“No cooking? What do you mean, no cooking!”
“The smell was going through the house. She’s supposedly doing a cleanse, and you’re not going to torture her.”
“Me! You gulped down a thousand calories in front of her!”
“Natural consequences. What you’re doing is different.”
She threw up her hands. “I don’t believe you!”
His mouth twisted. “Maybe you’d better call Mommy and have her send in the SEALs to protect you.”
Had she really kissed this man? Let him—let him—do that? Viper was beyond pissed, and she pointed a chipped charcoal fingernail right in his face. “You,” she said, “are going to pay.” And off she went.
HE WAS ALREADY PAYING. JUST being near her again was torture. He still remembered his first sight of her. The night of the rehearsal dinner. She’d been standing at Ted’s side in a ladylike blue-green dress, her shiny hair many shades lighter than it was now. All he could think about was how impeccably matched the two of them were, the perfect all-American couple. It wasn’t until almost two weeks later, the night at Caddo Lake when she’d finally called her family, that he’d realized she truly wasn’t going back to Ted. Stupid.
You weren’t that good anyway.
What a fricking lie. He was the one who’d been inept—rushed, clumsy, out of control. Lucy had been giving and natural, with none of that phony porn star posturing women seemed to believe they needed to bring to the bedroom.
He’d counted on her taking off as soon as she saw that he’d come back, but instead of jumping on the ferry the way she should have, she’d decided to cook pork chops in his kitchen. Now he had two problem women on his hands, both of whom wanted to use his house as their hideaway. One of them was a demanding pain in the ass, but he’d handled Temple before, and he could do it again. The other was a different kind of pain in the ass, and the way he most wanted to handle her was naked.
He pushed images of a naked Lucy from his mind so he could concentrate on the job at hand. This was the last place he wanted to be, but Temple was paying him a lot of money to babysit her, and she had refused to negotiate the location. He wished he hadn’t told her about the house, but he’d never imagined she’d insist on coming here, just as he never imagined her thirty pounds overweight and on the verge of ruining her career. He liked jobs that kept him on the move, jobs where there was at least the potential for a little excitement. This was a shit job, but it was also a highly lucrative one. Besides, Temple had been his first big client, and he owed her.
They’d met not long after he’d taken over the agency when her publisher had hired him for a routine security job at a Chicago bookstore where she was doing a signing. A twitchy-looking guy in the crowd had caught his attention. Panda had kept a close eye on him, and before the night was over, had stopped him from leaping over a row of chairs to carve up Temple’s face. From then on, whenever Temple needed security, she insisted he provide it. Thanks to her, he’d attracted other well-heeled clients, and his business had grown to the point where he’d been able to rent the Lake Shore Drive apartment he seldom slept in, buy this house, and put his mother in the best Alzheimer’s facility in Illinois.
His stomach rumbled, not from hunger but from trying to digest all that chocolate. He didn’t have much of a sweet tooth. Too bad Temple hadn’t been smuggling potato chips.
His thoughts drifted back to Lucy. He’d expressly told her not to change anything in the house, but she’d done what she’d wanted, and the changes unsettled him. Why had Lucy given in to Temple’s request? He couldn’t figure it out, but he did know that the sooner he could make her leave, the better, and the best way for him to accomplish that was to make sure she hadn’t forgotten his worst qualities.
If only the prospect of reminding her didn’t depress him so much.
THE EVIL QUEEN WASN’T A prima donna; Lucy would give her that. The next morning she worked side by side with Panda breaking down the bunk beds and carrying them outside. “Great cardio,” she told Lucy as she hauled a set of bedrails toward the front door.
Temple had pulled her hair into a messy ponytail and traded in yesterday’s black outfit for roomy navy workout pants and an oversize V-neck mesh knit top, neither of them stylish enough to have come from her own clothing line. “I’m getting the idea that you and Panda have some history,” she said.
Lucy moved ahead of her to hold the front door open. “Wrong idea.”
Temple wasn’t fazed by Lucy’s cool response. “As long as he does the job I hired him for”—she angled her cargo through the doorway—“I don’t care what the two of you do the rest of the time.”
Lucy wasn’t used to being addressed as anyone’s underling, but before she could fire back, the Evil Queen and her load of bedrails had disappeared down the front steps.
Lucy had discovered a padlock on the pantry door when she’d gone into the kitchen for breakfast, and since she hadn’t been up to doing battle with Panda on an empty stomach, she’d settled for coffee. But now she was hungry. She located a carton of black cherry yogurt and a cold hot dog. Before she could finish either one, she heard a truck pulling into the drive, followed almost immediately by the sound of a door slamming upstairs, presumably Temple hiding from sight. Soon Panda and the driver were unloading what proved to be gym equipment.
Lucy had planned to bake bread for Bree and Toby, but after last night’s pork chop incident, she couldn’t see that happening, and she rode to the farm stand empty-handed.
Bree stood on a ladder, painting a colorful ribbon garland across the top of the farm stand’s pale yellow frame, the kind of whimsical decoration that might be seen on a carousel. The colors coordinated with the old-fashioned moss-green quilt she’d tossed over the counter to showcase a row of three-bottle honey pyramids.
Toby popped out from behind the stand as Lucy got off her bike. “I saw Panda’s car go by yesterday. You got a job for me?”
Toby was a complication she hadn’t thought through. “Not for a while. One of my … girlfriends is visiting. We’re going to be hanging out, so it’ll be boring.” The idea of the Evil Queen as a girlfriend made her shudder, but she needed to lay some groundwork in case Toby showed up unexpectedly at the house, which he would almost certainly do.
“But I can still come over and do stuff, right?”
“Toby, please stop harassing her.” Bree gave Lucy a tired smile as she got down off the ladder, leaving her tray of paint pots balanced on top. Although the morning was warming up, Bree didn’t have any body fat, and she wore a lightweight gray sweater over her T-shirt. Neither the tan she was acquiring nor the fresh sprinkle of freckles across her cheekbones concealed her exhaustion. “I’ll do my best to keep him from bothering you.”
Considering Bree’s general ineffectiveness with Toby, Lucy wasn’t counting on it, and she slipped an arm around his shoulder. “The thing is, Toby, my friend isn’t exactly a kid person, so instead of coming over, maybe you could start showing me around the island. I know there are a lot of places I haven’t seen yet.”
“I guess.”
Lucy took in the Carousel Honey sign and freshly painted border. “I love what you’re doing. Is the sign working?”
“I’ve sold seven jars this morning.” She scratched a bee sting on her wrist, leaving a spot of raspberry paint behind. “I’m thinking about adding more products, maybe soap or beeswax candles. Whatever I can figure out how to make.”
“It’s still not going to be enough money,” Toby said, with his customary belligerence. “You should leave.”
Lucy quickly intervened. “The two of you have brought the farm stand back to life in just a couple of days. You should be proud of yourselves.”
“It’s Gram who should be proud,” Toby said. “It’s her honey.” He stomped off toward the house. “I’m calling Big Mike!” he shouted. “He said he’d take me out on his boat.”
“No!” Bree dashed to the driveway. “Toby, do not call Mike! Do you unde
rstand me? Toby!”
Toby had already disappeared.
With an air of weary resignation, Bree tucked away a lock of hair that had escaped her ponytail. She pulled a cigarette pack from a shelf behind the counter. “I’m no good at this.”
“He’s hurting,” Lucy said. “That makes him a tough challenge.”
“We’re both hurting.” She waved away the smoke, as if what hung in the air posed a bigger danger than what she was sucking into her lungs. “Sorry. Having a little pity party here.” She studied Lucy more closely. “You look so familiar. I feel like I know you from somewhere, but I’m sure we’ve never met. When I first saw you, I thought you were a kid.”
“I’m thirty-one.”
Her gaze drifted to Lucy’s hair, the new eyebrow ring, and the dragon tattoo on her neck.
“A case of arrested development,” Lucy said by way of explanation.
“I see.”
But Bree clearly didn’t see, and Lucy no longer felt right about keeping her identity hidden. She decided to take a risk. “I’m … sort of in disguise.” She hesitated. “I’m … Lucy Jorik.”
Bree’s eyes widened, her posture straightened, and she dropped her cigarette. She might be able to smoke in front of that odd girl who lived on the other side of the woods, but she couldn’t do it in front of the president’s daughter. “Oh … I …”
“I needed to hide out for a while,” Lucy said with a shrug. “This seemed like a good place.”
Bree realized she was staring. “Sorry. It’s just … a little unexpected.” She pushed at her hair again, trying to straighten it. “Why did you tell me? I’d never have guessed.”
“It doesn’t seem right to keep coming over here and not say anything. Hard to believe, but I have this thing about honesty.”
“But … You barely know me. I could tell everybody.”
“I’m hoping you won’t.” She wanted to change the subject. “That pity party you mentioned. Would you like to fill me in?”
A car slowed but didn’t stop. Bree gazed after it. “It’s a boring story.”
“I hate to admit this, but some days hearing about other people’s problems actually cheers me up.”
Bree laughed, the tension broken. “I know the feeling.” She wiped her hands on her shorts. “You really want to hear this?”
“Does that make me a bad person?”
“Don’t say you weren’t warned.” She rubbed absentmindedly at a paint flake on her arm. “Last November I came home from a luncheon at our country club and found my husband packing up his car. He said he was tired of our privileged life, he wanted a divorce, and oh, by the way, he was going to start over with his soul mate, a nineteen-year-old office temp who was twice the woman I was.”
“Ouch.”
“It gets worse.” The speckled sunlight coming through the trees cast her face in light and shadow, making her look both older and younger than she was. “He said he realized he owed me something for ten years of marriage, so I could have whatever was left after the debts I didn’t know anything about were paid off.”
“Nice guy.”
“Not even when I met him. I knew that, but he was gorgeous and smart, and all my sorority sisters were crazy about him. Our families had been friends for years. He was one of GM’s wonder boys before Detroit imploded.” She flicked her ash into the grass. “Scott and his temp headed off to Seattle to find their bliss, and the debts ate up everything we had. I’d only finished a year of college. I had no work experience and no idea how to support myself. For a while, I lived with one of my brothers, but after a few months of barely leaving my room, my sister-in-law let me know I’d worn out my welcome.”
She forgot her discomfort about smoking in front of the first daughter and reached for another cigarette. “Around the same time, Myra’s lawyer contacted me and told me she’d died and left her cottage to me along with her grandson. I’d only seen Toby a few times years ago when Myra came to visit me. Yet here I am. Mistress of my domain.” She looked around at the farm stand and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Have you ever heard anything more pathetic? I was raised with all the advantages except a backbone.” She pushed the cigarette back in its pack without lighting up. “I can imagine what you’re thinking after everything you’ve accomplished in your life.”
“Running away on my wedding day?”
“Especially that.” She grew almost dreamy-eyed. “How did you have the guts?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it guts.”
“I would.” Just then a car stopped. Bree tucked the cigarette pack in her pocket. “Thanks for trusting me. I won’t sell you out.”
Lucy hoped she’d keep her word.
ON THE WAY HOME, LUCY realized she’d forgotten her honey, but without the prospect of warm bread to slather it on, she didn’t turn around. A pile of broken-down bunk beds, old mattresses, and the ugly vinyl curtains from the dorm sat at the end of the drive, waiting to be hauled away. The delivery truck was gone, and as she entered the house she heard something heavy being dragged across the floor overhead. Too much to hope it was Panda’s dead body.
She cut through the kitchen to go outside and noticed that the old refrigerator was gone. In its place stood a high-tech stainless steel side-by-side. Her unsatisfactory breakfast had left her hungry, so she opened the doors.
And discovered all her stuff was gone. Her peanut butter and jelly, her deli ham and perfectly aged Swiss cheese. No black cherry yogurt, salad dressing, or sweet pickles. None of the leftovers she’d counted on for lunch. Even Panda’s marmalade had disappeared.
The freezer section was equally awful. Instead of Hot Pockets and the frozen waffles that were her weekend treat, she saw rows of prepackaged diet meals. She pulled open the vegetable bins. Where were her carrots? Her blueberries? The fresh bunch of romaine lettuce she’d bought just yesterday? Frozen waffles were one thing, but they’d taken her lettuce?
She stormed upstairs.
Chapter Twelve
THE RUBBERY SMELL OF A gym hit her even before she paused in the doorway. The dorm had been transformed since last night. Shiny new exercise equipment sat on pristine black rubber mats, the bare floor had been swept clean, and sunlight spilled through the open windows. Panda was wrestling with one of the bent window screens, the twist of his body tugging up his T-shirt and exposing a rock-hard abdomen. What she could see of his shirt was mercifully free of smutty messages, and the fact that she found this vaguely disappointing she blamed on Viper.
Temple grunted away on an elliptical machine, sweat dripping from her temples, wet tendrils of dark hair sticking to her neck. Lucy took in the scene of workout horror. “My food seems to be missing from the refrigerator.”
Temple hunched her shoulder and wiped her forehead on her sleeve. “Panda, take care of this.”
“Happy to.” He secured the screen and followed Lucy out of the room so quickly she knew he’d been looking for an excuse to escape. Before she could open her mouth to launch what she intended to be an un-Lucy-like tirade, he grabbed her elbow and steered her along the hall. “We have to talk downstairs. Loud voices upset Temple. Unless they’re coming from her.”
“I heard that,” Temple shouted from inside.
“I know,” Panda shouted in return.
Lucy headed for the stairs.
IT WAS PROBABLY PANDA’S IMAGINATION, but he could swear he saw dust bombs exploding from beneath the soles of Lucy’s ridiculous combat boots as she stomped down the worn beige stairway carpet. A carpet he suspected she wanted him to get rid of. Which he damned well wasn’t going to do.
She hit the bottom step. A purplish painted chest used to sit there, but it had gone missing, right along with the antler coatrack and that black shelving thing that was now on the porch holding some plants he hadn’t bought and didn’t want.
Why the hell hadn’t she taken off like she was supposed to? Because she’d latched onto this place. That was the thing about people who’d been raised with money
. Their sense of entitlement made them believe they could have whatever they wanted, even when it didn’t belong to them. Like this house. But as much as he wanted to cast Lucy as spoiled, he knew it wasn’t true. She was rock-bottom decent, even if she was screwed up right now.
As she tromped toward the kitchen, her small butt twitched in a pair of weird-looking black shorts that weren’t nearly baggy enough. He wanted her in oversize clothes like those Temple was wearing. Clothes that covered up everything he didn’t want to think about. Instead she wore those black shorts and an ugly gray top with these black leather ties on her shoulders.
As soon as she reached the kitchen, she whirled on him, making the ties twitch. “You had no right to get rid of my food!”
“You had no right to get rid of my furniture, and you shouldn’t be eating that crap.” His mood grew darker as he once again noted the clean counters, now missing, among other things, the ceramic pig dressed like a French waiter.
“Blueberries and lettuce aren’t crap,” she said.
“They weren’t organic.”
“You threw them out because they weren’t organic?”
She was really pissed. Good. As long as he kept her pissed at him, she wouldn’t try to suck him into one of those cozy little chats he used to pretend to hate. He splayed his hand on the counter. Her hair was so black it looked dead, the ratty purple dreadlocks were ridiculous, and her heavily mascaraed eyelashes looked like caterpillars had expired on them. A silver ring pierced one eyebrow; another pierced her nostril. He hoped like hell they were both fakes. And smearing that delicate mouth with ugly brown lipstick was a crime against humanity. But the tattoos bothered him most. That long, slender neck had no business being strangled by a fire-breathing dragon, and the thorns on her upper arm were an abomination, although a few of the blood drops had mercifully flaked off.
“Do you really want to pollute your body with pesticides and chemical fertilizers?” he said.
“Yes!” She jabbed a finger toward the pantry door. “And hand over that key.”