Liz lay on her side, facing the opposite wall. He ran his hand slowly over her back, following her spine delicately and outlining her shoulder blades. She rolled onto her stomach and he saw her birthmark peeking from behind the sheet. He traced the outline of it gently. He’d wondered about it, had actually obsessed about it for a very memorable few hours, but had convinced himself that it was not his right to ask. Liz had shared her history with him and if she’d left something out, that was her right. He certainly hadn’t told her the details about everyone he’d been with. Of course, that was because he couldn’t remember all of their names and he was not in a working relationship with any of them. But now, they were so close, had gotten impossibly close this summer…
Surely just asking wouldn’t hurt?
Liz stirred. “Good morning,” she said groggily.
“Morning. Sleep well?”
“Mmhm. Is that orange tea I smell?”
“Yes. Be careful, it’s hot.”
She sat up and slowly brought the cup to her lips. She took a tiny sip and smiled.
“Tea in bed. What a brilliant idea.”
He smiled again and looked away, slightly distracted.
“You sleep well?” Liz asked.
He nodded and made a sound she took as a yes. They drank quietly for a few minutes until Will broke the silence.
“Lizzy?” he said her name hesitantly.
“Yeah, babe?”
“How did Mark Basurto know about your birthmark?”
“What?”
“Your professor. In his book, the girl, she has a birthmark on her hip, just like yours.” She was silent. “Did you two ever…” he trailed off, unable to voice his question.
She leaned forward and looked at him, brushing her hair behind her ear. “No, I never slept with Mark. Is that what you’re trying to ask me?”
He nodded. “Did you,” he hesitated, “come close?”
She looked down, her hair falling forward and shielding her face. “One day, there was an… incident.” She looked toward the bright window. “We were reading a scene out loud, and it was raining. There was this Spanish guitar music playing.” She sighed loudly. “And it cast a sort of spell,” she said hesitantly. “Before I knew it we were kissing and my dress was on the floor.”
She plucked at the sheet with nervous fingers.
Will swallowed dryly. “Then what happened?”
“I came to my senses. I had just broken up with Jeremy the week before, I was feeling vulnerable. I pulled away and he apologized for overstepping. That was that,” she finished briskly.
Will nodded slowly. “Did anything like that ever happen again?” He knew he had no right to ask, that it was none of his business, that she hadn’t even known he existed at the time, but he couldn’t control his burning need to know exactly what they had been to each other. Were to each other.
“No, never again. I don’t think he would have stopped if I hadn’t said anything, and I don’t really think he would’ve said no to something later, either, but I never looked at him that way. He didn’t really see me that way either. I was his window into a young female mind—I realized that. He wasn’t really into me. Just what I represented.”
Will’s mind was reeling. So she had known that she was his muse. But then why didn’t she realize that the character Lita was based on her? Looking at her nervously pulling her hair behind her ears and sucking her lips in then releasing them, he thought it was better to leave it alone. The whole thing was over, she’d told him more than she had to, and more importantly, she hadn’t seen Mark Basurto in months. He could let it go.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” He took her hand firmly. “I don’t know that I agree with you about him not really wanting you, though.”
“You don’t?” she asked, surprised by his suddenly playful manner.
“You,” he said with dark eyes, “are a very desirable woman, Elizabeth.”
It took her a moment, but then she responded with equal playfulness. “Am I?”
“Yes. I’m sure he was half in love with you before the book was finished. Luckily, I came along and rescued you from the old man’s advances.”
She laughed. “You do realize he’s only ten years older than you?”
“Then you should listen to your elders, young lady,” he said lowly as he kissed her collarbone and his hair tickled her neck.
“Yes, sir.”
**
The next day, Caroline was feeling a bit funny and confessed to Liz that she was late for her period, but that because of the breast feeding she had been irregular and she’d taken two tests before, both negative, and didn’t want to get her hopes up again. But with the recent bout of nausea, she thought this might be the real thing.
Liz promised to sneak a test into the house without Teddy seeing, and so she found herself at the drug store one random Thursday morning, reading the labels of pregnancy test boxes and trying to discern which would be best. She finally settled on one that came with a simple to read plus or minus sign and four tests in the box in case one was a dud or something.
She put the bag on her dresser and joined the family for lunch, forgetting all about it. That afternoon, she went into the bedroom to change and found Will staring at something in his hand.
“Hey! Want to go for a swim? Teddy and Caroline and I are going to do some laps while the baby sleeps.”
“Liz?” he said in a voice that sounded far away. “What’s this?”
He held the pregnancy test box up to show her.
“Oh! You weren’t supposed to see that. Caroline hasn’t been feeling well and she thought she might be, but she didn’t want to get Teddy’s hopes up so she asked me to get the test for her. I haven’t snuck it into her bathroom yet.”
“So this isn’t for you?”
“No! Oh, you thought I was—no, no I’m not! Everything’s regular and working and—if you want me to pee on one just to be sure, I will. There are four in the box, Caroline won’t mind,” she rambled, scared by the strange look she saw on his face.
“You’re positive you aren’t?”
“Well, not one hundred percent. Anything can happen, but I did just have my period last week and I use contraceptive, so I seriously doubt it.”
He nodded and gingerly set the box back on the bureau. He was surprised at how he felt slightly disappointed. It’s probably just being around Teddy’s family, it’s nothing.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine. Don’t worry, I won’t say anything to Teddy.”
“Thanks.”
Caroline’s test the next morning was positive. She was so nervous she made Liz read the result for her. She couldn’t quite believe it, so she made Liz take one to make sure the pack wasn’t bad (Liz’s was negative) and just in case, she took another after breakfast that was also positive, and another after lunch with the same result. She told Teddy that afternoon while Thomas was sleeping and Liz was listening for the monitor.
That night at dinner, Teddy joyfully told Will that he would be a father of two in the spring. Harper opened a bottle of champagne and toasted his cousins eloquently. The whole party was merry and relaxed and filled with hopeful joy. Harper was only slightly discontent and told himself repeatedly that he was not jealous, rather just feeling his age and the usual urge to settle down, nothing more.
***
In September, Watson recommended Liz to an author who only needed minor help. The author was another scientist, but she had some sort of weird specialty with food and was writing a cookbook for geeks, as she called it. She referred to all her recipes as formulas and came at the entire thing from the point of view of a chemist. Liz loved her immediately.
She accompanied authors to meetings and helped explain the process to them when they got confused or overwhelmed. Arnold Billington had kindly allowed her to shadow a few editors in various departments over the summer and she had made a lot of great contacts.<
br />
As the months went on, she put in fewer and fewer hours at Taggston and took on two more authors, which was exactly how she wanted it. She thought it was smartest to maintain a good working relationship with Taggston Publishing, but the less time spent on site, the better. That way, it would be less likely for them to ask her to leave after the divorce.
Somehow, and she wasn’t quite sure how this had happened, she’d become a sort of scientist-literature liaison. All her years tutoring had taught her how to teach people to write and her quick mind guaranteed that she understood the complex subjects while her lack of experience in the field helped her know when something needed to be explained more simply. By the time November rolled around, she was working with five of Taggston’s non-fiction authors, four of them scientists and the other an engineer. Some required a lot of her time, like Ian Mellen, while others only needed to meet with her once every week or two.
She was putting in between thirty and forty hours a week with her own clients, which was just what she wanted. The hours were flexible and erratic, sometimes working late into the night when one of her authors was feeling the muse, and other times she would have an entire day to herself. It suited her perfectly and she felt like she had really found her niche.
At the end of October, they escaped to Valhalla to celebrate Will’s birthday a little early. The actual day was November fifteenth, but they didn’t want the beach to be too cold. They were only able to get away for five days, but it was worth the trouble. The days were a little shorter and a lot cooler, but still beautiful and absolutely idyllic. Liz felt no small amount of guilt for basically ignoring Will’s birthday the year before thanks to their (what she now called) ridiculous argument.
This time, Liz made sure his birthday was memorable in all his favorite ways and Will promised to turn off his phone and electronic devices the entire time. All in all, it was a lovely holiday that ended entirely too soon, as all truly lovely holidays do.
When she left Valhalla, she had the sense that she was locking something away, like it was a secret place just for them, holding her memories tightly behind its locked doors. Here, he wasn’t a business mogul and she wasn’t his hired wife. They were just two people who genuinely liked each other and enjoyed one another’s company, sharing a beautiful place and a few stolen moments.
***
“What do you want to do for Thanksgiving?” Will asked in early November. “Are we going to your parents’ again?”
“Actually, I was thinking about doing something different. What do you think about hosting Thanksgiving here?”
He looked surprised.
“We’ve never hosted a holiday or anything together and we already promised your sister that we would go to London for Christmas. This might be our last Thanksgiving together, and I thought, I don’t know, it might be a nice memory to have.” She looked down uncomfortably and waited for him to answer.
“I like that idea.”
She looked up and smiled.
“Were you thinking here or in the Hamptons?”
“Well, it probably depends on who’s coming. We can fit two people in the guest bedroom,” that’s what they now called her old bedroom since she’d never moved out of Harper’s, “two on the Murphy bed in my office, and we could even set up an air mattress or something in your study if we needed to.”
Harper pulled a face. “If your family comes, some of them could stay with Jen and Jamison. No need to put anyone on the floor.” He said it so distastefully Liz had to laugh.
“They wouldn’t be sleeping on the dirt! It would be a perfectly comfortable air mattress, and we would only do that for the young people like my sisters. My aunt and uncle could take the bedroom.”
“If you think that many people would be coming, maybe we should do it at the beach house. It sleeps twenty and we could probably fit more if we needed to. And Jamison’s place is just up the beach and has three guest rooms.”
“It doesn’t even have a dining table, just that little one in the kitchen.”
Will sighed dramatically. “I guess you’ll have to go shopping. Poor you!”
She laughed. “Very funny. Do you think it will be cold and ugly out there this time of year?”
“No uglier than it is in the city.”
She nodded agreement.
“And there are plenty of evergreens around, so it should still have some color to it.”
“Okay, so we’re decided then? Thanksgiving at the beach house?”
“It’s a plan.”
Two hours later Harper walked into the living room to find Liz on the phone with her mother.
“I know, Mom… I know… I think so, too…. I know no place is as magical as a Christmas tree farm! …No, that’s not what I’m trying to do… No one is trying to replace you! … Mom, just stop and listen for a minute, all right? Will and I bought a new beach house… Yes, I did tell you about it! … When we talked back in July. I said Will gave the family place to his sister and we bought a new one... Fine, whatever, that’s not the point. What I’m saying now is that we have this big place and we’ve never hosted a holiday together and it’s hard for everyone to travel for Christmas with all the activities and hauling the presents and everything, so it makes sense to do Thanksgiving. Next year we’ll be back at your place… I mean home… of course I still think of it as home! I just have another home here, in New York, with Will... You can go back Saturday morning, or even Friday… I know the train takes all day, maybe you can fly… I know the airports are crazy… No, I wouldn’t want to get stranded for hours either… Maybe we can work something out. Just let me try for a little bit, all right? Thanks, Mom. Love you, too. Talk soon. Bye.”
She sighed loudly and set the phone down.
“Rough chat?”
“Ugh! My mother! She thinks I’m trying to steal her holiday and usurp her position as hostess.”
“All part of your evil plan to take over the world?” he asked.
“Exactly. Starting with Thanksgiving dinner.” She rubbed her forehead. “She finally agreed, though. She is right about the trains taking all day and commercial airlines will be insane. Do you think we could send the plane down and bring everyone here at once? Would it be a huge difference in cost?”
“Probably not much, depending on how many people come. We could tell them you chartered a plane for less. People do it all the time.”
“You’re a brilliant and devious man, William Harper.”
He just smiled.
**
In the end, they had a houseful of people. Caroline and Teddy arrived on Saturday and stayed with them in the city at first, then the women drove out to the beach house together Tuesday morning with the baby while the men spent the morning at the office, then picked up the family from the airport.
Liz and Caroline went through the house carefully, making sure that everything was ready for their guests.
“I can’t believe I’m about to have my first American Thanksgiving!” Caroline enthused. “Who all is coming?”
“My mother and father, Jenny and Andrew, my little sisters Heather and Tiffany—Heather is quiet but really nice, and Tiffany is a tornado but sweet and great with kids if you need any help with Thomas. My grandmother Barrett is coming—you’ll love her,” she continued counting on her fingers, “my mother’s brother David and his wife Michelle and their three children. My cousin Mary is coming with her four kids—her husband has to work—and I think that’s it. We tried to get Calvin to come but he said he couldn’t make it, especially with Teddy out of the office.”
“Which is code for ‘I met a hot red head,’” Caroline laughed. “I don’t know how I’ll keep all the names straight but it sounds like it will be heaps of fun.”
“It always is. I’m just glad we have the bunk room for the kids! I don’t know how we’d fit everyone otherwise.”
The Barrett clan arrived with a bang late Tuesday night. William had rented two vans to accommodate them. He drove one with Teddy,
Mary and her four children, while David drove the other with his wife, their three children, Heather and Tiffany. Jenny and Andrew met them at the airport and brought Jen’s parents and grandmother in Andrew’s Land Rover.
By the time they got to the house, they all looked a little worse for wear, but Tiffany was full of excitement about the trip and the private plane and shopping in the city on black Friday and anything else she could think of. Her father was accompanying her on two college tours on Wednesday, another thing she simply could not stop talking about. Heather thanked Liz for making the travel plans and quietly said it was exciting to ride in a private plane, then went into the kitchen to help.
Loretta took one look at the house and pinched Liz’s cheek, telling her she’d done well for herself. Liz flushed but knew her mother meant well. She introduced her to Caroline and as soon as Loretta found out Caroline ran a store, she began talking to her about her little Christmas shop and how she’d thought about expanding and adding a tea shop onto it or even turning the house into a bed and breakfast once all her children had moved out. Caroline was kind and to Liz’s surprise, got really into the conversation and gave Loretta some sound advice about inventory tracking systems. At one point, she heard Caroline taking sales advice from Loretta with rapt attention. She just shook her head in amazement and kept tending to her guests.
They all set to work on the pies Wednesday afternoon. They made chocolate and chess, pumpkin, apple, and cherry. There was also a carrot cake and the traditional layered banana pudding. Loretta made blueberry pies from berries she had grown on her farm, frozen, and brought with her. Caroline had continued learning how to cook after Liz had taught her a few things last year, and she was quickly brought into the fold. Loretta taught her how to make the cherry pie, an experience Caroline was clearly eating up. She showed her how to make the perfect lattice top and to cut out little holly leaves made out of dough to decorate the corners.
By the time they were finished, Loretta had invited Caroline to the farm to see her store and told her she could choose whatever ornament she wished. Caroline smiled and promised to come.
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