“Yes,” I said. “I have.”
“I didn’t know that photographer was there,” he said.
“Really?” I asked, not at all cucumber-like. “He just happened to burst out from behind the bushes the moment we…kiss?” I whispered the last word, sure my mother was eavesdropping. Not that Penny didn’t know about the kiss; I just didn’t want to talk about it with my mom listening.
“I had no idea,” Carter said. “I promise.”
Promise? I thought. Something about Carter making a promise to me seemed authentic. It wasn’t something he would do lightly.
If it wasn’t a stunt, that meant the kiss was real. Genuine.
And somehow that was worse. I didn’t know what to do with those feelings. There was no slot in my life for wanting to kiss Carter.
“And if I really wanted to catch you in some kind of compromising position, it backfired—”
“Terribly,” I agreed. Then, because the photo was so awful, and the situation so ridiculous, I started to laugh.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said, and laughed some more. Some of that strange magic from last night lingered on my skin, the tips of my hair. I felt young and giddy.
“It is a bad photo,” he admitted, and I could almost hear the smile in his voice.
“The worst!”
I turned and sat on the edge of my bed and saw my mother standing in the doorway, her face cut into stern, unforgiving lines.
My laughter died in my throat.
The magic vanished, and I felt like a teenager caught doing something wrong.
I plucked at the knee of my yoga pants.
“So?” I asked, terribly aware of my mother’s eyes, her judgment. Even more aware that my mother, standing there with all the experience of a single parent, was probably right.
I had no business worrying about Carter O’Neill’s promises. Or teasing him. I was going to have a baby in a few months; I needed to focus on that.
“Are we done?” I asked. “No more dates?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I have to do a little more damage control after Deadbeat Daddy Denied.”
I ignored the little zing of excitement, smothered it with all kinds of worry and anxiety. More fake dates. More photos. More hand-holding.
“What…ah…what’s next?” I had no idea where mayor pro temps went on a second fake date.
“The National Ballet is in town.”
Oh, he was hitting me where it hurt. I would give my teeth to go see the ballet.
“How about Wednesday evening,” he said. “We’ll get some dinner—”
“No dinner,” I said. I had made Carter a promise, but my mother was right; dating right now, fake or not, was a distraction I didn’t need. If this was business, I would keep it business.
“I’ll meet you there,” I said. My mother made a disgusted noise and vanished from the doorway, leaving me alone in the sunny silence of my room.
I cleared my throat, lowered my voice. “And no…no more kissing.”
Carter was silent a long time and my heart pounded in my ears. “I wanted to kiss you, Zoe,” he said, his voice gruff. “I didn’t fake it and I certainly never expected it.”
“I know,” I said. Being noble sucked. “I didn’t, either, but…this relationship isn’t real and never could be, or would be if I hadn’t created such a bizarre situation.”
“I agree.”
“Great,” I said, bright as day. “Then let’s keep it businesslike.”
Carter’s laugh made me smile and my heart twist. “Something tells me, Zoe, that you wouldn’t know businesslike if it came up and bit you on the nose.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “But you do, so I’ll follow your lead.”
“What if businesslike isn’t all I want?” he asked and I nearly melted in response.
“Then you are fake-dating the wrong woman,” I said. “Because that’s all I’ve got right now.”
Please, I added silently, don’t push. Don’t make this harder than it is.
“Okay. I’ll see you Wednesday. I’ll call you with details.”
I disconnected and stared at my phone, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. One thing was for sure, I had to tell my mother the truth about this fake-dating situation—there was no other way to avoid the lecture of a lifetime.
I pulled together my courage and went out into the kitchen where my mother was using a wicked sharp blade to pulverize a bunch of apples.
“What are you doing?” I asked carefully.
“Making applesauce,” she answered, then slammed down the blade, and I jumped. “The question is, what are you doing?”
“It’s nothing, Mom.” When Penny opened her mouth to respond I held up my hand and told her everything. About the newspaper. The arrangement. Carter’s career. All of it.
“See, Mom,” I said, looking forward to getting my mother off my back. “It’s one hundred percent nothing.”
“Look at you,” Mom said. “You’re lying to yourself.”
“What are you talking about?” I sighed. Apparently I hadn’t avoided the lecture. Lucky me.
“It’s not nothing I see on your face,” Mom snapped, her face red and blotchy with ire. “It’s not nothing I hear in your voice.”
“What is it, then? Since you’re the expert on me?”
“You like him.”
“I don’t.”
“You kissed! It was all over the paper.”
Instantly I remembered the lush weight of his lips, the way my whole body had contracted with a desire so delicious, so consuming it had seemed painful.
An ache beneath my skin.
It had been unlike any other kiss in my life. Like my first taste of good wine, sweet and rich.
“Don’t lie to yourself, Zoe. That’s so dangerous. If you like him, admit it, but pretending you don’t is just asking for heartache.”
“Okay, fine, let’s say I like him. What’s wrong with that?”
“Zoe, can’t you see what you’re doing? This is your pattern. One mistake after another, thinking the second one will fix the first. You rush into situations without thinking.”
I felt a cold chill at the top of my spine and sat down on the stool by the counter.
Penny was right.
I did know a thing or two about mistakes.
“I’ve picked you up after every heartbreak, every disappointment, every situation you thought was going to be so amazing, only to have it fall apart around you.”
“I know,” I said, numbed by the truth.
“You need to use your head now, not your heart. Your life is about to be harder, in ways you don’t even understand, and that man will be gone.”
“Not every man is like Dad.”
“And you can tell me for sure that Carter O’Neill isn’t? That he’d stick around for the birth of a baby that isn’t his?”
There was no chance of that, I thought. None at all.
And, despite the magic and the teasing and the zing under my skin when I saw him, I didn’t want him around for the birth of my baby, so this whole argument was moot.
“It’s just some fun, Mom. That’s it.”
“It’s never just fun,” Penny said, shaking her head. “Someone always gets hurt. Always. And I don’t want that person to be you, because you’ve got enough on your plate.”
See, my impulsive nature once again stymied by Mom’s rationality. There was nothing my mother said that I could argue with.
Liking him, really liking Carter, was asking for trouble.
“You’re so busy with work and getting things ready for the baby, you don’t have time to be distracted.”
That, too, was true.
“There will be men, in the future, if you want them, but there is only one time in your life like this. One time to devote to your child.”
And score another one for Mom.
“You know I’m right,” Penny said, her case made. I sat slightly
sad over a mess of apples.
“You are,” I admitted, taking a piece of apple off the cutting board.
A couple more dates, a few more photographs, and my fake-relationship with Carter was over. We had to be.
CARTER
* * *
Monday, I said good-night to Larry at the security desk then stepped out into the black-edged purple night. It fit my mood, dark and darker.
This impending moment had been riding me for hours. The cherry on top of what had already been a weird day.
My meeting with Lafayette had been successful, but even that victory couldn’t chase Zoe out of my thoughts.
Why had I told Zoe my feelings for her weren’t businesslike? What idiotic devil had possessed me to say something so stupid? These dates were fake. Arranged.
Zoe had it right—this was business. Nothing else.
And somehow Zoe made me wish things were different.
I turned left outside the glass doors and searched the quiet dusk for evil blondes of my bloodline. The night-blooming jasmine battled with the smells of the city street, and I could hear the highway humming in the distance. But right now, right here, all was quiet in my city.
Across the street, in the deepest shadows in the alleyway between a McDonald’s and a barbershop, I saw a flash of white, the glowing tip of a cigarette.
And then it was gone.
I paused for a moment, making sure no photographer was following me, then I cut across the street, eager to have this over with. A taxi honked, breezing past, and I ignored it, focused instead on finding my mother and getting rid of her once and for all.
I stepped into the murky darkness of the alley and found her behind a fire escape. Her blond hair was pulled back, her black shirt swallowing the light. Her face was tight, her eyes shuddered.
She was subdued.
It freaked me out. Put an edge to my anger. I didn’t need to battle through one more act, one more false face.
She was never going to be my mother. She was certainly never going to be a friend, but why the hell did everything have to be a game?
“You look like a thief,” I said, stopping a good three feet from her.
“You look like a suit,” she said, pointing at me with her cigarette. “I swear you’re the only O’Neill to wear a suit who wasn’t selling something. Or maybe you are?” She tilted her head. “Lord knows you aren’t the first O’Neill to try politics as their scam of choice. Your great-uncle Jasper made a fortune—”
“I’m not like you,” I said. “So you can stop trying to tie the family bonds.”
She paused as if she was going to say something, but in the end she just took a drag of her cigarette.
“You were wrong,” I said, cutting to the chase. “The gems aren’t in the house and no one has come sneaking around. Margot’s in West Palm Beach and unless she travels with a fortune in stolen gems—”
“She doesn’t,” she sighed, smoke circling her head. “She doesn’t have the jewels. I’m guessing she never did.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, something about the authority in her tone made me nervous. “What did you do?”
“I had someone break into their hotel room, Carter. What do you think I did? Don’t worry,” she sighed, watching my face. “The guy was a pro. They don’t even know anyone was there. She doesn’t have safe-deposit boxes. She doesn’t rent a safe in hotels.”
“I can’t believe you—”
“I honestly thought she had the gems,” she said, her laughter sounding angry and sad at the same time and I felt as if I’d been dropped in some kind of wormhole. “It would be so like her, making me jump through hoops, chasing my tail all over the damn world while she sat in Bonne Terre laughing.”
“I don’t think anyone’s laughing,” I said. “Not after you broke into The Manor last summer.”
Vanessa dropped her cigarette and ground it out with the toe of a high-heeled foot. “I know. That was a mistake. This whole damn thing has been a mistake.”
“Do you have the gems?” I asked, wondering what game she was playing, because I hadn’t been dealt the same cards.
She stared at me, her eyes sharp and angry. “Why would I go to all this trouble, Carter?” she asked. “If I had the damn gems.”
“To get back into our lives,” I said. Even as the words came out of my mouth I realized it wasn’t the case. Not for Vanessa. Maybe in books or movies, when the bad guy was really a good guy in the end. But Vanessa was only greedy for money. Never greedy for her children.
Her silence confirmed it.
My rage ignited. “Then what the hell was the point of all this? Are we a game to you? A score? Is this…?” I could not get my head around what she wanted, why she was here. “Are you playing some kind of angle?”
She tilted her face back and looked up at the sky. “I’m way on the other side of fifty, broke and alone. I’m out of angles, Carter. I’m done.”
I laughed before I could help myself. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She shook her head, pulling out another cigarette and lighting it. “I’m sorry I bothered you, Carter. I’m sorry I bothered any of you.”
She turned as if to leave and I felt a lightning-quick knife in my chest—my whole body deflating in shock.
“This is it?” I asked. “You come back into my life for nothing? And now you just walk away?”
She paused, smoked half a cigarette in the charged silence. I could hear myself breathing, my heart pounding. “The gems… I thought it was my way out of the game, you know, for good. Otherwise I wouldn’t have broken our agreement,” she said. “I wouldn’t have scared Savannah…and her daughter.”
Your granddaughter. You can’t even say the word.
“That’s it?”
“What more do you want from me, Carter? I’m sorry. For all of it. You want to talk?” she asked, her voice joking, but a light sparking in her eyes. “Get a cup of coffee?”
“Hell no!” I cried. “I want to know why you came back! We had an agreement. I’ve spent the last ten years away from my brother and sister in fear of bringing you back to them. Afraid of contaminating them with the lies I told!”
“Oh, Carter, it wasn’t Federal Court. No one cares anymore.”
“I know what it was, Vanessa! I told the lie and I sure as hell care!”
She stepped up to me so close I could smell her perfume, see the black rim around her iris. She searched my eyes, my face, and her sudden smile was sad.
“I’m sorry I made you do that,” she said.
I felt fire burning through my veins, incinerating every logical thing I might say. Sorry? I thought. She was sorry?
“What about dropping us off with Margot?” My voice burned, rising up through my throat from some unknown furnace in my gut.
She shook her head. “Nope. That was the right thing to do. I’m a pretty crap mother.” She watched me as I stood there, running hot and cold, feeling like my head might explode. “You guys turned out better without me.”
Honesty? Honesty from Vanessa O’Neill. Was this really happening? Was I making this up? When I was a kid I used to dream about this crap—whole nights spent dedicated to the many ways my mother would come clean about screwing up.
“You okay?” she asked. Her smile, not sharp, not cold, not that evil slice across her mouth that held a thousand lies, was soft. Like a mother’s.
Not that I really knew what that looked like.
“You’ve had a bad day,” she said. “I saw the paper.”
Right. The paper. I pushed away from her, wiping my face. I didn’t need the two giant crap piles in my life converging into one giant crap pile.
“It’s that girl from the community center, right?” Vanessa asked. “The one I paid.” I braced myself against the fire escape, the metal cool in my hot hands.
Leave. Just leave.
But I couldn’t. Not while she was still talking. It was as if she held a magnet, and as long as she answered my questi
ons, I couldn’t walk away.
“She looks about five months pregnant.”
I watched her through narrowed eyes, waiting for her to say what had to be on the tip of her tongue, the tip of everyone’s tongue, but she was silent.
“I’d never met her before you paid her to get my attention. I’m not the father,” I finally snapped.
“I know you’re not,” she said.
“How?” I asked, “Mother’s intuition?”
“I know a first kiss when I see one.”
Stupidly, unbelievably, I smiled.
“You like her?” Vanessa asked.
“I am not talking about my love life with you.” I sounded like a defensive teenager and she smiled.
“Ahh, you do like her.” She took another drag from her cigarette. “It’s okay, Carter. You can be happy. You deserve it.”
“You’re an authority on happy?” I asked.
“Pretty much the other way around,” she said. “There’s not an inch of unhappy I haven’t seen firsthand.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel sorry for you?”
“The last thing I expect is for you to feel sorry for me. But if you like this girl, don’t run scared. Proud is a lonely way to spend your life.”
“You didn’t have to let go of us,” I said, not even sure if she was talking about her kids, but wanting to say it anyway. “You didn’t have to take that money from Margot every month.”
She didn’t give me an answer, probably didn’t have one, and I hated that I wanted one. I was doomed to disappointment when it came to my mother.
“I better go,” she said. “We don’t want our picture on the front page of the paper now, do we?”
Her black shirt blended into the night, the gleam of her blonde hair the only indication she was there.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere yet,” she said.
“I can’t have you here, Mom. It’s bad for me.”
“I know, Carter, and I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t worry about me, Carter,” she said, her voice spooling out from the darkness. “I’ll be fine.”
And then she was gone.
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