by Mimi Wells
Ivy’s phone chirped in her hand, Jada’s request filling the corner of the screen. Ivy smiled and connected FaceTime.
“Worst friend in the world here,” Jada said without preamble. Her phone was propped on the shelf over the toilet in her small bathroom. Ivy had a clear view of the towels hanging over the back of the door and a close-up of Jada working on her makeup. “I didn’t call you yesterday for your birthday.”
“There was a lot going on. I didn’t miss it.”
Jada caught something in Ivy’s tone, because she pulled her head back and frowned. She pointed a makeup brush at the phone camera. “Why do I already not like what I think you’re about to tell me?”
“Because it was awful?”
Jada narrowed her eyes. “Tell me everything. I haven’t talked to you in, like, forever, so this had better be good.”
So Ivy did, starting with Christmas Eve. Jada was appropriately thrilled and horrified in all the right places. She got so angry about what happened at Rand’s she had to wipe off her eyeliner and start over, which was big. Jada was the acknowledged queen of the office when it came to the perfect cat’s eye.
“Is he still alive?” The phone was moving now. Jada was headed to her closet.
“As far as I know,” Ivy said. “I haven’t spoken to him since. All I know is, yesterday had better not set the tone for my thirties, or I might as well refuse to get out of bed for a few years.”
“Hold on a sec,” Jada said. The image panned upward as Jada tossed her phone on the bed, and Ivy got a view of the patterned metal ceiling in Jada’s apartment, a fourth-floor walkup in a 1912 building. She heard the sound of hangers being shoved back and forth on a crowded rod, then a rustle of cloth, then Jada’s face came back into view.
“Nice blouse,” Ivy said. The blue and green Pucci print was a favorite look.
“You always say that when I wear this one,” Jada returned. “I should just give it to you.”
“Give it back, you mean. I think you borrowed it three years ago.”
Jada looked down. “Whatever. Looks better on me anyway.”
Ivy shrugged. She had a point.
Jada continued, “You still haven’t told me what you’re planning to do now. Wendy should be back in the office this morning. Paris’s lame story is racking up views without any competition, and you’re lazing around in your pajamas. So what’s your plan?”
“Still working on it,” Ivy said.
“Work faster. Wendy’s going to be making decisions by the end of the week.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want Paris as a boss.”
“Me neither.”
“So do something about it already.”
“I plan to.” On my own terms.
“Then get moving!” Jada brought the phone closer to her face to check the time and let out a squeal. “Oooh! I’m gonna be late.”
“Bye.”
“Bye. Text me!” Jada ended the call and Ivy’s screen returned to its usual wallpaper of Central Park’s Mall, its trees ablaze in fall colors. Ivy hadn’t bothered to change it because she loved the view. And, she admitted to herself, because it reminded her of home.
Dogwood Mountain.
Ivy wrestled with this uncomfortable thought as she headed downstairs. Unlike every other day, where she’d awakened with a mission, today she had answers and no idea what to do with them. She busied herself and set a kettle on the stove, then sliced herself a chunk of the buttermilk chocolate cake.
She was halfway through her piece of cake when Holly walked in the room.
“Well, good morning,” her mother said. “Please tell me you don’t eat like that in New York.”
“People don’t bake for me in New York,” Ivy responded. She cut off a big mouthful and ate it.
Holly shook her head. While Ivy poured boiling water into two mugs and dropped in the orange spice tea bags they both loved to brew, her mother toasted a couple of slices of bread and then put a skillet on a burner to heat. Once she had butter sizzling in the pan, Holly cut out the middles of each piece of toast with a biscuit cutter, laid the toast down, and cracked an egg in each hole.
Ivy knew what her mother was doing. Roadhouse eggs, as Alex called them, had been one of Ivy’s favorite things to eat as a child.
Holly didn’t say anything as she seasoned the eggs then flipped the slices of toast to finish cooking the center to a perfect over medium. She slid the prepped eggs onto two plates and handed one to Ivy, who reciprocated by sliding a mug of hot tea across the table.
“Thanks, Mama.” She toyed the edge of her egg with her fork, thinking. “How did you get to be you?”
Holly tilted her head. “What do you mean?”
“How did you end up here? Like this. Family, farm wife, the whole thing.” She waved the fork in circles. “I doubt you lay in bed as a girl dreaming of becoming a fruitcake boss.”
Holly chuckled. “No. That was as big a surprise to me as it was anyone else.” She took a sip of tea and tightened her lips. “It was all a series of choices. I married your father, so that brought me here. Children were a natural progression from that. The fruitcakes were a happy accident.”
“‘Accident’ I get, but ‘happy?’” She frowned over at her mother.
Holly stirred sugar into her mug. “I know you’ve never liked the whole fruitcake thing,” she said. “Laurel may be the most emotional of you girls, but you were always the most sensitive. It bothers you the most. Still does.” She looked over at Ivy as if daring her to contradict what she was saying.
Ivy couldn’t. Her mother was right.
“It’s not about the cakes, Ivy. It’s about a young mother with three small children who found something she was good at, something she was able to grow into a business that kept a family farm afloat in lean years and thriving during the good ones.” She waved in the direction of the kitchen shed. “Converting the washhouse into my kitchen was tangible proof that I’d done something separate from being a wife and mother. Something just for me. That’s my business out there, and Lord knows I complain between the apple harvest and Christmas every year, but I’m damned proud of what I’ve built.”
Ivy smiled in spite of herself. Her good-natured, practical mama sounded so fierce. An idea floated through her brain, and Ivy felt a tingle run down her spine. She got up and came to her mother’s end of the table and kissed her on the top of the head. “Thanks, Mama. I think I know what to do now.”
Holly patted her hand. “I knew you’d figure it out,” she said. “You always do.”
*
Once Ivy started writing, the words poured out. Her head seethed with images mixing the tranquility of Dogwood Mountain with the busy streets of New York, the hustle of Scoop’s offices and Jada’s affectionate sarcasm with the calm of a long mountain afternoon and her sisters’ teasing. About her mother and Wendy, of all people, dissimilar women with similar burning needs to express themselves. She thought of Katy and Julian, how different they appeared but how they fit so well together, like her parents had for all these years.
She thought of Rand, his bright eyes and russet hair, his easy ways and brilliant mind. And she wondered if there would be a place for him in the life she wanted for herself. The one she was crafting right now.
Ivy scanned the last few paragraphs of her article, attached the photos she’d selected, read the email she’d prepared one last time, and inhaled. Then she hit send.
She let the breath out with a whoosh that harmonized with the system’s outgoing email alert. What’s done is done. Now she could only wait.
Chapter Sixteen
For the second time in two days, Rand woke up on a sofa, this time on the long leather couch in his own living room. After pacing for much of the night, talking himself into and out of driving out to the Macphersons and groveling until Ivy forgave him, he’d finally crashed sometime in the wee hours. Now he felt bleary-eyed and as draggy as a frat boy after an all-day bender, minus the hangover. He
sat up and scrubbed the back of his head, yawned, headed into the kitchen.
Bright sunshine poured through the windows at an angle he wasn’t used to, so he checked the clock. Five after ten. He scoffed. He hadn’t slept this late in years.
After yesterday’s debacle, he’d cleaned while Katy and Julian huddled in the bedroom, packing and talking in low tones about how to deal with the media frenzy once they got back to Los Angeles.
“It’s going to suck,” he heard Julian say at one point. “Paparazzi dogging your every step, reporters calling you at all hours—you may as well move in with me just for the peace and quiet.”
“You’re not that quiet, Jules. And I like my condo,” Katy countered in a voice Rand knew well.
“Good luck, buddy,” Rand muttered, rinsing off the champagne flutes the three of them had used to toast the engagement and setting them on the drain board.
But this morning, everything was put away, counters wiped down and bare, bedroom quiet, bed stripped, towels in the hamper. The only sign Katy and Julian had even been here was a blue T-shirt he found downstairs in the extra room where Julian had done hot yoga a couple of mornings ago. That, and a photo of the two of them now residing on Ivy Macpherson’s phone, the bomb set to blow up all their lives.
Exhaling in frustration, Rand prepped a French press with coffee and paced while it brewed.
He hadn’t delivered on total privacy for Katy and Julian despite his best efforts to keep Ivy preoccupied. In good conscience, he couldn’t keep Julian’s generous check even though both of them swore up and down he more than deserved it. He didn’t. Not with Ivy’s photo poised to hit the Internet at any moment.
Katy had put up a fuss. Julian had insisted. But Rand was adamant. He’d go as far as the inflated room rate they’d initially agreed on, running Katy’s credit card himself, but that was it. When they piled into the white Camry to head to the airport, the check was back in Julian’s pocket where it belonged.
Maybe he could auction Julian’s T-shirt. Some crazed fan would buy it to mount on the wall. He could probably get some of the plumbing paid for with the proceeds. But the rest?
As far as he could tell, he was well and truly screwed.
He poured himself a cup of coffee, watching as it swirled up against the white ceramic of the NC State Wolfpack mug he’d bought sometime during architecture school. The brew was dark, like his thoughts. Like Ivy’s eyes.
“Way to prioritize,” he muttered to himself. “Your family’s facing total financial annihilation, but you’re more worried about a woman.”
But that was the worst thought of all. After what he’d done, Ivy probably wouldn’t speak to him again.
He walked over to the glass doors facing the deck and stared out across the valley. Mist hung thick among the treetops and blended into the fat-bellied clouds on the low horizon. Heavy and gray, they matched his mood. Nothing felt right. Not his house, not his work at the inn, and—he grimaced as he swallowed—not even this coffee. He stalked back into the kitchen and poured all of it down the drain.
He couldn’t pace all morning, hashing over every misstep he’d made with Ivy over the past few days. He’d make himself crazy. Might as well get to work and start brainstorming alternate solutions for his Cooper House woes. Anything to keep his mind occupied. He took a shower, dressed, and got in his Subaru to head down the mountain. The higher seat and workmanlike ride felt weird after driving Gramp’s old but luxurious Volvo for the past few days.
The day-after-Christmas crowds were thick on the sidewalks. Even in a town as small as Dogwood Mountain, people thronged the stores, exchanging gifts or splurging on items they hadn’t received with the gift cards they had. If Rand were lucky, there would be an accompanying uptick in reservations for the New Year’s holiday. Sometimes people wanted to get away to set the tone for the upcoming year or plan a romantic sleepover to avoid the annoyances of a booze-fueled weekend.
After that, well, the jury was out. He’d seen the numbers Jessica compiled based on the past two years of January reservations, and they weren’t good. If he had to close off the first floor like the building engineer had warned, those numbers would look even worse. He would have to have a long, uncomfortable talk about the cost of reality once Gramp and Nana came home from their cruise.
Rand pulled into the gravel lot behind the inn and killed the Subaru’s engine, then thumped up the back porch steps and came inside, hanging his coat on a hook by the door. He paused. The porch where they’d filled the luminarias, the kitchen where she’d first revealed what she thought was her Julian Wolf secret, the lobby where she’d slept in his arms—dammit. Everywhere he looked here, he would see Ivy. This was going to be an ugly, ugly week.
Jessica came bustling into the room, an empty silver tray in her hand. A few late-rising guests were visible in slices as the swinging door from the dining room swooshed back and forth and came to an eventual halt behind her.
“Oh, hey, Rand,” she said. “Just here to grab some more pastries.” She washed her hands and began unloading the Blossom Bakery box onto the tray as she chattered on. “Did you have a good Christmas?”
Loaded question, but she didn’t know that. “It wasn’t what I expected.”
“I hope that’s good?” She screwed up her face.
“We’ll see.”
She turned to head back to the dining room but then whirled to face him again and waggled a finger at him. “I almost forgot. Your friend Katy stopped by late last night after you left,” Jessica said.
“What?”
“Yeah—she said she’d forgotten something important and asked me for paper. Come on out here.”
Rand followed Jessica through the dining room, nodding his greetings to their guests and feeling self-conscious. He’d dressed that morning intending to hide in the office, not play host. Good thing Nana was sunbathing on a cruise ship right now instead of casting one of her guilt-inducing looks his way.
Jessica slipped behind the desk then held out a sealed Cooper House Inn envelope. “Here.”
Weird. Rand took the envelope and tore off one end. It only took a moment to read the brief note, but when he reached the bottom, he picked up the envelope again and held it to the light.
True to form, Katy was having the last word. He stuck his fingers deeper in the envelope and pulled out another, smaller slip of paper. Julian’s check, a bit crumpled, but still bearing enough zeroes to make anyone’s eyes pop.
Rand’s shoulders slumped in both defeat and relief. Katy could out-argue everyone he knew. It was useless for him to try objecting further. In the end, she’d get her way. Best to accept the gift gratefully and put it to good use. He flipped over the check to show Jessica. “Merry Christmas to us.”
Her response was pure Boston. “Wicked.”
*
Ivy’s boots crunched into the snow lying smooth between the rows of apple trees, their twisted old branches gathering strength in the winter cold for a new year of growth to come in the spring. Two sets of prints intersected her path—small front, long back—rabbits out foraging for forgotten windfalls in the new drifts of snow.
After sending the email to Wendy, she’d bolted out of the house to get her head together. Clad in an old red barn jacket and knit scarf she’d nicked from the porch instead of her city wool and sidewalk bargain pashmina, she’d walked until she couldn’t feel her toes and was headed inside to thaw.
Ivy was a hundred yards short of Laurel’s sweet new house when Bark Ruffalo thundered up, snow spraying beneath his paws and wriggling from tail to nose. She scratched behind his mismatched ears, giving him the attention he craved, until Laurel came over to corral him.
“I thought you were never coming in,” her sister said.
“Needed to think,” Ivy replied.
Laurel fell in step beside her. For a while, the only sounds were the soft crunch of the snow, the breeze in the limbs of the apple trees, and the staccato chirps of the cardinals flitting among the ba
re branches.
“So what’s on your mind?” Laurel asked.
“Am I that transparent?”
“Like glass.”
Ivy sighed. “I’m kind of dreading going back inside. I sent my boss a story that’ll either win me a promotion or cut me loose in a terrible job market. Which is only slightly terrifying.” She paused to pick up a stick poking out from the snow. She flung it down the row and Bark Ruffalo bounded after it. “My plane leaves tomorrow—”
Laurel cut her off. “And you have no idea what to do about Rand Cooper.”
Her perceptive baby sister. “Precisely.”
Laurel tipped her head back and blew out a long breath. “I think you do.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Laurel stopped walking and stared at her sister. “Oh, get over yourself. I think you know exactly what you want—finally, I might add—and now you’re waffling?”
Bark Ruffalo appeared at Ivy’s feet with the stick. She wrestled it out of his jaws and tossed it again, glad of the distraction. “Yesterday got ugly.”
“New day, new rules.” Laurel whistled for Bark Ruffalo, who ran over and dropped the stick at her feet. “Go, Ivy. If not for your sake, do it for me. I cannot listen to you whine about it anymore,” she said, her last words in a teasing, exaggerated tone.
Ivy narrowed her eyes at her little sister. “I hate you, you know that?”
“Yeah.” Laurel gave her playful shove. “I love you, too.”
*
For the second time in as many days, Ivy dropped a gear in the Jetta to make it up the steep driveway leading to Rand’s house. She’d been by the inn, expecting to find him knocking around the kitchen or haunting the lobby, but when she drove into the parking lot, neither his Subaru nor the Volvo he’d been driving were there. When she crested the short hill, she found the same thing. Neither car in the carport.
Where could he be? She sat in her car, engine running, nervous jitters multiplying—should she stay, text, leave a note?
Gravel crunched behind her. Ivy looked up to see a Subaru grille growing larger in her rearview mirror. Her heart kicked up in her chest at the man behind the wheel. Rand motioned her forward, so she pulled under the carport and got out while he pulled his car alongside hers.