Home Matters (A Ripple Effect Romance Novella, Book 1)

by Julie N. Ford

  A knock at the door, followed by her mother’s chipper voice, pulled her from her thoughts. “You about ready to go?” Emma-Jean asked as she inched the door open, her smiling face filling the gap. She’d been beyond ecstatic when her famous daughter had decided to come home between tapings instead of flying back to LA with the rest of the cast. Olivia hadn’t the heart to tell her she’d come home in hopes of creating some distance between her success and the confusion that had followed.

  Olivia sat up. “Go?” she questioned. Her gaze found the open, half-packed suitcase at the foot of her bed. “Oh, right.”

  It was time for her to fly out to the show’s next location. Valentine, Nebraska. Very apropos for February’s show. Ugh! The thought of starting the process all over again formed a bittersweet lump in her throat. Sweet when recalling the moment she’d brought Mr. and Mrs. Calhoun into their newly renovated home, and how Mrs. Calhoun had instantly begun calling out, “We choose renovation!” over and over. That, along with the satisfaction of watching William lapse into a sullen, on-air brood, followed by his fans taking to social media, calling him a sore loser and predicting Olivia as the winner of the next challenge. All of the above had increased her star power considerably, which should have had her scaling the moon. But try as she might, she just couldn’t muster even a trace of pride. Even though she’d achieved the impossible and pulled her design together in record time while managing to shame William in the process, Eleanor had reclaimed the designer’s seat, strapped herself in tight, and vowed to watch Olivia with hawk-like efficiency from now on.

  Olivia’s greatest success had yielded her most devastating disappointment.

  Emma-Jean’s brow creased with concern. “Sweetheart, are you all right?”

  Olivia forced a smile in her mother’s general direction. “Yes, Momma, fine.” Lifting a blouse from her heap of unpacked clothes, she gave it a half-hearted fold, and tossed it into the suitcase. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

  Slipping through the door, Emma-Jean sidestepped a pile of shoes and crossed to the bed. “Baby girl, what have you been doing in here all this time?” She plucked up a pair of jeans and began to fold. “If we don’t get a move on, you’re gonna miss your flight.” She placed the folded jeans in the suitcase and took a closer look at her daughter. “Olivia, what is the matter, child?”

  “Nothing, Momma,” Olivia denied. “I was just thinking is all.”

  “About who?” Emma-Jean asked. “William?”

  Olivia took note of her mother’s bouncing eyebrows. She, like the rest of the show’s fans, was still under the assumption Olivia and William were madly in love. That William just might be Olivia’s forever after. She hated lying to her mother, and honestly didn’t have to, but given the current state of her emotional turmoil, she didn’t have the strength to deal with the side effects of obliterating a mother’s matrimonial dreams for her only daughter.

  “Sure…” Olivia forced a smile that pricked the contempt she was unable to keep from her eyes. “William.”

  Emma-Jean’s lips curled up into a dreamy smile. “That’s my lucky girl.”

  “Yeah, lucky,” Olivia echoed, noticing for the first time her mother had something gripped in her hand. “Is that my cell phone?”

  An innocent look crossed Emma-Jean’s face. “Now, don’t go accusing me of snooping, or any such thing, but your phone was just lying there on the counter when I happened by, and it started convulsing all over the place.” She added a dire spin to what came next. “I had to grab it before it hit the floor and noticed that William has called you a number of times. But you haven’t returned not one of his calls.” She tossed the phone to the bed.

  Sparing her cell a glance, Olivia regarded her meddling mother a moment. Why did she insist on denying a behavior they both knew she couldn’t control? “Really, you just happened to notice all that, did you?” she asked, knowing Emma-Jean would never own up to it. Just like how Olivia wasn’t going to corroborate what she guessed her mother had already begun to suspect. “Don’t fret, Momma. I was planning to call him back from the airport,” she lied as a good daughter would.

  “See that you do,” Emma-Jean said, using a mother’s expectant tone, the kind that doubled as a subtle threat. “All right then.” She stepped back, as if intending to leave Olivia to her packing. Only she didn’t go.

  Olivia did a quick study of her mother’s face. On the back side of fifty-five, her green eyes popped from radiant skin. Her blonde hair shined with slight touches of gray. Her figure forever held fast at a size six. She had always been so beautiful.

  “Momma, how come you didn’t become a big star?” she asked, the question popping from her mouth before she’d given herself a chance to consider where the inquiry might lead. “I mean, you’re a talented actress and singer. You certainly had the looks for it. And still do.” She’d grown up watching her mother star in community theater productions and had viewed tapes of auditions from her early attempts at catching a Hollywood producer’s eye. “Why didn’t you go for it when you were young? What held you back?”

  Emma-Jean slid Olivia’s suitcase out of the way and sat on the bed. “Well, I met your daddy, for one.” She smiled through glistening eyes. “Fell head over heels for a grad-student with not a penny to his name.” She laughed, though it wasn’t a happy sound. “Can you imagine?”

  Actually, yes. Olivia could, in fact, imagine. Scooching closer, she asked, “How did you know he was the one?” then held her breath.

  Emma-Jean shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about him,” she said, her eyes looking into Olivia’s and yet somehow beyond at the same time. “When we were apart, it was like a chunk of my soul went missing.” She rubbed her shoulders as if afflicted by a sudden chill. “It sounds silly now, but back then I became physically ill whenever we were apart.”

  Olivia’s hand lifted to her chest and pressed as if to hold together the broken fragments of her racing heart. “That doesn’t sound silly at all,” she said, though it wasn’t just a piece of her that had gone missing when Pete had driven away. Her heart had split in two, the contents spilling to the bottom of that empty cavern in her soul, a fissure that grew with every day she spent away from him, with each second she kept to her present course.

  “We got married, started having babies,” Emma-Jean continued. “And well, my life just seemed to chart a course of its own from there,” she explained, like abandoning her dreams was as easy as that.

  “Do you regret it?” Olivia asked pointedly. “Not going after your dreams?”

  Emma-Jean ran her tongue over her top lip. Her gaze drifted further away, far past Olivia this time, and on to a place she appeared hesitant to go. Her expression rotated through an array of emotions: anger, betrayal, regret, envy, sadness, and finally resignation. “I did for a while. You know, every now and then when being a wife and mother became mundane.” A repentant smile thinned out her lips. “But now, looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. Your big brothers and you. Your daddy. Our life. I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” she said, after which the room fell into a weighted silence. A moment or two later, she spoke again. “Love and family. Home. These are the only things in life that matter.”

  Olivia pulled in a steady breath, gathering the courage needed to say what she had to next. “Momma, I don’t think I want to go—” she started, but then as if a hypnotist had snapped his fingers, Emma-Jean shook free of her reverie, her poignant expression flipping instantly to its usual bright self again.

  “Oh, I forgot!” she interrupted and began to sift through Olivia’s pile of unpacked clothes. “That assistant of yours… Twisty, is it?”

  Olivia blinked in response, requiring a second or two to process her mother’s quick-change in demeanor. “It’s Tristi,” she corrected.

  Emma-Jean swatted her mistake away. “Right, whatever,” she dismissed. “Since you’re ignoring your cell, Tristi called the house phone, wanting you to see this online article.” Locat
ing Olivia’s phone, she tapped the screen and scrolled, then held it out. “Here, she texted you this link.”

  Olivia arched an eyebrow at her mother. “Given as how you weren’t snooping and all, you’re awfully familiar with the workings of my cell.” She maintained her accusing stare as she retrieved the phone from her mother’s outstretched hand.

  Emma-Jean puckered her mouth in a what-did-you-expect fashion. “Excuse me for being helpful.”

  Shaking her head, but taking comfort in the fact that some things never change, Olivia turned her focus to Tristi’s text. Her throat instantly clogged at the sight of Pete. Grinning for the camera, he held up a giant check with Hearts and Hammers scrolled onto the beneficiary’s line. The number that followed was trailed by six zeroes.

  “He did it, but how?” she whispered. “Drew?” It had only been a couple of weeks since she’d sat across a coffeehouse booth from the young millionaire. He must have been sincerely desperate to rid himself of his family’s wealth.

  Her quivering fingers touched the display. Without warning, a tsunami of regret, driven by her decision not to accept Pete’s offer to become his designer, his partner, engulfed her.

  And that was when she knew she couldn’t hide from the truth any longer. The seeds of a fulfilling life’s purpose had been sown inside her, taken root, and begun to sprout. She was an artist, a designer—a creator—none of which cared one whit about money or fame. She wanted to use this talent, her every breath, to help people, to make a difference. How could she not have seen this in herself before? Like being sealed in a box, the need for air growing more intense the harder she tried to convince herself she didn’t need to breathe, the craving to pick up her sketchpad and set to work recreating a home, a single room—a coat closet, for heaven’s sake—consumed her.

  “Seems to me like a noble cause,” her mother observed.

  Olivia swallowed against the well of change rising up inside her. “Yeah, he’s going to be doing some pretty amazing things for people who genuinely need the help,” she said, trying though not succeeding to keep her voice even, to conceal what her heart was urging her again to admit out loud.

  Eyes shadowed by defiance one instant and melting to acceptance the next, Emma-Jean studied her daughter. “Hum, I wonder,” she said, as if musing aloud. “What are the chances he’s in need of a good designer? Someone with no formal training but who possesses great potential all the same?” She smiled then, the very essence of maternal love shining through the tears watering her eyes. “I’ve seen her work, and I have to admit, she’s quite talented.”

  Luckily, Atlanta was only a three-hour drive east from Nashville. Not so fortunate, however, was that it took another three hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get from one side of the city to the other. Olivia had left home before sunrise, hoping to arrive early in the day. People tended to be more optimistic, more open to new ideas, and more accepting of change first thing in the morning. Or so she’d heard on one of those early morning news shows. News? Well anyway, the kind of show where “newscasters” get paid an obscene amount of money to sit around and talk about themselves—ad nauseam—between information segments where an “expert” is forced to speed-talk through his/her spiel as to allow sufficient time for the extended commercial break to follow.

  Except, now that she thought about it, if what the “expert” from the next segment had claimed was also correct, and most Americans were sleep deprived, how was it logical to assume any one individual might be more open and optimistic while still in the thawing-out phase that followed an insufficient night’s sleep? Only what did it matter when, technically, it wasn’t “the morning” anymore. Ugh! This was a disaster already. What had she been thinking? Then again, maybe that was her problem.

  Maybe what she needed was to stop thinking and just breathe.

  She was still taking in deliberate breaths when she pulled to a stop along the curb of a rural neighborhood. Cutting the car’s engine, she glanced through the windshield and across the street.

  Dressed in faded jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and a red baseball cap turned backward on his head, Pete was in the process of positioning a sheet of plywood across two sawhorses. Just the sight of him sent her heart racing and the little hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing at attention. As she continued to watch him work, her finger found the fringe of her hair, anxious to twine a strand around its tip. Her next impulse was to stop herself, to save her hair from unsightly frizz. But then she remembered she no longer felt the need to tame her curly locks by means of a hot straightening tool. Or for that matter, to submit any other body part into becoming something it was not.

  After stalling a few minutes more, she urged herself from the car. Overhead, clouds stretched thin like gauze strips lain against a ceiling of blue, the vivid sun chasing a chill from the fifty-degree day. Her stomach cartwheeling below her ribs, she set out across the street, eyes firmly trained on her goal. She would not allow uncertainty to creep in, to warn against making a complete fool of herself.

  Nail in hand and positioned to secure a two-by-four to the plywood plank, Pete lifted his hammer and hesitated. Then, as if she’d called his name, he looked up, his puzzled gaze blazing a trail across the yard and on to where Olivia was crossing the street.

  After giving the nail a few whacks, he stood to face her. “Well, look what the wind blew in,” he said, his voice light while his eyes remained guarded.

  Olivia hopped the curb and walked the better part of the lawn between them. “Surprise,” she said with forced enthusiasm.

  Pete looked her over, one eye cocked against the bright winter sun. “Nice hair.”

  She tucked a loose coil behind her ear. “Naturally curly.”

  “And your eyes…” he observed without elaboration.

  Since she wasn’t wearing her glasses, she didn’t feel the need to explain how she’d swapped her “ridiculous” green contacts for clear ones. Pete was a smart guy. Surely, he’d figured as much.

  Pete smiled. “Are you lost or something?” he asked. “I thought you’d be somewhere in the middle of nowhere Nebraska, wrapping up another installment of Home Matters right about now.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “Then why aren’t you?”

  Evidently, he didn’t read the tabloids or watch much TV. If he did, he’d know why. She tried to smile, but instead her lips twisted into more of a grimace. “Because it turned out, you were right.”

  Pete removed his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. “Well, that goes without saying,” he said in that half-mocking, half-serious way of his.

  She’d come here to apologize, to thank him, and to grovel if necessary. But as usual, he was giving her a hard time. What she’d come to say was going to be difficult enough without his glibness. “Please, for once,” she said, the words coming out much more whiny than she’d intended, “could you just not make something harder than it has to be?”

  Pete replaced his hat. “My bad,” he said, the corners of his lips fighting against a smile he held back. “Please proceed.”

  Flustered, but still determined to voice what she’d driven all this way to ask, she primed her thoughts to start again. Whatever the outcome, if there was any chance of forging a new future for herself, she had to get this out. “Where was I?”

  She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Oh, right,” she said when the kink in her chain of thought released. “I was telling you how you were correct… I was selling myself short.”

  The smile he’d been suppressing broke free. “I know. I saw that your design was dubbed a fan favorite,” he said, more pleased this time than mocking. “Congratulations.”

  A shy smile brought a blush to Olivia’s cheeks. “Thanks,” she said but knew she couldn’t take full credit for her victory. “I couldn’t have done it without Tristi and the guys. It was crazy. Most of the fabric I’d chosen was special order, so we had to match my choices to what the shops had on hand. Tom even helped s
elect a few. He has good taste, by the way. Tristi was sewing up a storm while the guys and I ran all over town, throwing furniture into the van,” she rambled on, feeling a renewed excitement for all they’d accomplished. The day and a half it had taken them to complete the design was, for the most part, a frantic blur, but also the most fun she’d had in… well, ever. “Due to time and availability, we ended up having to incorporate some of Eleanor’s pieces. But in the end, I think the meshing of our differing styles was what brought the design together and made it pop.”

  Pete nodded his approval. “That’s great,” he said, but nothing more.

  It was Olivia’s turn to speak. Only her brain had disintegrated into nothing but question marks. She’d been rehearsing her speech for days, and then again on the long drive over, but now that she was standing here, under the beam of his watchful gaze, she couldn’t seem to hit her mark. The seconds ticked by. His smile slowly faded. The patch of air they co-occupied fell into an awkward silence. They stood there another moment or two, listening as a passing breeze touched leafless branches, the quiet punctuated by the distant bark of a social dog.

  Pete was the one to breach the impasse. “What are you doing here, Olivia?”

  Still at a loss for coherent thought, she took a breath and jumped. “I quit the show,” she blurted. Pete’s eyes rounded. His lips parted, but nothing came out. “I know. Insane, right?” She snorted out an incredulous laugh.

  Pete gave Olivia a curious look. “What happened?” he asked, seeming both confused and interested. “I mean, you finally had everything you wanted—the adoring fans, the promise of wealth and movie deals, America’s Heartthrob on your arm,” he said, the words puckering his mouth. “And now you’re a designer to boot. I never would have pegged you as self-destructive, though,” he continued, then in the next breath added, “Self-absorbed, self-consumed, self—”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I get it.”

  “So?” he questioned.