The Key Ingredient

by Susan Wiggs

  Heading for Martin’s trailer on foot, she passed a group of tourists on Segways, trolling for a glimpse of their favorite star. One eager woman paused her scooter and took Annie’s picture.

  “Hey there,” the woman said, “aren’t you Jasmine Lockwood?”

  “No,” said Annie with an almost apologetic smile.

  “Oh, sorry. You look like her. I bet you get that a lot.”

  Annie offered another slight smile and veered around the tour group. This wasn’t the first time someone pointed out her resemblance to the cooking diva. It was confusing to Annie. She didn’t look like anyone but herself.

  Martin, the golden boy, liked to say she was his exotic lover, which always made Annie laugh. “I’m an all-­American mutt from Vermont,” she’d say. “We can’t all have a pedigree.”

  Would the baby look like her? Brown eyes and riotous black curls? Or like Martin, blond and regal?

  Oh my God, she thought with a fresh surge of joy. A baby.

  Power cords snaked across the alleyway leading to the studio. The trailers were lined up, workers with headsets and clipboards scurrying around. She could see the scissors lift looming above the work site. Fully extended, its orange steel folding supports formed a crisscross pattern, topped by the platform high overhead. Workmen in hard hats and electricians draped in coiled wire swarmed around it. Some guy was banging on the manual release valve with a black iron wrench.

  She spotted Tiger, who hurried over to greet her. “It’s stuck in the up position.” Tiger looked like an anime character, with rainbow hair and a candy-­colored romper. She also had a rare gift for doing several things simultaneously and well. Martin thought she was manic, but Annie appreciated her laser focus.

  “Tell them to unstick it.” Annie kept walking. She could sense Tiger’s surprise; it wasn’t like Annie to breeze past a problem without attempting to solve it.

  Martin’s cast trailer was the biggest on the lot. It was also the most tricked out, with a makeup station, dressing area, full bath and kitchen, and a work and lounge area. When they first fell in love, they’d often worked late together there, and ended up making love on the curved lounge and falling asleep in each other’s arms. The trailer was closed now, the blinds drawn against the burning heat. The AC unit chugged away.

  Annie was eager to get inside where it was cool. She paused, straightening her skirt, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. There was a fleeting thought of lipstick. Shoot. She wanted to look nice when she told him she was going to be the mother of his child. Never mind, she told herself. Martin didn’t care about lipstick.

  She quickly entered the code on the keypad and let herself in.

  The first thing she noticed was the smell. Something soapy, floral. There was music playing, cheesy music. “Hanging by a Thread,” a song she used to sing at the top of her lungs when no one was around, because the right cheesy love song only made a person feel more in love.

  A narrow thread of light came from a gap under the window shades. She pushed her sunglasses up on her head and let her eyes adjust. She started to call out to Martin, but her gaze was caught by something out of place.

  A cell phone lay on the makeup station shelf. It wasn’t Martin’s phone, but Melissa’s. Annie recognized the blingy pink casing.

  And then there was that moment. That sucker-­punch feeling of knowing, but not really knowing. Not wanting to know.

  Annie stopped breathing. She felt as if her heart had stopped beating, impossible though that was. Her mind whirled through options, thoughts darting like a mouse in a maze. She could back away right now, slip outside, rewind the moment, and . . .

  And do what? What? Give them fair warning, so they could all go back to pretending this wasn’t happening?

  An icy stab of anger propelled her forward. She went to the workstation area, separated from the entryway by a folding pocket wall. With a swipe of her arm, she shoved aside the screen to reveal the big L-­shaped sofa.

  He was straddling her, wearing nothing but the five-­hundred-­dollar cowboy boots.

  “Hey!” he yelped, rearing back, a cowboy on a bucking bronc. “Oh, shit, Jesus Christ.” He scrambled to his feet, grabbing a fringed throw to cover his crotch.

  Melissa gasped and clutched a couch cushion against her. “Annie! Oh my God—­”

  “Really?” Annie scarcely recognized the sound of her own voice. “I mean, really?”

  “It’s not—­”

  “What it seems, Martin?” she bit out. “No. It’s exactly what it seems.” She backed away, her heart pounding, eager to get as far from him as possible.

  “Annie, wait. Babe, let’s talk about this.”

  She turned into a ghost right then and there. She could feel it. Every drop of color drained away until she was transparent.

  Could he see that? Could he see through her, straight into her heart? Maybe she had been a ghost for a long time but hadn’t realized it until this moment.

  The feeling of betrayal swept through her. She was bombarded by everything. Disbelief. Disappointment. Horror. Revulsion. It was like having an out-­of-­body experience. Her skin tingled. Literally tingled with some kind of electrical static.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. She needed to go throw up somewhere.

  “Can we please just talk about this?” Martin persisted.

  “Do you actually think there’s something to talk about?”

  She stared at the two of them a moment longer, perversely needing to imprint the scene on her brain. That was when the moment shifted.

  This is how it ends, she thought.

  Because it was one of those moments. A key moment. One that spins you around and points you in a new direction.

  This is how it ends.

  Martin and Melissa both began speaking at once. To Annie’s ears, it sounded like inarticulate babble. A strange blur pulsated at the edges of her vision. The blur was reddish in tone. The color of rage.

  She backed away, needing to escape. Plunged her hand into her bag and grabbed her keys. They were on a Sugar Rush key chain in the shape of a maple leaf, the distinctive shape making it easy to find in a hurry.

  Then she made a one-­eighty turn toward the door and walked out into the alley. Her stride was purposeful. Gaze straight ahead. Chin held high.

  That was probably the reason she tripped over the cable. The fall brought her to her knees, keys hitting the pavement with a jingle. She picked up the keys and whipped a glance around, praying no one had seen.

  Three ­people hurried over—­Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?

  “I’m fine,” she said, dusting off the palms of her hands and her scraped knees. “Really, don’t worry.”

  The phone in her shoulder bag went off like a buzz saw, even though it was set on silent mode. She marched past the construction area. Workers were still struggling with the lift, trying to open the hydraulic valve. She shouldn’t have let Martin talk her into the cheaper model.

  “You have to turn it the other way,” she called out to the workers.

  “Ma’am, this is a hard-­hat area,” a guy said, waving her off.

  “Leaving,” she said. “I’m just saying, you’re trying to crank the release valve the wrong way.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The valve. You’re turning it the wrong way.” What a strange conversation. When you discovered your husband banging some other woman, weren’t you supposed to call your mom, sobbing? Or your best friend?

  “You know,” she said to the guy. “Lefty loosey, righty tighty.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Counterclockwise,” she said, tracing her key chain in the air to show him the direction.

  “Annie.” Martin burst out of his trailer and sprinted toward her. Cargo shorts, bare chest, cowboy boots. “Come back.”

  Her hand tighte
ned around the key chain, the edges of the maple leaf biting into her flesh.

  The Segway tour group trolled past the end of the alley.

  “It’s Martin Harlow,” someone called.

  “We love your show, Martin,” called another girl in the Segway group. “We love you!”

  “Ma’am, you mean like this?” The workman gave the valve a hard turn.

  A metallic groan sounded from somewhere on high. And the entire structure came crashing down.

  Also by Susan Wiggs

  CONTEMPORARY NOVELS

  Home Before Dark

  The Ocean Between Us

  Summer by the Sea

  Table for Five

  Lakeside Cottage

  Just Breathe

  The Goodbye Quilt

  The Bella Vista Chronicles

  The Apple Orchard

  The Beekeeper’s Ball

  The Lakeshore Chronicles

  Summer at Willow Lake

  The Winter Lodge

  Dockside

  Snowfall at Willow Lake

  Fireside

  Lakeshore Christmas

  The Summer Hideaway

  Marrying Daisy Bellamy

  Return to Willow Lake

  Candlelight Christmas

  Starlight on Willow Lake

  HISTORICAL ROMANCES

  The Lightkeeper

  The Drifter

  The Mistress of Normandy

  The Maiden of Ireland

  The Tudor Rose Trilogy

  At the King’s Command

  The Maiden’s Hand

  At the Queen’s Summons

  Chicago Fire Trilogy

  The Hostage

  The Mistress

  The Firebrand

  Calhoun Chronicles

  The Charm School

  The Horsemaster’s Daughter

  Halfway to Heaven

  Enchanted Afternoon

  A Summer Affair

  About the Author

  SUSAN WIGGS’s life is all about family, friends . . . and fiction. She lives at the water’s edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather she commutes to her writers’ group in a 21-­foot motorboat. She’s been featured in the national media, including NPR and USA Today, and is a popular speaker locally, nationally, internationally, and on the high seas.

  From the very start, her writings have illuminated the everyday dramas of ordinary ­people. Her books celebrate the power of love, the timeless bonds of family, and the fascinating nuances of human nature. Today, she is an internationally bestselling, award-­winning author, with millions of copies of her books in print in numerous countries and languages. According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with “refreshingly honest emotion,” and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is “one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book.” Booklist characterizes her books as “real and true and unforgettable.”

  Her novels have appeared in the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, and have captured readers’ hearts around the globe. She is a three-­time winner of the RITA Award, the highest honor for a work of romantic fiction. Her recent novel, The Apple Orchard, is currently being made into a film.

  The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier, and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book.

  Visit Susan Wiggs’s website at

  www.susanwiggs.com

  Social Media:

  https://www.facebook.com/susanwiggs/

  https://www.pinterest.com/beachwriter1/

  https://twitter.com/susanwiggs

  http://www.goodreads.com/SusanWiggs

  https://www.instagram.com/susan_wiggs_/

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  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Excerpt from Family Tree copyright © 2016 by Susan Wiggs.

  THE KEY INGREDIENT. Copyright © 2016 by Susan Wiggs. All rights reserved under International and Pan-­American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-­book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-­engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of Harper­Collins e-­books. For information, address Harper­Collins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

  EPub Edition JUNE 2016 ISBN: 9780062499066

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