Zoey Phillips

by Judith Bowen

  Mary Ellen had never even hinted that she was falling in love with Ryan Donnelly. But now that Zoey thought about it, though, hadn’t the signs been there?

  A sudden image swept into her mind: Ryan teaching Mary Ellen the two-step, her laughter, the two of them hugging. Ryan whispering in her ear. Taking her to Prince George to shop. Had Cameron guessed? Had he known all along that his brother had a lot more interest in Mary Ellen Owen than he did in their guest at the ranch? If so, why hadn’t he told her earlier?

  “Where’s Cam?” Ryan asked.

  “I have no idea.” She handed him another string of lights.

  “Probably over at the Robbins place again, checking on that new foal. Hey!” Ryan turned, his arm around her shoulders. “There he is now.”

  Zoey watched as the too-familiar green pickup drove into the yard. She hadn’t even thought of the mare Cameron had gone to check on the night of the party. The night that—oh, never mind. A lot had happened.

  She felt she could face Cameron now. She wasn’t going to remember that she’d seen him practically naked and—and all the rest. She was going to be cool. She was going to be unflappable. Calm. She was going to be a grown-up.

  For once.

  She watched Cameron get out of his vehicle and her knees went dangerously weak. She was glad Ryan was beside her, she could lean on him if she had to. She hadn’t seen Cameron since the morning he’d walked her to the door in bare feet and a bath towel, to say goodbye. The morning after. Her heart thumped. He looked so familiar—dressed in jeans, work boots, lined canvas jacket, gloves tucked into his back pocket—and yet so entirely different.

  Despite her resolve, she knew she’d turned a fiery red. She prayed he wouldn’t notice, or if he did, that he’d attribute it to the cold and wind.

  “So…” He stood in front of them. Ryan still had his arm draped around Zoey’s shoulders. Cameron hadn’t met her eye, which was a relief of sorts. “What’s going on here?”

  “Lights.” Ryan waved toward the house. “Zoey bought a bunch of lights and I’m helping her put them up. A little Christmas cheer, don’t you think?”

  Cameron nodded. Then he looked at her. Her stomach dropped into her boots and bounced. Her hands were hot and sweaty in the cold, wet mittens. He raised an eyebrow. She swore his eyes were knowing, remembering—revealing. Seeing her stark naked, standing there in the snow. Nothing on but her fashion boots.

  She remembered how grim he’d looked the last time she’d seen him, as he’d held the door for her. She couldn’t—couldn’t!—pretend nothing had happened. He was doing it to her again, making her forget her own intentions.

  “I guess we’ve got you to thank for this, Zoey,” he said casually. A pleasant, friendly tone. Was he trying as hard as she was?

  “Yes,” she gulped. “Yes, I thought the place could stand a little fixing up for Christmas. I—”

  “Good idea.” He smiled slightly. “Maybe I’ll buy some more and we’ll do the eaves, too, before Lissy gets home from school. You got time, Ry?”

  He addressed his brother, ignoring her, thank heaven. Ryan agreed, and before Zoey could gather her thoughts, Cameron had returned to his truck, presumably to go to Stoney Creek for more lights, and she and Ryan were busy wrapping the shrubbery with winking and twinkling lights again.

  The dreaded first encounter was behind her. Zoey felt relieved. But she also felt sad. Empty. The worst was definitely over—Ryan had told her the big news, she’d faced Cameron for the first time since, well, since she’d slept with him. Things had to improve from here on.

  But if that was true, why did she feel so rotten?

  HOW COULD ANY MAN not love her? How could any man—like his brother—stand there, his arm casually around her shoulders, talking, laughing, as though she wasn’t the most glorious creature in all the world?

  Would he ever get that close to her again? Not damn likely. She’d made it clear. Somehow she’d convinced herself that she was in love with his brother. He’d thought—hoped—that after they’d spent the night together, she’d feel differently.

  He’d been half in love with her ever since she’d fallen into his arms at that stupid Haunted House exhibit. She’d screamed, and he’d known the absolute, bedrock truth: she had been scared silly. It had amused him at first and then he’d realized why he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He recalled the way she’d been ready to climb into that Santa suit so the children wouldn’t be disappointed. Everything about Zoey was honest. Everything you saw was true and exactly what she was.

  She thought she’d been devious as hell with this hopeless plan to get something going with his brother, but he’d been aware of every little move. He still couldn’t believe Ryan hadn’t fallen for her. Was it because Ryan had known her for so long? But he’d known Mary Ellen Owen just as long, maybe longer, and when she’d come back to town Ryan had gone after her, hook, line and sinker.

  Poor Zoey. She really didn’t get it. For such a smart, savvy woman—

  He shook his head. She didn’t see him as a potential lover, maybe more than a lover. She only saw him as Ryan’s conniving older brother, a man who’d taken advantage of her mistake, and she couldn’t wait to get out of Stoney Creek and fly back East, couldn’t wait to put this entire experience behind her.

  Maybe she could put it behind her, but he knew the night he’d spent with her would haunt him until he died. He’d never forget how beautiful she was, even in the pitch dark, how loving and tender, how perfect they’d been together.

  And all along she’d thought he was Ryan. The very recollection made him clench his jaw, press his foot a little harder on the accelerator. Luckily the roads were pretty empty. The only vehicles he passed were a couple of pickup trucks with freshly-cut Christmas trees in the back. People waved.

  Christmas. Folks were getting right into the spirit of it.

  Even Zoey. Here she was, stringing lights on his property. Doing things with Lissy. Making sure his daughter had a good time. She’d even talked him into putting on the damn Santa suit for Lissy’s sake. She’d made him feel guilty and it had worked. When he’d seen Lissy’s face as she sat on his knee and confessed her nearest, dearest thoughts, he’d felt love for his daughter burn in his heart like a blast furnace. He’d always loved her; he just hadn’t felt anything that powerful, that unstoppable before.

  Zoey’d made it happen. She’d argued and threatened and cajoled until he’d agreed, more to get her off his back than anything, and look what had come of it.

  He knew why Lissy wanted that seashell frame, too, and it made him feel like a real failure as a father. He knew she had a picture of her mother and herself, when she was tiny, maybe two, taken with a Santa at some mall or other. She wanted to put that picture in the frame and hide it in her closet to look at sometimes. She’d whispered to Santa—him—that her dad didn’t like her to talk about her mom and that was why she wanted to hide the picture, so she wouldn’t make her daddy sad.

  Sad? He wished he was sad about Mallory, for Lissy’s sake. He was glad to have Lissy in his life again and he was sorry her mother had died. But Mallory had always been a stranger to him, even when they were married, and how could you miss a stranger?

  Cameron had been grateful for the fake beard to hide his expression at his daughter’s words. Mallory had brought her back but Zoey had given his daughter to him. He would never let anything get between them again, especially not his bitter memories. When she got that frame for Christmas—and he’d make damned sure she would, if he had to drive to Prince George to pick it up—he was going to suggest they hang it in the family room somewhere. Swallow his foolishness, once and for all. Put it behind him.

  Right then, with Lissy on his knee, he knew that much as he’d fought it, he was desperately, totally, head-over-heels in love with Zoey Phillips. He’d watched her dance at the party and he’d wanted her in his arms. He’d seen her kissing Ryan on the dance floor and he’d wanted to walk over and punch his brother in the face
. He knew he had to bide his time. He had to wait for Ryan to spring the news about Mary Ellen—which he’d guessed was coming soon—to clear the field.

  Then…to come home and find Zoey in his bed?

  Life just couldn’t get any luckier. Not for him, a sonofabitch who didn’t deserve a second chance with anybody, let alone a woman like Zoey.

  Cameron thought back to the scene he’d just left at the Triple Oarlock. Ryan, laughing, happy, his arm draped around Zoey. His woman.

  He knew it wasn’t what it looked like. He knew there was absolutely nothing between them—certainly not on Ryan’s part. And he really didn’t think she was in love with Ryan, either, no matter what she’d said; she’d just let her imagination run away with her. Once she’d made up her mind to pursue his brother—he still cursed himself for his part in that stupid matchmaking plan—she’d bulldozed straight ahead.

  He had to smile. That was Zoey. That was the woman he loved.

  He pulled into the Home Hardware in Stoney Creek and went in to see if he could still get some of those popular icicle lights he’d seen on the houses in town. He bought a hundred feet, enough to do the front of the house and the windows. If there were any left over, they could run them along the fence.

  “Merry Christmas, Cam!”

  He nodded to Edgar Murphy, the old fellow who used to cook for his father, back on the family spread out toward Nimpkits Lake.

  “Merry Christmas to you, Ed.” He touched his hat and acknowledged Ed’s wife. “Mrs. Murphy,” he said, nodding.

  She beamed back at him, an apple dumpling of a woman, dressed in her Christmas best.

  He felt better when he got into his pickup for the return trip. Zoey didn’t see things the way he did. She was humiliated and embarrassed by what had happened the other night. She didn’t realize he loved her. She believed he’d taken advantage of her. He couldn’t just come straight out and say he loved her now, because she wasn’t going to buy it. She’d think he was just stringing her along, maybe to get her into his bed again. And, besides, she probably still thought she was in love with Ryan; she’d told herself often enough.

  It was up to him to turn this situation around. To help her change her mind.

  In a few days, she was leaving Stoney Creek, probably forever. That prospect scared him half to death. If she had even a shred of feeling for him, he had to know. If there was any chance at all that he could make her see things his way, he had to take it. He’d follow her to Toronto; he’d do whatever it took. Wine her, dine her, bring her flowers, do that romantic stuff other guys did.

  He had to show her how he felt. Somehow he had to convince her he was serious. That this wasn’t just happenstance. That she wasn’t just an accidental one-night stand. That she meant everything to him.

  Maybe he should have kicked her out of his bed, sent her back to her apartment, as he’d first considered—not “taken advantage” of her, as she had accused the next morning. Been noble.

  Noble? Nuts was more like it. He’d had the best sex of his life that night and so had she. More, much more than that—they’d made love, in the full meaning of the term. And she knew it, too.

  He’d bet the ranch on it.

  That was a start. A hell of a start, in his view. And it beat wining and dining, aces to eights.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “CAN WE PUT GUMDROPS for the windows, Zoey? It’d be like a real window if I licked the sugar off first.”

  Zoey pretended to consider. It was the afternoon of Lissy’s last day of school. The homemade gingerbread house plan had been revised to a purchased kit with extra candy decorations, once Zoey had studied the original German gingerbread recipe Elizabeth had given her and decided it was too complicated.

  “You know, I think you could be right,” she encouraged the girl. “Gumdrops might make great windows. Why don’t you try it?”

  Lissy giggled and applied the gumdrop to her tongue several times, swallowing with obvious pleasure. “Mmm!”

  Then she held the candy up to her eye. “You could even see through it, if you were small enough!”

  “Okay, here’s some glue—” Zoey squeezed some of the royal icing she’d rolled into a funnel-shaped piece of white paper onto the saucer in front of Lissy. They’d tried to stay tidy, but they were both covered with sugar and icing and Zoey had even found a licorice twist attached to her shirt.

  But they were having fun. And that was the main thing. Even Kitty, playing with an empty paper bag under the table, knocking into their feet from time to time, was having fun.

  “Daddy’s gonna get more lights for us this afternoon and I’m gonna go get a tree with Uncle Ryan.” The little girl’s eyes shone. “We’re having a real Christmas!” Zoey reached over and picked a red Lifesaver out of her hair.

  “You need a bath, honey, before you go chasing around with Uncle Ry. You might end up stuck to the seat of the snowmobile and then what?”

  “Yeah!”

  Zoey could tell Lissy thought that prospect might prove interesting. She was surprised Cameron wasn’t taking Lissy to cut a tree. Maybe this was a job Ryan was in charge of every year—if they’d ever put up a tree before.

  Since Ryan had told her the big news, Zoey had seen Mary Ellen and congratulated her. It wasn’t hard. Mary Ellen was ecstatic and had shyly confessed to Zoey that she’d been in love with Ryan since she could remember and she’d never dreamed he’d ever return her feelings. She was convinced that Ryan was only interested in sophisticated women like Adele Martinez and her.

  Her! Zoey would have laughed if it hadn’t been so ridiculous. “You know that was all silly high-school stuff, don’t you?” she reassured her friend. “We were kids! It’s history!”

  “I know,” Mary Ellen said softly. “I guess I was just so crazy about him I couldn’t see why other women wouldn’t be, too.”

  Yes, wasn’t that always the way, Zoey thought, carefully snipping a licorice twist into sections. She was grateful no one knew how completely deluded she’d been about Ryan and his intentions. Well, one person seemed to have guessed. His brother.

  Tiny candy canes worked well for fence posts. Actually, there were two gingerbread houses on the go— Lissy insisted she needed one for her apartment, even though Zoey told her she wouldn’t be staying long enough to enjoy it.

  “You’re going home?” Lissy wailed, looking startled at Zoey’s news. She wished, then, that she hadn’t mentioned it until a little closer to her departure.

  “Yes, I am. But there’s still the wedding to go to and the big, fancy reception afterwards….”

  “Do I get to go to that, too?”

  “I expect so. You’ll have to ask your father—”

  “Ask her father what?”

  Cameron stood at the door that led from the kitchen to the small mudroom. He was dressed casually, in jeans and a flannel shirt. Zoey’s heart lurched into her stomach.

  “Can I go to the wedding, too, Daddy? With you and Zoey? And the big, fancy ’ception?”

  Zoey still wasn’t comfortable when Cameron was around. These final days before she left were turning into a real ordeal. Right now, his attention was on his daughter, which was a relief.

  “Sure, you can go. Your uncle’s getting married, isn’t he?”

  “To Mary Ellen!” Lissy had been delighted at the news.

  Cameron’s eyes slid to Zoey. She became extremely interested in the exact placement of the gumdrop she had dabbed with icing to put down as one of the bricks in the gingerbread house’s sidewalk. Did he think she cared? That she was sensitive about Ryan marrying one of her best friends? He probably wouldn’t believe how thrilled she was for Mary Ellen.

  “That’s right, honey,” Zoey said mildly. “Mary Ellen will be your aunt now.”

  “Mind if I join you girls?”

  Zoey looked up. She knew she was a mess, not just from the icing and candy debris, but her hair was sliding out of its clip, too, and she hadn’t dared fix it with her sticky fingers. She s
hook her head. Cameron sat down, next to his daughter, and across from her.

  “Daddy!” Lissy was all smiles. “You can help lick off the gumdrops for me. I’ve got lots.” She generously pushed a pile of gumdrops in front of her father and he pushed them back.

  “You’d better do that, Lissy. You’re good at it. How about I lay this sidewalk here, help Zoey.”

  Zoey looked up and their eyes met. She knew her cheeks were red. “Sure. Just put the gumdrops in a nice pattern here—” She indicated the sidewalk layout, noticing how large his hands were as he traced the outline with one index finger. Large, capable, well-shaped.

  Hands that—

  She squelched the thought as she tried to squelch every thought she’d had about the night they’d spent together. She had only a few more days to get through, less than a week. And she’d get through them. She would, she would.

  Cameron laid the “bricks” of the sidewalk for a few minutes. “You able to come over and help us trim our tree tonight?” he asked quietly.

  Zoey stared at him. “Me?”

  He smiled and her stomach flip-flopped, as it always did these days. “Yeah, you. Somebody else in this kitchen?”

  “Oh, I—I guess so,” she managed. She’d rummaged in her brain for an excuse, but couldn’t come up with a thing. She’d already promised Lissy and Ryan she’d help with the tree but she had never dreamed for a minute that Cameron would be there, too.

  On the other hand, perhaps she should have guessed. Since he’d gone to town two days before and returned with the Christmas lights, which he and Ryan had put up immediately, he’d spent more time with his daughter than she’d ever noticed before. Maybe he wasn’t as busy these days.

  He didn’t seem as distant with Lissy, either. He stepped in and did things he used to leave for Ryan. Maybe it had sunk in that his brother would be gone soon—the happy foursome were going to Arizona for a honeymoon—and it would just be him and Lissy and Marty again.