She looked at him. “It must have been so hard.
Seventeen years old and taking care of a newborn.
All alone, no help.”
He nodded and slipped his hand away. “It was hard. But I had the money, and you bet I used it. I needed it. I found support in Boston, a center for fathers in my position. I accepted all the help I was offered. And I worked my ass off so that I could go to college. Thank God I had a good babysitter, a retired nurse whose own grandchildren lived far away. She took good care of Kayla while I was in school and worked.”
“Kayla. Her name is Kayla?”
He nodded.
It was all she could do not to burst into tears. “My middle name is Kaye,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said.
Again, they sat in silence for a few moments.
“What did you tell her about me?” she asked.
“I’ve told her the only truth I knew: that her mother was very young when she was born and needed to get her life together and one day, perhaps, she would come back.”
Olivia nodded.
“The sole reason I moved back to Blueberry was so that you would be able to find us if you ever did come,” Zach said.
“Where do you live now?”
“I built on the water, at the end of Spider’s Cove.
Do you remember all that wild brush and that sad 78
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weeping willow? I got rid of most of the brush, but the weeping willow is in my front yard.”
“I always loved that tree,” she said, so many memories hitting her at once. She and Zach had sat under that tree just twice, sharing French fries, sharing stories.
“Zach, will you tell Kayla about me? That I’m here?”
“I need to sleep on all this,” he said. “Kayla is going through a tough time.” He mentioned the suspension. The recent questions about Olivia and the pageant.
“I can’t quite process that this is my daughter we’re talking about. My child.”
“My child,” Zach snapped, as he stood up.
She glanced up at him.
He threw a twenty on the table, then put on his coat. “I need to think, Olivia. Until I call you, you’re not to go within two feet of Kayla. Do we have an agreement?”
She nodded, and in an instant, he was gone.
Olivia drove home, her fingers white on the steering wheel. She was relieved to be finally back at the cottage, where she could collapse and not think about Zach. About Kayla. About everything she’d learned and still couldn’t wrap her mind around.
She turned her key in the lock of the front door but was surprised that it wasn’t locked. She distinctly remembered locking the door behind her; it had offered her a few extra seconds before leaving the safety of the cottage to go meet Zach. Had Johanna, the caretaker, been by? Did she have a key?
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Huh. In everything that had happened today, Olivia had forgotten all about Johanna. Anyway, why would Johanna come by in the evening? Olivia had been told the caretaker would stop by every morning at eight. And Johanna had said the same thing this morning.
She stood outside on the porch, the cold night air slapping at her cheeks. She wasn’t sure about going in. This isn’t New York City, she told herself.
You’re perfectly safe. And you probably just left the door unlocked.
But she knew she hadn’t.
She opened the door and peered in. And then gasped. The collection of beautiful figurines that had been on the console table in the entryway was smashed on the floor. And on the mirror above the table, someone had scrawled with a marker: “Go away. No one wants you here.”
Her heart hammering, Olivia turned and ran for her car.
Chapter 7
What the—
As Zach pulled up to his house, he saw Olivia sitting on the steps. She jumped up and raced over to the car.
“Someone was in the cottage,” she said in a pan-icky rush, her shoulders trembling. “The entryway is trashed and there is a note scrawled on the mirror.”
He got out of the car and walked her up to the steps, gesturing for her to sit down. “Someone broke in? Or did you leave the door open?”
“I definitely locked the door.”
“What does the note say?” he asked.
She took a deep breath. “Go away. No one wants you here.”
He stared at her. “That’s insane. Who’d do that?
You’ve been here for a day.”
She shrugged. “It makes no sense.”
“Let me go in and tell the sitter I’ll need her to stay a bit longer,” he said. “Then I’ll call the police and have them meet us over at the cottage.”
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She nodded, but as he headed up the steps, she looked panicked.
He hesitated for just a moment, surprised by the urge to hold her, comfort her. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.”
Inside, the house was quiet, except for the television, which he could barely hear in the family room. He found Mrs. McGill, the grandmother of five who lived a few houses away, sitting on the sofa, Kayla sitting on the floor in front her, Mrs. McGill French braiding Kayla’s hair. A Harry Potter movie was on, but Kayla was fast asleep, lightly snoring.
“She just nodded off,” Mrs. McGill said.
“Would you mind staying for another couple of hours?” he asked. “I’ll carry Kayla up to bed, but there’s something I need to tend to in town.”
“No problem,” she said. “Take your time.”
Zach scooped up his daughter, who weighed next to nothing, and breathed in the scent of her strawberry shampoo as he carried her up the stairs to her room. She looked so peaceful, hardly like the rabble-rouser she was.
He glanced at the French braid. Olivia had once worn her hair like that.
He settled Kayla in bed and tucked her beloved Winnie the Pooh under her arm. She hugged it and turned over. He pulled the blanket up and kissed her on the forehead.
On his way back downstairs, he called the police on his cell phone. Outside, Olivia was pacing in front of the door. “The police will meet us at the cottage,” he told her. “I’ll drive us over. You can leave your car here.”
Silently she got into his pickup, hardly looking 82
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like she belonged in a pickup truck. Olivia Sedgwick was Jaguar material.
“I guess I should have just gone to the police station myself,” Olivia said, staring out the windshield.
“I’m sorry I bothered you. Not five minutes earlier you asked me not to come near Kayla, and what did I do? Drove straight to your house. I’m sorry, Zach.
I just wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s okay,” he said, glancing at her.
The cottage was only a couple of miles from Zach’s house. They drove in silence, and when they pulled up to the house, the police were already there.
“Miss Sedgwick?” a uniformed officer asked.
She nodded.
“The lock wasn’t broken,” he said. “Whoever broke in used a key.
“A key?” she repeated. “But who else would have a key?”
“You tell me,” the officer said.
“Well, I just arrived today,” Olivia told him. “I inherited the cottage from my father, William Sedgwick. There’s a caretaker, but I don’t know if she has a key.”
“Who’s the caretaker?” Zach asked.
“A woman named Johanna,” Olivia said. “She stopped by this morning. But she rang the doorbell.”
“Redhead?” the officer asked. “Owns the sweater store on Blueberry Boulevard?”
Olivia nodded.
Another officer came out of the house. “Well, whoever it was didn’t leave a calling card. Usually, people who do this kind of immature nonsense are dumb enough to leave a clue.”
“We’ll be in touch if we uncover anything, Miss HAUNTING OLIV IA
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Sedgwick,” the first officer said. “In the meantime, I suggest you change the locks.”
As the officer drove away, another car drove up.
Marnie. Now what was she doing here?
“That’s the woman you were with earlier today,”
Olivia whispered.
Zach said nothing as Marnie got out of her car. She wore tight jeans, high-heeled boots, and a cropped white down jacket.
“I heard from my cousin on the force that there was a break-in at the Sedgwick cottage and that William Sedgwick’s daughter was staying there,”
Marnie said, rushing up to them. “Zach, what are you doing here?”
“I’m an old friend of Olivia’s,” he told her. He introduced them, then said, “We were catching up at Barker’s, and she came home to the break-in, so she drove over to the house.”
He noticed the change in Marnie’s expression. His girlfriend’s gaze was all over Olivia. “Ah, I see,”
Marnie said. “Well, I figured I’d stop by and see if you were all right, Olivia. You’re welcome to stay with me tonight if you don’t feel comfortable staying here.”
“Thanks so much,” Olivia said. “But there’s a deadbolt on the front door, so I’ll feel safe inside. I’ll have a locksmith come change the locks first thing in the morning.”
Marnie nodded. “That’s a good idea. Well, I’d better get back to Brianna.”
“Thanks for coming out,” Olivia said. “That was very thoughtful of you.”
“No problem,” Marnie said, leaning over to kiss Zach. Her lips lingered. Zach stepped back, and he didn’t miss the look Marnie gave him. “See 84
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you tomorrow,” she added before jogging back to her car.
“You’re sure you’ll be okay here alone?” Zach asked Olivia, whose gaze was on Marnie’s back.
She turned to him. “I’ll be fine. Thanks again for being there for me, Zach.”
It was all he could do to take his eyes off her. She was so damned beautiful, so damned Olivia. “Well, then, good-bye again,” he said and began walking to his truck, his feet like lead.
As he pulled the pickup into his driveway, Zach saw Marnie’s car idling in his usual spot by the door.
He parked on the far side and turned off the lights.
Had she been waiting to see how long it would take him to get home? Waiting to see if he’d gone inside Olivia’s house or if he’d come straight home?
Before he could even turn off the ignition, she got inside the warm, dark truck. She took off her little puffy white coat. She wore nothing underneath. He stared at her breasts, huge and full and milky white, their rose-tipped nipples hard. He couldn’t help himself; he reached out, teasing the nipples between his fingers, wanting them in his mouth.
And after shimmying off her jeans and a tiny white thong, she reached over to undo his belt buckle and unzip his jeans, pulling what was now his rock-hard erection out of his underwear. She kneeled length-wise along the seat, her perfect ass up in the air as she wrapped her lips around the head of his shaft, then teased him with her tongue and sucked on him hard.
He groaned and closed his eyes, unable to tell her HAUNTING OLIV IA
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no, that he had so much on his mind, that he needed some time to think, some time to himself. As her mouth went up and down on him, all thoughts were obliterated, and he was damned grateful for that at the moment. She licked and sucked, her silky dark hair teasing his thighs and stomach.
He grabbed onto her hair and groaned again, and she kissed her way up his stomach, then sat back against the passenger side door, staring at him, her legs spread open. She reached for her coat on the floor and pulled a little pink bottle from one of the pockets. She poured some of its contents onto her hand and then reached between her legs and rubbed herself, the fragrant smell of strawberries filling the truck. She then took his face between her hands and pulled his head down between her legs, her nails scratching his back. He tasted the sweet, sticky strawberry oil she’d rubbed on, licking and darting his tongue until she arched her back and writhed. He teased her clitoris until she almost came; Marnie liked them to come together during intercourse.
“I can’t take anymore,” she whispered into his ear, her tongue and breath almost his undoing. She sat up and settled him back in the driver’s seat and then straddled him, kissing him, tasting herself. “I want you in me now.”
He was an inch away from entering her, but she held aloft, torturing him with her breasts against his mouth. She sucked two of his fingers, her gaze on his, and then put his fingers inside her. She moaned and he suckled hard on both of her breasts as she finally slid onto him, her back against the steering wheel.
She rocked up and down against him, then turned 86
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around so that he could take her from behind. Somewhere in the dimmest recesses of his mind, he hoped those huge breasts didn’t honk the horn. He wrapped his hands around them, squeezing, kneading her nipples, and then grabbed her hips and rocked her up and down on top of him until her breathy moans and screams came so fast that he couldn’t contain himself anymore.
She slid off him, put on her jeans and coat, and whispered into his ear, “Anytime you need more of that, you just come see me.” And then she headed back to her own car and drove off, leaving him to watch her red taillights as he caught his breath.
Olivia woke before six, surprised that she’d managed to fall asleep at all. When she’d gone inside last night, she’d swept up the smashed figurines and Windexed the mirror and then checked the deadbolt four times before going to bed.
And then she’d lain there.
Thinking about Zach. Thinking about Kayla.
Thinking about being sixteen. Wondering what the hell gave her father the right to play with her life that way. And Zach’s.
She’d been so furious that she’d jumped out of bed, planning to leave in the dead of night. And then she remembered. She was someone’s mother.
I am someone’s mother. She’d run into the bathroom to stare at herself in the mirror, as though she might have changed since yesterday. I have a daughter, she’d told her reflection. But she looked and felt like the same old Olivia she always was. Except for the questions, so many of them. And thoughts HAUNTING OLIV IA
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coming to her and at her from every direction.
What was her daughter like? What was Kayla’s world? Who was she?
All these years. Thirteen years. A baby had become a toddler, a preschooler, and had probably started asking questions that young, around three years old. Where is my mother? Why don’t I have a mother like everyone else?
As a kid Olivia had spent stupid hours on self-pity, upset that her own father didn’t really love her, didn’t want to know her. And for all these years, her own little girl had grown up into a teenager thinking that her mother had abandoned her.
She’d thought herself sick, literally throwing up right into the little plastic-lined wicker trash can next to her bed.
How dare her father have done this. How could he? How could anyone have done what he did?
Why tell her the baby died? Why let her go through the pregnancy and birth only to let her think her baby had been born dead?
She’d closed her eyes against the questions and gotten up to recheck the doors and windows one last time and then slipped into bed, wondering what Zach was doing. Wondering if Marnie had followed him home. Wondering if they were making love right now.
The thought of Zach having sex with another woman almost made her sick again and she’d vowed to close her eyes and go to sleep. She’d set the alarm so that Johanna wouldn’t surprise her again. This time, Olivia would be ready for her.
Ha. Now that it was morning, she didn’t feel ready for anything. She pulled the blankets up to 88
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her chin and glanced out the window at the gray winter morning. She shivered, then rea
lized the cold blast up her spine had more to do with the welcome note she’d received last night and Marnie than the weather. Zach’s girlfriend, if that’s what she was, had been polite, and it was nice of her to offer to let Olivia stay at her home, but years of working at Glitz had clued in Olivia to the word guarded. Olivia had immediately sensed Marnie’s sense of self-preservation. The woman had come because she’d either heard or seen with her own eyes that Zach had been dining earlier with Olivia at the bar and grill. Olivia had felt Marnie sizing her up, determining how ner vous, how ready to fight she needed to be.
All that from a two-minute meeting. But five years of watching Glitz staffers lie with straight faces and then stab coworkers in the back had taught Olivia a thing or two about people when they felt threatened.
As she headed into the bathroom for a long, hot shower, she thought about that kiss Marnie had given Zach. Perhaps Marnie knew about their past relationship, although it hadn’t sounded that way.
Perhaps Marnie was responsible for the vandalism.
A “keep away from my man” kind of thing.
Olivia wondered if Marnie was a mother figure to Kayla. On one hand, Olivia hoped Kayla did have a mother figure in her life. On the other, she had no idea how in the world she was going to inch her way into her daughter’s life as “mom” when she’d missed out on thirteen years. When Kayla had grown up believing her mother hadn’t wanted her. Didn’t want her.
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bath mat and reached for a towel, then shrieked as she saw someone dart past the window. She grabbed the towel and wrapped it around herself, then ran to the window and stared out—nothing but bare trees and evergreens. The bathroom window looked out onto nothing but forest, and the trees were so close to the house on that part of the property that there was no need for blinds on the window.
It could have been just a tree branch that had blown across the window, she thought. Or maybe whoever had left the note and destroyed her foyer was skulking around outside. Getting an eyeful. The cottage had been empty for a while; it was possible that teenagers had been breaking in to hang out in the house; perhaps they didn’t like that their place had been usurped. If only it was teenagers. She liked that idea a lot better than some nameless, faceless adult hell-bent on scaring her away. Or worse.
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