Haunting Olivia

by Janelle Taylor

  And then he was. Her nails dug into his back as he entered her, and he groaned against her hair.

  He then lifted her hips and shifted them to a sitting position against the bed so that she was on top of him. He lifted her up and down against the hard length of him until the waves overcame her and she exploded in pleasure. And then he laid her down on the rug again and rode her hard and fast until he too was spent.

  They lay there, catching their breath, until Zach suddenly bolted up.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I thought I heard noises outside the window,” he said, glancing up at the window in front of the bed.

  The curtains were drawn, but there was a slight gap between them. And the low lamp from the bedside table could have illuminated them enough for someone to have seen them. “It was like the sound of a foot breaking a branch.”

  “Maybe it was a raccoon,” Olivia said. Or Marnie, she thought.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  He looked at her, then down the length of her naked body. “You’re exquisite, Olivia.”

  She felt herself blush. “You are too.”

  “I’d like you to stay the night.”

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  “I wish I could,” Olivia said, “but rules of my father’s will stipulate that I spend every night of a month at the cottage.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Your father’s rules never made any sense.”

  She smiled. “I know.”

  “Keep a phone beside you at all times,” he said.

  “And I want you to call me when you get home.”

  Pleased, she reached over to kiss him, but he’d already moved away. She suddenly felt very naked.

  Exposed. And like a fool for moving so fast. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking.

  The man had just told her himself that he’d been with another woman last night. No, not just another woman. His girlfriend. And yet she let herself get caught up and carried away, let him make love to her.

  No again. Let him have sex with her. Sex, that was what it had been. Hot, fast, lusty, unemotional sex.

  Always good during the doing. Not so good during the aftermath, when you lie there feeling . . . alone.

  I’d like you to stay the night. . . .

  There was that. Men didn’t say that unless they meant it. A few years ago, she’d dated a man who’d pressured her for weeks to sleep with him, and then when she did, he handed her a ten-dollar bill for a cab because “he had to get up early to hit the gym.”

  Another lover had said the first morning they’d woken up together, “Do you know what I wish? I wish you were a Swiss cheese omelet and side of home fries. And a large cup of coffee.”

  Olivia had had her share of bad dates and worse relationships. She knew what it felt like to be lonely in a man’s company, in a man’s bed, in his arms.

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  She didn’t feel quite that way now. She felt . . .

  unsure. Unsure even what she was unsure of.

  She was thinking too hard. “I’d like you to stay the night” was about safety. She’d been targeted twice. And it was late. And then there was Kayla; it seemed perfectly fine and natural, given the circumstances, for Olivia to sleep over in the guest room, to be there in the morning for her daughter, who’d surely be full of questions, want to make sure the whole thing hadn’t been a dream.

  “You’ll call the minute you get home?” Zach asked as he stood, now fully dressed.

  “The very minute,” she said, wondering herself if what had occurred between them not five minutes ago hadn’t been a dream.

  Chapter 10

  When Olivia woke up in the morning she could still feel the imprint of his lips on hers. She closed her eyes and let the memories surround her. Zach.

  Zach. Zach.

  Last night, when she’d arrived home, she’d almost been surprised to find the house standing.

  Nothing seemed out of place. She’d called Zach and they’d spoken for just a minute, less really, and she’d felt bereft when they’d hung up.

  It was early now, not quite six, but Olivia couldn’t fall back asleep. Not with Zach to think about. Or Kayla. Or whoever it was who was trying to run her out of town. Olivia was eager to get up and out to meet with Pearl at the town hall to find out if she could still coordinate the pageant if her daughter was a contestant, but then she remembered she had to wait for Johanna. And the town hall probably didn’t open until nine, anyway.

  She showered, loathe to wash away the scent of sex, of Zach, from her body. As the hot water poured down, she thought of him making love to her and HAUNTING OLIV IA

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  instantly wanted him again. She had no idea if there would be a next time, though, or what it would mean.

  She’d never knowingly been with a man who was involved in a relationship. That was against every code she’d lived by since the first grade, when she developed a wild crush on the very boy her best friend had a crush on. The boy had chosen Olivia, and Olivia had chosen her friend.

  You didn’t fool around with other women’s men.

  Unknowingly was one thing. But Olivia knew. Zach had done the right thing—at least by Olivia, anyway—

  by telling her about Marnie before things had gotten out of hand between them last night. Olivia would have been wise to walk away. At least until either of them knew what they wanted.

  Maybe she was rationalizing, but it seemed that last night was less about romance and more about history. What was between them was overwhelming; what they’d gone through last night with Kayla amazing. In any case, there wouldn’t be a next time. Not while Zach was in a relationship with another woman.

  That settled in her mind, she dressed and made coffee, then sipped in dread as the minutes ticked toward eight o’clock. But eight came and went without the ringing of the doorbell. At eight-twenty, Olivia was about to head out, figuring she’d drop off the receipts at Johanna’s shop, when the doorbell rang. Johanna held out her hand without comment.

  Olivia gave her the receipts, then signed the log and the woman was down the path before Olivia could even say good morning.

  Or ask if Johanna, had, say, slashed her tires yesterday. Or been involved romantically with her father at all. If William had rarely come up to 130

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  Blueberr y, how serious could their relationship have been?

  Johanna taken care of—as far as the terms of the will were concerned—Olivia headed to the town hall. As she passed the auditorium, she couldn’t resist going in and walking across the stage, where so many years ago, she’d stood at the podium and read the essay she’d written on the most influential person in her life, her half sisters. A young girl in the audience, a candidate’s younger sister, probably, had stood up and said, “She’s disqualified,

  ’cause that’s two people!” But the main judge had stood and said that two half sisters made a whole and therefore beautifully fulfilled the topic, and the girl had sat down with a huff.

  It was true: Amanda and Ivy had been the most influential people in her life when she was fifteen, even though she saw them around three times a year: once for the two-week vacation in Maine, and then two or three more times for a dinner here or there to celebrate a holiday—if they were invited to their father’s. They often weren’t.

  Even though we couldn’t possibly be considered close, she’d written, my half sisters, Amanda and Ivy, are the most influential people in my life because I strive to make them proud. They probably don’t know that, couldn’t know that, actually, but I want Amanda to see during the brief times we have together that I’m kind and compassion-ate, like she is. And I want Ivy to see that I’m intelligent and questioning, like she is. I want them to know that I have inner beauty, like they do. . . .

  Olivia smiled at the memory of what she’d written so many years ago. Amanda and Ivy hadn’t heard Olivia read the essay; they hadn’t com
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  eant. Neither had her father. Olivia had been the only contestant without a reserved section in the audience for family. And the only winner in history, probably, who hadn’t been swept up in relatives’

  cheers and hugs when her name was announced.

  Her sisters hadn’t come because they simply hadn’t been close then. Wary was a good word to describe their relationship, fostered by their mothers. Though not so much Amanda’s mother, who didn’t seem to have a spiteful bone in her body. Amanda had been raised by her mother in a borough of New York City in a tiny apartment, and Olivia always got the sense that Amanda had felt she was looked down upon by Olivia, especially, but by Ivy too. That hadn’t been the case at all. And since birth probably, Ivy’s mother had been filling Ivy’s head with diatribes about how Ivy was the only legitimate Sedgwick child and therefore should be treated differently than the other two “bas-tard children” and given the biggest room and the most expensive gifts. Olivia had heard a few of Dana Sedgwick’s famous rants with her own ears.

  So, no, the girls hadn’t been close growing up. And they weren’t close now. But they were getting there.

  At the reading of their father’s will, the three Sedgwick sisters had somehow bonded, despite Olivia’s and Ivy’s bickering mothers demanding their daughters get the lion’s share. Once work was less hectic for Ivy and Amanda was back from her honeymoon, Olivia would try to arrange a get-together.

  If I’m in one piece, she thought as the door to the auditorium slammed shut.

  Olivia hurried up to the double doors and pushed.

  Nothing. Someone had locked her in.

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  Oh, good Lord, she thought, banging on the door. “Hello!” she called out.

  She’d been banging and calling out for fifteen minutes before Pearl herself opened the door.

  “How did you manage to lock yourself in?” Pearl asked. “Oh, never mind that. I’m always dallying and dallying with silly questions. I hope you’re here to tell me you’ve agreed to coordinate the pageant!”

  “I would love to accept,” Olivia said as they headed to Pearl’s office down the hall. “But I need to inform you of a serious conflict of interest.”

  Pearl’s eyes widened. “A conflict of interest?

  What could that possibly be? It’s not as if you’re related to any of the entrants, are you? Someone’s aunt? Second cousin?”

  “Actually,” Olivia said. “I’m one of the candidates’ mother.”

  Pearl stopped in her tracks. “Mother,” she repeated.

  “Whose?”

  “Kayla Archer’s.”

  “Ah,” Pearl said, resuming walking. “That does make sense, as she’s the only girl in town without a mother.” She hesitated, then bit her lip. “Were you . . . abroad or something?”

  Olivia shook her head. “To be very honest, Pearl,”

  she began, figuring the terrible truth was the best possible explanation, “I gave birth to Kayla when I was sixteen. My father had sent me to a home for pregnant teenagers up the coast and arranged for a private adoption. Only he didn’t. And I was told that my baby was stillborn. Only she wasn’t.”

  Pearl’s mouth dropped open. “I don’t understand.”

  “My father manipulated things,” Olivia explained.

  “Why, I don’t know.”

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  Because if Kayla had been adopted by a loving couple, you would have been out of Olivia’s reach until she was an adult, or possibly forever.

  Olivia froze, her mind reeling. The thought came to her so suddenly and from out of nowhere, but it was the only explanation that made sense. If that had been her father’s master plan, it gave him an iota of decency. She preferred the iota to believing that her father was a monster.

  “So you see, Pearl,” Olivia continued, “now that there’s a serious conflict of interest, I’m not sure you’ll still want me to coordinate the pageant. The other entrants and their mothers may feel it gives Kayla an unfair advantage.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they will feel that way,” Pearl said.

  “Oh, dear, how to handle, how to handle. I certainly don’t want to lose you as a coordinator, what with your experience as both a former Glitz editor and a former winner of the pageant. Let me call a meeting of all entrants and their guardians and let’s discuss the situation. Perhaps they’ll be open to a neutral assistant coordinator being on scene to make sure that everything is on the up-and-up, that you’re not giving Kayla information you’re not giving the other girls, that sort of thing.”

  “Do you think that would make everyone feel comfortable?” Olivia asked, surprised.

  “Well, the Inner-Beauty Pageant isn’t exactly Miss Teen Maine,” Pearl whispered. “The girls who enter the Inner-Beauty Pageant tend to be more self-motivated than entrants of beauty pageants, where, let’s just say, there can be a certain type of stage mother. . . .”

  Olivia smiled. “I understand.”

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  “Well, I’d better skedaddle to my phone calls,”

  Pearl said. “I’ll call you after I’ve set up the meeting. I’m thinking six o’clock tomorrow night in the auditorium.”

  “Sounds good,” Olivia said. She didn’t think it would sound too good to Marnie, though.

  When Olivia arrived at Zach’s house to take Kayla out to breakfast, Marnie’s car was in the driveway.

  She stopped short; perhaps she should return later.

  Too late. Kayla was peering out the window and spotted her. The girl smiled and waved and Olivia waved back.

  Good, Olivia thought. They were off to a fine start this morning.

  She rang the bell, and Marnie answered.

  “Olivia!” Marnie said. “What brings you here again? ” Olivia caught the emphasis on the again. The woman had fight in her eyes, and Olivia couldn’t exactly blame her. “Zach’s just finishing getting dressed,” she added quickly. She then giggled and buttoned the cleavage button of her blouse. “Oops.”

  Did I just interrupt them from making love? Olivia wondered, or is Marnie simply trying very hard to protect what is hers?

  “Omigod, Mom, guess what?” said a girl who came running down the stairs.

  She has mud on the heels of her boots, Olivia noticed as Marnie whirled around. Had she been prowling around outside Zach’s last night?

  “This is my daughter Brianna,” Marnie said, her arms around the pretty dark-haired girl.

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  Olivia smiled at the girl. “Ver y nice to meet you, Brianna.”

  “You have the exact same hair as Kayla,” Brianna said. “Doesn’t she, Mom?” she added to Marnie.

  Marnie looked like she wanted to spit. And then she regained her composure. “You know what, Bri, you’re right. They do have the same pretty hair.”

  Brianna’s eyes popped. “Oh. My. God. You must be Kayla’s mom!” She turned to her mother. “Mom, that’s the major secret that Kayla just told me! I can’t believe it!”

  “It’s true,” Olivia said. “I’m Kayla’s mother.”

  Marnie did not look pleased. Clearly, Zach had not told Marnie yet. And Marnie didn’t seem to appreciate her daughter’s knowing something so important about Zach Archer before she herself did. “Brianna, why don’t you go on up to Kayla’s room for a few minutes so Olivia and I can get better acquainted.”

  “Okay,” Brianna said and headed back upstairs.

  Marnie turned to Olivia, her anger barely veiled.

  “Actually, before we chat, will you excuse me for a moment? I’d like to talk to Zach for a moment.

  Privately.”

  “Of course,” Olivia said. This would be a good time for me to get my earrings off the bedside table in the guest room. Just in case Marnie goes in there for any reason.

  Like if Zach has a date with her tonig
ht, she thought, her heart squeezing.

  She hurried into the room, the sight of the white rug instantly bringing to mind Zach’s naked body, his lips on hers, his hands all over her. She blinked to bring herself back to the present. Her earrings weren’t on the table.

  She glanced on the rug; had they fallen down?

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  No. Something caught her eye on the bed. It was a picture from a magazine like National Geographic.

  Her earrings lay atop the picture.

  She screamed.

  The photograph was of a castrated man. Scrawled in the white space above the man’s head was: “This is a warning. Don’t see that bitch again. Or you’ll be next.”

  Zach and Marnie rushed into the room. “Olivia?”

  Zach said. “I didn’t realize you were here yet. What’s wrong?”

  The blood drained from her face. She showed him the picture.

  Zach crumpled the piece of paper. “That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m getting to the bottom of this.”

  “What’s that?” Marnie said, taking the picture from Zach. She uncrumpled it and smoothed it out; then her gaze went to the gold hoop earrings on the bed, gleaming against the dark coverlet. “I’m assum-ing the bitch in question is you,” she practically spat out at Olivia, her eyes on the earrings. “I assume you left these here last night. And I can only think of one reason why a woman would take off her earrings in a man’s home.” She glanced back at the picture in her hand. “Zach, did you cheat on me with her?” Marnie demanded.

  “Marnie, I didn’t mean—” Zach began.

  “Yeah. You didn’t mean for things to get out of hand between you and the bitch who abandoned you with a newborn. She waltzes back into town and seduces you all over again and you fall right for it? You’re a sucker.”

  “Marnie, can we just sit down and talk this through?”

  Zach asked. “There’s a lot I need to tell you.”

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  “Such as the fact that Olivia is Kayla’s mother?”

  Marnie spat. “I heard that choice piece of news from my daughter, who heard it before I did. The two of you make me sick. When she blows you off again, Zach, don’t come crawling back to me. I’ll have found someone decent by then.”