C.J. helped him connect with his fictional heroine, and more. He was happy before he met her, but she'd brought him joy. Celeste Joy. A lump in his throat the size of Indiana threatened to choke him. She was gone, and he didn't know her last name or where she lived. He had no idea why she left. She cared about him, at least a little. He knew she did. So whom was she going home to, and why?
He'd suggested that stupid game to guard against discussing things in his life, and it backfired. Served him right. He paced the lot where her RV sat, remembering ... the kitchen where she poured wine for marinade, the window she looked out the day of their safari, and her semi-nude dash to the trash can.
A glint of gold reflecting sunlight caught his eye. He leaned over and picked up a class ring with an M in the middle. Shiny enough to be new and small enough to be hers. He rolled it in his palm. When she backed over the log and sent everything tumbling, it must have fallen and later, rolled out.
An H and an S on either side of the M signified it was a high school ring, but M could stand for any of a million towns. She said she drove six hours to get there. He could look at a map and see what “M towns” lay in a six-hour radius. But if she wanted to see him again, she'd have left a forwarding address or promised to come back.
The one thing he did understand about women was that you couldn't trust them, and she'd reinforced that fact big time. You'd think they were there for you and then—bang, they were gone. No good-byes, just broken promises.
Damned if he'd make a fool of himself and track her down.
* * * *
CELESTE OPENED THE front door of her home and smiled. The aroma of chocolate chip cookies, Cee's favorite and the only thing Susan knew how to make, wafted through the house. She'd learned early they were a good way to soften up her new “mother-figure” for whatever she wanted, and she'd never found the need, or desire, to try anything else. Poor Mark. Unless he could cook, they'd have to eat out every meal—if they married.
Susan appeared in the foyer and gasped, then wailed. “What happened to your beautiful hair?"
"I had it cut. Don't you like it?” Cee set her bags down at her feet. Fingering the strands at the back of her neck, she wondered, for the first time, if it was too short.
"You look like a poodle that's just been trimmed. A lamb that's been shorn.” Susan rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and held her forehead.
Miss Drama Queen, Celeste once called her when talking to Harry, and he'd gotten bent out of shape. “It isn't necessary to belittle her. She's a growing girl who takes life seriously. She isn't acting."
Teens tended to overreact, but Susan dramatized to the nth degree, and Cee thought it might be a good idea to put her talents to work in school plays. She waited a few days to suggest Drama Club, and she saw a spark of interest in Suz's eyes, but Harry took it as further insult and said he thought it was a silly idea. Of course, his sister sided with him.
"I can't believe you did this to me.” Suz picked up a framed photo of Cee with long hair at her own wedding. “You've had long hair forever. If you had to get it cut, why couldn't you wait until after my party? And wedding?"
Celeste bit her tongue to keep back an apology. She'd always been too quick to say I'm sorry. “My hair isn't important. I'm not the one who's getting engaged."
"That's true.” Lighting up like a Day-Glo Watch, Susan launched into plans for her party. Her cheeks flushed and her blue eyes shone in anticipation. Her dark hair was drawn high on her head in a ponytail that spilled around her face. Cee smiled. Susan was a lovely young woman. It wasn't her fault her parents had spoiled her and her brother. As her guardian, Cee hadn't done much better. She'd felt sorry for the orphaned girl. But Susan needed to change if she wanted a happy marriage. Harry had remained selfish and grasping, and he'd thrown away their relationship.
"Let's sit down.” Suz motioned toward the living room where there were stacks of papers and catalogs. “I have books of invitations, brochures from halls we can rent, and caterers’ menus and prices. I've done my homework."
"I see you have.” Celeste gave her a warm hug. “Just give me a minute to freshen up."
She set her overnight bag at the foot of the stairs to carry up later. In the downstairs guest bath, she hid the bag of college catalogs in the linen closet. She'd drag them out later when Susan wasn't so fired up over a party. She'd originally ordered them for Susan, but taken them to New Beginnings to find classes for herself. Fluffing her hair, Cee studied her image in the mirror and was relieved she still liked her new appearance. She put on a touch of lipstick and braced herself for a chore she didn't relish.
Marianne had arrived and was browsing through a wedding magazine when Cee reentered the living room. “I love your hair. Do tell me the name of your new stylist,” she said, eyes sparkling with mischief.
Before Cee could think of a retort, Suz spoke. “Justin said we should hold the party at the Montclair Country Club."
"No,” Cee said firmly. Leave it to Daddy to interfere. “We aren't members."
Susan opened her mouth, and she held up her hand. She'd dropped the expensive membership when Harry died because she never enjoyed going there. Harry loved pomp and extravagance. “I know he can arrange it, but I don't want him to. We can hold the party right here. We have a lovely home."
"Eighty people? I don't think so. And this is a nice place but...” Looking around, Susan shrugged. “It's no palace."
Cee loved her rose and gray living room. Plump pillows, soft carpet, and pictures in shiny brass frames. Topiaries, candles, silk ferns. What would Nick think? She smothered a smile. Predictable.
"Why are you grinning? This is serious.” Susan pounded her fist on the couch cushion. Her eyes were pale blue, unlike Nick's true-blue.
What was Nick doing now? Did he miss her? Would he be there if she went back after the party?
"Why are you smiling?” Marianne asked, an amused grin playing around her lips.
Cee ignored their questions. “I suppose we could redecorate. I could use a change of pace.” She mentally changed the room to modernistic with bright splashes of color and furniture with clean lines. She rested a finger on her chin and tried to picture it, but it wasn't “her.” She liked a casual, lived-in look. A thought jolted her. “Maybe I should sell this house."
"You needn't be sarcastic.” Susan spoke in her mortally wounded voice, and Cee choked back a giggle. She was totally serious, but she'd tuck the idea away until the party crisis passed. “It's not like you to make jokes about something so important,” Susan said.
Cee smoothed back her hair. “I wasn't trying to make light of your plans, but I don't know what choices we have when you want to do everything so fast."
"Why not throw the party at The Willows?” Marianne asked.
"That chic new club?” Susan clapped her hands.
"Isn't it pricey?” Cee asked. If she was going to spend the weeks following the engagement party talking Suz into college, there was no sense spending a mint giving it.
"The owner is a silver fox I dated, and I can get it at a steal, if it's not already booked.” Marianne rubbed her highly polished nails against her sleeve and lowered her heavy lashes.
Marianne had a penchant for older men. Better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave, was a motto she'd picked up and sworn by. While she talked to the silver fox and Susan hung on her every word, Cee escaped to the carved bench on the terrace.
She needed a few moments alone, and this was her comfort spot. Usually, the sweet scent of roses soothed her and the solid feel of the bench gave her a sense of security, but today, the good feelings eluded her. In two months, Susan would marry or go to college, and either way, she'd be left ... alone. She wanted freedom to be herself, but freedom didn't rule out love, and she might have found it with Nick.
She could go back, but time would pass, and he might change. He might leave.
Why had he kept his life such a secret? Was he playing games to help her become a
free spirit, or playing her for a fool? Had he given her a second thought when she left?
Cee plucked a rose and looked out over her formal garden. All order and planned heights in pastels, it was beautiful and fragrant, but in her mind's eye, she saw brilliantly colored wildflowers growing on green hills. Hills she'd walked with a man who'd called her “special.” Who made her feel special. Whom she'd never see again.
She'd reverted to her old ways. Susan beckoned, and she'd come running. Where did responsibility begin and end? She hoped she hadn't sacrificed her only chance for love.
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Chapter Five
OVER THE NEXT few days, Susan invaded Celeste's every thought and consumed each waking moment. Arrangements for her engagement party, down to the tiniest detail, had to be perfect. Cee, sick of demands, took refuge in the formal garden, uprooting flowers. Susan was lunching with Justin, which could only mean more trouble when she came home. Cee made a trip to the nursery and put in new plants before her charge returned.
"Which of these do you like?” Suz ripped open a silver box and pulled back tissue to display two shades of delicate hosiery.
"If it takes this much planning for an engagement party, I'll never survive a wedding,” Cee said, choosing one of two nearly identical pairs. “How much would I have to pay you to elope?"
She followed the remark with a chuckle, but Susan, fingering the other pair, wasn't amused.
Neither was Cee's daddy when she repeated her remark to him over the phone.
"Elope?” Justin Bachman's thundering voice nearly burst her eardrum. “Susan Harte is going to have the biggest damned wedding we can afford."
"We are not paying for it. I am. She's my responsibility and you are missing the point. I don't want Susan to marry Mark."
"Nonsense. He's perfect. You don't know what's good for the girl, and as an engagement gift, your mother and I will pay the catering bill for her engagement party. She is, after all, the closest to a granddaughter we have. So don't argue.” He slammed down the receiver, and Celeste seethed. It wasn't her fault Harry hadn't wanted kids.
The next day, Cee was painting a cabinet she'd bought at a flea market when Susan burst into the kitchen, screeching. “Ce-leste, some dreadful animal tore up our garden. All that's left are weeds."
Smiling, she reached out to smooth the girl's hair. “They're new plants, Suz. We're going to have a wildflower garden.” The perennials she'd planted were the closest Garden Corner had to wildflowers. Daisies. Bee balm. Yarrow. Baby's breath. Lavender. The only way she could hold onto her sanity and memories of Nick was to pursue her dream of changing. She visualized a field of color, but the plants were mostly stems and leaves now. “They'll look better later in the season, and next year, they'll be beautiful."
"I won't be here next year.” Susan, rolling her eyes, moved closer. “What are you doing?"
"Sponge-painting. I saw Martha Stewart do it on TV."
"And you see where it got her."
"She didn't go to prison for that.” Smiling, Cee sat back on her heels to look at the old doublewide cabinet she'd picked up to store canned goods. Not satisfied with its original boring brown, she was sponging it blue and white in a checkered design. When it was finished, she'd add a red heart, or perhaps two.
"Fine.” Susan groaned. “Next thing I know you'll be braiding cornstalks into wreaths."
"Who knows? Maybe I will.” Standing, Cee folded her arms. “People need change in their lives or they become stale. I'm giving this chest a new personality, just as I did the garden. It was too orderly. I wanted something freer. The chest had nothing to offer, except practicality. I'm giving it a touch of beauty. I'm changing my life, developing a new personality."
And becoming freer, with the help of a freedom teacher who would make Susan's toes curl. Closing her eyes, she prayed that soon she'd be able to return to the campground, and Nick would take up her lessons where they left off. A heaviness weighed on her heart whenever she thought that he might have left, or that he'd refuse to forgive her for leaving.
Susan's shriek pierced her reverie. “You don't need to change anything. I like everything just the way it is."
"Everything isn't about you.” Cee spoke softly.
"Are you going through some sort of phase?"
She should have known her words would go right over the girl's head. Smiling wryly, she shrugged. “That's been my line for the past five years. Now you get the fun of wondering."
"This isn't a joke."
"You're acting so much like my dad, anyone would swear you're blood relation. Listen to what I'm saying and try to grasp the meaning of my words. I'm turning my life around. Changing. Metamorphosing. Doing a few things for me."
"Ohmigod."
"Susan Jane Harte, don't talk like—"
"Celeste, promise me you'll talk to Dr. Brown. Please."
"I don't need a shrink.” She'd paid the doctor a few visits after Harry's death and the revelation Stella was back in his life. “I feel better than I've felt in years.” But not as good as I did when I was at New Beginnings. Never as good as I did with Nick.
"I'm glad somebody does because I'm ready for a breakdown.” Susan stormed from the room, and Cee picked up her sponge determinedly.
Seconds later, Susan returned at hurricane force. “Whose dress is that on your bed?"
"I bought it to wear to your engagement party tomorrow night."
"It's not a dress for a ... foster mother. It's a cocktail dress for a twenty-year-old siren."
Cee squeezed the sponge so hard, paint dripped down her arm. She wasn't old enough to be any kind of mother to an eighteen-year-old know-it-all.
"First, short shorts and midriff tops, now this. You're almost thirty. It's too late to burst out of your cocoon."
Cee slapped the cabinet door with her sponge and it bounced, making a spot that looked like ... a butterfly with wings spread wide.
A sign. Susan was wrong. She had to be. Celeste Joy Harte was going to reclaim her life. She was going to find the freedom she'd known as a girl and the joy of romance she'd known as a woman with Nick. Soon. Soon, it would be her time.
* * * *
ISADORA HADN'T FALLEN in love with John yet. Fourteen days had passed since C.J. left, and every word Nick wrote sounded like crap. He looked out the window to the empty lot where her RV sat. People had come and gone on weekends but no one stayed, and it was no wonder when it did nothing but rain.
The sun was only half hidden by a cloud this morning, and if he hurried, he could ... what? Lie in his hammock or walk along the lake? Neither sounded like fun. Nothing did. Everything reminded him of her; even the fireworks over the lake on the Fourth had sent him into depression. Looking at the golden glow of skyrockets, he'd thought of the glints that lighted her eyes when she looked at him.
As if I were special.
He missed her more than he'd missed anyone ... in years. Nick took the class ring out of his pocket and rubbed the raised numerals. C.J. graduated high school a year before he did, which meant she was twenty-nine. Remembering how she'd worried whether she looked old before her haircut, he had to smile. Some women worried about turning thirty, and with her penchant for control, she was probably one of them. Silly when it was just another number and she looked like a college girl, especially with her hair short. His heart ached when he thought about cutting her hair and the trust she'd placed in him.
He tucked the ring back in his pocket and picked up his quartz tiger. He hadn't enjoyed a single day since she left. He'd enjoyed every minute of every day before he met her. What had she done to him? Even his morning eggs tasted wrong.
The real clincher was ... he couldn't write. The mop lady still lay under cover, and he tentatively removed the sheet. He had six weeks to finish his romance book and win the bet. Or lose and work for his father.
Nick looked out the back window at the house going up on the hill. Two workers were hanging the shutters. Another was cleani
ng debris off the muddy lawn. It was almost finished, and soon a family, thrilled with their new home, would move in. Did his father feel the thrill of creating something for someone else's enjoyment? Or did he work night and day because he was driven? To make money and stay away from home.
If his dad had stayed home more, Nick's mother wouldn't have left. She needed love and nurturing and fun. Nick remembered the way she used to sing and dance around the house. When she left, she took the happiness out of their home and Dad moved them closer to Dennis Homes, to an apartment, so he could work even longer hours.
Nick opened the refrigerator and took out the bacon. Folding back the wrapper, he found mold. Damn. He threw it in the trashcan outdoors and stared up at the sky. Gray, and the air was muggy. Nick had cooked for himself since he was ten. Georgia used to make pancakes with Mickey Mouse ears and draw syrup faces and whiskers on them.
Dark clouds had gathered on the horizon by the time he reached the camp store. The young clerk hovered over her baby, asleep in a small crib. Following him to the bakery case, she smiled. “The lowfat blueberry muffins are warm."
C.J. would have bought them. His blah mood turned black, and he waved a hand at the chocolate doughnuts. “Half a dozen of those."
By the time he picked up his sack, the clerk had returned to the crib. “I'm sorry if I acted gruff, Tina."
"It's the weather.” She smiled at him.
"Yeah, I guess it is.” He patted her shoulder. “You sure are a good mom."
"I have to make up for her not having a dad in her life."
Could one parent make up for the absence of another? He opened the door. If and when he was a husband, he'd shower his wife with attention. And if he ever took a real job, he'd make sure it was nine to five, so he could spend plenty of time with her and their kids.
"Oh, Mr. Dennis.” Tina hurried after him. “You forgot to check your books."
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