She opened her mouth to tell him that he would get over her. That this was … temporary, but her resolve broke, shattered, and when she opened her mouth she said, “I’m scared.”
He nodded as if he understood, and he did, she knew he did. He’d been scared, and look at how brave he’d been earlier today. Telling her he loved her in front of all those people.
That kind of bravery was a mystery. A wonder of the world, and she did not have it. She never had.
“What … what if I don’t love you?” she said, because she had to tell him, had to give him a glimpse of the pain coming his way. The pain he was asking for in loving her. “I don’t have love in me anymore. I can’t trust this feeling you have for me. Not after Joel.”
“That’s okay.” He pulled the bags from her hands, breaking her kung-fu death grip as if it were nothing, and set them on the ground, where they slumped against her legs like loyal dogs. “You can be scared to love me. I get it, it’s scary. And I’m in no hurry.” His smile was so sweet, the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. “But don’t be scared to let me love you.”
She resisted as best she could, holding herself apart from that smile, the temptation of his touch, the utter beguilement of his words. He loved her? It seemed impossible.
Slowly, inch by inch, she leaned against his chest, his heart beating so hard against her ear, and it felt good. Like home. Like those stars had been pointing to him all along.
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I warned you,” she whispered.
He didn’t bother to answer, he kicked the bags away and swung her up in his arms. His kiss was reverent and just a touch wild, as if he couldn’t believe his luck, as if he had something to prove, and she clasped his head in her hands and kissed him back.
I’m going to break your heart, she thought.
“Thanks, Sabrina,” Celeste said, taking the file from the young brunette they’d hired from Dallas to be their spa manager.
“We’ve got four women to interview,” Sabrina said, managing to be both efficient and friendly, two of the big reasons she and Victoria had hired her. That she looked like a healthier Angelina Jolie didn’t hurt. “We can start up again after Ruby and Victoria finish interviewing the kitchen staff.”
Celeste opened the front door, letting in the cool fall air, the sounds of construction on the barn. Opening week was a month away and progress was right on schedule. When guests arrived on the twenty-sixth of December, this place was going to be perfect. “Sounds good. I’m just going to have some lunch,” she said.
“I’ll come find you when we’re ready.”
Celeste shut the door and turned to find a skinny back sitting on the front step, sharp shoulder blades pressed against his black shirt, so different from the back she longed to see.
“Sabrina is so hot,” Thomas said, part of his meatball sub smeared across his face. This twenty-two-year-old man boy still needed a mother. Celeste handed him a napkin as she sat down.
“Sabrina,” she eyed him carefully, “is not for you.”
“Tell that to Sabrina,” he said with a goofy waggle of his eyebrows. He wiped his face and used his foot to push a sandwich bag over toward her.
A six-inch meatball on flatbread with cheese. It smelled like her mother’s terrible cooking, heavily processed and filled with fat and calories and chemicals. Delicious.
“No thank you,” she said, pushing it back at him with her toe. Every day they did this. He offered her one of his sandwiches and she rejected it, choosing the same strawberry yogurt she’d been eating for lunch for the last twenty years.
She didn’t even know what her body would do if she ate a sub like that.
Love it, she thought recklessly. Rejoice. Sing hallelujah.
“Hey, Celeste.” Thomas squinted up at the sun sitting practically on top of the barn. A solar rooster. “I’m really sorry about the other day. That thing with my dad—”
The yogurt turned to glue in her mouth.
“It was a stupid idea, the flowers and everything. It’s just … the way he talked about you and looked at you, I thought …” His sigh was not the sigh of a twenty-two-year-old kid, and she wished she were the kind of woman who could talk with her mouth full, because she’d tell him to shut up. Shut up and not worry. “Well, I thought he just needed some help asking you out.”
“Thomas, it was sweet, the flowers and sandwiches, it was very sweet.”
“But he didn’t stay.”
“That had nothing to do with you.”
“My mom did such a number on him—”
“I don’t think it had much to do with your mother either. I think …” She put down the yogurt, the four bites in her stomach starting a protest rally. “I’m just too old for him.”
Just too cold. Too mean. Too angry.
“Old? Come on, you’re what, fifty?”
“I’m sixty-three.”
“So?” He didn’t even pause, bless his heart.
“So, I could be your grandmother.”
“But not his. He’s fifty.”
Oh Lord, she was thirteen years older than him. Thirteen.
“And you’re hot.” Thomas nodded eagerly, as if it weren’t just slightly inappropriate that he’d said that.
“And your father is not interested.”
“But he is—”
She stood up, thinking about that kiss, the reverence of his hands on her flesh, and how she’d pushed that away. For good. “Trust me.”
chapter
23
“You sure …” Victoria ran a hand over the big belt buckle she wore. Her last pair of pants from her old life had finally split on Christmas morning, and Ruby and Celeste had just about thrown a party.
And then they took her shopping.
“This doesn’t look ridiculous?” she asked. The jeans she wore were dark and very tight, tucked into a pair of boots. She wore one of Eli’s belt buckles with a bright red tank top tucked into it.
Over the top of the whole outfit she wore a loose black sweater, longer at the front, almost down to her knees. A pair of dangly earrings swung from her ears.
Eli had whistled when he’d seen her, kissed her cheek, and told her how beautiful she looked. But he’d also said that when she split those pants. The man was no judge of fashion.
For four weeks now, she’d been pushing away his tenderness, his affection. And the pile of everything she was rejecting was growing so big in the corner of her life where she’d shoved it, she was going to have to deal with it at some point. Address it before it crushed her.
But she didn’t know how.
“You look great,” Celeste said, without looking up from their opening-week schematic.
“I don’t look like me.”
“Part of the reason you look great.”
“Should we be so casual?”
Celeste looked up at her, her blue eyes bright, the white tunic she wore over slim black pants making her look eons younger than Victoria felt. “We should be ourselves.”
“So a freaked-out ball of nerves?”
“Look at this place, Victoria,” Celeste said. “Shut your mouth and look.”
They stood behind the small desk they’d put into the foyer, beneath the skylight Gavin had made out of the portico. Sunlight flooded the room, and from where she stood she could see the lovely open-air dining room with its windows and pine walls. The fireplace in the lounge crackled, piping out warmth and the smell of a hickory fire. Through the door to her left were five state-of-the-art treatment rooms, and two change rooms with whirlpools and eucalyptus steam rooms.
The door to her right led to eight suites, with thousand-thread-count sheets, views of the property, and complimentary bottles of wine, just waiting to be opened.
Celeste, Victoria, and Jacob were living in the suite of rooms above the kitchen.
Behind them, the kitchen hummed with staff, with Ruby, with the smells of delicious food being prepared.
Everything was perfect. Totally p
erfect.
“Why am I so nervous?”
“You’d be an idiot not to be nervous.”
“You don’t seem nervous.”
“Years of practice.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Celeste made a note of something on the schematic and then lifted the small wicker wastebasket from under the desk and put it on top.
“Celeste.” Victoria put her hand over the all-holy schematic, forcing Celeste to look up at her. “If this fails, I’m so sorry.”
“Fails?” Much to Victoria’s surprise, Celeste put down the schematic and grabbed her arms, running her hands down to her cold, numb fingers. “We’re in this together. All the way.”
For years Victoria had avoided this woman’s gaze, knowing that she’d see all too clearly how Celeste felt about her and it wouldn’t be good. But not now. Those eyes were full of warmth … for her.
“I should have said this years ago, but I’m proud of you. You’re …” Celeste melted slightly, her cold angles softening, and she ran a hand over the younger woman’s hair as if she were a child with a skinned knee. Victoria soaked the attention in, gobbled it up, took every moment of warmth she could from this woman, surprised by how much she needed it. How much it meant to her. “You’re the daughter I never had and always wanted.”
So strange, the power of those words, how they reordered the past, shuffled memories like a deck of cards. Oddly, Victoria would have thought that she was past trying to gain this woman’s approval.
And here it was, when she needed it most.
“Thank you, Celeste. For everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“You would have been fine,” Celeste said. “Look at how far you’ve come since this summer. You’re a survivor. One of the best I’ve ever seen.”
It was a strange compliment, like Eli calling her game, but she would take it.
“I am,” she agreed.
“You are. Now fix your eye makeup. The first guests should be here any minute.”
“Right. Okay.” She pulled out the little mirror from the desk drawer, which was right next to the manicure kit, comb, and package of Kleenex that Celeste had thought were invaluable.
“I think you made the right decision sending Jacob off to camp,” Celeste said.
“It’s only until Wednesday.”
“Still, we should have our feet under us by then.”
Holy raccoon eyes. She used the Kleenex as best she could and as she tilted the mirror, she got a good look at herself. Her cheeks were fuller than they’d been in years, her eyes brighter. Her lips had lost that pinched look, perhaps under Eli’s kisses.
“Eli looks good on you,” Celeste murmured, still looking through her paperwork, but a coy smile hovered over her lips.
Victoria shut the compact and Celeste looked up at the hard click.
“Why didn’t you get married after you left Lyle? You were so young and beautiful … I mean, you were probably asked, weren’t you?” Victoria asked.
“I was. And … I had relationships, but when things got too serious I walked away.”
“Why?” she breathed.
Celeste shrugged, looking girlish. Honest. “Because I was scared. Scared of giving someone that much power over me again. Scared of being hurt. Scared of hurting someone. Love is powerful and I never knew what to do with it.”
Victoria knew exactly what she meant. The feelings she had for Eli were like a loaded gun she didn’t know how to use.
Celeste’s blue eyes burned with understanding. “But I regret it. I regret it very much. I regret not having more children. Not having someone to share my life with, good and bad. I wish I had been braver. I wish …”
Victoria put her hand over Celeste’s, touching the knuckles like stones under her skin. “It’s not too late, you know. I’ve seen how you watch Gavin—”
Celeste snatched her hand back, picking up the schematic. “Well, he’s gone now, isn’t he?”
“But you could call him.”
“We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you and Eli. And frankly, we should be talking about today. We’ve got guests arriving in ten minutes.”
Victoria pulled her hand back and touched the belt buckle at her waist. She felt, in a weird way, branded by his belt buckle.
And the feeling wasn’t bad. It was nice. Good.
Maybe she just needed to be braver. Maybe she needed to stop being so damn scared. Eli was not Joel, and she was not the woman she used to be.
That woman, just like that part of her past, was gone.
“Right. So who is coming first?” In the last few weeks, with the Christmas preparations and attending to all the finishing touches on the opening-night party, she’d left the guest management to Celeste. Names, arrival times, allergies, spa treatments. Celeste took care of all those details. Victoria took care of New Year’s Eve.
Never in her life had she imagined she and Celeste would make such a good team.
“Ah, this morning we’ve got the Rhodes, the Marrens, and … the Stones.”
That’s weird, Victoria thought, her stomach going a little queasy. “Where are they from?”
“New York. They booked online after they saw those ads in the Times.”
No. No … no way. It couldn’t be … it just couldn’t be. This was a possibility she’d never examined. Hadn’t prepared for. She leaned forward to see the women’s first names, but the front door opened and the cold air of winter swirled around her.
A boy stepped in first, his nose buried in a video game. He’d grown since the last time she’d seen him. His hair had been highlighted. An eight-year-old with highlighted hair. She knew only one woman who’d do that to her son.
“Kids?” Celeste muttered. “Who brings their kids to a spa? Didn’t we make it clear this wasn’t a family resort?”
Behind the kid came Bill, still handsome, his face hard, his belly soft. He was talking on his cell phone, carrying a travel golf bag.
“Golf?” Celeste whispered, shocked.
This was Victoria’s worst nightmare made real. This was a dimension of hell she’d never, ever considered. It was This Is Your Life, Victoria Schulman, the disaster version. The Suicide/Ponzi Scheme adaptation.
Last in the door was a petite woman with a shiny cap of dark hair. The first friend Victoria had made in her old life, the first friend to yank that friendship away when she’d needed it most.
Renee Stone smiled with all the black menace in her heart.
“Surprise, Victoria!”
After dinner that night, Celeste volunteered to take dessert out to Renee and her table. It was something they were doing with all the tables—a personal touch, which now felt like personal torture.
“You handle the other tables,” Victoria said. The five other reservations were all women from the area. And they were showing signs of frustration over the table full of kids and husbands. The kids were whiney, the husbands surfing the Net on their phones, and the women were drinking too much, being too loud.
They were a cancer, and it was spreading through the dining room.
“You don’t have to do this alone,” Celeste said, reaching out as if to catch her.
“I’m fine,” she lied, dodging her hand. Nothing could penetrate the thin veneer of ice she’d developed in order to push her body through this ordeal. And Celeste’s kindness would melt it all, leave her naked and shivering, vulnerable to Renee and all that hate.
She’d stood inside the kitchen door, watching them through the crack every time a server came and went with a tray of food. But she couldn’t hide forever. Sooner or later she’d need to face these women.
Victoria put the last of the mousse on the tray and let the server pick it up, leading her out of the kitchen.
Victoria paused at the door, searching through her memory bank, her inner stash of good things, for something to give her strength, something to make her smile in the face of all their animosity.
Her son’s hugs, Celeste’s respect—neither seemed strong enough to help her weather the ordeal ahead.
Eli saying, “I love you.”
She didn’t want to use that memory, didn’t want to need his love, but the thought lifted her like a lifeboat and she hit the door.
“There she is,” Renee said, leaning back in her chair. Her cheeks were bright, a sure sign she’d had too many martinis. Elizabeth, beside her, looked a little dazed from trying to keep up. “Our gracious proprietress.”
“Hello, I hope everyone enjoyed their meal,” Victoria said, with a smile that split the skin of her face as if she were a rotten tomato. She helped Tanya, the server, set the dishes down one by one in front of everyone, avoiding Bill, who always got a little grabby after having too much to drink.
“Passable,” Renee said, her smile wide, her voice carrying to the other guests. “A little simple for a spa, I thought.”
“Victoria,” Jamie whispered, putting a hand on her arm. “I could use a little more water, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Renee loved that, and beside her Elizabeth snickered. “Me too,” she said, slurring her words.
“Yes, water for the table.” Renee spread her arm, her eyes stabbing Victoria right through the heart. “And clear some of these glasses, would you? I promise,” she cooed, “we’ll leave you a good tip.”
She remembered Eli’s touch, the heat of his breath against the nape of her neck. “Not a problem.”
“I’ll get it,” the server murmured, and Victoria wanted to kiss her feet.
“I had no idea you had such an interesting family history, Victoria,” Renee said. “When I saw your picture on the website, I tell you, it just about made me fall over. Makes me wonder if Joel knew. Could you imagine him out here, riding horses? Busting broncos?”
The men said nothing, turning stone-faced, polishing off their drinks with one swallow. These men had considered Joel a friend and he’d robbed them.
I’m sorry, she thought for the millionth time. But her apologies had never gotten her anywhere with these people.
“It was my father’s ranch,” she said. “The running of it was left to me in his will.”
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