Enright Family Collection (82 page)

“What did Ted say?”

“He loved it. As a matter of fact, he asked if we might include her on the all-day Summer Wedding special they are planning. She said she would, as long as it doesn’t interfere with India and Nick’s wedding.”

“The station is really getting into these all-day events, aren’t they?” Without waiting for an answer, she continued. “And how are your brother’s wedding plans progressing, by the way?”

“Great.” Zoey recalled her mother’s tearful face looking up into Nick’s as if pleading for something. . . .

“Zoey, I said, what’s your dress like?”

“My dress?” Zoey asked blankly.

“For the wedding.” CeCe sliced first a green pepper, then a red one. “Did you just mentally
go
someplace?”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I drifted.”

“Something on your mind?”

“A lot, actually.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Where to start?” Zoey sighed. “It was quite a weekend.”

“How was the party?”

“Wonderful. The best.”

“Really?” CeCe giggled. “Might that explain why Mr. Home MarketPlace was seen prowling the halls all week wearing a silly grin and mismatched socks?”

“Ben was wearing two different socks?”

“Yep. One blue, one brown. Where I come from, that’s a sign of total distraction.”

Zoey smiled happily.

“So. I take it your path crossed with Ben’s this weekend.”

“Ummm.”

“Well, now. An ‘Ummm’-rated weekend. My favorite kind.”

“Mine, too.”

“And I trust there will be more ‘Ummm’-rated weekends in your future?”

“Oh, I sincerely hope so.” Zoey grinned. “It was wonderful. The party was wonderful. We danced in the moonlight on my mother’s porch. Did I say it was wonderful?” She sighed. “On Sunday, we went canoeing, and he stayed for dinner at my mother’s. My mother invited his grandfather to come as well.”

“You said that they knew each other from years ago?”

“More or less. It was fun.” Zoey’s lips tilted at the edges, as she remembered the way he had kissed her good night and left her standing in the driveway wanting
more, her toes curled and her heart pounding. No one had ever kissed her like that. . . .

“I’ll just bet it was.” CeCe measured olive oil into a frying pan and turned on the burner. “Well, there’s nothing like a perfect weekend to make you feel like all is well in the world.”

“Not quite.” Zoey shook her head.

CeCe turned to her, a puzzled look on her face.

“I don’t know . . .” Zoey struggled with the words, as if afraid that speaking her fears aloud might give them a life of their own, and make them come true.

“Don’t know what?”

“I don’t think Ben’s going to be staying here for too long. I think he’s going to go back to England.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.” Zoey unfolded the napkin at her place at the table, then folded it again. Then unfolded. Folded.

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said that if he couldn’t drive again, he was going to go into business with a friend of his.”

“What kind of business?”

Zoey shrugged. “Something to do with racing.”

“When will he know if he can drive?”

“Probably not for a few months.”

“Don’t waste your time worrying about what might or might not happen, Zoe. Save your energy for the
now,
and deal with things as they happen.”

“There’s more,” Zoey told her.

“More what?”

“More to worry about.”

“Such as . . . ?”

“Something odd is going on with my mother. I saw her crying in the garden yesterday with my brother. Yet, when I saw her later, she was her usual charming self. As if she didn’t have a care in the world.”

“Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she and your brother were having a mother-and-son moment.”

“You know, that’s what I tried to tell myself. But it
doesn’t feel right.” Zoey shook her head slowly. “As much as I wanted to believe that it’s nothing more than Mom being sappy about her little boy getting married and all that, I just know that there’s more to it than that. You’d have had to see the look on her face. She looked so . . . sad. So . . .
lost,
somehow.
Frightened,
even. It’s so hard to explain. My mother is always together, CeCe, I’ve never even seen her really afraid. And she is always in control.”

“Zoey, no one is always in control.”

“My mother is,” Zoey insisted.

“Maybe that’s what she would like you to think. But I’ll bet there are times when she falls apart like the rest of us.”

“Nah. I’d know if she did.”

“Zoey, all you really ever know of anyone is that which they
want
you to know.”

“CeCe, this is my
mother
we’re talking about. We have no secrets. I know all there is to know.”

“You can’t really believe that.”

“Sure. What’s not to know?”

“Why did your father leave?”

Zoey’s hand, wrapped around her wineglass, stopped in midair on its way to her mouth.

“I cannot believe I said that. Of all the insensitive . . . I’m so sorry, Zoey.” CeCe cringed when she realized what she had said. “I’m sorry, it just came out.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. It was thoughtless and it was—”

“No. Really. It’s okay.” Zoey looked up, her blue eyes clouded with uncertainty. “I have no idea why my father left. And you’re absolutely right.” She pondered the possibility for the first time. “I’m sure there are many things in my mother’s life that I don’t know anything about. It was a very arrogant assumption on my part.”

For the rest of the evening, Zoey wondered just how many secrets her mother might have, and which one of them had driven her to tears on Sunday morning.

*  *  *

“Zoey, ah have to tell you how much ah enjoy this show. Ah look forward to Tuesdays just so’s ah can watch you in the kitchen.” The caller—June from Savannah, Georgia—giggled. “But ah have to say ah never did see anyone have such a dickens of a time making pie crust.”

“Well, I know that there is a way to prevent this stuff from crawling up your arms. . . .” A flustered Zoey tried to keep her eyes on the monitor and away from the side of the set, where Ben stood laughing at her efforts to pick the sticky dough from her wrists.

“Sugar, if you would just flour your hands before you start, you won’t have a lick of trouble next time,” June confided.

“Really?”

“Really. Now, ah’m just going to hang up here and you can just go on with your show, there, Zoey,” June told her with a touch of maternal warmth.

“Thank you, June. Ah . . . that is,
I
. . . appreciate your help.” Momentarily off-camera, Zoey stuck her tongue out at Ben before continuing. “Now for the real challenge. I have to put this pie together.” She attempted to pick up the round crust and place it in the bottom of the pie plate, but it ripped into two pieces. “Oh boy.” She sighed and put the halves into the plate, trying to moosh them together.

“Zoey, you have another call,” her producer told her through her earpiece. “And for crying out loud, you’re burning the crap out of the strawberries. Take the pan off the stove!”

“Hello, Ruth.” Zoey dropped the pie crust onto the counter and removed the pan of boiling strawberries from the burner. “How’s your day going?”

She heard Ben chuckle but refused to look at him.

“Fine, honey, but it looks like you’re having a little trouble there.”

“I always do, Ruth.” Zoey frowned.

“If I could give you a little suggestion . . .”

“Certainly. Please. Feel free.”

“You can put that little torn section of crust back together with a little water.”

“Water?” Zoey frowned.

“Just wet your fingers and sort of work the two pieces of the crust together.”

“Like this?” Zoey signaled the cameraman to zoom in while her fingers worked the dough into a smooth and slippery disk.

“Exactly. That should be fine.” Ruth’s voice was soothing and patient.

“Hey! It worked!” Zoey beamed. “Well, I certainly thank you, Ruth.”

“It was my pleasure, Zoey.”

“Call back anytime,” Zoey told her, pleased that she had been able to salvage the dough and make a presentable piecrust.

“Zoey, one more call,” the producer told her.

“Hello, Zoey, this is Sharon calling from Boston.”

“Hi, Sharon, how’s everything in Boston?”

“Warmer than it was last week. I just wanted you to know how much I enjoy watching you cook—”

“Zoey, your oven mitt is on fire!” Ellen yelled.

“Oh!” A nervous glance at the monitor indicated that the burning mitt was off-camera. Zoey tried to inconspicuously knock the flaming mitt into the nearby sink.

She missed. The flaming mitt headed toward the floor.

“—and how thrilled I was to see you last week. I was lunching in the same restaurant as you and your mother. I sat three tables away.”

“Really?”

Zoey dropped a thick towel onto the mitt, which had gone down in flames like a kamikaze.

“You’re even prettier in person.”

“Zoey, say thank you to the lady,” Ellen instructed. “And see if you can stomp on that sucker to make sure it’s out.”

“Thank you,” Zoey said as she slid one pump-clad shoe onto the smoking towel.

“And I loved that purple suit you were wearing.”

“Thank you . . .”

“Sharon,” Ellen supplied Zoey with the name she had clearly forgotten.

“Sharon. Thanks for calling.”

Having gotten the fire out, Zoey glanced at the clock. Down to the last few minutes. She signaled the cameraman to run the promo shot and voice-over for one of the products to be offered on the next show while she retrieved the remnants of the burned mitt, dropped it into the sink, and turned on the water.

“Thanks for your help,” she stage-whispered to the production assistants and product coordinator, who were all but falling on the floor in gales of laughter. “I could have burned the set down.”

“We had a fire extinguisher ready, just in case,” one of them told her, “but you were doing just fine.”

“Zoey, please stop at my office when you’re done here.” Trying his best not to laugh at her, too, Ben turned away, nodding politely to the other employees as he walked off the set.

“Oh, boy.” One of the prop boys rolled his eyes. “Poor Zoey. It’s bad enough to mess up, but messing up with Pierce standing right there is not a good thing.”

“Sorry, Zoey,” another said as she walked off the set. “I guess you’re really going to get it now from Pierce.”

Ever hopeful that he might, in fact, be right, Zoey smiled to herself as she removed her microphone, stuck it into her pocket, and stepped down off the set.

*  *  *

“So, now you’ve seen firsthand what a buffoon I am in the kitchen, I guess you’ll want to recommend someone else do the cooking shows, right?” Zoey cheerfully folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the side of Ben’s desk.

“Not a chance. Everyone adores you.”
Including me.

Zoey sighed. “You’d think that people would want to see someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“They seem to like watching you.”
I like watching you.

“I thought maybe I had been summoned to the boss’s office for a lecture.”

He stood up from his desk, testing his foot. Therapy had helped a lot, but there were still times when his ankle seemed almost to freeze up. It didn’t bode well, he knew, but he pushed the thought from his mind. “This has nothing to do with how many woks you can sell.”

“What does it have to do with?”

“The way you look in that shade of blue-green.” His voice grew husky as he walked toward her.

“Teal,” she said.

“Teal.” The corners of his mouth quirked into a grin. “Teal is a very good color on you, Zoey. It brings out that smoky blue of your eyes.”

His fingers traced the outline of her face from her temple to her jaw and back again. “I haven’t been the same since the weekend,” he confessed. “I can’t seem to concentrate on much of anything.”

“Me, too,” she whispered.

“All I can think about is kissing you, Zoey Enright.”

“Well, then, I think you should stop thinking about it and do it.”

“I think you just might be right.”

He seemed to engulf her with his arms, which held her in an embrace both tender and powerful, and his lips, which caught her mouth and claimed it for his own. He seemed to siphon the very life from her, leaving her weak, short of breath, and dazed. But not totally defenseless, she discovered, as she parted her lips and felt his tongue, soft as a summer morning and hot as the midday sun, as it slipped into the corners of her mouth, and heard his breath catch in his throat. The pulse inside her head pounded like thunder and she lifted herself closer into his arms, drew his kiss deeper, until there was
neither sight nor sound, only sweet hot sensation that spread downward from her mouth and showed no signs of stopping at her stomach. She wished she could be brazen, could act the way she’d seen women act in the movies, the ones that would pull their dresses up to their waist and slide on back to the top of his desk and just
do it

But she, Zoey Enright, had not been raised to seduce men on their desks in their offices in their place of employment.

Ben, however, had apparently not been as delicately taught.

He eased her back toward the slab of mahogany and pressed her against the front of the desk.
Ok boy,
raced through Zoey’s feeble mind.
OK boy!

Finding that she did, in fact, feel much the seductress after all, Zoey pressed against the solid wall of Ben’s body and the source of the heat that had risen so rapidly between them like a flash fire. She felt herself falling, falling backward, like a snowflake on a downward spiral, still held tightly by his arms but dropping back onto the desk, his lips still torturing her as they skimmed first her chin, then the long eager column of her neck. She heard her breath in short bursts, his heart beating wildly, her name as he whispered it somewhere between her waist and her collarbone. She heard the soft fall of items on the desk as they fled toward the floor.