The Chesapeake Diaries Series (109 page)

~ Grace ~

“Hey, wake up!” Vanessa thumped on Steffie’s worktable with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t hear you come in.” Steffie swiveled around on the stool she’d been sitting on.

“You look like you’re a thousand miles away.”

“Close enough.” Stef held up a piece of paper. “Recipe for Mexican chocolate monster mash. Adding cinnamon and …”

She stared at the cover of the tabloid Vanessa was holding. “That’s me.” She reached for the paper. “Me and Wade and … oh, how cute does Austin look! This was taken right out front.” She held the photo up and pointed. “See, there’s the shop right there in the background. I guess one of those guys taking pictures yesterday sold them.” She grinned. “That was fast.”

“These publications pay a lot of money to get this stuff, like, pronto. I bet there are a half-dozen more publications on the stand today with the same kind of coverage. This article is pretty accurate, as far as tabloids go,” Vanessa pointed out. “It’s all about Dallas’s party and who was there and talks about her getting
engaged. There’s a close-up of her ring on page three.”

Steffie read the front-page photo’s caption: “ ‘Superstar Dallas MacGregor on a stroll with fiancé, Grant Wyler, after celebrating her birthday in St. Dennis, Maryland. With Dallas and Grant is (left to right) her son, Cody Blair, and his daughter, Paige Wyler’—how crazy will Paige be when she sees her face on the cover of a national newspaper—‘Dallas’s brother, Wade MacGregor, and his son, Austin; and Steffie Wyler, Grant’s sister and owner of One Scoop or Two, the ice-cream shop and the group’s Sunday afternoon destination.’ ”

Steffie looked up from the paper and laughed. “My name is in a tabloid. My picture is on the front page. How insane is this?”

“That much fuss for Dallas’s birthday, imagine what the coverage of the wedding is going to be like.”

“Do you think I look fat in this picture?” Steffie held up the paper.

“No. You look hot.” Vanessa looked closer. “So does Wade. The three of you—you and Wade and Austin—look like a happy family.”

“Yeah, well, whoever said that the camera never lies wasn’t aware that Wade and Austin would be on their way to Connecticut this morning to check out the new job and look for a place to live.” She glanced at the clock. “Actually, they’ve been there for a while. They left early this morning.”

“How are you feeling about that?” Vanessa asked.

“How do you think I feel?”

“That bad, huh?”

Stef nodded. “I’m trying not to, but I can’t help it.”

“Maybe you should tell him, Stef.” Vanessa sat on the other stool. “Maybe he should know how you feel.”

“Oh, he knows.” Steffie laughed. “Believe me, he knows.”

Vanessa’s eyes narrowed as she studied Stef’s face. “You slept with him.”

Steffie grinned and took a mallet to a hunk of dark chocolate, tapping it gently so that the pieces didn’t fly all over the table.

“You did.”

Gathering up the smaller chunks, Steffie nodded.

“When did this happen, and why am I just finding out about it?” Vanessa demanded.

“Because it just happened last night … oh, okay, and Saturday night. But I haven’t seen you and didn’t have time to call you.” Steffie smiled at her friend. “And I knew you’d be here today, if for no other reason than to talk about the party. Which, face it, was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Did you see Derek Manheimer? Oh, my heart. He looks good on the screen, but damn! In person, he—”

“Don’t even try to change the subject, missy. I want details. I demand details.” Vanessa snagged a chunk of chocolate that Steffie missed and nibbled. “Like, how was it?”

“Amazing. Incredible.” Steffie sighed. “Life changing.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing.” Vanessa reached into the bowl where Stef had
dumped the chunks. “This is ridiculous chocolate, by the way.”

“It’s Mexican. High butterfat content. Like, eighty-four percent.”

“So, talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Wade’s taking a job up north and I have a business here.”

“That was terse.”

“I don’t know what else to say. That’s what’s going on.”

“So it’s, like, nowhere?” Vanessa frowned.

“I guess.” Stef swallowed the lump in her throat. “Oh, I know he’ll be back. Once he finds a place to live, he’s going to have to come back for all his stuff.”

“All what stuff?”

“All the stuff that’s in the trailer he had hooked up to his car when he got here. All his stuff from Texas, I guess. And his Jeep,” she added. “He’ll need that.”

“I don’t understand. If he knew he was moving, why didn’t he just take everything with him today?”

“I’m not really sure, but I think he’s worried that Austin won’t adjust to the child care.”

“I think it’s more likely that Wade’s worried that you’ll adjust to someone else.” Vanessa wagged a finger at Stef. “I think he knows that the universe is bringing others into your orbit.”

“How can you say stuff like that with a straight face?” Stef asked.

“Because I—”

“Yeah, yeah. You cast a spell.” Steffie rolled her eyes. “Notice the path that’s been beaten to my door.”

“Hey, I did my part. Just because Jesse doesn’t do it for you or Clay—”

“Jesse and I have a professional relationship. And besides, I think he has his eye on Brooke. And Clay and I have known each other forever and he’s more like a brother to me.”

“Maybe I should try—”

“No. I know what you’re thinking, and no. Do not do it again. Whatever it is that you think you did the first time, don’t bother doing it again.”

Vanessa muttered something under her breath.

“What was that?” Stef asked.

“I just said, you deserve to be happy. If not with Wade, then with someone else.”

“I agree. I do deserve to be happy.” Stef bit her bottom lip. “But the thing is, I don’t want anyone else. I’ve tried—God knows that all my adult life I have tried—but it’s always been Wade. Especially now that we …” She shook her head. “Look, if you’re going to be saying some kind of mumbo jumbo—not that I want you to, and not that I’d ever ask you to, because, you know, I don’t believe in any of that—but if you were to do it, just don’t make it nonspecific, okay?”

Vanessa nodded. “Got it.”

“So. With the party behind me, I get to go back to work on my house. I haven’t even been inside in almost a week, except to meet with Cam one day for about twenty minutes to go over what the plumber and the electrician did.”

“How’s it going?”

“I can probably move in sometime next week. I’ll need to air out the place a little. The dust from all the
work they’ve been doing is enough to choke a horse, but my bathroom is ready and the kitchen is pretty much operational.”

“That was fast.”

“It’s been about a month, and since I didn’t make any major changes—no walls moved or anything like that—they were able to stay pretty much on schedule. I do want to have a powder room built on the first floor, but the room is already there and Cam said the pipes are in line with other pipes, so it won’t be a huge project.”

“So what are you going to do first?” Vanessa asked.

“Finish painting my kitchen cabinets and the woodwork in there. And paint my bedroom. And maybe the bath and the upstairs hall. And the—”

“Slow down. Focus on one room at a time.”

“Right. The kitchen and then my bedroom.” Stef forced a smile. “I won’t be entertaining a whole lot, so I’m not in any hurry to do the downstairs rooms. I’ll get to them.”

“So what night this week can we do our sleepover?”

“What?”

“The sleepover. You promised me popcorn and ice cream and s’mores. Grady’s away until the end of the week. I was thinking it would be nice to have company and do some girly things.”

“Promise not to paint my nails ‘Pretty in Pink’ while I’m sleeping?”

“How did you know …?”

“You’re the ultimate girly-girl. You love the froufrou. Me, I’m more the ‘Paint Me Plum’ type.”

“I’ll stock up.” Vanessa picked up her bag and hopped off her stool. “So which night?”

“Wednesday’s good.”

“Great. Bring your pillow and the previously mentioned snacks.” She hesitated at the door. “What kind of wine goes best with s’mores?”

“I’d guess a dessert wine.”

“Champagne.” Vanessa brightened. “Perfect.”

Stef closed Scoop up for the night at seven on the nose and headed for Olive Street and a long night of painting. She stopped at the market and bought copies of all the papers and magazines that had coverage of Saturday’s party, then at the Checkered Cloth for take-out pasta and a salad. When she arrived to the house, she got out all her brushes and her paint, then she sat on the front hall steps while she ate. She told herself she was being just a wee bit morbid—sitting where Wade had sat the last time he was here—but feeling a little depressed, she decided to wallow in it. By the time her phone rang at almost eleven, she had the inside of all the cabinets painted. A record, she thought. Then again, when you’re anxious and worried, you do tend to move a little faster. So what if she dripped a little paint here and there. She was going to replace the counters anyway, so neatness, she decided, didn’t count. Except for the streak she got in her hair when she answered the phone.

“Stef, it’s Wade.”

“Hey, hi.” She tried to sound chipper. “How was the trip?”

“Good. Austin mostly slept on the plane, and Ted had a car waiting for us when we got into Hartford.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“So, did you get to tour the plant?”

“The brewery, yes. It’s amazing. Top-of-the-line, everything up-to-the-minute in terms of technology. He’s very forward thinking. I have to hand it to him. He’s doing a few things I hadn’t thought of.”

Her heart sank with every word.

“Sounds like quite the operation,” she said.

“It is. I’m really impressed.”

“So did you sign the contract?” Was she really holding her breath?

“Funny thing, Stef. He gave it to me to look over, and when I started questioning certain clauses, he said those were things his lawyers insisted on putting in there and for me to just go ahead and cross out anything I didn’t like.”

“So you signed it.”

“That’s the funny part. When I told him I wanted a little time to look it over, he ripped it up and said the hell with it, that we’d work things out between us. Crazy, huh?”

“Crazy,” she agreed. “Where was Austin during all this negotiating?”

“He was in the day-care center with Mrs. Worth.”

“Mrs. Worth?”

“She runs the center. Think Angela Lansbury in
Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
”

“How do you know
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
?”

“It’s Cody’s favorite movie. We must have watched it fifty times while we were at Berry’s.”

“So the child-care situation looks pretty good.”

“It looks very good. There are only seven other kids and most of them are older than Austin, and Mrs. Worth has two assistants.” He paused for a moment. “Tomorrow Ted’s hooking me up with a Realtor to look at a couple of houses that are available.”

“Great.” The enthusiasm was becoming more difficult to maintain. “So it sounds as if you’re all set. The job is right, Austin’s happy, and you’ll find a great new house. Congratulations, Wade. It sounds as if you caught the brass ring.”

“I guess.”

“So what’s your schedule there?” she asked, when what she wanted to say was,
When are you coming home?
Her heart sank to her knees when she realized that St. Dennis wasn’t his home. His home was going to be in Connecticut before too long.

“Well, tomorrow I’ll be looking at houses. I guess if I don’t find anything, I’ll look again on Wednesday and Thursday until I do.”

“Well, good luck with finding a place.”

“Thanks.” Another pause. “Look, I’ll be back there before the weekend. Maybe we could go to dinner or something.”

“That would be great.”

“I’ll give you a call and let you know when.”

“Good. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

“Okay, then. Talk to you.”

She wanted to say,
Wait, don’t hang up. I miss you. Talk to me for just a little longer
. But she knew that wouldn’t do. Instead, she said, “Right. I’ll talk to you …”

She disconnected the call, then opened a bottle of water and sat on the kitchen floor.

“This totally sucks,” she said aloud. “And it’s going to suck more and more as time goes on.”

Holding her fist to her gut to stop the sick feeling in her stomach from spreading all through her, Stef tried to figure out why she’d put herself in this situation when she knew how it was likely to end.

“Because it’s always been Wade,” she said. Just like she’d told Vanessa. It had always been Wade.

She finished cleaning her brushes and started to close up the house when she found the magazines on the counter. She’d meant to tell Wade that they’d made the cover of
Celeb Today
, but she’d forgotten. They had magazines and tabloid papers in Connecticut, she reminded herself. If he’d already seen it, he, too, had forgotten to comment. She took a long look at the photo before tucking it into her bag to take home. Just as Vanessa had pointed out, she and Wade and Austin did look like a happy family, like two people who were deeply in love and their little guy who was basking in their glow.