Melissa swallows hard. Recipes, travel, lifestyle. Pretty much everything I pitched to Bob myself. The pitch that was meant to land me a job. She lets her hand go limp in Bob’s.
“Sounds like a hit for sure!” The reporter glows.
Matty thumbs to Melissa. “And he’s got her to thank for it!”
“And you are?” The reporter signals for the camera crew to keep rolling.
Melissa says nothing until Bob nudges her forward. “Um … Melissa. Melissa Forsythe.”
“She’s the ideas behind the scenes. A critical part of Chase Me,” Matty Chase says.
“And,” Bob adds, “she’ll not only be planning where I go on the show, but coming with me.”
Melissa grins, turning for the first time toward the camera. This is it! This is the job I’ve been wanting. And the guy. “Just wait till you see where we go first!”
“You pigheaded liar. How dare you insult me!” Dove spits the words at William.
“How dare you insult me?” Harley shouts at him, punching his shoulder. He doesn’t cower, but stands there listening to them berate him.
“I will never forgive you. What a waste of time!” Dove feels tears spring to her eyes. Not sadness. Frustration. All that time wasted on William when I could have just been by myself. Or with Max. His name echoes in her mind. Max. “Harley—he’s all yours.”
Harley grabs Dove’s arm. “Do you hate me?”
Dove shakes her head, looking at Harley’s leggy body, her photo-worthy face. “You didn’t even know. I’m not dumb enough to blame the other woman in this scenario.” She glares at William. “This one’s all on you.”
Dove marches away, her shoes clicking on the walkway. Out by the ocean, boat lights blink on and off. How glad I’ll be to get back to normal, she thinks, wiping the tears from her eyes. No boats, no food prep, no pining for a boy I can’t have. Then, up ahead by the secluded orange grove, she sees Max. Well, maybe my days of pining aren’t completely finished.
The air is scented with lime and lemons, and Dove removes her shoes to feel the lush grass underfoot.
“So lovely,” she says when Max is in earshot.
Max turns, breathing in the sight of her and the air. “I thought you’d never show up.”
Dove’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “What?”
Max steps toward her. “You were right. About the flowers? Gerbera daisies were the way to go.”
Dove studies Max, then moves her gaze to the surrounding flowers. What seems like millions of the daisies are set in swirling patterns.
Max climbs up on a stone bench. “Come here. You need to be elevated to get it.”
Wordlessly, Dove trusts him and climbs up. She looks into his eyes, wishing she knew what all their history meant. “What am I supposed to see up here?”
“This.” Max turns her face so she can view the flowers, but this time a clear pattern emerges. Its …
“It’s the book!” Dove nearly cries. “The cover of my Love textbook. Only—” She peers closely in the night air. Enough light from the party casts rays over the flower heads. “Only—it’s not a random couple.” She looks at the purple flowers, the reds and bright yellows, the white forming the woman’s slender hands. “It’s us.”
Max nods. Without explaining anything further, he slips his hand around Dove’s, pulling her into him the way the couple is on the textbook’s cover: entwined.
Shrieks and bursts of laughter, a mass exodus, and confusion all create a tornado of people running this way and that. A downpour sends everyone seeking shelter in the great house and under the food tents.
“Lily!” Lady de Rothschild holds her purse over her head but can’t disguise her surprise at seeing Dove.
“Mummy!” Dove stops in her tracks and hugs both her parents.
“Your hair!” her father says.
“Chopped,” Dove says, her insides doing cartwheels from Max, still prickling from William, and now caught off guard by her parents. I won’t bend down to them. I won’t admit defeat. After all, I’m not defeated. I’ve grown. Changed. “Before you get too soaked, let me get this off my chest—”
“We’ve heard,” her father says, water streaming down his face like tears.
“Heard what?” Dove shivers. Then she frowns. “Fine. So you were right about William …”
“Who cares about bloody William?” her father asks.
“That’s right. We’re just thrilled that you’ve made the decision to come home. To go to Oxford.” Her mother grips Dove’s shoulder.
Dove bites her lip. “But how’d you find out?” She’s so relieved that they’re happy and that they’re here that she doesn’t mind not being the one to inform them. In fact, it’s easier this way. Whoever told must have known how hard it would be to admit that I was wrong and basically did it for me.
“Your friend,” Lady de Rothschild says. “The very steady and sweet Harley.”
Dove’s face rises with a grin. Harley. “There’s more to her than you think.”
Her parents nod. “It’s good to see you again, Lily.”
“Dove,” she says. “Everyone calls me Dove.”
This time, instead of insisting otherwise, her mother looks at her daughter’s wet hair, her new self. “Welcome back, Dove.”
In the middle of the torrential rain, Melissa finds Harley and Dove in the otherwise empty gazebo.
Drenched to the bone, Melissa laughs. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you guys!”
“Yeah, well, here we are,” Harley says, sticking her hand out to collect a bit of rain and then whisking it through her hair. “All the money and power in the world can’t stop the weather.”
“Not even the Taylors’,” Dove says, opening her arms up to the downpour. They sit there, clothed in soaking formal attire in the partial shelter, sticking their legs through the gazebo railings and trading thoughts.
“I can’t believe I’m going back to school,” Dove says. “University. Oxford. Work.”
“Max …” Melissa suggests.
Dove grins. “And you—”
“I can’t believe I’m going to New York City,” Melissa says.
“It sounds amazing,” Dove gushes.
Melissa nods. “And Harley—”
“I know,” Harley says. “Good thing your parents have so much pull.” Harley rests her head for a moment on Dove’s shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m going back to where the three of us met,” she says. “Les Trois.
They each think back to their beginnings on the mountain and how far they’ve come.
“Think we’ll see each other again?” Harley asks them both.
“I might just have to concoct a research paper on French mountain history,” Dove says with a smirk.
“First of all, I still have to look for my luggage! You never know what—or who—you might meet at the airport.” Melissa smiles. “But we’ll find out. I could see if Chase Me is interested in a segment about traditional food of the Alps. With a modern twist, of course.” They stand there, in the rain, the skies overhead echoing with thunder and with possibilities.
About the Author
Emily Franklin is the author of Liner Notes and a story collection, The Girls’ Almanac. She is also the author or coauthor of over a dozen young adult books including The Half-Life of Planets (nominated for YALSA’s Best Book of the Year) and Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (named to the 2013 Rainbow List). A former chef, she wrote the cookbook-memoir Too Many Cooks: Kitchen Adventures with 1 Mom, 4 Kids, and 102 Recipes to chronicle a year in the life of new foods, family meals, and heartache around the table. Her fiction and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Monkeybicycle, the Mississippi Review, Post Road Magazine, Carve Magazine, and Word Riot, as well as on National Public Radio, among others. Her recipes have been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers, and on many food websites. She lives with her husband, four kids, and one-hundred-sixty-pound dog outside of Boston.
All rights reserved, including
without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Emily Franklin
Cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4804-5230-5
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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