Staying For Good (A Most Likely To Novel Book 2)

by Catherine Bybee

  The second Felix yelled action, Zoe opened her lips to deliver her lines about the proper care of a soufflé when removing it from the oven, and poof! The middle collapsed and at least three people on set said damn at the same time.

  “Cut!”

  Zoe straightened her back and hit the oven door with her knee to slam the thing shut.

  “Damn it, Felix.” Cussing out the director might prove detrimental to a celebrity chef with lesser clout, but Zoe had earned her stripes and often called the shots. Besides, Felix loved her.

  No longer caring if the food looked awful, Zoe all but tossed the dish on top of the counter and moved out of the hot lights of the staged kitchen.

  No less than a dozen sets of hands scrambled around the cameras and the microphones hanging from long booms hovering above.

  Felix stood in front of camera two, quietly scolding the man behind the lens.

  It was Zoe’s second soufflé of the day, and she wasn’t sure there was another one in her.

  She waited patiently while Felix finished his direction before turning her way. “Darling, I’m sorry.” He had to reach up to pat her face.

  “Cut is not a word we use when removing this from the oven. I told you that.”

  “The angle was all wrong. The finished dish is what makes everyone think they can do it . . . makes your audience think you’re a goddess of the kitchen.” It was hard to stay mad at a man who had a slight lisp and made grand gestures with his hands as he spoke. He called himself the Vanna White of the director’s chair. The only things those two had in common were their taste in men and their expansive shoe collections.

  Zoe removed the tiny apron that was mostly for show and handed it to him. “I told you soufflés were a bad idea.”

  “The harder the dish, the better the ratings, darling. Now stop complaining and start mixing.” He gently nudged her apron back into her hands.

  She handed it back.

  “I need to eat.”

  Felix swiveled to the counter and picked up the crock with the soufflé. He dropped it back on the counter almost as soon as his fingers touched the thing. He blew on his fingertips like a three-year-old. “Eat that.”

  “If I ate everything I cooked, I’d be as big as you.”

  He shrugged without argument and patted her slim hip. “We can’t have that.” He turned to the crew. “Everyone, we’re back in thirty. Princess Zoe has to eat.”

  Zoe grinned, kissed Felix’s cheek. “One more shot at this today. Get it right.”

  He was already turning away. “We will, darling. Rupert!” he yelled in the opposite direction.

  She walked past the cameras, out from around the fake walls of the set, and down the narrow hall to her dressing room, which sounded more glamorous than it was. A lighted mirror and a rack to hang her clothes on sat in one corner, while two chairs that once sat in a nearby office building surrounded a tiny table. A locker suitable for the gym at her old high school was used to lock up her purse. As much as she’d love to think her belongings were safe, there were too many nameless people running around who might be more than willing to lift her wallet.

  A knock on the door caught her attention.

  “Hey, Zoe . . . Felix said you needed to eat.”

  September was a twenty-two-year-old production assistant whose name and bubbly personality had landed her the job.

  “Anything other than chocolate.”

  “Salad . . . sandwich?”

  “Yes, and sure.”

  September smiled and left the doorway.

  Zoe kicked off her high heels, which she’d never cook in when in her own kitchen, and removed her purse from the tiny locker. She fished her cell phone from the bottom and checked her messages. Her real estate agent was supposed to have called, or at the very least texted that morning with a new list of potential properties in the Dallas area.

  It was time for Zoe to put down some roots. She’d traveled most of the past eight years after taking second place on the first season of Warring Chef. Her spot, even if one slot away from number one, had launched her career and turned her into a celebrity. She took regular guest spots on Chef Monroe’s weekly syndication, which had her flying to New York several times a year. She also hosted holiday specials, like the one she was filming now, for a popular food network, which wouldn’t air until Christmas, some eight months away. Her day job, if she could call it that, was taking the head chef position in the posh section of West Dallas, called Trinity Groves, two weekends a month. Everything else she did to earn money cooking was on location, at a charity event . . . or some kind of red carpet ordeal where she was just as big a draw as the Hollywood elite sitting at the dining tables.

  Zoe glared at her blank screen: no messages and no missed calls.

  It had been a big decision to consider buying property, and she was anxious to jump on it and move out of her two-bedroom apartment.

  It was the right thing to do. “Darn it!”

  Zoe flopped on the small chair and rested her head against the wall. The hairdresser would simply have to deal with it.

  Her eyes fluttered closed right as her phone, sitting beside her, rang.

  The screen lit up with the image of her mother. It wasn’t often Sheryl called, which gave Zoe’s heart a jump in her chest.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey . . . I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Her mom always sounded as if she were on the edge of a breakthrough announcement. Considering their family dynamics, she often was.

  “I’m on a break. Is everything okay?”

  There it was, Sheryl’s anxious sigh followed by a telltale groan. “It’s Zanya.”

  Zoe’s baby sister was now a mother with a three-month-old. Without hearing the details, Zoe could tell by her mother’s tone that this wasn’t a call about disaster striking. “I assume Blaze is okay.”

  “Your nephew is fine . . . it’s Zanya. I think she’s pregnant again.”

  Zoe was sure her jaw dropped enough to invite a flock of birds to nest inside. Of all the things her mother could have said, Zanya being knocked up before her vagina had healed from pushing nine pounds of Blaze out wasn’t expected.

  “What?”

  “I found a pregnancy test in the bathroom.”

  Zoe sat forward, head in her hand. That lack-of-food headache was quickly shifting into something that would need more than protein to fix. “Was it used?”

  “No. She can’t do this a second time. I knew when she started seeing that ass again things would go downhill.”

  That ass was Blaze’s father, Mylo Barkov. “You can’t expect him to sit out on his son’s life.”

  “Fine. He doesn’t have to sit out, but he doesn’t have to stick it in her again!” Zoe found a smile on her lips at her mother’s crass and pointed statement, despite the severity of the situation. “Can you talk to her? She won’t listen to me.”

  “You might be jumping to the wrong conclusions.”

  “Pregnancy tests don’t just land in your cart at the market, Zoe.”

  Zoe rubbed the bridge of her nose. “No, they don’t.” And thank God she’d never had a scare like the one her sister was going through. Zanya was barely able to drink legally in a bar and was a single mother who’d dropped out of school and had no real employable skills outside of retail and service work. Which in a small town the size of River Bend meant she’d be living in her mom’s mobile home for years to come. Seemed her sister was living the life Zoe feared and ran from. Too bad she hadn’t been able to take her baby sister with her when she’d left all those years ago.

  “I have to be back on set in twenty minutes. Is she there? Or should I call back tonight?”

  “She’s gone. But please call as soon as you can. If she isn’t knocked up again, she needs to have someone slap her into closing her legs.”

  “Mom!”

  “I mean it, Zoe. I love you kids, but I don’t need to raise another lot. I’m willing to help, but Blaze is a full-time
job by himself. I can’t have another one around here. I’m getting too old for this crap.”

  Late forties wasn’t old. Many hard years of life, however, gave Sheryl the appearance of a woman ten years older.

  September slipped into the room with a bag in her hand.

  Zoe raised her index finger in the air and finished the conversation.

  “I’ll call her, Mom. Try not to stress about this. It’s probably a false alarm.”

  “Damn well better be.”

  “I’ve gotta go.”

  “Call her,” was her mom’s final demand.

  Zoe ended the call and tossed her phone on the sofa with a moan.

  “That bad?” September asked from the door.

  “Why can’t family call just to say hi? Why is it always drama?”

  September started to laugh. “Friends call to say hi. Family call when they need something.”

  “I feel guilty,” Zoe moaned.

  “Because you’re living your life?” Mel asked after getting the scoop on the Zanya situation.

  “Because I’m not there keeping my baby sister from making more mistakes.”

  “You’re talented, Zoe, but stopping your sister from having sex isn’t a skill you have.”

  Zoe rested her head in her hands as she spoke on the phone. “I haven’t been there for her. My mom isn’t exactly the perfect role model, and we both know Zane can hardly take care of himself, let alone be a big brother for more than ten minutes at a time.”

  “You’re her sister, not her mother. You can open the communication door, but she needs to walk through it to make it happen.”

  Zoe knew her friend was right. “Still feel guilty.”

  “I’ll talk to her. Make sure she knows I’m here to listen. Being a single mom is hard. It’s easy to fall into the trap of sticking with the wrong man to make it easier.”

  If anyone knew that, it was Mel. Her eight-year-old daughter was born before Mel turned twenty. The baby daddy was a piece of shit, rest in peace.

  As the words rolled around in Zoe’s head, she pictured Hope’s father the last time she’d seen him alive. Nathan had tried to gain custody of Hope for all the wrong reasons. Went so far as to hire thugs to make Mel look like a bad mom. Everything backfired on the man, and one of the thugs he’d hired did a hell of a lot more than set Mel up for an unwinnable court battle.

  “You didn’t stick with Nathan for long.”

  “No, but it wasn’t easy on my own. I can’t say I wouldn’t have caved if he’d lost his selfish gene and stepped up early on.”

  “It would never have been good with that man.”

  “Don’t I know it. If I knew men like Wyatt were out there, I wouldn’t have ever slept with Nathan to begin with.”

  “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have Hope. And you wouldn’t have made it back to River Bend and met the love of your life.”

  “Who knew you were such the romantic?” Mel teased.

  “I’m not.”

  “Speaking of Wyatt . . . has he called you?”

  Zoe felt a smile on her lips. He hadn’t, but she knew why Mel was asking.

  “Nope, why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . . ask you my ring size, maybe.”

  Zoe giggled. “I don’t know your ring size.”

  “Six. We’ve talked about this.”

  “I must have forgotten.” Wyatt was working up the right time to pop the question. The question everyone already knew the answer to.

  “You’re just as frustrating as Jo. Maybe I should put my ring size on the box of condoms.”

  “I’d hope you’re on the pill by now,” she teased.

  “I am, but I’ve forgotten to take the damn things twice now. We need backup.”

  “How is it you’ve forgotten something as important as a pill?” Mel was the smart one, or so Zoe always thought.

  “I kept them on the bathroom counter. Someone moved them, and I forgot to take it. I remembered the next day.”

  “Where did you find them?”

  “In my makeup bag. I never put them in there.”

  “How did that happen? I can’t imagine Wyatt doing it.” Mel worked alongside Miss Gina at her bed-and-breakfast. She had the caretaker’s room and a private bath that wasn’t cleaned by the staff brought in on busy weekends. For the most part, the large Victorian home held only Miss Gina, Mel, and Hope. Plus the occasional overnight guest otherwise known as Wyatt. Though Wyatt had his own place just outside of town.

  “You’re probably just being blonde.”

  “Ha-ha! Very funny.” Melanie was as blonde as Zoe was dark haired. “So when are you coming to visit us again?”

  Considering Zoe had spent more time in River Bend in the past six months than she had in ten years, the question should have felt out of place. It didn’t. Still, returning home always tore a piece out of her heart. Well, returning didn’t so much as leaving again.

  “I’m actually in the process of buying my own place.”

  “Really? You’re buying a house?”

  Zoe had a hard time stretching the truth. “I haven’t found what I want yet. So my weekends off are busy with open houses and such.”

  Mel paused. “Oh . . . is that right?”

  “It is. Production this week hasn’t gone well. I’ll be on set most of the month.”

  “Huh.” Mel didn’t sound convinced.

  “You should come visit me.”

  Laughter met Zoe’s suggestion. “And pull Hope out of school? Not to mention I’m barely on my feet again. I’ve just about saved enough to buy a beater.”

  “Do you even need to buy a car?”

  “I can’t keep asking Miss Gina for hers.”

  Zoe nodded even though her friend couldn’t see her. “I get it. Now’s not a good time for me to fly in.”

  “I get it. But you have to promise me something.”

  Mel’s voice dropped as if what she was going to say meant business.

  “Sure, what?”

  “You have to promise me you won’t avoid coming back because of Luke.”

  Zoe hesitated . . . took a deep breath.

  “Of course not.”

  “Zoe?” Mel used her Mom voice.

  “I told you and Jo I wasn’t going to disappear. I won’t.” She would just find a way for her friends to visit her once in a while and then slide home and hope she didn’t see him.

  Just thinking about him made her heart hurt.

  She’d done really well for ten years. Ten years of avoiding Oregon. Ten years of pretending Luke was just a high school romance. Ten years of getting on with her life. She’d even managed a few lovers in that time. They never lasted, and she never tried to push any relationship past the physical.

  Even those encounters were far apart.

  Then, when she’d returned for her ten-year reunion . . . those encounters stopped altogether.

  Maybe the lack of any quality naked time was the reason she’d been thinking more and more about her high school flame.

  “I’m holding you to that.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “Glad we’re on the same page . . . now, about Wyatt . . .”

  For the next ten minutes, Zoe listened to all the ways Mel was planning to drop hints on styles and sizes of rings.

  Like a good friend, Zoe listened and offered advice.

  When she hung up, she realized that once Wyatt did pop the question, what would follow would put Zoe in River Bend more often than not. Between bridal showers, dress rehearsals, and the actual wedding, she’d need a permanent room at Miss Gina’s B and B.

  And avoiding Luke would be impossible.

  Chapter Two

  Luke skirted out from under Jo’s Jeep and wiped his dirty hands on the rag sitting on the ground by a workbench. Led Zeppelin music pounded inside the garage, giving his brain the opportunity to work without thought. Music had always been white noise while his hands dipped inside an engine.

  He rummaged ar
ound until he found the part he needed and headed back under the car.

  “Luke? You under there?”

  A familiar voice cut through the music. “Yeah. Just a sec.”

  He tightened the hose with a clamp and left the underside of the Jeep again.

  Wyatt stood to the side of the SUV, his eyes on the space Luke should be working in. Luke knew his friend’s question before he even asked.

  “When will this lift be fixed?”

  “Our guy in Eugene can’t get here until next week.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Tell me about it. This is the third time this thing has broken down in the past year.”

  “Maybe it knows how much you love crawling under cars on your back.”

  Luke rubbed the ache in his tailbone with the reminder. “At least most of the cars around here are lifted a few more inches than what the kids are driving these days.”

  “Hey,” Wyatt said with a laugh. “I’m still a kid.”

  “You drive a truck.”

  “Still a kid.”

  Neither one of them were kids any longer. But twenty-eight and twenty-nine weren’t exactly old.

  “What brings you by?”

  “Can’t I just drop in to say hi?”

  Luke gave a single nod. “Yeah, but that happens later with beer. Middle of the day drop-ins mean you need something.” Which was an absolute sign that they weren’t kids and both of them had jobs.

  Wyatt pointed two fingers in Luke’s direction. “Right. Two things. First, I need a starter for the track meet on Thursday.”

  Stopping a workday to fire blanks into the air and watch kids run around a track was a nice diversion in his week. “Two o’clock?”

  “Yep.”

  “And the second thing?”

  “I wondered if you could drive into Eugene with me on Saturday.”

  “What for?”

  “I found a couple of used cars I wanna check out for Melanie.”

  Luke found himself staring. “You’re buying Mel a car?”

  Wyatt shrugged his shoulders. “She needs one.”

  “She’d rather have a ring.”

  Wyatt smiled with a shake of his head. “Which is why I’m looking at used cars and not new ones. I think she’d flip a gasket if I told her we need to wait on a ring because of a new car.”