Zoey Phillips

by Judith Bowen

  Because of her condition, Edith relied on her neighbors for help. Tom Bennett, who lived in a small house nearby, had kept her lawns mowed and her table sup plied with trout, as well as vegetables from his small garden. In the fall, Mary Ellen said, he brought her fresh game for her freezer.

  “Hi!” Zoey got out of the car and locked it. Mary Ellen was standing by the frame porch, holding an armload of firewood.

  “This is a nice surprise!” Mary Ellen called. “Come in. Edith just put on the kettle for a pot of tea. She’ll be delighted to see you.”

  Zoey followed her. The porch door opened directly onto the kitchen, a warm and welcoming room, with two cats sleeping in a tumble on an upholstered rocker. The furnishings were simple and the tiled floor was spotlessly clean.

  “Zoey!” Edith held up both arms and Zoey hugged her. Zoey thought she’d lost quite a lot of weight since she’d seen her last, which had to be when she and Mary Ellen were still in high school.

  “How lovely to see you, Edith!”

  “Sit down. Have a cup of tea.”

  Zoey sat as Edith busied herself in the kitchen, pouring the tea and getting milk out of the refrigerator. She was very adept at moving her chair around. Zoey noted the collection of framed photographs on the wall—landscapes and family pictures, including the wedding photo of Edith and Morris Owen, Mary Ellen’s father. Edith had always been an avid amateur photographer when finances permitted.

  “Congratulations on your engagement, Edith. I’m so pleased for you.”

  She blushed prettily. “Oh, some say I’m too old for this. But Tom and I will be very happy, I know. He’s a very fine man.”

  Morris Owen had been killed in a logging accident. Zoey remembered the horrifying news as it spread through town, into the high school where a teacher had beckoned Mary Ellen from the cafeteria to the principal’s office so he could break the news privately.

  Mary Ellen had been devastated. Her father had raised her on his own until he’d met Edith Lowry, a thin, pale woman a little older than he was and originally from Vancouver, working in the Stoney Creek Rexall Drugs. They’d been happily married for four years, and all the while, Edith’s condition had gradually sapped her strength. After her husband’s death, Edith had eked out a living making and selling handicrafts, working for telemarketers from her home and spending her husband’s Worker’s Compensation settlement, penny by frugal penny. Somehow, she’d managed to finish raising his daughter, to arrange for Mary Ellen’s education and to keep her house and property.

  Mary Ellen loved Edith like the mother she couldn’t remember. More than anything, Zoey knew, Mary Ellen wanted to give her stepmother a wonderful wedding.

  “You find a place yet, Zoey?” Mary Ellen called from the living room, where she’d dumped her load of firewood by the fireplace. She joined them at the kitchen table.

  “Well, sort of. You’ll never guess who made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Zoey stirred her tea vigorously.

  Mary Ellen shook her head. “No idea.”

  “Cameron Donnelly! He says they’ve got an apartment out there built over a garage or something, and I can stay in it while I’m here.”

  Mary Ellen had looked a little startled at her announcement. “You’re going to take it?”

  Zoey stared at her. “Of course I am!” She reached for a cookie on the plate that Edith had shoved across the table. “It’s perfect. I can work on my book in peace and—” she winked at Mary Ellen “—who knows?” She hummed a few bars of “Young Love.”

  Mary Ellen didn’t say anything. After a few seconds, she looked directly at Zoey. “You don’t mean, you know—you and Ryan again?”

  “Hey, I’m just joking. What’s past is past and a good thing, too.”

  “Amen,” Edith said quietly. “More tea?”

  Zoey refused, and half an hour later, said goodbye. She’d wanted to see Edith and let Mary Ellen know where she’d be for the next little while, but she was anxious to return to the hotel and get herself organized for moving out to the Donnelly ranch. It wasn’t as though she and Mary Ellen could toss around any ideas for the wedding, not while Edith was right there.

  On the way back to town, Zoey pondered her friend’s response to the news that she was going to be staying on the Donnelly ranch. Mary Ellen hadn’t seemed too thrilled. The more she thought about it, though, the more she realized that Mary Ellen was only thinking of Zoey’s welfare, worried she’d get upset about Ryan again. Zoey had been all primed to confess that she did have an ulterior motive in moving to the ranch. But, no, Elizabeth was the one to tell if Zoey really felt the need to confide. Elizabeth wouldn’t take everything so seriously, the way Mary Ellen might.

  Mary Ellen was too sweet and sensitive. Too softhearted. Zoey recalled how horrified she’d been at the story Elizabeth had told about Adele dumping Ryan at the altar and was doubly glad she hadn’t spilled the beans about what she had in mind.

  No, Mary Ellen would just worry and she had enough on her hands with Edith’s wedding coming up.

  ZOEY WAS PACKED and ready to leave by noon the next day. She went down to check out and retrieve a trolley for her bags. Cameron was in the lobby, reading a newspaper.

  As dependable as he’d promised, she thought with a smile. She paid for her room and started back to the elevator with the trolley, assuming he hadn’t seen her, when she heard a man clear his throat behind her. She half turned.

  “Here. Let me take that.” Cameron reached for the trolley.

  “I’m fine! I can bring down my stuff,” Zoey protested.

  “I’ll give you a hand.” He strode down the hall beside her and they got into the elevator with the trolley. It made for close quarters. Frowning, he watched the lights on the ancient elevator as it laboriously ground its way up to the third floor.

  Zoey eyed him sideways, wondering if she was making the right decision. Several weeks on a remote ranch with a high-school crush who hadn’t even remembered her at first, a surly brother with matchmaking on his mind, a widowed aunt who was probably going to talk her ear off and a kid she knew nothing about.

  She must be insane.

  She unlocked the door to her room, relieved that Cameron didn’t try to take the key and open it for her. On the third try, it meshed.

  “That’s all you have?” Cameron surveyed the room quickly. She had the distinct impression that he was trying very hard not to glance at the fly-spotted mirror on the ceiling. So was she.

  “Yes. I travel light.” She reached for the blue case that held the Chinchilla manuscript and her laptop. She’d carry that herself.

  Cameron loaded her three bags onto the trolley, and as soon as they arrived back in the lobby, he strode ahead of her to the hotel doors. He hadn’t said a word in the elevator. Yesterday must have been a real stretch for him, convincing her to cooperate with his plan.

  Maybe his talents—like hers, she sometimes thought—ran more to scheming than talking.

  Well, how could she help it? Much of her working life was spent trying to figure out plot twists and tangles in Jamie Chinchilla mystery-thrillers. So far, she’d never thought of this as a particular talent that she could apply to life, but this Romancing Ryan plot of Cameron’s had definitely fired her imagination.

  “Cameron?” she called when they reached the parking lot.

  “Yes?” He was about to toss her bags into the back of his dark green pickup.

  “I’ve got my own car,” she reminded him, indicating the white rental Toyota sedan a few spaces away from his truck. “I’ll follow you, okay?”

  He nodded and carried her bags to the car and stood patiently while she fiddled with her keys, trying to open the trunk. Eventually it sprang open and he loaded her bags.

  She closed the trunk, then turned to him. “Look, is there something I should know?”

  He seemed startled. “Like what?”

  “Well, you’re awfully quiet today. I get the impression you’re not as happy about this plan today
as you were yesterday but you’re too polite to say so. Don’t feel obliged. We can drop the whole thing if you like—”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  Did she? She dug in her handbag for her sunglasses, mulling over the difficulties of going to the Nugents for a few days and still having to look for a more suitable place. “No, I’m game. I’ve got quite a bit of work and I need a place to do it in.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  Cameron started his engine and immediately re versed. Zoey started the Toyota and decided to give it a minute or two to warm up. She never drove in Toronto, although she’d maintained her driver’s license over the years, and couldn’t remember if you were supposed to warm up a car or not. It couldn’t hurt. Plus, it wouldn’t kill Cameron Donnelly to wait.

  Which he did. He was waiting for her at the en trance to the parking lot. She rigorously observed the speed limit as they set out in tandem. When she dropped behind, he slowed. Zoey suspected he’d prefer to go faster. But that was okay, too, she told herself, smiling just a little.

  It was clear that Cameron Donnelly was used to taking charge. He ran his ranch and organized his own life and his child’s life and probably Marty’s life. Now he was shopping for a romance for his brother. Well, he couldn’t find out any earlier that she wasn’t all that manageable. In fact, she knew she could be ornery as hell at times, something she wasn’t exactly proud of.

  But she was her own woman, with her own ideas and her own agenda. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she had in life.

  And that she was proud of.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE TRIPLE OARLOCK was about fifteen miles west of town, not far as distances went in this country. It was snugged up against the rolling hills of the Fullerton Range. A rambling one-story ranch house, seventies style, was nestled against a windbreak of trees to the west, and the ranch buildings, most of them, were to the south and southwest. The sturdy pole fences weren’t painted and had weathered to a soft silver. The barns and outbuildings had been painted a traditional barn red; the lawns were tidy, the bare hedges clipped. Everything looked in good repair.

  The apartment she was to occupy over the three-car garage stood about seventy-five feet southwest of the house. There was another parking spot, an open carport, attached to the house, probably a more convenient location for unloading groceries and passengers in inclement weather.

  They parked by the garage and Cameron took Zoey straight up to the ranch house to meet his aunt.

  “Marty? This is Zoey Phillips, you remember Harvey Phillips, used to be at the cement plant? This is his daughter.” He turned to Zoey. “My aunt, Marty Hainsworth.”

  “How do you do?” Zoey said formally, extending her hand. The older woman she’d glimpsed at the firefighters’ dance shook it briefly, her grip firm and hard as a man’s. She was slight, thin-lipped, and had a pink chiffon scarf tied over her head. Zoey spotted old-fashioned hair rollers under the scarf.

  “How d’ye do? I’m glad to meet you. Cameron’s been telling me about you.”

  “He has?” She glanced at Cameron with a smile. He seemed faintly embarrassed.

  “Oh, yes, and all of it favorable.” The aunt, who looked to be in her mid-sixties, put her hands on narrow, jean-clad hips. A toothpick bobbed in one side of her mouth. “Ryan, too. Matter of fact, he’s talked nonstop since Sunday about you and Mary Ellen Owen being back in town. You want a cup of tea or anything? You sure you want to stay out in that drafty old suite? I don’t like the idea. We got plenty of room up here in the house.”

  “No to the tea, thank you very much. And, yes, I prefer to stay in the apartment by myself. I’m not a guest, you know, Mrs. Hainsworth—”

  “Just call me Marty.”

  “Marty.” Zoey smiled. She had decided that she was going to get along very well with the Donnellys’ aunt. “I have lots to do over the next few weeks—”

  “What kind of work d’ye do, if you don’t mind me askin’?” Marty’s bright blue eyes, which reminded Zoey of Ryan’s, were curious.

  “I edit books. Mainly, I edit Jamie Chinchilla’s novels and—”

  “Oh, my! He’s one of my favorites. My sister Robin in Kelowna always sends me his books, when she’s finished with ’em. Or is this Chinchilla a she?”

  The reading public had never seen a picture of the author, nor did most people know whether Jamie Chinchilla was male or female. For purposes of publicity, the author and publisher had decided to maintain the mystery.

  “I’ve never met the author,” Zoey said truthfully. All her contact had been over the telephone. But she knew very well that Jamie Chinchilla was an elderly widow named Ruth Ohlmstad, who lived in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, and who had never been farther away from home than Halifax and St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, New Brunswick. Well, she’d been to Boston once, when she was twenty, she’d told Zoey. But that was it. Unlike her characters, Ruth Ohlmstad had never had a hair-raising adventure in her life. Her stories were complete products of an amazingly fertile and inventive imagination. Even her neighbors thought she was just good old Ruthie, stalwart of the Women’s League, co-president of the Lunenburg Historical Society and envied grower of prize-winning sweet peas.

  “Well, ain’t that something! You settle in and let me know if there’s anything you need. We can supply most everything from brooms to biscuits. And you’ll be eatin’ with us, won’t you?”

  Zoey shook her head. “Oh, no. I can manage quite nicely on my own, thanks anyway.”

  Marty Hainsworth shot a quick, questioning look at her nephew. “Well, you’ll be havin’ Sunday dinner over here at the house, that’s for sure,” the woman said decisively. “Roast beef and all the trimmin’s, six sharp. I won’t hear of you eatin’ all by yourself on a Sunday. It ain’t right.”

  “Thank you,” Zoey said, smiling. “That would be lovely. This Sunday, though, I’m having dinner with the Nugents. They’ve already invited me.”

  “Well, all right. Just this once.” Marty cracked a smile. She seemed as dour as her eldest nephew, but Zoey liked her immediately.

  Cameron turned to Zoey, one eyebrow raised. “Okay?”

  She followed him back to the garage. Where was his daughter? Mind you, it was Friday. She was probably at school.

  The entrance to the apartment was up an outdoor staircase with a landing midway. It wouldn’t be very convenient in deepest winter but she’d be going home before Christmas. “Cameron?”

  Cameron was getting her bags out of the Toyota’s trunk. “Yes?”

  “Um. Ryan does know about this, doesn’t he?” She’d received the distinct impression from the aunt that this was something dreamed up by Cameron and, possibly, Marty herself.

  He straightened and appeared to think deeply about her question. “Well, no. He doesn’t actually know about it, not about you moving in here today—”

  “That’s ridiculous! Why haven’t you told him?” Zoey panicked. She wanted to order Cameron to put her bags back in her car, wanted to return immediately to Stoney Creek. She’d stay with the Nugents. Or in the motel with the cockroaches, if she had to.

  “It was his suggestion,” he said, regarding her carefully. “When he heard you were looking for a place, he mentioned the apartment to me as a possibility.”

  “I see.” Although she didn’t really. “Well, if he doesn’t like this idea, I’m moving right back to town!” Zoey picked up the case that contained the manuscript. “This is downright underhanded. I don’t like it. It makes everything seem…cheap. Like—like I’m actually part of this stupid romance plan of yours.” Which she was…sort of.

  Cameron Donnelly had the grace to color slightly. “Believe me, it was his idea,” he repeated stubbornly.

  Zoey sighed. She gave up. First things, first: move in and get to work.

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, after a trip back to town to buy groceries, Zoey had settled in. She hung her clothes in the wardrobe in the tiny bedroom, furnished sparsely but
comfortably with a double bed, a carpet on the floor and bright chintz curtains at the window, which looked over the mountains to the west.

  The combination kitchen-living room was small but efficient, with a sofa, several lamps and a coffee table. There was also a table by the window; it was covered with plants, which Marty must have brought in recently and which Zoey would remove as she needed the table for eating. The bathroom had a shower and a tiny tub, trailer-size, and just off the kitchen was a little sunroom. Zoey decided she’d use it as a dining nook. She moved the small white-painted wooden table and two chairs from the kitchen to the sunporch, then dragged a rocking chair from the cramped living room into the space she’d freed up. An aging fridge, humming happily now and full of provisions, completed the kitchen equipment, along with a narrow three-burner electric stove.

  Now, to let Lydia know… She found a blank card and envelope in her briefcase.

  Dear Lydia,

  Just a quick note to tell you where I’m living—at Ryan’s ranch! No kidding. His brother suggested a little apartment over their garage as a place to stay—

  Zoey decided not to mention the bit about Cameron’s proposition. There was something sneaky and unsavory about the whole thing.

  —and it’s going to be ideal for my purposes. Work plus getting to know a certain somebody again! I rearranged some furniture, got in some food and will be using my cell. You’ve got my number, right? Anyway, goodbye for now and send Charlotte’s address when she has one.

  Luv,

  Zoey

  Zoey sealed the envelope, pasted a stamp on and looked around the little apartment again. It would do. In fact, considering her purposes, it was ideal. She needed quiet, freedom from ringing telephones and interruptions, and she’d certainly get that here. There wasn’t a sound to be heard beyond the whisper of the wind in the trees and the far-off bawl of a calf or the occasional bark of a dog.