Haunting Olivia

by Janelle Taylor

  As she dried her hair and put on a little make-up, just some mascara and lip gloss, she made a mental note to make window blinds one of her purchases in town for today.

  Olivia was dressed and on her second cup of coffee when the doorbell rang at exactly eight o’clock.

  Johanna was punctual.

  Olivia took a deep breath and opened the door.

  Johanna stood on the porch, glaring at her.

  “The next time you make accusations against someone to the police, have some proof,” Johanna snapped. “And I don’t like finding dead rats on the porch when I arrive at the butt crack of dawn in the dead of winter. If this is your little way of communi-cating, I suggest you grow the hell up.”

  90

  Janelle Taylor

  “What are you talk—” Olivia began, but then glanced down at Johanna’s feet, where a dead rat lay.

  Oh, God. Did a rat just up and die on her front porch? Doubtful. Had Johanna been the skulker she’d seen dart past her window? Or was the timing a coincidence?

  “Johanna, I realize you don’t know me, but you can rest assured that if I want to tell you something, I’ll say it. I don’t use dead rodents to speak for me.”

  “Whatever,” Johanna said. “I need your receipts.”

  Olivia held open the door and stepped aside.

  “Why don’t you come in for a few minutes. We can sit down and talk.”

  Johanna held out her clipboard. “All I want from you is your receipts and your signature.”

  Olivia tried to read Johanna; she couldn’t tell if the woman was just prickly or dangerous or both. She decided to give Johanna something to react to. Olivia would take it from there. “My feelings about my father are very complicated,” Olivia said. “We didn’t have much of a relationship, and that was his choice from the time I was born. Same with my sisters.”

  “So why did he leave you this place?” Johanna asked, gesturing at the house. “Why didn’t he leave it to me?” Tears came to her eyes.

  And we have contact, Olivia thought. At least she knew how to reach Johanna.

  “Please come in, Johanna,” Olivia said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Just give me your receipts and sign here,” the woman said angrily, wiping at her tears. “I’m not interested in talking to you.”

  Olivia sighed and handed over the receipts for the coffee and the postcards—which she’d almost HAUNTING OLIV IA

  91

  forgotten she’d bought—and signed the log on Johanna’s clipboard. Then Johanna turned and left.

  So did you trash the entryway? Olivia mentally called after her. She had no idea what to think. Johanna didn’t like her, clearly, and she was angry—or hurt—

  that she herself hadn’t inherited the cottage.

  If her father had loved Johanna, if they had been engaged, why hadn’t he left her the house? And why would he subject her to being caretaker?

  Checking up on the house, checking up on the daughter who would receive the house. If Olivia handed over her receipts every day and signed the log, the house would be hers in a month. Why would William ask Johanna to be watchdog?

  Because William is a hateful monster, she thought, heading back inside. Sorr y, she said heavenward, closing the door against the chilly winter air.

  She went into the kitchen to call a locksmith. She was in luck. Someone could come out to fix the lock in the next ten minutes

  The doorbell rang. The locksmith can’t be that fast, she thought, then wondered if Johanna had come back. She opened the door to find a smiling middle-aged woman carrying a pamphlet.

  “Hello, dear,” she said. “My name is Pearl Putnam and I’m Blueberry township’s manager of recreation. Which is a fancy way of saying I work in the town manager’s office and organize town activities, such as Little League and the Fourth of July fire-works display. Well, you get the picture. Anyway, there’s a rumor going around Blueberry that an editor from Glitz magazine is staying at the Sedgwick house.”

  92

  Janelle Taylor

  Olivia smiled and held out her hand. “I’m Olivia Sedgwick. One of William Sedgwick’s daughters.

  And a former editor of Glitz magazine.”

  Pearl squeezed Olivia’s hand with both of her own and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss. I didn’t know your father well, but he was a longtime home owner and taxpayer in our dear town.” Then she added, “And a former editor is just as good! If you have a few minutes, I’d like to talk to you about a community event.”

  “Sure,” Olivia said. “Come on in. I just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Pearl beamed. “That would be wonderful,” she said as she came in and glanced around. She took off her wool coat and hat, and Olivia hung them in the hall closet. “What a beautiful home. I’ve never been here before. Your father wasn’t one for socializing.”

  “Well, I guess when he was up here in Maine he wanted to spend time with his fiancée,” Olivia said, gesturing for Pearl to take a seat.

  Pearl almost choked on air. “His fiancée? He was quite a ladies’ man. I’m surprised to hear he could have had a fiancée. He dated a different woman every time he came up here. Not that he came up very often. A few times a year, maybe, especially in the last seven or eight years.”

  Well, well, Olivia thought. Interesting. Not surprising, but given what Johanna had said, interesting.

  “I was under the impression that he was engaged to Johanna, the woman who owns the sweater shop.”

  Pearl harrumphed. Clearly she didn’t approve of Johanna. “In her dreams, maybe.”

  “I’ll be right back with coffee,” Olivia said. Pearl HAUNTING OLIV IA

  93

  was clearly chock-full of information and gossip.

  She’d be a good source.

  Olivia headed to the kitchen and returned with two mugs of coffee. Pearl was walking around the living room, peering as if to see inside other rooms.

  “I’d be happy to take you on a tour,” Olivia said.

  “Oh, that would be wonderful,” Pearl said. “But I’d better ask you about the Inner-Beauty Pageant before I forget why I came in the first place. The pageant is an annual event here in Blueberry. It used to be held in the summer, but the year-round residents began to resent that so many summer vis-itors were winning that we voted to hold the pageant in the dead of winter.”

  Olivia smiled. “I can understand that. I myself won the pageant when I was fifteen.”

  Pearl sucked in her breath. “Really! Oh, my good-ness, well now you simply have to say yes!”

  “To what?”

  “To coordinating,” Pearl explained.

  “Coordinating the pageant?” Olivia asked. “I don’t—”

  “Oh, please say you’ll at least consider it,” Pearl said. “The pageant hasn’t changed in thirty years.

  It’s still our town’s way of valuing our girls age thirteen to seventeen, who know that beauty is only skin-deep. The prize is still twenty-five hundred dollars and a monthly column for the whole year on the subject of inner beauty in the Maine Daily News.”

  Olivia smiled. That was why she’d wanted so badly to enter the pageant and win; the columns helped her secure her internship at Glitz after college.

  “I don’t know the first thing about coordinating a pageant, though,” Olivia said. “I—”

  94

  Janelle Taylor

  “The former coordinator’s materials are all in order,” Pearl interrupted. “She had a folder full of everything you’d need to know. You just have to follow her schedule. The pageant will be held in two weeks, the day after Valentine’s.”

  “Why did the coordinator quit when the pageant is in two weeks?” Olivia asked.

  Pearl harrumphed again. “I have half a mind to locate her and tell her just what I think of her leaving us in the lurch that way. She just up and left yesterday, leaving me a note saying she’s sick of Maine in the winter and is going to Florida to be with a man she’s been corre
sponding with on-line. Do you believe her nerve? As if that relationship will last, anyway.”

  “Pearl, I—”

  “Your presence will be such a boost not only to the girls, but to the entire pageant itself. Not only a winner of the pageant, but one who grew up to become a distinguished editor of a major New York fashion magazine. Oh, please, Olivia.”

  Olivia sipped her coffee. Even if she wanted to say yes, she couldn’t very well do so without finding out what Zach thought. Kayla was entering the pageant. And she’d promised to keep her distance.

  “I’d try to take over the pageant myself,” Pearl said, “but my hands are so full right now. Give me one more thing, and I’m afraid all the balls I’ve got up in the air will come tumbling down.” She sighed.

  “As recreation manager, I’m responsible for the pageant, but Shelby—that’s the runaway coordinator, Shelby Maxwell—loved the role so much and managed it so well that I took it off my to-do list years ago. It would take me two weeks just to get up to HAUNTING OLIV IA

  95

  snuff on how the pageant operates.” Pearl sighed again for effect.

  “Let me think about it,” Olivia said.

  Pearl clapped her hands. “That’s not a no! Oh, do think fast, dear. The girls really need direction.”

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow,” Olivia promised.

  “Wonderful,” Pearl said.

  And then after a brief tour of the house, Pearl finally left. The locksmith arrived and set to work, leaving Olivia time to think. The Inner-Beauty Pageant. Olivia would actually love to be involved in coordinating. That pageant had meant so much to her. She thought about the summer she suggested that her sister Ivy enter the pageant. Ivy was so interesting, so passionate about forensic science, but Ivy had taken it the wrong way: “You think I should enter because I’m ugly! Because I don’t look like you! Well, I know why you’re not entering. Because you don’t have inner beauty! You’re ugly inside!”

  Later that night, she and Ivy had made up.

  “You’re not ugly inside,” Ivy had said, tears in her eyes. “You’re one of the nicest people I know, actually.”

  Olivia had been thrilled at the compliment. “And you’re not ugly outside,” she’d said. “In fact, you’re very pretty.”

  “Pretty schmitty,” Ivy had said. “I’d rather be smart.”

  “You are that,” Olivia had said.

  Ivy had inner beauty in spades. So did Amanda.

  And when Olivia won the pageant, she’d finally been assured that she did too.

  “I have a daughter,” she said to the air. “I have a daughter! I am someone’s mother!”

  96

  Janelle Taylor

  She tried to remember as much as she could of the girl she’d seen at the gazebo, but Kayla had been too far away for Olivia to get a good look at her face. She’d seen the hair, the same hair as her own, light blond and long.

  “I am a mother,” she said again, twirling around for no reason other than the pure joy that filled every bit of her heart.

  Her mood much improved, Olivia grabbed her coat and mittens and headed out. She had no idea when Zach would be returning her car, so she might as well walk into town. She had her two items to buy, one of which was a good set of blinds for the bathroom. And if she ran into Zach and Kayla while shopping, all the better.

  Chapter 8

  Zach was just getting into Olivia’s car in order to drive it back to the cottage when Marnie drove up in her little red car. He closed the door and walked toward her, lest she shove him in Olivia’s car and pull a repeat of last night. Though he doubted even Marnie would dare that in the light of morning.

  It was incredible sex, and crazy as his life was at the moment, Marnie had managed to clear his mind of all but what she was doing to him. He’d gone inside last night, paid the sitter, checked on Kayla, and then fallen fast asleep. Exactly what he needed. Without that lovely little interlude last night, he would have lain awake, thinking, wondering.

  As he strode toward Marnie, beautiful, sexy Marnie, what he was thinking, wondering, was why he couldn’t feel for her what he’d felt for Olivia. He hadn’t felt that for any woman since. He liked. He lusted. But that crazy I-would-die-for-you feeling had never stirred inside him again. Until he saw Olivia in Blueberry the other day. At first he’d been shocked, then, yes, scared, for what it meant in 98

  Janelle Taylor

  terms of his daughter, but the overriding feeling was that same lift of his heart, a surge he could only compare to how he felt for his daughter.

  “Thought I’d bring you some coffee and fresh muffins,” Marnie said, then kissed him full on the lips.

  “Appreciate it,” he said. “And I appreciated last night, too,” he added.

  “Look, Zach,” she said, eyeing Olivia’s car, “I really need to talk to you. Or do you have company?”

  “No. Olivia left her car here last night when she drove over after coming home to the break-in. I drove her home and told her I’d drive her car over this morning.”

  Her expression darkened. “Don’t be silly, Zach.

  You go to work. I’d be happy to drive her car over.

  Then she can drop me in town.”

  He didn’t think Olivia would appreciate that at all.

  “There’s something I wanted to talk to her about, so . . .”

  “Because there’s something going on between the two of you?” she asked, her eyes narrowed. “If you’re cheating on me, Zach Archer, I’ll—” She stopped, and then her expression changed again.

  Sweeter. Softer.

  “You’ll what?” he asked.

  “I’ll be devastated,” she said. “That’s what. So can we go talk somewhere?”

  He glanced at her, then led her into the heated barn, where he’d set up Kayla’s gymnastics equip-ment. Upstairs was a heated loft that contained a sofa, a desk and chair, and a table and chairs. They sat down on the sofa, their coffees and muffins on a small coffee table in front of them. He could tell HAUNTING OLIV IA

  99

  Marnie had a lot on her mind, and he had no doubt her questions would concern Olivia.

  We were catching up at Barker’s. . . .

  “I just need to know that things are okay between us,” Marnie said. “All of a sudden, this woman turns up and you’re acting differently.”

  “Things are fine between us, Marnie,” he said, covering her hand.

  She searched his eyes. “So is Olivia an old girlfriend?”

  He nodded and bit into his muffin to avoid having to elaborate.

  Her eyes widened. “She’s Kayla’s mother, isn’t she. They have the same hair.”

  “Marnie, I’m sorry to be so evasive, but I’m just not ready to answer any questions about Olivia. She and I do have a history, but I’d like to leave it at that for now. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, but she looked anything but satisfied. She placed his hand on his belt buckle. “How about a little morning delight?” she asked, rubbing against his fly. Before he could blink her tongue was in his ear and she was straddling him. “Lookie,”

  she said, taking his hand and putting it up under her skirt, “no underwear.”

  Oh, Marnie, he thought. You don’t have to do this.

  You don’t have to try to keep me yours with sex.

  She started unzipping his pants. In seconds he could be inside her, neither of them having to even undress. But it was eight o’clock in the morning, and though Kayla was fast asleep and probably wouldn’t awaken until nine, he’d never allow himself to be caught in a compromising position by his daughter.

  100

  Janelle Taylor

  “Kayla might come looking for me,” he told Marnie, as her hand stroked him. He put his hand on hers to stop her, and she flinched. “Why don’t we continue this tomorrow night,” he said.

  She smiled. “How about tonight instead? I can’t wait.”

  “You’re hard to resist, Marnie, but Kayla’s a lit
tle all over the place with the pageant and I think I’d better stick close to home tonight.”

  That was true, actually. The fact that he couldn’t get Olivia out of his mind was also true.

  She pouted, but his expression must have seemed unyielding because she smiled and said,

  “Tomorrow night, it is.”

  Marnie was his girlfriend. He was doing nothing he hadn’t been doing for a month. So why did he feel so guilty?

  Because Olivia was in his heart and always had been. Thirteen years and all the terrible circumstances hadn’t changed that.

  Zach drove Olivia’s car to the cottage, the faint smell of her trademark perfume assailing him. He used to love just sitting beside her, breathing in that beautiful clean scent. One of his assistants was trailing him in the pickup so that he wouldn’t have to walk the two miles into town. Good thing, too, because today was a cold one. And a waiting assistant meant he’d have to keep this meeting short.

  Truth was, he was glad for an excuse to see her again this morning. Despite how easily he’d fallen asleep last night—thanks to Marnie—he’d woken up several times and tossed and turned for thinking HAUNTING OLIV IA

  101

  of her alone in the house, a nasty message scrawled on the mirror, some stupid figurines smashed.

  It was a warning. A warning of what, he had no idea. Who gave two figs if Olivia Sedgwick was in town? She hadn’t been in town to get on anyone’s bad side in ten years. Olivia was right: it made no sense.

  He was pulling into her driveway when she came out of the house. He got out of her car, hating his response to the sight of her. It wasn’t just her beauty that always stopped him dead in his tracks.

  It was her aura, if he could use a word like that, her confidence, the intelligence in her eyes, the old-soul quality in her eyes. There were those who’d written Olivia off as a spoiled Sedgwick girl, but Zach had always known the real Olivia.

  Even bundled up in a down coat, she was sexy as hell.

  “Perfect timing,” he said. “Were you planning to walk into town?”

  She nodded. “It’s colder than I realized today.”

  She glanced over at Zach’s truck. “Is someone waiting to give you a ride back home? I was hoping to talk to you about something important.”