Within a few days, everyone working at the Last Chance knew that if Gavin Strike called for a pizza delivery, the order went to Zoe. She didn’t want anyone else making pizza for Padric. She had a reputation to uphold, after all. He was a celebrity now, and one word from him could influence millions either for or against her pizza.
At least that was the reason she gave everyone. The real reason was…a big, hot, confusing mess. She didn’t want anyone else making pizza for Padric. That was all there was to it. No need to overanalyze it.
Only the twins knew who “Gavin Strike” really was. They were more than happy to take turns delivering pizza to his fancy suite. He always gave them enormous tips and they always took much too long.
After two days—and six pizzas—he came into the Last Chance in person. He wore a thick hoodie with a fleece lining that made him blend in with the fishermen who came in for beer and pizza. No one looked twice at him, though she knew who he was before he even came through the door.
This time she was much more prepared for the sight of Padric. She’d spent the last couple of days lecturing herself on how to behave around him. Not hurt, for one. Grown-up. Businesslike. Mature.
“Confused” wasn’t on that list.
“You seem to have lots of energy,” he said to her in a low voice after he’d placed his order with Alexis and taken a stool at the counter.
“Um…yes. Thank you?” Confused, she pulled him a mug of ale and plunked it on the counter before him.
“You holding up okay?”
He sipped the ale, regarding her steadily over the rim. Those eyes—heart-stopping, that’s what they were.
Alexis was obviously eavesdropping from the cash register. “Isn’t it amazing?” she piped up. “Zoe always works through everything, no matter how bad she feels.”
Zoe frowned at her little sister. What was Alexis talking about? She took days off when she got sick. She worked in the food industry, for God’s sake. “So how have you been, Padric? I mean, besides the obvious.” She lowered her voice. “World-famous and all.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” He seemed to hunch over the glass tumbler of ale. “But yeah, good. I’m good.”
This was awkward. And the fact that it was awkward made it even more awkward. When had she ever felt awkward around Padric? Never. Until right this minute.
“Good.” Businesslike. Cool. Mature. “How’s your family?”
As soon as the words slipped out, she cringed. His family was not a good topic. The Scandal had nearly destroyed her family. Even though her parents had stayed together, things had remained tense between them, then Dad had died three years later.
“They’re good.”
Good. Everything was good, apparently. And yet nothing was.
“They retired to Florida. I mean, they already lived in Florida, but they retired to another part of Florida.”
He sounded just as awkward as she did, so that was some comfort.
“That’s nice.”
She had to serve a customer requesting more water. As she filled the pitcher, she took a few deep breaths. Padric was an old acquaintance, nothing more. After he’d left, she’d tried to call him. She’d also sent a letter and even an email through his new school system.
He’d never answered.
That silence had broken her heart, but she was completely recovered by now. There was no need for awkwardness.
Aa she handed the pitcher of water to the customer, she glanced under her lashes at Padric. How long was he going to hang out at the counter like this? She couldn’t keep up “cool and professional” forever.
But he showed no signs of leaving.
“So you’re working a pretty full schedule? Is that difficult?” he asked her.
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What am I, a rookie? I’ve been doing this since I was what, twelve?”
“I think you were thirteen when you started. It was a week after your birthday.”
Her mouth opened, then shut. Darn it, he was right. She’d started right after her thirteenth birthday, when she’d needed some extra cash for an art project.
“So what brings you back to Lost Harbor, Gavin?” she asked, a little extra edge of mockery in her voice. He deserved it, with his whole incognito act. “Are you trying to dodge your fans? You have a few here, too, you know.”
“Why do you keep changing the subject?” He fixed her with a level, unwavering gaze that made her squirm. “You keep evading and dodging.”
Dodging? She lifted her eyebrows at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” He pointed a finger at her in triumph.
Monica popped up next to her, babbling about a big order. She ignored her sister.
“You have a lot of nerve, Padric. I have no obligation to talk to you at all, so how could I be dodging?”
She poured a glass of wine for a customer, sloshing over the rim of the glass—probably because she would have preferred to toss it in Padric’s face.
“Why wouldn’t you talk to me? You can, you know. You can talk to me about anything.”
“Yeah? How about the fact that you—” She cut herself off. No need to get into their personal history in front of her sisters and a bunch of hungry customers.
“I what?” His patient voice unnerved her even more, because it sounded just like the teenage Padric, who never got angry the way everyone in her family did.
“Look, Padric.” She delivered the glass of wine and brushed away Monica, who kept trying to interrupt. Her sister was acting so strangely, like a mosquito buzzing around her ear. “Let’s just keep things simple here. You’re a customer, that’s it.”
“Right! Exactly!” Monica butted in. “I’ll take over here. Zoe, you go make that order for the cruise ship. They want twenty pizzas and you’re the fastest.”
Zoe allowed Monica to hustle her over to the kitchen area. More proof that everything was upside down and inside out. She was supposed to be in charge here, not her sixteen-year-old sister.
On the other hand, it was a relief to focus on making twenty Surf ’n’ Turf—halibut and sausage—pizzas instead of tangling with Padric Jeffers.
The next time she had a chance to look up, Padric was gone.
Not that he was gone gone. Oh no, that would be too easy. Even though she tried to conduct life as normal, he kept popping up. Her life was pretty simple, especially in the summer. Pizza. Family (riding herd on the twins and keeping an eye on her mother). Her latest art project. That was about it.
Occasionally she squeezed in a drink or dinner with friends. Once in a while she went for a trip across Misty Bay. She still loved to hike over there, though she’d never been back to Larkspur Trail. She probably never would. When the salmon were running, she went fishing. When the blueberries and currants ripened, she went berry picking.
Every summer passed the same way, and now she was thirty. Thirty. How had that happened?
Padric was thirty, too. Their birthdays only nine weeks apart. But he was a world-famous, model-dating, successful thirty, while she was a still-doing-the-same-thing thirty. Or, more accurately, a crash-and-burn-every-time-she-got-involved thirty. Everyone in Lost Harbor knew she had the worst luck when it came to men; it was legendary.
The next time she ran into Padric, she was browsing the aisles at Misty Bay Art Supplies and Frame Store. She’d been working on a series of clay figures—animals and humans—with whimsical mutations she created from objects that had washed up on the beach. She’d enlisted a few local fishermen and tour guides to keep an eye out for interesting beach debris. She called the project At Sea (Lost/Found), and it was supposed to be a commentary on how no one is immune from change.
Her secret dream was to submit her project for a fellowship in Banff. The Far North Arts grant was perfect for her. But chances were good that this dream would get torpedoed by her own self-doubt, as had always happened. She had yet to actually submit her work anywhe
re outside Lost Harbor.
Seeing Padric had inspired her to dive into the project again. He’d gone all out in pursuit of his music dreams. The least she could do was apply for one stupid fellowship. She already had a stockpile of found objects—pieces of buoys, aluminum cans, seagull bones, a Hello Kitty doll—ready to add to her figurines. But she’d run out of the fasteners she used to meld the debris to the clay.
So there she was in the “art tools” aisle when a familiar voice stroked every one of her nerve endings with a deep, “Hi, Zoe. It’s good to see you still like art.”
Using all her willpower to grab onto her “cool and professional” act, she calmly turned to face him. He looked scruffier than when he’d first arrived, as if he was avoiding his razor. He wore a simple t-shirt and flip-flops and looked relaxed and delicious.
“Hey, look at that, you can finally grow a beard.”
“Yes, turns out you were right. It was just a matter of time.”
Okay, that was a funny memory to hang on to. Beards, of all things, and his worry that he’d never achieve one.
“I was the expert, after all. I always had more facial hair than you. That’s one thing our family excels at. Hair. It’s a point of pride.”
He laughed at the familiar joke. “And yours is still looking glorious.”
“Thanks.” Embarrassed, she turned to search for the right fasteners. He must have seen much nicer hair than hers in the rock star world.
“What are you looking for?”
“Oh, just something for a project.” She found the fasteners and collected several boxes.
“What project?”
“Art.” She stepped around him and headed down the aisle.
“Yeah, I figured. That’s it? No details?”
“Why do you want details?”
“Because I’m interested? Is that so crazy?”
Interested? If he was interested, where had he been for the past fifteen years? She sighed, feeling cornered. She could either express her hurt at his disappearance or try to answer his question in a civil way.
“It’s…” She stopped to face him. Luckily, the fellowship required an abstract, which she’d written and rewritten a few times already. “It’s a mixed-media—clay and found materials—statement on the interconnectivity of humans and our environment, especially as relates to shifts in our ecology.”
He looked momentarily stunned, his blue eyes electric against the slight tan of his skin. She noticed the first marks of laugh lines, and somehow that irritated her. Nice life he’d enjoyed since leaving Lost Harbor. Lots of laughter and fun and fame and fortune.
“Sounds…uh…”
“Fascinating, I know.”
“Well, yeah, but also kind of…uh…”
“Bullshitty?”
“In the best possible way.”
She grinned, feeling herself relax a bit. “It’s a bunch of clay figures decorated with random ocean flotsam.” She gestured with her box of fasteners. “And I’d better get back to it.”
“Wait.” He hurried after her. “Can I see it?”
“No.”
“Zoe, come on. I was always your biggest art fan.” A pause. “Only art fan. You never showed anyone else your stuff.”
“That was a long time ago.”
Mavis, who owned the store, was busy on a phone call and directed her to add the box of fasteners to her tab. Zoe scribbled in the ledger under her name, then stalked out the door. Padric followed her out.
“So you’re saying you’ve finally started showing your work to the outside world?”
“Yes. I have.” No, she hadn’t. But she intended to. “As a matter of fact, I need to finish this project right away for this big competition I’m entering. So I’ll see you around.”
“Wait!” She turned to find him still on her heels. “Why do you keep running away from me?” He ran a hand through his shaggy mop of hair. Maybe shaggy wasn’t the right word anymore. Or mop. Now it had a style to it, along with the perfect amount of scruff. “Why can’t we have a normal conversation?”
“A normal conversation would have been nice. Maybe about fifteen years ago, that would have been good timing.” She rubbed at the space between her eyebrows, where she felt tension gathering. “Now I’m not sure what the point would be.”
“Zoe. Come on.” She watched him swallow hard, the Adam’s apple moving in his throat. “Things were so insane then. My family was falling apart. My mother was hysterical. My father was fucking furious. Mom begged me to keep my distance from you while they worked things out. I—I couldn’t go against her. I tried to call you the night we left, but something was wrong with your phone.”
Watching him speak his piece, she knew every word he said was true. Her parents had commanded her to do the same thing.
“My mother threw that phone into the garbage disposal,” she admitted. “She was convinced Dad had used it for his ‘dirty deeds.’ It was a mess. Ruined our garbage disposal.”
He gave a snort of laughter. “That doesn’t surprise me. My parents went into a kind of cold war. I kept waiting for someone to tell me it was okay to say the word ‘Bellini’ again but no one ever did. We also had to avoid pizza.”
“Pizza?” Zoe felt an oddly personal surge of outrage about that. “Pizza was entirely innocent in the situation. So were we, by the way.”
“I know. I know. But you know grownups. Can’t live with ’em—”
“Can’t live without ’em.” She finished the phrase with a smile. They used to say that in high school. “And now we’re the grownups.”
“And we’re not acting like it. We’re acting like them and not communicating. We were always really good at talking to each other, even when everything was shit.”
“I know, I know. We were. Okay.” She checked her watch. “I have to get to work, but we’ll get together soon.”
“When soon? I need specifics.”
“Can’t your people call my people and work something out?” she teased. It was so strange—even though they were completely different people now, that old sense of ease in his company was slowly coming back.
He lifted an eyebrow at her. “I can make this difficult if you want. I can keep ordering pizza until your delivery twins get fed up.”
She laughed at the phrase delivery twins. “That will never happen. You tip them too well. I’m thinking I should confiscate those tips because I’m sure they’re doing nothing good with them.”
“Come on. Let’s make a plan. I know—pizza. My place. Tonight.”
A weird combination of panic and joy threaded through her at the thought of being in the same space with him, alone. “No, I’m working tonight. How about a jog first thing tomorrow? We can take the bike trail from Seafarer’s Beach.”
“So…you like to jog? That’s…recommended?”
“Yup, doctor’s orders,” she said wryly. “They seem to worry about my pizza to white blood cell ratio.”
She was simply making a joke about the hazards of being around so much pizza, but he reacted with surprising seriousness.
“What exactly did the doctor say?”
“What?” She frowned at him in confusion. “Which doctor?”
“So you have more than one?”
“I…what?” She checked her watch and realized she was late. “I gotta go.” She gestured toward her Subaru, then headed toward it. “See you at Seafarer’s parking lot tomorrow at eight.”
As she zoomed out of the lot, she caught him staring after her with a puzzled expression. What on earth was up with him? Was it a rock star thing? Had the jet-setting lifestyle cost him a few brain cells?
Or maybe they simply didn’t know how to communicate with each other anymore. They kept talking past one another, as if they were speaking different languages.
Ah-ha! That was it. He spoke “man language,” which wasn’t her specialty. If she understood “man,” she wouldn’t have such a disastrous romantic history.
Note to self: avoid that
topic during tomorrow’s jog.
Chapter Five
Padric got to the Seafarer’s Beach parking lot half an hour before eight. He hadn’t slept well—too much frigging pizza. He’d ordered one last night with the hope that either Zoe or one of her sisters would deliver it, but a different kid had knocked on his door instead.
The teenager had introduced himself as Joseph Kenai, and he’d issued an invitation along with the pizza. Or maybe more like a plea.
“I’m working with Monica and Alexis Bellini on the first ever Last Chance to Rock Music Festival later this summer—we’re going to set up tents on Seafarer’s Beach, we got a permit and everything—and when I heard you were here, I had to try and see if you might want to come.”
“Sure, if I’m still here, I’ll come.” He’d handed over his usual forty bucks for the pizza.
“No, I mean…sing. Perform. It’s a charity event,” Joseph had added quickly. “For the Mariner’s Fund. I mean, after we pay back all the expenses, then we give the rest away. It’s just for fun. It’d be so incredibly awesome if you wanted to sing, like, just even one song.”
Padric had to laugh at the kid’s chutzpah. “I’m supposed to be resting my voice. It’s a thing called nodes.”
“I know. I saw it on your Instagram. But you could sing softly. One of the low-key songs.”
“I’ll, uh, think about it. But chances are I’ll be gone by then, so don’t count on me.”
The boy’s face had fallen. He’d looked to be partly native Alaskan, with shoulder-length black hair, a death metal t-shirt and unlaced sneakers. “Thanks anyway.”
Shoulders slumping, he’d let himself out of the suite.
Padric had felt like the ultimate asshole. The typical hotshot rock star refusing to perform if he didn’t get paid his usual fee. He’d almost called the kid back, but he really was supposed to rest his voice, after all.
And he’d have no chance of anonymity if he performed on the beach.
And he probably wouldn’t be here by then anyway, the way things were going with Zoe.
So now that he was here on a crisp morning at the water’s edge, amid the lush midsummer growth of pushki and wild rose and cranesbill, he knew he needed a different approach with Zoe. He needed to corner her. Pin her down.
Yours Since Yesterday Page 4
