Nikki frowned. “If he’s laid out on another barroom floor somewhere, so help me God, Cassandra, I’m going to—”
“Cookie,” Jay admonished, tugging on the ends of her hair.
“No, no. He’s not in a bar,” Cassandra said quickly. “At least, not that I know of . . .” She went clammy, wondering if he just might not be on another of his benders, and that this time he’d made sure she wasn’t called in as cleanup crew. Three days had passed since that morning when he’d brought over the contractor to do the necessary repair work on the shop.
She hadn’t seen him since and she’d assumed he’d been avoiding her because, well, he went through periods when he avoided everyone. Rather than tracking him down, she’d let it be, because it made it easier on her not to think about him, not to think about him in her bed and in her body, when she didn’t have to look at his unruly hair and his un-smiling face. Those only served to remind her that he’d smiled at her when they’d been together that night, that he’d laughed and spoken to her in a soft, deep, sexy voice. You wait this long, you get the edge that experience brings.
“Cassandra. Froot Loop.” Nikki was snapping her fingers in front of her face. “Hello in there.”
She started, aware that the other four were staring at her, their expressions puzzled. “Are you all right?” Juliet asked.
“Sure. I’m great.” But it was a lie, Cassandra realized, as she busied herself getting ready for the knitters soon to arrive. Until now, until she was breathing in all the fragrant love-in-the-air that surrounded the two couples, she hadn’t realized how third wheel she felt around them.
It was probably because Juliet and Noah were married now. It would only get worse once Nikki and Jay were wed.
She’d feel yet more alone.
It would be petty and mean-spirited and more than a little selfish of her if she didn’t want her sisters to be happy—and happily coupled-up. But gaining siblings and then brothers-in-law hadn’t rounded out her life as she’d hoped—it only seemed to push her further out of the circle.
With an inner sigh and a pasted-on smile, she waved Noah and Jay off and watched her sisters settle side by side on one of the couches, speaking all the while in a bridal shorthand that sounded like a foreign language she hadn’t studied. To distract herself, she inspected the lists sitting beside the cash register counter.
She hadn’t forgotten about that project she’d come up with when talking to her mother. RSVPs were rolling in. A menu had been planned. It might not be a marriage, it might not be a man, but she could focus on her birthday party.
In a small side drawer, she found the one invitation she’d dithered about mailing. Sneaking a look at her sisters, she shoved the drawer shut, wondering if she really could make the event all that she’d promised herself.
Marlys couldn’t say exactly what brought her back to Malibu & Ewe. She kept finding herself here lately. Once, on the evening of the posthumous launch of her famous father’s autobiography, a second time when she’d found the cardboard burning, and then again when she’d encountered Gabe in the parking lot and then chickened out before walking through the door.
It was probably that chickening out that drew her back to the beachside shop. Marlys Weston didn’t chicken out. Add to that the cavernous family house where she was living. The place was too large for one person and a dog. Blackie had a big personality, but even he couldn’t fill all the corners and the gloomy quiet.
Within the echoing rooms, she’d had too much time to think about Dean Long. Tall, dark, her silver-eyed nemesis who had dared her to gather some ice cream and some girl friends and decide what she wanted to do about him. About them.
Of course, that had already been decided the November before, but she’d begun to think that including some women in her life wasn’t a bad idea. Men had always failed her. If she could dress women, surely she could befriend women, too?
And maybe friendship could do something about those holes caused by her father’s death that had created in her this unprecedented need for a dark-haired, silver-eyed man who’d left her sleepless and yearning for too many nights running.
The bells on the door of the shop rang out as she pushed it open. Head down, she marched inside, not bothering to look around before making her way to the couches she could see in her direct line of sight. She took a seat on the first open cushion.
“Oh! It’s you,” a woman’s voice said. “Marlys, right? And I’m Ellen.”
Marlys turned, recognizing the woman beside her—Ellen—was none other than one of her boutique customers, the very woman with whom she’d discussed Ben & Jerry and low-rise jeans not long ago. She took it as a good omen, and tried on a smile, one she hoped was big enough to send amiable vibes as far as the other dozen or so knitters gathered in the center of the shop. “Hello. Small world, and all that.”
“I’ve just taken up knitting and my mother-in-law suggested I come here,” Ellen offered. “I don’t dare say no to my mother-in-law. You?”
“Me?” Marlys said. “I—”
“Have absolutely no good reason to be in Malibu & Ewe,” an angry voice finished for her.
Oh, shit. The mean one.
Marlys looked up, and sure enough, it was Nikki Car-michael, one of her evil stepmother’s wicked half-sisters. Her arms folded over her chest, the other woman was glaring down at Marlys with fire in her bicolored eyes.
“Nik . . .” the woman at her elbow admonished. Long, wavy hair, big blue eyes, and big boobs, this one was Cassandra Riley, proving she wasn’t so wicked after all as she tried pulling her sister away from the couches and the interested onlookers. “Simmer down.”
“What do you want?” Nikki demanded of Marlys, shaking off her sister’s hand.
“To . . .” Find something to take my mind off Dean, my father’s death, the fact that I still feel dirty for taking Pharmaceutical Phil to bed. She cleared her throat. “. . . knit, of course.”
“Juliet wouldn’t—” Nikki started.
“Juliet doesn’t have Marlys on her mind right now,” Cassandra said, pushing her sister away. “You just missed her, as a matter of fact. She and Noah returned from their honeymoon today, so she cut out from Knitters’ Night early.”
Nikki was muttering under her breath, but her older sister ignored her to perch on the arm of the sofa next to Marlys. “She told me about the champagne and fruit basket you had delivered.”
“I hope they had someone taste test the stuff first,” Nikki murmured, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Marlys felt her lips twitch. Under other circumstances, she thought she and the mean one might have a good time together. “I hope they enjoyed themselves.” She was almost sincere about it—well, she was sincere about it. Part of her didn’t wish Juliet and Noah anything but happiness. Then there was the bitter, grieving daughter who still resented that her father had left her and ultimately loved someone else.
“She brought us pictures,” Cassandra said, scooping a stack of glossy photographs from the low table between the couches. “Take a look.”
It gave Marlys a few minutes to sit amongst the other women and get acclimated. After a short, stilted silence, their chatter rose around her. It was familiar. Shoppers came in pairs or trios to the boutique, so she was accustomed to the rhythm of women’s conversation, the way it hopscotched from dinner plans, to a business dinner gone awry, to exactly what could Jennifer Aniston possibly eat for dinner to stay so skinny.
But around Malibu & Ewe more than one conversation bubbled, broke off, then restarted as knitters worked on their pieces, some without apparent concentration, others with their eyes glued to their needles. Marlys also learned about bad projects, bad parents, and bad romances in the short minutes it took her to sift through Juliet and Noah’s pictures while pretending a tepid interest in them.
Beach. Sunset. Beautiful Juliet, in a hot pink bikini. Noah, tanned and laughing, as he ran for the surf, his bride in his arms. The blond woman wrapped in a green
sarong and wearing a plumeria lei. The handsome man lying in bed, sheets puddled at his waist, desire stamped on his face as he beckoned the photographer to join him.
Damn! She was supposed to be appreciating the company of women, but now she was thinking of men and sex—oh, who was she kidding? She was thinking of one man, of Dean, who was a living, breathing beckoning finger, one that compelled her to forget that she’d never been able to depend upon the male species.
With a hurried movement, she shuffled the stack, hoping for a hula dancer or an innocuous tropical dawn. Instead, she found a snapshot of another tall, dark man. The one she was desperate to put from her mind.
Maybe she made some sound, because Ellen crowded closer, looking over her shoulder as her knitting fell to her lap. “It’s that sexy guy who was in your shop the last time I was there, isn’t it?”
It had to have been a picture taken before Juliet and Noah’s honeymoon. It showed Dean, straddling his motorcycle, wearing that rash, reckless grin that had both tempted and terrified her. He’d looked exactly like that last November, strong and confident, and yet he’d gone off with all that bravado and still been wounded.
And yet . . .
“I’m in love with him,” she whispered to Ellen. It felt good to say it out loud, not because she wanted to be in love, but if she no longer wasted energy trying to deny it, then she could start working on what it took to destroy the feeling. “I have been for a while.”
“He seemed very interested in you,” the other woman replied.
“That’s what makes it worse,” Marlys explained. “If only he didn’t have any interest in me at all. But we can’t be together. That possibility was lost months ago. I can’t pretend that November didn’t happen and I can’t explain it to him either.”
“November?” Ellen asked. “What happened in November?”
Marlys opened her mouth, then closed it on the sudden realization. The question was a trap. She saw it that way, anyhow, because the soft question and the concerned voice were like yawning metal jaws and the need to unburden herself was the piece of tasty cheese set squarely in the middle of the dangerous contraption.
Women really were the wilier sex.
And knowing that, and even knowing that the confession couldn’t absolve her of guilt, she still opened her mouth again. “I . . .” She experienced the whole event in a flashback of sensory memory. The brush of Phil’s lips as she turned her head and he missed her mouth to graze her jaw. The gentle touch of his hands as he undressed her, the deep groans he made as she undressed him. He’d once been her lover and at the onset it hadn’t seemed like such a huge sin to take him to her bed again, but it had been a sin.
Not his sin, though. She’d never blamed Phil for accepting her offer of a casual roll in the sack.
But the act had defiled her in ways that had nothing to do with her body. It should have been nothing!
But it had been a dishonor of her heart.
A sin of the soul she’d been denying she owned.
“Here,” Ellen said, pressing a tissue into her hand. Marlys stared at it, then lifted her other fingers to her face, only to realize she was crying. Waste of time, she thought, dashing at them with the tissue. They wouldn’t wash her clean.
“Now,” Ellen said, patting her thigh. “Why don’t you tell us all about it.”
Us? Marlys’s stomach twisted, and she looked around the knitters’ circle. Sure enough, the conversation had died down and though most were focusing their gazes on their yarn and needles, they were clearly really focused on her. “Where’s the ice cream?” she murmured to herself in a wry voice.
Across the room, Cassandra jumped into the awkward silence. “Does anyone want to see the shrugs I made for Nikki’s bridal party?” Quickly, several knitters piped up in emphatic agreement.
Grateful for the diversion, Marlys followed the shop owner with her gaze. As the woman headed toward the back and turned a corner, there came a muffled thump and then a smothered curse. Something that had been propped against the far wall—cardboard from a shipment maybe?— toppled, then slid along the hardwood floor toward the center of the room.
Nikki came from behind the register to pick up the large piece. “You knocked over the general, Froot Loop,” she called out.
Marlys rose from the couch as the other woman lifted the cardboard and she stared into the stern visage of her father, General Wayne Weston. Swallowing hard, she remembered that the nine-foot-tall cutout had been front and center at the book party held at Malibu & Ewe the previous fall.
As she walked toward it, she found herself pressing her hand against the silver tear she wore beneath her clothes. Suddenly, the shop walls felt too close, the ceiling too low, her chest too tight for the feelings brought on by seeing her father’s figure.
It’s just a piece of cardboard, she told herself.
Just like the pendant she was clutching at her throat was just an unshed tear.
Four feet from the cutout, she came to a stop. She was still standing there, staring, when Cassandra returned to the knitting circle, soft confections of ivory folded over her arm. She glanced at Nikki, who lifted a shoulder. Marlys couldn’t explain her fascination either.
“I should go,” she said, forcing her feet to back away. She’d accomplished enough for one night, with or without a pint or two of Ben & Jerry’s.
Cassandra shot another look at Nikki. “Do you . . . do you want to take the general with you?”
She recoiled from the thought. Hadn’t he always left her behind?
But a few minutes later she was on her way back to the house in Pacific Palisades, the convertible top of the Miata down so that the cardboard could be stuffed into the passenger seat beside her. Good God. Nothing ever did go her way, did it?
The woman who’d gone out looking for the comfort of female friendship was instead returning home with the embodiment of the man who had failed her.
Nikki stood next to Cassandra as they watched the Miata turn onto the Pacific Coast Highway. “That’s one chilly chick,” she said.
“Coming from Miss Warm and Fuzzy,” Cassandra replied.
“But you know I’m a sap when it comes to romance these days.” Nikki sighed. “You realize she got to me with that whole ‘I’m in love with him,’ thing.”
Cassandra smiled at her sister. “You are warm and fuzzy.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Nikki replied, slinging an arm around her. “It’ll be our secret.”
Cassandra had another of her very own. Seeing Marlys drive away with the cardboard general had helped her make an important decision. She cast a look in the direction of that yet-unsent birthday party invitation and made a promise to herself. If Marlys could face her father, then so could Cassandra.
Thirteen
The family—that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
—DODIE SMITH
Gabe poured himself another cup of inky coffee and refused to look across the parking lot at what was happening at Malibu & Ewe. His fish market/eatery was shutting down for the night and the small, end-of-day staff didn’t need him to oversee their efforts, but without groceries in his house and without any dinner invitations from Cassandra apparently forthcoming, he’d surrendered to his need for sustenance and dropped by for the last of the fish tacos and the dregs of the coffeepot.
The combination would probably keep him up to all hours, but what else was new? The last uninterrupted sleep he remembered was the night in his neighbor’s bed. When morning arrived, he’d awoken to discover she’d already left the house. He couldn’t exactly accuse her of avoiding him—by the time he’d roused himself it was past the hour that she opened the doors to her shop—but she’d left behind the air of someone who wanted to depersonalize their encounter.
In the bathroom, he’d found fresh towels—but no sign of the ones she’d used after her shower. The kitchen counter held the makings for a pot of coffee, but whateve
r breakfast she’d consumed had already been put away. She’d signed her name at the end of the brief note she’d left him—See you!—as if he wouldn’t recognize her distinctive, arty handwriting. But the note had been devoid of any greeting, not even a simple “Gabe.”
Do I have to write your name in pink gel pen?
Sue him, but it would have been a nice touch.
So, he’d followed her lead and been all business when he’d later brought over the contractor to repair the damage on her building. He’d dealt with the insurance company and followed up with the authorities from the distance of his home office.
She had thanked him while he was at her shop, but she hadn’t followed it up with an offer to fix him a garbanzo salad and green tea. It surprised him, how accustomed he was to being disgusted by the food she tried to guilt him into ingesting.
He should be grateful for the respite.
He was grateful for the respite.
But he was annoyed, too, because now he was feeling a tad awkward about going over to her shop and collecting her for their usually joint attendance at this month’s Malibu City Council meeting. She’d tricked him into the gig some time back. He’d missed another Chamber of Commerce shindig and she’d returned from it with the news that he had somehow, in absentia, “volunteered” to be the commerce’s eyes and ears at the city government meeting. In that same manner she’d committed him to the parking committee a few months before. But he’d smartened up the second time around, and three days later informed her smugly that he’d volunteered her right back into the co attendee position.
They were supposed to be at that meeting in twenty minutes.
This time he did sneak a peek across the parking lot. The lights were on in the shop, illuminating it in the surrounding darkness like a television set, which made it very easy to spy her eagerly embracing some other man.
They were going to be late if he didn’t break that up, Gabe told himself, so it was purely a business decision that had him jogging across the asphalt toward Malibu & Ewe. It was their habit that he would drive and she’d ride shotgun, because he claimed to dislike the smell of her veggie car. Though it was still in the shop after its close encounter with that hillside boulder, and she was behind the wheel of a rental these days, he’d assumed that he’d be driving her tonight.
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