Black Ember

by Ruby Laska

  “The other problem is, someone stole her stuff, so she’s got no ID, no money, nothing.”

  “Oh, no!” Jayne said.

  “I’ve got my tip money,” Caryn protested.

  “Also she hasn’t eaten in a while.”

  Caryn glared at Zane in the darkness. He was making her sound pathetic, not tough.

  “Why don’t you come on in?” Matthew said, already opening the front door. “I can heat you up some dinner and we can sort this all out.”

  “Oh,” Caryn said, suddenly torn. This man was getting married in two days. The last thing he and his fiancée needed to worry about was someone else’s problems. She knew all too well the kind of stress that wedding preparations could bring; after all, that had been a factor behind her own spectacular breakup three days before what was supposed to be her grand New York City wedding.

  Although if she was really honest with herself, it wasn’t seating arrangements or mix-ups with the flowers or even the stress of figuring out parking for four hundred in the heart of Manhattan. She and Nathanial had managed most of the friction completely on their own. This couple—in the light from inside the house she could see that the bride-to-be was wearing a simple sundress, with her red hair tied up in a messy topknot, and not a stitch of makeup on her face—looked relaxed, happy, and very much in love.

  “If you’re sure it’s no trouble,” she said in a small voice, all bravado gone. She had never felt the way this couple looked in her whole life. She was thirty years old, with a failed engagement, a broken family, an overbearing mother, a biological father who was a stranger, and a very bad dye job. Last year, Forbes had called her an “Entrepreneur to Watch.” They’d probably yank her membership in that club if they could see her now.

  And suddenly, on top of everything else, she had to pee. As she followed the others into the house, Jayne gave her a thoughtful, kind look, not bothering to cover up her assessing gaze.

  “Would you like to freshen up a bit?” she asked quietly as the men walked ahead. “Let me show you to the powder room. Well, it’s not really a powder room but the girls are taking it over for the weekend.”

  Caryn felt so grateful she felt like crying. As they passed through a beautiful, high-ceilinged family room, Jayne called out, “We’ll just be a second. Maybe you could fix her a plate.”

  “Already on it,” her fiancé replied.

  Caryn glanced into the kitchen to see him taking things out of a stainless steel refrigerator, the only modern touch in a charming rustic room anchored by an enormous pine table and at least eight chairs.

  Jayne showed her to the bathroom, handing her a clean hand towel and washcloth. “Take your time,” she said. “Help yourself to anything you need. I’m going to pour you a nice glass of wine. Is white okay?”

  “Sure,” Caryn mumbled. The thought of a nice crisp glass of sauvignon blanc made her want to weep—although she longed for her balcony high above Central Park, where she often enjoyed a glass of wine at the end of a long day while she went through her mail. Her mother’s voice came through in a What-Would-Georgia-Do flash: “Don’t fuss over what you don’t have, just make the best of what you do.”

  That was the pragmatic side of Georgia, the side that had kept her dedicated to scouring Los Angeles for a father for Caryn despite all the hardships and bumps along the way. Now, she used her steely resolve to raise funds for worthy causes, and to manage her multi-million-dollar foundation. It had been a long time since Caryn thought about her mother putting makeup on in the tiny bathroom of their West Hollywood studio apartment while she perched on the edge of the tub to watch, but Georgia’s determination to make the best of things had never flagged.

  She closed the door behind her, then smiled to see the mirror surrounded by white paper bells and swaths of pink ribbon. “Ladies only,” read a hand-lettered sign decorated by watercolor blossoms. Fluffy pink towels hung from the wall, and a shower curtain had been painted with the words HAPPILY EVER AFTER in huge letters. Someone had taken pains to turn the otherwise rustic bathroom into a girly paradise.

  Caryn’s spirits fell when she looked in the mirror. When she’d scrubbed the dye from her face, she’d taken most of the pale foundation off too, so her skin looked fairly normal. But the deep purple eye shadow and dramatic liner had settled into the creases under her eyes, making her look ghoulish. Her hair matted together in clumps, the color that had looked so daring on the box standing out in harsh contrast against her skin.

  She splashed water on her face and looked through the toiletries lined up neatly on the shelves, finding cotton squares and makeup remover. She quickly wiped away the smudges and most of the eye makeup that had miraculously stayed in place. Then, as an afterthought, she borrowed a tube of pink lip gloss and swiped on a little, just enough to return some color to her lips. She ran a comb through her hair and examined the results.

  She looked human again. Exhausted, wan, and strung out, but at least she no longer resembled a Goth nightmare. Taking a deep breath, she headed back to the kitchen.

  A plate loaded with rice, beans and tacos sat in the place of honor at the head of the table, along with a glass filled generously with straw colored wine. Matthew and Jayne looked relaxed, holding hands on one side of the table, while Zane sat on the other side, poking at an iPad.

  “Dig in,” Matthew said while Zane simply stared at her.

  “You look better,” he finally said, returning his attention to his iPad.

  Caryn touched her hair self-consciously before sitting down. Better—that could mean a whole host of things, none of them good. Obviously she’d looked terrible before. But she was still in the ridiculous clothes, her manicure was chipped, and her hair was a disaster. Zane, she had to accept, was being kind.

  And she would need to depend on that kindness just a little longer.

  She dug into the food, suddenly ravenous. “This is amazing,” she said after she had followed several enormous bites with a sip of wine.

  “Matthew’s famous for his tacos,” Jayne said proudly.

  “I aim to please,” he responded with a fond smile. “Just trying to hold onto my job.”

  “Matthew takes care of us,” Zane said, not looking up. “He cooks and cleans and does the shopping and sort of does the laundry, though I don’t let him touch my stuff.”

  “You want to pay a buck fifty a shirt, that’s your business,” Matthew said mildly.

  “He also did the renovations on this place and nearly all the work on the farmhouse.” Jayne patted her stomach. “We’re moving in there when the baby comes.”

  “Oh!” Caryn set down her fork. “You’re expecting?”

  “Due in September,” Matthew said proudly. “We’re having a boy.”

  “Just what we need around here,” Jayne said cheerfully. “More testosterone.”

  “I’ve checked every place I can think of,” Zane said. “Everyone’s full up.”

  Jayne nodded. “Deneen had to book rooms for the guests back in January. There won’t be a motel room available for weeks, if not months.”

  “You can stay here,” Matthew said. “No problem.”

  “I couldn’t!” Caryn protested. She’d counted bedroom doors down the long hall—six of them, enough for all the roommates and Jayne’s sister. “You don’t have room.”

  “Sure we do,” Matthew said. “The couch in the den’s insanely comfortable. I’ve crashed on it so many nights I can’t remember.”

  “And we have plenty of blankets and things,” Jayne added. “As for clothes, between me and Deneen I’m sure we can get you taken care of. What size shoe do you wear?”

  Caryn looked from one face to the next. The three of them, total strangers, were offering to take her into their home two days before a wedding.

  “But you’ve got guests—the wedding—”

  “The wedding’s going to be right here, on Saturday,” Jayne said, seeming completely unruffled by its imminence. “You can come!”

  “
She has to work,” Zane said sternly. Of the three of them, only Zane wasn’t acting like it was the best idea ever. In fact, he looked like he hated the idea. Well, Caryn would too, if the situation were reversed.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Matthew said. “Except, isn’t Buddy’s going to be closed on Saturday? Most of the regulars will be here. In fact, Buddy was on the guest list, but this was the only weekend he could take Melanie camping.”

  “And don’t forget, he hates weddings,” Jayne added.

  “Yeah, hates them,” Matthew agreed, gazing at his fiancée adoringly. “Guess he had a bad experience in the romance department a long time ago, and never recovered.”

  “So, look,” Zane continued as though they hadn’t spoken. “It’s almost one in the morning, and tomorrow’s a big day. I’ll get you some blankets and stuff. I think I can dig up a spare toothbrush.”

  “Just leave the dishes,” Matthew said, helping Jayne to her feet. “It’ll give me something to do in the morning while Deneen’s tearing up the place.”

  Now that Caryn looked more carefully, she could see the swell of Jayne’s stomach through her loose dress. A baby…the thought brought unwelcome memories back to her, memories of the very civilized conversations she’d had with Nathanial about how their careers left very little time for each other, much less parenthood; how they’d leave the childrearing to others and focus on enjoying their lives without the commitment or distraction.

  Something about this place—the sheer ruffled curtains tied back from the picture window, the mismatched coffee mugs lined up on hooks, the dozens of photos taped to the fridge—made her wish for a family unlike her own. Not to take anything away from Georgia or Randall, who’d given her opportunities other people could only dream of. But suddenly Caryn’s life of glamour and wealth seemed strangely hollow: she had traveled all over the world, eaten at the best restaurants and danced at the most famous clubs, had her picture in glossy magazines, and seen her jewelry designs on some of the most beautiful of the beautiful people.

  But she’d never had roommates, never kicked back over late-night tacos, never borrowed a toothbrush to camp out on a couch. She’d never been pregnant and she’d never had a fiancé who offered his arm to help her over a cattle guard or topped off her glass from a bottle of cheap white wine without being asked, who brought her an armful of old quilts and a faded T-shirt that had the words RED FORK FIGHTING BULLDOGS on the front, who—

  Caryn stopped with the T-shirt pulled halfway over her head. She was changing in the family room, hoping none of the residents would walk in on her, ready to slide under the covers on the ancient brown and gold plaid couch. The toothbrush Zane had given her lay on top of the old console television, along with her clothes, which smelled like beer and sweat and which she was supremely grateful to get out of.

  She was as tired as she’d ever been in her life. She’d been up for twenty hours, she was desperate for a shower, and she’d lost everything she’d brought on this crazy venture—and the man she’d come to see wasn’t even here. So maybe that explained why, when she thought of the fiancé she didn’t have, she accidently pictured the handsome but rude man at the table rather than the perfectly delightful groom.

  She crawled onto the sofa and pulled the soft old quilts up under her chin. They smelled faintly of rosewater and fresh air, and she was certain that the last time they’d been washed, they’d been hung from a clothesline to dry.

  She snuggled deeper into the covers, Zane’s old T-shirt deliciously soft against her skin. The couch was, surprisingly, just as comfortable as Matthew had promised.

  Amazingly, sleep didn’t come right away. Caryn lay in her nest of covers, listening to the sounds of the old bunkhouse: the creaking of the old wood-paneled walls, the tapping of branches against the windows, the far-off mooing of a cow—she was pretty sure it was a cow, anyway—and the much closer hooting of an owl. It was nothing like the sound of traffic and sirens and the bustle of life in the city, but it was…nice.

  Suddenly, her reasons for coming here seemed awfully blurry.

  It seemed absurd that she had thought she could come here to North Dakota, dressed like she was going to a Halloween party, and spy on Buddy using some guise that she hadn’t even bothered to figure out in advance. That plan had started falling apart the minute the plane touched down. For one thing, apparently Buddy was still well enough—or stubborn enough—to live at home and even romance a woman. Camping! What kind of dying man went camping? Which begged the question of whether her mother had exaggerated when she said he was dying. Of course, there was a chance Georgia simply didn’t have her facts straight, but she was generally meticulous about details. Caryn should have come right out and asked Opal or Turk, but she couldn’t think of a way to phrase the question without raising suspicions.

  Opal referred to her boss as an “old goat,” but Caryn thought she detected affection in her voice. She certainly hadn’t said anything to suggest that he was battling a fatal illness. Whatever the case, Buddy apparently was content to let the bar run itself until Monday night, which made him either a very careless businessman or a guy who just didn’t care any more.

  All of which meant Caryn had to stay in character for a few more days if she wanted to maintain her disguise. And that meant returning to the horrible bar and waiting on the horrible customers and showing the world yet again how incompetent she was, unable to do a job that thousands of women did every day without the benefit of a fraction of the education that Caryn had received. Waitressing was far more difficult than she had ever imagined. At one point, earlier in the evening, when a customer had dropped most of a whiskey sour on her boots while his friend tried to stuff a dollar bill in her waistband, Caryn had considered quitting on the spot. Her bio-dad had never done anything for her, so why was she making this effort for him?

  But it wasn’t Buddy’s fault that she’d become a celebrity. Wasn’t his fault that Caryn had inherited her mother’s thick blond hair and wide golden eyes, their features so similar that she couldn't have avoided becoming a recognizable celebrity, her privacy traded away before she could make the decision for herself. Designing jewelry had provided Caryn a welcome respite from the constant media attention; unlike some other offspring of celebrities, she’d been lucky enough to avoid flaming out. Still, even though she’d escaped public meltdowns and addictions and quickie weddings and scandals, the success of Caryn’s line as well as her broken engagement to one of the most eligible bachelors in New York ensured that there was always paparazzi around every corner, hoping for a good shot on a slow news day.

  Georgia had managed to keep the identity of Caryn’s father a secret from the press, but given Georgia’s revelation that Buddy had tried to get in touch, Caryn was forced to examine what she had thought was true all these years.

  But every time she tried to sift through what she knew about her bio-dad, she got distracted by thoughts of the man who’d come to her rescue tonight. A psychologist would have a field day with her—she was probably experiencing some sort of knight-in-shining-armor fantasy about Zane, who was a completely inappropriate substitute for her attention. Tomorrow, when she’d had a good night’s sleep and some coffee—any man who could cook like Matthew was bound to make great coffee—she’d borrow a phone and call her lawyers, who were masters of discretion. They’d have money wired, and they’d undoubtedly be able to find her a room as well, given the resources at their disposal and their experience handling celebrity scandals. That was the whole reason Georgia had hired them in the first place, and with their help, she and Caryn had never found themselves the target of stalkers or lawsuits or public battles of any sort. The attorneys were the best at what they did, and tomorrow they would bail Caryn out.

  As she nestled in the soft old quilts, Caryn tried to quell the nagging longing to solve all her problems on her own, just this once. Being Carrie-slash-Barracuda was a pain in the butt, but it was also strangely…exhilarating. Especially when gorgeous oilmen with sou
lful gray eyes checked her out. Or argued with her or insulted her or brushed against her when he handed her a toothbrush, or any of the hundred other moments she’d shared with Zane tonight.

  She’d come here to satisfy an old longing and find the answers to long-buried questions, and instead she was acting like a teenager at a prom, besotted with a man who clearly thought she was a pain or crazy or criminal, or all three.

  She’d come to North Dakota knowing who she was and what she wanted. Now she wasn’t sure about either.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Zane stood on the back porch with a cup of coffee, staring moodily at the sun peeking up over the trees and wishing he had somewhere else to be.

  He had three weeks off, something he’d been looking forward to every day of his last hitch. He was happy for his friends, for their wedding and the baby on its way, and he was even all right with standing up as a groomsman for Matthew, though Deneen was making him a little nuts with her wedding planning craziness. At least she was inviting Jayne’s friends from back home, and Zane had been idly considering a little wedding-night hookup with a girl from out of town…a girl with no expectations and no strings attached.

  That’s what Zane did best with: low expectations. There was a reason he’d left the law firm back in Arkansas, and it wasn’t the one most people suspected. The truth was that Zane hadn’t minded the long hours and the grueling caseload, the briefs and precedents and arguments, the fact that he saw more of the firm’s interns than his own family and barely recognized his own apartment.

  He’d been happy to let everyone assume that he was simply burned out. Because the real reason he’d left was hard to face: Zane was a quitter, and always had been. A coward. When the going got tough, he ran.

  Back when he was in middle school, he and Matthew had snuck out one night and rode their bikes to the convenience store in the part of town where they were never allowed to go, and stole two tall bottles of beer and a couple of packages of beef jerky. They’d snuck the beers and snacks inside their windbreakers, and made it out of the store before the old guy who ran the place followed them outside and started shouting in an unfamiliar language. Zane hopped on his bike and pedaled like hell…and Matthew stayed behind and apologized, and when his parents came to pick him up he agreed to go over to the store every day after school for a month and help clean and stock. Matthew had never ratted Zane out, and Zane had never forgiven himself for leaving him.