Love You Truly (Buttercup Hill #3)

Chapter 8

Mallory

If it wasn’t so nice out, I’d have a better excuse for waking up in an irritable mood. It’s hard to open the window shades, see a bluebird sky, smell the late summer roses on the vines, and declare that life is crap.

But boy does life feel like crap right about now.

Doesn’t mean I can stay in bed wallowing, but it means I’ll have to put even more effort into seeming cheerful when I go into St. Helena this morning. I’m bound to run into someone, and it could possibly be someone who I’ll need to have in my corner when Felix comes around again. And I know he will.

That has to be the reason I’m in a mood. Two interactions with him in one evening would push anyone over the edge. Fortunately, Dash played along and that seemed to loosen Felix’s barnacle-like hold on me, at least temporarily.

The memory of how my skin flamed hot when Dashiell Corbett joked that I’d one day be his wife sends a new shot of warmth down to my bones. It irritates me.

I don’t want to feel anything around Dash, especially when he seemed to enjoy our charade a little too much. Almost like he was mocking me. That has me edging past irritable and into downright pissy.

The harder I tried to hide my mood, the more makeup I put on this morning. I spent extra time choosing an outfit that would act as my game face because anyone I see could be someone to work with when it’s time to grow our wine business at Autumn Lake. It’s smart to have friends instead of enemies.

As it turns out, the first person I run into is a pair of moms who used to be high school friends of mine. That’s right—we’re not friends anymore, mainly because they got married and stopped inviting me to dinner parties after my short marriage to Felix ended. Some married people only like to spend time with other married people, I guess.

They’re dressed alike in black workout tights and zippered jackets, blond hair in matching high ponytails. It’s irrelevant whether they’re coming from a workout or going to one—the point is to tell the world that they care about fitness.

“Mallory! What are you doing in town?” Meadow asks, pulling Jackie to her side and linking arms.

“Picking up a few desserts for the workers. They’ve been putting in long hours, so I want to keep them happy.” My glossy lipstick frames my teeth when I offer a full smile and hold up my bakery bag.

“Oh, good for you.” They look me up and down, eyes snagging on my Moncler puffer vest, dark-washed skinny jeans, and Blundstone boots. “How do you always look so put-together, even running errands?” Jackie says, clutching a to-go cup of coffee.

I don’t bother telling them that the boots are seven years old and because I’ve polished them and treated the leather well, they’ll last another seven. I don’t bother saying that I got the vest at an outlet store and saved money by buying the largest child’s size instead of the more expensive women’s medium. All my clothes are designer-perfect, and that’s the point.

“Aw, thanks. You’re sweet.” I smile and take a step back, fishing my keys out of my purse as a hint that I don’t have time to linger.

“Though I guess it’s what you have to do when you’re still single, right?” Meadow gives me an upside down smile that I hate.

“Totally,” I say with my brightest smile. “You guys are the lucky ones.” I hope my singsong tone sounds convincing since I’m lying through my teeth. Running around in yoga pants trying to fill the day until school pickup sounds awful to me. And then shuttling the kids to playdates? No thank you. I’m good.

“Oh, if you only knew. Tommy had hand, foot, and mouth disease last week, and Maggie spent half the night in my room because she had a bad dream. I’m exhausted,” Jackie says. Meadow nods.

“Well, you make it look easy,” I say. This time, my smile is genuine because her description of motherhood sounds harrowing, and I salute her.

We air-kiss goodbye, and I make a beeline for my car, desperate to get back to the farm before running into anyone else, least of all Felix, who seems to turn up at every pass.

On my way home, I stop next door with a bag of chocolate chunk cookies for Mary and the kids. Hearing those moms talk about the trials of raising kids makes me appreciate Mary, who does it for someone else’s kids.

I pull my Jeep into the driveway of the house and turn off the ignition. The first sound I hear when I pop the door open is the trill of children’s laughter coming from the backyard. Even with the white clapboard house between me and the kids, I hear them loud and clear.

I follow a path alongside the house to a gate that opens to the backyard. There I find Mary crouched behind twin toddlers who stand at small easels. The kids paint with gusto, each armed with a row of multicolored paint dishes and wearing oversized tee-shirts over their clothes to keep them clean-ish.

“You start with the face and then add the eyes and mouth,” Mary tells the three-year-olds.

“I don’t want to do it like that. I want to start with the eyes.” One of the tow-headed toddlers pops out his lower lip and sulks. “He’s not even painting a face.” He points at where his sibling uses both palms to swirl paint on the hanging piece of paper.

“Okay, it was just a suggestion. You’re the artist. You do it how you want.”

I can’t help but laugh at her attempt to reason with him. Mary spies me and widens her eyes in a silent plea of “help me.”

“Hey guys. What are you painting?”

The twin who is anti-paintbrush turns around and eyes me suspiciously until he recognizes me. “I’m painting a soccer player. I don’t know what he’s doing.” He gestures to his brother’s painting which is a swirl of color. His twin is too absorbed in mixing the paint on the paper to stop for commentary.

“Soccer player, huh? Did Mary tell you they call soccer players footballers where she comes from?”

The twin lets out an exaggerated sigh. “Like a million times.”

“A kid has to learn.” Mary puts her hands on her hips and ushers me over to a picnic table a few feet from where the kids are absorbed in their art. “What’s this?” She gestures to the bag.

“Brought you some reinforcements.” Holding the bakery bag up, I lean on the edge of the table.

Her eyes dance. “I assume some are for the lads, but I might not tell ’em and eat them all myself instead.”

“You do you.” I’d never begrudge her a dozen cookies.

A bluebird flits in and out of one of the small wooden houses perched atop the old fence that separates the backyard from the field behind our property. Autumn Lake spans a couple hundred acres and abuts the backs of homes on the street running perpendicular to us. So even though we’re technically next door neighbors to the twins’ family, we don’t live on the same street, and it’s a fairly long walk from door to door.

“You want some coffee? I’ll make a fresh pot.”

“No, I can’t stay. Just dropping off your afternoon sugar rush, and then I need to get back to plotting world domination. Or at least finishing up my business plan.” I unroll the bakery bag and realize I’ve had the top in a death grip, though I can’t imagine why. The paper is smushed and mangled, and Mary notices all of it. Fortunately, the cookies have been spared.

Mary nods. “Is this when I tell you what I think about your little charade from last night?”

After Felix left, I told her to zip it. The whole episode left me so worn out that we agreed to just throw a few more darts and enjoy the night. Of course, I couldn’t get a darn dart anywhere close to the bullseye. That’s how rattled Felix makes me. To say nothing of my fake fiancé.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. Seriously, it must’ve been the beer. And now I somehow agreed to a date with the guy who already blew me off once. Clearly disinterested and now he’s just preparing to rub it in.”

“I disagree with that last part. He fancied you. That was obvious.”

I stop fidgeting with the bakery bag and sink into a cushion atop one of the benches flanking a picnic table. Mary takes the bag from me and rips it open down the center, turning it into a placemat for the dozen cookies that spill out. Glancing in the direction of the twins, who are still absorbed in working on their paintings, Mary swipes a cookie and takes a large bite.

“Oh, this is a proper biscuit. Thank you.” She takes another bite before swallowing the first one, and I realize she probably skipped lunch.

“Lemme guess. You didn’t eat with the boys?”

She makes a face, somewhere between disbelief and a wince. “I don’t fancy peanut butter, and that’s all those boys eat.” She pops the last of the cookie into her mouth and bustles off to the house, calling behind her, “Gonna be the death of me.”

I break off a corner of one cookie and pop it into my mouth. Even the delicious bite of the dark chocolate chips and the bits of sea salt sprinkled on top don’t improve my mood. Mary returns with a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic cups. She pours for each of us.

“I need to get back to work.” I say the words, but somehow my body stays fixed at the table.

Mary grins at me through chocolate-stained teeth. “What you ought to do is find a man. Marry a bloke just like your mother wants and it’ll invalidate Felix’s claim on you and your property. Your parents can pin their hopes on a new guy, and meanwhile, you’ll be free to run the business. Like in that show.”

I’ll never be able to keep up with Mary’s obsession with classic American TV shows.

“Which show?”

“The one with early Pierce Brosnan. Remington Steele, I think it was? She wants to run a detective agency, but no one takes her seriously so she invents a front man and names him Remington Steele. Then a real dude with that name shows up, and he’s lovely to look at, so she keeps him as the man candy and does all the real work herself.”

“I feel like there’s something sexist and sad about that.”

“Of course there is. That’s the beauty!”

“And you think I should use this as a model for my life.”

“Edit as you see fit. You already convinced Dash to be your fiancé for a night. Just take it to the next level. With him as your husband instead of Felix, you’d be trading up.”

“I don’t even know him.” I say it as though that’s the only problem with her ridiculous plan. “Not to mention, he might’ve been okay messing around in a bar in front of Felix, but I doubt he wants a wife. And I don’t want a husband.”

I’m drawn back to when he said the words “my wife,” and my nerve endings caught fire.

Maybe it’s the stress of the situation or the idea of being hitched to a man I barely know, but the idea makes me laugh so hard it brings tears to my eyes. “Ah, thank you for that. It’s so nice to feel an emotion other than stress for a hot minute.”

Mary watches me dab my eyes and nods slowly. “That’s what makes it perfect. The relationship won’t get in the way of the goal. I’m serious.”

“You don’t need to marry me off. But thank you for the idea.”

“It’s a good idea. The men will be lining up a mile long.”

“No way. It’ll land me right back where I started, linked at the hip to a man who puts his own interests before mine.”

“I’m done.” One of the twins waves Mary over with two hands covered in paint. She hauls herself up from the table and looks longingly at the cookies before dashing over with a container of wet wipes.

“Oh, that looks beautiful!” she exclaims, unpinning the painting from the easel. It’s covered from end to end with paint, every color in the palate blended together in swirls. Just witnessing her Mary Poppins energy makes me tired.

“I’ll see you later, Mare,” I call, heading around the side of the house and back to my car.

I hear her cheerful voice behind me. “Let’s get those hands cleaned up, and we’ll all eat some biscuits. Yeah?”

As I’m sliding into the front seat of my car, the three of them start to sing a song about a hungry moose. It makes me smile. Then I think about the crazy idea Mary proposed. It makes me smile a little wider. That’s when I know I’m in trouble.