Chapter 10
Ten
As Zoe put the last of the Friday morning breakfast plates into the dishwasher, she heard a scratch at the back door of the kitchen. She went to open it, and Byron came in with a plaintive meow, his tail held high like a gentleman doffing his hat. He sat and looked at her with expectant green eyes.
Zoe grinned and reached down to smooth his fluffy white fur. “I know what you’re after.”
She went to the stove, and spooned a few last curds of scrambled eggs from a skillet into Byron’s dish. The cat proceeded to eat daintily, his ears and tail twitching with enjoyment.
Justine entered the kitchen. “Someone’s here to see you. I wasn’t sure what to tell him.”
“Is it Alex?” Zoe’s nerves jolted pleasantly. “Please send him back here.”
“It’s not him. It’s your ex.”
Zoe blinked. She hadn’t seen or talked to Chris in more than a year, their contact limited to a couple of impersonal e-mails. As far as Zoe knew, there was no reason for him to come to the island.
“Is he alone or is he with his partner?”
“Solo,” Justine said.
“Did he tell you why he’s here?” Zoe asked.
Justine shook her head. “Want me to get rid of him?”
Zoe was almost tempted to say yes. It wasn’t that she and Chris had parted on bitter terms. In fact, their divorce had been a low-key and bloodless process. As his wife, she had felt betrayed, but as his friend, she couldn’t help feeling sympathy for the pain and confusion he’d so obviously been going through. Just after their first anniversary, Chris had come to her with tears in his eyes, and had tried to explain that even though he loved her, would always love her, he had been having an affair with a man who worked at his law firm. Chris had explained that until recently he’d never been able to face his feelings and desires, but he couldn’t pretend any longer. Whenever he’d been attracted to men in the past, he had always compartmentalized such feelings, knowing that his conservative family would never approve. However, it had gotten to the point where he could no longer live a lie. And what he regretted most was having caused Zoe disappointment and pain. He had never intended to hurt her.
“Doesn’t matter,” Justine had said to Zoe, regarding this last point. “He handled it the wrong way. Chris could have come to you and said, ‘Zoe, I’m having some complicated feelings,’ and then you could have talked about it. Instead, he lied to you repeatedly, until you were blindsided. He cheated on you. And that makes him a jackass, whether he’s gay or straight.”
Now, contemplating the prospect of seeing Chris, Zoe felt dread settle in her stomach like a lead weight. “I’ll talk to him,” she said reluctantly. “It wouldn’t feel right to turn him away.”
“You’re such a pushover,” Justine grumbled. “Okay, I’ll send him back here.”
In a couple of minutes, the door opened, and Chris entered cautiously.
He was as handsome as ever, slim and fit, his hair the rich color of wheat. Chris had always been in great shape, and he was scrupulously careful with his diet, rarely eating red meat or drinking a second glass of wine. “No butter, cream, or carbs,” he had always told Zoe when she had cooked for him. She had obliged, even though she had found the restrictions more than a little aggravating. The first meal she had made for herself after she had moved out of their apartment had been a huge bowl of spaghetti carbonara, with a sauce of white wine, cream, and three entire eggs, the whole of it covered in a snowy layer of grated Pecorino-Romano and Parmesan cheese and sprinkled with crisp shards of bacon.
Chris smiled when he saw her. “Zoe,” he said quietly, and stepped forward.
An awkward moment followed as they moved toward each other in the beginnings of a hug, and ended up clasping hands instead. Zoe was inwardly surprised by how good it was to see him again, and how much she had missed him.
“You look wonderful,” he said.
“So do you.” But she saw with concern that there was a weathering of sadness around his hazel-green eyes, and lines of tension that had been carved too deep and too fast.
Reaching into the pocket of his impeccably tailored blazer, Chris brought out a small object in a flannel pouch. “I found this behind the dresser the other day,” he said, handing it to her. “Remember how hard we looked for it?”
“My goodness,” Zoe said as she saw the brooch inside the pouch. It had always been one of the favorites in her collection, a vintage silver and enameled teapot embedded with amethysts. “I thought I’d never see it again.”
“I wanted to return it to you in person,” Chris said. “I knew how much it meant to you.”
“Thank you.” She gave him an unguarded smile. “Are you staying on the island for the weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?” she brought herself to ask. They were both trying hard to be casual, to mask the awkward edges and corners of a conversation between two people who were trying to reconnect.
Chris nodded. “I needed to get away and do some thinking. I’m renting a waterfront house for a couple of nights. Hoping to see some orcas, maybe do some kayaking.” His gaze flicked around the kitchen, taking in the pans that still needed to be cleaned, the remains of breakfast. “I came at a bad time. You’re in the middle of stuff—”
“No, it’s fine. Do you want to stay for a few minutes and have some coffee?”
“If you’ll have some with me.”
Zoe motioned for him to sit at the table. She went to brew a fresh pot of coffee. Rather than take a chair, Chris leaned back against the sturdy table and watched her.
“Where is the house you’re renting?” Zoe asked, measuring coffee into a filter basket.
“It’s at Lonesome Cove.” Chris paused before adding, “Apropos name, in my current situation.”
“Oh, dear.” Zoe went to fill the coffeepot at the sink. “Trouble with… your partner?”
“I’ll spare you the details. But a lot has been running through my mind. Memories and thoughts… and the thing I keep running into, again and again, is that I never really apologized for what I did to you. I handled everything the wrong way. I’m so sorry for that. I’m—” He closed his mouth and set his jaw, but a muscle in his cheek twitched like an overstretched rubber band.
Carefully Zoe brought the pot of water to the coffee machine and poured it in. “But you did,” she said. “You apologized more than once. And maybe you could have handled it better, but I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for you. I was so focused on my own hurt feelings that I didn’t think about how scary it would be for you to come out. How tough it would be to face everyone’s reactions. I forgave you a long time ago, Chris.”
“I haven’t forgiven myself,” Chris said, clearing his throat roughly. “I didn’t take responsibility. I told you it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t want to think about what I was putting you through. For a while I sort of became a teenager again, going through all the phases I missed during adolescence. I’m so sorry, Zoe.”
At a loss for words, Zoe started the coffeemaker and turned to face him. Her hands smoothed repeatedly over the bib front of her white chef’s apron. “It’s okay,” she eventually said. “It’s really okay. I’m fine. But I’m worried about you. Why do you seem so unhappy? Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“He left me for someone else,” Chris said, with a ragged laugh. “Fitting justice, right?”
“I’m sorry,” she said gently. “How long ago?”
“A month. I can’t eat, can’t breathe, can’t sleep. I’ve even lost my sense of smell and taste. I went to a doctor—can you believe there’s a level of depression where you can’t even smell things?” He let out a shaken sigh. “You were the best friend I ever had. You were always the one I wanted to tell first when anything happened.”
“You were my best friend, too.”
“I miss that. Do you think…” He swallowed audibly. “You think we could ever get back to that? Not like when we were married… I mean just the friendship part.”
“I can do that part,” she said readily. “Have a seat and tell me what happened. And while you do that, I’ll make you some breakfast. Just like old times.”
“I’m really not hungry.”
“You don’t have to eat,” she said, turning on the stove to preheat a black steel pan. “But I’m going to make something for you.”
When they were married, it had been like this nearly every night—Chris would sit and talk to Zoe while she cooked. It felt familiar to slip back into this, even after all the time they’d spent apart. Chris explained the issues he and his partner had faced, the initial exhilaration of their romance fading into the everyday routine of living together. “And then the things that didn’t seem to matter before—politics, money, even stupid stuff like whether the toilet paper unwinds from the top or bottom of the roll—all of it became important. We started to argue.” He paused as he noticed Zoe breaking eggs into a bowl with one hand. One, two, three. “What are you making?”
“An omelet.”
“Remember, no butter.”
“I remember.” Zoe cast a glance over her shoulder and prompted, “You were telling me about the arguments.”
“Yes. He’s a different guy when we fight. He’s willing to use any weapon, anything you confide in private. Win at all cost—” He paused as Zoe drizzled some clarified butter into a small saucepan. “Hey—”
“It’s a French omelet,” she said reasonably. “I have to do it this way. Just look the other way and keep talking.”
Chris sighed in resignation and resumed. “I wanted his approval too much. Couldn’t stand up to him. But he was the first man I ever…” He fell silent.
Zoe chopped some fresh herbs—parsley, tarragon, basil—and whisked them into the eggs. She understood the process Chris was going through. She knew how many ways you could find to blame yourself after a breakup, how you recounted a hundred conversations to figure out what you should or shouldn’t have said. How you constantly wanted sleep even when you’d already been sleeping too much, and you couldn’t eat even though your body was famished.
And how inexplicably foolish you felt when someone else had failed at loving you.
“There’s no way of knowing how a relationship will turn out,” Zoe said. “You gave it a try.”
“Did I ever,” Chris said bitterly, still not looking at her. “But I have no more luck being gay than I did being straight.”
“Chris… hardly anyone ends up with the first person they love.”
“Some people don’t end up with anyone at all. I don’t want to be one of those.”
“Justine says if you never find Mr. Right, you should have as much fun as possible with a lot of Mr. Wrongs.”
He let out a bleak laugh. “That sounds like Justine.”
“And she says you learn something from every relationship.”
“What have I learned?” he asked glumly.
Zoe held her hand over the pan, testing the heat as it rose against her palm. When it felt right, she poured the eggs into the pan and began to work them with a fork. “You’ve learned more about who you are,” she said eventually. “And what kind of love you want.”
She broke the rich curdles of the egg as they formed, and shook the pan with deft flicks of her wrist, working with the eggs, swirling until the mixture set firmly. Turning the flame on high, she gave the omelet a last caress of high heat, imparting a faint toasted finish to the delicate surface. Tipping the pan over a plate, she let the omelet roll out into a pristine sun-colored cylinder.
She garnished the plate with orange slices and fresh lavender petals, and set the plate in front of Chris.
“That looks amazing,” Chris said, “but I don’t think I can eat anything.”
“Try just a bite or two.”
Looking resigned, Chris sectioned a bite of the omelet and put it into his mouth. His teeth closed on the combination of textures—tender eggs, the subtle pungency of the herbs, the kiss of sea salt, and a smoky pinch of ground black pepper. Without a word, he took another bite, and another. A slight flush rose in his cheeks as he ate with focused pleasure.
“If I were straight,” he said after a moment, “I’d marry you again.”
Zoe smiled and poured more coffee into his cup.
While Chris ate, Zoe made apricot lemon teacakes for the afternoon tea that was set out daily for the guests. She mixed the ingredients and poured the batter into a minimuffin pan. As she worked, she told Chris about her grandmother’s deteriorating health. He listened with quiet sympathy.
“It’s going to be tough on you,” he said. “I’ve known some people who’ve taken care of relatives with dementia.”
“I’ll handle it,” she said.
“How can you be sure?”
“There’s no other choice. My plan is to rise to the occasion, whatever the occasion turns out to be.”
“Have you talked to your dad about your decision?”
A wry smile crossed Zoe’s lips as she sat at the table. “He and I don’t talk. We e-mail. He says he’s going to visit us once I get Emma settled at the lakeside cottage.”
“Oh, joy.” Chris had met Zoe’s father, James, on a handful of occasions, and the only thing they’d had in common was that, as males, they both possessed the XY chromosome. After the wedding, Chris had quipped that Zoe’s father had walked her down the aisle with all the tenderness of a man mailing a package at the UPS store.
“I don’t think Emma will look forward to it any more than I do,” Zoe admitted. “They haven’t communicated at all since the divorce.”
“ Our divorce?” Chris asked incredulously. “Why?”
“He’s against divorce for any reason.”
“But he had one.”
“He didn’t, actually. My mother abandoned us, but there was never a divorce.” Zoe smiled as she added ruefully, “He told me I should have tried to be a better wife, and taken you to counseling, and then you wouldn’t have turned gay.”
“I didn’t turn gay, I was gay. Am.” Chris shook his head with a perturbed laugh. “Counseling wouldn’t have changed that any more than it could have changed the shape of my nose or the color of my eyes. Look, do you want me to talk to him about this? I never dreamed that he would have blamed you for something like—”
“No. That’s incredibly sweet of you, but it’s not necessary. I don’t think my father really blamed me, in his heart. He just takes every chance he gets to be critical. He can’t help it. Because blaming other people is easier than thinking about what he might have to blame himself for.” She reached over and put her hand on his. “But thank you.”
Chris turned his hand palm up and squeezed hers before letting go. “What else is going on in your life?” he asked after a moment. “Is there a Mr. Right in the picture? Or a Mr. Wrong?”
Zoe shook her head. “No time for a love life. My work keeps me busy. And on top of that I’m getting the house ready for my grandmother.”
Chris stood to take his plate to the sink. “You’ll let me know if you need help, I hope.”
“Yes.” Zoe stood as well. She felt relieved, as if their relationship had finally become what it was ultimately supposed to be. Friendship… nothing more, nothing less.
“Thank you,” Chris said simply. “You’re a beautiful woman, Zoe, and I’m not just talking about the outside. I hope to God you find the right guy someday. I’m sorry I got in the way of that.” He reached out for her, and she went into his arms and hugged him. “I needed to find out if you still hated me,” Chris said above her head. “I’m so glad you don’t.”
“I could never hate you,” she protested.
The kitchen door opened as someone came in. Chris’s arms loosened. Zoe glanced at the doorway, expecting to see Justine.
Alex Nolan stood there, hard-faced and unsmiling. In the confines of the kitchen, Alex looked bigger than Zoe had remembered him, and meaner, and she could almost swear that those moments when he’d held her at the lakeside cottage had been nothing but a dream. As his wintry gaze raked over Zoe, an unmistakable tension inhabited his stillness.
“Hi,” Zoe said. “This is my ex-husband, Chris Kelly. Chris, this is Alex Nolan. He’s going to do the remodeling for the lake house.”
“That hasn’t been decided yet,” Alex said.
Still keeping an arm around Zoe’s shoulders, Chris reached out to shake Alex’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Alex returned the handshake in a businesslike manner, his gaze returning to Zoe. “I’ll come back another time,” he said brusquely.
“No, please stay. Chris was just leaving.” Seeing the accordion-pleated folder in his hand, Zoe asked, “Are those the plans? I would love to see them.”
Alex returned his attention to Chris. Although his expression betrayed nothing, a sense of hostility seemed to char the air. “You live on the mainland?” he asked.
“Seattle,” Chris said equably.
“Got family here?”
“Just Zoe.”
The reply was followed by a silence as prickly as a dead juniper bramble.
Removing his arm from Zoe, Chris murmured, “Thanks for breakfast. And… for everything else.”
“Take care,” she said softly.
A metallic jingle cut through the air. Alex was fiddling with his car keys in a show of impatience.
Chris exchanged a private glance with Zoe, his brows drawing together as if to ask silently, What is his deal?
Zoe wasn’t entirely certain. She gave Chris a bemused little shake of her head.
Her ex-husband left the kitchen, closing the door carefully behind him.
Zoe turned to confront Alex. He was more casually dressed than she had ever seen him, in a gray T-shirt and paint-stained jeans. The worn attire looked good on him, the denim clinging loosely to the hard lines of his body, shirtsleeves taut over sturdy arms.
“Would you like some breakfast?” Zoe asked.
“No, thanks.” Alex went to set his wallet and keys on the table. He removed a sheaf of paper from the folder. “This won’t take long. I’ll point out a couple of things and leave the drawings with you.”
“I’m not in a rush,” Zoe said.
“I am.”
A frown knit between her brows. She came to stand beside him at the table, while he spread out meticulous floor plans, elevations, and interior renderings.
Alex spoke without looking at her. “Later I’ll bring some catalogs so you can look at finishes and fixtures. How long have you been divorced?”
Zoe blinked in confusion at the abrupt question. “A couple of years.”
He showed no reaction other than a deepening of the brackets on either side of his mouth.
“We’d been best friends since high school,” Zoe said. “As it turned out, we should have just stayed friends. I haven’t seen Chris for a long time. He just showed up this morning out of the blue.”
“What you do with your ex is your own business.”
Zoe didn’t like the way he’d worded that. “I’m not doing anything with him. We’re divorced.”
His shoulders hitched in a taut shrug. “A lot of people have sex with their exes.”
She blinked in consternation. “What’s the point of sleeping with someone after you divorce them?”
“Convenience.” At her uncomprehending stare, Alex elaborated, “No dinners, no pretenses, no manners. It’s the equivalent of a takeout meal.”
“I don’t like takeout meals,” Zoe said, affronted. “And that’s the worst reason I’ve ever heard to have sex with someone, just because they’re convenient. That’s… that’s swallop. ”
He arched a brow, his stony belligerence seeming to fade. “What’s swallop?”
“Something reconstituted. Always terrible. Like dried potatoes, or processed canned meat, or powdered egg product.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “If you’re hungry enough, swallop isn’t so bad.”
“But it’s not the real thing.”
“Who cares? It’s a bodily function.”
“Eating?”
“I was referring to sex,” he said dryly. “But not every meal—or sex act—has to be a meaningful experience.”
“I don’t agree. To me, sex is about commitment, trust, honesty, respect—”
“Jesus.” He had begun to laugh quietly, not in a nice way. “With standards like that, do you ever get laid?”
Zoe stared at him indignantly.
As Alex looked back at her, his amusement dissolved. He braced his hands on the table on either side of her, their bodies close but not touching. Her breath shortened, and her heart began to beat in a wild staccato.
His face was right above hers, the touch of his breath cool and sweet, like cinnamon gum. “Haven’t you ever had sex just for the hell of it?”
Zoe blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she managed to say.
“I mean rock-your-world sex with someone you don’t give a damn about. Raw, hard-core, wrong on every level. But you don’t care, because it feels too good to stop. You do anything you want because you don’t have to talk about it afterward. No rules, no regrets. Just two people in the dark, roughing each other up in all the right ways.”
For a split second, Zoe’s unruly imagination seized on the idea, and a jolt of heat went to the pit of her stomach. She could feel her pulse beating at the front of her throat. Alex’s gaze tracked the visible throb before returning to her dilated eyes. In an abrupt motion, he pushed away from her. “You should try it sometime,” he advised coolly. “Looks like your ex is available.”
Zoe tucked her hair behind her ears and made a show of retying her apron. “Chris didn’t visit me for that,” she eventually said. “He just broke up with his partner. He needed to talk it over with someone.”
“With you.” Alex gave her a sardonic glance.
“Yes,” she said warily, sensing the approach of an insult. “Why not with me?”
“A woman who looks like you? If your ex shows up to talk over his problems, cupcake, it’s not for your keen psychological insight. It’s a booty call.”
Before she could reply, the oven timer went off.
Stung, Zoe was tempted to order him out of her kitchen. She picked up a couple of potholders and went to the oven. As soon as she opened the door, the heady fragrance of hot cake poured out in a perfumed steam of apricot and vanilla and heady spices. Taking deep breaths of the opulent sweetness, Zoe reflected that Alex was the most cynical man she’d ever met. How terrible it would be to view the world the way he did.
If he weren’t such an arrogant bully, she might have felt sorry for him.
Reaching into the oven with a potholder in each hand, Zoe grasped the heavy-gauge steel pan. As she pulled it out, the burning edge of the pan touched the inside of her arm, and she inhaled sharply. She was so accustomed to minor kitchen mishaps that she didn’t say a word, only set the pan calmly on the counter.
Alex was at her side in an instant. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
His gaze shot to the angry red splotch on her arm. Scowling, he pulled her to the kitchen sink and started cold water running from the faucet. “Hold it under there. Do you have a first-aid kit?”
“Yes, but I don’t need it.”
“Where is it?”
“In the cabinet under the sink.” Zoe moved a few inches to the side, so he could open the door and extract the white plastic box. “It’s just a little burn,” she said, pulling her arm out of the water to look at it. “Not even enough to blister.”
Alex took her wrist to reposition her arm under the water. “Keep it there.”
“You’re overreacting,” she told him. “Do you see the marks on my hands and arms? All cooks have scars. This spot on my elbow”—she showed him her free arm—“that was when I tried to rest my arm on the counter after forgetting that I’d just set a hot pan there.” She pointed to places on her left hand. “And these marks are from knives… this was from trying to pit an avocado that wasn’t ripe enough, and this was from deboning fish. Once I stabbed right through my palm while shucking oysters—”
“Why aren’t you wearing protective gear?” he demanded.
“I suppose I could wear a chef’s jacket,” Zoe said, “but on hot days like this, it wouldn’t be very comfortable.”
“You need Kevlar welding sleeves. I can get you some.”
Darting a bemused glance at Alex, Zoe realized he wasn’t joking. Some of her irritation faded. “I can’t wear welding sleeves in the kitchen,” she said.
“You need some kind of protection.” Alex took her free hand and examined it with a lingering frown, his fingertips moving from one small white scar to another. “I never thought about cooking being dangerous,” he said. “Unless one of my brothers or I were trying to eat something we’d made.”
The brush of his fingers caused a ripple of sensation to run up her arm. “None of you can cook?” she asked.
“Sam’s not too bad. Our oldest brother, Mark, is limited to making coffee. But it’s good coffee.”
“And you?”
“I can build a great kitchen. I just can’t make anything edible in it.”
Zoe made no protest as he adjusted her arm under the water again. He cradled her hand as if it were an injured bird.
“You have scars, too.” Zoe dared to put her fingertip against a thin line on the side of his forefinger. “What’s that from?”
“Box cutter.”
She moved to another healed-over mark, a deep gouge on the pad of his thumb. “And this?”
“Table saw.”
Zoe winced.
“Most carpentry accidents come from trying to save time,” Alex said. “Like when you need to construct a jig to hold something in place while you’re running a router. But instead you wing it, and then you pay for it.” He released her hand and opened the first-aid kit, rummaging until he found a small bottle of acetaminophen. “Where do you keep the glasses?”
“The cabinet over the dishwasher.”
Alex took a juice glass from the cabinet and filled it with water from the refrigerator dispenser. He gave two tablets to Zoe, and handed her the water.
“Thank you,” she said. “I think my arm’s okay now.”
“Give it a little more time. Burn damage keeps going for a few minutes after it starts.”
Resignedly Zoe stared at the water as it streamed over her skin. Alex stayed beside her, making no move to touch her again. Unlike the companionable silences she’d shared with Chris, this silence was tense and voltaic.
“Zoe,” he said in a rough-soft murmur. “What I said to you earlier… I was out of line.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I… apologize.”
Guessing that he was a man who made apologies rarely, and never easily, Zoe relented. “It’s okay.”
In the charged silence that followed, Zoe became acutely conscious of Alex’s solid presence beside her, the steady counterpoint of his breath to her own. He reached out to test the temperature of the water, his forearm heavily muscled and dusted with dark hair.
She glanced discreetly at the hard perfection of his profile, the dark-angel handsomeness of a man who stole his pleasures wherever he could find them. The hints of dissolution—the subtle shadows beneath his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks—only made him seem sexier, elegantly lethal.
An affair with him would cost a woman every ideal she had.
Justine was right—if Zoe wanted to start dating again, Alex was not the one to start with. But Zoe suspected that even though going to bed with him would inevitably turn out to be a mistake, it was almost certainly the kind a woman would enjoy making.
The prolonged exposure to the cold water sent fine tremors through her. The more she tried to steel herself against them, the worse they became.
“Do you have a jacket or a sweater around here?” Alex asked.
She shook her head.
“Should I ask Justine—”
“No,” Zoe said immediately. “Justine would call for an ambulance and a team of paramedics. Let’s keep her out of this.”
Amusement flickered in his eyes. “Okay.” He settled a hand on her back, the warmth of his palm sinking through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.
Zoe closed her eyes. After a moment, she felt Alex’s arm slide across her shoulders. He was big and warm, his body practically radiating heat. A pleasant sun-bleached, faintly salty smell clung to him.
“I have to tell you something,” she managed to say. “About how I know that Chris’s visit wasn’t a booty call.”
Alex’s arm loosened. “It’s none of my—”
“The reason I’m sure,” she said, “is because…” She hesitated, the words lodging behind a lump in her throat. Alex might blame her for the failure of the marriage, the way her father and Chris’s family had. He might be insulting or even cruel. Or worse, he might not care at all.
There was only one way to find out.
As she forced herself to say it, the lump broke, and her chest and throat filled with heat. “Chris left me for another man.”