Champagne and Lemon Drops: A Blueberry Springs Chick Lit Contemporary Romance (22 page)

"Fine, I'll put our place up for sale." He
turned on his heel and strode off, his hands buried deep in his
pockets, shoulders hunched like he was pushing against a snow storm
rather than the odd falling leaf.

Beth swallowed hard, struggling to find her
voice. To shout out not to sell the place. To ask if they could try
again. Instead she watched as the darkness slowly closed around his
form.

Chapter 13

"So, tell me, what were the men in Paris
like?" Mary Alice asked Beth, her eyes glittering with
excitement.

"Mary Alice, you're married. Not to mention,
have kids my age." Beth placed breath mints and a carton of milk by
the register.

"So what?" She waved a hand and gave an
impish grin. "I've heard about the Italian men and even met a few
here and there, but the French? No such luck. Are they smooth and
stuck up? Are they good lovers? I've heard they're short." She
raised her brows. "In more ways than one."

"Mary Alice!" Beth scolded with an
embarrassed laugh.

Mary Alice guffawed and leaned against the
counter, arms crossed. She pressed her body forward, pushing her
breasts up, creating a deep gulch that hid great treasures of
Kleenex, cash, cigarettes, and anything else Mary Alice wanted
close at hand. "You can't convince me you didn't see the
undercarriage of a man while in France."

"Mary Alice!" Beth gasped, her face on
fire.

"Look at you glow. You may
as well take out a flashing billboard saying you got some in
France." Mary Alice raised her eyebrows. "So? What
are
the French men like?"
She paused, her eyes boring into Beth. "Or was it a more
local
man?"

Beth let out a snort and tried to look
unimpressed. There was no way she was revealing to anyone in town
what had happened between her and Nash. It was their little secret,
not fodder for the town's gossip fest. In fact, to help curb any
suggestion of them being more than friends they'd gone as far as
avoid each other for the past week and a half. At first, with the
excitement of everyone asking about the trip she hadn't really
missed him, but now his absence was starting to nag at her. In
France, and even before, she had gotten used to leaning over to
whisper her thoughts in his ear or to point out something unusual.
Now, she had to sneak off to text him. And it wasn't the same.
Going back to friends sucked. She missed Nash like an amputee
missed their lost limb. It probably didn't help how her feelings
about Oz had been stirred up at Cynthia's party last week.

"Well?" Mary Alice asked. "The French
men...?"

"It's hard to tell with the language barrier
and all," Beth admitted truthfully. "Although, they do seem better
dressed than the ones around here."

"Honey," Mary Alice wheezed with her
smoker's voice, "that don't take much."

"The sights were amazing. We went to the
Louvre, which is massive. I got lost trying to find the ladies
room. There was more than one."

"You already told me about the stuffy art. I
wanna know if you and that Nash fellow finally fit it
together."

Beth gasped and took a step
back. "Mary Alice!
Really.
" Beth gave her head an
indignant shake. "I honestly can't believe you would ask such a
thing!"

"Ha! And peanut butter is pink. You know the
whole town is speculating and I'm the only one with the courage to
ask."

"The word you're looking for isn't courage,
Mary Alice."

Mary Alice laughed. "Look at you with your
spunk. You've been mooning about since you got back. Something
happened to you, girl." She gave another laugh and reached over the
counter to give Beth's cheek a light pat, enveloping her in a
familiar and strangely comforting waft of stale cigarette smoke.
"You are so cute when you act all confident."

Beth slapped the latest
edition of
In Style
on the counter. She gave Mary Alice a firm don't-mess-with-me
look. "Ring me up."

"That all?" Mary Alice looked at the pile,
then up at Beth. "I don't want you getting all the way home and
finding you need yet more milk. Whacha makin' that you need milk
every night after the grocery store closes, anyway? You didn't get
yourself a French baby did you?" Mary Alice raised an eyebrow and
eyed Beth's midriff.

"Very funny. You missed your calling as a
stand-up comedian."

Mary Alice smirked and calculated Beth's
small pile of purchases. "You know," Mary Alice said as she rang up
the items, which she claimed was strictly for accounting purposes,
"it's good to see the life back in you."

Beth was taken aback. "Sorry?"

"That Nash fellow. I had my doubts about
him, being all slick and citified, but he's brought you right back
alive again and that's good to see."

"Oh," Beth managed to muster before scooping
up her items. "Um, we're not together." She retreated to the safety
of the street before Mary Alice could pull any meaningful
information out of her.

Mary Alice called after her, "I hear you're
moving out of Katie's; if you need a place our guest room is still
available!"

Not on your big, fat life.

God, was her life that easy to read? Could
they really tell that she and Nash had been an item? And did it
matter if they did?

Being back in Blueberry Springs was a cold
splash of reality. Refreshing, because everyone spoke the same
language, but also shockingly abrasive because everyone used that
same language to interfere. How quickly she had gotten used to
being anonymous.

"Beth, wait up," called Katie, scurrying
down the street in a wooly, fashionable hat. It wasn't warm enough
for the light jacket Beth was wearing and she hugged herself. Since
being away, the air had lost the heady scent of decomposing leaves
and the first light snowfall had occurred making her disappointed
she'd missed it. Thin patches of snow hung on the odd clumps of
leaves still clinging to the trees in the square across the street.
Winter was coming.

"Hey." She whacked Katie in
the chest with
In Style
.

"Sweet! Thanks for the ones from France,
too. C'est inçroyable! The pictures are lovely, unfortunately the
text is really hard to understand."

"I thought you knew French?"

"Yeah, but this season
they're talking about things... differently. I don't know. It's
their frame of reference or something. I ended up ordering a
French-English dictionary because Nash stopped translating for me.
He
claims
it takes
up too much patient time. Truthfully, I think his French isn't so
hot." She rolled her eyes. "He doesn't even pronounce Christian
Louboutin properly."

"His French is just fine, Katie."

"Ooh. Look at you sticking up for Doctor
Boy." Katie nudged her with an elbow and a grin.

Beth rolled her eyes and
opened her car door, vowing to never, ever hint about her Parisian
fling to Katie. The really, really good Parisian fling. The one she
would repeat in an instant. The one that kept bursting into her
thoughts and dreams and was likely to have her panting and calling
out in the night. Hello, embarrassing! Especially with Katie just
one room over. The very definition of
awk-warrrrd
.

"Fluffy's up the tree again," Katie said.
"And Oz is a bit... preoccupied."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Beth said
tightly, imagining his arms wrapped around Mandy's naked frame. She
slung her purchases onto her Volvo's passenger seat. She didn't
need Oz and he didn't need her. And she really needed to stop
torturing herself about what might or might not be happening
between Oz and his ex.

She had moved on, right? Right.

Well, mostly. It still burned to think that
he'd chosen Mandy again over her. His fiancée.

Katie looked up and down the street then
leaned in and whispered, "He's drunk."

Beth frowned at Katie and checked her watch.
It wasn't even suppertime. "Drunk?"

"He's been having some... issues."

"Did he and Mandy break up?"

"He says they were never together."

"Yeah, right." Something was up between the
two of them. You didn't start rumors in town by doing nothing.

Katie shrugged and fiddled with her
ponytail. "I don't know. He and Mandy are telling two different
stories."

Beth nodded, thinking.

Katie lowered her voice. "I think maybe he's
having troubles with the rumors about you and Nash."

Beth's breathing stilled. "What rumors?"
Crap. Of course it wasn't just Mary Alice and a few others thinking
that.

Katie looked away. "You guys are an
item."

Beth laughed despite herself. How could she
be so stupid as to think she'd get off scott free and without Oz
having some sort of fit about it?

"Yeah, I know." Katie shot her a relieved
look. "Nash? Like, come on."

Beth climbed into her car. "He seemed fine
at Cynthia's party." Although the rumor she'd overheard at work
this morning was that he'd been best friends with the bottle since
then. Question was: who drove him to drink? Her or Mandy?

She stared out her windshield, blocking out
Katie's ramblings about how impersonal Nash was at work and the new
protocols he'd put in place to prevent nurses from eating at their
stations and how Beth would never go for someone like that and how
she was silly to have believed the rumors even for just a
minute.

"What about Fluffy?" Katie asked as Beth
started up her car.

"Call the goddamn fire department," Beth
snapped. Beth glanced at Katie's shocked expression. "What?"

"Mrs. Everett is going berserk."

Beth sighed. She pushed herself out of the
car. "Oh, fine. It's not like I haven't seen it done enough
times."

They crossed the street and stopped under
the large oak that grew near the sidewalk in the town square. Sure
enough, Fluffy was perched among the snowy branches, yowling her
little lungs out.

And just below the tree was Oz's groupie,
Mandy. She adjusted the neckline of her tight, wooly sweater, a
bright scarf obscuring most of her cleavage. "Where's Ozzie?"

"Why the hell should I know? You're the one
supposedly sticking your tongue down his throat."

Mandy backed up a step and opened her mouth
a few times before saying, "Hostile much?"

Beth snorted.

"Oh, Beth," breathed Mrs. Everett, her
mittened hand clamped on Beth's arm. "Poor Fluffy. She's been up
there for twenty minutes!"

"I'm sure she's fine. I'll get her down for
you," Beth said. She slipped from the woman's grasp and tossed her
fitted corduroy coat to the ground. She shivered as she sized up
the oak. Why on earth had she agreed to this? Tree climbing—both up
and down—was supposed to come naturally to cats, and an activity
she should have left firmly in childhood.

Beth hoisted herself into the tree's
branches, sending bits of snow and the odd stubborn leaf onto
Katie. She was halfway to Fluffy when a familiar voice yelled,
"Hey, Beth!"

Instinctively, she looked down and just
about fell out of the tree. Oz was gazing up through the branches,
his brown eyes filled with concern.

Beth stepped further out and stretched to
get a grip on the branch above her. She walked her feet up the
trunk and, with a soft grunt, hooked a leg over the branch. Sucking
in a deep breath, she concentrated on not falling. In a feat of
gravity-defying stupidity, she got herself on top of the branch
before realizing that what goes up must come down.

No wonder Fluffy always asked to get
rescued. Climbing down was going to be a real bitch.

Lovely. Lovely as poo pudding.

She tried to coax the cat
closer as she risked a glance at the people below. She swayed
dangerously and cursed under her breath. The ground was a
long
way down. Falling
would definitely make the paper. It would also make her a
laughingstock, get her a new nickname, as well as hit the rumor
mill's frontline.

Fluffy danced daintily toward Beth, gliding
her tail across Beth's face as she strutted away. Beth rubbed her
nose and waited for the cat to make a second flaunty pass, before
grabbing the squirming body and tucking it under her arm. Fluffy
wiggled and twisted until she was clutching Beth's shoulder with
every single one of her dagger-like front claws. Beth slowly
scooted her way back toward the trunk, resisting the urge to pull
Fluffy's nails out of her skin and leave the cat to her own
devices. How had Oz always made this look so easy?

"Here," came a voice directly behind her
ear, just about causing her to toss the cat out of the tree.

"What the hell are you doing?" Beth accused
Oz.

"Everyone knows it's my job to rescue
Fluffy." He wiggled his fingers at her. "Come on. I have to get
back to helping Benny with his cabinets."

"Are you sure? Katie said..." She
scrutinized Oz. He seemed sober. Shaven. Handsome.

"Just give me the cat." He stretched out his
hand, refusing to meet Beth's eye.

"Fine." Beth thrust the cat at him, trying
not to appear anywhere near as thankful as she felt. "Your
funeral."

Oz placed Fluffy on his shoulder and was
rewarded by a loud purr. Stupid cat.

In several quick moves the man and cat were
safely on the ground. He had to be sober to do that, didn't he? Or
maybe it helped to be drunk—you didn't stop to think, you just
moved.

Beth dangled both legs off the same side of
her branch. She was still several feet from the branch below.

"This is so not good."

She flipped onto her stomach, her legs still
a hopeless distance from the next branch. She shuffled closer to
the thick trunk and carefully reached out to hug it. Slowly, she
slipped off the branch and allowed herself to slide down, as if
hugging a rough, oversized firemen's pole. The bark lifted her
shirt, scraping her stomach and arms as she slid to what she hoped
was safety.