Losing Penny
Authors: Kristy Tate
Tags: #Romance, #Small Town, #Contemporary, #Cooking, #rose arbor
Copyright 2013 Kristy Tate
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Your stomach is only the size of your fist,
so it takes just a handful of food to fill it comfortably.
Keeping your portions reasonable will help
you stay in touch with your feelings of hunger and fullness, but
there is always room for ice cream. It really doesn’t matter how
full you are, ice cream slides in and fills all the empty
spaces.
From
Losing Penny and Pounds
Penny loved Richard
and she adored Rose, but her feelings toward pralines and cream
were mediocre at best. She didn’t want to look like a giant
pralines and cream ice cream cone on Rose’s wedding day. Dress
sizes come and go but wedding pictures are forever. She frowned at
her creamy white skin threatening to pop out of the too-tight and
too-sheer beige bodice.
Rose smiled at her from across the room.
Because of all the mirrors lining the walls, Rose came in
quadruples. Rose’s dress reminded Penny of a lampshade.
“Understated” was Rose’s buzzword for her simple, yet elegant, $150
thousand wedding. Penny’s brother couldn’t deny his finance even
one little thing, not even a waffle cone dress for his sister.
Sweat trickled down Penny’s face and along her neck—a slow but
steady procession toward the silk’s ruination.
“It’s a smidge snug.” Rose folded her arms
and frowned at Penny’s reflection.
“Harrumph,” the woman at Penny’s feet said.
Because of all the pins in the seamstress’s mouth, it surprised
Penny that the seamstress could say anything at all. Rose, a
fashion designer, understood tailor-speak, but Penny didn’t. She
guessed the woman said, “It doesn’t matter what she looks like,
everyone will be looking at you and you’ll be drop dead
gorgeous.”
“I know,” Rose sighed, “but we want her to
look her best.”
“Harrumph,” the woman retorted, which Penny
interpreted as “You can paint a barn in fancy colors, but it’s
still a barn.”
“She’s worked so hard, it would be a shame
not to show her off,” Rose said, smiling. She pinched the silk and
tugged the waffle cone slightly lower, exposing a double helping of
Penny’s cleavage.
Penny prayed that her pralines didn’t show.
She looked up at the ceiling, willing angels to swoop down and save
her modesty.
“Just a bit more va-va-voom.” Rose considered
Penny’s spillover with a puckered brow.
Penny spent the next three hours at the gym.
She wanted less va-va and definitely less voom. With grim
determination stamped on her face, she raced on the treadmill. All
around her Orange County toothpicks and giraffes pounded and
grunted on the machines, and their sweaty stench filled her head.
Music blared from the speakers and barbells clanged with thousands
of repetitions, but Penny only heard her own internal mantra: Less
va-va. Weigh less voom.
A soft, haunting music filled the night. The
notes rose with the flames and smoke to join the stars in the
glittering sky. Although Hans couldn’t see where the music came
from, he knew a girl played a flute. How did he know it was girl?
He couldn’t say, other than the tune filled his soul.
From
Hans and the Sunstone
Drake Islington sat
at a table in the back of the Fish House, a scowl creasing his
forehead. Watching Blair and listening to her play increased his
bad mood. His black thoughts sat on his shoulders like a cat. He
hated cats.
Drake had heard her play countless times in
their years together. He knew her and he thought that she knew him
better than anyone before or since. And then the notebook. Two
notebooks actually. The one she’d burned and the one she’d given
him. As if the second could possibly make up for the first.
Melinda Marx pulled out a wooden chair at
Drake’s table and settled into it, like she belonged there. She
leaned forward, her elbows propped on the table and her face inches
from Drake’s. Her perfume floated around him, like an invisible,
dangerous toxin.
“This is nice,” she whispered. “I haven’t
heard this band before. I wonder if they’re new.”
“Just the woman on the keyboard,” Drake said.
“She’s new, but the rest of the Bewick's Wrens have been playing
here on Friday nights for years.”
“Ah, she does look a little nervous.” Melinda
laughed and Drake wondered what she found funny. He studied Blair.
She looked stunning in her black dress, heels, and hose, but not
nervous. Drake tried to read her the way he once thought that he
could, but because he didn’t want to be caught staring, he forced
himself to look away. He took in the wide-planked floors, the tall
windows overlooking the Sound, and the night sky. Involuntarily his
gaze flicked over to Alec Rawlings, his replacement.
Alec shared a table with a chunky woman who
could pass as his sister. Drake tightened his grip on his glass,
comparing himself to Alec and coming up short, even though he had
at least a couple of inches on him. Everything about Alec raised
Drake’s blood pressure. First, and most importantly, he was with
Blair. Second, the man was a fly fishing guide and a New York Times
best-selling author.
Drake had begun writing as soon as he could
hold a pencil. He knew this because his mother had kept his
preschool stories. He studied literature at the university and
abroad, he had one PhD in the Romantic Age from Yale and was
working on his second in American Lit. He taught at Western
Washington University. Alec “Yokel” Rawlings wrote about fish.
And people bought
his
books.
The only people buying and reading Drake’s
books were his students, because they failed his classes if they
didn’t.
“You know why I asked you here tonight?”
Melinda whispered.
The smell of her breath mint wafted his way.
He shook his head, trying to clear it from all her odors.
“You don’t?” Melinda laughed again and leaned
closer.
Oh, he had an idea. Occasionally ideas still
visited him. It wasn’t very frequently, but every once in a while
an idea would make a flittering appearance. But none of them had
anything to do with Melinda. Most of his ideas were about
Vikings—murdering and pillaging Vikings.
“My father?” Melinda said.
Drake inhaled, remembering Don Marx, the car
guy. Melinda’s father owned a string of dealerships from Canada to
Portland. He wanted a biography. A horrible realization, like
monster trucks with revving engines, swept over Drake: Melinda
wanted Drake to write the biography.
Melinda possessed a magnetic rather than
classic beauty: tall, auburn hair, strong facial features. He
stared at her while she spoke, trying not to be caught in her
spell. His mouth hung open, and drool pooled on the other side of
his teeth. He reminded himself to close his mouth and to swallow,
but most of all to try to sound intelligent. His mind shot him
commands, but he could only sit and worry about drool.
The music stopped. His eyes followed Blair.
The woman who had typed all his work, filled in all his commas, had
left him for a fisherman. Sure, a best-selling, writing fisherman,
but still. Think of the stink and headless fish. When Blair and
Rawlings moved out onto the patio and out of sight, Drake tried to
focus on Melinda and her proposition.
“A surprise for my dad.” Melinda beamed.
“You want me to ghostwrite his
autobiography?”
“Yes!” Melinda squeezed his arm. “Except it’s
not an autobiography, it’s a biography. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a
surprise.”
Drake swallowed, his eyes fastened on the
French doors. Blair hadn’t returned yet, but he knew that she
would. The band had a second set to play. Why did he come here to
torture himself? She wasn’t coming back to him. He blew it. Poof.
She was gone. He watched her slip behind the keyboard and adjust
the stops. Rawlings bent to her, kissing her cheek.
“You’ll have to spend a lot of time with
him.”
Who, Rawlings?
Drake touched his
temple with his fingertips, looked at Melinda, and tried to block
out Blair and Rawlings. “Don’t you think he’ll get suspicious if
I’m hanging around?”
“No. This is where things get brilliant.”
The only thing brilliant about Melinda was
her teeth. Heck of a dental job.
“You can stay at the beach house right next
door! It’s all arranged!”
Drake slowly shook his head. “You can’t want
me to stay with you—”
“Oh, it’s not our beach house, it belongs to
this darling old lady. But as luck would have it, she’s broken her
foot! So she can’t come out this summer like she usually does, and
Dad asked if I wanted to use it.”
“Drake!” He felt a light touch on his arm and
heard a familiar voice.
Drake swiveled in his chair to face Andrea,
the lead singer of the Bewick's Wren.
“Hey, Andrea,” Drake said. He stood to hug
her, resisting the urge to ask her to provide an escape from
Melinda. Any excuse would do. He could fake help her jumpstart her
car. Rooting around under a greasy hood would be much better than
moping in the Fish House.