Dream Lake (Friday Harbor 3)

“You’ve done an amazing amount of work,” Zoë replied. “And the most important things were the kitchen and my grandmother’s room, which are beautiful.” Scrutinizing the mannequin, Zoë pinned a brooch on an empty space. “I’m either going to have to stop collecting,” she said, “or get another mannequin.”

Alex stood next to her, looking over the array of jewelry. “When did you start the collection?”

“When I was sixteen. My grandmother gave this to me for my birthday.” She showed him a flower covered with crystals. “And I bought this to celebrate graduating from culinary school.” She held up a red enameled lobster with gold antennae before fastening it to the mannequin’s chest.

“What about that one?”Alex asked, looking at an antique gold-framed ivory cameo.

“A wedding present from Chris.” She smiled. “He told me if you own a cameo for seven years, it becomes a lucky charm.”

“You’re due for some luck,” he said.

“I think people don’t always know when lucky things are happening to them. Or they only realize it later. Like the divorce from Chris. It turned out to be the best thing for both of us.”

“That wasn’t luck. That was bailing out after a mistake.”

She made a little face at him. “I try not to think of the marriage as a mistake, but more like something fate put in my path. To help me learn, and grow.”

“What did you learn?” he asked with a mocking gleam in his eyes.

“How to be better at forgiving. How to be more independent.”

“Don’t you think you could have learned that stuff without some higher power putting you through a divorce?”

“You probably don’t even believe in a higher power.”

He shrugged. “Existentialism has always made a lot more sense to me than fate, God, or chance.”

“I’ve never been sure exactly what existentialism is,” Zoë confessed.

“It’s knowing the world is crazy and meaningless, so you have to find your own truth. Your own meaning. Because nothing else makes sense. No higher power, just human beings stumbling through life.”

“But … does having no faith make you happier?” she asked doubtfully.

“To existentialists, you can only be happy if you can manage to live in a state of denial about the absurdity of human existence. So … happiness is out.”

“That’s horrible,” Zoë said, laughing. “And way too deep for me. I like things I can be sure of. Like recipes. I know that the right amount of baking powder makes a cake rise. And eggs bind the other ingredients together. And life is basically good, and so are most people, and chocolate is proof that God wants us to be happy. See? My mind works on the most superficial level possible.”

“I like how your mind works.” As he held her gaze, there was a brief, hot flicker in his eyes. “Call if you have any problems,” he said. “Otherwise I won’t see you for a couple of days.”

“I wouldn’t dream of bothering you during your time off. You’ve worked practically nonstop since the project started.”

“It’s no hardship to work,” he said, “when I’m being paid well.”

“I appreciate it anyway.”

“I’ll come to the cottage on Monday. From now on I won’t start until about ten, so your grandmother will have time to get up and have breakfast before all the noise starts.”

“Will Gavin and Isaac come with you?”

“No. Just me, that first week. I don’t want to overwhelm Emma with too many new faces all at once.”

Zoë was touched and a little surprised by the realization that Alex had considered her grandmother’s feelings so carefully. “What are you going to do this weekend?” she asked, obliging Alex to stop at the doorway.

He gave her an opaque glance. “Darcy’s visiting. She wants to stage the house to sell faster.”

“I thought you said it was already impersonal. Isn’t that the point of staging?”

“Apparently not always. Darcy’s bringing an expert in target staging. The theory is that you’re supposed to fill the house with colors and objects that make potential buyers connect emotionally with the place.”

“Do you think that will work?”

He shrugged. “Regardless of what I think, it’s Darcy’s house.”

So Alex would be spending at least part of the weekend, if not all of it, in the company of his ex-wife. Zoë remembered what he’d once told her, that he and Darcy had slept together after the divorce out of sheer convenience. It would probably happen again, she thought, while depression settled over on her. There was no reason for Alex to turn down an offer of sex if Darcy was willing.

Maybe it wasn’t depression. It felt worse than that. It felt as if she’d made a pie with poisoned fruit and eaten all of it.

No, definitely not depression. It was jealousy.

Zoë tried to smile through the feeling as if she didn’t care. The effort made her mouth hurt. “Have a good weekend,” she managed to say.

“You, too.” And he left.

He always left without looking back, Zoë thought, and jabbed another brooch into the glittering mannequin.

“What was all that crap about?” the ghost asked in a surly tone, walking beside Alex. “Existentialism … life is meaningless … you can’t really believe that.”

“I do believe it. And stop eavesdropping on me.”

“I wouldn’t have to if there was anything else to do.” The ghost scowled at him. “Look at yourself. You’re being haunted by a spirit. That’s about as unexistential as you can get. The fact that I’m with you means it doesn’t all end with death. And it also means that someone or something put me in your life for a reason.”

“Maybe you’re not a spirit,” Alex muttered. “You could be a figment of my imagination.”

“You have no imagination.”

“Maybe you’re a symptom of depression.”

“Then why don’t you take some Prozac, and see if I disappear?”

Alex paused at the door of his truck and regarded the ghost with a contemplative scowl. “Because you wouldn’t,” he finally said. “I’m stuck with you.”

“So you’re not an existentialist,” the ghost said smugly. “You’re still just an as**ole.”

Sixteen

“You look good,” were the first words Darcy uttered when Alex opened the front door. Her tone was inflected with mild surprise, as if she’d expected to find him sprawled in a pile of empty cough syrup bottles and drug paraphernalia.

“So do you,” Alex said.

Darcy lived and dressed as if she were the subject of a fashion magazine layout, ready for photographs to be taken at random angles. Her exterior was a hard, brilliant gloss of perfect makeup and retail chic. Her blouse was unfastened one more button than necessary, her hair flat-ironed and expertly highlighted. If she had any deeper goals than acquiring money by any and all means available, she had never expressed them. Alex didn’t blame her for that. He knew without a doubt that she would marry again soon, to some wealthy and well-connected man from whom she would eventually garner an immense divorce settlement. Alex didn’t blame her for that, either. She had never pretended to be anything other than what she was.

Pleasantries were exchanged as Darcy introduced the stager, an artfully made-up woman of indeterminate age, with layered hair that had been sprayed until it didn’t move. Her name was Amanda. Darcy and the stager wandered through the sparely furnished house, occasionally asking questions that obliged Alex to follow in their wake. The place was scrupulously clean, every wall freshened with touch-up paint, the lighting and plumbing in perfect working order, the landscaping tidy with beds of new mulch.

Darcy had set a Vuitton overnight bag inside the front entranceway. Alex glanced at it with a frown, having hoped that Darcy wouldn’t stay after the stager had left. The prospect of making conversation with his ex-wife was depressing. They had run out of things to say to each other even before the divorce.

The prospect of ha**ng s*x with his ex-wife was even more depressing. No matter if his body was clamoring to fire one off, no matter if Darcy was hot and willing … it wasn’t going to happen. Because the problem with having tried something new and amazing was that you could never go back and take the same pleasure in the thing you used to enjoy. You could never erase the awareness that somewhere out there was a better experience you weren’t having. You knew you were eating a canned biscuit after you’d tried a fluffy, tender homemade one with a crisp buttered top, the whole of it split open and doused with honey.

“You should tell Darcy before she decides to stay,” the ghost said, lounging nearby.

“Tell her what?”

“That you’re not going to sleep with her.”

“What makes you think I’m not?”

The ghost had the effrontery to grin. “Because you’re looking at that bag like it’s full of live cobras.” The smile changed, gentling at the edges. “And Darcy doesn’t fit with your new direction.”

The ghost had been in a strange mood the past few days, impatient, eager, worried, and most of all filled with a burning quicksilver joy at the knowledge that he would see Emma soon. It rattled Alex to be in the vortices of such intense moods—he was having enough trouble keeping his own emotions in check. Probably the thing he missed most about drinking was how it had kept him anesthetized from that kind of turmoil.

What Alex did appreciate was that the ghost had been making an effort to give him as much space as possible, trying not to interfere. The remark he’d just made about Darcy was the only vaguely manipulative thing he’d said in days. He hadn’t uttered a word about the way Alex had kissed Zoë at the cottage. In fact, he’d actually pretended not to notice. For his part, Alex had tried like hell to forget it.

Except that part of his brain had locked around it, viselike, and wouldn’t let go. Zoë’s sparkling blue eyes looking up into his, the provocative way she had lifted on her toes and molded herself against him. He had never been so overwhelmed by anyone, by the idea that he might actually have made a woman happy for a moment. And she had moved with him so easily, letting him do whatever he wanted. She would be like that in bed, open to anything. Trusting him.

Christ.

If that happened, before long he would have turned her into someone else entirely, someone cynical, angry, guarded. Like Darcy. That was what happened to women who got mixed up with him.

After a couple of hours of discussing ideas and looking at photos and designs on an electronic tablet, Amanda said it was time to leave. She didn’t want to miss the late afternoon ferry.

“I’ll take Amanda to Friday Harbor and pick up something for dinner,” Darcy told Alex. “How does Italian sound?”

“You’re staying overnight?” Alex asked reluctantly.

Darcy looked sardonic. “You saw my bag.” A quick blink of annoyance as she saw his face. “You don’t have a problem with that, I hope. Considering the fact that it’s my house.”

“I’m maintaining it and paying the bills until it sells,” he said. “Not a bad deal for you.”

“True.” She smiled, her gaze provocative. “Maybe I’ll give you a bonus later.”

“Not necessary.”

A little over an hour later, Darcy returned with takeout boxes of pasta marinara and salads. They plated the food and sat at the kitchen table, just as they had done while they were married. Since neither of them cooked, they had lived on takeout and frozen dinners, or had eaten at restaurants.

“I got a bottle of Chianti,” Darcy said, rummaging in the drawer for a bottle opener.

“None for me, thanks.”

She cast a surprised glance over her shoulder. “You’re joking, right?”

The ghost, who was sitting on one of the counters with his long legs dangling, asked rhetorically, “Since when does he joke about anything?”

“I just don’t feel like it tonight,” Alex said to Darcy, and sent the ghost a hard glance.

“Okay,” the ghost said, easing off the counter, sauntering away. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone.”

Darcy took two wineglasses from the cabinet, filled them both, and brought them to the table. “Amanda says we need to make the house look warmer. It’s going to be easy, since the house is already uncluttered and everything is in neutrals. She’s going to bring colorful pillows for the sofa, some silk trees, centerpieces for the tables, things like that.”

Alex looked at the glass of Chianti, the liquid glowing pomegranate red. He remembered the taste of it, dry and violety. It had been weeks since he’d had a drink. One glass of wine wouldn’t hurt. People drank wine with dinner all the time.

He reached for the glass but didn’t pick it up, only ran his fingertips along the smooth circular base of the stem. He pushed it away an inch.

Dragging his gaze to Darcy’s face, he focused on what she was saying. She was talking about her latest promotion—she was a marketing communications manager for a massive software company, and she had just been put in charge of the internal business group newsletter, which would go out to thousands of people.

“Good for you,” Alex said. “I think you’ll be great at it.”

She grinned at him. “You almost sound like you mean it.”

“I do. I’ve always wanted you to be successful.”

“That’s news to me.” She drank deeply of her wine. Extending a long leg, she rested her foot on his thigh. Delicately her toes began to burrow into his lap. “Have you been with anyone?” she asked. “Since our last time?”

He shook his head and caught her wiggling foot, keeping it still.

“You need to let off steam,” Darcy said.

“No, I’m fine.”

A disbelieving smile touched her lips. “You’re not trying to turn me down, are you?”

Alex found himself reaching for his wineglass, his fingers closing lightly around the gleaming bowl. He cast a wary glance around the kitchen, but the ghost was nowhere to be seen. Lifting the glass, he took a sip, and the flavor of wine filled his mouth. He closed his eyes briefly. It was a relief. It promised that he would feel better soon. He wanted more. He wanted to guzzle it without pausing for breath.