Читать книгу The Cupcake Queen - Patricia Coughlin - Страница 9

O livia hated to lose. To be truthful, it went beyond hate. She abhorred losing, to anyone, under any circumstances, but she especially loathed being bested by one of her four older and frequently infuriating brothers.

Together, they had seen to it that she learned to think fast and stand her ground at a very young age. Now twenty-four, she no longer had to dodge water balloons or check for reptiles before climbing into bed, but their propensity for teasing and practical jokes persisted, and she was adept at deflecting, countering or ignoring their efforts as the situation warranted. Sometimes she even enjoyed the challenge, and she dearly loved her brothers. She just flat-out refused to lose a wager to one of them…particularly as ridiculous a wager as the one she’d allowed herself to be roped into this time.

Olivia winced just thinking about it. If Brad had challenged her privately, she would have found some way to resist the bait. But no, her brother had tossed down the gauntlet in the middle of the Historical Association’s annual ball, in front of dozens of amused witnesses. In Baltimore society, it didn’t get any more public than that. She’d had no choice but to accept the challenge on the spot, and now pride and her own mulish nature demanded she follow through. Precisely as Brad had anticipated when he set her up, she thought with chagrin.

Pride and pigheadedness. The combination had landed her in a tight spot on more occasions than she cared to recall. But this time she’d even outdone herself. This time she was scaling new heights of absurdity. There certainly was no sane explanation for crawling out of bed at what she deemed the crack of dawn on this brisk October morning, to drive to some godforsaken little town in the backwoods of upstate New York.

She kicked the large suitcase by her side.

“Ouch.”

It was packed solid. So solid she’d had to jump up and down on it before she could close the zipper. The “Rules According to Brad” limited her to one suitcase. That presented a formidable challenge to a woman who required a minimum of two bags for a weekend jaunt, and in the end she’d resorted to cheating by wearing everything she couldn’t stuff into the suitcase.

There was a reason the layered look went out of style, she reflected, squirming uncomfortably inside a turtleneck jersey, denim shirt and three sweaters. She didn’t even want to think about how she must look. Not that it was likely to matter much where she was headed. For all she knew, the layered look was still the rage in Danby.

She reached for the oversize tote bag which she defied Brad to call a second suitcase and was rummaging through it for a map when her mother joined her in the foyer of Twin Brooks, the grand Georgian-style mansion that had been home to the Ashfields for nearly a century.

“What time do you expect Bradford?” Helen Ashfield asked her youngest, and most exasperating, child.

“I told him I was leaving at ten sharp and he’s supposed to be here to see me off. Which gives him—” Olivia glanced at her watch “—five minutes. Damn, why didn’t I think to stipulate that if he isn’t here on time, he forfeits?”

“Perhaps because you were too busy making a spectacle of yourself, throwing arrows…”

“I think you mean darts.”

“Of course, darts,” her mother conceded, oozing disapproval. “That makes it infinitely more dignified than tossing arrows at a map stuck to the wall of the Continental Ballroom.”

Olivia shrugged. “It seemed the most logical way to choose a destination under the circumstances.”

“Logical? Logical? There is not one scintilla of logic in this latest…escapade that you and your brother have cooked up.” She sighed. “I thought Bradford had more sense.”

“Well, he doesn’t.” It did not escape Olivia that her mother had not said that she thought she had more sense.

“Does that mean you are obligated to go along with whatever asinine scheme he proposes?”

“What can I say? He has a way of bringing out the worst of my inner child.”

“Please don’t joke, Olivia. Your father and I are very worried about you going off alone like this.”

“Mom, I’ve been traveling alone for years.”

“Traveling, yes. Not living and working and fending for yourself in some strange place. I cannot for the life of me understand why— Don’t say it.” She raised her palm to halt Olivia’s response. “I’m weary of hearing you say it’s the principle of the matter…whatever that means. How principle can be at stake in such a foolish, not to mention dangerous, stunt, eludes me.”

“We’re not talking about Beirut, Mom. I’m going to a town named Danby, population 14,000, for heaven’s sake. I suspect the crime rate there is lower than in Baltimore.”

“I don’t care what the population is. Every one of them is a stranger. And it’s not as if you’ll be spending a weekend. You’ll be there for months…”

“Eight weeks.”

“Alone, with no family, no job, no friends, no one who even knows who you are, for heaven’s sake.”

“That’s the point,” Olivia countered wryly, bringing a familiar, long-suffering expression to her mother’s face.

The sunlight streaming through the leaded glass windows of the foyer might have been hard on the appearance of another woman in her fifties, but not Helen Templeton Ashfield. A combination of good genes and good sense resulted in a softly glowing complexion, a still-slim and strong body and golden-brown hair, cut to flatter her classic features and draw attention to her brilliant blue eyes. The fact that the softly layered style was the look of the moment mattered not at all to her mother, who had a remarkable talent for knowing what was right for her…in hairstyles and in life.

Olivia liked to think she’d inherited those gifts. There was no question she had done all right in the looks department. Blond, blue-eyed and willowy, she was aware she could turn heads dressed in baggy sweats. Not that she would ever be caught dead in them. Her style was one she’d dubbed “casual glam,” and she wore it well. She clung to the belief that hidden somewhere inside her—deep inside—she possessed the same instinct for more significant matters. It was just taking her a while to dig it out.

She was convinced that when she at last found whatever it was she was meant to do with her life, she would know it instantly, the way her mother insisted she had known her future the very first time she’d set eyes on Richard Ashfield. She was definitely narrowing the field of possibilities. Through trial and error she had established she was not destined to work with young children or stay cooped up in an office all day or work around chemicals, especially those of a combustible nature. And she’d yet to set sight on a man and know for sure that she’d want to spend a weekend with him, much less “till death did them part.”

Her mother was still voicing her objections. Taking a deep breath, Olivia decided she would try one more time to make her understand what she was about to do. “Mom, the reason I’m going to Danby is precisely because I don’t know a soul there, to prove that I can survive completely on my own. With…how did my dear brother put it? No trust account…”

“No credit cards. No Daddy,” interrupted a masculine voice from behind her.

“Ah, the devil himself,” Olivia drawled, turning.

Brad Ashfield, like all the Ashfield men, was tall and athletic and heartbreakingly handsome. He grinned at his only sister and moved to give his mother a quick kiss on her cheek. “Good morning, Mother. Great day for a drive in the country, wouldn’t you say?”

Rubbing his hands together like the villain in a cartoon, he glanced from Olivia’s unsmiling face to the suitcase beside her and nodded approvingly. “One bag. See? You can follow orders. You’re even ready on time. Hell, Liv, if you keep this up, you just might last more than two days on a real job after all.”

“Oh, I intend to last more than two days. I intend to last the entire eight weeks. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for the pleasure of seeing you shave your head in public.”

“That would be a sight to draw a crowd, all right,” Brad agreed. Looking smug, he added, “Why, I’ll bet it would be nearly as big a crowd as we’re going to have when you shave yours.”

Her mother swung her horrified gaze to Olivia. “Oliv-ia, please tell me you are not going to—”

“I am not going to shave my head in public or anywhere else, Mother. I fully intend to win this bet. This victory will be my swan song, my final participation in anything my brothers dream up, proving once and for all that nothing my conniving, eavesdropping, interfering…”

Brad looked indignant. “I did not eavesdrop. I was simply dancing in close proximity to you and that Taylor guy when I happened to overhear you reeling him in with that old line about how you dreamed of running away from your unbearably tedious life of wealth and privilege and make your own way in the world.” He shook his head with mock dismay. “Really, Liv, I should have thought you’d retired that one years ago.”

“I believe ‘find myself’ was the phrase I used,” she informed him.

“Yes, of course. I remember thinking it was such a charmingly retro expression.”

“Did you think that right before you barged into my private conversation for the sole purpose of taunting me and backing me into a corner in public?”

“That’s not my recollection at all,” he said, stroking his chin with such phony sincerity that Olivia’s lip curled. “I only recall chatting with my sister and her partner after inadvertently bumping into them on the dance floor.”

“Inadvertently, my eye,” she muttered.

“After that I simply did my best to encourage you to follow your dream…you know, that lifelong dream of finding yourself. Hell, a lot of brothers wouldn’t even care that their kid sister was lost, never mind go to all this trouble to help her find herself. Seems to me you should be thanking me, not finding fault with every little—”

“Thanking you?” she snapped, tossing back thick, straight blond hair that fell past her shoulders. “You’re lucky I didn’t—”

“Stop! Both of you.” Their mother silenced them with a look that had shriveled braver souls. “You make me wish I could still send you to your rooms for a timeout.”

Olivia and Brad chuckled at their mother’s exasperation, and even she surrendered to a small smile edged with regret.

“But I can’t,” she continued, all business once again. “I can still threaten and nag, however, and I shall. Olivia, are you determined to go through with this?”

“Very,” she replied.

“In that case, Bradford, carry your sister’s suitcase to the car.”

He lifted it with some effort. “What do you have in here?” he grumbled. “Cement blocks?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she retorted. “You said one bag. That’s one bag. What’s in it is none of your business.”

“I’ll go along with that. And to prove what a good sport I am, I won’t even ask whether you packed on a few pounds overnight or you’re wearing enough to clothe an entire softball team.”

Olivia smiled at him. “Have I told you how much I’m going to miss you?”

“Actually, you haven’t,” countered her brother.

“This much,” she snapped, pressing the tip of her thumb and forefinger tightly together.

He laughed all the way out the door. Olivia linked arms with her mother as they followed.

“You have to promise to call,” said her mother.

“I will, Mom, I promise.”

“Every day.”

“Probably not every day. It’s long-distance and I’ll be paying my own phone bill. But I will definitely call as often as I can.”

Accepting that reluctantly, her mother continued. “And I want you to promise me you will be careful and not take risks of any nature.”

“No risks. You have my word. Trust me, if it was adventure I was looking for I wouldn’t be going to Danby.”

“And I also want your word that no matter what the final outcome of this, you will not, under any circumstances—”

“Shave my head? Trust me, Mom, do you think I’d have agreed to this if I thought there was the slightest possibility I could lose?”

Helen Ashfield searched her daughter’s eyes. “You wouldn’t have?”

Olivia shook her head, slipped on her sunglasses and grinned. “Not a chance. Think about it, Mom, all I have to do is find a job and support myself for eight weeks.”

The color seemed to drain from her mother’s face. “Oh, dear.”

“Don’t worry,” she said, hiding a trace of annoyance as she hugged her mother. “It’ll be a piece of cake.”

Maybe Brad was doing her a favor, she thought as she started down the brick steps to the wide circular drive. She was pretty tired of being the family “joke.” Good old Olivia, beautiful, but…basically useless. An intelligent woman but a pretty ornament. Well, they were all wrong. Just because she hadn’t discovered what she wanted to do with her life didn’t mean she was destined to do nothing. She was perfectly capable of doing anything she set her mind to, and she was about to prove it.

“Whoa. That’s not my car,” she told Brad as he swung her bag into the trunk of a white sedan parked behind her car.

“Of course it’s not,” he agreed cheerfully, closing the trunk. “You can’t use your car for the next eight weeks.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would violate the terms of our agreement.”

“There was no mention of cars in our agreement.”

“Sure there was,” he countered. “It falls under ‘trappings.’ We agreed you would not take with you any outward trappings of your true identity that might raise questions. That,” he continued, pointing at her beloved silver Jaguar, “is definitely an outward trapping.”

“And you,” retorted Olivia as she snatched the keys he was dangling before her, “are definitely a petty, devious jerk.”

Enduring the dents and scrapes and mismatched wheel covers, she slid behind the wheel of the used sedan and slammed the door. The seat felt too big for her. The whole car felt too big for her. Compared to her sleek, low-slung Jag it was like driving a bus. When the engine sputtered, she said a prayer that it wouldn’t start, but it did, and after only a few jerky stops as she experimented with the unfamiliar brakes, she was on her way…with Brad’s final words ringing in her ears.

“Don’t forget your weekly check-ins, sweetheart.”