A Broken Kind of Beautiful (20 page)

Ivy was coming back. He would see her tonight.

Sara stuck one of the veils in her hair. “It will be fun to see her again, won’t it?”

“I think Marilyn’s eager to have her back.” It was a safe answer, a half truth. Because in all honesty, so was Davis.

Ivy pulled her suitcase from Marilyn’s trunk and tried not to breathe through her nose. The smell of marsh saturated the evening air. Extra pungent. Yuck. After a fifty-minute car ride from the airport, in which Marilyn bombarded her with questions in an attempt to combat the silence, Ivy yearned for her white room above the garage. Maybe some relaxing music while she soaked in the tub and read some more of Billy Collins, but the soothing thought flitted away.

After her Vera Wang meeting with Juliette, Ivy knew one thing: the livelihood of her career hinged upon Davis. If she had any chance of taking him back to New York, she needed to spend time with him, which meant sitting in on the fashion show planning session. A few days ago, she had been determined to avoid him. Today, her future depended on their closeness. If foreboding had a smell, she imagined it would smell like that marsh—a complete appetite stealer.

She trudged to the porch with coiled muscles and opened the front
door. The smell of fried chicken and a barking white Georgia greeted her. She plunked her suitcase onto the travertine stone flooring and moved out of the way so Marilyn could come in. The stairs whispered Ivy’s name, but her tiredness would have to wait. She had more important things to do, like sit inside a house she hated and figure out why Davis left New York City. There had to be more to it than not liking the man he’d become. Maybe if she could unravel that particular mystery, she could figure out how to approach him about returning.

Marilyn shut out the heat and crouched to pet the frantic dog yipping at her feet. She left the luggage near the steps and made her way to the kitchen. Ivy followed and found Sara sitting on a high stool in front of the island, bouncing a tennis ball to Sunny. A slight woman with a dark braid swinging down her back stood on tiptoe and attacked the top of the stainless steel refrigerator with a feather duster. A bowl of banana pudding sat next to a vase filled with white oleanders, and the loud whirring of a blender drowned out the sound of dog nails skittering across wood. Davis stood behind the blender, sporting bronzed muscles in a hunter-green T-shirt and golden hair that wasn’t as short as she remembered, holding the power button as ice cream and milk swirled and mixed.

The entire scene unnerved her. She’d stepped into the front cover of
Family Living
. Blenders and milkshakes? Fetch with the family pets while the maid whistled a tune? This was new. This was foreign.

Davis stopped the blender and smiled. “You’re back.”

The lady with the feather duster turned around, the apple-red Lee press-ons capping her fingernails deluging Ivy with a sudden and unexpected ache. Her mother had a habit of filling Ivy’s Christmas stocking with Lee press-ons when she was a little girl. Renee had called last week after checking herself back into the rehab facility. As much as Ivy wanted to hope, she knew better. Her mother could never manage more than thirty days of sobriety.

“My daughter’s idea of a manicure.” The woman with the feather duster brought her hands behind her back, her freckled cheeks turning pink.

Marilyn plopped her keys on the counter. “Annie, this is my stepdaughter, Ivy. Ivy, this is my housekeeper and friend, Annie.”

Annie smiled a shy, gap-toothed smile.

Sunny deposited the slobbery tennis ball onto Sara’s lap. She picked it up and tossed it toward the foyer. Both dogs scampered away, nails scratching against the floor. “It’s nice to have you home.”

Ivy’s heart cramped over the word.
Home
. It floated in the air like a soap bubble. She imagined reaching out her finger and popping it. This place wasn’t home back then, and it couldn’t be home now. She was here to do a job. Not play house.

Marilyn walked to the refrigerator and opened the door.

Davis uncapped the Hershey’s syrup and squeezed a ribbon of black into the blender. “Be careful, Aunt Mare. Last time I opened that thing, I got attacked by all the Tupperware. You have enough meals in there to last a lifetime.”

“People from church keep bringing them to me.” Marilyn pulled out a Saran-wrapped dish of potato salad and set it next to the pudding. “If it doesn’t stop soon, Pastor Voss will have to intervene on my behalf or I will drown in fried chicken.”

Annie hurried into the adjoining room, brandishing her feather duster. The kitchen opened into a smaller version of a living room, not to be mistaken for the great room across the foyer. It was a cozy space filled with a striped sofa bookended by two old-fashioned easy chairs. Ivy used to sit in there as a little girl, curled up like a cat in a corner of the sofa. She doodled silly pictures while Bernice cooked dinner and sang West African soul music. It was a safe room, one James never visited.

Ivy slapped her hand against the countertop. She had enough uncomfortable silence in the car. She didn’t need more of it now. “Let’s get this
show on the road, shall we? What are we talking about? A charity show? I’ve walked for a few of those before. One for AIDS, another for breast cancer. What’s this one for—malaria?”

“An art program for the blind and visually impaired,” Davis said.

Ivy looked at Sara. “Oh.”

Marilyn removed spoons and a stack of small porcelain bowls from a drawer, spooned some banana pudding into one, and slid it over to Sara. She dipped her fingertip into the creamy top and let Sunny have a taste. “Davis wants to bring the program to Greenbrier’s community college. I think I might be the only student.”

Marilyn plopped a dollop of potato salad into her bowl and pushed it around with a fork. “You’re our expert, Ivy. Where do we start?”

All eyes turned in her direction. Ivy sagged beneath their appraisal. What did she know about captaining a charity event? She was just a model. “Well …” She sifted through her memory and plucked out the charity shows she’d walked for in the past. “First, you want to figure out how you’re going to raise money. Do you want to charge an admission fee? auction off dresses?”

“I was thinking an admission fee,” Marilyn said.

“If you really want to raise money, you could ask local businesses to donate packages for auction in exchange for free advertising. Anything wedding related. Maybe honeymoon prizes or floral packages. That sort of thing.”

Marilyn beamed. “That’s a great idea.”

A ribbon of warmth swirled through Ivy’s chest. “The next thing is figuring out a venue. You’ll want to find a place that has a lot of space. A room for the models to change in and out of outfits. Something with a stage for them to walk on. Room for guests.” She picked at the underside of the countertop and snuck a glance at Davis. “I bet we could find one together.”

He shrugged.

“I need to take notes. Where’s a pen when you need one?” Marilyn held
up a finger. “Don’t say anything important while I’m gone.” She pushed away from the counter and left the room.

Sara tossed the tennis ball again.

Davis toyed with the power button on the blender. “I know I already said it, but I’m sorry about your friend.”

His softened voice made her think of that night. And his question.
“Who’s going to help you find the sea?”
She blinked away the memory. Vera Wang was her sea, and if Davis really wanted to help her, he could. “Everybody’s gotta die sometime, right?”

He gave her a long look and offered her a bowl of pudding. Ivy ignored the rumble in her stomach and waved the food away. She couldn’t afford to gain a single ounce. Nothing about her appearance between now and the Vera Wang photo shoot could change.

The dogs settled at Sara’s feet. “How was your time in New York?” she asked.

“It was something.” Ivy tapped a fingernail against the countertop, searching for a way to keep the conversation headed in the right direction. “You should go there sometime. You’d like it.”

“I’m more of a small-town girl.”

Davis clipped the end of Sara’s words with the whirring of the blender. He let go of the button, removed the pitcher, and filled four tall glasses with milkshake.

Ivy examined the tic in his jaw. “It’s good for small-town folk to get out and visit a big city. Enlarges your world, you know?”

“I’ve been there. Once.” Sara ran her hand over the granite countertop. “I went when Davis lived there.”

Cha-ching!
“Really?”

Davis scooted a glass in front of Sara, then sent one sliding in Ivy’s direction. “Did you have a nice flight?”

She ignored his attempted distraction and kept her focus on Sara. “How long ago was that?”

“A couple years.”

“I saw some nasty thunderstorms on the radar. Did you hit any turbulence?”

“Nothing too traumatic, but thanks for the concern, Dave.” Ignoring the glint in his eye, Ivy turned back to Sara and twisted the cold glass in a circle. “So tell me what you thought of the Big Apple.”

Sara bit her lip. “It wasn’t really my scene.”

“Was it your brother’s?”

“I didn’t belong there any more than Sara did,” he said.

Before Ivy could respond, Marilyn swept into the room, holding up a spiral notebook and a ballpoint pen. “Okay, what did I miss?”

“We were talking about Sara’s trip to New York City.”

Marilyn stopped, her attention twitching to Davis.

All right, something was definitely going on.

“Excuse us for a second.” Davis took Ivy’s elbow and guided her into the foyer like a naughty child before letting go of her arm. “What are you doing?”

She rubbed the swatch of skin his hand had touched, wondering what he might say if she came straight out and explained her dilemma. Would he agree to come back to New York with her? She studied the hard set of his jaw. No, definitely not. He didn’t like her enough to agree. At least not yet.

“Just trying to figure out why New York City is such a hot-button topic in this house.”

“Why?”

“Can’t a girl be curious?”

“The subject’s off limits.”

“Don’t you know, Davis, that when you tell a girl something’s off limits, it only makes her want to push harder?” She raised her eyebrows. “Would you ever go back?”

He didn’t answer.

“For a little while? Temporarily?”

“No.”

“You offered to go to Annalise’s funeral with me, and that was in New York.”

“That was different.”

“How so?”

He ran his hand down his face. “It’s the lights when I need the sea, remember?”

Ivy tapped her chin. “Sara and I are living in the same house, which means we’ll be spending a lot of time together. We’re bound to get close.” She crossed her fingers in front of her face. “Almost like sisters. And sisters talk, Dave. They tell each other things.”

His eyes narrowed. “You can play all you want with me, Ivy. I can handle it. But please leave Sara out of this.”

Marilyn poked her head into the foyer. “Everything okay?”

Davis shoved his hands into the back pockets of his cargoes. “Everything’s fine. We’re just straightening some things out.”

“Are they all straightened?” Marilyn wagged her pen at them. “Because I’d sure like to dive in.”

He turned to Ivy with smoldering eyes. “I don’t know. Is everything straightened?”

She didn’t wither. Not even a tiny bit. “As straight as can be.”

19

Davis fanned the front of his shirt against his chest and stared at the building, an architectural island sitting in the middle of an expansive lawn, shaded by Spanish moss and live oaks. So far this afternoon, he and Ivy had visited two potential venues for the fashion show: the Greenbrier Community Center on the north end of the island and a warehouse-turned-convention-center on the eastern edge of the business district. Ivy hadn’t approved of either. Davis let go of his shirt, took off his Colorado Rockies cap, and scratched the top of his head. “What do you think?”

She squinted against the sun. “What is it?”

“It’s a theater now, but during the War of Northern Aggression”—he bracketed the words with his fingers—“it used to be an orphanage.”