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Authors: Sheila Roberts

BOOK: Bikini Season
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“Well, you can eat that, but I'm not going to.” Kizzy said, and turned her back on the cheesecake.
“I'm sure not letting it go to waste,” he said. “You can go ahead and be miserable if you want. I'll eat your piece and mine.”
“Fine. You go right ahead.”
But she knew it was there. And she thought about it as they sat at the kitchen table, eating her nutritious, nonfattening meal. And afterward, when Lionel helped himself to a piece and forked a huge chunk of it into his mouth she really thought about it. One little bite, how much harm could one little bite do?
As if reading her mind, he said, “Here, have a bite of mine before you drown in drool.” Then he softly added, “Anyway, I brought it home for you, Kiz.”
One bite turned into two, then three, and before she knew it, he'd fed her two thirds of the dangerous stuff. She scowled at him. “You let me eat almost that whole thing!” No, she'd let herself eat almost the whole thing, and that made her even angrier. She walked over to the dishwasher and shoved in her plate. Then she turned and pointed a finger at him. “I swear, Lionel, if you bring home anything else I can't have I'm going to club you with a rolling pin.”
He held up both hands. “What? You've been working hard at this. I was just bringing you a treat to reward you.”
She suddenly remembered something she'd read in one of the diet books she'd just bought. “No,” she said slowly as she processed her revelation, “you were sabotaging me.”
He reared back. “What?”
“You don't want me to succeed on this diet. Even if it kills me, you'd rather have me fat.”
“You're not fat, you're big. And that's a rotten thing to say.”
“But it's true, isn't it?”
“Well, I don't want you to be a twig. If I wanted a twig I'd have gone and married some skinny girl.”
“Skinny can be pretty,” Kizzy pointed out. “Look at Oprah's friend Gayle.”
“I don't want Oprah's friend Gayle. I want a woman with some junk in the trunk and something on the front end, too.”
Kizzy pursed her lips together. There he was, her husband, her friend, the man who was supposed to always want her best. She was trying to lose weight and what was he thinking about? Himself. “The doctor told me to lose weight, Lionel. If I don't, I can't get healthy. Is that what you want, for me to be sick?”
His bluster fell away and he looked stricken. “No. Good God, no.”
She walked over to him and poked him in the chest. “Then you'd better quit trying to mess me up. 'Cause if you don't stop, I'm going to go live with my sister and leave you to eat KFC until you grow feathers and a beak.”
His jaw dropped. “You'd do that? You'd leave me, Kiz?”
“For as long as it takes to get these pounds off, yes. Remember those wedding vows you took? Well, they said in sickness and health—and that means skinny or fat. You've had the sickness part with a big, old wife who can barely walk a block without getting winded. In another few months you're going to have a wife who you are going to have to run to keep up with. You'd better get used to it.” She picked up the plate with the last of the cheesecake.
“Oh, no. You wouldn't.”
She did. Into the garbage can it went. “Don't do that to me again, Lionel. I mean it. I need to get healthy.”
Lionel scratched the back of his head. “Well.”
“Well, what?” Kizzy demanded.
He heaved a big sigh. “I guess Oprah's friend's not so bad looking.”
Kizzy smiled. Now that was the Lionel she knew and loved. “Come here, you.”
And he came, like a man running for his last meal.
 
 
Erin decided it would be best to go to the gym weekday evenings, when Dan Rockwell was working. She didn't want any more gym encounters or coffee counseling sessions. No more contact. Period. Dan Rockwell was developing upsetting her into a fine art.
Before going to the gym tonight, she had an appointment with Hope Walker, the owner of Changing Seasons, Heart Lake's new flower shop, who was staying open late just for Erin. Hope was supposed to be a genius with flowers. Maybe she could be a genius on a budget.
There was something about flower shops, Erin thought as she walked through the door, that made you want to have a party. Everything was so festive and pretty. And this shop really said party. Refrigerated cases held arrangements of all sizes: large ones in antique pitchers, tiny ones in teacups. Buckets bloomed with long-stemmed roses, carnations, baby's breath, and mixed bouquets. In one corner sat what looked like the world's largest Christmas cactus, still blooming and housed in a fat yellow pot supported by ruby slippers. A little sign next to it said, “Feed me, Seymour.” A collection of helium balloons danced above one corner of the counter, ready to grab for a last-minute birthday present or get-well gift. Potted plants of every variety decorated shelves, and in the window a huge Valentine display complete with both flowers and heart-shaped candy boxes reminded passersby that February 14 was right around the corner. Erin sniffed. Something in here smelled really good. And then she saw the little, foil-wrapped pots of hyacinths, all dolled up with pastel bows. She would have to take one of those home with her.
“Hi,” Hope greeted her. She looked a little like a flower herself, with her ruffled long-sleeved pink top spilling over her jeans—a
pale flower, the kind you might just walk past and not see at first. Except for her hair. The extreme short growth on her head practically screamed post-chemo grow-out. She looked to be somewhere in her late twenties or early thirties—way too young to have to cope with something so awful.
“I love your shop,” Erin said.
Hope looked around and smiled. “So do I. It's been a godsend.”
“That's some plant,” Erin said, pointing to the cactus.
“That's Audrey, the shop mascot,” Hope said. “I've had it for years.”
“I've never seen such a big plant,” Erin said. “You've sure got a green thumb.”
Hope smiled. “Plants are my thing. So is doing flowers for weddings,” she added, motioning Erin to a small wrought-iron patio table where she'd laid out an album full of sample pictures of floral arrangements.
They settled in, Erin with the photo album, Hope with her laptop.
The minute Erin started looking at the arrangements she knew she'd come to the right place. They were gorgeous—striking and modern: delphiniums and some kind of unusual greens in a tall vase, passionate pairings of reds and oranges in an arrangement that made you think of sex, tranquil arrangements of light shades of green, misty blues, and other cool hues.
“Where are you having the wedding?” asked Hope.
“At the Heart Lake Lodge.”
“Oh, lucky you,” breathed Hope.
“It's going to be perfect,” Erin predicted. In spite of all the corners they were cutting. Anyway, it wasn't how you got married that counted. It was who you married.
“What are your colors?”
“Brown and green.”
“Nice.” Hope began typing. “I could make you a bouquet with white and chocolate roses, baby's breath, and plumosa.”
“There's such a thing as a chocolate rose?”
“Absolutely. Do you have a favorite flower, by the way? Something you'd like to incorporate?”
“Well, I like daisies,” said Erin. “But they stink,” she added, wrinkling her nose.
“Daisies are sweet, though. You know they symbolize innocence.”
“Bag that, I guess,” cracked Erin.
Hope grinned. “Maybe you won't want white roses then. They symbolize purity.”
“I still have a pure heart. What do chocolate roses symbolize?”
“You know, I don't know,” Hope said, still typing away. “We could incorporate some stephanotis in the arrangements up by the altar. For good luck. And carnations. A lot of people don't like to use them. They don't have the cachet roses do, but you can do a lot with carnations. And they're affordable.”
“Affordable is good,” Erin said quickly.
“So are huckleberry branches and salal, and they look great in a big arrangement. Chocolate mint is nice, too. Is this an evening wedding?”
“Yes.”
“So you'll want candelabras?”
Erin nodded. She closed her eyes and envisioned herself in her wedding dress, walking toward Adam in a romantic haze of candlelight. Thank God he'd finally come to his senses and turned over the creative control to her.
“Oh, I know something really cool we could do for your centerpiece on the refreshment table.” Hope's typing got faster. “A big platter piled high with limes and Granny Smith apples and pears.”
“Wow,” Erin breathed. She'd never thought of using fruit as a table centerpiece. In fact, she hadn't thought of much of anything Hope was suggesting. She made a mental note to file Hope's number in her computer so she could use her for events in the future.
She was a little less excited after Hope had entered all the
information into her computer and printed out prices. Even with the carnations it wasn't cheap. But Hope was creative, and she would be more affordable than any of the other florists Erin had checked into.
Still. “I'd better think about this,” Erin said. “I think I'll probably have to scale back some. Can we finalize this in a couple of weeks or so?”
“No problem,” said Hope. “We've got plenty of time. And don't worry if you have to cut a few things,” she added. “We'll make it nice for you no matter what you decide on.”
Erin thanked her and bought a hyacinth. It was just one little flower, but it was sweet and it made her feel good. And that would be her motto when making her final decision on flowers for the wedding. She didn't need to go on flower overload for the wedding. She would think small but tasteful. Less was more.
“And if you want to bring your fiance in …” Hope began.
“Oh, that's okay,” Erin said quickly. “He trusts me.” Anyway, the last thing she needed was the man who had wanted his cousin the happy gardener to do their flowers helping her make her final decision.
Outside the shop, she closed her eyes, took a sniff of her hyacinth and smiled. Hope would help her make the wedding beautiful. Everything would be perfect. This day was perfect.
Until she opened her eyes and saw Dan Rockwell coming down the street.
E
rin wanted to turn and run somewhere, anywhere—across the street, back into the flower shop. But it was too late. He'd seen her.
The sudden halt in his step indicated he was feeling the same way. She watched as Dan mentally gathered himself and moved forward, giving her a salutary nod. “How's it going?”
He sounded as stiff as she felt.
Be polite,
said her inner mother.
“Fine,” she said. “I was just looking at flowers for the wedding.”
He pointed to her hyacinths. “Pretty small bouquet.”
“The bouquet will be gorgeous,” Erin said. “This was just a little something extra to make me feel good.”
“You just ordered flowers for your wedding. You should feel great.”
“I do,” she insisted. “But who can resist hyacinths?”
“Someone with hay fever? Here, let me smell it.” She held the flower up to his face and he took a deep sniff, then produced a huge, fake sneeze.
“Very funny,” she said, trying not to smile.
“No, that does smell good. Are you having some of those?”
“I'm not sure they'll be in bloom in June. Anyway, I'm happy with what I'm getting.”
“Glad to hear you're getting what you want.”
“Well, within reason,” she qualified, and then realized she'd just opened the door for Dan to insult McDoodoo. McDreamy, she quickly corrected herself. Grabbing for something to turn the conversation, she pointed to Dan's grubby jeans, speckled with paint and the tattered tennis shoes. “You're not working at the store?”
“They give me a day off once in a while for good behavior.” He looked down at his jeans. “I was working on a project. Just came to town to pick up some dinner.”
Good. At least he wouldn't be going to the gym. Her curiosity got the better of her and she couldn't help asking. “What kind of project?”
“I'm fixing up a house on the other side of the lake.”
She cocked her head. “I didn't know you moonlighted as a carpenter.”
He grinned. “Like someone recently said, ‘You don't know anything about me.'”
Okay, he was starting to irritate her.
He began speaking again before she could tell him. “I bought a little place that I'm going to fix up and flip.”
He wasn't staying forever at the grocery store, checking groceries and stocking the freezer? Who'd have thought it? “Are you going to be one of those guys who makes his fortune in real estate?”
He smiled. “Maybe. Got a lot of things I want to do. Money'll help 'em happen.”
A lot of things he wanted to do. He was right. She didn't know him.
And you don't want to; you're engaged,
her inner mother reminded her.
Happily engaged.
“Well, I'd better get going,” she said. “Good luck with the house.”
“Good luck with the flowers,” he said.
“Thanks,” she murmured, and hurried away. But partway down the street she grew thoughtful and slowed down. Was that man with the plan really Dan Rockwell? And, more to the point, why, when he wasn't irritating her, did he interest her? She half turned and looked back down the street. No sign of him. He'd vanished, like an angel.
She frowned. Or a ghost. She firmly shook Dan Rockwell out of her mind and continued on. She was only interested because he was a childhood … something. Who cared about Dan and his get-rich plan? She had plans of her own, weight to lose and a wedding to pull together.
Have a nice life, Dan
.
She sped to the gym and jumped on the treadmill. And started running. And running. And running.
 
 
It was Tuesday, lunch hour, and Megan finished her chicken salad in record time. It was filling. She wasn't hungry, really. But her taste buds were just itching for trouble. If she didn't get out of this office, she was going to wind up down at the lobby coffee shop that doubled as a muffin land mine. Maybe a change of pace, a change of place, would be good. She needed to do something to keep herself from falling off the wagon, and she needed to do it quickly.
She looked at her commuter tennis shoes that she wore for her bus ride into the city every morning, sitting in a bag under her desk. A walk. She could take a lunch-hour walk. Why not? It beat sitting here fantasizing over muffins.
She picked up the bag and opened her office door. Then she looked to see if anyone was coming. Like it mattered if anyone was coming? What did she care if someone saw her waiting for an elevator with her tennis shoes in a bag? Ridiculous. She yanked open the door and strode out into the hallway.
She had just pushed the down button when Pamela Thornton pranced up behind her. “Erin, off to get some lunch?”
Coming from any other person that would just be a conversation starter. Coming from Pamela the Pencil it was an opening shot.
“Just out to run some errands,” Megan said, and kept her gaze on the closed elevator door. She felt rather than saw Pamela leaning over to look in her bag, and moved it away.
“Running. Literally?” She arched an eyebrow.
“Walking. Literally,” Megan snapped. The elevator doors slid open and they both stepped inside.
“Walking off your frustrations? Having a bad day?” Pamela taunted. “How are things going on
Newton
v.
Owens?”
“Okay.”
Brilliant answer, Wales
.
“I hear Tanner is a bastard to work for.”
“He's successful and driven, and he's a man.”
Pamela rolled her eyes. “He's going to break you, you've got to know that.”
Oh, now she got what was going on. “And then, when he breaks me I'll scuttle away and no longer be an embarrassment to the firm? Is that it?”
“No, of course not,” said Pamela. “I just meant—”
Megan held up a hand. “I know what you meant. And what are your chances of making partner?”
Pamela's mouth turned down and her eyebrows dipped—as much as Botoxed eyebrows could. “Damned good. I do my part for the firm.”
“Yes, you do,” Megan agreed. “You keep up … morale.”
“Hearsay, darling. You should know you can't build a case on that. But here's something you can build a case on: facts. Fact: there are only so many partnerships available this year. Fact: the firm wants rainmakers. Who are they going to choose, a bitter big girl who couldn't bring in a new client unless she kidnapped him or someone with legal brains
and
a personality? I wonder.” The doors swished open and Pamela gave her long hair a shake, then stepped out.
It was all Megan could do not to kick her in the butt and help her on her way. She followed Pamela out the elevator into the lobby, then marched toward a grouping of chairs and sat down to put on her shoes. Bitter big girl? Who did that pencil think had made her bitter? Women like Pamela!
Shoes laced, she steamed out of the First Orca Trust Tower and down Second Avenue, her mood a perfect match for the gray Seattle sky.
Bitter big girl. Humph!
Talk about someone living in a glass house throwing stones. Pamela wasn't all sweetness and light.
Megan swallowed and realized that she actually had a bitter taste in her mouth that had nothing to do with the fumes from the diesel bus roaring by.
Bitter big girl
. Was she?
Of course she was. She thought back to her first taste of bitter. She'd been eight. Paul, her new daddy, had just shooed her away from the potato chips at the neighborhood barbecue. She'd grabbed one last handful and he'd given her a swat on the bottom to help her on her way. That had been humiliating.
But not half as humiliating as hearing Paul say to Angela's dad, “That kid is such a pig. At the rate she's going she'll be the size of the Goodyear blimp by the time she's twelve.”
Well, she showed him. She didn't turn into the Goodyear blimp until she was fourteen. And every year along the way she missed her real daddy who died when she was six. Her real daddy would put her on his feet and dance with her and call her Peanut and Princess. Paul only called her fat.
Someone must have told him not to do that, because he finally stopped. But by the time he did it was too late. She knew what he thought of her. And although she tried to salve the hurt with contraband cookies and chips, she never succeeded. The times when they clashed she found herself wondering why a man who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day got to defy statistics and keep living when her real dad had to get in a car accident and die. All that resentment helped her build a chip on her shoulder the
size of an eighties shoulder pad, and she'd worn it right into Wise Ass and Greed.
Her steps slowed as she remembered the first time she'd met Pamela Thornton and her friend Ashley Paine, Megan's competition at the firm. It had been at a cocktail party that Grant Waters had hosted for some of the new members of the firm. She'd walked into that elegant drawing room with its ancient carpets and Queen Anne furniture and tried not to gawk at the Chihuly glass. Pamela and Ashley stood by the fireplace, drinks in hand, talking to Jonathan Green. Instead of joining them, Megan had frozen in her tracks. The only thing that saved her was Tanner showing up at her elbow and saying, “Isn't this your dream come true? Why do you look like you're in a nightmare? Go mingle.”
She'd tried, she really had. She drifted to the edge of the group and pretended like she belonged. But she didn't. She knew it and they knew it. They gave her a crumb—neeting smiles—then turned their rapt attention back to Green. She'd broken off from the magic circle and drifted toward the bar, stopping on the way to put some caviar on a cracker.
“Way to have them hanging on your every word,” Tanner said at her elbow.
She took in a deep breath. He'd been one of the partners who interviewed her. He'd probably recommended her to the firm. He was invested in her success, although why, she had no idea. Why was she here at all? She clearly wasn't what they wanted.
“They're too busy getting their noses brown to want to listen to anything I've got to say. Their brain size probably isn't any bigger than their bra size,” she'd added under her breath.
Tanner had let out a bark of laughter that turned heads in their direction. “Oh, you ladies are going to get along well,” he predicted.
As the night wore on, Megan felt the womens' assessing gazes on her. Once Pamela even smiled at her, but she hadn't been able to smile back.
Would things have turned out differently between them if she'd smiled? Megan sighed. Probably not. She was pretty sure someone had overheard her comment to Tanner and went running to Pamela and Ashley with it. Whatever had started the nasty rivalry, they'd been shooting barbs back and forth practically from the beginning. And with each encounter the barbs had gotten sharper.
Bitter big girl.
Maybe she was. What did she have to be bitter about, really? Nothing but her weight. And whose fault was it that she was fat? She could blame it on a lot of things, a lot of people—especially her stepfather—but the truth was she was the one who had forked all that food into her mouth. A woman could only go so long blaming her childhood for her problems as an adult. It was time to stop.
She picked up her pace and walked down the hill toward the Seattle waterfront where ferryboats, shops, restaurants, and seagulls all vied for attention. Down here the air took on the salty tang of the sea. Megan took a deep breath, filling her lungs with it. A weak winter sun found a small corner of sky and brightened the gray just a little. This was a beautiful city. She had a great job. She could have a great life. And she didn't have to be big or bitter. It was really her choice.
A woman in jogging shorts and a sweatshirt with an iPod plugged into her ears ran past her. Megan stopped and watched the woman. She looked so graceful, so in control of her world.
Running. That was a goal to work for. Megan would like to become a runner, jogging about the city in cute little shorts, a ponytail swinging. She took some experimental jogging steps and found herself quickly winded. Okay, maybe not quite yet, but soon—maybe by summer. Perhaps even by spring. She didn't have to run a marathon. She could start by running a block and work up from there. She turned and started back to the First Orca Trust Tower. On the way she went into the Hallmark store and picked up a
card. It was time to stop feuding with the skinny women of the world. If you couldn't beat ‘em, join 'em. She was ready to join the club.
 
 
It was Friday night, and the members of the Teeny Bikini Diet Club showed up with tales of both diet tragedy and triumph to share.

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