“Probably just breathed a little too much smoke,” Sugar Beth said quickly.
Dulane gazed toward the second story. “She was lucky you were there.”
“Anybody would have done the same thing.”
The EMTs still had Winnie, and the smoke had begun to clear from the upstairs window. Sugar Beth watched along with the crowd. Before long, one of the firemen emerged and headed toward Winnie. Sugar Beth decided this was an excellent time to make herself scarce, but just as she began to head to her car, a tan BMW screeched to a stop behind the fire trucks and Ryan leaped out, barefoot and dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt.
He ran for Winnie and pulled her to his chest. Since they were barely eight feet away, Sugar Beth could hear every word. “Are you all right?” he said.
“Yes, I—I was frying chicken—Charise has been sick, and…The phone distracted me. The oil got too hot. It was stupid.”
“I’m so sorry.” The emotion in his voice made Sugar Beth suspect he might be talking about something more than the fire. She’d seen a lot of men in love, and Ryan fit right in.
She lost the thread of conversation for a few minutes as she convinced another EMT that she hadn’t suffered any harm. When she finally got rid of him, she saw Ryan push a lock of hair from Winnie’s grimy cheek and search her face. “What I said yesterday…I didn’t mean any of it.”
Winnie gave a wobbly nod.
A young fireman Sugar Beth didn’t recognize came forward. “You’ve got a lot of smoke damage, Mrs. Galantine, but it could have been worse.” He turned to Ryan and indicated Sugar Beth with his thumb. “It’s a good thing the lady over there showed up. She carried Mrs. Galantine downstairs. Your wife could have been seriously hurt.”
Winnie had temporarily forgotten about Sugar Beth, but the fireman’s praise brought it all back, and her eyebrows slammed together. Ryan spun around. “Sugar Beth?”
Winnie opened her mouth, all ready to blast her, only to have Ryan pull her to his chest again. “My God…Are you sure you’re all right?” He seemed to be having a hard time breathing. “You have to come home now. It’s over, Winnie. You don’t have any choice.”
He didn’t gloat, and he wasn’t even the tiniest bit smug, but Sugar Beth could see Winnie withdrawing. Looking deeply unhappy, she took a small step backward and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with sooty fingers. “Not yet. Not until we’re both sure.”
“I’m sure,” Ryan said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“I’m glad for you.” Winnie reached out and touched his cheek tenderly. “A little longer.”
Even from where she was standing, Sugar Beth could feel Winnie’s love for him, but Ryan didn’t seem as perceptive. Instead of relaxing and giving her the room she needed like any person with half a brain would do, he continued to press. “You have to come home. You don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Winnie got all starchy, and Sugar Beth found herself thinking that even the best of men could be stupider than dirt.
“I’ll stay at the Inn,” she said.
“Aaron’s hosting the chamber of commerce conference right now, remember? Everything’s been booked for weeks.”
“I’d forgotten.” Winnie began to look cornered. “I’ll—I’ll work something out.”
“You can work it out later. In the meantime, I want you to come home.”
“Ryan, please…”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“If I come home now, we’ll never get fixed!” she cried.
“We aren’t broken,” he insisted. “Not anymore.”
“We’re still damaged,” she said more quietly. “And we need to make it right.”
But he wouldn’t back down. “Just for tonight, then.”
Winnie looked like an animal caught in a trap, and the same impulse that had made Sugar Beth trip her now suggested she do something else entirely, something not nearly as much fun. Something not fun at all.
She ordered herself to walk away, but instead, she heard herself speak. “You could…” Shut up, you dummy. “You could…you know…” She started to cough and patted her chest. “Smoke.”
Don’t say another word. Not one more word. Just walk away.
Their impatient expressions made her feel like a child who’d interrupted the grown-ups’ important business. She pressed her hand to her throat. “You could…uh…stay with me, Winnie. Just for tonight…Tomorrow, maybe, if you have to, but…Not more than…Whatever, damn it!”
“With you!” Ryan laughed. “That’s a good one. Save your breath. Winnie is not going to stay with you.”
The bigger they were, the dumber they were.
“All right,” Winnie said slowly, her expression remote. “Yes, thank you. I will.”
Ryan looked as though somebody’d knocked him in the head with a two-by-four. “Are you out of your mind? That’s Sugar Beth!”
“I’m well aware of who it is.” And then, with a completely straight face: “She did save my life.”
Sugar Beth tried her best to look humble. “It was nothing.”
“Believe me, I’m the best judge of that,” Winnie said, tight-lipped.
Ryan gazed at them both, as if they’d lost their minds. “I don’t understand any of this.”
“You can come by as soon as you’re done here,” Sugar Beth said to Winnie. “I’m going home to hide the knives.”
An hour later, after Ryan had checked on Gigi to make sure she was still asleep, then downed a stiff drink, he called Colin and told him what had happened. “You’re sure they’re both safe?” Colin asked for the third time.
“From the fire, yes, but who knows about tonight. Go over and check on them, will you? I’m so upset with Winnie right now, I don’t trust myself to get near her.”
“Forget it. I’d do anything else for you, but as long as I know they’re safe, I’m not going near that house. They’ll have to work this out for themselves.”
“Sugar Beth doesn’t want to work anything out. This was pure spite on her part. She’s scheming to keep Winnie from coming home.”
Colin sincerely doubted that. At the same time, who knew what was going through her mind. “You say Sugar Beth saved Winnie’s life?”
“That’s what they’re telling me. God knows, I’m grateful, but— Why did it have to be her? Everything’s so screwed up. One minute I had life by the balls, and now it’s got me.”
“Things’ll look better in the morning, no doubt.”
“I’d like to believe that.”
After they hung up, Colin had to keep reminding himself that Sugar Beth wasn’t hurt, so he didn’t rush over to the carriage house. His presence would make her feel as if she had two battles to fight instead of one. As he gazed out the window, he saw Winnie’s Benz parked by the house. He turned away only to be greeted with the sight of his unmade bed. He wanted Sugar Beth there—naked, legs twined through rumpled sheets, arms reaching out for him.
Now that he knew about Delilah, all the parts of her that wouldn’t fit together had snapped into place. She was a woman of strong principles and sterling character, the kind of woman who, in days of yore, had driven ordinary men to scale castle walls or sent a prince door-to-door with a glass slipper in his pocket.
Who could have imagined a hardheaded realist like himself would have fallen under the spell of Sugar Beth Carey? But fall he had, and now he needed to figure out exactly what he intended to do about it.
Sugar Beth was fairly certain Winnie wouldn’t go home to pack a suitcase, so she set out a toothbrush, along with a change of clothes, in the small bedroom. She was in no shape to deal with her natural-born enemy tonight, so after a quick bath, she went to bed.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t avoid her the next morning. A little after eight, she heard Winnie coming downstairs. Sugar Beth shut off the kitchen faucet and spoke to her without turning around. “I’ve got Fruity Pebbles or Doritos. Take your pick.”
“I’ll get something on my way to the store.”
“Good choice.” Sugar Beth glanced at her over her shoulder, then snorted. She’d known Cy’s old Matrix T-shirt and her own ratty gray sweatpants wouldn’t look good on Winnie, but she hadn’t been prepared for quite how oversize they’d be. “Nice outfit.”
Winnie, as usual, was the better person and didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s fine,” she said stiffly. Gordon slithered from under the table to check out the new houseguest, bared his teeth at her, and headed for the living room. “I appreciate your letting me sleep here last night.”
“It was the least I could do. After saving your life and everything.”
That set Winnie off. “You could have hurt me when you tripped me like that.”
“No risk, no reward.”
“It was my risk.”
“Exactly what made it irresistible.”
“You always have to be the center of attention, don’t you?”
“Let’s just say I seize my opportunities.”
“And everybody else’s while you’re at it.”
“Has anybody mentioned that you have no sense of humor?”
“Everything isn’t a joke.”
“Is anything a joke to you? Or do you look like you’re sucking on prunes all the time.”
“Lemons. The expression is ‘sucking on lemons.’”
“You should know.” Gordon started barking in the living room. “Quiet!” And then Sugar Beth realized he was barking because somebody was banging on the front door. With a hiss of exasperation, she stalked off to answer it and found Gigi wearing a sweater and jeans that actually fit. Even with her mangled hair, she looked pretty cute.
“Were you guys yelling?”
“Hey, kiddo.”
Winnie shot out of the kitchen. The teenager rushed over and gave her an awkward hug. For a moment Winnie closed her eyes and simply held her. When she finally let her go, Gigi looked embarrassed and knelt to greet Gordon. “Hey, boy. Missed me?”
Gordon rolled on his back to let her scratch his stomach. As she rubbed, the dog cast a hostile eye toward Winnie. Gigi took in her mother’s outfit and wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”
“Not mine. You’re up awfully early for a Saturday.”
“I think I might have had a premonition that something was wrong.” She gave Gordon a last pat and rose. “Dad told me what happened. He said I could come here.”
“Want some cinnamon French toast?” Sugar Beth asked, moving back into the kitchen.
“Sure.”
Winnie immediately got pissy. “You offered me Doritos.”
“Dang, I must have forgotten about the French toast.”
Hope flickered in Gigi’s eyes. “Are you guys friends now?”
Sugar Beth occupied herself with the eggs and let Winnie answer that one. “Not friends. No.”
Gigi’s forehead crumpled. “You still hate each other, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate anyone,” Mother Teresa replied, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Sugar Beth hid another snort by cracking an egg.
“If I ever had a sister, I wouldn’t hate her.” Gigi sat on the floor by the door so Gordon could snuggle up to her.
“We aren’t regular sisters,” Winnie replied, taking a seat at the table.
“Half sisters. You had the same father.”
“But we weren’t raised together.”
“If I found out I had a half sister, even if we weren’t raised together, it would make me happy. I hate being an only child.”
“As you’ve mentioned at least a hundred times.”
Gigi gave her mother a reproachful look. “I don’t understand why you have to hate her so much.”
“Gigi, this isn’t any of your business.”
The temporary truce between mother and teenager came to an end, and silence fell over the kitchen, broken only by the soft, contented moans of a basset having his ears rubbed. Sugar Beth tapped the whisk against the sides of Tallulah’s old spongeware bowl. Gigi intended to cast her mother as the bad guy, with Sugar Beth as the injured party, which meant it was time to come clean. She consoled herself with the reminder that she owed Winnie one after the trick she’d pulled last night. All right. She owed Winnie more than one.
“The truth is, cupcake, I pretty much made your mother’s life miserable.”
Gigi abandoned Gordon’s ears to gaze up at Sugar Beth. “What did you do?”
“Everything I could think of.” Sugar Beth concentrated on dredging the bread so she didn’t have to look at either one of them. “Your mother was shy, and I used that to my advantage to make her look bad in front of the other kids. Whenever somebody wanted to be her friend, I found a way to break it up. I made fun of her behind her back. I even found this diary she kept and read it out loud to everybody.”
“I don’t believe you,” Gigi replied, too loyal to abandon faith in her new aunt so quickly. “Even Kelli Willman wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Believe it.” Sugar Beth threw a slab of butter into the skillet. She’d forgotten to turn the burner on, so it sat there in a hard lump. She picked up a tea towel to wipe her hands, then turned to face them both. Winnie had the coffee mug cradled in her hands, her expression unreadable.
“My senior year, I did the worst thing to her I’ve ever done to anybody.” Sugar Beth looked at Gigi because she didn’t want to look at Winnie. “Your mom was in a show at school—”
Winnie rose from her chair. “There’s no reason to go into this.”
“It’s my shame, not yours,” Sugar Beth shot back.
To her credit, Winnie sat down again. Maybe she realized, as Sugar Beth did, that the time had come to drag the old ghosts out into the sunlight.
“She had paint all over her,” Sugar Beth said, “so I knew she’d have to go to the locker room to get cleaned up when it was over. I waited till she had time to get into the shower, then I sneaked in and hid all her clothes. I hid the towels, anything she could use to cover up with.”
She half expected Winnie to make another protest, but she simply cradled her mug and gazed straight ahead.
“That wasn’t as bad as reading her diary to everybody,” Gigi said.
“I haven’t finished.”
Gigi drew Gordon’s head farther into her lap while Winnie sat stone-faced.
“I was with some boys,” Sugar Beth said, “and I dared them to go into the locker room. I made a big joke out of it. They didn’t know your mom was in there, so they went along with me.” She fiddled with the tea towel. “Your dad was one of those boys.”
The muscles worked in Gigi’s throat as she swallowed. “Did he see her?”
Sugar Beth nodded. “Yes. And she had this huge crush on him. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But she liked him so much, and she was humiliated.”
“Why would you do something so mean?”
Sugar Beth gazed at Winnie. “Maybe you’d like to explain this part.”
“How can I explain it when I never understood it myself?” Winnie said stonily.
“Sure you did.”
“There was no reason for it,” Winnie retorted. “You had everything. You were legitimate. You had a real family.”
“And you were popular, too,” Gigi said. “So what did you have to be jealous of?”
Winnie knew, but she wasn’t going to say it.
“My father loved your mother, but he didn’t love me,” Sugar Beth said. “The truth was, he could barely tolerate me. I giggled, I got lousy grades, and I made too many demands on him.”
“I don’t believe you,” Gigi said. “Dads love their kids, even when they screw up.”
“Not all dads are like yours. Mine didn’t hit me or anything. He just didn’t like being around me. But he loved being with your mother, and that made me hate her.” Sugar Beth turned back to the stove and flipped on the burner, aware of how much the past still hurt. “Whenever I saw them together, he looked happy with her in a way he nev
er looked with me. I couldn’t punish him for it, so I punished her.”
Gigi swallowed hard, trying to make the best of it. “Teenagers do dumb things. I don’t see why it should still be a big deal.”
“You’re right,” Sugar Beth said. “It shouldn’t be.”
Winnie continued being unhelpful by taking another sip of coffee and not saying a thing. Sugar Beth concentrated on the French toast. Finally, Gigi set Gordon aside and rose to her feet, a little furrow in her brow. “Did you take my dad away from my mom in high school?”
“Now that I didn’t do.”
“He was your boyfriend for a long time, right?”
“Until we went to college. Then I dumped him for another guy. A guy who wasn’t half as nice as your dad. But you have to admit that turned out to be a good thing because, if I hadn’t cheated on him, your dad and mom wouldn’t have gotten to know each other, and you wouldn’t have been born.”
“They had to get married. Mom got pregnant.”
Sugar Beth glanced at Winnie, but she had that miles-away expression she used to wear sometimes in school.
“I’d never be stupid enough to get pregnant if I wasn’t married,” Gigi said.
“That’s because you’re not going to have sex until you’re thirty,” Sugar Beth replied.
Something that might have been a smile caught the corner of Winnie’s mouth, but Gigi didn’t see the humor. “Are you, like, going to try to take him away from her again?”
“No!” Winnie smacked her hand so hard on the table her mug rattled. “No, Gigi. She’s not going to do that.”
Gigi moved to her mother’s side, relaxing almost imperceptibly.
Sugar Beth tossed the bread into the skillet. “Honey, I couldn’t take your dad away from your mom even if I tried. He loves her. He doesn’t love me.”
Still troubled, Gigi gazed at her mother. “I don’t understand how you could let her do so many bad things to you. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”
“I was a wimp,” Winnie said, looking surprisingly formidable in her oversize clothes.
Gigi nodded with the wisdom of the ages. “You didn’t claim your power.”
“I didn’t know I had any. You should have seen her, Gi. She was so beautiful, so confident. Her hair was perfect, her clothes perfect, her makeup always right. And she had this amazing laugh that made everybody want to laugh with her. Nothing was ever boring when Sugar Beth was around. When she walked into a room, you couldn’t look at anybody else.”