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Brad’s gaze cleared; a wicked grin split his face. “Gotta give props to a woman who knows her games,” he said.
Heart speeding up, Zoe took an involuntary step forward.
“Brad,” she started to say.
Before she could spit out anything else, though, Candice tucked her hand into his beefy arm and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Breakfast?”
“Sure,” he said, his gaze glued on her cleavage.
“Zoe, I’ll catch you later,” he tossed off as Candice dragged him away. The entourage followed silently, although a few of them cast sympathetic looks Zoe’s way.
Ignoring the pity, Zoe watched in futile silence as Candice stole Brad away from her. Again. As the couple reached the restaurant, the blonde turned and shot Zoe a gloating look, one brow raised in taunting triumph.
ZOE GLANCED THROUGH THE window into the dining room, noting the gathering of her ex-classmates and their coziness. She needed to talk to Brad. To talk to a few people, actually. But not in there. All she’d get if she tried to join the stupid round of games they were playing this afternoon was more snide snootiness from Candice or the pitying glances of the other classmates. No, thanks. She kicked a rock, watching it tumble across the leaf-strewn cobblestones with a frown.
“Now that’s no way to treat such pretty boots.”She spun around, wincing as she found the owner of the voice. An elderly woman sat on garden stool, pruning the dead wood off an ugly bush. Her big floppy hat shaded her parchment skin from the late-afternoon autumn sun.
“Sorry, I didn’t startle you, did I?”
The woman shook her head, her stare making it clear she did expect an explanation for the tantrum, though.
“I’m just frustrated,” Zoe blurted out as she tucked her cell phone into her jacket pocket along with her hands. Damn, she’d forgotten how cold Idaho falls were. “Coming to this reunion was a mistake.”
Obviously, so was taking this walk. Knowing she needed to move, she’d gone straight up to her room after her run-in with Candice and Brad, aka Barbie and Ken, and grabbed her jacket. Now she was making her way through the garden toward the bare hill just outside the hotel property.
“Why?” the lady asked, unfazed by Zoe’s odd sharing. “Is it not what you hoped? Or too close to what you remembered?”
Zoe made a noncommittal sound, not sure how to say she’d had no hopes and the memories had sucked. Except of Dex. Those memories had been great.
She frowned, looking closer at the elderly woman. Recognition clicked into place. “Mrs. Drake?”
“Yes, indeed. And you’re Zoe, aren’t you?”
Eyes huge, Zoe looked down to see if she had a name tag on. “How’d you know?”
“Dexter always had a soft spot for you,” the older woman said. Spry as someone half her age, she bounded from the stool and strode over to Zoe. “You’re taking a walk? I’ll join you.”
Trying to decipher what a soft spot meant in teenage-boy speak, Zoe nodded and checked her steps to accommodate the octogenarian.
“I heard you had a séance earlier,” Zoe said, changing the subject as she stepped through the well-tended white picket fence onto the path through the wild overgrowth around the outside of the inn’s property. The cold autumn air had the biting scent of fallen leaves, decaying flowers and bitter cold. “I was with Dex when they told him about it. He seems to be handling running the inn really well.” Then Zoe slid a sideways glance at the snickering older woman, both to gauge how much to say and also in wonder. Had she gone in the pool, too? “Dex has…. changed.”
“Well, that’s not all bad, is it?” Mrs. Drake asked with a naughty laugh that seemed totally out of place in a grandmother. Yeah, Zoe was pretty sure she’d gone swimming. “I mean, that boy used to play dress-up, if you remember. I worried about him for a while.”
Zoe blinked, wondering why. Dex had seemed like a dream kid to her. Good grades, helped out when he was asked. Sure, he’d bitched and moaned a bit, but he’d never caused his parents any real trouble.
“Did the two of you have a nice little visit?” the woman asked as she took Zoe’s arm to step over a fallen branch on the path.
“Visit? It was…” Weird? She’d spent most of it lusting after her old friend. Not that she’d tell his grandma that. “It was a little awkward, I guess. We’ve fallen out of touch, you know?”
“True friendship requires a little work, of course.”
Guilt tickled Zoe’s spine at the truth of those words. She should have stayed in touch. Being back here, seeing Dex, reminded her of how much she’d appreciated him. But like everything in her life, she hadn’t been able to hang on long-term. “We used to be best friends. We’re obviously not now, but we should still be comfortable with each other, right? Except it was all, like I said, weird.”
