AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I winced. I certainly didn’t miss that part about working at the orchard. “Guess I’ll be eating his helping.”
“Where’s my baby girl?”
I managed to swallow back another bout of tears when I heard my dad’s voice at the front of the house. I went out to meet him in the living room. Rangy and tall, with his dusty Red Sox hat on backwards, Christopher Manning didn’t look his age until he smiled. Then all the sunkissed lines at the corners of his eyes made his caramel eyes shine. My eyes.
I was the spitting image of my mother except for the eyes.
He gathered me into his side and we both collapsed onto the couch together. I buried my face in his dusty shirt. He smelled of earth and peppermint. I dug into his shirt pocket and sure enough, there was a wrapped candy.
“Hey.”
I grinned at him cheekily, then bit through the twist of the wrapper and the sharp candy burned my tongue. “Hey, Dad.”
“Hey, Zoe.” He brushed a kiss along my forehead. “We really missed you around here.”
“Like an orchid?”
He winced. “I tried to convince her to wait on that.”
I waved him away. “It’s fine.”
“I thought you were happy in California. We assumed you’d come home for Christmas and we could tell you all about the new add-on.”
“Or maybe during one of my phone calls?”
“Yeah, well, if you called more than once a month maybe we would have remembered to cram it into the conversation.”
I heard the censure and regret bounced around in my chest. I’d been so immersed in my own life, in Ian, in the work I was doing, I’d neglected my family.
“Ah, don’t worry about it, girl. We understood. Life moves really quick when you are actually doing stuff you love. You were, right? More than you could find here?”
“I was, Dad. I did. I just needed someplace to think. I loved J Town and Venice Beach. My studio was so perfect.”
“But…”
I sighed. “I got lost along the way. I was lost even before I went out there.” Funny how being with Ian had actually made everything so clear. That I’d been hiding from my art by leaving my home. By trying to conform to my idea of being a professional artist, I’d just ended up more tangled.
“And a guy?”
I leaned into his warmth. Even as night was falling over the house, and the heat was still sticking inside the living room, there was something soothing about cuddling into my dad. “So much more than just a guy.”
I didn’t even know what I should tell them.
Things had been kept quiet thanks to Donovan’s legion of people and money. Everyone involved in Margo’s kidnapping had been dealt with in one way or another. And the fallout had been massive.
“Should make for some interesting dinner conversation.”
I gave a strangled laugh. “You have no idea.”
“Wash up, you two.” My mother’s voice carried into the living room.
My dad squeezed my knee lightly. “You heard the boss.”
I popped up off the couch and tugged him after me. “We better get in there before Justin eats everything.”
“That is a true statement.”
We crammed around the kitchen table, passing around platters of food, tortillas, and my mom’s to die for guacamole. They asked me about California, about the beach. My brothers battered me with questions about famous people I didn’t know or care about.
