WHEN ALL ELSE fails, run home to your mother. At least those were my thoughts when I woke up this morning. I didn’t consider that, once I pulled into her driveway, I would be accosted by her and asked a gazillion questions I didn’t want to deal with. Have you been eating well? How has it been staying with your brother? Is he eating well? How did it go with Derek? I’m setting you up on another date, you’ll like this guy, I promise. How’s the studio? I heard you did a great job with the hospital. And lastly . . . Come in, let me feed you!
Which of course, I did. I sat in the dining table overlooking the mountains and the ocean behind them. Vic and I were water babies, but my parents preferred the Santa Barbara Mountain View. They owned a house in Malibu that we used to drive to on weekends. Sometimes we were with them, but mostly we were with friends.
“Vic says you’ve been hanging out with Oliver a lot,” my mom comments, using her nonchalant voice, as if curiosity isn’t coloring the undertones of her voice.
I groan. “Vic is so annoying. We see each other a lot in the hospital. We hung out once outside of work. Big deal!” Her laugh makes my eyes snap to her. “What?”
She shrugs. “Your brother didn’t think anything of it until I mentioned it was odd that you were hanging out. You used to hate him, didn’t you?”
“No I didn’t.” I frown. Where the hell would she get that idea?
“I thought you did. You were always talking about what a player he was.”
“Because he was,” I say, giving her a “no shit” look.
“And now?”
I stare at her for a while, my hands playing with the napkin on the table. People say I’m a carbon copy of her, and that if they cloned me I wouldn’t have looked more like her than I do. The thought makes me smile, because my mother is really a beautiful person, inside and out. Even with her demanding career as a professor, she’s always managed to put her family first. Like today, when she saw my car pulling into the driveway, she immediately called out sick. I’m used to telling her everything, but for some reason, I can’t talk to her about Oliver. I just can’t. He’s like a third child of this house. It’s not like Wyatt, where I could come and complain about him or say beautiful things about him, and it wouldn’t matter either way because he was an outsider to everybody. Oliver practically lived here growing up. And even though absolutely nothing is going on, as usual, I would hate to paint him in a bad light.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I say, finally. “I honestly don’t know. I’m sure Vic can tell you better than I can.”
“But you see him at work.”
“Yeah, and?”
“Does he have a girlfriend? Or girlfriends?” she asks, rolling her hazel eyes.
I shrug. “You know him. He flirts with anything that walks, so I guess.”
“Do you think he sleeps with all of them?”
My eyes widen. “Okay, this is getting awkward, and again, I don’t know.”
“Sometimes guys like him get a bad rap, don’t you think? I mean, he’s always been such a good boy.”
I make a noncommittal wave of my hands. “I don’t care. Why are we talking about this?”
Then she smiles, really wide, and I sink back in my seat. I’m half expecting her to tell me she’s setting me up with him on a date.
“Because, this guy, Zach, sort of has that reputation with the ladies, but I hear he’s not a player at all,” she starts.
“Mom.”
“And he is so cute, Estelle!”
“Mom.”
“He owns a gallery in Malibu.”
“Zach Edwin?” I practically shout.
My mom smiles, nodding and raising her eyebrows as if she just tasted all the cookies in the jar and didn’t get caught.
“How the hell do you know him?” I ask a little too enthusiastically for my own good.
“Well, it’s a funny story, Bettina and I were doing some shopping a couple of weeks ago and happened to step in his shop. He has gorgeous things in there, by the way, but the piece that caught our eye was a heart—one of your hearts. We stepped in, pretending we didn’t know anything about anything, and asked him how much the heart was.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Four thousand dollars.”
My mouth drops.
“He says he sold the last one for three thousand, and this is the only one he has left, but the person he bought them from didn’t leave a card so he can’t get in touch with who made it. Elle, are you all right?”
I shake my head, my mouth still hanging open.
My mom laughs and taps my hand with hers. “Can you believe that? I’m assuming he bought them from Wyatt.”
I swallow, recollecting myself. “Yeah, Wyatt mentioned selling him a few pieces years back but . . . wow . . . four thousand dollars?”
“So you haven’t gotten a cut from that?” my mom asks, frowning.
“It wasn’t on consignment. He sold it to get rid of them, because I had made too many for a show we were attending, and Wyatt thought selling to Zach would be good for me later on. Obviously I never followed up, and Wyatt probably forgot his cards, as usual, but oh my God.”
“I know!” my mom squeals.
“Okay, so how did the date thing come about?”
“Oh. Well, I told him my daughter was the one who made it, and he was very impressed.”
“Uh-huh?”
“And then I got on my phone and showed him the website to your studio. He saw your photo, and I just saw his eyes light up.”
“Oh my God, Mom,” I say, burying my face in my hands.
“So I told him the short version about Wyatt and that you’re dating now. I asked him if he would be interested, and he jumped on the chance.”
“Oh my God, Mom!” I say again, still talking into my hands.
“Have you seen him, Elle?” she asks. I peer at her through my fingers and nod. “He’s good looking!”
“He’s freaking hot, but I can’t go out with him! This isn’t the fifteen hundreds. You can’t just go around trying to court me to people!”
“Why the hell not?” she says, frowning. “Haven’t you seen those shows on television where people are actually paying to be set up with others? Millionaire Matchmaker or something?”
I stare blankly. “No, I haven’t had the pleasure of watching that. Just . . . I don’t know, I mean, I would love to sell him some of my work, but I can’t date him!”
“Is it because he’s a player?”
“What? No!”
Zach does have that whole player reputation, with good reason. He doesn’t usually date people in the industry, but the one girl he dated, he married, cheated on, and divorced within a year. After that, he’d been known to sleep with models, actresses, and whoever else walked into his shop on two slender legs and a short skirt.
“Are you sure?”