Kaleidoscope Hearts (19 page)

“He’s going to be fine. I have faith that he’ll change.”

Her words made me smile. She’d only met him once. She had no idea what he was like.

“Do you think people can change?”

Her eyes flickered between mine. She moved forward until half of her torso was over the table, closer to me. I wanted to take my hands out of hers and pull her face to mine. I wanted to kiss her and get lost in the feel of it, the way I always did. Her face stopped centimeters from mine.

“I know they can. They just have to want to,” she whispered in a breath against me.

“You have a lot of faith in people.”

She backed away, leaning back into her seat. She smiled, wide and confident, as she picked up her cup and put her lips around the straw again. “I sure do.”

You make me want to change,
I didn’t say.
You make me believe that I can.

The next day, at the same time, we ran into each other there again, and the following day one more time. We sat down, talked, made each other laugh, and went our separate ways after. She made me smile on days that laughter seemed impossible. She made me see hope in things I didn’t know existed. That was when she truly became my Estelle. She just didn’t know it. Hell, neither did I.

Present

A WEEK LATER, my painting team is done with the rooms and the hallway. We’ve turned an ocean into a field filled with flowers and kids playing. Everyone has been working around the clock to make sure we meet the deadline, so needless to say, when we’re finally done, we all cheer loudly about it. We walk out of there, with our arms linked to one another’s, fighting the urge to close our eyes in exhaustion.

“I am so ready for sleep,” Micah says, leaning his head on mine.

“Me too,” I say with a yawn.

I nearly trip over my own feet when we round the corner, and I see Oliver talking to a nurse I haven’t seen before. He’s standing against the wall, and she’s leaning into him like he’s her next meal. I catch his eye and he straightens a bit, but I look away and lean into Micah, walking out of the hospital before he can approach me—not that I expect him to. It kills me to admit to myself that I feel anything when I see something like that happen. It kills me, because I’m really not the kind of girl who gets jealous over anything, yet when it comes to Oliver, I feel possessive.

I go home and sleep like the dead. I don’t hear my phone calls or text messages or shouts from my brother downstairs telling me I need to eat. I don’t even care about any of it, until I realize I have a missed call from my realtor, and I call her back frantically, hoping for good news.

“Hello?”

“I don’t want you to get your hopes up, but we have a possible buyer.”

“Oh, thank God! Finally!”

She goes on to tell me how much they offered and lets me know she’ll get back to me as soon as she needs me again. I stretch and go downstairs, half expecting not to see my brother there, but unfortunately come face to face with not only him, but his friend Bobby from work, as well. And I look like shit.

“Hey, Elle, good to see you again,” Bobby says, smiling as his eyes run up and down my body.

“Hey. Sorry you had to see me in this condition, but I’ve been sleeping for like . . .”

“Eighteen hours,” Vic interrupts.

“No shit.”

“Yes, shit.”

“Wow. I guess I was really tired.”

“Yeah, I guess. Bean called asking for you.”

I frown and pop my head out of the fridge. “And?”

“And I thought that was odd,” Vic says with a shrug. “You’ve been hanging out a lot, right?”

“Not really.” I go back into the fridge, looking for nothing in particular.

“He says he tried calling you and couldn’t get through.”

“I’ll call him back later. I think he’s working tonight anyway.”

“Yeah, isn’t tonight Grace’s night?” Bobby asks with a laugh over a mouthful of muffin.

Vic doesn’t respond, just looks at me for a reaction I don’t give him. Inside I’m screaming “Who the fuck is Grace?” but I can’t let that show. If anything, this cements the reason my brother shouldn’t know anything about Oliver and me. It just bugs me that they seem to know his every move. It makes me realize that I don’t.

“Mom called too.”

“Okay, Vic. What are you, the freaking operator? I’ll call everybody back when I feel like it.” I turn around and head back up to my room.

“Damn. Maybe she needs more sleep.”

Vic scoffs. “She was born bitchy.”

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?”

“I’m positive! I’m not looking for anything serious, so why would I care about his reputation?”

“I don’t think his reputation is who he is. I’m telling you, he’s a charmer, but I don’t think he sleeps around as much as we’re led to believe.”