Smooth Moves

And she’d remembered the little town of Quimby.

Cathy turned away from the mirror. Toward the window. Toward Zack.

“We’ll coach you every step of the way,” Julia was saying reassuringly into her ear when a light blinked on next door.

The bottom dropped out of Cathy’s stomach. Oh, my.

There was a racy black sports car parked in the driveway of the Brody house. Inside, another light came on.

Cathy’s fingers clenched, putting creases into the miniblinds. She closed her eyes. Zack. Zack Brody.

Heartbreak was home.

And—

Oh. My. Stars.

He’d seen her.

3

THE NEXT DAY, Cathy worked at Scarborough Faire alone all morning. Its herbal-scented atmosphere soothed her fitfulness. Amongst the shop’s cornucopia of gnarled branches and vines, sheaves of dried flowers, weathered barn-board shelving, old jelly cupboards and pie safes stocked with ribbons and wrapping papers, stationery, pen nibs and bottles of ink, she was as at home and confident as never before in her life. Peace had its price in this instance; few customers stopped in. Distracted from issues of commerce, she did not particularly care.

Quite naturally, Cathy was occupied with thoughts of Zack Brody. Worriedly, at first, but after a few hours in the shop, she began to see things from a different perspective. A buoyant, emboldened one.

And why not? She was attractive enough. She was intelligent. She was capable.

Upon realizing how dissatisfied she’d become with her humdrum life as an accounts supervisor for a small advertising firm in Virginia Beach, she’d single-handedly researched, plotted and executed a successful escape. She’d ditched the job, cashed out her savings and moved cross-country to turn Kay’s Krafts into the storybook arts and gift shop she’d long dreamed of.

Such drastic change took courage. Ergo, she’d already proved that she could handle anything.

Even, perhaps, the legendary Heartbreak.

Humming beneath her breath, Cathy rummaged through an old sea chest of fabric remnants. Zack had nearly caught her that morning when she’d scurried from the house to her car, wearing dark glasses and a scarf knotted over her hair like a celebrity dodging the paparazzi.

He’d stepped onto his porch and shouted a neighborly hello; she’d been reversing out of the driveway and had pretended not to notice. All she’d seen was a quick glimpse of him in her rearview mirror. Upraised hand, fading smile. Thick brown hair. Lots of shoulder.

Imminent Heartbreak.

Cathy pulled out a piece of gingham, then discarded it. Whether or not anything developed between her and Zack, she was willing to be a martyr for the cause.

Unfolding a length of dotted swiss, she thought of his engaging smile, the light in his eyes. Her stomach did a slow roll of sensuous proportions. Yum. There were worse fates.

At one o’clock, Kay Estress arrived for the shift she put in four days a week. As the store’s previous proprietor, Kay had agreed to stay on part-time during the changeover of ownership. Seven months later, though appreciative of the practical advice Kay freely—and frequently—offered, Cathy was ready for the arrangement to end. She hadn’t yet figured out how to ease Kay out the door in a properly respectful manner.

The tall, raw-boned woman gave the new baby-bootie-and-receiving-blanket display a once-over. Cathy had gone a little wild with the dotted swiss and trailing yellow ribbons.

Kay, whose style was relentlessly straightforward, even militant, sniffed. “Cute,” she conceded, her dark brows rising to meet the fluff of silvery-white bangs that were the only soft thing about her. “But it doesn’t pay to overstock on these type of knitting patterns. The profit margin is minimal.”

Cathy took off her apron, wadded it up and stowed it on one of the shelves beneath the checkout counter. “A person who buys the patterns will need needles, ribbon and two kinds of yarn,” she pointed out. “We—I’ll see a decent return.”

Kay shrugged her wide, bony shoulders. “It’s your funeral.” She slipped a pristine apron over the neat silver cap of her hair, straightening her starched collar with a tug. Her displays had been practical, not imaginative. Her shelves had been stocked on schedule, not on whim.

Cathy smiled at Kay. Nicely. She understood that it was difficult for the older woman to adjust to a more creative way of doing things. Having grown up under the watch of Admiral Wallace Winston Bell, Cathy had plenty of experience dealing with rigidity. Her father was career Navy—he’d run the proverbial tight ship. His awkward, bookish, imaginative daughter had baffled him to no end. He’d never completely succeeded in shaping her up, which was perhaps the one failure in his illustrious career.

“I’ll be gone for at least an hour,” Cathy said, tightening at the thought of her impending makeover. “Maybe two.”

Kay took out a bottle of Zap, her favorite spray cleaner. “No problem.”

Cathy waved from the door. “There haven’t been many customers, so you should do fine alone. I’ll be next door at Laurel’s if you need me.”

Kay doffed the bottle as Cathy departed. Looking back, she saw that her employee had yanked the apron out from beneath the counter and was whipping it into a tidy package like a color guard folding a flag. A woman after her father’s heart. Banish the thought.

Outside, the June sunshine was glorious; it made the pavement shine and the parking meters sparkle. Quimby was as quaint as Cathy had remembered from her yearlong stay as a child. Beneath mature sugar maples and grand old elms, the residential streets were cozy with modest Queen Anne cottages, Craftsman bungalows and wood-frame houses with wide front porches. The downtown business district thrived on what passed for bustle in the small town. Cathy did not regret her move, even though it had meant leaving several good friends and her one dominant family member behind.

Luckily, her second sojourn in Quimby had thus far not been as socially inept as the first, when she’d been sent to stay with her grandparents while the Admiral was at sea. She’d made plenty of friends this time around, and even gone out on a few pleasant dates. In fact, the residents were so friendly she rarely stepped outside of her little shop without being greeted by several of them.

“Hallo, Mrs. Timmerman,” said Reggie Lee Marvin, his face completely guileless beneath the bill of a grimy, faded gimme cap. The handyman parked his three-wheeled bike at the curb. A toolbox, spade, rake and other assorted supplies were strapped to the basket in the back.

“Hey, Reggie Lee. Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

“Sure is, Mrs. Timmerman.”

“Going to lunch?” Cathy had given up trying to get Reggie Lee to call her Cathy, or even Ms. or Miss. She’d never felt much like a Mrs. Her marriage to Chad Timmerman, handsome hunk but faithless husband, had lasted all of two years, including the divorce process.

Reggie Lee nodded, his full cheeks turning ruddy. Cathy suspected he had a bit of a crush on her, as was also the case with Laurel, Julia and perhaps even Faith. She’d seen Reggie Lee watching Faith with an absorbed expression.

The handyman was far too shy to be overt toward the opposite sex. He ducked his head when addressing her, avoiding eye contact. “You coming to the café, Mrs. Timmerman?”

Cathy stepped under a white canvas awning and opened the door to Laurel’s store, Couturier, which was as high style as Quimby got. “Not today, Reggie Lee. But I’ll see you around.”

“Okey-dokey.”

Allie was tugging on Cathy’s arm before she’d even made it over the threshold into the elegant store. “Come on, chickie. We’ve been waiting for you. There’s lots and lots to do.”

“Well, gee, thanks,” Cathy said with dry amusement.

Allie chuckled. “Cripes, Cath. You know what I mean.”

“Sure. I know.” She pressed a hand to her tie-dyed head scarf, feeling at odds with Couturier’s many mirrored surfaces and its refined decor of monochromatic pewter accented by touches of glossy black. “I’m…ready.” The makeover was dreaded, but necessary. Part of her even wanted it. For Zack.

“Ewww.” Laurel came out of the back room with puckered lips and an armful of garments. “You must take that rag off your head, Cathy. It’s so very sixties. And the blouse…how ethnic.” She shuddered. “That won’t do.”

Cathy dragged off the scarf and shook out her hair. “What’s wrong with ethnic?” Her closet was filled with imported clothing. The pieces she’d collected were inexpensive, colorful, unique and easy to wear. No binding straps, formfitting skirts or low-cut necklines to worry about.

“Since this is a makeover, I’ll be straight with you.” Laurel’s smile made a token apology. “First of all, you couldn’t seduce a marine fresh off the ship in that gunnysack.”

Cathy tucked her hands into the roomy pockets of the plain dress and turned to examine it in a triple mirror. The ticking pinafore was both comfortable and suitable for her work; she’d paired it with a red cotton embroidered blouse from Mexico. It looked okay to her. But Laurel knew fashion, and she certainly knew what attracted men.

“This one will bring out the blue in your eyes.” Laurel held up a periwinkle slip dress. It dangled from a hanger on skinny straps, shimmering in the artfully arranged lights that beamed from brushed steel fixtures overhead, spilling in subtle pools here and there on the plush gray carpeting.

Cathy gulped. “But there’s nothing to that dress.”

Laurel’s lips curved. “Exactly.”

Allie was looking at Cathy’s chunky sandals. “You’ll need heels.”

“I can’t walk in heels.”

“Oh, great.” Laurel rolled her eyes an instant before she turned her face aside.

“I know.” Ignoring her scraped pride, Cathy took off her glasses and squinted. The details of her reflection were becomingly blurred. “I’m a major project.” As much as the prospect of lipstick and heels and daring hemlines dismayed her, she didn’t ask the women to quit. A psychologically interesting development. Perhaps now that she’d accomplished a career switch, she was ready to change her appearance as well…?

“Add contacts to the to-do list,” Laurel said.

“I have contacts. They make my eyes itch and water.”

“You can do this, Cathy.” Allie was encouraging while she searched her purse for the list they’d started at the calligraphy class. “We can do this.”

Julia and Faith arrived, both on their lunch hour. Gwen was peeved that she couldn’t get free from her job at the post office and was missing all the makeover fun.

Faith seated herself on an unobtrusive brushed aluminum chair and opened her neat little brown-bag lunch. Julia flipped through the garments, munching on a juicy apple, ignoring Laurel’s murmurs and fluttering hands.

“Whew. Hot tamale.” Broodingly, Julia admired a slinky, strapless dress in a deep shade of brick-red. When her gaze turned toward Cathy, she frowned. “You know, it occurs to me…” She glanced at the other women. “Sure, we can glam Cathy up like a living doll, but how will that make her different from every other girl Zack has already had?”

Julia pitched the apple core and wiped her hands on the piece of silver wrapping tissue Laurel hastily provided. “I’m thinking this seduction has to be as emotional as it is physical.”

Laurel narrowed her eyes. “And how does one accomplish that?”

“With a provocative brain tease, not slam-bang, bam-between-the-eyes lust.”

Apprehension nibbled at Cathy’s composure. Each glimpse of Zack, in photographs or in person, had been like a kick in the gut. Was that lust or was that more?

“Nothing too obvious,” Julia continued. “Heartbreak shouldn’t know he’s being played.”

Cathy winced over the previous evening. Prancing around naked definitely fit under the “obvious” category.

“These clothes are subtle,” Laurel said, miffed. “I’m not offering peekaboo bras and crotchless panties.”

“Yes, of course. But clothes are beside the point.” Julia advanced on Cathy, watching as her face colored with discomfiture. “Oh, Cath. You’re so innocent. We need to play up that sexy, who-me? quality of yours.”

Cathy caught at her lower lip. “I didn’t know I had one.”

“Exactly.” Julia took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the mirror. “You’ve been hiding your light under the proverbial bushel up to now. Let yourself shine. Use your smarts, your smile. The genuine you will get Zack’s attention, not the fancy frills. All we need to do is set the proper stage.”

Julia’s words worked a transformation on Cathy. She drew a deep breath, lifted her chin. She was strong, she reminded herself. She was smart. As for sexy…well, she could always fake that.

Because she was woman. Incomparable, undeniable, phenomenal woman.

You can do this, she told her reflection, momentarily entranced by the lift of her amused smile, the slant of her chin. The gleam in her squinting eyes. Zack’s worth the effort. And the potential humiliation.

“Yes.” Julia gave her a squeeze. “Go for it.”

Faith goggled, a bitten tuna sandwich suspended halfway to her mouth.

Allie said, “Wow,” and dove her head into her purse.

“But remember, this is only a make-believe seduction,” warned Laurel, her airy tone edged in ice. She held up a pair of tweezers like forceps. “The purpose is to give Heartbreak a taste of his own medicine.”

“Of course,” Cathy murmured, scarcely listening.

Though Julia lifted a discerning brow, she didn’t say a word.

“SO WHAT’S WITH my new neighbor?” Zack said, applying his elbow to Fred Spangler’s gut when the man attempted a rush toward the basketball. Zack dribbled around his old college friend, made a feint that put Fred further off balance, then pulled up and sent the ball arching toward the basket.

Swish.

Fred staggered off the court, red-faced and dripping with sweat. “You win. Again. Man, Zack.” He collapsed onto a bench. “Thought you said you’d gone soft in Idaho.”

“Not soft enough.” Zack grabbed the spinning ball off the cement court and beamed it toward Fred’s bulging midsection. “Allie’s turned into a good cook?”

Fred caught the ball and shot it back as hard as he could. “She’s terrible.”

The ball slammed into Zack’s waiting hands. He laughed, glad to be home, among friends with a shared history. “Yeah. I remember her Home Ec experiments. Chicken-fried salmon. Salsa-flavored taffy. Snow pea flambé.”

“Since the kids came, Allie’s given up on cooking. The munchkins get PB&Js. The adults get Chinese take-out three times a week. She even lets me order in pizza at midnight.” Fred yanked off his sweatband, releasing a floppy halo of golden curls. “It’s great. Just like our fraternity days. Except with a woman at hand there’s also regular sex.”

“Married sex.”

“Way better than college sex, bud.”

“Maybe for you.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be the campus heartthrob.”

Zack shrugged. “I never applied for the job.”

“I know, man, I know. The coeds just handed it to ya.” Fred cackled. “It’s a nasty job…”

“But someone’s got to do it,” Zack finished, somewhat sheepishly. He’d never intended to become known as a ladies’ man. He’d just always done what he’d been brought up to do. Which was the right thing. The polite thing. The considerate, generous, honorable thing.

Women seemed to appreciate it.

He palmed the basketball and held it threateningly over Fred’s blond head. “Say, Shirley T, you’re never gonna rev up enough to beat me subsisting on take-out food. Try tofu instead.”

Fred sneered at the old nickname, braced himself for a ball bouncing off his skull, and asked mildly, “You eat health food?”

Zack set the ball on the bench. He swiped his damp forehead with the ragged hem of his T-shirt. The light breeze cooled the hot skin of his abdomen. “It’s not so bad.”

“Yeah, sure. You just go for the nature girls. Long hair. No bras. Equal opportunity Kama Sutra.” Fred squinted into the sunshine. “Got a recipe?”

“For Allie?” In Allie’s hands, tofu would take on terrifying configurations. Maybe Fred was referring to one of the more complicated positions from the dog-eared copy of the Kama Sutra they’d studied in college, some of which ought to come with a recipe. And scorecard.

“Naw,” Fred said. “For me. One of us has got to learn how to cook healthy pretty damn soon. The sex won’t be much good if I can’t see past my gut.”

“Exercise,” said Zack. “Swimming. Low-impact aerobics.” He slanted a smile at Fred. “Good for the stamina. I’m sure Allie’d appreciate it.”

“Don’t you worry. Allie’s a tiger in the sack. Got enough stamina for both of us.”

“Hey, that’s my childhood pal you’re talking sleaze about.” Zack scooped up the ball, bounced it a few times, went up on the balls of his feet and lined up another perfect shot.

Swish.

Fred groaned. “Show-off.”

Zack let the ball roll away along the cracked cement. They’d chosen to play one-on-one at the old Riverpark courts instead of the busy set of courts at the youth center. Zack was still unsure of his reception. The Barnards had a lot of friends around town and he hadn’t felt like running into their public disapproval quite yet.

He walked to the bench and sat, then flexed his hands and laid them on his thighs. “So.”

Fred lifted an arm and took a sniff. “Man. I stink like a goat. Gotta go home and take a shower before I head back to the car lot.”

“What about the neighbor?” Zack prodded.

“Eh. Allie knows her. But she’s not your type.” Fred rested his head against the chain-link fence. He made quotation marks in the air, his tenor rising and falling like a graph. “She’s creative. Which translates to sensitive and temperamental in my book. High maintenance. She presides over a coven of crafty women at her store on Central Street.”

“And her name?” Zack thought of the woman, splendidly nude, bathed in golden light, a visual poem of languid female grace. She’d been natural, yet seductive. Enchanting. Even today, he was feeling kind of strung out, empty and restless, hungry for another sight of her.

“Cathy Timmerman,” Fred said with a grunt. “New in town.”

“Boyfriend?”

“How would I know?”

“Allie.”

Fred scratched his head. “Yeah, like I listen when she talks.”

In college, he’d fallen hard and fast for Allie the first time she’d visited Zack. Within a day, Fred had shaved off his incipient goatee, torn down his Cindy Crawford posters and started dogging Allie like a Springer Spaniel. At the moment, Zack was too lazily distracted to point that out.

“Man, your radar must be off,” Fred complained. “Trust me, Zack. You don’t want this one—she wears baggy clothes, Birkenstocks and Mr. Magoo glasses. She’s not in your league.” Absently, he stroked his belly. “Hell, I don’t think her type even has a league.”

“Outside of softball, neither do I.” Were they talking about the same woman? They had to be. Instead of being put off, Zack felt…privileged. As if Cathy Timmerman’s beauty was his alone.

“Yeah, sure,” scoffed Fred. “Like Laurel Barnard isn’t in a class by herself. Talk about high maintenance!”

Laurel. Zack gritted his teeth until his jaw bulged.

“Yup.” Fred nudged his pal in the ribs. “Laurel. She’s still mad at you.”

“I assumed as much.”

“I heard she said that if you ever showed your face in town again, she was gonna sic her daddy on you. Planned to sue you big time—public humiliation, alienation of affection, something like that. She’s out to recoup the cost of the, uh, wedding.” Fred glanced sidelong at Zack. “I’d be worried if I was you. Laurel’s got a hidden nasty streak.”

Not entirely hidden. “Hmm. Guess I’ll start rounding up character witnesses.”

Fred leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. “Steer clear, is all I’m saying.”

“What about Julia? Does she hate me, too?”

“With her, who knows? Jule doesn’t run off at the mouth like the rest of ’em.”

Zack expelled a huge breath.

Fred’s shoulders hunched. “Gotta be strange for you, being the whipping boy instead of the hero.”

“The whipping boy?”

“Women take weddings mighty seriously. And vanishing grooms—” He whistled, slowly wagging his head from side to side.

In Zack’s note to Laurel, he’d offered to pay for half of the cost of the cancelled wedding; he’d even provided Adam’s temporary address. She’d never responded. A matter of hurt pride, he’d assumed, and possibly even remorse for her part in the fiasco.

He shoved the matter to the back of his mind, leaving it for a personal confrontation with Laurel that was coming as surely as the next Quimby garage sale. “Stuff that,” he told Fred. “I’d rather talk about my new neighbor.”

“Why her? You can’t be that hard up.”

“What do you mean? She’s…” Zack waved his hands in the air.

Fred scratched his scalp vigorously, making the yellow mop of hair slide back and forth. “We are talking about Cathy Timmerman, the woman who’s renting Allie’s family’s house?”

“None other.” Zack’s face felt warm, and not because of the sun. There had to be a dopey look on it, too, judging by his friend’s baffled expression.

“This is weird,” said Fred.

“Very.”

“Something’s not right.”

Oh, but it is, Zack thought. Very right.

He’d bet what was left of his good reputation on it.

ZACK TOOK his time reintroducing himself to Quimby. After leaving Fred, he stopped for a cold drink at the Burger Bucket drive-in and flirted very mildly with the waitress, who, despite several tattoos and piercings, looked no more than nineteen. She stood at the counter, smoking, trying to maintain her cool while whispering to the fry girl. Zack looked away, smiling at a squalling toddler in the next car until he recognized the child’s mother, Liz Somebody from high school, who gaped at him with her mouth open. After the first moment of shock, she recovered enough to shoot him an impressively nasty evil eye.

He drove away, remembering that Liz had been one of Laurel’s bridesmaids. And that there were six of them.

Enough for a posse.

Next he went to the lake. In another week the water would be warm enough for pleasant swimming, but even now there were several hardy bathers. Pale, fleshy bodies lined the sand like walruses basking in the sun. Little kids dashed in and out of the shallows, squealing and splashing, the lifeguard poised to take flight from his peeling white throne.

Zack parked and sat on the hood of his car. The water and sky were complementary shades of blue, drenched with so much sunlight his eyes began to water and he had to fish a pair of shades from his pocket. He smelled pine resin, warm tar. Hot sand. The medicinal odor of sunscreen and the indefinable dank, marshy tang of lake water.

Memories came in a flood. He’d been the lifeguard at Mirror Lake for four summers, from ages sixteen to twenty. An uncomplicated time. He remembered the slow roasting hours of midday, the usual teenage horseplay with his swim team buddies, the day Julia Knox had pranced across the sand in braids and a yellow bikini and he’d decided that she was the girl for him.

Zack grimaced. His life would have stayed uncomplicated if only they’d married. For a time, he’d thought that eventually they would…until Julia had come to him at the start of their junior year of college and confessed that she loved someone else. The worst part of it had been that he wasn’t devastated by the news, not really. He and Julia…they’d never truly sparked. Not in the crackling, fiery way that burned hot enough to last a lifetime.

Zack stood up. Enough wallowing. Someone looked over and waved at him from a beach towel as he slammed the car door. He didn’t stop. Gravel spit beneath the back wheels of the Jag as he peeled out of the parking lot like a hot-rodder.

He pulled together a bagful of groceries at the little mom-and-pop convenience store at the crossroads. Mom was too myopic to see beyond her nose. Pop looked at Zack with a vague recognition; Zack was gone before it jelled.