Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (24 page)

“Y
our aunt still hasn’t had her surgery?” Cat asked over the phone.

“No,” Grace said, sitting on her bed. It was late Saturday morning, and beyond the French doors the sky and ocean were a wash of brilliant blue. The cheerful sunlight was at odds with her cloudy mood. “Andrew pesters her about it at least once a week, but she always manages to turn the conversation in some direction that flusters him and he forgets to pursue the issue until the next time he’s here.”

“That seems kind of weird, doesn’t it? I mean, I thought the whole purpose of having you there all summer was so she could have help while she recovered.”

“What can I say? She does what she wants.”

“And she has plenty of hired help already,” Cat said slowly. “She has to have had an ulterior motive for inviting you to stay.”

“I think she just likes having people around.”

“Are Andrew and Declan spending a lot of time there?”

“Declan hasn’t been here for over two weeks,” Grace said, affecting nonchalance.

The morning after their sexual contest she’d woken up alone in her bed. Declan hadn’t just left her room; he’d left the house
and the town. Sophia told her later that morning that he’d gone back to San Francisco.

Grace had felt a slight disappointment, barely enough to dim her glow of victory and sexual satisfaction. He had retreated in defeat, unwilling to face the woman who had bested him! Or maybe he was afraid that if he stayed, Sophia would sense that the two of them had been intimate. He couldn’t know Sophia would be more amused than distressed.

That first morning after, just thinking Declan’s name made her whole body tingle. The attention he had lavished on her and his determination to make her feel pleasure no matter the consequence to himself had gone a long way toward breaching the walls she’d built against him. His adoration of her body had felt like an adoration of her, the woman inside. When she’d briefly stirred from sleep to find herself held warm and secure in his arms, she’d assumed he must like her, maybe even love her a little. And she’d allowed herself to feel a frisson of the same, her blood humming with the excitement of new hopes.

But as the hours turned into days without a word from Declan, Grace’s euphoria had drained away. She’d thought she’d won the battle in her bedroom, but she’d lost. She’d let him fool her into thinking he cared,
again
. How could she have been so stupid?

Her burgeoning romantic hopes were replaced by darker emotions.

Violent emotions.

Blood-tinged, incoherent, howling animal emotions.

Emotions that needed an ax for full expression, one of those old medieval axes they used for chopping off heads. After she chopped off his head, she’d disembowel him and leave his innards on the rocks for the seagulls to eat.

“Declan’s not around,” Grace told Cat now, “but Andrew is here a lot, and he’s got me going to this CRON group he’s part of.”

“A what group?”

Grace explained the theory of calorie restriction and longevity. The members of the CRON group struck her as fanatical, obsessed with eating only the peels of apples and charting the nutritional value of every microgram of food they put in their mouths. Several had histories of eating disorders, although they all claimed to be taking charge of their health through CRON.

But the biggest downside was that what Andrew had explained about libido was apparently true. Testosterone dropped. Several members of the group had been celibate for more than a year, and not just because they were nut jobs who couldn’t find a date.

“Are you actually doing this calorie-restriction thing?” Cat asked incredulously. “You, who never met a Ben and Jerry’s flavor that couldn’t be improved with hot-fudge sauce?”

“Shocking, huh?” Grace said, feeling a prick of annoyance. Why should it be such a surprise that she might give up ice cream, at least for a summer? Was she such a glutton that it seemed impossible? “You’re not going to believe this, but in the two months I’ve been here I’ve lost thirty pounds.”

“Grace!”

“It’s great, isn’t it?”

“
Grace!
That’s almost four pounds a week. That’s not healthy,” Catherine scolded.

“Oh,
phhtt
,” she said. “The first ten pounds were mostly water.”

“You can’t be eating enough to be healthy.”

“I
am
.” For once, she was grateful for the CRON meetings. They made a great cover for a diet. “One of the CRONies showed me a computer program to calculate all my daily nutritional
needs so I can be sure to eat the right things. I’ve been exercising a lot, too.” She’d been exercising with more vigor since Declan had disappeared; the next time he saw her, she wanted his eyes to fall out of his head. Her weight loss had been stalled for a week or so before they’d had their encounter. Since then, the pounds had flown off. Maybe anger burned extra calories.

“You, exercise?”

“Yeah,” Grace said, irritated. “Me. Exercise.”

“You aren’t turning anorexic, are you? Did Sophia drive you to this somehow?”

Grace’s anger—with judgmental Cat, with despicable Declan; with prim Andrew, and with her perpetual, aching, crazy-making state of hunger—all boiled over. “You know, I’d think you’d be happy for me. Everyone always told me to eat better, to exercise, that the fat around my middle was going to give me dementia, diabetes, arthritis, and a heart attack all at once. Now I do what everyone said and take care of myself, and all I get is a bunch of crap about being anorexic! Goddamned
anorexic
! No wonder fat people stay fat. They can’t win either way!”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Grace ground her teeth, fuming.

“Hit a nerve, didn’t I?” Cat said at last. “Defensiveness is a sign of an eating disorder.”

“Fuck you!” Grace shouted into the phone. “Fuck. You! Ever since I turned you down you’ve been trying to control me, to keep me to yourself. You don’t want me to lose weight because then I might find a guy who’ll take me away from you. You’re like one of those lesbian abusers you work with, trying to keep me dependent and helpless so I can’t leave you. Well, fuck you, Cat. You have no hold on me.”

Silence. Grace could hear her own heavy breathing, her body shaking with anger, her heart racing. She felt a tingle of dread at
what Cat’s response would be, but also felt an eager, almost violent wish for verbal battle.

At last Cat’s answer came. “Whoa,” she said softly. “I’ve never heard you this upset before.” Her voice quavering with real concern, she asked, “Gracie, are you okay? Is everything all right?”

“I’m fine! Better than ever!” Grace barked back, but without the bite of before. She was vaguely unsettled by Cat’s calm, caring response.

“Talk to me, Grace. What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me, but you should think of talking to someone. Professor Joansdatter. Your mom. Or maybe Dr. Andrew?”

“Aren’t you afraid he’s part of the problem, due to CRON?”

“There’s not a lot of choice for someone to talk to in that house. At least his heart’s in the right place, and he seems to like you.”

“Yeah, he seems to,” Grace drawled. “As much as he can.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means the guy might as well be a eunuch,” Grace groused.

There was a sound suspiciously like a chuckle on the other end of the line.

“What?” Grace demanded.

“Nothing! Really!”

Grace scowled. “You think sexual frustration has caused my bad temper?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Then what? Tell me, Ms. Know-it-all.”

“I’ve had a passing acquaintance with unrequited love myself.”

An image of Declan sprang to Grace’s mind. Declan smiling at her, teasing her, leering at her. Touching her . . . “I’m not in love with him,” Grace insisted.

“Mm-hmm,” Cat murmured knowingly. “You know what I think?”

Grace didn’t want to know.

“I think that you’re afraid to admit you love him, because he might not love you back.”

“His type can’t love.” After that night they’d spent together, to leave without even a good-bye . . .

“That’s ridiculous. You of all people should know that intellectuals like Andrew—and you—are uncomfortable with messy emotions. It doesn’t mean they’re not there, though.”

Grace started. Andrew. Cat was talking about Andrew, of course, not Declan.

Cat went on, “You and Andrew have to have the courage to face your emotions.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “This isn’t about courage. He seems more interested in me as a friend than as a romantic partner.”

Cat laughed. “Isn’t that exactly the same technique you usually use on someone you’re interested in? You befriend them and slip in under their radar, because there’s little risk of romantic rejection that way.”

“No, I do that because that’s how you build a relationship with a solid foundation.”

“Whatever the motivation, Andrew is probably doing the same with you. Be patient with him. Encourage him.”

Grace scowled, not believing what she was hearing. “You’re trying to help me hook up with a guy?”

Cat was quiet on the other end of the line. “Grace,” she finally said, her voice sad, “I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy and to have what’s best for you.”

“So you think Andrew is ‘what’s best for me,’” she said drily.

“Yes. And I can’t tell you how much it relieves me to hear
you being angsty about him. I’d been worried that you might get involved with Declan.”

“You think I’m an idiot?”

“I think you’re female. Even I could feel the man’s sexual aura, so an attraction didn’t surprise me. But I’m glad that your true self has shifted your interest on to Andrew, who shares your values.”

Grace felt a cloak of “should” settling over her, muffling anger and passion under a layer of reason. Her shoulders slumped and she felt her mouth pursing in disgruntled resignation. She really should redouble her efforts with Andrew instead of wasting thoughts on annihilating Declan. Which path, after all, was more likely to lead to long-term happiness?

“Oh, I meant to ask,” Cat said in a sudden shift of tone, “did your mom ever answer your questions about why Sophia is estranged from your family?”

“She doesn’t know. And she won’t ask anyone, either. She says she sees no point in stirring up old dirt. She thinks it would be intrusive. I think she’d like to pretend that Sophia doesn’t exist and that I’m not here with her.” Anything positive that Grace had said about Sophia either in an e-mail or on the phone had been met with a decided silence on her mother’s side. Her mom was a generous and loving woman, but if someone managed to get on her bad side, they stayed there.

“Have you told your mom about the weight you’ve lost?”

Grace hesitated. “I want to surprise her.”

Cat murmured unhappily. “Is that it, or are you afraid of how she’s going to react? You know she’ll blame Sophia for making you feel that your body wasn’t good enough.”

Grace felt a spark of returning anger. “Cat, lay off it. You’ve never been overweight, so just . . . lay off.”

“So I have to have been overweight to understand what damage self-loathing can do?”

“For God’s sake, I don’t hate myself!”

“Andrew isn’t going to suddenly start showering you with affection if you lose another ten pounds. Weight loss isn’t a magic potion.”

“Sure it is!” Grace snapped, angry now and wanting to goad her. “It always is, where men are concerned. So if I want love and happiness, of course I have to lose ten more pounds. At
least
ten.”

“You
are
kidding, aren’t you?”

“Am I? Let’s get real, Cat. Weight matters. You may be ‘more evolved’ about it, but the rest of the world is made up of assholes who aren’t. Fighting them is a losing battle.”

“Grace, this isn’t like you,” Cat said, worried.

“Says who? You going to start telling me who I am now, too?”

“Maybe you need reminding! The Grace I know isn’t a bitch.”

The nasty name hit her like a sucker punch, knocking the wind from her. Grace hung up without responding, her hands shaking, her emotions a roiling mess of anger, hurt, and guilt. She flung herself down on the bed, staring at the canopy overhead.

Goddammit, why did she have people like Cat and Declan in her life? She mentally thrashed through her history with them both, working herself into a froth that slowly drained away as her hands rested on her nearly flat stomach.

The pillow of doughy flesh that she used to knead like a kitten seeking comfort had shrunk to the thickness of a summer quilt. She could feel the hard base of her muscles beneath it, waiting to be uncovered. If she could lose another ten pounds by the end of the month, no one would recognize her. She’d be able to wear any pair of pants without wondering if her butt looked like a sack of marbles. She could wear clingy knits without a body
shaper. A bikini. If her breasts shrank enough, she could even go braless in a backless dress.

She rolled off the bed and went to examine her face in the bathroom mirror. Her jawline had narrowed, and her neck was thinner, making it look longer. As she turned her head this way and that and lifted her hair into different styles, she caught glimpses of the Sophia in the portrait downstairs.

Grace narrowed her eyes, thinking of how she could use her changing body to make Declan suffer, to give an “up yours” to Cat, and to transform Dr. Andrew into a man with a libido.

For the first time, the face in the mirror was Sophia’s. Green eyes stared back at her with calculation and sultry schemes for her own benefit.

Startled, Grace blinked and let her hair drop. Her expression of surprise erased the doppelgänger effect, but the moment she thought of Declan and narrowed her eyes, it returned.

She shuddered. Was she taking on the personality of her aunt? Was she losing herself under Sophia’s influence?

Or maybe it was worse than that. Maybe this angry, manipulative person in the mirror had always been inside her, waiting to emerge. Maybe the real Grace had always wanted to control people and be considered a beauty, and crush those who hurt her.