She held out a showcase hand, indicating the seat next to hers.
Buck took a moment to sip his coffee. He wanted to cultivate the right tone of voice for this conversation—comforting but not indulgent.
“Scarlett,” he said, “I need to talk to you about a few things.”
She arched her eyebrows but did not speak. This was sort of like communicating with a mime.
“I’ve sifted through Deacon’s affairs,” Buck said. “The first thing you need to know is that in his will, Deacon left a third of this house to you, a third to Belinda, and a third to Laurel.”
Scarlett didn’t move, didn’t speak. Dread gathered in Buck’s gut. Did she understand?
“Do you understand what I’m telling you?” he asked.
Scarlett nodded.
“Now, that’s a moot point, because this house is going into foreclosure at the beginning of next month.” He checked his watch. “Eleven days from now. Deacon had three mortgages on it, and he’d let them all slide since January. At the end of December, he had an investor pull out of the restaurant—your uncle, as it happens—and Deacon replaced your uncle’s money with a million dollars from his brokerage account. He owes over four hundred thousand dollars on this house, and the estate just doesn’t have it. The estate doesn’t have much of anything, other than a one-sixth interest in the Board Room. And he left a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy that listed you and Ellery as the beneficiaries. That quarter million is yours. It should be enough to get you through until you figure out something else.” Buck stopped and reminded himself to breathe. He had done it. He had told her. Suddenly, he perked up. “I saw the canceled check made out to Skinny4Life. Is that something he invested in that might pay off?”
“No,” Scarlett said. “The company folded. All I ended up with was one of the huge suitcases I brought with me, filled with product.”
Buck closed his eyes. The last hope popped like a soap bubble.
Scarlett pivoted in her chair to face him, adjusting the kimono around her legs. She was barefoot, and her toenails were painted crimson. Red was her signature color—Buck understood this—but it always put him on edge. “I trapped him, Buck.”
“He believed in you,” Buck said. “He wanted you to find a career that would make you happy.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Scarlett said. “I mean, back in the beginning.”
Buck waited. He wasn’t sure which beginning she was talking about.
“We’d been engaged for a while,” Scarlett said. “But when he started working on the restaurant, when he got all the investors in place, I felt him slipping away from me. He was going to break the engagement, I could tell. And I loved him so much. I had wanted him for so long. I had a terrific crush on him the entire time I worked for him and Belinda. He was so talented, so funny, so… irreverent. And sexy, with the tattoos and the brooding looks on the one hand, and the sweet daddy persona on the other. I used to catch him looking at me, and I wondered if there was any way I could steal him from Belinda. From Belinda Rowe, whom I had grown up idolizing. You can’t imagine what a rush it was to fantasize that I could have what she had, that I could, in a way, become her. I had to keep him. And so… I threw my diaphragm in the trash. I got intentionally accidentally pregnant.”
“Oh,” Buck said.
“And he stayed.”
“Of course he stayed,” Buck said. “He loved you.”
“Did he?”
“Yes,” Buck said.
“He told me about the girl at the gentlemen’s club, and he said he was going to stop drinking and stop the drugs, and I told him I didn’t believe him. I told him it was too little, too late, and that he’d lost me and it was his own fault. I knew he was mad that Uncle Cal pulled his money out, and I knew he thought it was because Bo Tanner and I were having an affair and my uncle knew about it and didn’t want to keep his money in Deacon’s pockets. But I didn’t realize that Deacon had replaced my uncle’s money with his own money. He told me he found another investor, someone who shared his vision.”
“Were you?” Buck asked. “Having an affair with Bo Tanner? Are you?”
Scarlett shrugged, and the kimono slipped to reveal her shoulder. Was that supposed to be an answer or a distraction tactic?
“It’s so obvious in retrospect!” she said. “Deacon became obsessed, all of a sudden, with writing his cookbook, but it wasn’t going well. You would have thought he was working on some insane deadline. He was pulling his hair out about it, losing sleep, telling the same story over and over again about how he nearly failed English in high school, but somehow he passed, somehow he squeaked by. And then this woman at my gym approached me with the Skinny4Life proposal, and I thought, Deacon is never going to go for it. But when I brought it up, he jumped on it. He invested a hundred thousand in January, thinking we would have double or triple that by the end of June. But that failed. Like everything else I’ve tried.”
“Scarlett…,” Buck said.
“I bled him dry, Buck,” Scarlett said. “I treated him horribly. I was having an affair with Bo Tanner, and I’m pretty sure Deacon knew it, and that did contribute to my uncle pulling his money out. So really, all of this is my fault.”
“You didn’t know he was going to die,” Buck said. “None of us did. You think there aren’t things I would have done differently?”
“You didn’t need to do anything differently,” Scarlett said. “He loved you. You two were Oscar and Felix.”
Buck smiled. “I would have watched him more closely. I would have negotiated better on his behalf. I would have pushed for merchandising. Gosh, there are a lot of things I would have done differently. I would have made him quit smoking.”
“At least he knew you loved him,” Scarlett said. “I can’t say the same.”
“Scarlett, come on…”
“Buck,” she said, and she gazed off in the distance. “I think I’d like another minute alone out here.”
“He knew you loved him, Scarlett.”
“Please,” she said.
Buck stepped inside the screen door and nearly ran smack into… Joel Tersigni, who was standing in the kitchen, downing a bottle of orange Gatorade.
Joel Tersigni?
Buck opened his mouth to speak, but Joel stuck out his hand first and said, “Buck, man, how you doing? This weekend couldn’t have been easy.”
Buck shook Joel’s hand and watched as Angie approached with a shy expression on her face. Then Buck remembered that Angie was involved with this creep. If Joel’s wife caught wind of this, there would be death threats. Because when it rained, it poured! Deacon wouldn’t have liked Angie being involved with Joel. Nope, not one bit.
“Good to see you,” Buck said to Joel. It was a total lie. Buck couldn’t believe Angie had invited him here.
“Good morning,” Belinda sang out, coming down the stairs wearing a leopard-print sheath dress, looking as though she were about to go out shopping on Rodeo Drive. She eyed Joel Tersigni. “Who is this?”
“Mom,” Angie said, “this is Joel. Joel, my mother, Belinda Rowe.”
Joel took Belinda’s hand reverently, as if she were the queen mother. “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
“‘Ma’am’?” Belinda said. “I’m hardly older than you are.”
“He’s only forty, Mom,” Angie said.
“Only forty?” Belinda said. “That’s fifteen years older than you.”
“Fourteen,” Angie said.
“She always was a hair splitter,” Belinda said to Joel.
Laurel entered the kitchen, followed by Hayes.
“Who wants avocado toast?” Laurel asked.
“I’ll have some,” Hayes said. “I’m starving.” He eyeballed Belinda. “I had a rough night.”
Scarlett stepped in off the porch.
“Do you want avocado toast, Scarlett?” Laurel asked. “It’s vegan.”