Sunset Beach(7)

“Hi,” the young man said, turning to her. “Can I help you?”

“Hope so. I’m Drue Campbell. My father is expecting me.”

“The new girl!” he squealed, clapping his fingertips together. “Thank God!” He stood and extended a hand. “Welcome! I’m Geoff. Spelled with a G, not a J. It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Okay,” Drue said slowly. “Good to meet you too.”

“Listen,” he said. “Brice is in with a client right now, but he asked me to take you back to Wendy, the office manager, since she’ll be doing your new-employee orientation.”

She followed him through a doorway and down a short corridor until he paused in front of an open door. He poked his head inside. “Hi, Wendy, I have our new employee here.” He gently pushed her into the room. “This is Drue.”

The office manager sat at a contemporary glass-topped desk. She lowered a pair of Chanel reading glasses onto her nose and looked up, her pale eyes appraising Drue with a hint of amusement. She was very tan and wore a chic blush pink sleeveless sheath dress with a string of rose quartz beads looped around her neck.

Drue returned her gaze with an uncertain smile of her own. There was something eerily familiar about this woman.

Before either could speak, Brice burst through the door of his adjacent office.

“Oh good, you’re here,” he said, beaming at Drue. He stood behind the glass desk, one hand placed lightly on his manager’s bare shoulder.

“Drue, you remember my wife, Wendy, right?”

She gawked, trying to make sense of the surreal scene in front of her. Drue knew that name, but the rest of the package was different. This Wendy was slender and petite, not pudgy and awkward. The orthodontia and mall bangs were gone. The frizzy long strawberry-blond hair was now short and sleek and a shimmering red. The sharp chin and high, rounded cheekbones were the same, but the lips were plumper. It was the nose that had thrown her off. This nose was definitely not factory equipment.

“Wendy Lockhart?” She blurted out the name, glancing at her father for confirmation. “Wait. You married Wendy Lockhart?”

“That’s right,” Brice said. “It’ll be three years on the twenty-eighth.”

“Twenty-seventh, you shameless cradle robber,” Wendy cooed. She gave Drue a mirthless smile. “So that makes me your stepmother. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Hysterical,” Drue mumbled, sinking onto the wing chair facing the desk. “Mind-blowing.”

What’s the worst that could happen? she’d asked herself, the previous night on that long, mind-numbing drive across Alligator Alley from Lauderdale to St. Pete. And now she had the answer to that rhetorical question. This. Right here. The prospect of having Wendy Lockhart, her junior high best friend/worst frenemy as both stepmother and supervisor. This was absolutely the worst that could happen.



* * *



“I didn’t even know you’d remarried,” she finally managed, when her brain began to thaw.

“It was a very intimate ceremony,” Wendy said, casually flaunting the motherlode of an engagement ring on her left hand. “Just a few friends and close family.”

Drue chewed the inside of her cheek and wondered if this office had a trapdoor, or maybe a fire escape.

“How did you two, uh, reconnect?” she asked.

“Reconnect?” Brice frowned. “I handled some legal work for Wendy, but I didn’t actually ask her out until after she’d gotten her settlement.” He winked. “Don’t share that with the Bar Association ethics committee, okay?”

“He didn’t remember me at all,” Wendy assured her. “I mean, it was so long ago. And when I hired him, I was Wendy Harrison, which was my ex-husband’s name.”

“We were in eighth grade,” Drue said, her voice cracking in disbelief. “You spent the night at our house nearly every Friday night of eighth grade. We’d tape Sabrina the Teenage Witch and watch it together on Friday nights. How could he not remember you?”

Wendy laughed and waved away Drue’s insistence. “Same old Drue. Still wildly exaggerating things. It wasn’t every Friday night. I spent the night maybe twice, three times tops. Your dad wasn’t even around that much back then, the way I remember it.”

Drue’s memories were distinctly different. She and Wendy had been nearly inseparable in the eighth grade, bonding initially over their shared misery at being the new girls in school, their friendship deepening over painful problems at home.

“Whatever,” she said now.

“Right,” Wendy said briskly, consulting her Rolex. “I was actually expecting you earlier, so we’re already behind with your training schedule.”

“My car wouldn’t start this morning,” Drue said, instantly feeling both lame and defensive.

“I’ll let you two girls get to the training room,” Brice said. “Why don’t we meet up and have lunch together at your break? I’ll get Geoff to make a reservation.”

“Can’t,” Wendy said. “We need her on those phones tomorrow. Which means she’s got the whole legal training module to get through, which is six hours, and then there’s the employee handbook. And she’s still got to run over to Medical Associates for her drug test.”