Lovers Lie

By Samantha McPhillips

Cali Scott is not looking forward to attending her mother's wedding - especially given the girlfriend she has brought along for the trip is not actually dating her at all.

 

Leaving Wyoming was the only way Cali could be true to herself, even if it meant becoming a maid for a stately manor on the other side of the world. She didn't move. She ran.

 

After overhearing her colleague being roped back into the life she desperately tried to escape, Brodie attempts to save her by posing as her girlfriend while on call and agreeing to attend the wedding. It's what friends are for right?

 

Devising a relationship to return home with, they have an ex-boyfriend to convince there's no second chance and a small town family's prejudice to juggle but can Cali pull off a convincing performance when she's battling her real feelings for Brodie or will they see through the cracks?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Samantha McPhillips
• Release date: Mar 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393787426

Book preview

Chapter 1

Distance, Cali Scott is told, makes the heart grow fonder - and maybe that’s true, for some situations. For the situation that is her mother, she thinks there isn’t enough distance in the world. Not even hopping on a plane to Scotland, telling Julia with the slapdash over-her-shoulder desperation of a woman on the run, I’ll call! I’ll call when I get settled! was enough.

I’m a grown woman, she reminds herself entirely too frequently. A grown woman with a steady job, a nice living situation, a whole life out here in Salkire, and if her stomach still sinks into her sneakers when the phone rings - if she still wakes in a cold sweat from dreams of home - if it makes her feel like she’s going just a little bit out of her mind when her mother sends well-meaning texts about Cali’s love life...

Grown women still have to deal with ghosts of a certain kind, it would appear.

Still, Cali’s comfortable with her decisions. Happy, even. Most girls don’t flee the country over a breakup, but when that breakup comes with disapproving head shakes in the grocery store, with cajoling Facebook posts, and with Nate’s mother materialising on her doorstep to insist that cold feet happen, Calista, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love you - dire choices must sometimes be made. Some girls would leap frantically into a new relationship, or invent wild excuses for their behavior, or even have a public meltdown.

Cali Scott quietly - without asking permission or for anyone’s advice on the subject - packed three small bags, bought a ticket to anywhere else and left.

Six months later, she found herself here: a lady’s maid for a recently relocated family, the Salingers, in a stately country manor she couldn’t have conceived of back in Wyoming. It had been less than simple, at first: every room was blanketed in thick dust, unpacked boxes, frantic new owners and two children who welcomed her with silence. The older of the two, Sophie, was alternately sweet and cold while Harris bounced between hyperactive and nearly sick with misery. They missed their life back in London, they missed their nanny, they missed public school, for reasons no other occupant of the house had seemed quite able to understand. And Cali, who had been looking for a distraction big enough to wield against the shadows of her own failed relationship, had felt strangely at home without even trying.

The others who worked at the estate had, of course, helped: Kifat, with his brotherly teasing despite being the butler never failed to spread his consistent positivity; Simone played the role of Chef de Cuisine with her top-notch culinary skills and was an excellent listener who made Cali feel instantly as though she had nothing to be ashamed of; Brodie who drove her from the airport to her new home felt as though she’d been in Cali’s life from the start, even if she was constantly outside tending to the livestock or many fields. Cali, whose friend list had previously consisted of Nathan and all of his friends, as well as a handful of colleagues from the office she worked in, had felt as though she was plunging out into a deep ocean only to be rescued by these three people. Caught, buoyed, and loved, against all odds.

It’s been strange, and it’s been complicated, but more often than not it’s also been good. Not that she’s been able to get as much across to her mother, who calls once a week with barbed questions on her tongue: when are you coming back? Are you even bothering to look for another job? You know Nate’s still talking about you, don’t you, Calista?

All the more reason to stay here forever, she thinks each time she hangs up. All the more reason to build a permanent life out here in Salkire, with its huge staircase and its elegant walls and its tiny little family tucked into a warm living room.

I don’t know why I even pick up, Cali tells Brodie one day, tossing her phone so hard, it bounces off the couch and clatters to the floor. Brodie bends down, picks it up, inspecting the screen for dents.

All good, she confirms, handing it back. And you do it ‘cause you’re kind. Couldn’t say I’d be the same, if I had a mother that relentless.

Cali laughs as her frustrations melt and feels all the more better for it; she always seems to when Brodie is in the room. She’s never had a friend like Brodie before, someone so willing - even eager - to listen to her speak. Not that Brodie is one of those people who tells Cali what she wants to hear, someone poised to constantly stroke Cali’s ego. She’s a little rough around the edges, uninterested in lies or games, and when she looks Cali in the eye, Cali always feels seen. It’s been refreshing, these months with Brodie. Makes her feel safe in a way she can’t remember ever being before, even when she was a child.

Closest, maybe, was that first year being Nate’s best friend. That first year, with her dad barely in his grave and her mother pulling further away each day, before Nate ever thought about kissing or marriage or anything else. She thinks about that year often, how they’d both been small for their age, how his family had been so big and warm and welcoming, and hers had shriveled to bitter silence one night without warning. She’d felt at home in Nate’s house, ten years old and trying so hard to look stronger than she felt.

And then, the rest of it is like a bad coming of age movie writing itself. Nate’s attention grew bigger by the day, while Cali felt herself shrinking beneath its weight. Nate’s mother, Polly, the sweetest woman in the world, dropping hints about how nicely Cali would fit into the family Christmas card, how beautiful Cali would look in Nate’s grandmother’s ring, how perfect Cali would be, dropping her father’s name and wearing Bishop like an anchor around her neck instead.

She’d run, before it could all set in. Before the cement around her shoes could dry, and the cage door could slam, and her story could be stamped with a filigreed The End before it had even begun. She’d run, and the worst part about it was Polly on the other end of every social media messenger, asking what she’d done wrong.

Heavy, Brodie had said when Cali told her the whole sordid tale. She’d left out some parts - how she’d always felt wrong in a way she couldn’t quite pin down with Nate; how she still feels it now, in a hot-flash-opposite way with Brodie sitting beside her on the couch. But most of it, she’d let fall out in a single evening, passing a bottle of wine back and forth with Brodie while the family were in town for dinner.

I should have stayed, shouldn’t I? she’d questioned, swaying a little, her knee pushed up against Brodie’s thigh. I should have just figured it out. Who runs away like that?

Brodie, true to form, hadn’t danced around it, hadn’t even tried to find a way to make what she had to say pleasant. She’d closed a hand over Cali’s kneecap, the calluses of her fingers rough against Cali’s skin, and looked her dead in the eye.

Yogi. Were you happy?

Cali, tears threatening to spill from her eyes, had shaken her head hard enough to blur the world. Brodie handed the bottle back, leaned against the arm of the couch, gave her knee a single firm pat.

And are you now?

Cali, bottle raised clumsily to her lips, had nodded. Brodie looked satisfied, messy auburn curls backlit by the room’s single lamp.

Well, there you go.

That had been her first month at Salkire, and Cali hasn’t allowed herself to stray down that line of thinking again since. That was Calista’s life, not hers. This, living on the estate; mopping every floorboard to find Sophie trailing muck back in, painting the walls of Harris’s new room to gently pull him away from the disjointment he felt, labouring after every one of Lady Salinger’s preposterous requests, serving Lord Salinger’s work friends during meetings, being playfully mocked by Kifat for her painfully American accent, helping Simone prepare dinners, stealing little glances at Brodie out on the farm. This is her life. And she loves it. She does wholeheartedly.

Distance. That’s the key to every problem. A little distance. A little freedom. Took her nearly twenty five years, but Cali has it figured out now. And she’s satisfied with that much...

Right until the Monday morning phone call from Julia Scott.

Mom? Cali tries her hardest not to sound ragged, as if she wasn’t just chasing Sophie down the stairs in a feeble effort to coax the girl into picking up after herself. It’s one of those days already, where the children are distant, impatient, not quite there and their parents are out for business. Cali doesn’t really have time for this call.

Cali doesn’t ever really have time. Her mother always starts the same, a record that refuses to skip:

Honey, have you done something to your hair?

Cali resists the urge to close her eyes. Her mother has opted again for the impossible-to-escape video call, her face small and pinched and angled to prevent Cali seeing her rounding jawline. She looks so fragile, filling Cali’s screen, and Cali briefly thinks, I could toss this phone into the silo, and we’d never have to do this again. I could drown what’s left of Calista and forget. Finally.

Hi, Mom, she says, pitching her voice toward anything along the lines of cheerful, consciously wiping the weariness away. What’s up?

What do you want, more likely - her mother has that look Cali remembers all too well from growing up, the one that said Julia was about to make demands phrased carefully to feel like questions. Would you mind running to the store, Calista? We’re out of milk and cigarettes again. Oh, and if you could drop this bill off while you’re at it? Wouldn’t want the electricity to shut off again, would we?

Calista, I know it’s been a hard year, her mother is saying now, her voice skipping and stuttering with her poor wifi connection. She’s not at the house, Cali thinks; the kitchen behind her doesn’t look familiar. Or maybe the house, the one Cali grew up in, isn’t their house anymore. Maybe Julia has moved on without her. Wouldn’t that be something?

What? Cali asks, when her mother’s face freezes, blurs, jumps forward a few frames. Her voice has stopped altogether. Cali moves automatically toward the front door, stepping out into sunshine in hopes of locating a better signal. Try again now.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah- yes, that’s better. Few more minutes. Few more minutes, and I can forget this call even happened. Bad signal, Mom, I keep telling you I’m out in the country-

So, of course, we’ll need you to come home for it, Julia trails off at the exact same moment. Icey water has somehow found its way into Cali’s veins, a riptide turning her body to stone.

Say again?

For the wedding, her mother yells impatiently. Calista, are you listening?

Mom- I can’t- I can’t hear- Just wind back and throw, Cali thinks helplessly, staring out at the fields. Just throw it as hard as you can, and maybe a bird will take it off to its nest, and you can be free-

I said. Julia’s voice is chipped, shrill, awful in her ears. Am I going to sound like this someday? Did I pick up too many of my mother’s genes in the great lottery that was my birth? Will I, one day, be squinting into a phone at the daughter I can’t comprehend, sounding like a witch from some old fairytale in which children are devoured and home is a broken story? You’ll be here for the wedding, of course. You’ll be standing up in the wedding, Calista, as my bridesmaid. Or is that not going to work with your plans?

Wedding. She’s definitely said wedding, several times over now. She’s said wedding, and also my, and also bridesmaid, and Cali feels like the world has been slammed into fast-forward.

You’re getting married? she probes, trying not to sound like a third marriage is probably the worst idea Julia Scott could have. If there’s an art to love, her mother missed every class. Resentment, on the other hand - Again?

Calista, honestly, it’s like you’re not even- yes, I’m getting married. In two weeks. And I’ll need you here the whole time, alright? None of this sweeping in Friday night and running away before the reception’s over nonsense. I need my daughter.

Since when? Cali thinks almost idly. She catches sight of Brodie, overalls and flannel shirt, carrying buckets of feed to the barn, and finds her feet carrying her slowly in that direction. At the very least, Brodie can help talk her down from whatever cliff she’ll feel like flinging herself off of when this conversation finally ends.

And, dear, I think it’s time we put all that runaway bride crap behind us, her mother goes on. I’ve put Nathan at your table, and I think you know he’s still sweet on you. His online relationship status hasn’t changed since you left, not once. He’d take you back in an instant if you just-

I’m no- I don’t want that,