Beth Ciotta - Anything but Love

She eyed the ritzy candy jar.

In order to get through the next couple of hours, she might have to chase this truffle bar with that chocolate salted almond bar.

On the other hand she wasn’t sure her waistline could bear it, especially since she was definitely set on making and treating herself to those decadent cupcakes. She’d even bought a special bottle of Red Velvet wine as her beverage of choice. A sinful combination, but what the heck? It was, after all, her birthday.

Her twenty-fifth birthday—a legal and financial milestone.

As of today, Rae was a millionaire.

Whoop-de-flipping-do .

Finishing off the truffle, she sighed and shifted from the snow white leather club chair to the snow white leather sofa in yet another attempt to find comfort in her mother’s luxurious Bel Air home. The furnishings were sparse and expensive. The decorative accessories tasteful, bordering on sterile. Not one area of casual clutter. Even the holiday decorations were meticulously arranged.

Classical music played softly in the background, compliments of a new stereo system, hidden away somewhere—otherwise Rae would’ve dialed up a livelier playlist. Instead, she endured the stuffy music while scrolling through real estate listings on her iPhone and fantasizing about cupcakes and better times.

She’d spent the past year living a simple life in Sugar Creek, Vermont. Then the last two months driving across country sorting through jumbled emotions and bracing for the future. She’d only been back in California and living under her mother’s roof for three days, and it was two days too long.

Anxious, she glanced toward the grand stairway, wishing her mother and stepfather would dress a little faster. Rae had been ready for an hour. The sooner they got this evening’s pretentious holiday dinner over, the better.

“Bah humbug.”

There. She said it. She’d been thinking it all day. Rae had never been a big fan of Christmas. Mostly because it had never lived up to her expectations. As an only child of a celebrity socialite who preferred the limelight to home life, Rae had spent a good majority of her childhood keeping company with her very own TV. Holiday programming highlighted the importance of family and friends, the spirit of giving, and the magic of believing.

Rae had never lacked for presents, but there’d been no festive activities with family. No gathering around the piano to sing carols. No sleigh rides, no tree trimming, no baking of holiday cookies. Oh, there’d been decorations, but her mother had hired a company to trick out whichever mansion they were living in at the time. And there’d been parties, but they’d been the Hollywood kind or the business-related kind, depending on which man her mother had been married to, and certainly none were the kind that welcomed kids.

Christmas Eve had always been Olivia Deveraux’s night on the town, bouncing from one glitzy party to another. Never mind that Christmas Eve was also her daughter’s birthday. Surely the fact that Rae got presents that day in addition to Christmas morning was celebration enough.

This year was no different. This morning Olivia had presented Rae with diamond earrings, a special gift for her twenty-fifth. “ Really, sweetie, ” she had said, “ you’re independently wealthy now. A legitimate heiress. Time to start dressing and acting the part .”

Olivia had been dressing and acting the part for years. She’d never been the real deal. Rae was the real deal. Thanks to Olivia’s first husband, the father Rae had lost at age two.

Just now Olivia was upstairs with husband number four, a man Rae despised, taking forever and a day dressing for the first of three parties on their meticulously calculated social calendar. Amazingly, Olivia had invited Rae along. Although maybe not so amazing. As of this morning, Rae was stinking rich, a magnet for attention, something Olivia breathed like air.

Not wanting to insult her mother, especially since Rae was trying to forge some sort of genuine bond, she’d sucked it up, agreeing to attend the dinner party being hosted at the Beverly Wilshire. Rae had never been a social butterfly, but she could endure a formal dinner, and besides, the proceeds went to a local children’s hospital. She’d simply beg off after, leaving the wilder, drinking parties to Olivia and Geoffrey while she took advantage of their state-of-the-art kitchen.

Rae planned to spend her Christmas Eve birthday whipping up a holiday cupcake that would make the Cupcake Lovers proud, then chowing down and drinking wine while watching a marathon of sappy holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel. Movies celebrating friends and family, old-fashioned values, open hearts, and love. Movies that celebrated the kind of Christmas Rae had always craved and—double whammy—reminded her of the down-to-earth folk she’d been surrounded by in Sugar Creek. Being filthy rich couldn’t compare to being happy.

Rae eyed her mother’s professionally decorated, artificial tree, weathering a wave of melancholy as her mind exploded with the visions and scents of naked Vermont pine. Over the last two months Rae had done her best to forget her attempt at lying low and living incognito in the Green Mountain State under the mousy, shy guise of Rachel Lacey. All she’d wanted was a few months of anonymity, time to assess a dicey situation with Geoffrey, time to contemplate her future without her shallow mother breathing down her neck.

Losing herself to find herself.

Hiding until she had the funds to fight fire with fire.

Being a nobody had paid off in ways she’d never dreamed. Working with the children at Sugar Tots had been a dream. Joining the Cupcake Lovers and baking cupcakes for charitable causes had been a joy. If only Sam McCloud hadn’t fallen for her. ( How could any man fall for drab, aloof Rachel? ) If only Rae hadn’t fallen for Sam’s cousin, Luke Monroe.

Another dicey situation.

Disappearing, again, seemed the best course. No one would miss her, right? People came and went all the time—at least in Rae’s life.

“Stop moping, Deveraux. Jeez. ” Disgusted with her blue mood, Rae pushed to her feet and smoothed the wrinkles of her cocktail dress. “It’s your birthday. You’re a millionaire.”

Surely it was sinful for someone so fortunate to feel this miserable.

Time to find new happiness. Honest joy and real contentment. As for love …

There was always the Hallmark Channel.

“Someone to see you, Miss Deveraux.”

Rae blinked, startled by the depth of her daydreaming. She hadn’t heard the doorbell. She hadn’t even heard Ms. Finch, her mother’s latest housekeeper, enter the room. “Who is it?”

“Said he’s an old friend.”

That heightened Rae’s curiosity. True friends were sacred, a rarity in Rae’s life, and she was certain she didn’t have any in Bel Air.

Ms. Finch, who struck Rae as having a broomstick up her butt, raised her fastidiously penciled, coal-black eyebrows. “He seemed harmless so I allowed him access through the security gate and asked him to wait in the foyer.”

“Oh. Right. Thank you.” Rae dragged her fingers through her Bordeaux-colored, newly cropped hair. In her desperate need to cut ties with Rachel Lacey, she’d invested in a stylish makeover and a chic wardrobe. Months ago she would have been wearing a mid-shin peasant dress and clunky, flat-heeled sweater boots. This afternoon she’d zipped herself into a knee-length emerald green sheath with an Empire waist and donned a pair of platform pumps. A dash of holiday spirit combined with an air of sophistication—perfect for the dinner at the Wilshire.

Rae bolstered her shoulders as she moved across the pristine living area and then through two other rooms in order to greet her old friend —who was more than likely a smooth-talking reporter or an annoying member of the paparazzi. She’d begged Olivia not to brag about her inheritance but that was like asking her mother not to pose for the camera. Nothing would have surprised Rae. Except …