Read Online Love & The Goddess by Mary Elizabeth Coen - Free Book Online

up. They say looking well is the best revenge and I feel freer dressing like this
rather than in the suits Trevor liked me wearing.”
    “Hello, Kate,” my father said, as I walked through the kitchen door. “You look very pretty. Is there a new man on the scene?”
    “Don’t be silly – what on earth are you asking her that for?” My mother still hoped I would get back with Trevor. I was the dreamer she had constantly worried about. The
day I’d announced my engagement to Trevor, she’d felt all her prayers were answered in one fell swoop. At long last, her youngest daughter had someone to take care of her and save her
from herself. She’d always worried about me ending up with an out-of-work artist or musician.
    “No-one apart from you, Daddy.” I pecked him on the cheek. Flattery always worked with my father, although, more rebellious than my older sister Liz, I had almost always resisted
pandering to him. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to start now, as a means of deflecting attention away from myself and at the same time making an old man happy. Slightly taken aback by my change in
attitude, he smiled bashfully before beaming his trademark megawatt smile. Though my father was reserved he had a natural charm which came forth whenever he felt relaxed. For a handsome man, I
could never understand his innate lack of confidence. Taking a tin foil container from my shopping bag, I placed it on the table in front of him. “I made you a Bailey’s cheesecake, Dad.
Forgive the tin foil, but it travels best this way. Tastes the same as always.” I’d learned at fourteen that the way to his heart was definitely via his taste buds. He’d started
praising me for the first time in my life, when I cooked for him during the week my mother was in hospital with pneumonia. His words had stuck in my head until now: “You’re an
alchemist, capable of transforming base ingredients into ambrosia, food of the Gods.” This was proof that finally I had come to exist as a viable person in my father’s world.
    Now his face lit up like a little boy’s as he inhaled the aroma of the liqueur. “Nobody in the world makes it like you do, Liz. Thank you.”
    “Kate. It’s Kate, Dad.”
    “I know you’re Kate,” he said, looking at me oddly. His short-sleeved white shirt showed off his holiday tan, yet he looked more than usually tired. His grey hair was receding
further back at the temples, and his once-blue eyes were now pale grey in hollow sockets.
    I was about to ask him if he was all right, when my mother burst in, “D’ya hear him going on about your cooking? I gave up after two attempts using your recipe for that cheesecake.
He kept asking me was it shop-bought. Liz has tried and failed – what are we doing wrong?”
    “Haven’t a clue, Mam,” I said vaguely, still concerned about my father’s calling me by my sister’s name. Anyway, I wasn’t about to reveal that I threw in way
more Baileys than the recipe specified and then added a large dollop of old fashioned Irel coffee essence. Liz would turn up her nose at the notion of so much booze and condemn the Irel as silly.
No, I would retain the element of mystery, for the sake of gaining an innocent advantage.
    “You’ll never guess who’s back in Ireland and asking for you?” My mother had a self-conscious snigger in her voice. “Billy. And like you his marriage is gone wrong.
It seems to be catching. Almost all our neighbours have at least one child with a broken marriage.”
    Well, that was good to know, I thought (and was half inclined to say it, but decided to keep it to myself). Instead, I smiled brightly, “I must meet up with him. Do you know I was only
thinking about him recently? We used to be so close. I don’t know how we lost contact.”
    “He’s wealthy, he’s been very successful. But he’s not your type, Kate.” That was my mother’s way of telling me to put on my chastity belt now that I was no
longer a respectable married