“Come on, Gayla. They need to vacuum over there.”
“Vacuum?”
She swung her legs over the side of the sofa then held a hand out to steady her head. The crash was always the bad part.
Through squinted eyes she realized Lance wasn't alone in the apartment. Two women, one white and the other black, scurried around the place. One held a bucket, its noxious pine odor indicating some sort of household cleaner. The other one was pushing a vacuum.
“Who are these people?”
“The service I hired to clean up this place.”
“Who the hell are you coming into my house and cleaning up?”
“I'm paying for it, Gayla.”
She sat back. “Oh. Well, tell 'em to clean out the refrigerator, too. And to get that gunk up in the bathroom.”
Gayla saw both women exchange a distasteful glance between them. “Mr. Heart,” the black one said, “our contract . . .”
“Triple rate,” Lance said over the objection before it was fully formed.
The two cleaning women shrugged and went back to their work.
Gayla snorted. “Throwing money around always worked for you Hearts.”
Something in her voice made him look at her askance. “What do you mean?”
“If you throw enough money at it, problems disappear.”
Lance held out a hand to Gayla to help her up. “That's not necessarily true.”
“Yeah, right.” Gayla looked around. “Where's Tarique?”
“I don't know. I was going to ask you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How'd you get in here?”
“The door was open.”
Gayla shrugged. For all she knew she could have left it wide open.
“We need to talk,” Lance said.
“So talk.”
“Not here,” he said. “Are you hungry? We can go get a bite to eat and then talk.”
Gayla sized him up, wondering how much longer he planned to stick around. There was a time when she'd dreamed of this moment, anticipated the day when Lance would come back to rescue her, to take her away from her sorry life. But he'd never come. Not once. He didn't respond to the letters she wrote and eventually hope, just like her dreams, withered and died. All that remained was the hurt . . . and the occasional fantasy of what it would have been like.
Her stomach rumbled. “I guess I am hungry. But I want to go someplace fancy. Someplace nice.”
She watched him assess her.
“All right. I'll wait in the truck while you change. Ten minutes, Gayla.”
“Yeah, yeah. What about these people?” The cleaning crew was swabbing down the kitchen, one washing dishes and the other working on crusted-over spaghetti sauce stains that caked the counter.
“They'll lock up when they finish. You can trust them. They do my house.”
“Hmph” was all she said in response.
“Ten minutes, Gayla.”
Twenty minutes later, she'd showered, brushed her hair and put on a dress she borrowed from her best friend and next-door neighbor. “This is it, girl. He's come back for you.”
Shay knew the whole sorry story about Lance and Gayla.
Gayla wasn't quite so positive. “I don't know.”
“Shit, girl. He done brought groceries up in here. Had them bitches clean up your place. Shoot, sound to me like he ready to move right on in.”
The shower had cleared her head, and the makeup Shay was applying to her face made her look a little like the Gayla she used to be.
After a light brush of crimson frost over her mouth, Gayla stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“You the bomb, girl.”
The smiling confidence of her friend boosted Gayla's own confidence. Maybe Lance had come back to reclaim her heart. She'd never stopped loving himâa fact that usually caused her endless heartache. Today though it didn't seem so bad to be still in love with Lance Heart Smith.
Maybe today they could pretend they were married in the true sense of the word.
Everything was like she remembered it. Lance's attentiveness, the warm feeling along her skin and in her heart when he touched her, though today his touches were just of the polite variety, holding a hand out to help her from the gleaming Escalade, a guiding hand at her back as they entered the Thai restaurant and then followed a hostess to their table.
Watching him, being with him reminded her of all the reasons she'd fallen in love with this man, all the reasons she'd thought she'd spend the rest of her life with him. But it hadn't happened that way. Prince Charming rode off into the sunset alone, and all she had to show for her time in his kingdom was a baby she wasn't supposed to have, a broken heart and the long-gone money she'd accepted from Virginia Heart to disappear from Lance's life.
“I'm glad you came back,” she told him.
He nodded. “Me, too. It's been a long time.”
Had he truly come back for her?
Everything he'd said and done so far indicated just that. Plus, Shay had said all the pieces added up. But why now?
Gayla smiled at him, and Lance smiled right back. This was going to work, she thought. It really would work. They could get the house they'd designed together all those years ago. There would be a wing just for them, a cozy love nest; Tarique and any other kids they had would be on the other side of the house, the side where the nanny lived. In their bedroom, there'd be a cream-colored chaise like the one she'd seen in a furniture store window. It would be perfect for late-night and mid-afternoon love sessions.
The bubble burst shortly after the entree dishes had been taken away but before the server brought the coconut ice cream.
“What do you mean you want Tarique?”
Lance reached for her hand, but she snatched it away.
“I can provide so much more for him. He can go to the best schools in the city, get exposed toâ”
“He gets exposed to everything he needs right where he is.”
Lance hunched forward and reached behind him. A moment later, his wallet was in his hand.
Gayla watched him pull out several hundred-dollar bills, about nine hundred more than their lunch would cost. “What are you doing?”
“Gayla, had I known about Tarique I would have helped you all this time. That's my responsibility. I want to take care of my son.”
When she didn't take the money, he put it on the table between them.
She noticed that he'd said he wanted to take care of
Tarique
ânot of her, or her, too. She grabbed on to the part she could deal with. “If you'd wanted to be so involved in his life, why didn't you answer any of my letters?”
“You didn't send me any letters.”
“I did, too. A lot of them. I sent them to your house. And you never responded. If you wanted to take care of your
responsibility
you'd have done so a long time ago. Like when I was pregnant and scared and living by myself in a hotel room.”
“Hotel room? What are you talking about.”
And then she told him. She told him what it was like to be seventeen and pregnant and alone. Her parents kicked her out the moment she'd told them she was married and pregnant.
“ âGo to your husband then,' my father told me. But I couldn't, because you were gone and I couldn't find you, and Mrs. Heart told me you had other family commitments.”
Lance's brow furrowed and he held up both hands as if staving off her words. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Mrs. Heart? Which Mrs. Heart?”
Gayla closed her eyes and sighed. “Lance, don't play me for stupid.”
He grabbed her hand. “Gayla, this is important. Are you talking about my mother?”
“Lance, why would I be talking about your mother? Her last name isn't Heart.”
He knew where this was going, and a sick, hollow feeling washed over him. “You mean my grandmother, don't you? Virginia?”
She yanked her hand free from his and folded her arms under her breasts.
“Here you are,” the server said. He placed two dishes of coconut ice cream with little waffle cookies in front of each of them. Spoons and napkins followed. “Enjoy.”
Both Gayla and Lance ignored the dessert.
When she didn't seem inclined to say anything else, Lance prodded. “Gayla, if what you're telling me is true, the reason I never responded to you is because I never got your letters. I didn't know you were pregnant.”
“What I'm telling you
is
true. How dare you suggest . . .”
He held a hand up to silence her as a thought occurred to him. “We were manipulated.”
“Huh?”
“I was staying with my grandparents, remember? My mom was in Florida and I was at the compound. That's where you sent the letters, right?”
She nodded.
“One of them must have intercepted them.”
It didn't take long for him to piece together a likely scenarioâVirginia getting rid of a problem in the traditional Heart way: throwing money at the nuisance until it went away.
“How much did she give you?” he asked Gayla.
“What?”
“How much money did you get from my grandmother?”
Gayla glanced away, then defiantly met his gaze. “Twenty-five thousand. In cash. Plus money to get an abortion. And I had to promise not to ever see you again.” Gayla stared at her fingers, the nails ragged and bitten in some places. “She said if I double-crossed her and had the baby and kept it, she'd take it away from me and then make my life a living hell. So when I had Tarique, I made sure no one knew.”
“Did you tell her we were married?”
Gayla shook her head. “I never got that far. She started screaming and calling me names when I told her I was pregnant.”
Their waiter appeared at the table's edge. “You did not like the ice cream?”
“What?” Lance looked up at the man, then down at the two bowls of melted mess in front of them. “It was fine.” He handed both bowls to the server.
The waiter eyed the cash on the table. “You want I should get something else?”
“No, we're fine,” Lance said.
“I want some ice cream,” Gayla said, petulance in her voice now.
Lance shook his head. “Another bowl of ice cream, please.”
“Okay.” The server left for Gayla's dessert and Lance leaned forward, picking up the money he'd placed on the table. “Take this, for Tarique.”
For a moment, neither of them said anything. Lance's money, all crisp bills, hovered in the air as he held it out to her. She met his gaze, assessing his true concern.
Another buyout?
Even if it was, she'd more than earned it, she told herself. Lance was a Heart. Gayla knew the guilt she saw on his face would go a long way toward improving her own lot. All Tarique needed was something to eat and some clothes to wear. Her expenses though . . . well, she had needs of her own.
She took the money, put it in her purse then folded her hands in her lap.
“That's for Tarique,” Lance emphasized. “Until we can set up a permanent arrangement, okay? I'll get you guys whatever else you need.”
“What are you saying?”
“I didn't know then, but I know now,” he said. “I can't turn back the clock and make what happened go away, but I promise to try to make it up to you. I can get you a place to stay if you want to move.”
Her brows rose in speculation. “I always wanted to live in a house again.”
He waved a hand as if her dreams were unimportant. “Fine. But we need to get back to what was going on ten years ago. This is important, Gayla. I want to get to the bottom of this. I'm finding out some things about my grandmother that I didn't know before. Most of them aren't good. It sounds like she stepped in and ruined our lives.”
Gayla looked at him. “She ruined my life, Lance. Look at you. Big car, nice clothes. You still have money. You're doing just fine. Did you marry her?”
“Marry who?”
“The girl Mrs. Heart said you were destined for. Some sort of family arrangement.”
“Goddamn it to hell. I don't believe this.”
Several people turned at the outburst. Lance either didn't see them or didn't care.
“Is that what she told you?”
Gayla nodded.
The pieces all fell into place now. The hastily arranged family vacation. The insistence from Virginia and Uncle Jimmy that Lance be nice to Ginger Gerard. He well remembered that summer on the lake in North Carolina. His grandparents had invited friends to join them, and the friends had a pretty daughter, Ginger. Ginger of the perfect teeth, wide smile and big breasts.
More than once she'd caught him alone at the secluded lakefront. He'd gone there to think about Gayla and the life they'd share together. Ginger had come with seduction on her mind. She'd done everything in her power to seduce him, but Lance's body and mind belonged to his secret bride.
“Her name was Ginger. And no. I didn't marry her. I didn't want her. You were the only woman I wanted.”
“Past tense?”
Still thinking about that strange week in the middle of the school year, he shook his head, “What was that?”
The waiter put a fresh bowl of ice cream in front of Gayla. She scooped a bit onto her spoon. “Nothing.”
“Tell me what else happened.”
“What do you mean, what else?”
He quickly relayed their shared history. “We got married in Mexico. Came home and decided to keep it a secret at least for a while.”
“I was pregnant. My mom figured it out before I did. I was throwing up like crazy every morning.”