Chapter Eighteen
"Hey, stop the truck! Let me out right here."
Colton looked over at his nephew in surprise, but obediently jammed on the brakes at the top of Lila's driveway. He'd talked Jonah into going fishing with him again, but he knew the only reason the kid showed any enthusiasm for the idea was that he knew Lila would feed them.
Sometimes, he worried they took advantage of her. This wasn't how he'd expected to romance a woman, dragging her to kid's baseball games and eating dinner at her house on Sundays, but Lila seemed content. Colton didn't want her content, he wanted her head-over-heels in love with him the way he was with her, but it seemed all he could do was wait and hope that happened.
Jonah slid out of the seat and slammed the truck door. Colton pulled further down the drive, watching the boy from his rearview mirror, amazed to see him open her mailbox. He smiled. Jonah would have bitched if he'd asked him to grab their mail, but the small gesture he was making on Lila's behalf pleased him.
Her less-than enthusiastic welcome when he entered her garage did not. She only offered him her cheek, and her attention remained on the cabinet door she was stripping. "If you guys catch anything, I'll cook them another night. I have some chicken breasts I can fix for dinner," she informed him distractedly.
"Why don't you let us take you out instead?" he suggested, moving away to examine the newly stripped pieces she had laid out to dry. She had done a lot of work on the cabinet in the last week, only the case itself remained painted orange. The bared wood was sort of a washed out, pinkish gray, and he looked forward to seeing what she'd do with it. He had every faith she'd turn the old carcass into something beautiful.
"No, I don't have time," was all she said.
"Brought your mail, Lila," Jonah crowed, dashing into the garage. "You got a bunch of junk."
She stripped off her rubber gloves and stood up, giving Jonah a big smile and a hug before flipping through the mail. Colton felt a twinge of jealousy. "It's impolite to look through someone else's mail," he reproved.
"It's just junk," Jonah insisted. "Like this big old ugly piece of furniture." Colton wished he'd kept his mouth shut, since Lila didn't seem to mind and he'd spoiled his nephew's good mood.
"You mean the way baseball is just a game? What's really ugly is the way you argued balls and strikes with the umpire last night." Lila looked up from the mail in her hand to give Jonah a steady gaze.
The kid just shrugged but he got the sullen look Colton dreaded to see on his face.
"Jonah, I want you to think about this," Lila continued. "Do you really think these guys come to the ball field thinking 'Which kid's game can I screw up tonight? Who can I cheat out of a run or a strike or a base?' Because that's what you're saying when you put on that sort of show. And you can take my word for the fact that I've never seen a fit like you pitched last night make an umpire change a call, so what's the point?" Not waiting for a reply, she turned away to disappear up the steps and into the house.
"She can be such a bitch," Jonah said angrily, kicking the cabinet door she'd laid on the floor. "Who does she think she is? My mother?"
"Jonah." Colton used a warning tone, his heart sinking because the last thing he wanted was to fight with his nephew. Before either of them could say another word, the unfamiliar sound of Lila shouting came clearly through the closed door to the kitchen.
"You know what, Ron?" she yelled. "I get mail addressed to Pete every damn day, it feels like, but this one just takes the cake. He worked for your company for over fifteen years and you can't update your records to show he's deceased? I mean, if he could fill out this proxy form for his stock, he wouldn't be dead, now would he? It's just plain lazy and a merry fucking insult, on top of everything else, because you and I both know why I can't fill out the damn thing. Just fix it, update your damn records, Ron. Do you think you can get that done?"
Colton and Jonah exchanged looks as her voice climbed. It hurt him to hear the pain in her voice.
"He's dead," she shrieked, "He's dead and I hate that. Every day I wake up and it takes me a minute to figure out why I don't hear him snoring. But I figure it out all over again and I get out of bed and I try to move on, but how the fuck am I supposed to move on when the company he worked for over fifteen years still sends mail here addressed to him almost a year after I put him into the ground?"
Over the sound of the phone being slammed violently back onto the receiver, they could hear her sobbing.
Colton stood riveted to the concrete floor, wanting more than anything to go up those steps and hold her. He knew most men despised when their woman cried, but to him, their tears were what made them women. The chance to hold her while she cried seemed to him a privilege and not a chore. To his mind, it was like the enthusiasm she showed for sucking his cock when others had done it but let him know they didn't enjoy the act.
He didn't know if she'd want that from him right now, since she was crying over Pete, but it didn't feel right to just stand here listening to her sobs. She kept him so off-balance, he never figured out what she wanted from him. Besides sex.
Jonah didn't seem to share his concerns. The kid was already opening the kitchen door.
He followed Jonah quietly into the house. Lila was sitting on the floor, looking as if the world had her cornered. The kid dropped to his knees and flung his arms around her, and Lila squeezed him fiercely as the kid began to sob, too. Colton just stood there, watching the pair. He felt left out and uncertain.
"I know how you feel, Lila," Jonah choked out. "I feel the same way every time somebody tells me I look just like my mom, or asks why I live with Colton instead of my dad."
"Oh, sweetie, you just tell them Colton is your dad now," Lila said through her sobs, hugging him tighter. "The rest is none of their business, and you can tell those busybodies that, too."
Jonah glanced up at him. "Can I?" he asked doubtfully.
How the hell had he fucked that message up?
"Yes, absolutely," Colton agreed, crossing the kitchen to kneel beside them, still unsure of what they needed him to do.
"I miss my m-oooo-m," Jonah howled suddenly.
Lila brushed Jonah's hair out of his eyes, snubbing back her own tears. "Of course you do," she soothed. "There's always going to be a hole in your heart where she was, honey. It's never going to go away. But every day it gets just a little bit less tender, until one day it only aches when you need it to, to help remember her."
Jonah sobbed. "I want the ache to stop, Lila. It hurts all the time."
"That ache means she was important to you, you wouldn't ever want it to go away completely."
Jonah just shook his head furiously, tears streaming down his face. "I don't want to hurt over her anymore," he cried.
Colton's tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.
Lila wiped her eyes on her shirttail and gave the teenager a weak smile. "You're still mad at her, huh? Mad she left you? Mad she went somewhere it wasn't safe and got herself killed and changed your life?"
"Ye-ees-ss," Jonah wailed, his slender shoulders shaking. "I'm so mad that sometimes I hate her for dying."
Lila pulled Jonah into her lap, never mind the fact the kid looked like a boxer Colton had once owned that had loved sitting in his water bucket when it was hot. "And it makes you feel guilty that you're mad," she stated. "Then the guilt makes you feel worse?"
Jonah was crying so hard now he merely nodded. Colton scrubbed his hands along the thighs of his jeans as he thought of his anger with his sister, and his helpless fury about why Sarah had been in a bad part of town, and why she hadn't just handed over her keys and survived.
"I'll tell you something, Jonah. It's okay to be mad at her. It's okay to be mad because your life changed because of something you have no control over. But there comes a day when your anger goes away, they tell me, and all you have left is the good parts, and it doesn't hurt in the bad way anymore." Lila brushed his bangs out of his face again. The motherly gesture made Colton's heart twist. His mother hadn't been around to do stuff like that.
He quietly got to his feet, leaving them to this very important conversation he and Jonah had been unable to have. He wandered outside and used his cell to phone for a pizza to be delivered. While he was out there, he installed the new wiper blades he'd bought for her truck, giving her and Jonah more time to talk.
"You mad at your husband, Lila?" Jonah asked later, around a mouthful of pepperoni pizza.
"There are days I think about going to the cemetery, digging him up and stabbing him to death," she giggled, licking at the strings of mozzarella on her fingers.
Jonah's eyes rounded. "Wow that is mad. What did he do?"
Lila wiped her hands on a napkin before answering. Colton waited quietly, needing to know and glad the kid had asked.
"He got hurt, and he couldn't walk or use his arms, but his mind was clear and he could still talk to me," Lila stated. "So, our lives were different, but I still had the important part of Pete, until Dr. Fielder got him on an experimental drug that was supposed to help with chronic pain. The pain didn't seem any better, but Pete got worse. It made his mind fuzzy, and sometimes he didn't even know who I was. He would get agitated and take a swing at me. His personality changed. He got mean and he started having seizures. I wanted him to quit taking the drug, and we fought about that a lot, but every time I talked to his doctor, the man treated me like I didn't know what I was talking about. And after the drug erased any trace of the man I loved, it killed him. So, the day I actually go stark raving nuts and dig Pete up, when I finish with him, I'm going straight for that doctor." She laughed. "If I'm headed for prison, I might as well go for the trifecta. I believe I'll just get Pete's mother too, the hateful old witch."
It shouldn't have been funny, but the three of them laughed for a long time over her frank confession.
Later, Colton sat on the step, watching her work on the cabinet. Jonah retreated to her den to watch television. "He hasn't cried over his mom since the day I got to California to handle her remains and take custody of him," he said.
"No doubt some idiot told him real men don't cry," she replied.
"That'd be Eric," Colton sighed. "My point is, he needed to show some emotion about his mother's death, and I never could figure out how to help him with that. So thank you."
She only nodded, keeping her eyes glued to her work. "I think you needed to as well," he added lamely, earning another nod.
This wasn't what he wanted to say. This touchy-feely stuff was hard, never knowing if he might say the wrong thing, but he hadn't missed her comment that talking to Pete was what she missed the most, not the sex, not the money Pete earned, but sharing her feelings with him. Colton sighed deeply, moving across the workspace to turn her around so she faced him. "Lila, I can't tell you how it hurts me to see either one of you cry like that, to hear the raw pain in your voices. I think your life in the last few years must've been hell, and sometimes Jonah says stuff that makes me wonder about his. I'd do whatever it took to make sure neither of you ever have to cry again in your lives, but I have absolutely no idea how to stop that from happening."
She smiled softly. "You lost someone too, Colton. I know you must hurt, and there have to be days you resent all the changes in your life."
He kissed the top of her head, pulling her to his chest, just enjoying the comforting feel of her against him. "It's been one hell of an adjustment, but you've taught me so much about parenting. I didn't have much for parents, Lila. We don't know what good parents do, how they act. When my mom bailed right after Sarah was born, my dad blamed us for being the reason she left. He mostly just knocked us around because he'd rather have had her than us, I guess."
She pulled back to stare up at him, concern and sympathy filling her eyes. "That's why you and your brothers are so close." She frowned, tiny furrows appearing between her eyes. "I bet you were mad at Sarah for leaving too, huh?"
"Yeah," he agreed, amazed at how perceptive she was, how she just watched people and figured stuff out about him most people overlooked. "Eric never forgave her, or Dan either, really. I was the only one that ever went to visit them in California. The other two said if she wanted to see them, she could come here, but she refused to come back even to visit."
"You ever wonder what she was running from?"
"Not really. I figured Jonah's dad broke her heart, and she didn't want to ever see him again, but I have absolutely no idea who he was," Colton admitted, the memory of how abandoned he'd felt in the days after Sarah left threatening to make him cry. There'd been enough crying for one night.
He swallowed hard, reaching out to turn up the radio, pulling her against him again, swaying her to the slow song. He ached to tell her he loved her, but not tonight. Not the night she'd cried over Pete. Instead, he held her close to his heart, kissing her temple, moving his lips down the side of her neck, thinking how perfectly she fit in his arms, knowing she'd fit into his life with the same ease. He dragged his lips along her jawline, over her cheekbone, pausing to press a soft kiss on each closed eyelid, tasting the salt of her tears. He kissed the straight length of her nose, before taking her mouth slowly and softly, trying to tell her with his kiss what he was never sure if she'd want to hear him say. Her arms tightened around his neck and they just moved in a small circle, kissing and swaying to the old rhythm and blues songs Lila seemed to listen to the most.
If he was hurt by the way she kept him at arm's length sometimes, he could handle that, as long as she let him hold her when things got rough, he decided. Lila couldn't mourn Pete forever; a change would come.
Chapter Nineteen
Amy showed up Thursday at noon with a bag of sub sandwiches. "That's intimidating," she remarked, looking at the huge orange cabinet.
Lila pulled off her gloves and led the way into the kitchen. "You think that's intimidating? Wait until you're trying to teach Algebra or Chemistry to a bunch of kids who just discovered the opposite sex. At least the breakfront doesn't have rampaging hormones and talk back."
Amy poured two glasses of tea and carried them to the table. "So glad you brought up sex and rampaging hormones. How's the new boyfriend?"
"Oh, God, Amy," Lila said with exasperation. "He's not my boyfriend. What was that term I heard you use? This is more like friends with benefits." She had been appalled when Amy had used the term to describe the relationship between another of Amy's girlfriends and a guy they both knew, but now she had a new appreciation for the possibilities it allowed. She wasn't dating, not really. They didn't go out to dinner alone, or to the movies. She went to some baseball games with them because she liked baseball, and they had great sex. He was struggling to get a handle on raising a teenager with little preparation. There'd been the one visit to his house, but spending one night in his bed didn't mean anything, right?
Amy's eyes lit up. "I was afraid you might not get the concept of casual sex after such a long marriage. I approve of your attitude. Start talking."
"Nothing to tell, it's just a regular hook-up," Lila protested. "No strings attached. You don't get any more 'deets'. What happened about that professor you were going to murder? Did he let you rewrite your paper?"
* * * *
Fifty-two minutes later, Amy scrambled to her feet. If she didn't hurry, she was going to be late for her next class. Before she left, she broached the subject of Lila's birthday. "So, if there's no chance you're going out with this guy next Friday, are we still on for dinner that night? I told Drew I was busy already." She knew she'd have to tell him again, but that day was off the table for her, had been for months.
"It's a date," Lila assured her. "Colton doesn't even know when my birthday is. The last thing I want him to know is when I get another year older. I invited Lorie and Susan, one owns an antique shop and buys from me, and the other works for her. I'm not sure if they'll show. But you can bring Drew."
There was no way Amy intended to remind Lila of her loss by showing up with Drew. It was her friend's first birthday with neither Pete nor Charlie. "No, Girls' Night it is. I was thinking Applebee's, or do you want to go to The Crab Corner?"
"Crab Corner sounds great," Lila said eagerly. "Corona and crab legs can get a girl through a lot."
"Is that silk?" Amy asked pointing to the orchid on the table. "It looks real."
"Believe it or not, it is real," Lila assured her. "I can't believe it hasn't died yet. Somehow, after an initial fade, the thing rebounded. Colton brought it, sort of a thank you. I told him I'd kill it, but he left it anyway."
Amy nodded uncertainly before she dashed for her car. Since when did hook-ups show up holding orchids? The ones she knew about brought condoms, not flowers. For that matter, she knew guys that expected the girl they hooked up with to have those handy. Thank you for what? The sex? Leave it to Lila to find a hot guy with manners.
* * * *
"Ride me, Delilah," he encouraged, his voice gravelly as she straddled his knees and bent to drag her tongue from his balls to the head of his cock. He'd pulled in on his lunch break to find her in the garage, still steadily stripping the orange paint from the breakfront. Happy she'd called him, for a change. "Take a break," he'd said, grabbing her from behind and lifting her off her feet.
"Sounds good." She stripped off the gloves as he walked into the house with her, dropping one on the step into the house and the other on the kitchen floor. He tossed her on the couch in her front room and pounced on the oversize t-shirt, dragging it over her head.
"Pink again, I love you in pink. Take it off," he ordered, hurriedly turning his attention to his own clothes.
Lila undid the clasp and dropped the scrap of silk on the arm of the couch, but got lost in staring at him and forgot to pull off her shorts. He stripped her shorts down her legs as he knelt on the floor in front of her, suckling her nipples first, until he had them standing at attention and she was rubbing her mound against his stomach, her legs wrapped around his back as if she thought he might try to escape.
He licked and sucked her through the matching panties until she growled, literally growled, and pulled his hair, and he pulled the panties down to feast on her until she cried out and came hard, and he kept licking her as she came back to her senses, her hands buried in his hair.
* * * *
She pushed at his shoulders and he dragged her with him onto the plush Oriental rug, her torturing him now, sucking and nibbling his balls until he was the one growling.
He stared at her as she crawled up his body and lifted up on her long thighs, stretching above him as she guided his cock into her pussy, her eyes on his face as she worked herself down.
She set her own pace, lost in the look in his eyes and the way her body felt when he was inside her, near her, nibbling her, licking her, kissing her. He never thought her sexual wants too extreme. He was ready, hard and eager, always delighted with her boldness, never appalled or judgmental.
And he never once forgot to hold her after, never rolled away to fall instantly asleep, leaving her lost and bewildered, resentful, alone, trying to make sense of the insanity of intimacy.
And as the madness took her, he wrapped his arms around her, rolling her to her back to find his own pace, harder, faster now, but he never once let her go, and she began to soar again, not fall, not yet.
He cried out a name she was becoming, and she wrapped her arms and legs around him to thank him for those heated splashes that reminded her she was still alive, aware that some of the things she'd considered in the dark days would have deprived her of this moment.
When she came back to reality, somehow she was on top, but he still held her, his legs bent at the knees to help hold her, his thighs pressing against her ass.
She finally pushed off his chest, wondering when he'd unbraided her hair, but uncaring. He liked her hair down, she'd re-braid it when he left, but right now, she had to put that look of rapt wonder on his face again, so she slowly lifted her hips until the sated monster slipped out and reclined against his muscular legs, widening her thighs as she bent her knees. Watching him intently as she felt the trickle that marked her as a woman, she saw the awe wash over his face like a summer sun over the horizon.
Her ability to put that wondrous look on his face was a powerful feeling, and Delilah gloried in the moment, treasuring it in her heart.
Again, she cleaned his fingers, because it wasn't disgusting, it was—
* * * *
"Beautiful," he rasped. God, she was so fucking beautiful. What was she thinking, with that Mona Lisa smile while she tore him apart?
She leaned forward, and pushed her butt insistently against his thighs. He lowered his legs obediently, staring at her as she scooted back then leaned forward until she reached the pearly puddle. She looked up at him as she lapped every drop from his belly button.
He dragged her forward and kissed her, the taste of his seed on her tongue making him hard again, but time was growing short, damn it. He felt like he never had enough time with her. She steadfastly refused to consider sleeping at his place when Jonah was there.
"Shower with me, Delilah?" he asked hopefully. She never took a shower with him in this house. Maybe she was ready, though. There was a look in her eyes today he couldn't quite decipher.
* * * *
"Let's use mine," she replied. Delilah could do that, could do things Lila could not.
Delilah could have sex a second time in the shower, hard and fast, ten steps from the bed where a ghost had insisted sex belonged. Delilah could laugh when Colton asked what she used the removable showerhead for and show him with a wink while he washed her hair, wrapping his strong arms around her when she came.
But it was Lila who blinked owlishly at him in the kitchen when he asked her out for Friday night. "This Friday?"
"This Friday. It's your birthday. Do you have other plans?"
"My best friend is taking me out, and some other girls might drop in," she began, glancing at the orchid as he slid out a chair from under the kitchen table, sitting down to put on his shoes.
"I can't tag along? I'd like to meet your best friend. I'd gladly pay for her meal. You've met both of mine, you know."
"Your brothers are your best friends?" she asked, stalling.
"Spoken like an only child." His tone was exasperated as he picked up a shoe. "Of course they are."
And one of them disliked her. "Amy's kicking her boyfriend to the curb that night, for me, and Susan, too I think. Lorie's making her husband stay home with the kids. It's just a bunch of women."
He didn't look at her as he worked his feet into his work boots. "So, four ladies and no guys, huh? Where's the celebration?"
"We'll probably just complain about wrinkles and the men and kids who caused them. Not much fun for you."
He looked disappointed, she thought, or mad, but she decided she was imagining things. She was wondering something else now. "How'd you find out?" It didn't seem like something Colton would do, but all she could think was that he'd gone through her purse and checked her driver's license.
"An old girlfriend of E's works at the DMV. I had to drop off some registration papers for Dan, so I asked her and she looked the date up for me. Thank God E always leaves his girlfriends on good terms."
"That has to be illegal," she thought aloud, relieved she'd been right about his character. The comment about Eric didn't surprise her. Lila figured you had to care in order to bother to fight.
"I'd break a few laws for you, I guess." He kissed her and got ready to leave, scooping his hair back into the ponytail, buttoning his jeans, and yanking his shirt over his head before she'd had her fill of looking at him.
He was so gorgeous; she frequently went stupid around him. "Oh, wait, I made you guys lunch!" She turned and took the large paper shopping bag out of the bottom of the refrigerator.
* * * *
"Lila, you don't have to do this," he began, confused as she handed him the big paper bag.
"The really good turkey was on sale, and I had a blond moment, forgot it was just me now. If I see turkey again before Thanksgiving, I'll… gobble. There're two apiece, so there should be enough for Jonah to have a couple after school, too."
She was babbling. Something he'd done had shaken her, but he had no idea what that could be.
He didn't open the bag until he got back to the garage. There were eight neatly wrapped sandwiches, he discovered, turkey with bacon, tomato, lettuce, and cheese on Kaiser rolls, thick with meat and creamy with mayo. There was a big container of the potato salad she made, along with chips and pickles.
And a note.
There are some suspiciously clean, shiny parts under my hood. I'm aware it's a family business, so thank you as well as Eric and Daniel very much. Get used to it, this will happen again.
Busted.
He grimaced, heading for the office where he knew his brothers were eating fast-food burgers. She had him twisting. Most women expected to spend their birthday with the guy they were seeing, but she hadn't told him when hers was. Was that because of her age? At least she hadn't made a big deal about the work he'd done to her truck.
Dan and E abandoned their fast-food burgers in a red hot hurry, he noted. "I shouldn't give you these," he told his middle brother fiercely. "Since Lila made them."
"I take back every word," Eric said, grabbing for the sandwiches.
"He says another word, I'll kick his ass," Daniel assured Colton, once he'd tasted the potato salad. "You expect to get any of this potato salad, you'll have to kick mine," his biggest brother vowed, clutching the container.
Colton tried to remember if anyone had ever made him a sandwich after school, other than himself, as he stowed the extra sandwiches in the fridge.
The thought she only wanted him around for the sex reoccurred, but he tried to shove the idea to the back of his mind as he went back to work. This thing between him and Lila was more than a hook-up.
It had to be.