Chapter Twenty
She tried to work after he left, but confusion drove her to the phone, glad for once Amy's cell phone seemed to grow from the young woman's palm. Amy even checked voicemail in class, yet another reason Lila was secretly glad her child had already completed school. "We need to talk," she said after the prompt, staring at the orchid that wasn't dead. Appeared to be thriving. "I'm ready to give you your 'deets', damn it. Get your butt back here."
* * * *
Amy said she had no problem walking out on a class she was acing at the break. She swore she could do analytical geometry in her sleep.
"How the hell did you confuse this with a hook-up, Lila?" Amy finally asked when Lila fell silent. "Hook-ups don't bring flowers or introduce you to family. They barely bring the condoms. And they damn sure don't go above and beyond to find out when your birthday is." Amy shook her head again. "Oh, honey, casual is when he sees you out with another guy, and he walks over and mentions he's not busy Saturday, and they make a date to go fishing."
"But, he's
twenty-nine,
" Lila tried to explain the problem again. "And I already knew his family, sort of."
Amy spun her cell phone around in a circle on the kitchen table. "You say that like I'm supposed to hear twenty. It's his age we're talking about, not some advertising ploy to make you think you're only spending two tens, not three. He's nearly thirty. Thir-Tee. It's the real age of maturity, according to my mother. Genuine, iron-clad adulthood.
"This isn't a math problem, Amy, or Madison Avenue." Lila was nearly wailing now.
"Where's my logic error? You're the one that's lost here, not me. He thinks this is more than casual, or he wants it to be."
"For someone who's not a blonde, you seem to need a map out of that paper bag. Let me dumb this down for you. He's only eight years older than my
son
," Lila snapped in exasperation.
Math had never failed her, and Amy's grin was superior as she drove home her point. "How old was Pete when you two got married?"
* * * *
Lila felt sick to her stomach as she caught the point her young friend was making. Middle schools everywhere must be in chaos, if Amy was the new norm for teachers. She tried to take a deep breath. "How did you go from sex to marriage? Not helping, Amy."
"All I meant was, you of all people should know even twenty-year-olds can commit. Quit looking like you're going to jump off a cliff. You're the one hung up on his age, not me. So, to you, it's just sex. He went to a lot of trouble to find out when your birthday was, though." Amy must've sensed Lila was totally off her game, and took advantage. "So, is the sex as good as he looks?"
"It's freaking incredible," Lila mumbled, banging her forehead gently against the kitchen table.
Amy apparently wasn't ready to let her off the hook. "But it's like, small, right, and he just uses it well? Nature screwed him somewhere, surely."
Lila kept her face down. "I call it the monster." Her head snapped up. "But not to his face."
And even that wasn't the truth
, she realized, as Amy shook so hard with laughter that Lila hoped she'd fall out of her chair. She called it
her
monster. The thought of anyone else conquering that thing made her stomach really ache. Delilah had a lot to answer for.
Because that little slut had gone and started a relationship.
Oh, shit.
"I think I know what confused him, Amy." Lila dropped her forehead to the table again. She could not stand to look at the gleam in Amy's eyes.
Amy relaxed in the chair. "Do tell. I don't have to be anywhere till six."
Lila raised her head. "I swear to God, back in the day, the main thing you could get was pregnant, and we had the Pill. I'd never used a condom before, and I hated them. So we stopped."
Amy's eyes rounded as her head moved violently back and forth. "So
not
a hook-up."
Lila's temper frayed. "You cannot start a sentence with a conjunction, damn it. Think of the children."
"Speaking of children, are you still on the Pill?"
Now Amy was a comedian, too? This was one concern she didn't have. "Not since I had one ovary removed and the other decided not to work. We were lucky to get Charlie."
"Conjunctions be damned, Lila. If Murphy's Law kicks in, these children you're so worried about are going to be crawling around in this kitchen, looking up at you. Then, you can correct their English since maybe I'll have them for Math."
The little bitch had the nerve to laugh while she threw up the coffee she'd had for lunch into the kitchen sink. But she did hold Lila's hair.
* * * *
Her hair was still wet, wet from where Colton had shampooed it, something Pete had never offered to do for her. But she'd shampooed Pete's hair for four years. That thought affected her on some deep level Colton would never be able to comprehend, because she couldn't quite get her own head around what the gesture meant to her.
Lila stared at a strand of her hair as she twisted it around her finger, after kicking Amy out.
Thinking.
Thinking about how she didn't even have an official death certificate for Pete yet, because she'd insisted on an autopsy, convinced it was the drug that had killed him, needing to know, not to sue, because they'd signed a release in order to be allowed to participate in the experimental program, but to
know
. And because she lived in a small city in upstate South Carolina, the toxicology report wasn't done in an hour the way it happened on television. Blood samples were sent off to the state crime lab in Columbia, and non-crimes were pushed to the rear of a very long line. Lila was still waiting for those results.
So, while she had a death certificate, it was a temporary, almost useless one, because the cause of death said "Pending", and the life insurance company refused to pay off until she could provide a death certificate with an actual cause of death listed.
Thinking about how she'd sold the dining room suite she'd bought the first year of her marriage, crying as she loaded the pieces carefully in her truck because the suite was the only furniture she'd ever bought, bartered for, or found that hadn't been for sale, once she'd discovered the incredible floral marquetry under the hideous blue and silver paint. But she'd sold it to put toward the van, and those tears she'd shed had been followed by so many others that she could almost forget that pain, until she had to go to the front door and saw the empty dining room. Or went in there to fan her anger with Pete.
The ridiculously expensive van, because Pete needed it, and there hadn't been a used one that suited him. Pete never thanked her, never acknowledged she'd sacrificed anything because, to him, her treasures were all for sale—something she'd taught him, to be fair. It was hard as hell to get a car loan when the only breadwinner of record couldn't work, but the dining room suite had brought half of the van price. Anyone could get a new vehicle loan for fifty percent, it seemed. And, Pete had disability insurance that paid monthly benefits.
Now the van was sitting on the lot where they'd ordered it, waiting for someone else's life to shatter. Lila was still making the payment, because she couldn't collect on the life insurance, and yet the same insurance company that refused to accept the temporary certificate to pay off on his life insurance damn sure thought that useless bit of paper was a good enough reason to cut off his monthly disability insurance check.
Meaning if her truck died, Lila was in some deep shit.
Thanks to Colton, who'd fixed more than a belt without a word, she no longer had that concern. Something she'd never have discovered he'd done if she hadn't accidentally dropped her purse and had to go crawling underneath the truck to pick up her stuff.
Thinking about the way Colton had turned the wrecker around and taken her to the dealer who would give her the best price for that sewing box, but who didn't drive, by some absurdity. Again, without a word.
The man who'd wondered aloud if she needed help to move the breakfront.
The breakfront she'd have never have attempted to do, but the money she'd earn was the difference between making the van and house payments for the next couple of months, and not. The autopsy results had to be back by then; a year had to be all the time the lab could take, surely. It had been nearly ten and a half months, and Lila had used up every available dime in the meanwhile and had to scrimp, turning off her cell phone and most of the cable packages, cutting corners wherever she could as the months had dragged by and she hadn't heard from the Coroner's Office about the toxicology results.
She'd thought about refinancing the loan on the house, but who would give her a mortgage? Lila's little enterprise was tiny potatoes, a hobby, not really a business. On paper, she'd never worked. But she had managed.
In spite of the temporary snafu, Lila had survived, by her wits, by her negotiations, by herself. And she loved it. She was thinking of doing this full-time, rather than hunting for a job at her age.
She didn't want to risk the independence she'd gained, since that sense of self-sufficiency was the only positive in the whole deal after Pete had died. No explanations. She didn't answer to anybody now.
She could read whenever. The televisions hadn't been on much in nearly a year, and she didn't miss the big cable bill, either.
Colton had his hands full with a business and an angry thirteen-year-old; she didn't think he was seeing anybody else. Jonah was enough to scare off the fainthearted. Lila could understand the child because Charlie had gone off the rails too. She and Jonah could connect about baseball, how many other women could do that?
He wasn't taking her independence, he was fucking underwriting it. Once she had the life insurance, she'd make Dan accept payment for the work Colton had done to her truck, if she had to take the damn thing somewhere else and ask what looked recent and the cost of the parts.
And she was happy. It had sneaked up on her somehow, but she was happy again. Charlie had left, Pete had died, and she had nearly died from her grief.
But gradually the positives had begun to outweigh the negatives. She didn't see the dreaded ogre-in-law's silver Buick turning into her driveway so Joan could check on
her son
anymore. Never mind Lila had been the walking dead. And unlike Pete and the bitch that spawned him, Lila didn't waste one minute worrying what the neighbors thought. She didn't endure Pete's channel-flipping anymore, or his subtle jabs that meant—even seventeen years later—she still didn't quite measure up to the way dear old mom did things. She'd loved him, but would walk away from another one just like him.
Currently, the most annoying person in her world was Reggie.
That thought had her laughing out loud.
Not the doctor who'd blown off Lila's concerns and killed Pete with his experimental drug, not the insurance company pencil-pushers who drove her insane, not the mother-in-law who made her tear out her hair in frustration. Not the fair-weather friends who were so scared she would screw one of their husbands they shut her out when she needed them the most.
Reggie Martin.
Lila could handle Reggie, because Reggie had a lot in common with… Pete—the baseball coach, not Pete the husband. Because some weird mutation took place when ordinary mortal men stepped into that fence, with a handful of kids and something to prove, but she had experience counteracting that.
And Eric De Marco could kiss her foot, for all she cared, but experience wasn't a negative.
What, though, could Delilah handle? Besides crazy white-hot, do-whatever-you-feel, unselfconscious sex the way Lila had always thought it could be?
As far back as Lila could remember, Delilah was the person nobody wanted her to be. Delilah was that inner child who rebelled, who did as she pleased, who'd been banished long ago. Delilah wanted to have sex outdoors while the breeze tickled her ass, because it fucking felt good. Delilah wanted to lick their co-mingled cum off his beautifully hard and breathtaking body, because she fucking well got pleasure from the look on his face when she did it.
Delilah was the voice in her head telling her she had a lot of lost time and missed orgasms to make up for.
Lila's voice was telling her not to get hurt again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Colton tried to concentrate on taking out the dash of the huge Ford F-350 in his bay, so he could work on fixing the electrical problem. The wipers came on by themselves, the horn would blow on its own, locks would deploy but not unlock. According to the remarks on the card the Ford dealership service tech had filled out, the truck was possessed.
Any other time he'd have been laughing his ass off. Any other time, the truck's problem would have been long since repaired. Colton didn't believe in demons. Well, he might, but he knew damn well they didn't live in the wiring installed by the line workers at a Ford plant.
The demons carried nine millimeter handguns and killed young women caught in the wrong place at the wrong time for their car keys.
The demons walked out on four little children and never looked back.
The demons used hard fists to take their disillusionment out on those same four little kids after a long night of drinking and despair.
But right now, he couldn't see the schematics of the Ford in his head so he could figure out the most likely and no doubt totally inaccessible spot where some piece of metal had worn away the insulating plastic around a tiny wire, creating havoc.
All he could see was Delilah.
Delilah, with her face flushed, her hair wild around her shoulders, her lips and breasts still swollen from his kisses while she reclined against his knees, her fingertips trailing over her mound as she spread her gorgeous pussy for his pleasure, so he could watch in rapt fascination while he waited for that first pearly drop to slide from her slit.
His
pearly drop.
His heartbeat became primitive drumbeats, urging him to drag this woman to his cave and throw huge boulders in front of the only exit so she would always be there, waiting for him.
His. His woman.
But barricading her in his cave wasn't possible. So he'd taken her again in the shower, and to his mind the shower stall became a remote waterfall in a primitive jungle, and he'd picked her up and sat her on his cock, driven into her again and again to give her the message.
Me man. You woman.
My woman.
Then he'd cleaned her. His.
And then, he had to beg to spend her birthday with her.
Reality check, Colton.
He'd been clenching his fists to stop from bending her over that kitchen table and driving his cock into a place he hadn't taken yet because the caveman inside him wanted to communicate. The message would have been simple. He could hear himself say the words. "Mine. Fucking mine. Say it, Delilah. Because I'll fuck you up the ass until you do."
The image had been so clear in his mind; he could see himself doing it. It scared the fuck out of him. He'd never known he was capable of that kind of base, mindless urge. Yeah that would work.
Not.
Because they weren't in a jungle.
He wasn't a caveman.
She wasn't his. Sometimes, she still belonged to Pete.
The pain in his heart moved to his hand. He blinked sweat from his eyes. The plastic housing of the cordless drill had cracked in his hand, a jagged edge slicing across his palm. His injured hand shook so badly, he'd dropped the drill on his foot.
But his hand wasn't shaking because of the cut.
He stared at his palm as yet another drop of his fluids trickled across flesh and formed a single, heavy drop.
The primeval drumbeats started again in his head.
Another drop, rolling down her tummy to pool in her navel.
More drumbeats, faster this time.
Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine, mine, mineminemine.
Another pearl, his seed again, nestled in the hollow at the base of her throat.
More seed, clinging to her bottom lip after she'd sucked it from him.
A drop of her sweat, caressing the side of her face as she straddled him, rubbing her clit along his cock.
A drop of barbeque sauce, tempting him just above her nipple.
The first drop of his cum sliding through her petals as she reclined on his sheets.
More droplets sliding over her skin as he'd taken her in his shower, tried and failed to give her his message, but she'd wanted to be taken home, wouldn't stay in his cave, not when the cub was around.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Colton!"
A large rag was slapped over his hand. Colton blinked, clearing his vision again. Daniel was yelling at him.
The leaves and vegetation of the jungle slowly shifted back into the belts, gaskets, and hoses that hung on the walls of the garage. Eric was staring at the concrete floor, so Colton looked to see what his brother found so interesting, shocked by the sight of the irregular, rust-colored circles of blood spattering his shoes, practically obliterating the black leather. His blood streaked down his pants. There were drops on the light tan carpet inside the door jamb of the Ford.
None on the leather seats, that was good
, he thought.
"Were you planning on bleeding to death?" Daniel yelled, shaking him roughly and pressing his fingers into the wound.
Okay, now it fucking hurt.
He let Dan drag him into the restroom to clean up his hand.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" Daniel demanded gruffly, wrenching on the faucet and shoving Colton's hand under running water. "While you watched yourself bleed?"
He could explain that in a word, wincing as the cold water sluiced over his palm. "Lila."
"What about her?" Dan practically yelled.
He tried to find words to make sense of it. "Sometimes, it's just me and Delilah and nobody else exists. It's incredible, Daniel, better than anything I've ever felt. Then, it's me, her and Jonah, and that's all good, too. But then somehow, she turns back into Pete Walker's widow, Charlie's mother, and I don't have any rights to her at all. How can she tear me apart like she does and then just throw that switch and shut me out? It's hard to explain."
* * * *
They were all pathetic, motherless little bastards
, Dan thought, as he examined the wound in Colton's palm. Growing up without a woman to explain things made their female complexities indecipherable for the brothers. When he'd first noticed that look on Colton's face when Lila Walker was around, he'd thought it was because the kid saw in Lila the loving mother they hadn't had. That yearning expression C always wore around her made sense to him then. But once he'd suspected it was something more Colton was yearning for, his baby brother's attraction to a married woman had worried the hell out of him.
He'd been glad, and even envious, when Lila and Colton got together. But it sounded like Lila was in one place with this and Colton in another, as they pretty much had always been. Colton, for all his progress, still wanted something he couldn't have. Hell, all four of them did. Had, he amended, thinking of Sarah, who'd been dumped as soon as she'd gotten pregnant and now rested in the same big, commercial cemetery where Pete likely did.
"Give it time. Patience and being who you are got you this far, I figure," he finally said. "I don't think you need stitches. But get your ass out of here, before you fuck something up that we can't fix. I'll grab the kid from school and bring him home. Give you some time to think."
Irrational as it was, Daniel needed to believe things could work out right for at least one De Marco man, and Colton figured to have the best shot. Eric was too afraid to lower his protective walls and take a real chance on one, and Daniel had hurt the only woman that had ever taken a chance on him so badly he'd learned to live without a woman, because he knew he didn't deserve one.
"Don't push her into something, Colton. That never ends well."
* * * *
Colton managed to throw together something for him and Jonah to eat, in spite of his hand. The kid slammed a few doors when Colton had begged off from catching and had dragged his supper to his room to eat. He'd just finished a solitary meal when Lila called. He had to shut the door to his bedroom to hear her over the angry rap music.
"Friday night, we're meeting at The Crab Corner at seven-thirty. You're welcome to drop in."
He needed to give her space
, he thought. But the invitation pleased him. "I can make do with the game tomorrow night, and maybe a date on Saturday that runs into Sunday. Jonah can spend the night with E or Dan."
"No, I need to work. I don't think I'll be able to go anywhere this weekend. This breakfront is a bigger project than I realized. I'm on a deadline."
His disappointment throbbed in time with his hand. A free weekend with Lila in his bed didn't seem to be in the cards. But he'd figure something out, maybe drop by her house Saturday and just hang out while she worked. Dan had never steered him wrong. He'd be patient. "You already made your plans, sweetheart. You girls have fun."
"One more thing, Colton. What you did to my truck is a bigger gift than you know. I'm not sure if I ever told you how much I appreciate that you did that for me."
He couldn't say anything for fear he'd say too much.
He made Jonah clean up the kitchen and explained for the second time that he wasn't up to catching in the yard tonight. Jonah wasn't happy with either edict, but slammed through the chore and disappeared down the hall.
"Do you have homework?" Colton yelled after him.
"How many of you are going to ask me that?" Jonah yelled back, turning up the volume.
Which wasn't an answer, but he let it go. He couldn't help wondering how Lila would've handled that exchange.
Nobody had ever asked Colton if he'd done his homework, just knocked him around if his grades were bad. He had to work after school, doing whatever his old man wanted done, meaning he had to figure out the homework thing on his own time. And there sure as hell hadn't been time for sports.
In some ways, the kid still needed time too. Colton had played his music loud in rebellion once himself. He didn't want to think about how that had ended.
He stretched out on his bed, atop the covers, thinking again about Lila's birthday. He'd taken the time to drop by a jewelry store. But he hadn't bought anything.
He saw something, though. The perfect something, a necklace of pink pearls with a sapphire clasp that matched her eyes, surrounded by diamonds. The price made his hand stop hurting for a minute, because his wallet started screaming. Not that he wouldn't spend the money on her, but he knew the necklace was too much, too soon.
Maybe Christmas
, he decided, doubling back to the junk shop where he'd taken her, figuring the old man might help him figure out a smaller gift that she'd like.
But if he learned one thing, standing in that jewelry store, he'd learned pearls were valuable. Not given lightly.
She gave him pearls of a different kind. That had to mean something.
For now, she'd wear the pearls she begged him for and wore proudly, if only for a few minutes at a time. That had to mean something, too.
* * * *
Lila sat uncomfortably in the dim booth of the trendy new restaurant. She wasn't sure how her request to talk to her bank's investment officer had been translated into lunch rather than the meeting she'd envisioned taking place in his office, but here she was.
Van Westbrook had taken control of the lunch, ordering for her, which she did not care for but she raked her teeth over her top lip as she listened obediently to his tales of winning golf matches she had no interest in, waiting patiently for him to turn to the topic of what she should do with her anticipated life insurance check.
"Perhaps we can play a round one day soon," Van said.
Lila blinked. "I don't play golf," she explained.
Van smiled wolfishly at her. "I'm a great teacher. How's Saturday for you? I'll get us a tee time."
Oh, for fuck's sake. He wanted to date her? "I'm sure you are, but I am equally sure I'd be a terrible student," she assured him. She eyed the gray in his close-cropped business haircut and found it compared unfavorably to Colton's longer style. If Van had a tattoo, she'd bet it was a cartoonish naked lady. The plush Cadillac he'd driven them in from the bank didn't appeal to her nearly as much as Colton's roomy four-door truck. In the second it took her to picture him naked, she lost all appetite for lunch, since she had no trouble conjuring an image of a flabby, aged man with a paunch that hid his smallish cock. Van might be what society thought she should date, but if this was what she had to choose from, Lila would be single and celibate till her dying day. "Listen, Van, I need to know if you can advise me on how to invest the insurance money I'll be getting soon." Lila dove into the matter she did care about, before Van could ask her on some other kind of date.
But he asked her out anyway before he'd let her out of the car back at the bank.
"I'm seeing somebody," she replied.
And when the jerk had demanded to know who, Lila had told him, and to hell with what the pinstripe-plated asshole thought. She'd find another banker to look after her money, preferably one that understood how to separate business from pleasure.