Lilly screamed. “You made me lose a nail!”
“That’s enough,” Benjamin said, stepping between them while Lilly’s arms flailed around him. “Enough of this catfight,” he said sternly, pushing Lilly away from Delilah.
“Benjamin,” Lilly said weakly as if she’d just seen through her haze of fury. “What are you doing here?”
“I live next door.”
“To her?” Lilly asked, looking at Delilah in scorn. “You have my sympathies.”
Delilah bared her teeth at Lilly, resisting the urge to tell her that Benjamin had been more than neighborly.
Lilly glared at Delilah.
“Lilly, why in hell are you acting like a fishwife?” Benjamin demanded.
Lilly shook her finger at Delilah. “It’s all her fault. She got pregnant and had my father’s baby.”
Benjamin looked at Delilah with what she suspected was his lawyerly interrogational expression.
“I did not,” Delilah said.
“She did. She’s a slut,” Lilly interjected.
“Shut up,” Benjamin said to Lilly.
Delilah took her first breath in two minutes. “Howard Cash Bradford was impotent. To compensate, he liked having young arm candy. He charmed me into being arm candy, gave me gifts and became my best friend before I realized I wouldn’t ever be going to bed with him. He taught me about business and gave me career opportunities I couldn’t have imagined.”
“That’s an understatement,” Lilly muttered in a low voice, glowering.
The insult stung. “You’re so right. I didn’t have any of the educational opportunities you had when I was growing up. Even my father said I was white trash.”
Lilly stared in silence.
“I’m sure you remember that your father was very clever, even manipulative at times.”
Lilly opened her mouth as if to protest, then closed it, folding her arms over her chest.
“After his last visit to the hospital, I visited Cash at home and he made me promise to look after you if anything happened to him. He also said he wanted me to do one more thing, but he never got to tell me because we were interrupted and he died that night. Willy’s mother showed up on my doorstep three weeks ago and told me Howard had promised I would take care of him.”
“Willy?” Lilly echoed, her brows furrowing. “Is that the baby you had at the spa?”
Delilah nodded.
“Now some sleazeball named Guy Crandall is trying to get me to pay money to keep him quiet about this,” Lilly said.
Delilah swore. “I’ve already written three checks to the guy.” She felt Benjamin’s gaze on her and tried not to squirm.
“That’s extortion. Is that why you wanted to sell the condo?”
“That and for the baby. Nicky neglected to tell me how to receive financial support for Willy when she left for Paris.”
Lilly stared at her in amazement. “You were going to sell your condo to pay Guy Crandall?”
Delilah shrugged. “I hated to do it, but I didn’t see any way out. You were going to get engaged to Robert any day and—” She broke off, watching Lilly turn white.
“Omigod, Robert will break our engagement if he hears about this,” Lilly whispered.
Delilah searched Benjamin’s face and his impassive expression made her stomach knot. “I’m sure he won’t,” Delilah quickly said, although her voice sounded unconvincing to her own ears.
“Yes, he will,” Lilly wailed, grabbing Benjamin’s shoulders and shaking. “What are we going to do? I’ve got to pay him. I’ve got to or Robert will dump me. You know he’ll dump me. He may like me, but he doesn’t need me.”
“I don’t know that,” Benjamin said, prying Lilly’s hands loose. “I think Robert does believe he needs you or he wouldn’t have asked you to marry him.”
Delilah turned to Benjamin. “You have to swear not to tell Robert about this.”
He shook his head.
“You have to swear,” Delilah said. “You owe me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “How long are you going to keep extracting favors from me?”
“Owe you?” Lilly said. “Why does he owe you?”
Delilah waved a dismissing hand, but kept staring at Benjamin. “I helped him in his hour of need. Benjamin, you have to agree not to tell Robert.”
He raked his hand through his hair. “You can’t continue to pay this Guy—guy.”
“We’re not talking about payment at the moment. I want your word.”
“Okay,” he said. “I won’t tell Robert, but you can’t keep paying Guy. He’ll keep asking for more. He will get out of control.”
A wail sounded from the nursery. “Willy,” Delilah said, automatically heading to collect him. She picked him up from his crib and cuddled him close. “Good morning, Mr. Sunshine.” Her heart twisted as she recalled again that this would be the last morning she would greet him this way.
Delilah closed her eyes against the spurt of pain, refusing to cry. She felt a hand on her shoulder, a comforting squeeze.
“You okay?” Benjamin asked in a low voice.
“Don’t be too nice to me,” she whispered. “It’ll make me cry.”
No way around it, sex in a closet will be murder on someone’s knees. But you’ll never be forgotten.
—D
ELILAH’S
D
ICTUM
“
S
o this is really my half-brother,” Lilly said as she stared at Willy.
“The ears are a dead giveaway,” Delilah said, stroking the baby’s soft ears that stuck straight out.
Lilly touched her own ears self-consciously.
“Your father’s ears were like this,” Delilah said.
Lilly let out a slight breath. “I guess you’re right.”
An uneasy silence settled between the two women and Lilly cleared her throat. Benjamin had left after extracting a promise that there would be no more hair-pulling, clawing, smacking or kicking.
Lilly cleared her throat again. “I suppose I owe you an apology.”
Delilah gave a wry smile. “Kinda hard to do when you’re bearing a grudge the size of your native state.”
Lilly sighed. “He was always out with you. And when he wasn’t out with you, he was talking about you.”
“Really?” Delilah felt a dart of pleasure. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, he did,” Lilly grumbled. She gave her a curious glance. “What’s the story with your parents?”
“I prefer to say I was hatched,” she said. “But the truth is that my mother gave birth to four children by four different fathers. My father is an evangelist and he regards me as the daughter of a she-devil.”
Lilly looked at her for a long moment.
Delilah’s stomach tightened. “Don’t feel sorry for me or I’ll have to stomp on your foot.”
“Benjamin said no kicking.”
“He didn’t say no stomping and he didn’t say I couldn’t rip your hair out by the roots.”
“You must think I’m a spoiled brat,” Lilly said.
“Have you given me reason to think anything else?”
Lilly paused and looked away. “I guess not. So why did you pay Guy Crandall?”
“Why do you think?”
“Because you made a promise to my father?”
Delilah nodded.
Lilly looked at Willy and shook her head. “My father could really be an ass sometimes.” She extended her hands to the baby. “May I hold him for a minute?”
Delilah handed over Willy’s warm, squirmy body. He immediately wrapped his hands around Lilly’s hair.
“You’re a cutie, aren’t you?” Lilly said to the baby then looked at Delilah. “Will you be keeping him?”
Her stomach twisted. “No, but that’s another story. His very, very young mother dumped him on me, but she has decided she wants him back.”
Lilly looked at her in disbelief then closed her eyes. “This whole situation is crazy. What are we going to do about Guy?”
“Pay him until we figure out how to neuter him,” Delilah said.
“Neuter?”
Delilah shrugged. “Neuter. Neutralize. Same thing. Any chance you can make this a short engagement?”
Lilly’s eyes filled with misery. “It’ll be very short if Robert finds out about this. Every decision he makes is affected by his run for office. Even sex. He won’t even stay—” She broke off as if she just realized what she’d confessed. Her face flamed.
“Are you saying that you and Robert haven’t had sex?”
If possible, Lilly’s face turned brighter red.
“Are you?”
Lilly closed her eyes and nodded. “He said his father said it wouldn’t be good if a reporter saw his car staying at my house overnight.”
Delilah groaned. “So? You don’t need a bed to have sex. You only need a man and a condom.”
Lilly opened her eyes. “What are you suggesting?”
“Go to his office, lock the door and have your way with him.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Well maybe you should. Women who say that the way to a man’s heart is his stomach should look a little lower.”
By eight o’clock that evening, Delilah felt like a used tissue someone had tossed on the ground and ground into the pavement. Giving Willy to Nicky had ripped her in half. She felt so full of unshed tears that she was sure she was going to burst any moment, but she was determined not to cry.
She looked at the spot where she’d kept the playpen and sucked in a deep breath. “No crying. Crying doesn’t solve anything,” she whispered.
She was so upset she didn’t even feel like getting in the Jacuzzi. The last champagne she’d bought had gone flat and turned to vinegar, so she couldn’t even have her favorite cocktail. She was out of M&Ms too.
She felt so lost. Maybe if she went to bed she would fall asleep and the horrible knot in her chest would go away. She heard her door open and looked up to see Benjamin enter.
He glanced around the condo. “Did Nicky come for Willy?”
She nodded, her throat tight with misery.
“Did you work out an arrangement to see—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, biting her lip to stave off tears. In fact, she’d promised Nicky that she would rip her into little pieces if she didn’t take good care of Willy.
He nodded, taking a breath and putting his hands on his hips. “You’d rather talk about Guy Crandall and why you lied to me.”
Ouch
. The accusation pinched. “Not really.”
“You didn’t really lie?” he asked, his voice rising.
“No,” she said, looking at the leather cushion. “I meant I wouldn’t rather talk about Guy Crandall.” She could feel the anger rolling off of him. His displeasure bothered her. She was a survivalist. She’d been through tough times and she’d had to do things she wasn’t necessarily proud of to get through them, but she didn’t like what she was feeling right now. She hated disappointing Benjamin.
She felt like a piece of crud.
He sat on the cushion that she’d been intently studying. His thigh blocked her view. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I couldn’t tell you the truth because of your brother.”
“That’s no excuse. You had every reason to trust me,” he said and she heard more than injured male pride in his voice.
Delilah felt even more like crud. Nothing like being caught between a rock and a hard place. Jeez, that was where she lived. She met his gaze. “How hard for you was it to promise that you wouldn’t tell Robert about Willy?”
“Difficult, but—”
“Exactly. If I’d told you earlier, then it would have been even more difficult. You have this huge sense of integrity and it would have suffered. Your integrity is suffering now.”
“Doesn’t yours suffer?”
Delilah fought the guilty feeling. Her father had spent a lot of time trying to make her feel guilty. The trouble was she wasn’t just feeling guilty because she hadn’t told Benjamin the whole truth and nothing but the truth. She felt guilty because she sensed she’d hurt him. “I do my best and I do what I have to. I know I’m not perfect and never will be.”
“I hate for people who are important to me to lie to me.”
Her heart dipped. Was she that important to him?
No
, she insisted. “I did what I had to do.”
Benjamin stood. “Damn it, you should have trusted me, Delilah. I was willing to buy this friggin’ condo from you. That should have given you a sign.”
She gnawed on her lip. “Yes. That was very nice, but blood is different. You can’t tell me you’re not protective of your brother.”
“Of course I’m protective of my brother, but—”
“But nothing,” Delilah interjected. “You feel torn now. You would have felt torn then.”
“What’s it going to take for you to trust me? When are you going to admit that there’s something between us?” he demanded.
Delilah was oh-so-tempted to close her eyes, cover her ears and sing la-la-la so she couldn’t hear him. “I don’t have a lot of experience with trusting people.”
“Maybe you’ve been hanging around the wrong kind of people,” he said, his voice edged with a sexy roughness.
“Maybe,” she admitted, her heart jumping.
“Do you want me to stay tonight?”
Yes. No. Yes. No
. She felt raw and vulnerable. He could get to her tonight. He could get to her in ways she wasn’t sure she wanted to be gotten. He already had.
“No,” she finally said.
“Okay, good night,” he told her in a voice so cold it gave her a chill. She blinked and he was gone, and she was even more miserable than before he’d visited her.
The following morning, Delilah felt lost. She kept going into the nursery and inhaling the baby powder scent of Willy. She called Nicky to find out how Willy was and learned that he’d had a restless night. Although deep down, she knew Willy would adjust, Delilah knew she had been altered, and she wasn’t sure she could go back to being the person she’d been before Willy had shown up on her doorstep. Irritated with her misery, she left for the office early and resolved to catch up on everything she’d set aside during the last few weeks.
Midway through the day she came upon an invitation to a cocktail party from one of the spa’s most influential clients, Iris McLanahan. Delilah chuckled at the scribble at the bottom of the invite,
No need to RSVP. You will attend! Bring a gorgeous man
.
Delilah thought of Benjamin, and immediately shook her head at the image. She heard the low chuckle of Paul Woodward in the outer office and liked the idea. She had noticed that Paul and Sara were getting along much better lately. What a relief. Sara had been so stiff and uncomfortable around him for a while.
Rising from her chair, she peeked into the outer office. “Hey big boy, I’ve got a special request. Are you up to it?”
The slightest trace of discomfort crossed his face. Glancing at Sara, he winked then lifted his lips in a boyish smile. “You know I’ve always been up to it,” he flirted back at her. “What do you need?”
“Are you available tonight?” she asked.
His jaw dropped and he darted another quick glance at Sara. “Uh—for what?”
“Business acquaintance obligation. Iris McLanahan has summoned me to a cocktail party. She’s also ordered me to bring a gorgeous male. You fit the qualifications, so you’re elected if you can make it.”
“I, uh—”
“I’d really appreciate it if you could do it,” Delilah confessed. “I don’t feel like doing this one alone.”
“Okay. Just tell me what time and I’ll pick you up.”
“Eight o’clock.” She smiled. “I’ll try not to keep you out too late.”
Hours later, Delilah was putting the finishing touches on her makeup. She was dressed in a purple curve-loving designer dress and she looked pretty damn good if she did say so herself. She remembered her mother had always said that if you felt depressed, you should dress up. It would make you feel better.
Delilah had to confess that she did indeed feel a little better, not a lot, but enough. She hadn’t attended an adult event since Cash’s funeral, so she supposed it was time.
Her doorbell rang and she couldn’t help smiling. Paul. He was gorgeous. He was safe. Perfect combination for tonight. Grabbing her purse, she opened the door and thoroughly approved his well-cut suit. She let out a whistle. “You look better than I do.”
“I’m blushing,” he lied.
She rolled her eyes. “You never blush.”
“Under the right circumstances with the right woman,” he corrected, escorting her to the elevator.
“Have you found her?” she asked, curious.
“Who?” he asked, seeming a bit distracted.
“The right woman,” she said as the elevator whisked down to the garage.
He was silent for a long moment.
“Paul? Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I just have something on my mind, but don’t worry. I’ll put on my party front at Iris’s.”
“You don’t have to go,” she said, feeling guilty for having pushed him into going with her.
“No.” He lifted his hand. “This is fine. It’s good.”
“Good for who?” she asked doubtfully.
“For several people,” he said in a mysterious voice.
“What have you got cooking on the back burner?”
“Front burner. She hasn’t taken me seriously yet. My instincts tell me she may after tonight.”
“Poor woman,” Delilah said, making a clucking sound as he led her to his car.
“Poor me,” he corrected.
Two-and-a-half hours later, Delilah had loosened up. After two champagne cocktails and two of Iris’s secret cocktail dubbed
Knock-out punch
, she felt as if she were walking on a ship. The walls were moving. The floor definitely shifted when she tried to put one foot in front of the other.
She nodded and smiled at everyone who spoke to her, but she couldn’t have repeated what they’d said. Hearing Iris’s trilling laughter from the next room, Delilah saw an anniversary clock on a table and squinted to make out the time. She couldn’t resist the urge to put her hands on either side of it to make it stay still.
“What are you doing to that clock?” Paul asked, appearing by her side.
“I can’t read it when it’s moving,” she said.
He chuckled. “Definitely time to go.”
“Ya think?”
“Yeah. Let’s say goodbye to Iris.”
Delilah thanked Iris then leaned heavily on Paul as he helped her into his car. She leaned her head against the headrest and fell asleep on the way to her condo. He helped her into the elevator and tried to help her to get into her room, but she couldn’t find her key.
“I know it’s here somewhere,” she muttered and dumped the contents of her purse onto the hallway floor in frustration. “Do you see it?”
Paul lifted a key. “Is this it?”
Delilah shrugged. “Probably. Try it.”
Pacing his condo, Benjamin heard odd sounds in the doorway. He’d just returned from a family dinner where he’d watched Lilly nearly have a meltdown. His father was pissed because Benjamin had told him he was going into business with a friend. The evening had been so awkward it had made his teeth ache. And Delilah weighed heavily on his mind.