Caught Between a Lie and True Love (Caught Between series Book 1) (17 page)

Testing her weight on the bottom of the trellis, she gingerly started climbing up it.

Once she reached the window, she glanced around to see if she was visible, but the humongous Mahogany tree beside the house hid her relatively well from the street. Someone would have to be looking this way to even catch a glimpse of her. And in the dark, with her black clothes to camouflage her, she should be okay.

She peered through the window. The bedside lamp illuminated the room and what she saw nearly made her tear out her hair in fury. There was Brody trapped against the dresser against his will, while it was obvious Paige had coerced him into the position.

Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you
.

Delores had to cover her mouth to stop the scream of rage.

There were moments such as this that she wanted to cover her eyes and pray for their souls. But she didn’t because she also wanted to make sure that when she was done with them, they went to eternal hell and damnation.

Delores pushed back from the house, fell on her butt, and nearly fell off the roof. She managed to grab a tree branch right before she went over. As she steadied herself and scrambled to her feet, she felt a tug on her wrist. Giving a vicious yank, she freed herself, hightailed it down the trellis, out the back gate, across the alley, and into her own yard.

Reaching the safety of her house, she finally gasped in a breath of air and raced up the steps. In her bedroom, she ripped off the black clothes using only the light from the street lamps, washed the black off her face, and climbed into bed.

Minutes ticked by, and she tried to forget that she’d seen Brody with his hand up Paige’s shirtfront.

Except the memory had been seared into her brain like one of those horror movies she had never been able to watch as a teenager because if she did, she’d wake up screaming in the middle of the night.

Thirty minutes later, her heart had stopped pounding. No one had come to her door to accuse her of spying. No one had come to apologize for cheating on her either.

She rolled out of bed and headed straight for the freezer where she pulled out a pail of vanilla ice cream—and discovered only a couple of tablespoons remained in the bottom of the pail.

This evening’s shock required something stronger to soothe her nerves. Yanking on the closest clothes, she headed into the garage where she pulled the keys out of her pocket, jumped into the car, and took off.

It was a good thing the supermarket doors were open 24/7, Delores thought as she gazed at the variety of ice cream flavors in the cooler. Her stomach rumbled greedily and she rubbed it with hopes of quietening it down while she scanned the aisle and tried to listen for random voices headed her way.

Fortunately, the evening wasn’t a busy time in the store, so all was quiet. She didn’t expect to run into anyone she knew as she turned back to look at the selection.

Butterscotch ripple?

Had that last week.

Chocolate fudge?

She’d be up all night and in the morning, would have dark circles under her eyes.

Plain vanilla?

Borrrrring.

Kiwi, lime, and apple crispy crunch?

Who the hell thought these flavors up?

A stir at the top of the aisle caught her attention. She opened the freezer door and stepped in behind it, pretending to make her choice while she tried to see who it was through the rapidly fogging glass door.

“It’s true,” the person said, the clatter of the store buggy nearly obliterating the words. “Paige and Brody had a high school love affair. I’ll bet Paige’s daughter is their love child. And now they’ve resumed their affair—”

Lies, all of it. Paige had been barely out of her training bra. Brody would have never paid her a bit of attention or Delores would have known about it.

She grabbed the nearest container of ice-cream, and sprinted down the aisle before they came closer and recognized her. But when she reached the till, there was a lineup.

The boy bagging groceries glanced from the ice-cream in her hand up to her face, a smirk on his mouth as if to say
loser
.

He might as well have stood on the till itself and shouted it through the PA system. As he went back to bagging the groceries, she felt even more conspicuous than before.

She held the ice cream container in the crook of her arm and pressed it against her stomach, growing miserable at the freezing temperature and the damp melting through her shirt as the checkout girl price-checked yet another item. When more people came up behind her and the line grew from three to seven, she ducked her head and tugged a clump of hair over her face.

“Does she have one red and one green sock on?”

Oh God, please don’t let it be me,
she prayed.

But when she looked down, she not only saw she’d mismatched her socks, but she’d done the same to her sneakers.

She did a quick inventory of how she looked and came up with another half dozen infractions: hangnails, chipped nail polish, t-shirt untucked with a smear of chocolate across the front.

“No wonder Brody went for the other one. Just look at her.”

Before Delores started screaming, she pushed through the crowd and ran for the door, intent on getting home where she could close her curtains tight, and hide.

As she sped through town, the sound of sirens reached her ears. She stepped on the gas, but when she turned into the alley, the cop car turned in right behind her, lights flashing.

Only a few feet from her driveway, Delores braked to a stop. If she’d been a wee bit faster, she might have been up her driveway and safely behind the garage doors.

She rolled down the window and watched the deputy’s feet hit the pavement as he climbed out of the cop car. With an exaggerated swagger, he approached her car, leaned down, and aimed the flashlight in her eyes before he scanned the interior of the car with the light. “Evening, Del. Received a complaint that you’d run out of the supermarket without paying for your purchase.”

“What?” Flustered, she followed the beam of the flashlight, shocked when it illuminated the pail of Triple Fudge ice cream on the seat beside her. “Oh gosh, Harley, I didn’t even realize. I’m so sorry.”

“I still have to arrest you. Theft, unless you can produce a receipt from the store.”

“I can’t.” She looked up into his eyes and manifested pleading in her own gaze. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I received some shocking news and left without thinking. If you let me go, I promise I’ll stop by the store first thing tomorrow morning and pay. You know I’m good for it.”

He rapped his knuckles on the top of her car and noodled his tongue as he eyeballed her. Then with an affirmative nod of his head, he straightened and returned to his car, calling over his shoulder, “If you don’t, I know where you live.”

Unmoving, Delores watched him drive away. As he turned the corner, a lone figure climbed out Brody’s bedroom window and stole across the moonlit darkness to the house next door.

Oh Brody, how could you cheat on me
?

Shaking, she grabbed the pail of ice-cream, stuck it between her legs, tore off the lid, and used her key as a spoon to shovel the rich chocolate flavor into her mouth.

She’d gotten off lucky tonight. Next time she might not.

On the seat beside her was her wedding scrapbook, and she opened it to flip through the pages.

Brody and her in all their glory. She couldn’t let Paige ruin everything when it was all within reach. There had to be something she’d missed.

As she sat there shoveling ice-cream into her mouth, searching her brain for anything that she’d missed, she noticed that her charm bracelet was gone. Frantic, she searched the seat around her, felt with her hand on the dark shadows of the floor, then remembered getting tangled up in the tree under Brody’s window.

She eyed the light shining from his bedroom window.

Once he was asleep, she’d have to grab a flashlight and go back to look for the bracelet.

As she sat there waiting for the bedroom light to turn off, she thought of the DVD she’d hidden between her mattresses, the one she hadn’t watched since before Brody’s return.

The one with Lisa’s face and barely covered breasts on the cover.

What had the porn star been holding in her hands?

Delores shoved another chunk of ice-cream in her mouth, and as she experienced a brain freeze like no other brain freeze before, she remembered.

It had been a dildo the size that made Delores drool with envy.

Paige’s mom was a porn star.

A porn star
.

If that bit of information didn’t stop them all in their tracks, then she’d have to dig into the family crypt a little deeper.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The next morning, Paige woke up to the memory of making out with Brody, and a different kind of heat from the previous evening washed through her body.

Embarrassment.

Things between them had quickly turned hot and heavy, and then Hope had returned which ended all foreplay and anything further. She’d barely escaped out the window before the girl had stormed into Brody’s room without knocking. Fortunately his untucked t-shirt had covered the part of his anatomy that would give away his arousal.

Not wanting to alert Hope to her presence, she’d stayed put, crouched down low on the rooftop. Lucky for her, Brody had enough forethought to close the bedroom window.

And as he stood there, his gaze connecting with hers briefly before he turned back to his daughter, she heard him say, “I’m not doing this anymore, Hope. If you want to live here, you obey my rules or get out.”

As Paige scrambled down the rooftop, her hand brushed over something delicate and fragile, and she grabbed it. But all of her thoughts were on Brody and Hope.

He’d given Hope the ultimate teenage challenge. What had he been thinking? That he wanted to return to the freedom of his old life?

Back in her room, she sat in the dark and watched them, wishing she could help ease their relationship. But this was something they needed to figure out on their own. The best thing she could do for them was keep her distance, her mouth shut, and get Jeb out of the picture.

Besides, in a few days the ferry would be back in the dock. She’d return to the city with Starr and resume her old life, sans Brody and Hope.

The thought depressed her.

As she rolled out of bed and inhaled the scent of baking, she glanced at her alarm clock. Her gaze fell on the item she’d found on the rooftop next door.

A charm bracelet.

Her eyes opened wide and she glanced out the window at Brody’s rooftop.

Who’s bracelet?

She tried to remember if she’d seen Lisa wearing a bracelet, but mostly she’d ignored the other woman as much as possible.

With it fisted in one hand, she dressed and made her way downstairs. When she entered the kitchen and saw an explosion of dirty dishes spilling over the edges of the sink, scattered from one end of the countertop to the other, she stopped.

Definitely not her grandma. Gram always washed dishes and tidied up as she worked.

The oven timer buzzed, the screen door swung open, and Lisa stepped into the kitchen. When she saw Paige, she froze. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else was up. I’ll just get out of your wa—” Her gaze slid toward the messy countertop, and it was as though someone had stuck her blowup body with a pin. Her shoulders slumped, her ribcage caved in, and she shrunk by almost four inches. “Never mind. If you can’t stand to be in the same room as me, then you’ll have to leave.”

Lisa grabbed the oven gloves off the countertop, swung open the oven door, and pulled out a tray of cookies. They looked like chocolate chip, and they smelled delicious.

As the other woman straightened and closed the oven door, her normally pale skin was rosy from the heat. She twisted her neck slightly and, with one exquisite eyebrow raised, stared at Paige. “Well, then, good morning.”

Paige narrowed her eyes at the other woman and held out the bracelet. “Is this yours?”

Lisa set the oven timer and put the sheet of cookies down on the cooling rack. Removing the gloves, she took the bracelet from Paige and studied it. “Where did you find this?”

“On Brody’s rooftop.”

The other woman quirked one exquisite brow. “What were you doing up there?”

Heat filled her cheeks, but she kept her gaze steady on her mother’s face, searching for any sign of guilt. “Nothing.”

Lisa tucked the bracelet into her pocket. “Well, never you mind about this. I’ll take care of it.”

“Whose is it?”

Lisa turned away. “Delores’s. I’ll return it. She doesn’t need to know that you were on Brody’s rooftop, too.” She tsked. “The man gets around, doesn’t he?”

Paige stood there and watched her mother bustle around the kitchen, and silently acknowledged the fact that Brody wasn’t
getting around
as Lisa had suggested. He was doing nothing more than trying to be a good father, build a relationship with his daughter, and change the reputation he’d earned on the football field and off.

When the coffee pot gurgled and the scent of the rich dark brew mingled with the delicious scent of the cookies, she grabbed a cup from the cupboard, filled it, then forced her feet to take her back the way she’d come.

As her palm hit the swinging door, the clatter of a plate reached her ears, and Lisa’s melodic voice stopped her.

“Would you like a cookie? Fresh from the oven is the best way to eat them. The chocolate chips are still gooey and, well, I’m just saying you can join me if you want.”

Gram had taught her to be polite and tolerant. She was no actress, but she figured a cookie or two might temporarily alleviate the tension between her and this woman who’d given birth to her. She lowered her hand and beelined toward the table where Lisa was setting down a plateful of the fresh baking.

The older woman waved her into the chair closest to the plate of cookies.

Mouth watering, Paige sat down and set her coffee cup next to the plate. “You’re up awfully early. I thought it was Gram down here.”

“Couldn’t sleep.” Lisa bustled around the kitchen, preparing another batch of cookie dough for the oven. “Are you always up at this time?”