Deconstructing Lila (Entangled Select) (2 page)

So Lila switched gears. She wasn’t going to let Jake build another wall around himself, so high she couldn’t scale it with the highest ladder. No, ma’am. She’d learned how to get what she wanted back in Dallas, and Jake was about to find out she had all new strategies.

“It’s been nice catching up, Jake. Tell your folks I said hello. If you want to get together tomorrow for pig wrestling or whatever, I’ll be at Granny’s.” And then she turned her back on Jake Winter and walked to her waiting car.

Throwing her purchase into the passenger seat, Lila wondered what he would do next. Her body tingled in anticipation.

Suddenly, he was there, trapping her in the open vee of her car door, his chest pressing deliciously close. Her body hummed in response. She curled her fingers into fists to keep from reaching for him.

“How long are you staying?” He propped a tanned forearm on the roof and leaned in farther. A muscle in his jaw clenched.

“However long it takes,” she admitted.

“For what?” He crowded her. The therapist she’d spent dozens of hours with had warned her defensiveness could be the result of her sudden appearance. Of her extended stay.

Which meant Jake felt vulnerable.

Which meant he still cared.

Stage one of the manhunt: complete. Jake still cared about her.

She smiled and resisted the urge to stroke his cheek and kiss his lips. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, baby.”

Jake backed up, sweetly confused and properly flustered. “Are we playing a game, Lila?”

The fact that he asked the question meant she had a fighting chance. This wasn’t a football game he could predict and plan play-by-play.

He simply had to live it. Which was the source of all their problems.

Shrugging her shoulders, she winked and slid into the driver’s seat.

Jake quietly returned the gas nozzle to the pump for her, gave a farewell nod, and strolled to his truck. Metal hinges creaked with age and use as he opened the door. Turning the key, he fired up the vintage Chevy and fiddled with the AC.

Lila grinned with her success at no one in particular and left the shaded canopy of the Grab & Get.

Chapter Two

J
a
ke watched in his rearview mirror as Lila smiled. And then the weight from ten years of resignation hit him like a hammer. He’d fought the urge to reach out and drag her into his arms. To feel her pressed up against his chest. He wanted to know if she still smelled like summer sun and flower gardens.

And because he was tired today from a late-night planning session with a new client, he did stupid-ass things, like stand in the middle of the Grab & Get lot on the hottest day of the goddamn summer and ogle old exes, as if he were ready to drive back to his place and jump in bed.

Very bad idea, thinking of the two of them together in bed. One thing they were always good at, even up to the very end, was sex. And lots of it. At various times of the night and day. In exciting, body-bending positions. Hands down, his favorites were the sessions at 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m.

Lila had always been intuitively sexual and sensual. Her willingness to experiment and trust him in and out of bed was one of the things he loved most about her.

Jesus. Love. Loved?

He pushed away thoughts of feelings and focused on the here and now.

He needed some physical activity all right, just not that kind of physical. At least not with Lila. A bone-draining run along the back roads of nearby Indian Gap should work. But that wasn’t in his schedule.

He was so screwed.

But Lila wasn’t. She’d done the right thing back then, calling off their relationship. Pride filled his heart.

Look how far she’d gone in Dallas with her business. She never would have done the same here in Hannington. As a cotton-farming town that went belly-up during the Depression and didn’t recover, the same opportunities just weren’t available. Hell, they’d never been available unless you were into farming or raising cattle, or joined the military at nearby Fort Hood.

One thing he knew for sure. Lila Jean had grown up. Her blue eyes reflected the clarity of the sky overhead with a peace he’d not witnessed before. And that sexy tumble of blond hair? It was shorter than he remembered, but skimmed her bare shoulders to softly kiss her tan skin. She looked mature, her pose saying what her face didn’t: that she’d learned a thing or two about the world and how to work it to her advantage.

No doubt about it. She’d done the right thing when she’d left him. So what was she doing back in town now, wasting time with him at the convenience store?

“Who was that?” John Casler, Jake’s closest friend and project foreman, passed a Gatorade in through the open window and climbed into the passenger seat of the cab.

Jake shrugged and adjusted the rearview mirror to cover his discomfort. “Someone I used to know.”

“You want to get to know her again?”

Breaking the seal on his bottle, Jake swallowed a third of the contents. The truth was, it would be better, safer, for both of them if he didn’t get to know her again. Especially in a carnal way. Once he went down that road, it was hard,
ha ha
, to turn back.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and looked directly at Casler. “Nope.”

Casler watched him with quiet intensity. They had worked together for almost seven years, and Casler knew him better than anybody. Knew that his one-word answers meant he wanted this discussion over. In the past.

“Old girlfriend,
mi amigo
?”

Christ
. He wasn’t going to let it go.

Jake switched the AC higher, though the ancient system did little to cool the cab in hundred-degree heat.

“You could say that.” And so much more. Like how he had once counted every tiny freckle on her entire body. Right before he kissed them all. And that at one time he loved nothing more in the world than running his fingers down her naked back to the dip in her spine near her ass.

Pulling out of the convenience store lot, they headed a few blocks down Main Street to the Dairy Queen to grab lunch for his crew.

Jake attempted to ignore Casler’s questioning stare. Little good it did him.

“So what’s her name? I might want to ask her out.”

Jake’s hand gripped the steering wheel, the leather squeaking softly under the strain. Casler was only screwing with him.

“You don’t want to ask her out. She’s married.”

“
Mierda
.”

Casler always cursed in Spanish.

“Why were you hanging out with her then?”

“Because I’m her husband.”

L
ila peered at her grandmother’s redbrick bungalow with green-and-white-striped awnings, and contemplated how many times she’d played on the big side porch, busying herself with books and journaling, waiting for her family to come home. It felt like thousands. And here she sat, once again stalling, though this time Lila played the part of returning family.

Though carefully orchestrated over months of therapy and dozens of phone calls with her Granny, Lila’s return to the town of her birth was bittersweet at best.

The melted candy bar, now re-formed under the blow of the air conditioner, whispered to her as it slipped across the lap of her silk skirt and fell between the seats. Her hand dived in, but it was too late. The chocolate was gone, drowning in the under-the-seat darkness, requiring a flashlight and body contortions to retrieve.

Probably for the best. She’d advanced beyond the days of fixing boy troubles and family drama with chocolate.

She gripped the wheel between shaking hands and breathed. Many years had passed since she’d lived in the house. Memories of her past life resided there. Memories of her mother, who ran out when Lila was five, pictures of her dead father, whom she didn’t remember, and reminders of the naive girl she’d been at eighteen when she’d married Jake.

She looked at her reflection in the rearview mirror, affecting a stern, disappointing expression. “Quit whining and get your rear in there!” Her angry voice echoed in the empty car, her mouth dry despite the soda.

Jerking the door open, she slid out of her seat and strode inside. Her heels sank in the thick, cushy carpet and a blast of cold air hit her face, cooling her heated cheeks. Her grandmother’s favorite rose potpourri assailed her senses.

She listened, but didn’t hear the familiar sounds of TV drifting from the den. “Granny?”

No response.

Had she missed her? Maybe she’d gone out to the grocery.

Dropping her purse and the box containing the journal on the mahogany console table near the door, she followed the trail of oriental runners back to her grandmother’s bedroom.

Stopping just outside the door, she watched in shocked surprise as a nurse fussed over Granny. Barbara Gentry, age seventy-two, lay propped up in bed, a casted arm heavy on her chest.

“Lila Jean, is that you hovering out there in the hall?” Granny’s no-nonsense voice called to her.

She made her feet move across the carpet to stand at the edge of the bed, like she had so many times as a child. Never mean, Granny was nevertheless stern, demanding manners and politeness.

“What happened, Granny? Are you all right?” She wiped a trickle of moisture from her eye and attempted a smile. Her grandmother looked tiny and frail amid the white linens and plaster cast, her silver hair in disarray.

“I’m fine. It’s not the end of the world.” Shooing the nurse away, she patted the rumpled chenille comforter with her good hand. “Stop that crying and come down here where I can see you better.”

Lila hitched a hip onto the iron bed, taking her grandmother’s hand. She admired the ever-present jeweled ring on her finger, the birthstones of her father, Granny, and herself. She loved the ring. It reminded her of the closeness and traditions of family.

The tears started again. What kind of granddaughter was she that her own grandmother was injured and Lila didn’t know?

“Lila, it’s not your fault your crazy Granny slipped outside while trying to talk on her cell phone and feed the cats at the same time. I should have been watching for that rascal Nate. He trips me every time!”

Lila laughed in spite of herself. The image of her grandmother surrounded by cats, hands full of food with her ear pressed firmly to the phone, was very real.

“See now, it’s not too bad. It’s a broken arm, nothing more. I’m sure it will annoy my bowling team more than it will bother me.” She fussed with the covers, throwing the neatly tucked afghan off the bed.

“When did this happen? And why didn’t you call me? I should have been here. Sooner.”

“Day before yesterday. It’s not that bad and I can still take care of myself. I just can’t bowl. The Bombshells will have to replace me this season.”

“Granny, I wish you would’ve called—”

Her concern fell in the wake of Granny’s shrewd change of subject. “This doesn’t affect us or our plan one bit. Just my ability to whip Howard’s hind end if he stands in our way. But we’ll deal with that as we need to. You, missy, need to get it in gear, however, and save Miss Pru’s old house from the wrecking ball.”

While Granny liked to let on that “the plan” was a conspiracy the two women shared, Lila knew the effort was in itself simply a trigger to bring her back to Hannington. Back to the beginning. And back to her true self.

“Ever since that idiot mayor of ours got it into his head to tear it down, it has been nothing but a fight. The Bombshells haven’t been real successful at making the case, what with all the town hall records from that time mysteriously disappearing.”

Granny waved her good hand in disdain. “A fire, my ass. Looks suspicious if you ask me. Anyway, you’re here now and old Howard is about to get his butt handed to him.”

Lila sat back on the bed, confused. “Why didn’t you use the journal? With that and the building, you could probably get in with the Texas Historical Commission.”

Granny pushed back on her pillows, sitting as straight as she could manage with one good hand. “I don’t know anything about a journal.”

Lila hopped from the bed and padded back down the hall to recover Miss Pru’s book from the entry table.

She returned to the bedside and laid it in Granny’s lap. “This showed up last week. A brief note said: ‘This is part of your past. Thought it could be part of your future.’ I assumed it was from you. More ammunition in our war to save Miss Pru’s place.”

Granny stopped flipping through the book to give her a scolding look. “Lila Jean. I would never be so cryptic. Nor anonymous.”

“If you didn’t send it, then who did?”

Granny snorted. “Let’s look at this inscription.” She held her breath as Granny carefully laid the front cover open. Seconds ticked by in silence.

Finally, Granny looked up. “Oh, dear. It seems we have quite the mystery here, don’t we?”

From the Journal of Prudence MacIntosh

Lesson Number One —

For women, resolution can be a powerful weapon. Once you make a decision, remain true. Do not change your mind or give in to persuasive arguments. Your man will come to respect you for it and so will you.

Chapter Three

Dallas

Two weeks ago

“I
’m reading a prostitute’s manual on how to have a great sex life.” Lila looked over the spine of the book in her hands to Mark Shrine, her in-house architect.

“Excuse me?” He swung the door all the way open and glided into her office, interested in her out-of-the-ordinary reply to “what’s up?”

Mark took the overstuffed leather chair across from her desk. He snuggled into the cushy cocoon, eager for an interesting story like a kid before bedtime. When she’d hired the man six years ago to redesign historic downtown buildings for her, she had no idea he was so…so inclined to drama. But they’d made an immediate connection and become fast friends and he offered a sympathetic ear when she needed one. Which, these days, seemed to be more often than not.

And with the chain of events currently unraveling, she was in need of a good sounding board to make sure she wasn’t straight-up bananas.

“So, what’s the story?” He sipped a diet soda and crossed his legs.

“Someone—my grandmother most likely—sent me this old journal. It dates back to the 1870s! And, are you ready for this?”

Mark nodded.

“It’s from Hannington.”

“That little pissant town you’re from?”

Lila smiled. “According to my grandmother, it’s not so pissant anymore. Lots of folks are buying up ranch property with their oil and gas money and building weekend homes.”

“Okay. Yeah. Interesting. But let’s get back to the relevant part. A prostitute’s guide to a great sex life? Why would anyone send it to you? You don’t have a sex life!”

“Ha ha.” True, she didn’t.

“So what’s the deal with the book? Is it one of those personal accounts of ‘life on the streets,’ ‘a look inside the bordellos of old’?”

Mark loved stories. With him, any event could seem dark, mysterious, and tawdry. It was one of the reasons she enjoyed his company so much. The man made her laugh with his genuineness and exuberance.

“From what I can tell, the author wrote it for publication, but this is the writer’s working copy. There are journal entries throughout, in between the passages meant to be published.”

“Intriguing.”

Lila bit her lip. “Mark, do you believe in fate?”

“You mean like
Kismet
?” He threw his head back and stared at the black iron piping running along the ceiling. “God, that was a great movie.”

“Seriously, do you think every one person has a special somebody out there?”

His head snapped up and he met her gaze. “Oh, this is more like
An Affair to Remember
.” Setting his can on the glass side table, he sat up straight in the chair. “What are you saying, Lila? That you found a special somebody?”

Suddenly nervous now that she was on the precipice of revealing her little secret, she stared at the book, waffling. Although her therapist encouraged her to deal with her emotions. Examine them. Revel in them. Feel the vulnerability. And then let them go.

Damn them. They were the culprits behind her panic attacks, these persistent emotions. And Lila was more than ready to let the little suckers go free.

“Unresolved issues,” the therapist said. “A fear of abandonment,” the therapist said.

Lila had shrugged at the time. They were her issues and she’d worn them like armor for years. But now, finally, motivated by age, maturity, and the lessons in this journal, she was ready to let it all go. To gamble. To pick up the pieces of her abandoned marriage and fully love the man she could no longer live without.

She refused to end up like her mother.

“Oh, no. You don’t ask me a question like that and then go and clam up. What gives? Do you have a man or not?”

“I used to.”

Mark slapped the arm of the chair. “Oh shit. Here we go. I’ll grab the beer. Do you need a burger with it? A nice dose of booze and grease will ease the pain.”

Lila laughed and waved away his concern. “I’m good. Though a burger from the Love Shack would set my crap straight right now.”

Mark joined her laughter and grabbed his soda can again, tossing back the last of his aspartame-filled goodness. “So who was this guy? And why are we talking past tense? Did he die?”

Lila’s mood sobered quickly.

She pushed away from her desk and walked to the windows overlooking downtown Dallas, in an attempt to escape her melancholy feelings.

Her father had left her. Then her mother. And then him. Her high school sweetheart,
her husband
. He’d pushed her so far away from his love, Lila had been forced to leave, retreating to Dallas.

“What happened?” Mark broke the silence and came up next to her, nudging her shoulder with his own.

She looked into his concerned hazel eyes, but saw another pair of eyes, smoky jade and swirling with dark emotion. Emotion she could never experience, share, or relieve him of.

He’d been so shattered. So lost. And believing his sacrifice was true and right, he’d forced her away, pushing her to seize opportunity and life without him.

Shaking the memory loose, she focused on Mark. “You never answered my question about fate. Do you believe in it?”

“I don’t know, Lila. I like to think everybody has a soul mate out there, but in truth, I haven’t seen it happen for too many people. There is a lot of settling for close. And almost.”

“What if I were to tell you this book”—she held it up between them so the gilded pages shone in the overhead lighting—“was a sign?”

He studied her face, his cynicism evident. “Of what?”

“It’s time I went home. Dealt with my past. And kicked its ass.”

Mark liked it when she talked tough. It was their inside joke, because Lila was anything but an ass-kicker.

“Lila, what the hell are you talking about?”

“By itself, I might be able to shrug it off. But I like to think of it as a sign. An arrow pointing me home. And then last week, I got a phone call from an attorney regarding some money due to my mother.”

“Your mother? You mean your grandmother?”

“No, my biological mother.”
How to make this particular story short and not so depressing?
She loathed discussing this particular pain. It made her feel weak. “After my dad died overseas, she kind of…well, she kind of went off the deep end and took off out West somewhere. I haven’t seen her since I was five.”

Mark rubbed his forehead. “Damn, Lila. I didn’t know all this.”

Realizing this was probably way more than he wanted to hear, she stepped away from the window, trying to establish some distance between the bombshell she’d dropped and herself.

A similar behavior executed by her mother over and over again. A behavior Lila was desperate not to repeat. So she turned back to Mark and grabbed for his hand. He squeezed it reassuringly. “What did the lawyer want?”

Lila cleared her throat. “Somebody on my dad’s side left my parents money. The attorney needed to know if my mother was still at her current address. In California. In Los Angeles to be exact.”

Mark’s heavily lashed eyes widened. “This dude knows where your mother is?”

“He at least knew her last known address, which is more than I ever had.”

“Whoa.”

“Exactly.” Lila leaned against the bookcase for support. “And then this week, this journal shows up in the mail.” Flipping her leather satchel open, she pulled the book into the light once more. “Look at the inscription on the inside cover.”

Mark opened the cover and read the faded ink on the first page. She’d read it so many times today she could repeat it, verbatim.

“To my daughter: Lila Gentry. Follow the path to happiness, little one. I will be there to guide you, all the days of your life. Your mother, Prudence MacIntosh.”

She saw the confusion in his face and helped him muddle through it. “Lila Gentry was my great-grandmother on my father’s side. Miss Pru, it seems, was my great-great-grandmother.”

“Son of a biscuit.”

“Exactly.”

“E
xcuse me, ladies, but I’ve finished up here and I gotta get to Mrs. Motheral’s down the street before she up and climbs the refrigerator again looking for her cigs.”

Lila smiled at the home health care nurse. The old iron bed frame groaned and then settled back into place as she got up. “I want to talk to the nurse to see if she has any special restrictions for you.”

“As long as I can get a double cheeseburger from the DQ, she can restrict whatever she likes.”

Lila didn’t need to see her grandmother’s frown. Her challenging, I’ll-put-up-a-fight tone said everything.

The nurse stood patiently by the upright piano in the front parlor, her lips twitching over the sheet music selections on display.

“You sure got your hands full, Miss Gentry.” Her eyes turned up to Lila’s and her mouth widened into a broad smile.

She liked the nurse immediately. “What’s the diagnosis?”

“She’ll heal, but it will take longer considering her age and all. The hard part is going to be keeping her from moving around too much while the bones in her shoulder knit back together.”

Yes, keeping Granny from bowling and gardening would be next to impossible. “Is there anything special I need to do?”

“No. Just keep her entertained.”

“Easier said than done.” Barbara Gentry did not like movies, video games, books, or idle conversation. She lived for bowling, long walks, dominoes, and gossip.

“You’ll think of something.” The nurse patted Lila’s arm. “I’ll drop by each morning for the next couple of days until you get settled. Just to check in on y’all, and see how things are going.”

Lila nodded. How hard could it be to care for her granny?

Reaching into the depths of her bag, the nurse rooted around. “I gotta get organized one of these days.” She retrieved a card at last, handing it to her. “Just call me if you need anything.”

The name on the card said “Steve Ann Richards.”

She must have read the look of confusion in Lila’s eyes. She smiled a smile that said she’d heard the question a million times before. “My parents were counting on a boy, you know, and when they didn’t get one, they went ahead and kept the name, adding Ann to soften it.”

“Oh.”

The phone rang and her grandmother’s voice carried down the hall. “No, Judith, I’m fine. Lila’s here now, so I don’t need you to rush over with a pot of chili. Save it for Charley. Lord knows the man needs it worse than I do.”

Steve Ann smiled. “She sure is proud of you. You’re all she’s talked about the last couple of days.” Steve Ann looked down the hall to Granny’s room and then back to Lila. “I don’t want to alarm you or get in the middle of your family business, but your grandmother has also been talking about passin’ along all of her motherly wisdom before she commits to her final rest. She said there’s no one else to do it, what with her daughter—your mother, I reckon—outta the picture.”

Lila tried to swallow over the growing ball of panic in her throat, but choked instead. And then suffered more horror over embarrassing herself so.

“Hey, hey. It don’t mean nothing.” Steve Ann rubbed her arm briskly. “It’s typical for ladies her age. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Don’t get upset when she starts talking about teaching you everything she knows before she passes on to the Lord. It’s normal. Now that you’re here, she’ll be able to rest better and she’ll ease up on the talk.”

“But, is she, I mean, ready to, you know…”

“She isn’t anywhere close to giving up that bowling ball for the harp.”

“Thanks,” Lila murmured, trying not to think of her future without Granny. Nope. She wasn’t going there.

She watched from the door as Steve Ann’s extended cab truck pulled away from the curb. Shutting out the late-afternoon heat, and the grief that came with the notion of losing her Granny, she closed the front door and padded back to her grandmother’s room.

“Good grief, Judith, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll be back on the bowling team as soon as the cast comes off. Shirley Maple can fill in for me until then.”

The Bowling Bombshells were no longer blond, young, or single, but they could still bowl better than anyone in Bell County. They’d managed to defend their undefeated title in the women’s league since 1943. And they played every week in Temple, never missing a league night, with the exception of the end of World War II in September 1945.

Lila caught her grandmother’s attention with a wave. “Can I get you some tea?” she whispered. Granny nodded, shooing Lila on with her good hand, the phone tucked securely under her chin.

Out of earshot in the kitchen, Lila found the tea bags and searched her grandmother’s Depression-era pitcher collection until she found the polka-dotted one used for iced tea. Buoyed by the familiar chatter drifting down the hall from her Granny’s bedroom, she considered her plan for the coming day, making a mental note of one errand she needed to complete pronto. She prayed she wouldn’t run into Jake Winter again. Unexpected run-ins were not in her plan. Carefully orchestrated and rehearsed encounters were.

But what the hell. Miss Pru said life was full of the unplanned. And that was the only thing you could plan on.