Safe Harbor (The Lake Trilogy, Book 3) (41 page)

“L-Luke, W-W-Wes, and I thought it’d be a g-g-good idea. Ch-chances were g-g-good you were g-going to g-go rogue on m-me,” Will says through the freeze his body is fighting.

“I’m too happy that you’re alive to be mad at you right now! Oh babe! I can’t believe you did that!” I throw my body over Will’s and get a better idea of just how cold he is as the freezing water soaking his clothes begins to soak mine, too.

I hear the rush of footsteps behind me and see a crew of paramedics headed for us. One of them has one of those silver blanket things I’ve seen runners use. They get Will’s shirt and the bulletproof vest off of him and wrap him in a wa
rm blanket and the silver one.

“Layla?” I turn and see Agent Croft behind me. I’m sitting more to the side now that the paramedics are getting Will’s vitals so I stand up and meet him. “How is he?”

“He’s going to be fine. I’ll be mad at all of you later for not telling me he was wearing a bulletproof vest. But…thank you for that,” I tell him with a small smile.

“It wasn’t my idea. Take it up with all the other men in your life,” Croft smiles.
“How are
you
?”

“I’m ok. I just don’t understand why Agent Lassiter would do this? I mean, I know that Will’s father manipulated people like Wes, but I don’t know what the payoff was for Lassiter, or why he’d push for the rest of the money,” I say.

“We’ll find out when we interrogate him. Do you want to know what he says?” Croft asks. I remember him telling me that because I asked a lot of questions, I might make a good FBI agent one day.

“Yeah. I’m studying psychology. Maybe I’ll join the behavioral analysis division of the FBI one day.” I smile at Agent Croft and turn back to Will. He’s sitting up now and his color is returning.

“His vitals are good. He’s going to be fine, but we can take him to the hospital for a more thorough exam if you’d like,” the paramedic says.

“No, I’m good. I don’t want to go to the hospital. I want to go home
. It’s Thanksgiving,” Will says. He’s not shivering anymore, so that’s a good sign.

“I’ll just take him home. Thank you so much for your help,” I tell them.

They leave Will with both blankets and help him stand at his request. It takes Will a moment to get his bearings but then he’s fine. Will cuddles himself in the blankets and I wrap my arm around his waist as we walk the length of the dock. By the time we reach the parking lot Agent Croft and his entire team are gone.

“I can’t believe you all thought I’d freak out!” I say to Will, Luke, and Wes. “Talk about not trusting a girl!”

“Honey, you
did
freak out,” Will says.

“I was so angry. I know how much pain
Blasi’s family is in. I just wanted to alleviate it.” I lean in closer to Will and he rests his head on top of mine.

“It’s not over, Layla. If it means that much to you, we can have them drag the lake,” Will says. His voice is still a little hoarse from the frigid water and all the coughing.

“That would be awesome, but who knows if Lassiter was even telling the truth? Let’s just go home,” I say. My clothes are cold and wet from hugging Will, and I need a nice, hot shower to ease the tension of the day. “It’s still Thanksgiving and there’s still plenty of time to cook the turkey and eat at a reasonable hour.”

We send everyone home and try to go about our day
like we didn’t just face the barrel of a gun on a dock on Thanksgiving morning. Will and I even have time to take a nap. I bundled him under the covers on our bed even though he says his body temperature is just fine.

“I can think of other ways you can raise my body temperature,” Will says with a flirtatious tone.

“We’ll get to that, Mr. Meyer,” I say, just as flirtatiously. “I still can’t believe you jumped in front of me like that.” I run my fingers through Will’s hair as he lies on the bed next to me.

“I don’t know why. I told you, Layla…all I’ve ever wanted to do was protect you. What would you have done if I hadn’t been there?” Will turns and faces me, tears welling up in his eyes. “I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.”

“I’m so sorry.” I lean in and wrap my arms around Will’s neck and then move into my sweet spot on his chest. “When I thought I had lost
you
…it was so awful.”  His body is warm now and the fear I felt earlier when I pulled him from the water is gone. I can hear and feel his heart beating and it’s the most wonderful sound in the world.

“It’s ok, babe. We’re here, together, alive and well,” Will says, stroking my hair in that comforting way that soothes me to my core.

“I wish we could lie like this all day,” I sigh.

“Me, too
, but we’ve got family to take care of today.” Will sits us up and locks his beautiful blue eyes on mine.

“Not just today. We’ve got family to take
care of everyday,” I tell him.

Five years
. I used to hear the term
five years
and cringe.
Five years
would conjure up memories of my grandmother’s obsession with making me pay for my parents’ death and the years I spent as my grandfather’s caretaker. It would bring up the feelings of abandonment, rejection, and sadness with having forgotten who I was becoming before my parents died.
Five years
meant sadness, heartache, and pain.

But…
five years
doesn’t have the same meaning to me anymore.

Five years
is now the length of time I’ve been Layla Meyer. I look back and see all that Will and I have accomplished over these years. We graduated from college, having managed to arrange three years of class schedules perfectly. Will got his contracting company off and running and has more business than we ever dreamed he would. He spends time in the workshop I gave him as a wedding gift creating and designing and making us all proud that he’s carrying on the Hufford legacy.

I’ve been so lucky for the last year and a half to work with an agency that helps children who have lost a parent. I help them grieve and walk them through all the feelings I was never allowed to feel. It truly is the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done.

Knowing how much it meant to me, Will took charge of having the lake dragged and searched until Albert Blasi’s body was found. It took almost a year, but Will just kept saying that until the search teams told us every inch of the lake had been searched, we were not going to give up until Blasi was found. At least Agent Lassiter hadn’t been lying that Thanksgiving Day at the marina. I could hardly hold back the tears when Agent Croft allowed me to go with him to deliver the news to Blasi’s wife and children. They were so thankful that they would be able to give him the proper memorial he deserved. They were even more thankful when we told them Lassiter was convicted of murder and jury tampering and sentenced to life. That was an outstanding day.

Five years
means so much for the people I love most, too. Claire and I threw a small, but beautifully elegant wedding for Wes and Eliana three summers ago. We had the ceremony on the dock at Luke and Claire’s at sunset. Eliana wore a simple, yet elegant, ivory dress that flowed when the wind blew, making her look like an angel against the orange glow of the sky. I’d never seen Wes so happy. Not only was he marrying the love of his life, but his daughter Anna came to the wedding. At Eliana’s urging, Wes reached out to Anna to reconnect and help her understand what happened all those years ago. Anna was reluctant at first, but as Wes explained and Eliana backed up everything that Wes told her, she came to understand more clearly what Wes had done and why. Anna’s mother hasn’t jumped on board yet, but that’s not what’s most important to Wes and Eliana. They’re building a beautiful relationship with Anna and it’s a joy to watch them together.

Anna and Eliana have become so close that at Eliana’s graduation from Davidson College, Anna was the first one to break out of the group and rush to embrace her. She practically tackled Eliana to the ground. There’s a great picture of the three of them, my favorite in fact, hanging in the foyer of Wes and Eliana’s new place. They chose to move out of the neighborhood to another one on the lake. It’s so fun to be at Luke and Claire’s house and take their new boat across the lake to Wes and Eliana’s.

Luke spent the first two of the last five years digging into Judge Harris to find out why she would give Holly the maximum sentence and not the five years that Rossen recommended. It took that long to find any evidence,
anyone
who could give them an idea of what kind of relationship she had with Gregory Meyer. When the gross facts came out, I think I threw up a little bit. It turns out Judge Harris and Meyer had been sleeping together for almost a decade. I don’t know what the benefit was to either of them. Luke looked back at all of their cases for the last ten years and nothing overlapped. The only thing Luke could determine was that she was just one more in a long line of women Meyer used for his own selfish gain. That, or in her twisted mind she thought she could one day be the next Mrs. Meyer.

Once the truth about Judge Harris came to light, a new judge reduced Holly’s sentence to the five years recommended by Rossen. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to mean a whole lot to Holly’s family. A year into her sentence Marlene and her husband left town. Wes tracked them to France but Holly told Luke she didn’t want to find her. Holly was happy they were gone. Holly broke down with Will, apologizing for the way she behaved. She wanted to speak directly to me, but I told Will her apology to him was enough for me. Apology or not, we have no plans of ever seeing Holly again. She was released a few months ago. Wes and Luke did for Holly what they did for Will and Eliana. She’s starting over again
with a new identity in Georgia.

There have been five Thanksgivings since Will and I married. As hard as we worked for it not to be, the first was marred by the events with Agent Lassiter. The other four, however, have been full of everything we ever dreamed they would be. But this one, this sixth Thanksgiving is going to be the most spectacular one yet.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to wait until tomorrow to tell them,” I say to Will.

“I know, but it’ll be the best Thanksgiving ever. Our moms are going to flip!” he says with wide eyes and an even wider smile.

“Layla Meyer?” the nurse calls as she opens the door to the waiting room. Will and I stand up and follow her to the exam room. “How have you been feeling?” she asks.

“Good. Tired. I’ve been sick, but only really early in the morning,” I tell her.

“Good. That’s all very normal.” There’s a knock at the door and Dr. Kendall comes in, greeting both Will and me with a handshake.

“How are you, Layla? Feeling good? Sick at all?” he asks, reviewing my chart quickly and then washing his hands.

“Yes, good. All the normal stuff,” I tell him.

“Ok then…I’m just going to measure you, see how you’re doing here.” Dr. Kendall feels around on my stomach and I imagine my little kumquat dodging his poking.  “Are you certain of the conception time frame?”

I blush at his question because I remember exactly when this baby was conceived. Will had been asking me for months when we were going to start trying for a baby and this was the night I told him I had been off my birth control for a month. He thought I was telling him that I was already pregnant. When I told him I wasn’t, he scooped me up in his arms and said that he was going to fix that. We had the most wonderful night of perfection ever.

“I’m certain,” I say. Dr. Kendall notices the flush in my skin and blushes a little himself. “How about we do a quick ultrasound?”

“Is there something wrong?” Will asks with obvious concern.

“No, no. You’re about eight weeks…we’ll take some pictures and measure the baby. It’s all good.”

The nurse squirts my belly with cold goop and the doctor takes the ultrasound wand and rolls it over my stomach. In a minute we’re hearing a rapid sound coming from the machine. Will and I stare at the screen, not sure of what we’re looking at, but smiling like fools because we know our baby is somewhere in there.

“How about that?” Dr. Kendall muses.

“What? What are we looking at here? I’m sure our baby is on the screen somewhere, but…” I say with a small laugh.

“Well, this is your baby,” he says, circling the cutest blob ever with the keyboard controls on the machine. “And this is your
other
baby.”

“I’m sorry…what did you just say?” Will stutters.

“Layla is having twins,” the doctor says with a smile.

Will squeezes my hand and I look up into his eyes. Tears are welling up and turning his eyes a brilliant shade of blue, bluer than they’ve ever been.  It was hard to believe we were having a baby in the first place, but now to find out we’re having twins!

All Will could say the whole drive home is, “I can’t believe this! This is amazing!” And now that we’re home, he’s added, “Two! Two babies, Layla!”

I lay down on the bed and watch Will pace excitedly around our bedroom, smiling as the love of my life spits out every thought coming to his mind. “Where should we put their room? Maybe they can each have their own room, I mean, especially if we have one of each. I could remodel the house…give them a Jack and Jill bathroom. Or, what if it’s two girls? They’ll need their own bathrooms, right? Your people need your own bathrooms right?”