“Hell, no,” he denied. “I think Schuyler cooked this up.”
“Not without Lucie’s help,” Lila said accusingly. Furious, she let out a shaky breath. And then she turned toward Everett. She was furious. “You know you can leave,” she told him.
“I know.” Lord, but he had missed her, he thought now, looking at Lila. “But since I’m here...maybe we should talk.”
“About what?” Lila wanted to know. “What is there left to say?” Restless, uneasy, she began to pace within the limited space. “I trusted you once and got my heart broken for my trouble.”
Her accusation hurt. But this wasn’t one-sided. “I could say the same thing,” Everett countered.
Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Everett, stunned. “You?” she questioned. What was he talking about?
“Yes,” he informed Lila. “I’d trusted you, too. Trusted that you’d be with me forever—and then you walked out. It wasn’t easy for me after we broke up. I might have gone on with my studies—because that was what I was supposed to do—but there was this huge, empty, jagged hole in my chest where you used to be.”
His dry laugh was totally mirthless as he continued. “I think I must have picked up the phone a hundred times that first year, wanting to call you and tell you about something that had happened in class or at the hospital, before I realized that I couldn’t. That you wouldn’t be there to answer the phone.” His eyes met hers. “Nothing meant anything without you,” he told her.
Lila stood there looking at him. The inside of her mouth felt like cotton and she struggled not to cry. She’d held her feelings in too long. For thirteen years, to be exact. Now she could hold them in no longer.
“I still think about our baby all the time,” she admitted.
Everett felt her words like a knife to his heart. More than anything, he wished he could go back in time to make things right. To do things differently. “Do you regret giving her up?”
“Yes,” she answered so quietly, he had to strain to hear her. And then Lila took a deep breath. “No.”
She blinked hard, telling herself she wasn’t going to cry. Forbidding herself to shed a single tear. Tears were for the weak and she wasn’t weak. She’d proven that over and over again.
“I know that our daughter has had a good life. The people who adopted her send me letters and photographs every once in a while, to let me know how she’s doing.” Lila smiled sadly. “Emma’s a beautiful girl and she’s doing really, really well in school.”
Everett looked at her in surprise. He’d had no idea this was going on. “Her name is Emma? And you’ve stayed in contact with the family?” he asked.
Lila nodded. “Yes. Not knowing what was going on with Emma was killing me so it took a bit of doing but I managed to get in contact with the family that adopted her. Emma’s parents are good people. They understood how hard it was for me to give up the baby. As a matter of fact, they’re grateful to us for giving them what they call ‘the most precious gift of all,’” Lila said. “Over the years, I’ve kept track of her through emails and pictures from her parents.”
It was a lot for Everett to take in. Numerous questions rose in his head.
“How is she doing? What grade is she in now?” Everett asked.
“You actually want to know?” Lila asked him, astonished. “I mean, after the baby was born, you seemed really eager to put the whole incident behind you and forget about it. About her.”
Her words stung, but he knew they were true. He’d been young and he’d just wanted to pretend that none of it had happened because it was easier to erase the guilt that way.
“I was,” he admitted. “I’m not proud of it now, but it was the only way I could deal with it at the time, to just bury it and put it all totally out of my mind.” Everett put his hands on her shoulders now, looking into Lila’s eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more understanding, Lila. I didn’t realize that you were hurting. I only knew that I was.”
Lila struggled to wrap her mind around what he was telling her. She’d never suspected any of this. “You were hurting?”
Everett nodded. “She was my little girl, too,” he told Lila.
“Oh, Everett, I wish you had told me,” she cried.
So much time had been lost because of a failure to communicate. So much heartache could have been avoided if he had only verbalized his feelings to her.
If he’d just given her a clue...
“I wish I had told you, too,” Everett said with all sincerity. And then he looked at her hopefully. “You wouldn’t have a picture of Emma with you, would you?” he asked.
Lila opened up a drawer, took out her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She pressed the photo app and scrolled through a few photos until she came to the one she was looking for.
“This is Emma,” she told Everett, holding out her phone to him.
Everett looked at the young girl on the screen. He could feel his heart swell as he stared at the image. Emma looked to be on the verge of her teen years and she had a mouth full of braces.
She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
“She has your smile,” he said, taking in every detail of the photo. And then he looked up at Lila. “I can’t believe how beautiful our daughter is.” With a sigh, he handed the phone back to Lila.
Lila closed her phone and put it back in her purse. “Emma’s not our daughter anymore, Everett,” she told him quietly.
Everett nodded. “Right. Have you ever seen her in person?”
Lila shook her head. “No. I wanted to, but I don’t want to confuse Emma. One mother and father is enough for her right now at her age. Besides, her parents know how to get in contact with me. They have my cell number. Someday, when she’s older, if Emma wants to meet me, they’ll let me know and I’ll be there in a heartbeat. But for right now, all I want is for Emma to grow up happy and well adjusted.”
“You’re a strong, brave woman, Lila,” Everett told her with admiration. He hadn’t realized until this moment just how strong and brave she really was.
Lila shrugged. “You do what you have to do in order to survive. And you make the best of the situation,” she added. “The alternative is much too dark.”
He nodded. “You’re right. It is.” He paused for a moment before looking at her and saying, “Would it surprise you if I told you that I think about Emma, too? That over the last few years, I’ve found myself thinking about her a lot. Wondering where she was, what she’s doing. If she was happy. If she ever wondered about her birth parents and thought they—we—gave her up because we didn’t love her.”
“She knows we gave her up to give her a better life,” Lila told him.
“You’re just speculating,” he said.
“No, I know that Emma knows that because her adoptive parents told me they told her that when she was old enough to begin asking questions.”
Everett was quiet for a long moment. And when he finally spoke, what he said really surprised her. “I really wish I could meet our daughter.”
It took Lila a moment to fully absorb what he had just said.
“Do you really mean that?” she asked Everett, astonished to hear him voice the same feelings that had been haunting her for years.
“Yes,” he told her honestly. “I do.”
She pressed her lips together, thinking over the feasibility of what he had just told her. “Well, I’m not sure how Emma’s parents would feel about that, but I could certainly let them know that you’re back in the picture and that you would like to meet Emma whenever it’s convenient for them—and for her.”
He nodded. It was a difficult situation all around and he fully understood that.
“I’d really appreciate that,” he told her. He paused, trying to find the right words to convey what he wanted to say to her. “Lila...” Everett started, then stopped, his brain free
zing up on him. This was a great deal harder than he’d anticipated.
“Yes?” she asked, wondering what else there was left for him to say. He’d already gladdened her heart by telling her that he not only thought about Emma, but actually wanted to meet her. That meant a great deal to her.
His eyes met hers. “Can you ever forgive me for not being there for you?” he asked softly.
Lila blinked. She could have been knocked over with the proverbial feather. Staring at Everett, she realized that he was being sincere.
“Oh Everett, I really wish I had known that you were hurting, too and that you felt the way you did. It would have helped me deal with everything that happened so much better.” She smiled at him, fighting back tears again. “We really should have communicated more honestly with one another.”
Everett stepped closer, letting himself do what he’d wanted to since he’d walked into this office. He enfolded Lila in his arms. “You’re absolutely right. I should have talked with you, told you what I was feeling. But I just closed myself off, trying to deal with what was going on. I was blind and didn’t realize that you were going through the same thing, too, and could have used my support.” He’d been such a fool, Everett thought, regret riddling him. “Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?” he asked again.
Now that she knew that Everett had experienced the same doubts and emotions about their daughter that had haunted her, all of Lila’s old feelings of anger and resentment vanished as if they had never existed. All Everett ever had to do was tell her what he’d gone through.
Forgiveness flooded her. “Yes, of course I can,” she told him.
Relief mingled with love, all but overwhelming Everett. He kissed Lila, temporarily disregarding where they were and the fact that the people she worked with could easily look over and see what was happening.
And she kissed him back.
Everett forced himself to draw back. Still holding her in his arms, he looked down into her eyes. “From now on,” he promised, “I’m putting all my cards on the table.”
“Are you planning on playing solitaire or poker?” she asked Everett, a smile curving the corners of her mouth.
“Definitely not solitaire,” he answered. “But any other game that you want. Oh, Lila, we’ve wasted much too much time and we’ll never get any of that time back,” he told her. His arms tightened around her. It felt so good to hold her against him like this. He felt he’d never let her go. “But we can have the future.”
“And by that you mean...?” Her voice trailed off.
She wanted him to spell everything out so that there would be no more mix-ups, no more misunderstandings to haunt either one of them. She wanted to be absolutely certain that Everett was talking about what she thought he was talking about.
“I mean that I’m planning on being very clear about my intentions this time around. I know what I want,” he told her, looking deep into her eyes. “All you need to do is say yes.”
But she wasn’t the same person she’d been thirteen years ago. She knew how to stand up for herself, how not to allow herself to be swept away.
She surprised him by telling Everett, “I never say ‘yes’ unless I know exactly what it is that I’m saying yes to.”
“To this,” Everett told her, pulling something out of his pocket. When he opened his hand, there was a big, beautiful heart-shaped diamond ring mounted on a wishbone setting in the center of his palm. He’d brought it with him for luck—and just in case.
Lila stared at it, momentarily speechless. When she raised her eyes to his face, she could barely speak. “Is that—”
She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question, because the moment she did—and he said no—a little of the magic would be gone. And she really couldn’t believe that the ring she was looking at was the one she’d fallen in love with so many years ago.
But Lila discovered that she needn’t have anticipated disappointment, because Everett nodded.
“Yes,” he told her, pleased by her reaction, “it is. It’s the one you saw through the window in that little out-of-the-way shop that day when we were back in college. You made me stand there while you made a wish and just stared at it, like it was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.”
She smiled, remembering every detail. “I was being silly and frivolous,” she admitted.
“No, you were being honest about your reaction,” he corrected.
She continued looking at the sparkling diamond in his hand, completely mesmerized. “But how did you...?”
Everett anticipated her question and was way ahead of her. “After I dropped you off home, I doubled back to the store to buy the ring. The store was closed for the night by then, but I kept knocking on the door until the owner finally came down and opened it. Turns out that he lived above the store,” he told her. “Anyway, I made him sell me the ring right then and there. I hung onto it, confident that I would give it to you someday.” He smiled ruefully. “I just never thought it was going to take quite this long,” he confessed.
Taking a deep breath, he held the ring up to her and said in a voice filled with emotion, “Lila Clark, will you marry me? I promise if you say yes, I will never leave you again.”
Lila could feel her heart beating so hard in her chest, she was certain it was going to break right through her ribs. The wish she’d made that day in front of the shop window was finally coming true.
“I don’t plan to keep you on a leash,” she told him, so filled with love she thought she was going to burst. “But yes, I will marry you.”
Thrilled, dazed, relieved and experiencing a whole host of other emotions, Everett slipped the engagement ring on her finger.
The second he did, he swept her into his arms and kissed her again, longer this time even though he could see that they had attracted an audience. It didn’t matter to him.
Lila’s colleagues were watching them through the glass walls of her office and cheering them on, his sister and her cohort in front of the pack.
He looked down into Lila’s eyes. “We can have more kids,” he told her. “An entire army of kids if that’s what you want. And they’ll never want for anything. We can have that wonderful life that we used to just talk about having.”
“A better one,” she interjected.
“Absolutely,” he agreed, hugging her to him again. “The sky’s the limit,” he promised. “But there’s just one more thing.”
“Oh?” Lila refused to be concerned. She’d been down that route and this was a brand-new route she was embarking on—with Everett beside her. She knew that she could face anything as long as he was with her. “What’s that?”
“I don’t want any more secrets between us,” Everett said.
“Neither do I,” Lila agreed wholeheartedly. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
“More than just you,” Everett answered. “If we’re going to start with a clean slate, there is something else I need to do.”
Now he was beginning to really make her wonder, but she wasn’t about to shrink away from his revelation. Because whatever it was, they would face it together. Conquer it together.
“Go ahead,” Lila said, thinking that he was going to confess something serious to her.
Instead, Everett opened her office door and called out, “Schuyler, Lucie, would you mind stepping back in here?”
The two women obligingly filed back into Lila’s office.
“Okay,” Schuyler said to her brother, “make your announcement, although we both saw you put that huge rock on Lila’s finger so this is going to be a little anticlimatic.”
“It’s not what you think,” Everett told his sister.
Schuyler exchanged looks with Lucie, obviously confused. “All right, enlighten us then,” she said.
“I’m through sneaking around,” he told his sister. “This is wha
t we talked about when I first came to Austin, thinking I was picking you up to bring you home.”
“What is he talking about?” Lucie asked, looking at Everett’s sister.
Everett turned toward Lucie. “Lucie, I think it’s time I told you who we really are. Or at least who we think we are.”
Lucie looked from Everett to Lila, her brows furrowed. “Lila?”
But Lila shrugged, as mystified as Lucie was. “I have no idea what he’s talking about,” she admitted.
Everett laced the fingers of one hand through Lila’s hand as he went on to make his revelation. Nodding toward his sister, he told Lucie, “As you know, our last name is Fortunado.”
Lucie waited for more. “Yes?”
“What you might not know, and I’ve recently come to find out—thanks to Schuyler’s detective work—is that the Fortunado family might actually be descendants of Julius Fortune, Jerome Fortune’s father,” he added for clarity.
“You know,” Lucie told Everett, a smile spreading across her face, “I’m not half surprised. With all of Jerome’s illegitimate offspring coming to light lately, it stands to reason he learned the art of seduction from his father.” She reached out and placed a hand on Everett’s shoulder. “In that case, I have some people I would really love for you to meet.”
“People who could substantiate my suspicions?” Everett wanted to know.
“Oh, more than substantiate, I think,” Lucie said with emphasis.
Instead of eagerly asking her friend to make the meeting happen, the way Lila thought he would, Everett turned to look at her. She saw a wicked sparkle in his eyes. Her pulse instantly began to accelerate.
“That really sounds wonderful, Lucie, and I’d appreciate the introduction,” he told her without so much as a glance her way. His eyes were solely on Lila. “But I’m afraid the meeting is going to have to wait for now.”
“Oh? Why?” Lucie asked.
“Because,” Everett began, raising Lila’s hand to his lips and brushing a kiss lightly against her knuckles, “my fiancée and I have plans for this afternoon. Plans,” he said, “starting right now. So if you’ll please excuse us...”
Summer of Love Page 16
