by Lexi Blake
“You should back up now.”
He took a step back and she gunned the engine, taking off down the highway.
“That’s a no, then?” Armie shouted after the car.
She was probably speeding again, but he wasn’t going to press his luck.
chapter two
Lila stood in front of the dilapidated ranch house that seemed to back up to some form of water. That must be the bayou portion of Butterfly Bayou, though she didn’t see any butterflies. She did see the massive potential for mosquitoes. There was a dock she probably would never in a million years risk walking on, and a boat she was shocked was still floating tied to it.
What the hell am I doing?
She’d left her perfectly good apartment for this? Sure, it had been bland and she’d never bothered to decorate, but at least it didn’t look like it was about to fall apart.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Lisa said, stepping in beside her. Her sister had been waiting for her when she’d driven up the gravel drive. “Maybe. I went inside and it’s pretty bad in there. I can’t believe Bill’s kids didn’t clean it out.”
She felt her eyes widen because she wasn’t good with dirt. Blood, she could handle. She fully understood the role of germs in the natural world, but in her own home she preferred the suckers nonexistent. “They didn’t clean?”
Lisa turned to her. “Oh, not that. I didn’t mean that. I had a maid service clean it top to bottom. I’m talking about all the things.”
“They said it came furnished.” It was the reason she’d chosen the place. Well, that and the fact that it was cheap, and she needed cheap. Most of her savings was in her practice now. She couldn’t afford a new house. Or apparently one that would be standing in a couple of years.
“Yep, with everything. You bought a ninety-eight-year-old man’s entire life.”
She wasn’t sure that’s what she’d planned on. “I thought it was furniture and dishes and stuff like that.”
She’d left behind almost all of her own stuff when she’d broken things off with her fiancé. She’d walked away from him and gotten her own bland apartment that served as nothing more than a place to eat and sleep. It hadn’t been hard to leave it when she’d decided to move out of Dallas.
“And dentures. He had a surprising collection of those,” Lisa pointed out. “Don’t worry. I think I got them all. I organized the bathrooms and there are fresh sheets on the bed. And the kitchen. It’s spotless, though not decluttered. I wasn’t able to get to the rest of the place. It’s been crazy at work lately. I’ll be here every minute I can to help you. I actually think it’s going to be pretty once we fix it up.”
It had to be because she was going to live here. She was going to make a home here in this tiny backwater place, where she could maybe hide from the big bad world.
“Lila, are you okay?”
She shook it off. She’d made her decision and she was sticking to it, peeling paint and all. “I’m good. It was a long drive. Thanks for bringing the keys out. And you don’t have to help me. I’m sure it will be a good way to pass the time. I certainly won’t explore this town by driving around. The sheriff is quick with a ticket.”
And he was gorgeous and his smile lit up the world, and he had the most spectacular butt. She’d seen it in her rearview mirror as he’d swaggered away to write her up.
Apparently he wasn’t married since he’d asked her out. Well, he’d suggested that they grab dinner together. That was kind of like asking her on a date. She’d been out of the game for a very long time.
Lisa groaned. “Are you serious? I’ll talk to him. You know what? There’s a town hall next week. I’ll yell at him there. And I’ll let him know if he doesn’t fix it, he’s off the pie list at Guidry’s. Don’t discount that threat. Armie might look like a man who never eats carbs, but he loves my pecan pie.”
She did not want her sister involved. “It’s fine. I was speeding, but I swear he’s in league with that gator. Are there a lot of them?”
“Gators? Yeah, but they really don’t cause trouble,” Lisa explained. “You leave them alone and they’ll leave you alone. You know you can change your mind. You can still come and stay with me until we get everything up to your standards.”
“I have standards?”
Lisa sent her an incredulous look. “Yeah, sis. It’s kind of your thing. I remember not being allowed out of the house until I looked picture perfect, and I was all of ten years old.”
“You had to look perfect so no one would suspect we were on our own.” The first time their mother had gone to jail, their aunt had stayed with them for the whole six months. The second she’d had other things to do. She’d played her part for CPS, but they’d been on their own. It had gone that way for the rest of their childhood. Often Lila had preferred the times when her mother was locked up. It meant one less person to take care of. “We had to be ready in case someone showed up. The place had to be immaculate at all times, and we all had to be perfect in school or questions would be asked.”
She’d never gotten out of the habit. It was funny that it hadn’t really struck her until that moment. She couldn’t tolerate a mess. Not because it bothered her. It made her nervous. It made her worry someone would judge her.
How had she never let that go? How was she still in that place she’d been in when she was a kid?
“You don’t have to be perfect here. It’s actually way better that you aren’t. These people respect authenticity,” Lisa assured her. “I’m going to help you fix this place up. It’ll be fun. And who knows—maybe there’s, like, treasure in there. Probably not. He was on a fixed income. From what I’ve heard, he didn’t get out much after his wife passed. His kids were scattered all over the country. When he got sick, he went into a nursing home up in Thibodaux. The kids didn’t want to spend much time here. That’s why you got it for such a steal. Remy says the house itself is solid, but it needs some upgrading. He’s worried about the water heater. And the air conditioner.”
“Yeah, I kind of got that feeling from the sheriff.”
“He talked to you about the house? How did he know about the house?” Lisa’s eyes had turned shrewd. “Armie’s famously tight-lipped when it comes to pulling over drivers. He doesn’t listen to anyone. All he’ll say is ‘License and registration’ and then he passes you a ticket. He got chatty with you?”
She could still hear the deep rumble of his voice. “He got weird with me. He gave me a ticket and then offered to show me around town, starting with some place called Lucille’s.”
Now her sister’s eyes went wide. “Lucille’s is a date place. No one goes to Lucille’s unless they’re celebrating something special or trying to get into someone’s pants. And it’s not here in Papillon. It’s thirty minutes away.”
“If he wanted to date me, maybe he shouldn’t have given me a ticket,” she replied, starting toward the front door. Armie LaVigne was big and gorgeous but off-limits because she wasn’t going to hop into bed two seconds after she’d gotten into town.
Why?
Because he gave me a freaking ticket.
So? He might also give you an orgasm.
Her inner voice could just shut up because she bet Armie LaVigne hit on every single tourist who came into town. The whole parish had less than two thousand people in it. It wasn’t like he had a ton of choices, and she was the new girl. Of course he was going to hit on her. She should probably expect that from most of the single men.
“Don’t let the ticket thing throw you off. Armie’s pretty hot, and he’s a solid guy. And I mean that in several ways. He’s responsible and has a good job, and he’s been shot a couple of times and always survives it.” Lisa went still and her hand went over her mouth. “God, Lila. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
There it was. That memory of when the gun came up and time had slowed down. It was al
ways there, simmering under the surface of every good moment she had. She blinked and reminded herself Dallas was hundreds of miles away.
“I’m fine.” She said those words a lot. She said them to her family and friends. She said them to her therapist. She said them to herself. Of course, if she was fine, why had she felt the desperate need to upend her whole life, move over five hundred miles from the city she’d lived in for years, and spend every penny of her savings on a new start? “I didn’t take it that way. I’m glad to know the sheriff of the parish is capable of surviving a couple of bullets. I’m sure no bullet could get through his thick head.”
Lisa seemed to want to say something else, but her sister let it go. “You know, you could do worse than Armie.”
She wasn’t sure how. Getting involved with a gorgeous man who was sure to break her heart when she was trying to build a business and a new life for herself seemed like pretty much the worst thing she could do. “I’m not here to socialize.”
She fit the key in the door. It was time to see how much trouble she’d bought for herself.
“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Lisa was saying as the door opened. “This isn’t Dallas.”
Precisely why she was here. Papillon was about as far as she could get from Dallas and still be close to her family. When she’d decided on a new start, she hadn’t been able to give up being close to at least one of her siblings. She’d thought it through. Laurel had a baby. She’d come through it like a champ, and her brother’s wife, Bridget, had given birth twice. They both had access to good healthcare. Lisa was out here alone. If her big Cajun husband wasn’t packing some hefty swimmers, she would eat her Louis Vuitton handbag. Lisa would get pregnant at some point, and Lila wasn’t leaving her care to anyone but her. “I’m well aware this isn’t Dallas.”
She got the door open and stepped into the fifties. At least she was pretty sure that was when every piece of furniture had been bought. The newspapers, though, looked like they came from every week of the last fifty years.
“Sorry about the papers.” Lisa maneuvered her way around the first of what looked like fifty stacks. “Like I said, the place isn’t dirty, per se. Just cluttered. He liked newspapers and magazines. And books. Lots of books. There’s also a closet full of buttons. No idea why, but we were told not to open that one. I wasn’t talking about physical differences. I was talking about fitting in. I’m not sure if you know it, but sometimes you can be intimidating.”
Often in the ER a little intimidation went a long way. “I can’t help how other people react to me. I do my job and I do it well.”
“See, right there. Intimidating.”
She managed to make it to the living room. It was better in here, but the place was covered in tchotchkes. Every available space was littered with snow globes and stuffed animals with the names of various monuments stitched on them. There were commemorative plates and spoons and thimbles.
At least the sofa looked fairly comfy. “Again, I’m not seeing the problem.”
“People here aren’t used to that,” Lisa said, picking up a set of Disneyland salt and pepper shakers and moving them in an attempt to clear off the coffee table. “They’re used to a gentler approach. You have to think before you blurt out whatever goes through your head or you’ll lose them. The people here aren’t used to change. They kind of actively fear it.”
“You seem to be getting along well. And this is coming from the girl who got into a fight her first night here and ended up pulling out another chick’s weave. So I’m not seeing the Southern manners.” Her sister’s stories about the town and the people here had been one of the reasons she’d come.
It had seemed like a good place to hide.
Lisa grinned. “They do like drama. And she was coming after my man. They understand that, too. You’re amazing at your job. I just want it to be smooth sailing for you.”
“It will be.” At least her clinic probably wasn’t a museum for bad souvenirs. “Why on earth would he keep all these things? The poor man obviously had a mental illness.”
“Or he was lonely.” Lisa’s hands ran over the collection of brightly colored pens. There looked to be tubs of them. “These things probably reminded him of a time when life was good. When he and his family traveled. The only thing the kids asked me for were the pictures. I sent those back. There were lots of pictures of the five of them in a camper traveling across the country.”
The Daley family had never done that. Not once. The most they’d traveled as kids was to the prison on visiting days after Will had managed to get his license. They hadn’t taken trips, they’d just tried to survive.
Was she still trying to survive? Was she still clawing her way through a day without any understanding as to what it meant? Her family was safe. They were all happy and moving on. They had lives and she was . . . running and managing to stand still all at the same time.
The man who’d lived here, he’d had a life. Maybe it had been a messy one. Maybe he’d been lonely in the end, but he’d lived.
When she’d decided to leave Dallas, she’d packed up her car and had room to spare. She hadn’t taken a bunch of things that reminded her of good times.
Because she hadn’t really had good times.
Lisa held up a coffee mug. It was emblazoned with the hokiest picture of an elderly couple smiling from inside a big heart. World’s Greatest Husband was written across the other side of the mug. “I think some of these things were gifts from his wife. Isn’t that sweet?”
She’d been engaged at one point in time and she’d handed back the ring without a second thought. She hadn’t needed to have a bonfire to burn all her mementos because there hadn’t been any. All of his gifts to her had been practical. No flowers for Lila Daley. She needed a pair of gloves. No jewelry. She would rather have orthopedic shoes and new scrubs.
“I used to schedule gifts for myself,” she said quietly, studying the books on the shelf. It looked like the man had been heavily invested in old Westerns. Her eyes drifted down to the lower shelf and she found a whole row of what looked like romance novels. “When I was with Brock, I mean. I would schedule gifts because I thought I should. He bought me flowers once and I explained that I would prefer him to spend money on something that wouldn’t die on me in a week.”
“Okay, that’s the single least romantic thing I’ve ever heard,” Lisa said. “I never liked Brock. He seemed cold.”
“That was what I liked about him,” she admitted.
“Because you didn’t have to work too hard?”
“Because I did all the work.” She looked to her sister and wished she hadn’t given in to the impulse to talk about her private life. But wasn’t that what her therapist had told her to do? She held everything in, never admitting her own flaws or weaknesses. It kept her apart from even the people she loved. “I liked doing all the work. And I resented it. I wanted control but when I had it, I hated him for giving it all to me. You think I’m intimidating, but I’m a hot mess when it comes to most things.”
A quiet, hot mess. A silent, threatening volcano. A bomb waiting to go off if pressure wasn’t released. She usually released that pressure via long runs.
What if she could release it a different way?
“You went through something awful. It’s okay to be a hot mess.” Lisa sank down on the couch and patted the place beside her.
It was odd to have their roles reversed. For all her life she’d been the big sister, the one Laurel and Lisa came to, the one with all the answers, and if she didn’t have them, she made them up. She was the ultimate fake-it-’til-you-make-it girl. She’d been doing it all her life.
But she had no answers now. Only a million gnawing questions.
“I should be over it.” It was what she told her therapist. She’d treated therapy like something she had to get through in order to get on with her life. Like if she sat in
the chair and answered the questions, she would be fine.
It hadn’t worked that way.
“You’re not going to get over it. I think that’s a phrase that does not apply to what happened to you. You get through it,” Lisa said, reaching a hand out. “This will be with you the rest of your life.”
“I couldn’t walk into the hospital without being in that moment.” It was why she’d quit. She’d gone back to work a month after the incident. She’d forced herself to walk into the building, forced herself to do the job, forced herself to go home, forced herself to take the pills that helped her sleep, and then one night thought about how nice it was to sleep, how if she took enough pills she might be able to stay asleep.
She’d quit the next day, and now she was here and she was going to find a way to want to wake up every morning.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to go back there, either,” Lisa said. “I think that’s normal. I was worried when you went back to work so quickly, but it didn’t surprise me.”
“I bet me quitting did.”
Lisa seemed to consider that for a moment. “Not really. Coming here surprised me. I didn’t think you liked it here. You barely talked to anyone at my wedding.”
There had been a reason for that. “I know you won’t believe this, but I was upset when I broke up with Brock. I knew he wasn’t the one, but I think I figured out there might not be a one out there for me. I was jealous of everything my siblings have and I held myself apart. I actually find this place interesting.”
She’d definitely found Armie LaVigne interesting. Until he’d given her a damn ticket. Not that she could blame the ticket for her hesitance. He hadn’t ticketed her at the wedding and she’d still run as fast as she could.
