Lover's Lane

by Jill Marie Landis

  She didn’t object or explain as he unerringly found a skillet and began to chop and sauté onions along with red and green bell peppers. While they simmered, he opened the bottle of champagne.

  Carly cupped her chin in her hand, watching Geoff break half a dozen eggs into a bowl. He whisked them together before he added heavy cream.

  It was easier to let him have his way than protest that she wasn’t hungry. She hadn’t really eaten since dinner with Jake on Friday night.

  Geoff brought her a mimosa he’d made with champagne and orange juice.

  “So . . .” He took the sautéed veggies out of the pan, left them in a bowl, and poured in the eggs. As the edges of the omelette started to set, he turned around, leaned against the kitchen counter, and folded his arms. “So, how are you doing?”

  Her hand shook as she forced herself to take a sip of the mimosa. “I’ve been better.”

  “God, Carly. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault.”

  Carly lowered her voice so that Chris wouldn’t hear. “Actually, Friday night was . . . unforgettable. Everything went according to plan. Dinner was a huge success.”

  More than a success. His hands, his lips, the very way he spoke her name on every sigh had moved her to new heights. For as long as she lived, she would never, ever forget that night in his arms.

  “And afterward?”

  “I’ll never forget it. But it’s over.”

  “I thought you two had something going.”

  “We did. Until I got home yesterday and heard from Glenn Potter that Jake isn’t the owner of a consulting firm. He’s a private investigator.”

  Geoff went back to the stove, lifted the edge of the omelette so that the creamy egg mixture would cook evenly.

  “And that’s a bad thing?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath, shuddered. “Jake didn’t come to Twilight just to buy a painting. He came specifically looking for me.”

  Geoff paused with a spatula in the air and waved it like a wand. “Why?”

  “He knew Chris’ father.”

  “Ohmygod. There’s way more to this than meets the eye, isn’t there?”

  She fought a sudden wash of tears and nodded.

  “Just let me get this dished up, and then you can start at the very beginning.”

  Twenty minutes later, Geoff’s omelette was gone. Carly’s was still on her plate, untouched. She’d given him the Reader’s Digest version of her life right up until yesterday when she’d learned about Jake’s duplicity. There wasn’t the relief she’d experienced after telling Jake, but at least baring her past had been a little easier this time.

  “This morning right before you called, a sheriff knocked at the door and asked if I was Carly Nolan, a.k.a. Caroline Graham, then he shoved an envelope at me and left.”

  Geoff’s right brow slowly rose. He pulled the papers toward him and glanced over them with a look of pure disdain. “Let me guess . . .”

  “Anna Saunders is petitioning the court for guardianship of Christopher.”

  “Jake told her where to find you.”

  “I don’t know how else she’d know.”

  Trust me, Carly. All I’ve ever wanted is to help you and Chris.

  She closed her eyes. Tried to shake off the notion that Jake had betrayed her. There was nothing else to believe.

  Geoff grabbed his empty plate and pushed away from the table. “What in the hell is the woman thinking? There’s no way she can prove you’re negligent or abusive. This is just a waste of time and money. It’s ridiculous.”

  She clasped her hands in her lap, her fingers cold as ice. She stared out into the studio. “I should pack up Christopher and leave . . .”

  “Running away isn’t the answer anymore, Carly. It won’t solve anything. You’ll just have to keep on running. It’s time you fought back.”

  “But what if she wins?”

  “How can you lose?”

  “Geoff, I passed myself off as someone else for years. That’s against the law.”

  “Did you commit fraud while using your friend’s name? No? Then it’s not like you ran up debts in her name or stole her credit cards and bank accounts.”

  “Of course I didn’t do any such thing.”

  “For heaven’s sake, you’re a great mother.” He slipped his plate into the soapy water in the sink then made a fist in the air. “Just bring the old bitch on. As soon as I get home, I’m calling you with the name of a good lawyer. He’s a friend of a friend of mine in San Luis Obispo. You’re calling him first thing in the morning.”

  Tears began to slide down Carly’s cheeks. With a quick glance at Chris, she wiped her face on the sleeves of her terry robe, damning and missing Jake at the same time.

  “All I’ve ever done is make one stupid decision after another, Geoff. I thought that somehow everything I was doing was for the best, but a lot of wrongs never add up to a right.”

  “Running away again certainly isn’t going to help you now. Besides, you’re not fighting alone this time. You’re not a nineteen-year-old unwed mother, either. You’ve built a home here. You have friends who consider you family. Do you think any of us will let anyone take Christopher away from you?”

  Family.

  A dream that had died when she was a child, blossomed for a brief time in Borrego, but perished again with Rick on a treacherous mountain grade.

  Geoff sat down across from her again and pointed to her plate.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you’ve eaten half of that omelette. I know thin is in, but you can’t afford to lose any weight.” He glanced down at his watch, a slim rectangle on a black leather band. “I’ve got to open the gallery in forty minutes, so you eat up, missy. Don’t make me have to get butch about it.”

  Carly found herself smiling through her fear. She picked up her fork, forced herself to take a bite.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe this time, if she fought back, she’d finally be able to put the past behind her and stop looking over her shoulder.

  Maybe from now on, things would be different.

  Half an hour after Geoff left, Carly was in the shower rinsing her hair when Chris called out from the other side of the shower curtain.

  “Mom! It’s Jake! He’s on the phone!”

  She stuck her head and shoulders around the edge of the shower curtain, and there was Christopher, holding the portable phone toward her.

  “Tell him I can’t talk.”

  He held the phone to his ear. “She can’t talk right now. She’s all wet and she’s naked. Yeah. She’s in the shower.” He looked at Carly, the phone still pressed to his ear. “He says it’s important.”

  “Tell him I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Water’s dripping all over the floor.”

  Knowing Chris would stand there and give Jake a blow-by-blow description of everything she was doing, Carly shut off the water, grabbed a towel before she stepped out of the tub, and took the phone.

  “Thanks, now go on.” When he flashed her a bright smile and gave her a thumbs-up, she waved Chris out of the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

  “Hello?”

  “Carly, it’s Jake.”

  At the sound of his voice she closed her eyes against an unexpected rush of longing. “What do you want?”

  “I spoke to Anna Saunders late last night. She . . . she called in her own investigators after she talked with me, and there’s no other way to say this—she had me followed. She knows about you, Carly. She knows where you live, and she knows your name.”

  “You’re way behind, Jake. She’s petitioned for guardianship of Christopher. A sheriff knocked on my door at nine this morning and handed me papers.”

  She heard him mumble a curse.

  “So, if you called to warn me, you’re a little too late. I do like the part about a detective following you around.” She sat down on the toilet seat cover and pulled the towel closer. Water was streaming down her back, dr
ipping off her soaking-wet hair and onto the floor.

  “Jake, I really don’t have time for this. Good- . . .”

  “Carly, don’t hang up! Listen to me.”

  “Look where that’s gotten me.”

  “I’m not giving up. I’m going to talk to Anna again.”

  “Oh, really? Have a nice chat.” She punched the talk button off and sat there staring at the phone while the puddle on the floor widened.

  31

  THIRTY MINUTES AFTER STEPPING OFF HIS GRANDFATHER’S sixty-foot Hatteras Sportfisher, Jake was sitting in his mother’s kitchen surrounded by the scent of home and childhood memories.

  The air in the room was close and warm, as were the intense feelings that filled him whenever he walked in the back door.

  This house had been home to him until he’d married Marla. Like many Long Beach natives, he’d gone to Cal State Long Beach right out of high school, worked part time, and commuted from home. It was a simple house, with three bedrooms and a den in the quiet, historically designated California Heights area with streets lined with magnolia and jacaranda trees.

  This was what he’d wanted before he’d married Marla. A house on a quiet street, three kids. A dog. A car without payments. But he’d wanted his own firm, too. Wanted more than to work in a cubicle at A and P or be their errand boy. He wanted to build his own client list, set his own hours, turn down the more mundane cases, and take on the challenging ones.

  But what he’d wanted hadn’t meshed with what Marla wanted. Once they were married, she’d started needing other men, and unfortunately, he hadn’t been willing to look the other way.

  He watched his mother bend over the open oven with a red-and-white checkerboard oven mitt on each hand as she reached for a golden-brown loaf of banana bread.

  In her mid-sixties, Sheila Olson was still trim, though she’d be the first to admit she had to work hard to stay that way. She played golf two days a week, walked a mile and a half every morning, and still found time to watch Julie’s terrible trio.

  Her family was and always had been both her passion and her inspiration.

  She had been widowed the first time at twenty-four, but even then she had the courage to stand up to Jackson Montgomery when Granddad, overflowing with grief of his own and embittered by sorrow, blamed and deluged her with “I-told-you-so” and “What-else-did-you-expect?”

  She stood her ground when Jackson insisted that he knew what was better for young Jake than she. He even swore not to let her ruin his grandson’s life the way she had his son’s, but as stubborn as she was gentle and loving, Sheila had easily won using love, something Jackson never understood.

  Sheila turned the loaf pan upside down over a wire rack and the bread came out clean. She flipped the loaf right side up and walked over to sit beside Jake at the oak breakfast nook Manny had painstakingly built her.

  “This will be cool enough to cut in a few minutes. I think you should take it to Kat, fatten that girl up a bit.” She took a deep breath and finally asked, “How’d it go this morning? Did you have any trouble?”

  “No trouble at all.”

  The ocean was blessedly calm that morning, the slight offshore breeze glassed the waters between Long Beach and Catalina. A pod of dolphins had escorted him, a fitting tribute to his grandfather, who had loved cruising open water more than anything or anyone.

  “I would have come with you, you know.” She watched him closely, perhaps worried that he might be taking his grandfather’s death harder than he let show.

  “I know how seasick you get, Mom.”

  She shrugged. “Still, I would have come.”

  She would do anything for him. Anything at all. As a kid he’d taken her love for granted, assumed that was the way things were supposed to be. As an adult, he knew better. He knew how lucky he was to have her.

  “I know, Mom. Thanks.”

  Granddad had left specific instructions that Jake be the one to spread his ashes at sea between Long Beach and Catalina. Jake had taken the yacht out alone.

  “Can you stay for lunch?” Sheila asked.

  “Sorry. I’ve got to get back to the office. Kat picked up a client, a fraud case that needs a little more expertise than she has at running numbers at this point. What would take her a couple of days will only take me a few hours to untangle. I’ve got to go over the accounts they sent us, look for evidence of embezzlement.”

  “Is everything else going all right? You’ve been away so much.”

  “It runs just as smoothly without me. Kat’s great. Besides, I’ve needed some time off for a long time. All I want to do right now is convince Anna Saunders to meet with me. I’m going by to try to talk to her tonight, see if she won’t agree to settle this thing out of court, but I probably don’t stand a chance in hell. She thinks she had to keep this thing going because her husband, Charles, wanted it that way.”

  “You could always make a scene outside her door.”

  He laughed. “If I get arrested, I’ll call you.”

  He’d told his mom why he’d gone to Twilight Cove and shared his excitement about renting the house. Last night over dinner, he’d described Carly and how the search for the mother of Rick’s child had led him to her. He’d talked about Christopher and of Anna Saunders’ determination to have her grandson.

  Sheila could relate to Carly’s situation. “Don’t blame yourself for all this, Jake. From what you’ve said, Anna Saunders has had people searching for that child for years. Eventually she would have succeeded, don’t you think?”

  He doubted it, but he didn’t bother to explain why.

  “How does a woman my age think she’s going to cope with a six-year-old boy?”

  Sheila shook her head and paired up the salt and pepper shakers, funny wooden figures in mushroom-shaped chef’s hats that he’d given her for Mother’s Day when he was around Christopher’s age. Their painted faces had worn off a long time ago but she still insisted on using them.

  She sighed. “People waste so much time butting heads while life slips through their fingers. When I think of all the good times your grandfather could have shared with us if he’d hadn’t drawn a line in the sand. He could have joined us for the holidays, seen you graduate from high school and college. He didn’t have to miss your wedding.”

  Jake had forgotten Jackson had refused to attend his and Marla’s wedding simply because Sheila would be there. Time tended to smooth away the rough edges of life the way water rounded river rock.

  He tried to imagine his grandfather sitting at the crowded dining-room table with the rest of them, but couldn’t quite see Jackson joining hands as Manny gave the blessing or suffering through Julie’s kids’ antics. They loved to show off mouthfuls of mashed potatoes.

  Not in a million years would Jackson Montgomery have ever fit in here.

  Unfortunately, it was all too easy to see Chris and Carly surrounded by the circle of his family.

  “You know, it’s funny.” He ran his fingers over the glossy oak table as the image of Manny using his sander in the garage workshop flashed through his mind. “This morning, out on the water with no one around, nothing but the sound of the gulls and the dolphin and the smell of salt air, I held the urn with Granddad’s ashes, and a kind of peace came over me, the kind I never experienced when the two of us were together. It was as if every argument we’d ever had didn’t matter anymore.”

  He recalled watching the ashes drift on the water as he sprinkled them over the rail. The spreading stain widened, the ashes disappeared from sight. In that moment, he wondered if it wasn’t his inner peace he experienced, but that maybe Granddad had found his own contentment.

  “I think maybe Granddad’s finally happy,” he told her.

  “I hope so.” Sheila reached across the table for Jake’s hand. “I really do. Now what are we going to do about you now that you’ve found this woman? You’ve never said all that much about it over the years, but I know how it’s bothered you that you couldn’t find h
er for Rick.”

  “Me? I’m fine.”

  “Fine isn’t good enough. You’re falling in love, Jake. I hear it in your voice and see it plain as day on your face when you talk about Carly Nolan. I haven’t seen you like this for a long time. How do you feel about her boy?”

  “He’s a great kid.”

  “I know you’ve always wanted a family of your own and how devastated you were when you and Marla split up. Honey, just don’t let old wounds keep you from having what you really want.” She let go of his hand but continued to hold his eyes with the intensity of her gaze.

  “When I lost your dad, I thought that I’d never love anyone that way again. I didn’t trust God anymore. He’d not only taken Jack from me but left you fatherless. What kind of a God could be so cruel? Then Manny came into my life, bringing Julie with him. Suddenly I had a loving husband and a daughter I’d never have known had your father lived.” She leaned closer, her voice full of emotion. “We never know what’s in store for us, Jake. We just have to make it through the storms and wait for rainbows to appear.”

  He thought of Carly back in Twilight, of the storm she was weathering. The rainbows in her life had been few and far between.

  But this time, he’d be damned if he let her go through the storm alone. He was going to be right there beside her whether she wanted him or not.

  Jake rang the security buzzer outside Anna Saunders’ condo with little hope of her actually letting him in, but somehow she’d agreed to give him a few moments of her time.

  Standing in the gilt and marble foyer with his hands casually shoved into his pockets, he told her, “Thanks for seeing me.”

  She kept her distance, obviously nervous, as she stood beside a glass and wrought iron table, her softening profile reflected in the mirror on the wall beside her. She was a handsome woman with eyes very much like Rick’s. The gray in her hair was dyed blonde. She wore it short and stylishly.

  It was clear she had no intention of inviting him in to sit down as she had the last time. Her posture was wooden, as if she were afraid to show any emotion, which made him wonder if she wasn’t as certain of herself as she wanted him to believe.