by Vi Keeland
My smile wilted before the last part even registered in my brain. I was confused. “You’ve been to prison?”
“I’m the program coordinator, Layla. It’s my job. My inmate job.” Gray leaned closer and searched my eyes. “How are you looking at me now?”
Chapter 5
* * *
Layla
I’d been trying to cut back to one cup of coffee, but this morning a double dose was definitely necessary. I’d tossed and turned all night, not able to switch off the rambling thoughts in my head long enough to relax and drift off. Thank goodness for concealer.
I stared out the bedroom window of my third-floor apartment, sipping my coffee. I had a half hour before the car would pick me up for the airport, and all I needed to do was get dressed, which left me yet more time to think.
A black town car slowed, then pulled up at the curb of my building. I glanced over at the clock next to my bed to see if I’d lost track of the time. Six thirty. The car service had arrived really early. Of course, I could’ve made the driver wait until seven, the time I’d scheduled, but that wasn’t my style. I chugged the remainder of my coffee and headed to the closet to get the dress I’d picked out to wear today, but I stopped when my buzzer buzzed. Drivers normally just idled until I came outside, rather than parking and letting me know they were here.
I hit the intercom. “Hello?”
“Morning, beautiful.”
I froze. Gray’s voice was deep and distinct. It couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else’s.
“What are you doing here?”
“We’re here to pick you up to go to the airport.”
“We?”
“Me and my driver.”
“I have my own car coming. I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“I canceled your car.”
“You what?”
“We need time to go over some things before the meeting. Besides, there’s no point in taking two cars to go to the same place. Your secretary gave me your itinerary, so I called your service and told them the car was no longer needed.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m here instead of your car, aren’t I?”
I looked up and counted to ten. Gray was trying to do more than share a car to the airport. He wanted to throw me off my game. I did it to opponents occasionally to make them feel unbalanced. I’d randomly change up the topic of my questioning mid-stream, scramble my witness order—anything that might make them feel unsettled allowed a bit of vulnerability to creep in.
I had no intention of becoming a pawn in whatever games Gray thought he could play with me.
I pressed the buzzer after a long pause. “I’ll be down in a few.”
“I need to use your bathroom.”
“No!”
“It’s either that or find an alley somewhere.”
“Get looking for an alley.” I released the intercom button and went to get dressed. From the other room, I heard his voice reply in the distance, but I couldn’t make out what he’d said. It didn’t matter. He was most certainly not coming up to my apartment.
By nature, I was a people pleaser. So without thinking, I rushed to get dressed so I wouldn’t keep the driver and Gray waiting. When I caught myself, I slowed down, spending a few extra minutes fixing my hair and adding another coat of mascara. But that only made me more annoyed with myself, because I felt like I was putting extra effort into my appearance for my travel companion.
I needed to stop overthinking and treat Gray like any other client.
I loaded my bag with the few files I had, added some legal pads and pens, and took a deep breath before heading downstairs. Gray stood just outside the front door of my building, leaning against the railing.
“Find an alley?” I snipped.
“Nope. Thought better of it. I’m out on probation. Getting tossed back inside for indecent exposure isn’t in my plans.”
“There’s a coffee shop at the corner.”
“Tried. Owner said it was out of order.”
I rolled my eyes and groaned before turning to go back upstairs. “Come on. Bathroom only.”
In the elevator, I stared straight ahead, even when I caught his eyes on me through my peripheral vision. Although, staring at the shiny silver doors that reflected back almost as well as a mirror didn’t do much to help me avoid looking at Gray. He was dressed in a Brioni custom-fit, five-thousand-dollar suit, and the tailor had done one hell of a job. It showed off his slim waist, hugged his broad shoulders, and made him look effortlessly elegant. Some women liked a bad boy look—all James Dean in a leather jacket. But a well-fitted suit pushed every one of my hot buttons.
Admiring the package presented before me almost made me forget his true colors. Almost.
The doors slid open, and I rushed out of the car, anxious to breathe air that wasn’t shared with Gray Westbrook. Unlocking my apartment, I held the door open and pointed.
“Down the hall, first door on the right. No lingering.”
I wrenched my gaze away from him as he walked, not wanting to notice that the tailor had done as good of a job on the back as he had the front.
While I waited impatiently, holding the front door open, a cell phone rang from somewhere. I glanced around the kitchen before realizing it was coming from the bathroom.
A few minutes later, Gray strode down the hall. The ringing started again as he reached where I stood at the door. He slipped his phone from his pocket and held up one finger.
“What’s up?” he answered. “Is everything okay?”
He sounded concerned. Through the receiver, I heard a woman talking, but I couldn’t make out what she said. So I listened to one side of the conversation.
“I’m never too busy for you. What’s going on?”
His eyes shut as the woman spoke again.
“Are you hurt? What happened?”
The anxiety in his voice settled in my chest as he listened again.
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Who was driving?”
Another pause.
Gray shook his head. “Where are you? Are the police there yet?”
More muffled sounds through the phone.
“I’ll be right there. Don’t talk to anyone, Etta. Not a word.”
He swiped to end the call and looked up at me. “Change of plans.”
“What happened?”
“A family friend had an accident. She’s seventy-seven and had her license taken away last year by the doctor. She still drives anyway. I need to get to Queens.”
“Let’s go.”
***
Gray stared off out the window as we made our way to Queens.
“Everything is going to be okay. They’ll just give her a ticket for driving without a license.”
He nodded.
“What’s her name? Did you say Etta? I remember you mentioning her a few times.”
“Short for Henrietta. But don’t call her that. She hates it. Etta might be in her seventies, but she’s still scary as shit.”
I started to laugh until I realized he wasn’t joking. “Who is she?”
“She was my dad’s housekeeper for almost thirty-five years. When I was little, she used to watch me, too—basically raised me since my father was never around.”
“Oh. Wow. And she lives in Queens?”
“Yeah. In one of the rental buildings my father owned. He didn’t do right by most women, but he took care of Etta.”
Two police cars were parked diagonally in the street, surrounding the accident when we pulled up. EMTs lifted an older gentleman on a stretcher into the back of an ambulance.
Gray jumped out of the car almost before we came to a full stop and ran right over to Etta’s car. I followed behind as fast as I could. The driver’s side door was open, and she sat behind the wheel with her legs sticking out of the car. An officer stood next to her, writing something in his little notepad.
“Etta. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Zippy. I
didn’t want to have to call you. I just wasn’t sure if I was going to need some assistance with the police.”
Zippy?
Gray knelt down and looked Etta over. He seemed to be assessing her health.
“Was she given medical attention?” he asked the officer.
“Paramedics checked her out. Everything was fine, and she didn’t want to go to the hospital.”
“Does anything hurt?” he asked her.
“Nothing that didn’t hurt before.”
“You should go to the hospital anyway, Etta. Just as a precaution.”
She waved him away. “Nonsense. People my age go into the hospital for a few stitches and wind up dead a week later from a staph infection they picked up.”
“Did you hit your head or anything?”
“It was a light tap. My Henry used to do more damage hitting my noggin against the headboard back in the day. The man was a lion.”
The officer’s eyebrows jumped, and he shook his head with a chuckle.
Etta’s eyes lifted to me. “Speaking of headboard banging, who have we here?”
“This is Layla Hutton. She’s…”
I stepped forward. “I’m Gray’s attorney.”
Etta’s eyes twinkled. “Layla. It’s so nice to finally meet you, dear.” She turned to Gray. “And she’s a hell of a lot better looking than the moron who told you to take that bad deal.”
“Yes, she is,” Gray said. “What happened with the accident, Etta?”
“I was on my way home from picking up a new TV Guide. I think the postman’s stealing mine.”
Gray interrupted. “At six thirty in the morning?”
“When you get to be my age, God stops requiring sleep so you don’t have to waste what little time you have left.”
Gray took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. I could tell he was frustrated and upset, but he did his best not to show it. “Go on. Tell me about the accident.”
“Not much to tell. I stopped at the stop sign on the corner, and some geezer who should’ve had his license taken away rear-ended me.”
The cop stopped writing in his notepad and pointed his pen at Etta. “He had a license, Mrs. Bell. Unlike you.”
“Whatever.” Etta rolled her eyes.
I turned my attention to the officer. “Could we talk for a minute?”
The policeman tilted his head toward his patrol car. “Sure. Just let me call in that the ambulance is about to take off.”
It took me ten minutes to talk the officer out of issuing Etta a citation. I had to tell him she had trouble remembering she no longer had a license and promise I’d take the keys away as soon as I got her home.
I walked back to the car with the police report in my hand. “He’s gonna let it slide this time. But you have to get a license or stop driving, Mrs. Bell.”
“Call me Etta. And I had a license more years than that idiot was alive. And the eye doctor who ratted me out to the DMV, too, for that matter. I think if a person is going to take away your license or give you a ticket, they should at least have the decency to be over thirty.”
Gray shook his head. “Thank you for taking care of that. Looks like her car is still drivable. It’s just a dent in the back bumper. Why don’t I drive Etta home, and you can follow with my driver.”
“Sure.” I glanced at the time on my phone. “We aren’t going to make our flight.”
“I’ll call the airline and see if we can get on the next one when we get to Etta’s.”
As I settled back into the car by myself and let the driver know what was going on, I realized there was no livery or car-for-hire license information displayed in the back. “Umm…excuse me, do you work for a car service?”
“No, I work for Mr. Westbrook. Name’s Al, ma’am.”
Gray had only been released two weeks ago. I’d checked. “Hi, Al. How long have you worked for Mr. Westbrook?”
The driver caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. He was older with silver hair, probably in his sixties. “Off and on for eight years now.”
“Off and on?”
“Yes, ma’am. While Mr. Westbrook was…out of town…I did some freelance driving. But now that he’s back, I’m back.”
I don’t know why, but I found that interesting. Gray had been in prison for three years, out for barely two weeks, and he was already saving his old nanny from a ticket and rehiring his driver.
Etta’s house was only a few blocks from the accident. The driver pulled to the curb while Gray parked in the driveway. I got out to see what I could do to help.
Turned out, Etta didn’t need much help. She got her car door open and had climbed out before Gray could shut off the engine and run around to help her.
We walked into her house together.
“Have a cup of tea with me, Layla,” she said.
Gray closed the front door behind us. “What? I’m not invited for tea?”
“You’re invited to make the tea. You stopped being a guest in my home when you were in diapers. Now mind your manners and go put on the kettle. Rustle us up something to have with our tea. I think there’s some biscotti in the cabinet to the left of the refrigerator.”
Gray looked from Etta to me and then back to Etta. “Fine.”
I found it amusing how such a large, dominant presence like Gray was easily transformed into something totally different by this woman. Their interactions were interesting, to say the least.
Etta walked over to a chair that sat across from a couch. “Come, dear. Sit. We don’t have much time.”
Something told me she didn’t mean time was limited because Gray and I had to get going for work. Curiously, I took a seat across from her.
She smiled warmly at me before beginning to speak. “Let’s get the obvious out of the way. Gray can be a real asshole.”
My eyebrows jumped. “Wow.” I laughed. “I’m not sure what I expected you to say, but it certainly wasn’t that.”
“I passed the age where you stop to think about whether it’s appropriate to say something or not a long time ago.”
“I appreciate that. I’m actually pretty direct myself.”
“I know. That’s one of the things that first attracted Zippy to you.”
I’d suspected by her reaction when we were introduced that she knew something about me, and something about my history with Gray.
“Gray told you about me?”
She opened the drawer on the end table next to her and lifted out a thick batch of rubber-banded envelopes. “You were in every letter since the day he walked into that library and saw you. Can’t visit a prisoner unless they put you on their visitor list. The little shit wouldn’t add my name; he didn’t want me to see him in that light. But he wrote every week.”
“I didn’t know. That’s very sweet.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Grayson is sweet. He’s made some poor choices, didn’t have the best role models in life, but he’s not the man you think he is.”
“Not to be disrespectful, Etta, but how do you know who I think he is?”
She nodded with a smile. “I was married for more than forty years before my Henry passed away.” She looked over to a framed wedding picture on the wall, and her eyes softened. “He was a charming man. Could talk the pants off of any woman. This woman included. We met at The Plaza Hotel—literally walked into each other in the lobby. He was new in town, and the two of us hit it off pretty well. He’d told me he’d never had a serious girlfriend before. About a month or so after we became inseparable, I found out he’d been married. I’d say that was about as serious of a girlfriend as you could get, wouldn’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Anyway, to make a long story short, I stopped seeing Henry after finding out he’d lied to me. Later, I came to find out Henry had been in a car accident with his wife. He was at the wheel, and she’d died in the wreck. They’d only been married a few weeks. He held himself responsible for it, even though the accident
wasn’t his fault. Unable to shake the memories in the small town they’d lived in, he’d relocated to New York, where he’d grown up, and left everything behind. It was too painful for him to talk about, so he just pretended it never happened.”
“That’s so sad.”
“It is, isn’t it? The best thing I ever did was give Henry a chance and hear him out. He’d lied to me. But sometimes people tell lies for reasons other than keeping the truth from us. Sometimes those lies are to protect themselves.”
“I don’t know, Etta. Gray’s wife didn’t die. I can’t imagine what reason he could have to justify a lie like that. It wasn’t like we had a normal relationship. We couldn’t go out to dinner or the movies. All we had were long talks and truth. That’s why it really hurt when I found out he was married. I spent all day on Saturdays visiting him for a year after my six-month teaching assignment was over. He had every opportunity to talk to me.” I took a deep breath. “Besides, I’ve moved on. It honestly took me a really long time to do it. But I did. And now I’m dating a great guy.”
She reached over and patted my knee. “Okay, sweetheart. I don’t want to upset you. I just wanted you to know that I’ve known the man all of his life. And he’s as loyal as they come. In fact, that’s what got him into trouble. You’re as lovely as he’s said you were in his letters. I hope you’re happy, dear.”
Gray walked in carrying two cups of tea and saw our serious faces. “Oh, Jesus. Don’t believe any of the crap Etta tells you.”
Etta scolded him for his use of the word crap, but I saw the light in her eyes when he spoke. She loved the man fiercely.
We sat and had tea with Etta before Gray reluctantly said we had to get going. He hugged her goodbye and said he’d be back to check in on her over the weekend.
When it was time for me to say goodbye, she pulled me into an embrace. “It was wonderful to finally meet you, Layla.”
“You too, Etta.”
“Gray, would you mind getting my TV Guide out of the car before you go?”
Once we were alone again, she squeezed my hand. “I see the way he looks at you. He cares for you a great deal. I’m happy for you that you’ve moved on. But I know my Zippy; he’s strong willed. He won’t move on if he thinks he has the slightest chance of making things right with you. He’s just lost three years of his life that he didn’t deserve to lose. If you have it in your heart, just hear him out. Let him finally tell you his story. Seeing that you’re not interested after you know everything might help him move on, too. He’s lost enough time.”
