“It’s time I went home. Dealt with my past. And kicked its ass.”
Mark liked it when she talked tough. It was their inside joke, because Lila was anything but an ass-kicker.
“Lila, what the hell are you talking about?”
“By itself, I might be able to shrug it off. But I like to think of it as a sign. An arrow pointing me home. And then last week, I got a phone call from an attorney regarding some money due to my mother.”
“Your mother? You mean your grandmother?”
“No, my biological mother.” How to make this particular story short and not so depressing? She loathed discussing this particular pain. It made her feel weak. “After my dad died overseas, she kind of…well, she kind of went off the deep end and took off out West somewhere. I haven’t seen her since I was five.”
Mark rubbed his forehead. “Damn, Lila. I didn’t know all this.”
Realizing this was probably way more than he wanted to hear, she stepped away from the window, trying to establish some distance between the bombshell she’d dropped and herself.
A similar behavior executed by her mother over and over again. A behavior Lila was desperate not to repeat. So she turned back to Mark and grabbed for his hand. He squeezed it reassuringly. “What did the lawyer want?”
Lila cleared her throat. “Somebody on my dad’s side left my parents money. The attorney needed to know if my mother was still at her current address. In California. In Los Angeles to be exact.”
Mark’s heavily lashed eyes widened. “This dude knows where your mother is?”
“He at least knew her last known address, which is more than I ever had.”
“Whoa.”
“Exactly.” Lila leaned against the bookcase for support. “And then this week, this journal shows up in the mail.” Flipping her leather satchel open, she pulled the book into the light once more. “Look at the inscription on the inside cover.”
Mark opened the cover and read the faded ink on the first page. She’d read it so many times today she could repeat it, verbatim.
“To my daughter: Lila Gentry. Follow the path to happiness, little one. I will be there to guide you, all the days of your life. Your mother, Prudence MacIntosh.”
She saw the confusion in his face and helped him muddle through it. “Lila Gentry was my great-grandmother on my father’s side. Miss Pru, it seems, was my great-great-grandmother.”
“Son of a biscuit.”
“Exactly.”
“Excuse me, ladies, but I’ve finished up here and I gotta get to Mrs. Motheral’s down the street before she up and climbs the refrigerator again looking for her cigs.”
Lila smiled at the home health care nurse. The old iron bed frame groaned and then settled back into place as she got up. “I want to talk to the nurse to see if she has any special restrictions for you.”
“As long as I can get a double cheeseburger from the DQ, she can restrict whatever she likes.”
Lila didn’t need to see her grandmother’s frown. Her challenging, I’ll-put-up-a-fight tone said everything.
The nurse stood patiently by the upright piano in the front parlor, her lips twitching over the sheet music selections on display.
“You sure got your hands full, Miss Gentry.” Her eyes turned up to Lila’s and her mouth widened into a broad smile.
She liked the nurse immediately. “What’s the diagnosis?”
“She’ll heal, but it will take longer considering her age and all. The hard part is going to be keeping her from moving around too much while the bones in her shoulder knit back together.”
Yes, keeping Granny from bowling and gardening would be next to impossible. “Is there anything special I need to do?”
“No. Just keep her entertained.”
“Easier said than done.” Barbara Gentry did not like movies, video games, books, or idle conversation. She lived for bowling, long walks, dominoes, and gossip.
“You’ll think of something.” The nurse patted Lila’s arm. “I’ll drop by each morning for the next couple of days until you get settled. Just to check in on y’all, and see how things are going.”
Lila nodded. How hard could it be to care for her granny?
Reaching into the depths of her bag, the nurse rooted around. “I gotta get organized one of these days.” She retrieved a card at last, handing it to her. “Just call me if you need anything.”
The name on the card said “Steve Ann Richards.”
She must have read the look of confusion in Lila’s eyes. She smiled a smile that said she’d heard the question a million times before. “My parents were counting on a boy, you know, and when they didn’t get one, they went ahead and kept the name, adding Ann to soften it.”
“Oh.”
The phone rang and her grandmother’s voice carried down the hall. “No, Judith, I’m fine. Lila’s here now, so I don’t need you to rush over with a pot of chili. Save it for Charley. Lord knows the man needs it worse than I do.”
Steve Ann smiled. “She sure is proud of you. You’re all she’s talked about the last couple of days.” Steve Ann looked down the hall to Granny’s room and then back to Lila. “I don’t want to alarm you or get in the middle of your family business, but your grandmother has also been talking about passin’ along all of her motherly wisdom before she commits to her final rest. She said there’s no one else to do it, what with her daughter—your mother, I reckon—outta the picture.”
Lila tried to swallow over the growing ball of panic in her throat, but choked instead. And then suffered more horror over embarrassing herself so.
“Hey, hey. It don’t mean nothing.” Steve Ann rubbed her arm briskly. “It’s typical for ladies her age. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Don’t get upset when she starts talking about teaching you everything she knows before she passes on to the Lord. It’s normal. Now that you’re here, she’ll be able to rest better and she’ll ease up on the talk.”
“But, is she, I mean, ready to, you know…”
“She isn’t anywhere close to giving up that bowling ball for the harp.”
“Thanks,” Lila murmured, trying not to think of her future without Granny. Nope. She wasn’t going there.
She watched from the door as Steve Ann’s extended cab truck pulled away from the curb. Shutting out the late-afternoon heat, and the grief that came with the notion of losing her Granny, she closed the front door and padded back to her grandmother’s room.
“Good grief, Judith, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll be back on the bowling team as soon as the cast comes off. Shirley Maple can fill in for me until then.”
The Bowling Bombshells were no longer blond, young, or single, but they could still bowl better than anyone in Bell County. They’d managed to defend their undefeated title in the women’s league since 1943. And they played every week in Temple, never missing a league night, with the exception of the end of World War II in September 1945.
Lila caught her grandmother’s attention with a wave. “Can I get you some tea?” she whispered. Granny nodded, shooing Lila on with her good hand, the phone tucked securely under her chin.
Out of earshot in the kitchen, Lila found the tea bags and searched her grandmother’s Depression-era pitcher collection until she found the polka-dotted one used for iced tea. Buoyed by the familiar chatter drifting down the hall from her Granny’s bedroom, she considered her plan for the coming day, making a mental note of one errand she needed to complete pronto. She prayed she wouldn’t run into Jake Winter again. Unexpected run-ins were not in her plan. Carefully orchestrated and rehearsed encounters were.
But what the hell. Miss Pru said life was full of the unplanned. And that was the only thing you could plan on.
Lesson Number Two —
The best way to get a man to sing your praises is to be subtle. Go about your business, the everyday chores necessary to keeping and pleasing a man, but do not speak of them. Let him discover your abilities and he will be thankful. Even boast
ful where you are not.
Chapter Four
Jake crossed over into the aged, tiled foyer of the Dairy Queen, the dinging bell overhead announcing his entrance amid the sticky scent of yesterday’s Blizzards and hamburgers. He nodded at several familiar faces occupying the bright yellow booths in the dining area.
Stepping up to the counter, he reviewed the overhead menu out of habit. His eyes fell on the section titled “Treats” and his thoughts went immediately to Lila, full of determination, kindness, and beauty, a package wrapped up in a hot body that kept him up at night.
His wife. Home again after all this time. He couldn’t stop thinking about the high heels she was wearing, the ones that evoked endless images of her naked, and him doing things to her body that would make her beg. Not that he would get the opportunity anytime soon to see her naked. No way. Sex without strings wasn’t in Lila’s vocabulary. And sex with commitment wasn’t in his at the moment, so he might as well stop punishing himself by thinking of her in bed.
“Jake, are you wantin’ to order something, or are you just enjoying the view?”
His gaze fell to Mary Beth waiting at the register. She’d worked behind the dull brown counter for as many years as he could remember, her DQ uniform consistently and unavoidably gaping open where it fit too snugly across her ample chest. Anna Nicole Smith discovered in a Texas Dairy Queen, she was not. But nice as the day was long, that was Mary Beth.
“Give me ten Hungr-Busters with cheese, fries, and a gallon of tea.”
“You want any Dilly Bars with that? We knocked the freezer burn off just last night.” Mary Beth’s lips twitched.
“No, thanks.”
“How ’bout your usual salad with grilled chicken, then?”
“Yeah.” Jake rubbed a hand across his face.
An excited whisper from the dining area caught his attention, though he didn’t acknowledge it—that simply fueled the fire.
“I saw her, y’all! With her big hair and fake boobs. She gave Jake a good once-over and peeled out of the Grab & Get.”
“Are you sure it was Lila, Janie? Your Lasik’s not quite healed and the other day, you thought Howard was Jesus Christ crossing the courthouse square.”
“Shut up! The sun was in my eyes. Which are fine now, thank you very much.” Janie paused for a deep breath. “Of course it was her. I know what Lila Gentry looks like and I don’t care how long she’s been gone. Once a trailer park brat, always a trailer park brat!”
Threasa shushed her sister. But Jake had heard all he needed to hear. Word of Lila’s arrival had gotten out.
Super. Now all he needed was Casler to come out of the toilet and incite further talk by jawing up Lila’s physical attributes. Hell, they could have their own Hollywood love triangle, Texas-style, and a reality TV show to go with it: Bell County Wives.
Mary Beth handed him his change and narrowed her penciled eyebrows as she surveyed the dining room. “Your order will be right up. And while you’re waiting, you mind taking Janie’s refill out there?”
Jake watched as Mary Beth disappeared around the back of the soda machine with an empty coffee cup, returning seconds later to hand it to him.
“Do I want to know what’s in this?”
“No.”
He raised the cup in salute.
“Thanks,” and strolled to an empty booth across from the Thompson sisters. Janie’s unfocused blue eyes followed him the entire way, but Threasa avoided meeting his smile. They were as opposite as two sisters could be: Janie, a bored, mean-spirited woman with big money, big hips, and an even bigger mouth, while Threasa resembled a fresh-faced magazine model quietly abiding beneath a straw Resistol cowboy hat.
“Afternoon, ladies.”
“Howdy yourself, Jake. How’s business?” Janie offered a wide smile full of teeth, though moments ago she had maligned his wife’s perfect breasts. And he knew deep down, she didn’t see the hypocrisy.
“Can’t complain. Natural gas money keeps business rolling my way. And speaking of, how’s Howard getting along with his wells out east? Heard he had some trouble.”
Janie’s lips hardened. Howard Armstrong was a moron. How he had managed to accumulate any money or become mayor was a mystery to Jake. Though now that Howard had it, he couldn’t stop blowing it on bad land deals, questionable business ventures, and overmanagement.
“It’s all fine. He’s moving a couple of wells. Salt water ruined two sites, but we should be drilling again in a week or two.”
Threasa sighed. “Tell your husband to hire a geologist, Janie. For pity’s sake.”
Jake recognized Casler’s heavy tread on the tile behind him. And sighed. At six foot six, the carpenter was built like a boxer, lean, mean, and tough as hammered nails. If there was something Casler enjoyed more than bustin’ Jake’s balls, it was giving Janie Armstrong hell.
“Howard doesn’t need people knowing how much the wells produce,” Janie chastised her sister.
Jake glanced at Threasa, anticipating how she would respond to the opening. But she had eyes only for Casler, following his movements all the way from the front counter to where he stood now, towering over their booth. Casler threw Threasa a distracted smile and zeroed in on her older sister with a look that said, Did I step in shit?
Which she returned because John Casler was a card-carrying member of the blue-collar majority. Worse than that, the poor son of a bitch was half Native American and half Mexican.
But Threasa Thompson didn’t seem to mind. Who would have guessed?
“Jake,” Janie continued, oblivious to the pending confrontation, “Threasa and I were just reminiscing and I was telling her I saw Lila Gentry at the gas station. Do you know anything about that?”
Jake was still watching Threasa and Casler, the latter of whom remained clueless of his admirer. “Now that you mention it, I think I did see her. She must have been the hot blonde in the Lexus.”
Casler whistled long and low. “Totalmente caliente.” His eyes swept Janie’s strapless summer dress and gold heels. “And that’s without effort.”
Janie’s cheeks reddened, though Jake seriously doubted she understood the Spanish. “Is she staying this time, Jake? Or are we still too small-town for her?”
Jake grew suddenly tired of Janie’s bitterness. Of all the pettiness and jealousy. Lila could have ended up like that. Married to an unhappy, cancer-ridden, self-medicating, numb drinker with no prospects of a happily ever after.
They’d dodged one mean bitch of a bullet when he had the good sense during a selfless moment to realize he was doing a bang-up job knocking all of the optimism and adventure out of his young wife. What legacy was he going to leave? Only grim reality and resignation.
Screw that.
So he’d set her free. And dammit all if she wasn’t back.
Huh.
“It’s not so much about the town as it is her asshole husband,” Jake offered.
Casler slapped him on the back. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, man. If I were gay, I’d take you. Though I would have to sleep on the left side of the bed.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw Mary Beth set his order on the counter. He pushed Janie’s tainted coffee to the side, unwilling to contribute further to the woman’s bad mood, and stood, stretching his legs. “Ladies.” He sauntered to the front and grabbed his lunch, a chuckling Casler in his wake as they headed out to the truck.
“That damn woman is so spoiled, salt couldn’t save her.”
Jake’s response was cut off as he spotted Lila across the street at the post office. He’d never seen another woman move with the unconscious grace she possessed. It wasn’t artifice. It was her. Pure and simple. From the way her hips rolled, to the prim set of her shoulders that highlighted her perfect breasts.
“Take the truck. I’ll catch up with you.” Jake tossed the keys to a surprised Casler and set the Dairy Queen bags on the hood before jogging across the street.
By the time he made it, she’d disap
peared inside the building. He wandered around to her car and leaned against the rear fender, settling in for a wait.
Passersby looked at him with curiosity and waved tentatively. He rarely stood still for more than five minutes and to be standing there, doing nothing, threw people for a loop.
Minutes later Lila came back out, glowing with happiness and confidence. She smiled at people as they passed her on their way inside.
The years spent apart melted away in a searing rush and his chest constricted. He wanted to grab her up in his arms and nuzzle the side of her neck, a welcome-back kiss to let her know he’d missed her for the three minutes she’d been in the post office. A gesture he’d initiated a hundred times during their short marriage.
The fresh pain of that loss grabbed him by the throat and squeezed.
Lila’s stride broke midway across the small parking lot as she spotted him. Happy slipped off her face and hid behind an emotional wall.
Ah, Lila. Did I do that to you? Make you so guarded? If he were another man, he’d punch himself in the face for damaging Lila so.
“Jake,” she said, coming to a stop near the trunk of her car. He got an eyeful of creamy skin beneath the deep vee of her blouse.
“We need to talk,” he said.
She glanced around the lot as people came and went, clearly uncomfortable.
“Haven’t you had enough of parking lots already? I’ve finished my business researching the origins of a mystery package and need to get back to Granny.” She frowned.
“Nah. Nice and public.” It was hot enough to keep the conversation short, and he really had only one point to make. “I can appreciate that you’re home to see Barbara and old friends, but I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding between us, Lila. In my mind we’re divorced. Maybe not legally, but where it matters.”
Did he sound sincere? Because he couldn’t believe the shit he’d just said. He’d become a pretty good liar over the years, masking his grief and pain. Covering up the weakness. Praying for a cure from cancer, only to be disappointed time and time again, did that.
Deconstructing Lila (Entangled Select) Page 3
