by Julia London
Lola could feel her face burning. “We’re friends. He’s just passing through—”
“We’d love to come,” Harry said, and stretched back, put his arm across the back of Lola’s chair, his hand on her shoulder, and gave her something that felt like the Vulcan death grip.
She turned her body around to face him. “I’m sure you don’t have time for a party. Don’t you have to be in the city? You said you’d be gone all weekend.”
“No,” he said breezily, and playfully tweaked her nose, like a boyfriend. “Whatever gave you that idea? And why do you keep trying to convince poor Mallory here that I’m only passing through?”
“I knew it,” Mallory said, slapping her hand against the table and rattling all the cups.
Lola didn’t know what game he was playing, but she was having none of it. She narrowed her gaze. So did Harry.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Lola?” Mallory gushed.
She was going to kill him. She was going to kill him Sherri-style, with a claw hammer or something like it. Cut him into pieces and feed him to some fish at the bottom of Lake Haven.
“She’s shy,” Harry said. “And it just sort of happened. Lola can be very cautious when it comes to her heart,” he said, and smiled devilishly as he reached for his coffee. He did not seem the least bit bothered by the heat-seeking missiles Lola was launching at him with her eyes.
“Well of course! That’s totally understandable,” Mallory said. “I would be, too, if I were divorced.”
Harry choked on his sip of coffee.
“Be careful!” Mallory warned him. “It’s super hot coffee around here.”
Harry looked at Lola, his gaze even narrower.
“I’m not that shy,” Lola said. “It’s just really complicated. Isn’t it?” she said to Harry, and kicked him under the table.
He jumped a little. “It does seem to be getting more complicated by the second,” he agreed.
“These things have a way of working themselves out,” Mallory said sagely. “Lola, you have to get back in the game. You can’t let that divorce hold you back. So will you come to the party?”
“You bet,” Harry said at the exact same moment Lola said, “No.”
He grabbed Lola’s hand and squeezed tight. “Absolutely. Thanks for the coffee, Mallory. I hope you won’t mind if I steal Lola away. We have a trip planned to the big supermarket in Black Springs today.”
“No we don’t,” Lola said.
“Sure—oh, God, look at the time!” Mallory suddenly blurted. “I promised Albert I would open the candy shop on time today. He went on and on about having to make sure that shops on prime Main Street real estate are open every day in the summer months and blaaaah,” she said, fluttering her hands. “The party starts at seven! We’re the big white house on Hackberry Road,” she said. She stood up, and so did Harry. Mallory impulsively hugged him. “So nice to meet you, Harry!” She gathered her things.
“Pleasure to meet you too, Mallory.”
“See you two tonight!” Mallory sang out as she headed for the door.
“Wait! Which white house?” Lola called after her.
“There’s only one house on Hackberry Road,” Mallory said, and called a good-bye to Stephen behind the counter as she exited the shop. Stephen sighed wearily.
Lola slowly turned her gaze from the door through which Mallory had disappeared and glared at Harry.
Surprisingly, given the mess he’d just made of things, he was glaring at her, too. “Are you crazy?” he asked.
“Me?” she exclaimed, astonished. “What do you think you’re doing, Harry? You can’t go to that party!”
“Oh yes I can, and so can you. Why did you tell her you were a friend of Zach’s for Chrissakes?” he asked, holding out his hand to pull her to her feet.
“Obviously, given my promise to Sara, I thought it best not to mention her name,” she snapped, and bent down to pick up her tote. “A better question is why did you make it sound like we’re together?” she demanded as he presumptuously put his hand on her elbow and steered her through the labyrinth of tables.
“Because I want to go to that party, that’s why.” He shoved the door of the Green Bean open, holding it so that Lola could sail through.
“Why?”
“Because I need to meet Albert Cantrell in the worst possible way,” he said, striding a step ahead of her toward his truck. “He is the CEO of Horizons Enterprises, and they just landed that giant toll road contract with the three bridges that I want to build. Un-fucking-believable! How small is this planet, anyway?” He pointed his key fob at his truck to unlock it, then opened the passenger door and grandly gestured for her to enter.
He didn’t honestly think he could just gesture and she would hurry over and hop in his truck, did he?
“Get in,” he said, as if she were so dumb she didn’t know what all the waving was supposed to mean.
“No!”
He sighed impatiently. “We’re going to the grocery store, remember?”
“I’m not going to any grocery store.” She folded her arms.
Harry stared at her. He braced his arm against the door. “It will be okay,” he said gently. “We have some things we should probably discuss. And as long as you promise not to throw yourself at me, we ought to be just fine.”
Lola gaped. Her cheeks flamed. “Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that, Buster,” she said. “Cold day in hell and all that.”
Harry smiled. “Baby, you would never make it to that cold day if I didn’t want you to. Come on, get in.”
What a presumptuous, self-satisfied, egotistical being! She lifted her chin and looked away, sniffing lightly. She glanced at Harry sidelong. He was smiling, all too sure of himself. Too bad he was half-crazy and half-jerk, because otherwise, she might be sort of interested to know what his moves were.
“How long are you going to stand there?” he asked.
“I’m not riding on the console.”
“I cleaned it out.”
“What about my bike? If I leave it here, it might be stolen.”
“Oh, right—East Beach is a hotbed of thieving and robbery,” he said. “Where is it?”
She pointed to the rack.
Harry squinted in that direction. “Key?”
Was she really going to do this? Had she not humiliated herself enough as it was? Not quite, apparently, because she very coolly retrieved her key and pressed it into his open palm. “Be careful with it. It’s an antique.”
She heard him mutter something under his breath as she climbed into his truck.
Thirteen
Harry tried not to lecture her, but he couldn’t help himself. “Of all the reckless things you could have done,” he said as he sped down the road to Black Springs. “Claiming to be Zach’s friend? All it would take was a question or two to figure out you don’t know him at all. You can’t talk about the house, Lola.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she shot back. She was sitting with her legs crossed, her arms folded tightly over her middle. “What I am supposed to say when someone asks where I’m living? Sara said they never used the lake house once things got bad between them and that no one was there but some caretaker. It never crossed my mind that Mallory would actually know Zach Miller. And by the way, you’re one to talk! Mallory knows everyone in town, so now everyone in town is going to know that Zach’s friend, who would be me,” she said, jabbing herself in the chest, “is shacking up in Zach’s house with some random dude.”
“How did I become a random dude?” Harry repeated, not liking the sound of that.
“Because that’s what you were before you opened your big fat mouth,” Lola said pertly. “What was all that business about draping your arm over the back of my seat?” she asked, and squirmed, as if she were trying to shake off his invisible arm.
As Harry didn’t know why exactly he’d gone down that road, he changed the subject. “How did you manage to meet Albert Cantrell’s daughte
r anyway?” he asked, still amazed by the coincidence.
“I didn’t know that she was Albert Cantrell’s daughter. Is it really that big of a deal?”
“Yes. Huge. You have no idea. Where did you meet her?”
“At the Green Bean. I went in there looking for Birta Hoffman, but there were no seats, and she offered me a seat at her table. We hit it off. ”
“Okay, right back at you—is Birta Hoffman really a big deal?”
Lola turned her head and gave him a look that suggested he was dense. “It could only make my career as a writer, that’s all. So yeah.”
“Well same here, cupcake. Are we agreed? We’re going to that damn party if we like it or not?”
“I’m thinking about it,” Lola said coyly. “I wasn’t prepared for this. And I have nothing to wear.”
Why was it that women with closets full of clothes always said they had nothing to wear? “You could try sifting through some of the clothes on the floor of your room.”
“Very funny, Bob the Builder. I don’t expect you to understand. I know it must be super easy for you, what with your never-changing look of hard boots and harder hats.”
“My clothes are functional. I didn’t come to East Beach to win a beauty contest,” he said as he pulled into the grocery store lot. “Those are clothes I wear to work, Lola. That’s why they’re called work clothes.”
“Has it even occurred to you that we could meet someone who knows Zach or Sara at this party and blow our sweet deal with that lake house?” she demanded.
Harry looked out his window a moment. She was right about that—it would only take one person to know either Zach or Sara to get the ball rolling toward disaster. “Yes,” he said. “I thought about it and I’ll be thinking about it all day. But for me, it’s worth it.” He shifted his gaze to her once more. “I guess I need to know if the risk is worth it to you.”
“I don’t know,” she said, and opened her door.
They got out of the truck at the same moment and marched in sync to the door of the grocery. Cool air and piped-in elevator music hit them squarely in the face as the glass doors slid open.
Harry grabbed a basket and started for the frozen food section. But Lola caught the front of the basket and forced it around, toward the fresh produce section. She grabbed a bag of spinach and put it in his cart.
“What are you doing?” he asked, staring at the package of baby leaf spinach. “I won’t eat that.”
“Spinach? You won’t eat spinach? What kind of Neanderthal are you, anyway?” She added a purple cabbage.
Had he ever eaten purple cabbage? It had probably appeared in some restaurant dish in his life, but he would never consciously pick that thing. Harry let it go—at the moment, he had bigger fish to fry. “Okay, Lola, let’s dissect this. We both want to meet people who could be very important to our careers at this party.”
“Apparently,” she said as she picked up two apples and examined them.
“Then let’s just do the date thing, and who knows, maybe even have a good time. Once I meet Albert, we can go back to this,” he said, gesturing between them.
Lola looked up from her apples. “This? What’s this?”
“The temporary roommate thing.”
Lola chewed on the inside of her cheek as if she were mulling that over. She put the two apples back on the pile and picked up two new ones, put them into his cart, then moved down the aisle, picking up a big, dark-green and oddly shaped thing.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Acorn squash. When you say do the date thing, what exactly do you mean?” She put the squash in his cart.
“You know . . . pretend we’re on a date.”
“I’m not very good at pretending.” She walked on.
And what did that mean? That she wouldn’t go along with it? Well, she had to—Harry was determined. He might never get an opportunity like this again, and he was fast running out of options. He followed her, tossing in some cheese sticks, bananas, and something that looked like donuts into his cart. He rounded the corner and followed Lola into the next aisle, where she had stopped to peruse the coffee selections.
Harry was momentarily distracted from his cause by her sexy-as-hell legs. He’d never really considered himself a leg man, but Lola was making him reconsider.
She happened to glance up and catch him checking her out. She rolled her eyes.
“Can’t help it,” he said with a shrug. “I’m a guy. So what’s the verdict?”
“You’re definitely a guy,” she said.
“I mean, are you going to the party with me?”
“That depends,” she said. “I want to meet Birta Hoffman and her agent. If I help you meet Mr. Cantrell, which I am obviously doing, as you wouldn’t be invited if it weren’t for me,” she said, smiling devilishly at that, “then you have to help me meet Birta Hoffman, or no deal.”
“Deal,” he said easily. How hard could that be? “So we’re doing this? We’ll do this as a favor to each other and get it done?”
She picked up a bag of coffee and added it to the cart, braced her hands on either side, and said, “I’m still wondering about this date business. When you say date, what exactly do you mean?”
Damn it, she was determined to make him work for it. “Like . . . two people on a date,” he said. “You’ve been on a date, right?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Plenty. Have you?”
He snorted.
“So then you know we have to establish a story. Are we a couple?”
“Ah . . . I guess,” he said, uncomfortable with applying that word. In some ways, he hadn’t completely uncoupled from the idea that he was with Melissa. And besides, this was a favor. Why did they have to put a lot of labels on it?
“You guess? Are we a couple, or did we just meet over spinach and sort of show up at the same place?”
Harry sighed. He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Why are you making this so hard?”
“Couples have to know each other, Harry. They talk to each other, they are together. And I don’t know anything about you.”
“You’re right,” he said, nodding. “I don’t know anything about you, either. I didn’t know you were divorced. Maybe you could start by telling me if there are any other surprises lurking. That would help. Know any other people in East Beach? Any other thing about you that might pop up?”
He hadn’t meant it as it apparently sounded, because Lola’s gaze suddenly hardened. “I just remembered I need some kale.” She brushed past him, walking quickly back to the produce section.
For the love of God, if there was one thing that drove Harry insane, it was having to darken the door of a grocery store. If there was anything worse than that, it was backtracking in a grocery store. But he felt like an ass at that moment and dutifully turned his cart around, going against traffic, and followed her back to the produce section.
She was standing under a sign that said Organic Produce picking up bunches of kale. Harry was familiar with kale—Melissa had deemed it her diet food. He had personally eaten pounds of it in the last year. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should be more sensitive.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said, her eyes fixed on the kale as if studying a new plant species. “It’s no big deal.”
Bullshit. Divorce was always a big deal. Just ask Zach and Sara. Just ask him. The breakup of any relationship was, by its very definition, a big deal. “Do you mind if I ask what happened?”
She glanced up from her kale. “The usual.”
What was the usual when it came to divorce? He stared at her blankly.
Lola sighed. “Infidelity?” she said, as if the answer were obvious.
Harry blinked with surprise. “You had an affair?”
“Not me,” she said, hitting him in the chest with the kale before adding it to the cart. “Him.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course.” Of course? Was it a foregone conclusion that the man in any couple equation would have the affair? There w
ere lots of women out there who got their jollies outside the bounds of holy matrimony, too. “How long have you been divorced?”
“Fifteen months. Not that I’m counting. What about you?”
“I haven’t been divorced,” he said quickly. Perhaps too quickly, judging by her slight frown. He hadn’t meant it as a criticism. It was just that for him, if he ever did take that walk down the aisle, he wanted it to be permanent. Which, his astute sister had once pointed out, was why he never really settled with anyone. He hadn’t been convinced of anything permanent with his girlfriends until Melissa had come along.
“Ah, so you’re a bachelor,” Lola said, nodding sagely.
“I’m not a bachelor,” he protested. “I just ended a long-term relationship, if you must know.”
“Oh really? Let me guess . . . afraid to commit?” She tossed an onion at him. Harry caught it with one hand and put it in the basket as Lola walked past him, once again going in the opposite direction of his cart.
Harry turned the damn thing around. “That wasn’t it.”
“That’s what they all say,” she tossed over her shoulder. She was now in front of the yogurt case. But she wasn’t looking at the yogurts with fruit or honey on the bottom. She was looking at a giant tub of plain, fat-free Greek yogurt.
Harry was irritated now. Maybe because there was some truth in her accusation. “Just because I’m not married doesn’t mean I’m some player, you know.”
“I wouldn’t know what it means because I don’t know any men as old as you who aren’t married. What are you, forty?”
Harry’s jaw dropped. “I’m just shy of thirty-four! And don’t look at me like that,” he said, pointing a finger. “You’re not exactly fresh out of college, either.”
Lola gasped.
“Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not wrong, but you’re not supposed to say it!”
“Do you not hear yourself? You just said it to me. How old are you, Lola?”
Her eyes were dancing with amusement now. She picked up the biggest bucket of plain Greek yogurt in the display case and put it in his cart. “I just turned thirty-one. And now, you’re probably doubly shocked that someone my age is already divorced.”
