by Julia London
“I don’t know what the hell his name is! I just know he come in here asking if I knew where you were. I said I don’t have a clue, that no one cares about me out here. And then he asked for Casey. You know what kind of man that is? Can’t have one sister, he’ll take another?”
“Mom!” Lola cried. She was going to hyperventilate or pass out, whichever came first. Harry had been here? How did he even know where here was? “What did you tell him?”
“I told him I ain’t telling no pervert where my daughters are. And he left.”
Lola choked down a sob and sank onto the end of her mother’s bed. “He left?”
“Are you deaf? Course he left. I’m not putting up with that shit.”
Her heart was lamely beating again, but without conviction. It wanted to die. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“No! I wouldn’t’ve cared if he did!”
“Oh, Mom,” Lola said sadly. “What have you done?”
“Like it or not, missy, I’m your mother. Course I’m going to watch out for you if you’re too dumb to do it yourself.”
Lola’s heart skipped and found its determination, fueled by ire. “Oh, yeah, thanks,” she snapped. “Here’s the thing, Mom—we don’t need you to protect us now. We’re adults, the danger is behind us. We needed you to protect us then.”
Her mother’s eyes widened with surprise. “You better not be speaking to me like that, Lola Elizabeth Dunne.”
“Maybe I should have spoken to you like that a long time ago,” Lola said dispassionately. “Maybe I should have learned to speak my heart a very long time ago instead of always hiding it from you and the authorities and anyone else who I feared would hurt us.”
“That’s a load of bullshit,” her mother said.
“No, Mom, it’s not. All my life, I have been careful not to say the wrong thing, not to give off any hint of despair because I was so afraid someone would come and take us away. And now, as an adult, I can’t say what I feel. I never told you how hard you made our lives. I never told Will how angry I was with him. I never told Harry—” She caught herself.
“Never told Harry what?” her mother asked, peering at her.
“That I love him,” Lola said. “Happy now?”
Her mother laughed.
Lola dragged herself home, her emotional beatdown now complete. She was so numb she couldn’t think. She was going to take a shower, put on something nice, and go to the Westbrooks’ apartment with the hope of getting a message to Harry. And if she somehow managed to see him again—he’d probably run like the wind after talking to her mother—Lola would say what she’d meant to say to him Monday morning. She would say what she’d wanted to say for a few weeks now. And she would pray with all her might that it was not too late.
She used the spare key to get into Casey’s apartment. It was dark; Casey wasn’t home from work yet. Lola went into Casey’s room and fell face down onto her bed and into a deep, morose sleep.
She thought she was dreaming when she heard Casey talking loudly. It took her a moment to rouse herself from sleep and sit up. It was no dream—Casey was shouting into the intercom to the front door.
“Please let me up.”
Lola gasped. Harry!
“No!”
Lola shot off the bed and ran into the living room. Casey was standing in front of the intercom with her hands on her hips. She gestured for Lola to go back into the bedroom.
“Casey, please. Is she up there?”
Casey looked at Lola and lifted her shoulders.
“Yes,” Lola said.
Casey frowned. She pressed the intercom button. “It depends,” she said, looking at Lola. “It depends on what she is going to say to you.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Lola cried, and raced for the intercom. But Casey blocked it, pushing her sister back. “You have to do it, Lola. You have to say what you feel for this guy or I am going to kill you. I’ve read your book, so I know how to do it.”
“Will you butt out?” Lola said angrily, trying to push past her.
“No! I’m not going to sit back and watch you ruin your life with all these damn phobias!”
Lola pushed Casey, who banged into the coatrack she had at the door. Casey looked as if she was going to haul off and hit her, but they were both startled by a knock at the door. Casey whirled around and looked out the peephole. “It’s him!” she hissed.
“I know you’re in there, Lola,” Harry said through the door.
Lola pushed Casey aside and threw open the door.
“How did you get in?” Casey asked angrily from behind Lola.
“Some guy coming out held the door open for me,” he said, and braced his arm against the door frame and glared at Lola. “For God’s sake, woman, where have you been? Why haven’t you answered your phone?”
“Because she forgot it at your friend’s house,” Casey said.
“What?” Harry said, looking annoyed.
“Okay, all right, I can take it from here,” Lola said, gesturing for Casey to back off. “It’s true. In the mad rush of being kicked out of the lake house, I left my phone behind. I haven’t had a chance to replace it because my mother was in the hospital. How did you find me?” Lola demanded.
“Your mother,” he said. “I left her my number.”
“She didn’t tell me that!” Lola said irritably. “My mother called you?”
“May I come in?” Harry asked as two women passed by behind him. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Lola stepped back to let him in.
“Our mother called you?” Casey echoed incredulously when he’d shut the door.
“Yep. She cussed me out and then told me where to find you. Lola, I am so sorry Zach kicked you out. I wish I’d been there—I would have sorted it out with him.”
“I don’t think so,” Lola snorted. “He’s threatening to sue me, just so you know. And of course I haven’t told Sara yet because I left my phone behind. She’s going to be furious. Oh, and I don’t have a place to live. My mother called you?”
“She called me. Because I was pretty adamant that I needed to talk to you,” he said, stepping closer to her. “Look, I need to get something off my chest—”
“Lola!” Casey said frantically. “Don’t let him—”
“All right, everyone wait a minute!” Lola shouted, throwing up her hands. “Casey, go in your bedroom, give us a minute here. Harry, sit down.”
Harry didn’t sit. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll hear what you have to say standing up.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “First, I want to say I wish I wasn’t such a chickenshit. I know that about myself, and no matter how hard I try not to be, it keeps happening. I just have this irrational fear of disappointment. But from here on out, I am only speaking my truths, okay?”
“Your what?”
“It’s from her counseling,” Casey said.
Lola jerked around. “Casey! Bedroom!”
“Fine,” Casey said, slinking out. “I’m just trying to help.”
Lola turned back to Harry. “So here is my truth, Harry. I have fallen in love with you,” she said. “Yes, it’s true! I want to be with you every day. I would do anything for you, absolutely anything. I’ve been completely despondent without you. I love you . . . but you have to love me, too,” she said, pointing at him. “If this is just an experiment for you, or you aren’t entirely certain, or if you were meeting Melissa for a reason, then you need to go build your bridges and leave me alone. Do you get it? Do you understand? No more friends with benefits. I’m in. I’m in one hundred percent, in over my head, and you know what I want? I want you.”
Harry nodded. He ran a hand over his hair. “I went to see Melissa to tell her to stop hoping, that it was never going to happen. That I love someone else.”
That warm honey feeling was Lola’s heart melting. “You did?”
Harry slowly sank to his knees.
“What are you doing?” Lola asked, confus
ed.
“I have been waiting for you to say it, Lola. I have been waiting for you to admit you love me. Because I love you, too, more than I thought was possible to love someone. I want you, too, all or nothing . . . but I knew I couldn’t have that if you couldn’t even tell me how you felt. I had to hear you say it before I could even think of proposing to you.”
“Before you what?” Casey shouted from the bedroom.
“Lola Dunne, will you marry me?” he asked.
The floor seemed to shift under Lola’s feet. “Are you crazy?”
“Crazy for you, you little lunatic. I realize this is all spur of the moment, seeing as how I was pretty sure I would never see you again. I don’t have a ring, and honestly, I can’t afford one right now. But I’ve always gone after what I’ve wanted, Lola. I’ve always been very sure of myself. When everyone around me told me I was wrong, I knew what I was doing was right. And then I met you, and suddenly, everything was upside down and I’d never been so uncertain in my life . . . until I realized that I wasn’t confused. Actually, I’ve never had so much clarity in my life. I never knew what I truly wanted until you rose up out of that pool, Lola, and I want you. I love you. And I want to marry you.”
“He’s crazy!” Casey shouted. “But ohmigod, if you don’t say yes, I’ll hurt you,” she added, suddenly appearing next to Lola.
Lola’s heart was racing. This couldn’t be happening; it was too good, too perfect. But the thing she was feeling in her chest was sheer joy. Harry was right in something he’d once said—she never would have known how utterly joyful and beautiful this moment could be had she not been so terribly disappointed before.
Harry winced. “God, don’t say no,” he said. “I’ve never actually proposed to anyone in my life. It’s you or nothing, Lola Dunne.”
“What are you doing?” Casey cried, and chucked Lola in the back.
Lola stumbled, catching herself on his shoulders. She smiled. She sank down on her knees in front of him. “Yes, Harry Westbrook. Yes, I will marry you. I love you, Handsome Harry! I love you, I love you.” She threw her arms around his neck. “But maybe we save getting married until we’ve had a chance to know each other a little longer?”
“Not making any promises,” he said, and kissed her neck, toppling over with her onto the rug and landing on a pair of Casey’s shoes.
“Not my Stuart Weitzmans!” Casey cried, and tried to pull them out from underneath Harry, which caused her to trip and end up next to them on the floor. “This is ridiculous,” she said.
Lola laughed. She laughed with the gaiety of a little girl who never had much opportunity to laugh. Until now.
Epilogue
Lola’s book, Apartment 3C, was a modest success. The reviews said the writing was “engaging” and that she was a “debut author to watch” . . . but the sales were not exactly what the publisher had hoped. Still, all was not lost—her publisher wanted a second book. “Maybe something a little more upbeat,” her editor suggested.
“Don’t listen to her,” Cyrus warned Lola. “You write what you want to write. We’ll sell it. I believe in you, Lola.”
Lola was grateful for his confidence in her and had been working on an idea about three college girls who kill a professor who slept with one of them. Cyrus sounded a little uncertain when she told him, but said, “Write it. We’ll go from there.”
Harry won the bid for only one of the three bridges in the toll road project, but it was enough to get him a leg up. He won two other contracts after that, both of them small jobs, but big enough that they were helping him build the resume he needed.
After the dustup with Zach and Sara died down, the lake house was sold to a Wall Street banker. Zach and Harry were friends again. Sara moved to Los Angeles.
Harry and Lola’s income was modest, so they rented a two-bedroom cottage from the East Beach Lake Cottages. Their front porch overlooked the lake, and even though times were lean, they were really quite happy.
Lola wrote in the mornings, then worked part-time in Mallory’s candy shop in the afternoons. She loved cooking for Harry who, unlike Will, appreciated her skills. He boasted that he’d gained ten pounds in the year they’d been together, although Lola couldn’t see where he’d put it.
They spent Sundays with his parents, and once a month they made the trip out to Long Island to see her mother. Neither of them could take more than that. Her mother’s health continued to deteriorate, but her acid tongue remained very much intact. “I don’t know why you want to get married,” she’d said to Lola. “You’ll probably end up divorced again.”
“No, she won’t,” Harry said. “And you should be more supportive.”
“Don’t tell me what I ought to be, mister,” her mother said, coughing violently with her anger. But Lola thought her mother really liked Harry.
Her siblings certainly did. It occurred to her one day that they’d stopped calling her and had started calling for Harry. “Is Harry there? I have a question about my car,” Ty would say. Or, “Is Harry home? I need some advice about this guy,” Casey would say. Lola wasn’t bothered by it—she was happy that they loved Harry, too.
Harry’s mother, on the other hand, did not like Lola. She was still mourning the loss of Melissa. Lola knew this because Mrs. Westbrook would say to her, “Melissa was such a lovely girl.”
“Your mom is never going to come around,” Lola warned Harry one evening as they drove back to Lake Haven. “You’re going to have to choose between your mother and me.”
He laughed. “No contest.”
“You better mean me,” she said. Harry took her hand, a big grin on his face.
One night, Lola was in bed, a book propped on her knees, a bowl of popcorn on the bed beside her. She heard Harry’s truck on the drive, heard his boots on the steps of the porch. He walked into the bedroom, a dirty mess of flannel and denim and sweat.
Lola grinned. “Hey, there, Hardhat Harry. I left some King Ranch chicken in the fridge for you.”
Harry didn’t say anything. He walked deeper into the room and dropped his hard hat.
Lola looked at the hat, then at him. “Are you all right?”
“Yep,” he said, and pulled his shirt over his head. “Something extraordinary happened.”
He looked so serious, that Lola’s heart began to race. “What happened?” she asked, and pushed herself up, her book falling off her lap. “Did someone die?”
“No. Remember that project in Maryland I told you about?”
“Yes, the two overpasses. Oh no,” she said, and smiled sadly. “Did it go to someone else?”
Harry laughed. “Oh ye of little faith. No, it went to me. I got the first draw against the funds today.”
“That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Congratulations!”
“But that’s not the extraordinary news.” He walked over to the bed and sank down on one knee beside her. “Lola, do you still love me?”
“Pretty much,” she said airily. “Why, did you do something?”
“Do you still want to marry me?”
“Of course. Do you still want to marry me?”
“Does this answer your question?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring, holding it up to her. It was incredible—a diamond the size of the nail on her little finger, glittering in the lamplight.
Lola’s eyes widened with shock. “Harry, are you insane? We don’t have the money for a ring!”
“I didn’t buy it.”
She gasped. “What the hell have you done, Harry Westbrook?” she demanded, guessing that he had traded his pickup or some foolish thing for it.
Harry laughed and took her hand, sliding the ring onto her finger. “Look at that, a perfect fit.”
Lola held her hand up to admire it. “Is it real?”
“Of course it is, you little lunatic. It belonged to my grandmother.”
Lola stared at him. “What?”
“The extraordinary thing is that my mother gave it t
o me. She asked me to come into the city today. She said it was time I made an honest woman of you.”
“No she didn’t,” Lola scoffed. Mrs. Westbrook despised her.
But Harry nodded.
“Your mother said that? She hates me!”
“Apparently she doesn’t,” he said, grinning. “She finally gets how much I love you, Lola. And I do. I love you so much,” he said, and kissed her knuckles. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Oh, Harry,” she said. “I love you, too. More than life.” She couldn’t imagine how this man had come into her life, had made her open up, had coaxed her into walking out on that limb. But he had, and she would love him with all her heart as long as she lived. “I love you,” she said again, and leaned down to kiss him.
Harry came up, gathering her in his arms, and rolling with her on the bed. The popcorn spilled beneath his weight.
“What is that?” he asked as he kissed her. “What’s that sound?”
“Popcorn,” she whispered, and rolled on top of him, pushing popcorn out of the way, kissing him. “Don’t worry, I’ll make another batch.”
Harry chuckled against her lips. “You’re a little lunatic, you know that? But you’re my lunatic.”
Truer words had never been spoken, because Lola was absolutely crazy for her Handsome Harry.
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About the Author
Photo © 2010 Carrie D’Anna
Julia London is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. Her historical titles include the popular Desperate Debutantes series, the Secrets of Hadley Green series, and the Cabot Sisters series; her contemporary works include the Lake Haven, Pine River, and Cedar Springs series. She has won the RT Bookclub Award for Best Historical Romance and has been a six-time finalist for the prestigious RITA Award for excellence in romantic fiction. She lives in Austin, Texas.
