by Jeannie Watt
“No more than usual,” he assured her, suddenly having a very strong urge to yawn. He held it in until he turned his back and opened the door.
“Drive safe,” she called, as he stepped outside and saw that the light rain had become sleet. There’d be no sleet in the Washoe Valley, but he’d have to keep his wits about him until he got below the freeze line.
He cranked the music up, cracked the window to get some air blowing over his face and pulled out onto the highway. He made this drive an average of three times a week, and sometimes the monotony got to him and his mind wandered.
When he hit age thirty, he’d quit the lake. Eighteen months to go. By that time, hopefully, he’d have the cake business established to the point that he didn’t need the extra income from the hotel. The balloon payment would be made on his condo. From that point on, he’d go to Tahoe only to snowboard or play.
But again he was lying to himself. He worked to keep busy—to keep from having free time to be alone and think. His workaholic tendencies hadn’t started until after culinary school, after he’d had the realization that his son was about to start first grade. About the time that pushing his guilt down deep had become more difficult.
Justin started up the summit, the sleet coming at him in mesmerizing streaks of white that the wipers swept away at the last minute. He was going to the kitchen late tomorrow. Maybe an hour late.
The car came up behind him fast, its lights flashing in his rearview mirror, causing a surge of adrenaline to jolt through him before it pulled out into the passing lane and zoomed by, traveling at too high a speed for road conditions.
Justin forced himself to loosen his death grip on the steering wheel as the other vehicle disappeared around a corner.
He swallowed drily. Shouldn’t be any trouble staying awake now. Not with his heart knocking against his ribs.
Nobody’s forcing you off the road tonight.
Like they had a year ago when he’d been mistakenly identified as a narc. His soon-to-be brother-in-law, Nick, a drug task force detective, had arrested the guy, who was now cooling his heels in prison, but the incident had left a mark.
Driving past the spot where the accident happened didn’t bother Justin as much anymore, but headlights coming out of nowhere still triggered a reaction, one he was working on combating. Tonight he was kind of glad it had happened because maybe he’d get home without nodding off.
He cleared the summit and started down the other side, traveling even slower because of the accumulation of slushy snow on the road. Another vehicle came up behind him, but Justin had seen him miles ago. Being another invincible Californian in a four-wheel drive truck, the guy sailed by, signaling to pull back into Justin’s lane. Only it didn’t exactly work out as planned. The bed end of the truck, which had no weight to speak of, started to drift to the left on the slick road as the driver attempted to pull in.
“Hold on, buddy,” Justin muttered, tapping his brakes, trying desperately to keep some distance between them. They were almost at the place where he’d been forced off the road. Surely this couldn’t happen twice....
Oh, it was happening.
The truck went into a sideways skid, smashing into the guardrail in front of Justin, then bouncing back off, the front wheels catching the edge of the pavement and flipping the four-wheel drive onto its side seconds before the Challenger also went into a skid and rammed into the rear bumper.
The two vehicles slid to a stop in tandem. Justin, fearful of other traffic coming around the curve and slamming into them, flipped open his cell and dialed the National Highway Patrol with his thumb as he went to check the other driver. No need.
“Son of a bitch!” the guy yelled as he pushed open the passenger door of his truck like the hatch on a submarine and climbed out. He walked over and kicked one of the tires.
Justin took a few steps back. Probably best not to engage him. He appeared uninjured, but was tottering on the brink of losing it.
The dispatcher came on the line and Justin reported the accident, then went back to his car for the road flares he kept in his trunk. It wasn’t the first time he’d used them to mark an accident on the grade, but it was the first time since the wreck last year that his car had been involved.
The other driver was pacing in the snow around the truck, ranting, kicking slush, flailing his arms, so Justin leaned back against the guardrail several yards away after lighting the flares, and calculated the cost of putting a new front end on his car.
He hoped this ranting guy with the big-ass four-wheel drive had insurance. And he hoped his sisters didn’t ride him about this, because it wasn’t even close to his fault.
He also hoped his life started easing back to its normal path.
Since agreeing to give Layla a ride home, he’d gotten a black eye, broken into a school and wrecked his car. And somehow he had a feeling that his run of questionable luck wasn’t over yet.
“HEY, LAYLA?” Sam called from the back room of her shop. “Your phone is ringing in your purse.” A second later, as Layla pushed the beaded curtains aside, Sam said, “Layla’s phone. Yes. She’s right here.”
She held out the cell, and when Layla answered, she found herself slightly breathless. Justin, maybe? Very few people called her.
“Hi, Layla. Dillon Conrad.”
Good grief. What now? “Hello, Dillon,” she said cautiously, wondering why the guy who taught science down the hall from her room could possibly be calling. Had they figured out that she and Justin had taken her lessons? And if they did, then what?
“I’m calling you on the q.t. Have you gotten an invitation to the Merit Awards?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. When Ella gave me my invitation, I saw an invitation clearly addressed to you in care of the school sitting on her desk. I don’t think it’s right if she doesn’t inform you of it.”
“Thank you.”
“Not that you’d want to go, but you’ve won another award and you deserve it.” There was a brief, uncomfortable pause and then he said, “Are you doing all right? Is there anything Judy or I could do? If you need a recommendation or something…”
“Actually, I’m going back to school.”
“Hey, that’s great to hear.”
“Yes.”
After another silence, he said, “Well, I’ll let you go.”
“Thanks for calling. I truly appreciate it.” And she also appreciated knowing she had a friend. No one else from the school had contacted her since she’d left. She hadn’t been ultraclose to any of the other teachers, but they had socialized on occasion. Apparently, there would be no more of that.
When Layla shut off her phone, she turned to see her sister waiting expectantly to hear the details.
“I won an award,” she said with a slight shrug, making a mental note never to take a call of a truly personal nature in the shop. Sam was one of those people who tended to keep her own affairs a mystery, but fully expected to share in every part of Layla’s life.
“Educational?”
“What else?” A nice bit of irony. Layla leaned her arms on the counter between them.
Her sister laughed. “That should stick in that bitch principal’s craw.”
Layla smiled as she clasped her hands loosely together. “There is one small problem, though. My invitation is at the school. I don’t think the principal is going to tell me about it.”
Sam’s eyes, which already looked huge due to the false lashes she wore, went even wider. “If you want to go get it, I’ll come with you.” She made a grab for her purse. “We can go right now.”
As satisfying as that mental picture was—showing up at school with her unconventional sister ready to go to bat for her—it would probably result in a trespassing charge or something.
Layla had an easier solution. “I’ll call the Merit Awards office and RSVP by phone. Then I’ll show up at the ceremony.”
“Alone?”
“Not necessarily. You could come.�
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“But if you needed an actual date, Willie—”
Layla’s eyes shot to Sam’s face. “No.”
“But—”
“Sam, your friend hums when he’s bored, and this ceremony will be very boring to someone not winning an award.”
“Perhaps he’s over that.”
“He wasn’t the last time we went out.” A date that Sam had arranged a year ago, just prior to Layla meeting Robert.
“Did he hum a lot?” As if a small amount of humming during a boring educational award ceremony would be acceptable.
Layla nodded. They’d gone to an art gallery opening and Willie had been okay in the beginning, but by the end her elbow was sore from nudging him. “His favorite tune was ‘Yellow Submarine.’”
Sam gave a resigned nod. “That sounds like Willie.”
“He’s a nice guy,” Layla said in a placating tone.
“No. It’s fine. Really. I’d just like to see him settled.”
“But not with me, okay?”
“Okay.” Sam picked up the steamer and started working over a filmy silk robe, humming “Yellow Submarine” lightly under her breath.
Sometimes Layla envied her sister’s ability to simply let matters drop and move on. If Layla had that ability herself, she probably wouldn’t have wasted so much time obsessing over matters she couldn’t control.
She was learning, though. For instance, she was dealing with her cheating boyfriend and being fired better than she’d ever thought possible. And she knew why: she was distracted by other matters.
Had it not been for Justin, and her realization that she found him ridiculously attractive, she would have been obsessing about her career a whole lot more. Instead, she was wondering why, when there was so obviously good chemistry between them, Justin was taking a giant step back just as she was ready to take a giant step forward.
She looked at her sister. “Tell me about Rachel Kelly.”
Sam turned, the steamer blowing a cloud of condensation into the air as she pulled it away from the robe. “Rachel?”
“You know. Justin’s old high school girlfriend. The person who helped you get through government class.”
Sam gave a casual shrug. Too casual. “Not much to tell,” she said, going back to the robe, which was totally wrinkle free. “She had rich parents who wanted her to be one way. She wanted to be another. The parents won.”
“She moved before graduation?”
Sam hesitated, then nodded and started steaming the robe again.
“How many times are you going to de-wrinkle that one robe?”
“Until I get it right,” Sam muttered.
“What do you know about Rachel?”
Her sister turned then. “I don’t know anything about a girl who disappeared from my life ten years ago. Anything else?”
“Was she pregnant?” Layla spoke almost before the pieces had fully clicked into place—Justin’s behavior with the reunion committee, Rachel’s disappearance from school months before graduation. But once they did click, it made perfect sense.
Sam lifted her chin. “I can honestly say I don’t know.”
Layla believed her. “Did you suspect?”
“All I can tell you is that Rachel withdrew into herself for a couple months, barely talked to me in class, and then, boom. Gone.”
Layla nodded.
“Even if she was pregnant, what does it matter?” Sam asked.
Layla pushed her hair back from her temples, wondering the exact same thing. “It doesn’t, I guess.” Although it would explain a few things for her.
Sam came around the counter. “Justin is hot. But he’s also a player. He is not going to settle down. Don’t try to figure him out. Don’t try to fix him.”
She hated that her sister could read her so easily. Layla was the Taylor who made the observations and attempted to direct her errant siblings down the correct path in life. Not that they ever followed her advice…just as she wasn’t going to follow Sam’s. “What makes you think I want to settle down or fix him?”
Sam’s expression took on a sad cast. “Because that’s the way you are. You like stability. You want everyone else to be stable.” She reached out and squeezed Layla’s shoulder. “Some of us aren’t.”
“SO YOU’RE REALLY all right? As in unscathed?” Eden spoke in a low, disbelieving voice.
“Damn it, Eden, it was the car that got creamed. Not me.” Justin paced through the empty kitchen, the phone at his ear.
“But it could have been you.”
This was what he got for apprising his sister of the situation rather that just dealing with it. Except that now he needed her driveway to work on the car, so she would have figured out what’d happened anyway. Eden tended to notice things like a vehicle with a smashed-in hood sitting in front of her garage.
As if he had time for this. Patty’s last day was tomorrow—Tuesday—and after that he’d be buried in work.
“But it wasn’t me,” he said for the third time.
“Are you sure you can’t afford to quit at the lake?” They’d had this same conversation after his last accident. Only Reggie had been there with Eden, double-teaming him.
“After the big payment on the condo, I can quit.”
“That’s more than a year away.”
“It’ll take me that long to save the money.”
Eden made a growling noise on the other end of the phone, probably because she couldn’t yell at him while serving a luncheon. He called her only because he wanted her to know what had happened the night before, and why he was borrowing her SUV, parked at the kitchen, to deliver a cake. His second car, a small Honda, wasn’t up to the task of hauling that many layers.
He should have left a note.
“I can’t help it if I bought the condo at the wrong time.” Just before the housing market had gone to hell. His timing was always impeccable. Now he was upside down and had no choice but to surge on. The problem with being a small-business owner was that the income was not always steady.
“But maybe you could get a job locally.”
“Not one that pays like this one.”
Another growl. “Be careful with my vehicle!”
“I will. And thanks.”
“We’re not through.”
“Yes, we are.”
He finished loading the cake tiers into the SUV and securing the boxes so they didn’t move during the trip down to Carson City. After setting up the cake, he’d head on up to the lake for his last shift of the week, and hopefully avoid asshole drivers who thought four-wheel drive gave them the ability to speed regardless of conditions.
His fault or not, Eden would kill him if he wrecked her SUV.
CHAPTER NINE
LAYLA WENT HOME from Sunshine of Your Love shortly after the Rachel discussion, more irritated than she wanted to acknowledge about Sam lecturing her.
Sam. Lecturing her.
And Layla couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel Kelly.
If she had been pregnant, it wasn’t necessarily with Justin’s child. He’d dated her during their senior year, but had he been her only partner? People that age were known to cheat…hell, people of any age cheated. Like, say, Robert.
Layla grabbed the usual handful of junk mail from her box and dug her key out of her jacket pocket just as her phone rang. She let it ring while she opened the door and put down the mail. The phone went silent, then a few seconds later started ringing again.
Her mother or Sam. The persistent people in her life. Layla checked the number before answering.
Her mother. Whom she hadn’t called after being fired. She should have, but it wasn’t something she wanted to discuss with her mom. Losing her job was embarrassing—especially when she was the responsible child. It was as if everything she’d stood for had been proved wrong.
Wait—she’d already figured that out. Everything she’d stood for was wrong. Perhaps she and her mother would have more common ground now that she was no longer th
e only Taylor child who hadn’t been fired or gone bankrupt.
“Mom, hi.”
“Hello, Layla love.”
It felt good to hear her voice.
“I’m surprised I haven’t heard from you sooner,” Layla admitted. “Sam said she told you what happened.”
“I thought that it’d be best to wait a few days, give us both some time to get our heads together.” Her mom’s tone sounded off. Stilted.
