He should have known it was the other LaLa. He had always referred to Marla and Kayla as the two LaLas. He sent the message to both Kayla and Marla.
Dear LaLas, I am not in trouble. Things could not be better. Don’t worry about me.
Then he decided to add Natalie’s phone number to his contacts. He probably shouldn’t have picked on her in school. Of course, he had been seventeen and full of himself, like most teenagers, and he’d had something of a secret crush on the unattainable Natalie Layton.
On his way back to the elevator, he stopped in the hallway and looked at the nameplate on a closed office door. Beneath Dr. Collins’s name was a wide strip of gold engraved with the title CHIEF OF CARDIOLOGY.
Determination settled about Brett. In a few weeks, his name would be on that door. Unfortunately, Natalie Layton would likely be the key to his success with her uppity grandmother, but that was nothing he couldn’t handle. He gazed at the gold nameplate. He was going to make this happen, just like he had made everything else in his life happen.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and sent Natalie a text.
Hi. This is Brett. We need to talk.
By the time he reached the elevator, he had a reply.
NO, WE DON’T was followed by a frowning, red-faced emoji.
Chapter 2
Natalie opened the screen door and stepped inside the Country Corner Café on Court Square. Some things never change. That included not only Brett Harris but also the Country Corner Café. Colorful baskets decorated the walls, red gingham covered the tables, and classic country music played on overhead speakers. The café smelled of fresh coffee and lemon pie, the house specialty when it came to desserts that made your mouth water.
The broad windows across the front of the café provided a view of the historical district. Composed of buildings from the 1880s and a town square, old downtown Lafayette Falls evoked a period when life moved at a slower pace. The Dickens-era street lamps had been installed by the Main Street Committee, whose goal was to revitalize the historic downtown by giving it postcard appeal that ushered visitors into another era.
It was a lot like being in a time warp for Natalie.
She had left the summer of her graduation from Lafayette High School fifteen years ago and never returned. Not until now. She had never expected to have another cup of coffee in the Country Corner Café.
And she’d certainly never expected to see Brett Harris again.
She shook her head, amused as she thought of him, checking her out in the elevator and going for it. He still oozed with confidence and cockiness. The genius from the wrong side of town who didn’t let anything intimidate him.
Nobody could sport a leather bomber jacket and jeans as well as Brett.
She had to admit he was actually better looking now than he had been in high school. More mature. Laugh lines enhanced his hazel eyes, which were a blend of deep green and light gold. His coffee-brown hair was thick and unruly, which she’d always liked, and he was in need of a shave. He wore masculinity well.
Almost too well. She had always been attracted to that type of guy. The ones who could make you feel a little uncertain and needy. Oddly enough, that kind of primal appeal had saved her life once when she had hooked up with a stranger at a hotel in Kabul.
Two Americans. She was an intrepid photojournalist who had traversed the most violent places on earth, and he was a man who existed in the shadowy world of CIA operatives. They didn’t know each other, but what the hell? They both lived on the edge for different reasons, and sex was a way to make it through the night. Then the morning came, along with a suicide bomber, and her life had been changed forever.
She looked at her phone and read Brett’s message.
They did not need to talk. With a shake of her head, she sent her reply. She thought the angry emoji was a nice touch. Let him worry that she might impede his success out of vengeance. But the truth was she hadn’t been kidding him when she told him Nana was a piranha. Anna Layton and her cat were fully capable of destroying him without any help from her.
“Natalie.” Amber Wells waved from a corner table. Best friends forever and party pals. The first person she’d gone to see when she arrived in Lafayette Falls was Amber.
In high school, they’d been like twins. They had borrowed each other’s clothes, and both had colored their hair platinum blond. It was a wonder they hadn’t died from peroxide poisoning or worse. In the eleventh grade, Natalie had told her father she needed a thousand dollars for a charitable project at school. Dad handed over the cash. She and Amber went to Nashville, where they bought two fake IDs with the money and hit the clubs. Those were the good old days.
The owner of Sassy Styles Beauty Salon, Amber was now a brunette. Smoky eyeliner rimmed her brown eyes, and her lips were painted a russet red. She had been married to Josh Wells for eight years, and she had a little boy, who was quiet and sweet like his father. Amber didn’t want to have another child for fear that it might be a girl just like her.
“What a morning,” Natalie said as she joined Amber.
“I want all the juicy details.” Amber’s dark eyes fired up. “How did it go?”
Natalie laughed as she told Amber about the elevator ride. “Of course, he had no idea who I was when he was hitting on me.” She didn’t fault Brett for not recognizing her. It had been two years since her nose and cheekbones had been shattered by a piece of shrapnel, and she still had unsettled feelings when she looked in the mirror at her reconstructed face.
A server appeared, and Amber wet her lips. “Let’s have a daiquiri.”
“In the middle of the morning?”
“We’ll pretend we’re on Bourbon Street. Remember our trip to New Orleans back in the day?” They had used the fake IDs in New Orleans, too. “Two strawberry daiquiris,” Amber told the server.
“We can celebrate your reunion with your old lab partner, Brett. Maybe there’ll be some chemistry come into play.” Amber winked.
“I don’t want to celebrate that.” She had agreed to Harry and Lorraine’s brilliant scheme involving the only unmarried cardiologist in town before she found out who it was. She’d almost croaked when she learned it was her old nemesis, Brett Harris.
“So he went along with your crazy uncles?”
“He lit up like he’d been offered the keys to the kingdom. You should have seen it.” Natalie chuckled as she remembered the excited look on Brett’s face when Harry and Sheldon dangled the chief of cardiology position in front of him like a carrot. “His mouth practically watered.”
“I bet.”
“He hasn’t changed at all.”
“You know, he always had the hots for you.”
“No. You are so wrong about that.” Natalie thanked the server as he delivered the daiquiris. She plucked the fresh strawberry from the center of the drink. “He despised me. And he had plenty of girlfriends.”
“Listen, he was the guy from Trinity Road, and you were a Layton. Talk about a line he couldn’t cross.” Amber sighed. “Besides, you and Jeremy were like frigging glued together.”
“Jeremy was my sweetheart.” Natalie’s smile widened as she thought of the boy she had dated during all four years of high school. She and Jeremy had known each other since they were toddlers, and she supposed they had found security being together.
She had trusted Jeremy. There was no pressure or awkwardness between them. He loved football and video games. A lot of weekends had been spent with him playing Dungeons and Dragons while she read romances.
It had been such an innocent time in her life compared to what had followed.
“I wonder what happened to Jeremy.” She had lost track of him after graduation. He had been recruited by a college in Louisiana that needed a good quarterback.
“I’m sure he’s doing what all former jocks do. He’s a high school football coach.”
“Jeremy would make a good coach,” Natalie said. “He was a sweet guy.”
She couldn’t say
that for Brett Harris. He didn’t have a sweet bone in his body. “You know that I was never a snob.” Amber could vouch for her. “I tried to be friends with everybody, but Brett was such an asshole.” She lowered her voice, mimicking him. “Hey, Slacker, too bad you didn’t grow a brain when you grew tits.”
Amber laughed, and Natalie knocked back the daiquiri. “Screw him.”
“You should do that!” Amber patted the table with her hands. “Bang his brains out.”
“I’m not going there.” Natalie shook her head. “No way!”
She couldn’t even imagine it. Well, maybe, she could, but some things weren’t meant to happen, and that included sex with Brett Harris.
“You know, they call him Hot Rod now.” Amber sipped her drink.
“Hot Rod?” Maybe she shouldn’t ask.
“That’s what Josh said.” Amber referred to her husband. “According to Josh, Brett owns several really fast muscle cars from the sixties. They’re like worth a fortune. He said that’s why they call him Hot Rod. Of course, it might be for other reasons.” Amber winked as her smile widened. “You need to check that out. It might be huge.”
“If it’s as big as his ego, it’s probably knocking against his knee.”
Amber let out a cackle. “You gotta get some of that!”
“Shut. Up.” Natalie leaned back in the chair, thankful it was mid-morning and the café was practically empty. “I’m not interested, and personally, I think Nana should do what she wants to do about a doctor. But,” she shrugged in defeat, “I feel like if I don’t do this, and something happens to her, it’ll be my fault.”
“Yeah, that sucks.” Amber agreed.
Natalie’s phone chirped, and she dug it out of her purse. She glanced at the number on the screen. “It’s local, but I don’t recognize it.” Then, she nodded and grimaced. “I bet it’s Brett. He just sent me a text saying we needed to talk.”
Obviously, he was not going to give up, which was typical of his win-or-die mentality.
“Here.” Amber motioned for the phone. “Time for a little payback.”
Natalie laughed and slid the phone over to Amber, who tapped the speaker icon. “Hello.”
After a brief pause, Brett said, “Natalie?”
“No. This is Natalie’s evil twin. What do you want? We’re getting drunk.”
Another pause. “Oh God,” he muttered. “Amber.”
“That’s what my husband says when we’re having sex.” Amber puckered up her red lips, and Natalie looked away to contain herself.
“Let me speak to Natalie,” Brett demanded.
“I’m sorry, but Natalie is really busy. Plotting your demise. You know it’s not every day that you have the opportunity to get even with an asshole who called you ‘Slacker.’ Or worse. ‘Nitwit Natalie.’ You remember that?”
There was no reply, and Natalie mouthed, “Did he hang up?” to Amber.
Amber spoke, “Hey, dude, are you still there?”
“Give the phone to Natalie.”
“Okay, but just remember one thing.” Amber paused for effect. “You’re her bitch now.”
Natalie took a gulp of her drink as Brett spoke to her. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said in a heated, deep voice. “Without the evil twin present. Can you meet me tonight at the Thunderbird?”
Amber made a kissing sound with her lips, and Natalie shook her head.
“Is there something particular you want to discuss?” she asked him.
“We need to make this work.”
“We? I don’t have to make anything work,” she said, and Amber stuck her thumb up.
“What about your grandmother?” he shot back.
She and Amber exchanged eye rolls. “Listen, just show up tomorrow evening at the castle. I’ll introduce you to Nana, and I’m sure you can take it from there, with you being Mr. Charm and all.”
After another pause, he said, “Natalie, give me a chance.”
For just a brief second, she felt a pang in her chest. “I gotta go.” She dropped her phone back in her purse. “I should have stayed in London,” she told Amber.
“No. You belong here with all of us crazy people. This is where the fun is. It’s like fun city here,” Amber insisted. “And you’ve got Doctor Hot Rod Harris right where you want him.”
“I don’t want him anywhere.”
“Hey, you can torture him at will. Make him pay for every shitty ‘Slacker’ remark he made. Make him get down on his knees”—Amber’s dark eyes twinkled—“and do stuff.”
Natalie held up her hand. “Nope. I’m not going there.” She finished off her slushy strawberry drink, and Amber grew serious.
“You are glad you’re home. Right? It’s going to be a good thing for you. Don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” She offered her old friend a smile. “Yeah, it’s a good thing.” It had to be a good thing. Her therapist had told her she’d been disconnected for way too long, and she needed to reestablish ties with her family and her past in order to have a future. So, with the holiday season approaching, she had come home to Lafayette Falls to reconnect with her roots and to find a reason to believe in tomorrow.
After she had said good-bye to Amber, she got behind the wheel of a new Lexus that had been waiting for her at the grandmother’s house, courtesy of her father. The senator had wanted her to know he was happy she was home, even if he couldn’t be there with her. Fatherly love had its perks.
She drove along a bypass road called Commerce Parkway where mega-stores and an outlet mall had sprouted. A lot had changed in her hometown. She took the Old Shelbyville Road exit and traveled through a new residential area. Cloned brick homes now stood where cattle had once grazed. She missed the cows.
Past the city limits, she turned the SUV onto Trinity Road. Much to her surprise, the old roadhouses, pawnshops, and pool halls, known for everything from shootings to prostitution, were gone. A couple of new houses had been built on either side of the road.
A flock of black birds lifted from a cut cornfield as she drove over the Black Creek Bridge. To her left was an old mobile home with roll-out windows, and she dodged a pothole in the asphalt. This was not her first trip down Trinity Road.
Years ago, she had made a few covert drives down this road by herself, which would have worried her family, as most people feared the riffraff on Trinity Road. So she had come and gone in the morning, when all the unsavory places of business were closed. No one had ever known about her forays to check out Brett Harris.
After she had driven around a curve, she slowed the Lexus. On the right was a deserted frame house with an overgrown yard. Tar streaked the shingled roof, and a NO TRESPASSING sign was posted on the front door. Beside the house was a large cinder-block building. Over a wide opening, a rusty sign read HARRIS GARAGE. She pulled the car into the driveway.
This was where Brett had grown up, raised by an uncle who made a living as a mechanic. She had never stopped here before. That would have been outrageous. She had just seen the place from the roadside, but she’d been curious then, and she was still curious now.
To her, Brett was an enigma.
She walked toward the old garage, dry maple leaves crunching beneath her boots. She hadn’t met Brett until high school. She had attended elementary school in the city, and he had gone to the county elementary school. But there was only one large high school that accommodated all the students in the city and the county.
Back then, Brett drove a fast car, and he had the kind of attitude that distinguished him as a tough guy from Trinity Road, which the girls loved. He had also been gifted with a high IQ that he hadn’t squandered. He had maintained a straight-A average all during high school. He’d been a top graduate. Class valedictorian. Awarded multiple scholarships.
She looked inside the old garage. Dark, empty, oil stains on the concrete floor. It hadn’t been used in years, but it still smelled of grease and metal. Behind the garage, the rusting bodies of three wrecked cars huddled together like
old people trying to weather a storm. A pine tree had unceremoniously dumped a season’s worth of needles on their hoods, and vines had found their way inside the vehicles. Mother Nature always won out.
She wandered across the yard, covered in dead leaves. Concrete steps led up to the back porch of the house, where white paint peeled from the wood siding, but the brick foundation still held.
On the porch, Natalie saw that the kitchen door was ajar. She pushed it open and looked inside. The kitchen had metal cabinets and one of those old cast-iron enamel sinks. In a few places, the faded floor tiles were cracked. So was the window over the sink. No one had been here for a long time.
Deserted houses had a certain sadness about them. They had been built to hold life, but when the life was gone from one, it became cold and still like a tomb.
She stood there a moment longer, looking from the kitchen into the living room, where cobwebs hung in the corners and dust coated the hardwood floorboards. She pictured a young boy growing up in this house with his uncle. She’d heard Brett’s uncle had been a first-rate mechanic and a widower who had no children of his own. Had he been the one who instilled such determination into Brett?
Never in a thousand years would she admit this to anyone, but at graduation, she had been proud of Brett when he took the podium as their class valedictorian.
Standing beside the Lexus, she took a moment to enjoy a pair of red maples in the front yard. The scarlet leaves blazed in the sunlight, creating a feast for the eyes. For a moment, she wished she had one of her cameras with her. When was the last time she had captured something as beautiful as a red maple on a fall day? When was the last time she had wanted to photograph the splendor of nature?
And not the ugliness, brutality, and horror of mankind?
Her world had gone dark when her beloved husband became a victim of violence. Robbed, murdered, and dumped in the woods to rot, Aidan had died young and pointlessly.
Her response had been to turn her camera away from the light. She needed to know, she needed to feel, she needed to understand the terror Aidan had felt at the end.
Everything His Heart Desires Page 3
