B0161IZ63U (A) (9 page)

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Hours later, the party was finally dying down.  Thanks to Chase, Lila’s tame event had quickly spiraled into a full-on dance party.  It had blessedly remained PG.  Even more blessedly, everyone seemed to have had a good time, including the faculty.  Only about a dozen people remained now, mostly Lila’s friends, and they were starting to peel away, too.

“Where the hell is Chase with the hotdogs?” Lila said to herself from where she was still cooking up food on the grill, looking towards the house.  She’d sent him inside to get her a fresh pack from the fridge over ten minutes ago.

After another five minutes, she made her way across the yard, waving awkwardly to Kelly and Chelsea as she moved.  They were sitting on the hammock on the other end of the yard.  The hammock was the
second
reason Lila had fallen in love with that house, and she hated to see it tainted by Kelly.

Lila shook her head at herself.  She didn’t want to be the woman who hated another woman over a man.  After all, it wasn’t Kelly’s fault that Jack had slept with Lila behind her back.  It wasn’t Kelly’s fault that he’d conveniently forgotten to mention that he was engaged, not even as he was putting his dick inside her.

Lila’s blood ran so hot, she worried it might melt her veins and spill out of her body, killing her instantly.  At that point, she would’ve welcome death, anything to extract herself from this party, and this night.

As she made her way into the house, she sighed when the crisp air conditioning hit her.  It was the first time her house had been this cool since the day she’d moved in.  She reminded herself to start being nicer to Chase.  He was a godsend for fixing it.

Fearful of burning the meat she still had on the grill outside, she hurried down the long corridor and passed the family room.

She stopped at the sight that met her when she stepped into the living room.  She quickly backed up, creeping into a shadow behind the wall, covering the smile on her mouth with a shaking hand.

In the kitchen, Jack and Chase were alone together. She felt her heart hammer when she realized they were both laughing.

“Stop,” Chase demanded, just as Jack swatted him playfully across the head.  The shy smile on his face grew wide, directly contradicting his demanding tone.  Behind him on the stove, two packs of hot dogs sat lonely.  He’d been fending off his older brother for so long, he’d forgotten about them.  When Jack’s other hand came up and swiped him across the head again, Chase lunged at him, his head ramming into Jack’s gut.  The hit sent Jack stumbling backwards.  They slammed against the white granite counter with simultaneous grunts.

“Shit,” Jack laughed, leaning over in an attempt to crane his body out of Chase’s hold.  He was fighting a losing battle.  “When the hell did you get so strong, huh?” Jack bent down lower and attempted to wrap an arm around Chase’s neck, his laughs intensifying when they both caught each other in a headlock.

“Say I’m right,” Jack demanded.

“No,” Chase’s voice was muffled in Jack’s arm.

“Say it…”

“Never.”

Jack was the first to let up, and he immediately swatted Chase’s hand away when his brother went to bop him across the head.

“Stop playing,” Jack warned while swatting another hand away.  “Don’t make me regret letting you go.”  A glorious smile crossed his face when Chase grabbed the water sprayer on the sink and pulled the hose to the brink, pointing it at Jack.  A laugh of caution bubbled up from the back of Jack’s throat.  “I wish you fucking would,” he warned.

Chase put his hand on the lever, laughing heartily when Jack flinched and brought his hands up to block his face.

Lila stood quietly in the hallway on the other side of the room, a hand covering her mouth as she watched the exchange in the kitchen.  She couldn’t stop her heart from swelling at the sight of Jack and Chase playing together. 
Playing
.  A year ago, the two of them couldn’t even be in the same room together.  The last memory she had of them being in each other’s arms was on Turtle Bay in Manhattan when they’d been determined to murder each other.

This was why she’d left New York City.  This moment.

When she felt two hands wrap around her waist from behind, she almost screamed out loud.  Managing to bite it back, she looked over her shoulder.  Her eyes met Chelsea’s, and she brought a finger of silence to her lips.

“Why are you lingering in the darkness like some leper?” Chelsea came up next to her.

Lila pointed toward the kitchen.  “Jack and Chase are playing and laughing together. I just want to stand here and take it all in.”

Chelsea cut her eyes at her friend.  “Okay…”

“If you’d seen the way they were with each other a year ago, you’d know what a big deal this is.  This is huge.”

“What’s huge is the younger one.  Look at those arms.  Ugh.  If I thought Jack was a Greek God, it’s only because I’d never laid eyes on his little brother.”  Chelsea bit her lip, looking pained.  “What’s his name again?”

Lila’s eyes narrowed.  “Chase.”

“And how old is he?”

Lila finally looked at her friend.  “Too young for you.”

“Age ain’t nothing but a number, throwing down ain’t nothing but a thang,” Chelsea sang, nudging Lila when she didn’t so much as smirk.  “Oh, come on.  Girl’s gotta eat, right?”

“Yeah, well.  Not with him.”

“Nobody has to know,” Chelsea grinned.

“Not with him, Chels. End of discussion.”

Chelsea reared back.               “What is that
tone
?” she beamed, a knowing smile spreading on her face. “Do you want a little taste of the baby cub too? One brother wasn’t quite enough?”

Lila rolled her eyes.

“Lila James,” Chelsea admonished, dramatically.  “I had no idea you were the type of girl who kept it in the family.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, you can’t fool me doll, and I hate to break it to you, but you’re not fooling him either.” Chelsea pointed to Jack and Chase.  

Lila wondered which one Chelsea was referring to, and then realized it didn’t matter.  She now had a feeling Chelsea had provoked her purposely.

Lila grumbled something unintelligible, annoyed with her friend.

Chelsea kept smiling, swatting Lila on the ass.  Their eyes locked as Chelsea made her way back down the hall, and into the yard.

Lila waited until Chelsea closed the door before she began to make her way towards the staircase of the house, located on the other side of the living room. 

After that conversation, she needed to splash some cold water on her face and pray it would bring her to her senses.

She crossed the room to the staircase, hoping Jack and Chase were so entrenched in their play that they wouldn’t even notice her.

The moment she put her foot on the first step, Chase’s eyes met hers from the kitchen, and he stopped tussling with Jack. 

Thrown by the sudden lack of attention, Jack instinctively looked over his shoulder and met Lila’s eyes as well.

Lila cursed under her breath when both their eyes met hers at the same time, feeling the most poignant, foreign sensation of being torn right in two.  Two men that held such a large corner of her heart, but were so succinctly volatile when brought together in her presence, looking at her the way Jack and Chase were right then, was too much to bear. 

Nervous like a high school teenager, Lila raised an awkward hand of greeting before racing up the stairs.

6

Splashing her face with cold water wasn’t working, so Lila tried piping hot.  That didn’t work either, and she nearly burned her skin off.  Grabbing a towel from the bathroom rack, she hid her face behind the fragrant terry cloth and begged for strength.

She’d hoped for a nice, relaxing evening of meeting new people, and letting them rave over her gorgeous new house.  It had been anything but.

She’d spent the entire night stressed out.  She’d slept with a man who was about to be married, and she had a sneaking suspicion his wife-to-be knew it had happened.  What was throwing Lila for a loop was that, if wifey was suspicious, she wasn’t making it known.  Kelly had smiled with Lila, asked her questions about her life, shared information about her own, and had been downright
delightful.

She recalled Chelsea telling her that Kelly liked to keep her enemies close. Lila now knew that was right on the money.  Kelly intended to keep her close.  Lila itched to tell her it was far from necessary.  She itched to tell Kelly that she didn’t have to pretend not to have seen Jack go after Lila at her engagement party.  She didn’t have to pretend not to know that her husband had something deeper with Lila once.  She didn’t have to smile at Lila, when what she really wanted to do was claw her eyes out.  Kelly didn’t have to do any of it because, as far as Lila was concerned, Jack Almeida was
all hers.

Lila would never, not for as long as she lived, sleep with Jack Almeida again. If there once lived in Lila an itch that only Jack could scratch, it was no longer there.  He hadn’t just scratched that itch. He’d clawed it out of existence.  Right along with the place he’d once held in her heart.

He was dead to her.

With a sigh, she snatched opened the door of her upstairs bathroom, stalked across her master bedroom, threw that door open as well, and came face to face with Jack.

And she realized how wrong she was.

Women didn’t care about men who were dead to them.  Women didn’t argue with men who were dead to them.  Women sure as hell didn’t feel like their heart had jumped into their throat at the mere sight of men who were dead to them.

But Lila was running a strong three out of three.

“The guest bathroom is downstairs,” she said across her dark upstairs hallway, pointing a finger at Jack, who was leaning against the wall on the other side.  If she were crazy, she’d almost believe he’d been waiting for her.

His head was thrown back against the wall, and he looked down at her from under those intense brown eyes.  His lips were parted the tiniest bit, giving her a view of what she knew were perfect teeth.  Perfect teeth that had the power to spread into a smile that was debilitating, a smile he didn’t utilize.  Not nearly enough.  His hands were pressed into the pockets of his slacks, eyes almost black in the near darkness. His tan skin jumped out from his white button down, showing the tiniest smattering of chest hair.   He didn’t move. 

Neither did she.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

The accusation in his voice boiled her blood.  “What am
I
doing?”

He lifted his head from the wall, but not his body.  “Why would you invite my fiancé to your housewarming party?  If you wanted to see me that badly, all you had to do was call.”  His expression deepened.  “I would have picked up.”

“You’re an arrogant son of a bitch, you know that?”  She nearly flew across the hallway and slapped him. “I didn’t invite your fiancé. Your fiancé overheard I was hosting this party from her sister, who just happens to be my best friend, and then she invited herself.  Apparently she’s under the, very incorrect, impression that she has something to worry about when it comes to you and me.  That she has to keep an eye on me.  She must have some sixth sense that her future husband is a piece of shit, so she’s following that shit scent. Eventually, she’ll figure out that scent doesn’t lead to me, but right back to you. Do me a favor, and tell her she has nothing to worry about, because you will never have me again, Jack Almeida.  That I can guarantee.  The guest bathroom is
downstairs
.”

Lila went to move past him.

He took her arm.

She didn’t look at him.  She couldn’t trust herself to.

“How do you hate me so easily?” he whispered.  “I’ve spent six years trying my damndest to hate you, and I can’t.  How do you do it so easily?”

“Let me go.”

“Tell me.  Honestly.  Because I would do it in a minute.  I would hate you passionately. If I only knew how.”

“Let. Me. Go.”

Jack held on.  “I guess the wrong brother followed you upstairs, huh?”

Lila’s eyes finally flew to his.

He squinted in the darkness, seeing the change in her.  “Am I warm?”

“Jack, I swear to god, I’ll kill you.  Stop with the Chase shit.  Just stop.  Only a child would go this far out of his way to create a competition with his little brother.”

“Competition.” He smiled that glorious smile, that smile he almost never utilized.  It was laced with everything but happiness.  “No, see, a
competition
involves two players who are both evenly matched.”  His smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.  “There is no competition, Lila.  There never has been.”  He finally forced himself to look away after searching her eyes for a telling amount of time, nodding towards the stairs. “It’s a great party.  A lot of kids, though.  Can’t say I’m surprised.” His eyes came back to her.  “You always did like ‘em young.”

When she snatched at her arm this time, he released it, and she charged for the stairs, chest heaving.

She heard him on her heels, pounding down the stairs behind her.  It wasn’t until she reached the bottom and caught eyes with Kelly and Chase, standing in the kitchen, that she realized how close behind her Jack was. 

His body crashed into hers, pushing her off the last step and onto the living room floor completely.

From where she and Chase had been leaning on the kitchen counter talking, Kelly’s mouth fell open at the sight of Lila and Jack emerging from upstairs. 

Kelly had her keys out, swinging down from her finger, and her purse on her shoulder.  Clearly she was ready to leave and had been looking for Jack.   The last place she’d expected to find him was barreling down those stairs after Lila.

Lila sighed in defeat as her eyes moved to Chase, and when she saw the look on his face, she had to turn away. 

Behind her, she could hear Jack was breathing just as hard as she was.

They’d both come downstairs at the same time, and there was no reason in the world why Jack needed to be up there with her.  There was a bathroom downstairs.  On top of all that, they’d both come down panting and emotional, with heated eyes.