Here Comes Trouble (7 page)

“That looks like something someone on the Oregon Trail would have worn.”

A laugh popped out of her as she set the shirt down and folded it. “Yeah, Ray didn’t have the best taste in clothes, did he?” She placed the folded shirt in the box next to her. “So, where’s Little T today?” Brody’s nine-year-old son, Tyler, was one of Lacy’s best buddies. She’d affectionately dubbed him
Little T
when she first met him two years ago.

Brody dropped to the edge of the bed and took a swig from his water bottle. “Kelly picked him up from school.”

She placed another folded shirt in the box. “But you’re supposed to have him on the weekends.”

“She’s going to see her parents in Michigan his weekend and asked if she could take him.” He rolled his eyes after she threw him a suspicious glance. “I’m not going to tell my son he can’t see his grandparents.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You don’t like Kelly very much, do you?”

She placed the last shirt in the box and glanced at him. “I never said I didn’t like her.”

“But?

Lacy slumped her shoulders on a sigh. How to explain this to a man…”It has nothing to do with me liking her. I just don’t think she treated you very well during your divorce.”

He lifted a dark brow. “I wasn’t completely innocent, you know. It took both of us to break up our marriage.”

She tucked some hair behind her ear. “I’m not saying you weren’t. I’m just saying she was pretty bitter.”

“I was a lousy husband, Lace. She had every right to be bitter.”

Lacy shoved the full box to the wall with the others. There were still three drawers full of clothes she’d yet to box up. The bottom one was full of jeans. Lacy opened the rickety drawer and pulled out stacks of denim. “You’re pretty defensive of her,” she said with her attention focused on a worn, holey pair of jeans.

Brody was silent for a few seconds. “She’s
Tyler
’s mother.”

She shook out the next pair of jeans and glanced at Brody out of the corner of her eye. Brody had always been good-looking. His father’s gray eyes blinked at her and his midnight black hair was in need of a cut. “Is that all she is?” she asked in a quiet voice.

He stared at her, unblinking, for a moment. While Brody was pretty darn attractive, she’d always been grateful for not having a thing for him. That would have made their friendship too weird.

“Where’re you going with this, Lace?”

She shook her head. “Nowhere. I just think you talk pretty affectionately about a woman you’re not married to anymore.” She placed a hand on his denim-clad knee. “I don’t want you to be hurt again.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You wouldn’t be jealous, would you?” The small tug of his lips kept Lacy from taking him seriously.

She folded another pair of jeans and set them aside. “You’re impossible.”

He raised the bottle water to his lips. “Yeah, that would be weird considering you want to get into my brother’s pants.”

Just as he was about to take a drink, Lacy smacked his elbow and water dribbled down his bare chest and into his lap. Brody jumped up from the bed and water ran from his chest, down his pants and onto the floor. He swiped water from his chin with the back of his hand.
 
“That was real mature, Twiggy.”

She feigned nonchalance and lifted her shoulders. “That’s what you get for saying something so stupid.”

He picked up his black T-shirt from the floor and wiped his chest dry. “Stupid. But true.”

She stared at him until he glanced at her. “Are you going to tell me you don’t have a thing for Chase?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” It was getting harder and harder for her to deny it. Damn Brody for reading her so easily.

A rude noise popped out of him. “Okay.”

“You don’t believe me?”

He tossed the shirt on the floor. “No.”

How to make him believe her…She pulled in a deep breath and focused on the next pair of jeans. Why the hell did Ray have so many pairs of jeans? “You’ve seen how we are together, we’re always arguing.”

“Foreplay.”

Her temper flared for one moment and without thinking, she chucked the pair of jeans at Brody. The denim hit his chest then landed on the floor. He made no attempt to pick them up. Ray always said she had a temper bigger than she could handle. She pulled in a deep breath to calm herself down.

“No feelings, huh?”

“I hate you sometimes,” she said with a smile creeping along her mouth. Brody always knew how to make her smile.

“No, you don’t. I’m the only person who doesn’t call you Twiggy.”

She gave him a pointed look. “You did a second ago.”

“You’d just dumped water down my chest,” he replied while picking up another box.

“I should have asked R.J. to help me with this,” she mumbled.

Brody walked to the bedroom door. “R.J. knows you have the hots for my brother too.”

An un-lady-like groan forced its way passed her lips. She dropped her head to her hands. Damn, insufferable men.
 
She pulled a breath of air into her lungs and calmly placed all the folded jeans into another empty box. Why did she let Brody get her so riled up? Because he was right? Pretty stupid reason. And here she thought she’d been going a good job of hiding her lustful feelings for Chase. Turned out his whole damn family knew. Perfect.

As she pushed another full box to the wall, someone rang her doorbell. Lacy groaned again, hoping it wasn’t Mrs. Pratt with another update on the neighborhood watch. Couldn’t the woman just send out a newsletter or something?

On her way to the closet, she saw Brody walk into the room. “Will you get that? If its Mrs. Pratt, tell her I died.”

Brody’s soft chuckle reached her in the closet as he walked out of the room. Ray’s closet looked like it could have belonged to a teenage boy. Clothes piled up everywhere. Lacy could only take two steps into the small space. Shoe boxes were stacked on a shelf and went all the way up to the ceiling. No telling what useful things Ray stashed in those. Probably stuff like leaves and gum wrappers. She’d just grabbed a pile of sweaters from the floor when she felt a presence behind her. Knowing it was Brody, Lacy asked instead of turning around, “Who’s at the door?” “A girl named Megan.”

She turned, almost dropping the sweater off the top of the pile. “I don’t know a girl named Megan.”

Brody stared her before answering. “She’s says she’s your sister.”

****

In her hand, she held a check for ten million dollars made out to Lacy Taylor.

At the moment all Lacy could do was stare at the slip of paper with her name on it and an obscene amount of money. She supposed later on she’d be in the right frame of mind to have an appropriate reaction. Right now all she could muster was disbelief. And shock. And that didn’t even cover the nineteen-year-old blond girl claiming to be her half-sister, sitting at the kitchen table. Megan, as she’d introduced herself, had driven all the way from southern California as per their mother’s instructions.
 
That was as far into the story as Megan had gotten before handing over this check. Lacy wasn’t sure why Megan stopped in the middle to show her this check or what it had to do with her mother. Lynette Taylor had been dead broke when she left Trouble. All she’d had was a beat up Datsun and a duffle bag full of ratty clothes. Where in the world had she gotten this kind of money?

Megan, who had one of those stylish, sleek bobs, sat at the table and played with the label on the bottle of water Brody had given her. Brody, being the super nice guy he was, said he wanted to give them privacy and went home. But not before giving Megan a narrow eyed look. Lacy assured him everything was okay and shoved him out the door.

“Would you mind starting over? Because I’m having a hard time believing Lynette had this kind of money.”

Megan chewed her lower lip, which was free of any kind of lipstick. She pulled in a deep breath and twirled the water bottle around in circles. “When Mom came to southern
California
twenty-four years ago she met my father.” Megan looked at Lacy with eyes the same green as her mother’s.
Their
mother. “My father was a pretty big Hollywood producer–”

“Was?” Lacy interjected.

“Um…” Megan tucked a strand of hair behind one petite, earring-studded ear. “He died of a heart attack a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Lacy could think to say. Heck, she knew how painful it was to lose a parent.

Megan nodded and lifted her chin. “When he died, he wanted to make sure Mom and I were taken care of. He–he left her everything.”

In other words a shit load of money. Had to be if he was a Hollywood producer. That would explain the big fat check. But why did Lynette feel the need to give this to Lacy now after walking out on her? Why couldn’t she have just been a mother? That was more valuable than any amount of money. Lacy tried to ignore the squeezing pain in her chest that occurred whenever she thought about her mother.

“So we stayed in our Malibu house until…”

Megan’s words trailed off, her gaze directed at the water bottle. That bottle must be pretty darn fascinating; Megan had spent almost the entire time staring at the thing. Was it too hard for her to look at Lacy, knowing she’d gotten the shit end of the deal while Megan had grown up with two loving parents in a trillion square foot house?

“Until what?” she prompted Megan gently.

Megan pulled a deep breath, shifting the expensive-looking brown silk dress against her breasts. “Until Mom died in a car accident.”

Lacy heard the whispered words come out of the teen’s mouth, but they didn’t make sense. Dead? How could Lynette be dead?
 
Lacy had always lived in a world where Lynette existed somewhere out there, perhaps thinking of the daughter she’d left and maybe considering a way to make it up to her. That pipe dream had lived in the back of her mind for the better part of twenty years. In the forefront, however, anger and resentment clouded any affectionate feelings a daughter should feel for her mother. But dead? Now there would be nothing. No closure, no satisfaction of writing her mother a heated letter. An overwhelming sense of incompleteness consumed her, as if something had been taken from her all over again.

Lacy cleared her throat, trying to swallow the lump that made its way from the pit of her stomach.

“How-how long has she been gone?” The words came out hoarser than she’d anticipated.

A tear slowly ran down Megan’s flawless cheek. She pulled a tissue out of her white clutch purse and carefully blotted the moisture away so as not to ruin her perfect makeup.

“About seven months,” Megan replied on another strained whisper. “Afterward, when I was dealing with her will, her lawyer told me about two letters she’d written sometime before she died.” She placed her little purse on the table and pulled out two white envelopes. “One is addressed to me and the other…” With one baby-pink manicured fingernail, Megan slid the envelope across the table. “Is for you.”

Scrawled in small, loopy handwriting was her name in black ink. Lacy didn’t take the envelope right away. She stared at her name, trying to picture her mother dragging a ball-point pen across the paper. So many things tumbled through her mind; Lacy couldn’t make sense of anything. Confusion and hurt were the two main things squeezing her heart until the organ almost beat out of her chest. Lynette was the most elusive, difficult person to understand. Why would she abandon her only child, move to
California
, birth another child, then give this obscene amount of money to the daughter she gave up? None of this made sense.

“You don’t have to read it right away.” Megan’s voice had become a little bit stronger. “I almost wish I hadn’t read mine.”

Lacy pulled her brows together as she gazed at her half-sister. “Why?”

The younger girl rolled her lips. “I didn’t know about you until after she died. I was completely shocked when I read this,” she said, holding up her envelope. “I couldn’t believe she had another child that she’d given up.” Megan turned her blue eyes to Lacy. “The mother I knew would never have done anything like that. She just wasn’t that kind of person.”

“Maybe she wasn’t that kind of mother to you, but she was to me.”

Two perfectly shaped, honey-colored brows pulled worry lines in Megan’s forehead. “How old are you?”

Thrown off-balance by the question, Lacy could only stare for a moment. “Twenty-eight.”

“Geez, you’re almost ten years older than me.” Megan ran a hand through her highlighted tresses. “Why do you think she did it? Why did she leave you?”

That was the six-million-dollar question Lacy would never know the answer to. “I’ve spent almost my entire life asking myself that question.” She moved her focus to the check Megan had handed to her earlier. Lacy picked it up for Megan to see. “Why did you give me this?”

“That’s a little bit harder to explain. I had to read my letter three times before it made sense.” Megan toyed with the corner of the envelope. “Twenty million dollars was part of the inheritance my dad left for Mom when he died. In my letter, she left very clear instructions that I was to find you and give you half. She wanted you to have it.”