Authors: Elizabeth Bevarly
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense
Overnight Male (24 page)
Nevertheless, there was another quick pull on the knot in his stomach.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he replied.
Neither seemed to have a clue what to do or say next. So Joel opened the door wider, stepped aside and invited her in, hoping none of his anxiousness showed in his actions or voice. He ran his fingers restlessly through his dark hair, tucking a handful behind one ear, then brushed his palm over the blue-and-white-striped shirt he’d tucked into his own reasonably reputable-looking jeans.
“Have you had breakfast?” he asked. “I could make more coffee, if you want some.”
She shook her head. “I’m good, thanks.”
She certainly was.
Even though he’d promised himself he would let Lila be the one to bring it up, before he could stop himself, he heard himself asking, “Did you have a good visit with Marnie?”
Her smile fell a little. “Um, yeah…Joel…about that…”
He immediately regretted saying a word. Holding up a hand in apology, he told her, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did. It’s none of my business what—”
“No, I should have told you I was going to visit my sister in Cleveland,” she said. She smiled. “My sister in Cleveland,” she repeated. “I like saying that. It feels nice.” Then her smile fell. “I’m sorry I took off the way I did. But I just…” She sighed deeply. “I just needed to get away for a few days, that’s all.”
“I understand, really,” he said. And he was surprised to realize he did. “And I’m glad you had Marnie to give you a safe haven,” he added. “We all need one of those.” Though he wished Lila would see she had one in him, too.
“It really was a good visit,” she said. “And it was nice to spend more than an evening with her. But kind of weird, too, you know?”
He shook his head. “Not really. But I can imagine.”
She sighed. “It’s just…It’s just weird to know I have a family. I grew up telling myself it was okay that I didn’t have one, even though everyone else did, because, hey, I didn’t want a family anyway, so there.”
Joel smiled, hoping it looked reassuring. “Just like the hurt little kid who says she hates the very thing she craves so no one will think less of her for not having it, huh?”
Lila nodded. “But even as an adult, I kept telling myself I didn’t want it. I’ve always let that hurt little kid in me dictate how I felt about family. It’s only been since spending time with Marnie that I’ve come to realize how incredibly desperately I’ve
always
wanted a family.” She crossed her arms anxiously over her chest as she continued, “During those months I was in hiding, running from OPUS, I was completely alone. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, no one to trust, no one to share anything with. For the first time in my life, Joel, I was actually
alone.
Completely alone. The way I’d always told myself I wanted to be. And it was horrible. I never want to have to live like that again. I never want to be alone.”
He wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, so he said nothing. Besides, she seemed to want to say more.
But she only sighed and drove her gaze restlessly around the room, until it settled on a painting that hung between the front door and window. It was the latest from Joel’s thirteen-year-old niece, a watercolor titled “The Shoes My Mom Won’t Let Me Have.” It was executed in angry slashes of purple and gold that most art critics would probably have called “self-indulgent.” Joel, however, thought the kid showed promise. Once she stopped being thirteen.
“You have some new art,” Lila said.
He nodded. “Yeah, it was waiting for me when I got home from Cincinnati. There’s a nice one from the two-year-old, too. It’s supposed to be a dog, I think. Maybe a butterfly. Possibly a hamburger. Or else it’s a depiction of man’s eternal struggle with his inner Paris Hilton.”
“Interpretive art, huh?” she asked with a smile.
“For lack of a better word—like incomprehensible—yeah.”
She looked around the room some more, then back at Joel. “You have a nice place here, Joel. It’s…homey.”
He wondered about the rapid ricochet of changing subject, but decided to go with it for now. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“No, it’s more than okay. It’s really…cozy. The kind of place that would be nice for raising a family.”
The knot in his belly went so tight then, it nearly cut off his circulation. “Maybe…”
“That was what you said you wanted,” she reminded him. “Remember? That day we left for Cincinnati. Life with all the traditional trappings. You said the house could be a Tudor, and the dog could be named Pal, but that that was what you wanted. The whole suburban fantasy of wife, kids and riding mower.”
Had he said that? he wondered. He thought back to the day in question. Strange. He supposed he had said that. He’d probably even believed it. Then. Now, however, none of those things showed up on his list of Things That Would Make Joel Faraday Happy. In fact, there wasn’t even a list anymore. Because there was only one thing Joel Faraday needed to make him happy. Lila Moreau.
“I guess I did say that,” he told her. “But things change, Lila.”
“In just a couple of weeks?”
He nodded. “A couple of weeks is a long time. A lot can happen in a couple of weeks. You should know that better than anyone.”
She looked at him in silence for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I should.” She met his gaze levelly. “I’ll never be the sort of woman who can live a traditional life, Joel. Even though I’m not sure yet what I’ll do for a living now that I’m not working for OPUS, it will still be something…edgy,” she finally said. “Maybe not dangerous, but I have to have something, some kind of adventure, some kind of excitement. Something unpredictable and…and breakneck and…and not routine. The life in the suburbs thing, the whole soccer-mom existence…That’s not me. Ever. I know a lot of women—and men, too—are totally suited to that, and I salute them. But I’d suffocate if I had to live a traditional life in the suburbs. And I’d be a lousy mom.”
He started to argue with her, but knew better. This wasn’t a realization she’d come to easily, he knew. It was something she’d doubtless figured out a long time ago.
“So if you want kids,” she began again, “I’m not—”
“I want you,” he told her before she could finish. “And that’s all I want.”
“You say that now, but—”
“Because I know it’s true. Look, Lila,” he said, “you’re not the only one who’s had things to figure out. Maybe before I met you I had this vague idea of what I wanted my future to be. But now…”
He paused, drove his own gaze around the room, then looked at her again. “You could take away this house and everything in it,” he said. “You can take away my job and tell me none of my work has ever mattered. You can tell me I’ll never have kids or dogs or crabgrass or anything else in the traditional domestic-bliss scenario. Frankly, Lila, I don’t give a damn.
“But take away
you,
” he said more softly this time, “tell me I’ll never have
you,
and I just can’t see any reason for wanting anything. Because you are all I want. You’re all I need. When I think of the future now, it’s full of uncertainty. But that wouldn’t scare me if it weren’t for the fact that, right now, one of those uncertainties is you. And that, Lila…That does scare me. It scares the hell out of me.”
Her eyebrows had arrowed downward as he spoke, as if she wanted to believe him, but couldn’t quite make the leap.
“I love you,” he told her. “I want to be with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Even if I have no idea what that life will bring. It doesn’t matter what happens or doesn’t happen. It doesn’t matter what I have or don’t have. As long as I have you.” He inhaled another fortifying breath before voicing the last part, then added, “And as long as I know you love me.”
This was her cue, he thought. If she was going to say it, it better be now. Because if she didn’t say it now…
She nodded slowly, her expression filled with…something. Something pretty major, he could tell. He just couldn’t quite say what. But all she said was, “We should probably get going. I promised Oliver we’d be there before dinner.”
I
T WAS A GOOD THING
the drive took six hours, Lila thought six hours later. Because it had taken every last minute of those hours to get her and Joel to a place where they were
almost
as comfortable together as they had been before.
Oh, who was she kidding? They’d never be that comfortable again. Not until she could acknowledge—to both herself and Joel—how she felt about him. The problem was that, even after thinking about it for days, and talking about it with Marnie for days, Lila still wasn’t sure. Even the six-hour drive hadn’t made things any clearer for her. It was wonderful to be with Joel. And when she was with him, she never wanted to be away from him. But she couldn’t envision a future with him, either. Nothing would come into focus for her. As hard as she’d tried to figure things out over the past few days, in a way they’d become even blurrier than they’d been before.
But six hours in the car had eased some of the tension that had been present at Joel’s house. Enough that they were able to at least pretend there was nothing unsettled between them. For now, Lila thought, that would have to be enough.
The Nesbitt estate was exactly the way she recalled it from her single visit there six months ago. Massive. Lavish. Excessive. Though, granted, at that time she’d been eluding the authorities, had arrived and left under cover of darkness and had been forced to limit her stay to about twenty minutes. She also hadn’t been dressed appropriately for high society, wearing, as she had been that night, the oversize uniform of a security guard she’d coldcocked and half a pair of handcuffs. So she hadn’t really had the chance to appreciate the full effect of the place. Now as Joel steered her car up the long and winding road that was the Nesbitt driveway, she took her time to enjoy the view. And the phrase that leaped first and foremost into her mind as she surveyed the house and grounds was
Holy crap.
The Nesbitt home probably wasn’t that much different from any number of other East Hampton estates, but since Lila’s experience with such abodes was limited, she thought the house was amazing. Oliver had told her the place actually had a name—Cobble Court—and that it was worth a cool fifty million dollars. Which meant fifty mil was just a fraction of the wealth claimed by Desmond Nesbitt III, Oliver’s future father-in-law.
She grinned as she thought about Oliver marrying into such a family. True, the Sheridans were no slouches when it came to money, but this…This went beyond money. With this sort of wealth came the potential for global domination, and Oliver just didn’t seem like the type of guy who would be comfortable with such a thing.
Then again, his intended, the youngest offspring of Desmond and Felicia Nesbitt, wasn’t much the type for such a thing, either, even having grown up in the lap of this sort of luxury. Or rather, this particular lap of luxury. It was just one of many things Lila knew Oliver loved about the woman, even if Lila had found Avery to be…oh, a bit neurotic. At least, she had been six months ago when Lila met her, a skinny, bespectacled computer geek who was confined to her home by agoraphobia and crushing panic attacks that assailed her whenever she tried to leave.
Oliver, however, had told Lila just a few days ago—when she’d called him to tell him she was leaving OPUS—that Avery had come a long way since November. Her agoraphobia was under better control, and she was actually able to make trips from the city to her parents’ estate now without loading up on scotch first. And she and Oliver were able to go out within the city from time to time, to plays or restaurants in venues that were small and dark and fairly sparsely populated.
It was a huge accomplishment for a woman who’d spent years holed up in a Central Park condo, virtually never leaving it. And Avery, Lila knew, credited Oliver’s entry into her life as being responsible for the majority of her progress. Then again, Oliver had come a long way, too, since Avery had entered his life. He’d been on the road to becoming a bitter, hardened tight ass before he met her. She’d opened him up a lot, had put something back into his life that had been missing for a long time. In a way, Lila supposed, Avery and Oliver had saved each other from lives that would have otherwise been empty and hollow and sad.
“Holy crap,” Joel said from the driver’s seat as the house grew larger the closer they came. “There really are people in the world who live this way?”
“What?” Lila asked, gesturing toward the palatial home. “Haven’t you been to dozens of parties at places like this?”
He shook his head. “My family has money, sure, but…” He eased up on the gas and slowed the car, as if they were approaching some holy shrine that commanded obeisance. “But not like this. This goes beyond rich. This is that top one percent of the country’s population that claims ninety-nine percent of its wealth.”
“I always thought that was one of those urban legends.”
“This place would confirm it as fact, I think.”
Lila couldn’t argue. The massive Tudor mansion looked like something from a Brontë novel, its beveled glass windows sparkling like diamonds in the midafternoon sun. The lawn rolled seemingly for miles, the kind of flawless green that comes only with a full-time gardener and chemical warfare on the weeds. Beyond the house lay a long ribbon of private beach fronting a wide pond, and there were doubtless views of the ocean beyond that from the upper floors in back. It was out back, near the water, that the double wedding of the Misses Avery and Carly Nesbitt would be taking place. Though had Mother Nature had the temerity to be uncooperative today, the festivities could have been moved inside fairly easily, along with the five hundred guests, because the house could have comfortably accommodated the United Arab Emirates.
Fortunately, Mother Nature knew better, and the blue May sky was streaked with gauzy white clouds, the sun glittering above it all like a newly minted coin.
Joel urged the accelerator toward the floor again, and the car began to pick up speed. “And here I was worried we might be crowding them by accepting their invitation to spend the night at the house.”
Lila laughed at that. “Are you kidding? I think they’re giving us our own wing.”
And she couldn’t help thinking as she said it that that was good, because she was hoping the night ahead would be a noisy one. And not just in terms of the wedding reception, either.
Okay, so maybe the tension between them was easing more than she realized. They—or, at least, she—still had a way to go.
“Come on,” she said softly, smiling at him, “we don’t want to be late. I am, after all, the best man.”
He smiled back. “The best woman, too.”
There was, of course, no way they would be late. The wedding was still hours away. But Lila wanted to enjoy every moment. She’d never been in a wedding before. Hell, she’d never been
to
a wedding before. She honestly had no idea what to expect, save the few dramatized weddings she’d seen in movies and on TV. And she really, really, really hoped that Oliver and Avery’s didn’t turn out like one of those. Especially the one on
Dynasty.
Then again, just a shot in the dark, but probably the Nesbitts knew better than to invite anyone from Moldavia.
Of course, it wasn’t just Oliver and Avery’s wedding. Avery’s sister Carly was getting married today, too, to Tanner Gillespie, the man who had been partnered with Oliver while Lila was busy being a fugitive from justice. And as odd a couple as she thought Avery and Oliver were, from what Lila had gathered of the second couple via her conversations with Oliver, Carly and Tanner were even less suited to each other.
She was able to see for herself, since it was the latter couple Lila and Joel encountered first, within moments of the elegant Nesbitt butler inviting them into the elegant Nesbitt foyer of the elegant Nesbitt estate. Never had Lila felt more
in
elegant than she did when she saw the elegant Nesbitt employee dressed in black tie and tails. Or, at least, something that sort of looked like black tie and tails. Only without the tails. And the tie was more charcoal. Joel seemed to feel the same way, because he suddenly ran a hand over his travel-rumpled clothing. Lila had started to mimic his action when an ungodly outburst from somewhere beyond—like maybe hell—halted her hand.
“Tanner!” something sounding vaguely human—though not quite female—screeched from somewhere deep within the bowels of the house. “What color is this?”
There was a soft reply that Lila couldn’t hear, followed by a retort that was more than clear. “It is
not
petal-pink. It’s almost apricot, or my name isn’t Carly Nesbitt. And the roses are supposed to be petal-pink.
Not
almost apricot!”
“Excuse me, Miss Moreau and Mr. Faraday,” the butler, who’d introduced himself as Jensen, said as he did a little half-bow thing. “There appears to be a problem in the parlor.”
Then without awaiting a reply—which Lila wasn’t sure, but probably wasn’t proper butler protocol—he spun around and made his way toward the screeching. Lila and Joel exchanged a glance, smiled at each other and, it went without saying, followed him. They arrived in a room furnished in a half dozen shades of blue, with accents of ivory, and not another lick of color. Except for lots and lots of flowers that, Lila had to admit, looked more apricot than they did pink. Even the woman standing at the center of the room wore a white robe and had her hair wrapped in a white towel.
“She’s right,” Joel leaned in and whispered in Lila’s ear. “Definitely apricot. Or my name isn’t Joel Faraday.”
The woman—who had to be Carly Nesbitt, Lila thought—snapped her head up to look at them and immediately narrowed her eyes.
“Damn,” Joel muttered, straightening. “Busted. She’s got good ears.”
“Of course I have good ears,” Carly said, dropping her hands onto her waist. “I’m a Nesbitt. Who the hell are you?” But before either Lila or Joel could reply, she made a not-so-soft tsking noise and said, “Oh. Right. Oliver’s partner. Lila, right? Nice to meet you, heard so much about you. Blah blah blah. Now back to my problems.” With the requisite pleasantries concluded, she did indeed go back to her harping about the roses.
“Carly.”
The name was uttered softly from the opposite side of the room, and only then did Lila realize there was another person present besides her, Joel, the butler, Carly and Carly’s ego. The man was dressed in faded jeans and an equally faded chambray work shirt, which, coupled with his pale blond hair, was in keeping with the room’s decor. No wonder Lila had missed him. Although, looking at him now, she was surprised she had. And not just because she was Lila Moreau, ex-überspy. But because the guy—who had to be Tanner Gillespie—was gorgeous. Not gorgeous like Joel, mind you, but extremely attractive in a boyish, all-American kind of way.
“The roses will be fine,” he said, his gaze never leaving his fiancée’s. “You’re wearing white, remember?” He flashed her a grin. “Not that you’re entitled.” A soft sound of outrage escaped Carly, and she opened her mouth to say only God knew what, but Tanner continued before she had a chance. “White goes with anything.”
He pushed himself away from the wall and strode across the room. His eyes never left Carly, and she seemed to be completely spellbound by him, because she stood there silently watching his approach. He stopped only when his body was flush against hers, then bent his head to kiss her in a slow, openmouthed, full-tongued kiss, even though there were others looking on.
Then he pulled back and continued to look at her. “Besides, sweetheart,” he said, “you’re so beautiful, nobody’s going to be looking at the flowers.”
Damn, Lila thought. He was
good.
“Damn,” Joel said softly. “He’s
good.
”
“Tanner Gillespie,” Tanner said then, still looking at Carly, but obviously talking to Lila and Joel. “Nice to finally meet you, Lila. Heard a lot about you from Oliver. Heard even more through the OPUS grapevine.”
“Uh, nice to meet you, too,” Lila replied.
“Oliver and Avery are out back,” he told them, still looking at his intended. “Not that I’m trying to get rid of you or anything. But my fiancée and I have something we need to, ah, discuss right now. In private.”
Yeah, and Lila would just bet it wasn’t the color of the roses.
“I’ll take you to Miss Avery and her intended,” Jensen offered, clearly realizing his services were no longer necessary. Tanner obviously had everything—i.e., Carly Nesbitt—under control.
Lila and Joel followed the butler down a hallway that was roughly the same length as Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors, passed an endless assortment of rooms, each color-coded in a different—but monochromatic—way than the one preceding it. Finally they arrived in what Lila supposed was a garden room or something, because one entire wall was glass and looked out onto the lush and inescapably elegant Nesbitt gardens—all eight billion acres of them—behind the house. The room itself was crowded with potted trees and ferns and big leafy things she couldn’t begin to identify, and furnished with the sort of furniture that looked as if it was supposed to be outside, but which probably cost more than all the bamboo in China.
The gardens, clearly, would be where the dual nuptials took place, since a sea of folding white chairs had been set up for as far as the eye could see. At the farthest reaches of the seating was a white pavilion of sorts, and even from this distance Lila could see that it was encrusted with—well, there was no denying it—apricot roses. On the nearest side of the seating, however, stood two people with their backs to Joel and Lila, whom Lila hadn’t seen for some time. Her partner Oliver and the woman with whom he was about to join his life forever.
Forever.
She waited for the ominous boom of thunder and the violent crash of waves that should have accompanied the word. Strangely, it instead evoked images of peaceful sunsets and tranquil beaches. No matter what happened in the future, Lila thought, Oliver would always have Avery there with him. Be it joyful celebration or grievous loss, he would have a companion to share it all. So maybe in that way,
forever
wasn’t such a bad deal.