Carly Phillips - Cross My Heart

Back then Lilly hadn’t been concerned with the legalities or with the money since she knew it wasn’t hers until she turned twenty-one, as her uncle constantly reminded her. By then she’d had the beginnings of a life and enough inbred fear of her uncle to remain far away. She assumed the money had remained untouched and had been content to let it stay that way.

She swiped at the tears that had begun running down her face. Remembering her parents and all she’d lost was never easy, but recalling the time afterward caused her stomach to churn and the old anger and resentment to flare up. She’d gone from her parents’ princess to her uncle’s piece of property, something he could kick out of her own home on a whim.

That thought cemented her decision. Lacey didn’t need the money her parents had left her. After all, she’d lived without the extras for so long, she rarely thought about them now. But there was no way she wanted her bastard uncle to profit from her parents’ deaths. He’d run her father’s business into the ground shortly after taking over, and he’d claimed ownership of her childhood home. She wasn’t about to let him have anything more.

Lacey wasn’t vindictive by nature. She had a life here that she was proud of, one she’d worked hard to build and maintain, which had prompted her initial reluctance to return home with Ty. But the thought of her uncle enjoying anything more at her expense churned her stomach nearly as much as thinking about her uncle and her past.

Ty was right. She’d have to go home.

Lacey climbed out of bed and slipped on her favorite pair of slippers, a fuzzy pair that were soft enough to feel like an old friend. She headed to the kitchen for a midnight snack, tiptoeing on the way, careful not to wake Ty. Careful not to stop and watch him sleep and risk rousing warm feelings for a man she no longer knew, but one she wanted to know again.

She poured a glass of milk, pulled the Oreos out of the refrigerator and settled into the corner she jokingly called her kitchenette. In reality it was a small table at the end of the entry hall.

“Mind if I join you?” Ty asked, just as she dunked her first cookie into the cold milk.

Without waiting for a reply, he sat in the only other chair that fit around the table, Digger curling at his feet. Ty was shirtless, wearing only his partially zipped jeans, unsnapped at the waist. A low light glowed from the kitchen, casting them in shadows, but even in the darkness surrounding them, she could see enough to admire how broad his chest had become, how drop-dead sexy he was.

She ran her tongue over her suddenly dry lips. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither. Obviously.” She gestured to her midnight snack.

“So you resorted to your old standby, cookies and milk?”

She slowly lowered the Oreo onto the table. “You remember that?” He’d often caught her snacking in his mother’s kitchen late at night. That’s how comfortable she’d been in his childhood home, she thought.

“I remember lots of things about you,” he said in a husky voice.

“Such as?” she asked, her curiosity not the only thing that he aroused.

“Such as the fact that Oreo cookies are your comfort food. You like them cold and hard from the fridge even though you’re just going to dip them into milk and make them soggy. And you keep the cookie in the milk for about five seconds so it doesn’t get too soft. Like this.” While speaking, he reached out, snagged a fresh cookie, dipped it into the cold milk, then held it out for her to taste.

She opened her mouth and bit down, the cookie partially crumbling, partially melting in her mouth exactly the way she liked it. Her lips brushed over his fingertip, the accidental touch causing an unexpected rush of physical sensation to sweep over her.

She laughed, keeping things light, and wiped her mouth with a napkin, but what she felt was anything but funny. Her breasts grew heavy and a pulse-pounding awareness thudded through her veins along with a heaviness between her thighs. She managed to suppress what surely would have been an orgasmic-sounding groan. Because somehow her comfort food had turned erotic and sharing memories with an old friend had become something much more sensual.

From the reciprocal yet clouded look in his eyes, she doubted that had been his intent. He was holding himself back from her now and she missed the closeness they’d shared when they were kids and they didn’t think things through all that much.

There had been something special between them, something they’d never acted on, either because they’d been afraid to sever a friendship that represented the only stability in their young lives, or because neither quite knew what to do with what they were feeling. Maybe even back then, they’d subconsciously realized that sex alone wouldn’t be enough.

Although Lacey had to admit, at the moment, sex sounded awfully appealing. Still, they’d never had the chance to scratch the surface of that first love, leaving them emotionally wanting more. Leaving her wanting more. She never really knew how Ty had felt, whether he’d really liked her or whether he just enjoyed being her hero.

At least now they were adults, capable of making grown-up choices and dealing with the consequences, she thought. Consequences that for Lacey included Ty showing up when she had an unanswered marriage proposal from another man.

“Tell me about the time after you ‘disappeared’.” Ty spoke, his voice a welcome distraction from both her thoughts and her desires.

Apparently he didn’t intend to take things any further and she found herself feeling both disappointed and relieved at the same time. “Look around you. I’ve done okay.” More than okay, as her business proved.

But as she spoke, she realized this was the second time tonight she’d defended her small apartment and her life. For no good reason. Ty hadn’t belittled who and what she’d become. She wasn’t used to feeling defensive-usually, she was more than proud of all she’d accomplished.

Ty’s presence reminded her of the good and the bad things in her past and forced her to face how different her life had turned out than what she’d envisioned as a child. It wasn’t what her parents would have wanted, but given the reasons and the things she’d been through, Lacey felt sure they’d be proud, too. Which was just another reason Odd Jobs meant so much to her. It was something tangible she could point to that proved Lilly Dumont had survived.

Ty nodded. “You’ve done more than okay, but what I see now doesn’t tell me how you got here.”

She drew a deep breath. The past was something she preferred to keep there, but as her onetime coconspirator, Ty had a right to some answers. And just maybe, talking about it would help her release some of the pain she still held inside.

She glanced down at her intertwined hands, remembering the dark night with too much ease. “I walked for about half an hour and right outside of town, I met up with your friend. The one who’d stolen Uncle Marc’s car. We drove to a place far enough away where no one would recognize me. Then I took a bus to New York City.”

“Just like we planned.”

“Right.” But no one had planned beyond that. “I crashed on the bus and when we arrived, it was the next day. I had the small stash of money you and Hunter had given to me. I slept in a YWCA one night, a bus terminal another.”

He winced.

She ignored it and kept talking. “I washed dishes and I got by. Eventually I met someone who cleaned apartments. She worked for a Spanish woman who hired immigrant girls. By that time, my hands were rough enough from detergent and water, so somehow I convinced her I could handle the work. That pretty much saved my life because I’d run out of free or cheap places to sleep and it was getting harder and harder to duck the johns and pimps in the bus and train stations.”