Second Time's the Charm

There was a message in there for her. Unrelated to Jon and Abraham Swartz.

“You think I’m trying to leave my past behind? I thought you approved of my move to Shelter Valley. You encouraged me to branch out on my own.”

Gayle’s blue eyes were filled with concern. “We did,” she said. “We do.”

“Papa?”

“Gayle and I fully support your move—and your career choice,” he said, his words coming slowly, as if he was choosing them carefully.

Gayle. It was what Kirk had called his father’s third wife. So that was what Lillie called her, too, although she’d always been closer to Gayle than to Kirk’s biological mother—Jerry’s first wife, who’d left him for a man richer than he was back when Jerry had been fresh out of college and starting his own PR firm.

“We thought you’d have found...someone...by now,” Gayle’s gaze was direct. And filled with love.

Shaking her head, Lillie looked between the two of them, her broccoli quiche and fruit untouched on her plate. “I don’t understand.” Either they thought the move to Shelter Valley had been a good decision, or they thought she was running away. It couldn’t be both.

Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she’d asked for this conversation. That she wanted—no, needed—their insight and perspective.

Everyone needed a sounding board.

“Your career choice, your location, isn’t the problem, Lil,” Jerry said. “It’s your lack of close relationships that concerns us.”

“You want me to take a lover?”

What did this have to do with Jon and Abraham? She’d asked them if they thought she was crossing a line getting involved with the Swartzes.

During the final months of her pregnancy, Lillie and the Hendersons had had many frank conversations. Gayle had been present during the birth.

Gayle’s smile was too knowing, but Lillie wasn’t sure what the older woman thought she knew.

“No, Lil, we don’t mean you should take a lover,” she said. “Unless you meet a man you’re in love with and want to sleep with, of course,” she added.

“We just want you to open your heart and let people in again,” Jerry said.

Oh.

As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. “Hearts break.”

“When you first came to us, your parents had only been gone for a year,” Jerry said. “You had a broken heart then.”

She remembered spending nights alone in her dorm room when she’d been so filled with pain that she’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to pull enough air into her lungs to sustain her until morning.

“But you were still you, Lil. A woman with a generous heart who has a special awareness of people and their needs. You’re very perceptive to other people’s feelings,” he added.

“Are you saying I’m no longer generous?”

Reaching across the table, Gayle covered Lillie’s hand. “We’re saying that while you’re busy giving every hour of your life to other people, you aren’t allowing yourself to get close to anyone,” she said.

“We were talking about Jon and Abraham Swartz. About whether or not I’d overstepped a professional boundary by making that absurd agreement with him—trading skill set for skill set. Letting him in my home...”

“And we’re telling you that isn’t even an issue, Lil,” Jerry said, more serious than she’d heard him in a long time. “What you’re doing for that man and his little boy is marvelous. Generous. It’s classic you, understanding that in order for him to accept your help he had to be able to give in kind. My worry is that you had to ask if you were overstepping. Are you really that afraid of letting anyone into your heart?”

“Jerry and I have been worried about you for a while,” Gayle said. “You’ve got a town full of friends, but you don’t let any of them into your heart. At least, not that you tell us about.”

“You two are in there.”

Jerry’s gaze softened, moistened, as he added his hand atop Gayle’s and hers on the table. “And you are first in ours, Lil. Don’t ever doubt that. But you need more than two old folks in your life. You need a partner who is worthy of you. Who will look out for you as much as you look out for him. I’m just worried that if he comes along, you won’t be able or ready to open your heart and let him in.”

Kirk had bolted her heart shut and thrown away the key.

But Papa and Gayle knew that. Lillie was at a loss for words. She’d accepted her lot in life. Had found a way to be happy.

And she didn’t want to screw it up by making a professional mistake from which it would be impossible to recover in a town as small and close-knit as Shelter Valley.

“Have you heard from that damned son of mine?” Jerry asked.

Kirk still worked for his father. But they didn’t socialize.

Or even chat much beyond clients and accounts. And Kirk dropping his son off to spend an occasional day with them.

“No,” Lillie assured him. She didn’t need Papa thinking he had to rake Kirk across the coals another time. It hurt Papa and served no purpose. “Of course not.”

A couple of years before, when Kirk had come to Lillie pressuring her for a change to their divorce decree that would give him more money, Jerry had given his son an ultimatum. If Kirk bothered Lillie again he would be cut off. Period. From the firm and from his inheritance.

“He left Leah,” Gayle said softly.

“I thought they were getting married.” Their son was five now—not that Kirk spent much quality time with the boy, according to Papa and Gayle.

Papa and Gayle did more with him the couple of times a month they saw him then Kirk appeared to.

“He said he didn’t love her enough to marry her.”

Kind of late to be figuring that out. Lillie counted her lucky stars that she’d gotten out before wasting all of the best years of her life with him.

She had to admit, she felt a small thrill of satisfaction, too. Did that mean Kirk really had loved her as much as he’d said he did? He had, after all, married her.

“Maybe if Leah hadn’t let him move in with her, if she hadn’t had his child without expecting anything in return, he would have married her,” she said, just to show Jerry and Gayle that she could speak rationally, unemotionally, about the man who’d ripped her apart at the seams during the darkest hours of her life. To show them that it didn’t matter to her a whit whether Kirk was with Leah, or Kayla or Marcie or anyone.

Jerry and Gayle were like parents to her.

Their son meant nothing.

Period.

CHAPTER SEVEN

BREAKFAST DISHES WERE done, bathroom cleaned—and Jon hadn’t cracked a book open because Abe hadn’t gone down for his nap.

And they had an appointment at Lillie’s that afternoon.