Dear God, what was he going to do about Lilly, anyway?
What a miserable way to end a perfectly bad Friday!
“NO, I DIDN’T KNOW he owned the newspaper here. Do you think I would have accepted the job if I’d known there was a chance I’d run into him?” Lilly paced barefooted across the black-and-white-checkered linoleum floor in the circa 1935 kitchen, scrunching her cell phone to her ear and shaking a bottle of apple juice. “Sure, I saw the name on my docket, but it’s a pretty common name, you’ll have to admit, so I didn’t think much about it. I mean, who would have ever guessed that Mike Collier—the Mike Collier…my Mike Collier—would end up at a newspaper here in Whittier? The town’s what? Fifty thousand people, tops? The Mike I’ve known and despised would have never settled in a place like this. Not enough people here to railroad, not enough action or sensationalism, which is what he thrives on.”
“So are you gonna stay?” Rachel Perkins asked. “Even with Mike there?” Rachel was Lilly’s best friend, the one she’d met on the first day of first grade and spent some part of almost every day with, in one way or another, ever since. “And if you do stay, am I gonna have to come to Whittier to make sure you don’t you-know-what again with Mike? Because you know how you are about him.” She laughed. “And I know how you are about him even if you won’t admit it, which you won’t. And I’m betting doing you-know-what with you-know-who has been on your mind a time or two already. Hasn’t it?”
“No,” Lilly snapped. She opened the fridge and pulled out a bowl of last night’s leftover tuna noodle casserole and sniffed it just to be sure. “How I used to be isn’t how I am now. The first time between Mike and me was, well…” She popped the casserole in the microwave oven and set the timer for a minute. “Lust,” she admitted. “I was twenty-two and stupid, and he was twenty-four and convincing.”
“Convincing, Lil? You mean drop-dead, don’t you? ’Cause he was, and you almost did drop dead every time he looked at you. Remember? And I’m betting he still is drop-dead, maybe even more than he used to be. Is he?”
“Well, he was pretty cute, and I suppose you could say he still is, in an older sort of way,” Lilly admitted grudgingly. Pretty cute, pretty sexy—actually the sexiest thing she’d ever met in her life. Then and now. And back then all he’d had to do was crook his finger and she’d gone running. Good thing she’d taken off those track shoes the second time they’d…Yeah, yeah. Another big mistake, second time around. But the shoes were off now for sure.
“Pretty cute?” Rachel asked. “It’s pheromones, Lil. He emits them and you can’t control yourself. You just sniff them right in, you know that. And if you ask me, you always liked sniffing them in,” she said. “And yeah, I know it wasn’t love, at least that’s what you told me a billion times. But if it wasn’t love, it was certainly something like it, and I voted for love back then. Still do.”
The microwave dinged and Lilly popped open the door. Her leftovers were steamy, so she let them sit while she trudged over to the fridge for…She opened the door, looked for and found the rest of a salad left over from the night before. If it wasn’t wilted beyond recognition, it would suffice as the remainder of her dinner. If it was wilted, she’d eat crackers. “It was a mistake, okay? A mistake and I learned my lesson, especially the second time. I mean, we had a couple of drinks and yes, I suppose I was still attracted to him—then, not now. But that was a long time ago.”
“And you’ve gone out with how many men since a long time ago?”
Lilly plunked the salad down on the kitchen table and returned to the microwave for her tuna noodle. “Dozens,” she lied. “I just forgot to tell you.”
“Well, girlfriend, you don’t lie about that any better than you lie to yourself about Mike. And I’m betting you’re already getting that same old tingly thing for him like you used to.”
“Am not.”
“Sweetie, tell yourself anything you want. But I know the truth and I say go for it. Most people don’t get a third chance.”
“The only thing I’m going for is my tuna casserole, which is getting cold.”
Rachel issued a deliberate huff of futility into the phone, one meant to be heard across the fifty miles between them, and one Lilly knew well. Then she did it a second time for effect.
“Knock it off, Rach,” Lilly grumbled. “I’m fine, dandy. Impervious.”
“School doesn’t start for a couple weeks, Lil. I’ve got all my lesson plans together for the first semester, so I’m free to come chaperon you two, or nag or keep you out of the line of his pheromones, if that’s what you intend on doing.”
“I don’t need you to chaperon, or nag,” Lilly stated flatly. “I’m fine.”
“I’d give you my opinion of what you really are, but you’d hang up. So I’m going to shut up and let you go eat. Just watch out for the pheromones, if that’s what you really want, and those are my last words on the subject of Mike Collier. Now I’m going to sit in a dark corner and wonder why I don’t have somebody in my life who’s as crazy about me as he is about you.” Before Lilly had a chance at a comeback, Rachel had clicked off.
Lilly’s casserole was barely warm by the time she got around to it, and as she speared a chunk of celery, she punched into her voice mail. “This is your mother—” as if she didn’t recognize her mother’s voice “—calling to remind you not to forget to send something for Aunt Mary’s birthday next week. Kisses, sweetie.” Beep. “If you’re in the market for replacement windows, call—” Beep. “Lilly, how about stopping by Saturday evening for drinks and hors d’oeuvres. I’m having a few people over around seven.” That from Ezra Kessler, her former law school professor and the person who’d recommended her for the pro tem job. Beep. Then a message from…no, not Mike! “Look, Lilly. I need to see you…need to see you…need to see you.…” She listened to it, then listened again. And the third time she listened her appetite quit, so she sat the bowl of casserole down on the floor for Sherlock, her basset hound.
In spite of the doughy lump of dread shaping in her stomach, Lilly’s heart skipped a beat. Headache time…need an aspirin and…She hit the redial button on her phone. “Rach, help!
3
Just when she was finally dozing off from Friday night—Saturday morning!
IT WAS BRIGHT AND EARLY Saturday morning, just a little after seven, when Lilly, still bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained, stumbled to the front door and threw it open, only to be greeted by Mayor Lowell Tannenbaum waving a newspaper at her. He was tapping his left size-thirteen frantically on the concrete, holding the headlines straight out in front of him so she couldn’t see his face. But she knew it was him from the overall testy disposition circling around him like a swarm of hungry mosquitoes. “I think we could have a real problem here, Judge Malloy,” he screeched from behind the newspaper.
He could have started off with a friendly little hello, Lilly thought, or “Excuse me for barging in at this ungodly hour.” Or “I’ve brought you a cup of Starbucks to drink as we go over a serious problem.” That one would have been her choice. But no. He was straight to the point, snarling and snapping like a churlish Chihuahua. On the bright side, that did clear the fuzz right out of her brain.
“Just look at the headlines about—” his whole body shook in rumbling fury “—about what you’ve done.”
Lilly did look, not surprised about what she saw. Journalist Jailed For Illegal Parking. “So I made the headlines.” She yawned. She’d expected to. She was dealing with Mike Collier, after all. This was his norm. Not making headlines would have been the unexpected. “What’s the problem?” Other than the fact that she wasn’t ardently engaged in her every Saturday morning Starbucks fix.
“Read on,” the mayor snapped, shaking the paper.