Once More, At Midnight

Gorgeous, Lilah amended her first impression, but thick as a post. “Nooo, I mean Ernie the owner,” she clarified, aiming her thumb over her shoulder. “The one whose name is on the sign out front.”

For a long moment, the girl gazed at Lilah with a little furrow between her dark eyebrows. “I didn’t know there was a real Ernie. I thought it was just a name. You know, like Burger King.”

“You mean, like Carl’s Junior?”

“Is he real, too?”

“I think so. Anyway, I know Ernie is real, so is he around? In the back, perhaps?”

Suddenly the furrow cleared. “Oh, yeah, the owner’s in back.” A bell dinged in the kitchen. “That’s my order. I’ve gotta go. Back in a sec.” She disappeared before Lilah could remind her to send Ernie out.

Sighing, Lilah turned and walked to the wall of publicity photos Ernie had hung by the front door. Gazing idly at the pictures while she waited, she leaned forward suddenly as she recognized the first picture she’d ever sent home. This one wasn’t a headshot; it was a reprint of a photo taken on the set of the only movie she’d ever done: Attack Girls From Planet Venus. The snapshot showed her and several other wanna-be starlets in scanty, strategically ripped silver attire. Lilah stood on the far right. Beneath her likeness she had written To Ernie, I’ll always love your milk shakes best. XOXO, Lilah. Then she’d drawn a star instead of her last name.

Lilah shook her head. She didn’t draw stars anymore. No one ever asked for her autograph, anyway.

“I didn’t see that movie. The locals tell me it’s a classic.”

The deep voice, low and slow and sardonic, made Lilah’s heart jump to her throat. She whirled around to find Gus standing mere inches behind her. Looming several inches taller and wider than she, he gazed over her head at the photograph then down again at her and raised an eyebrow with perfect irony.

“Was there a sequel?”

His presence seemed to surround Lilah, to press in on her, though there was a good foot and a half of air between them.

She stood dry-mouthed and thick-tongued as Gus’s prairie-winter eyes lowered slowly from the photo to her face. Not sure what to expect from him, she felt a thin, sharp stab of anxiety as their gazes met and held. In all the years she’d known him, she had never stood this close without feeling the almost electric energy that pulsed between them. It had been there ever since they’d both hit puberty. Today was no different.

When she’d pictured him over the years—and she’d be lying through her teeth to claim that she hadn’t—she had sometimes imagined him still in love with her and unable to mask the longing and youthful hunger that smoldered in his gaze. Once upon a time being with Gus had made her feel more special than she’d felt anyplace else.

Then there were the times in the past few years when Lilah could not picture Gus except as he’d looked the last time she saw him—with his eyes spitting sparks of fury and bitterness that had burned her soul.

Today if his eyes were a true indication of his feelings, he was long past the fury and resentment. Past the adolescent lust, too. In front of her was a man whose emotions were under his own control, and he looked at her with decided neutrality.

“The movie,” he murmured, nudging her focus. “Was there ever a sequel?”

“I hope not.”

He laughed at that. Easily. It was a sound she had not heard often from him. Even in their happiest moments and even though they’d almost always been alone together, away from the townspeople he’d mistrusted, Gus had rarely laughed. She remembered wanting him to, wanting to be the one to elicit a guffaw or two. Though she’d rarely been successful, she had challenged his control in other ways….

“So, what brings you back to town, Lilah?” The rich baritone, much deeper than she recalled, wrapped around her name. “Taking a break from the bright lights and big city?”

She looked for sarcasm and found none, but felt embarrassed nonetheless. Gus had no way of knowing that the brightest light she’d worked under in years was the plate warmer at Jerry’s Deli. “My family is here,” she said, striving for a matter-of-fact inflection, but to her own ears she sounded defensive. “I’ve been back many times over the years. Have you?”

She already knew the answer to that question, of course. She’d looked for him, listened for some clue to his whereabouts on most of those early visits home. But the only person in town who had ever kept tabs on Gus had been Uncle Harm, and he’d never spoken of Gus again after the time he’d called California to tell Lilah that Gus had been sentenced to one year in prison.

“My family left the area years ago,” Gus told her dispassionately. “I had no reason to come back until recently.”

No reason. Meaning she had not been a good enough reason. Lilah had always wondered if he’d ever looked her up.

Guess now I have an answer. Unwillingly, she felt hurt. As badly as they’d ended, she’d Googled him on the Internet lots of times, always warning herself to do nothing if his name came up, but never quite certain how she would react.

“Why are you back in town?” she asked. In high school, nine-tenths of their conversations had centered not on if but rather on when they planned to make their permanent escapes.

“I’m building my home and business here.”

“You’re going to stay…in Kalamoose?” Surprise teemed with the ramifications this news posed, and Lilah felt dizzy.

God really does have a sense of humor.

With her mind a jumble of oh, no’s and what now’s, Lilah felt an almost desperate desire to rush back to the table, tell Bree they were going to dine on Sara’s Cap’n Crunch after all and get the heck out of here so she could think.

Gus did weird things to her common sense—like obliterate it, entirely. It didn’t matter how wrong they were for each other, how overcomplicated and flat-out painful her life had become because she hadn’t been able to keep her adolescent hands off him; he was like a drug—she was forever yearning for him, even when her mind should have been on something, or perhaps somebody, else.

She forced herself to admit, albeit silently, that for the past twelve years she had unconsciously pasted Gus’s countenance over the face of every man to whom she’d tried to get close. She’d had other lovers, two with whom she’d honestly tried to make a relationship work. But she had never been able to give herself wholly, and she had not understood why…until the night she’d realized that the arms she’d felt holding her, the hands she’d imagined caressing her, belonged to Gus and not to the man she was actually with. Bone-deep loneliness had dogged her for years; in that moment she’d understood why—and why the embrace of a lover had been no defense against it.

The best, the absolute wisest thing Lilah could do for herself would be to stay out of Gus’s sight line. She had a life—two lives now—to put in order. Nothing good would come of continued contact with a man whose very presence had always ruined her ability to think.

She’d made too many mistakes in her relationship with Gus to believe they could pick up where they’d left off, and standing so close to him now, thinking things she prayed her face would not reveal, Lilah felt a traitorous bloom of red creep up her neck. She was trying to think of a polite way to excuse herself, to buy a little time so she could regroup before she saw him again, when he surprised her once more.

“I’m planning a large party in September,” he said smoothly. It was a comment so utterly uncharacteristic of him, Lilah wasn’t sure she heard correctly. In high school, he had never gone to a party, much less thrown one.

Now he gazed down at the girl who used to be his party and said with detached ease, “If you’re here in the fall, be sure to drop by and help us celebrate.”

September. Two months away. Lilah was no longer certain she should plan to stay in Kalamoose two weeks much less two months. Between her eyebrows, her head began to throb.

Say something, a voice inside urged. With her tongue feeling too thick to fit her mouth, she forced herself to ask, “What will you be celebrating?”

A satisfied smile crawled leisurely across Gus’s handsome face. He looked every inch the contented man and every inch a success—proof that America was still the land of self-made men and second chances—when he answered.

“My marriage.”

Whomp. Satisfaction hit Gus like a sock to the solar plexus. Confirmation, validation…retaliation. You name it, he felt it. And it felt fine.

He’d waited twelve years to see Lilah Owens swallow a bite, just a bite, of the shock and pain she’d fed him. The fact that their relationship was over a decade old and that her choices then could be blamed on youth and immaturity didn’t appease his anger. He was surprised the resentment still burned so brightly all these years later.

He’d had a counselor once—in prison—who had helped him work on the concepts of forgiveness and letting go. After his initial resistance to everything the man had to say, Gus had learned a few things. Unfortunately none of the lessons he’d taken with him managed to completely obliterate his resentment. Nonetheless, even he was surprised by the degree of gratification he felt when Lilah registered the news that he was going to be married.

First, shock sparked in the gray-green eyes. Then the arched golden eyebrows pinched as if the news disturbed her. Gus watched her and had to work hard to keep his own expression under control when jealousy streaked across her face, briefly but unmistakably. He hadn’t known he could still affect her. God help him, but the knowledge was rewarding.

Still beautiful, Lilah was close to thirty. One of the single secretaries at his office in Chicago had celebrated her thirtieth birthday on a Friday and by Monday had begun reacting to every marriage announcement with near suicidal grief. Perhaps Lilah was the same.

He’d already noted her bare ring finger. Some women chose not to wear a wedding ring, but he doubted Lilah Owens would be one of them. He imagined she would wear a rock the size of Gibraltar. She had never been quiet, never blended in. That had been his goal in school: to be so unremarkable that no one would pay attention to the son of the least respectable family in town.

He’d once thought Lilah wanted to keep their relationship a secret because, like him, she’d thought it was a special thing, too important to expose to the judgments of a bigoted town. He’d trusted her, one hundred percent.

Unbidden came the memory of the nights he’d lain awake in the barn where he’d often slept as a kid, gazing through the dark at the bare rafters and planning how to buy Lilah an engagement ring. He’d spent hours wondering if a ruby might be less expensive than a diamond, wondering how to get the money and where to buy a gem. In retrospect, nothing more than a fantasy for a kid who didn’t have a mattress to sleep on.

He could buy Lilah a hundred rings now, he thought as he stared at her, a blood-red, passionate ruby or a diamond whose white brilliance set it forever apart from the pale. But now it didn’t matter, not for her.

Schooling his features to reflect dispassion, he said, “What can I do for you, Lilah?”

“C-congratulations.”

They spoke over each other then hesitated and did it again.

“Thank you,” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“Nikki said you asked to speak to me,” Gus said. “What about?”

Lilah looked genuinely confused. “Nikki?” She glanced to the dining room. “The waitress?” Shaking her head, she corrected, “I asked to speak with Ernie.”

Gus scratched his temple and tried to appreciate the irony. So Lilah hadn’t sought him out? And here he’d been enjoying the indecency of power.

“Nikki said you wanted to speak to the owner,” he told her, putting two and two together for both of them. “She obviously thought you meant me. I bought the diner from Ernie a month ago.” This time he tried to keep the pride and challenge out of his voice. It finally began to sink in that standing here, hoping to inspire envy with news of his new home and wife-to-be was not only immature, it was hardly fair to his fiancée.

“If you need to speak with Ernie,” he said with a customer-service politeness he had seldom exercised, “I’m sure we can help with that.”

Lilah felt her heart lurch, indecisive and arrhythmic. She wasn’t sure her exhausted body could take any more surprises than she’d already had today. “This is your business? The diner? I thought the gas station—”

“Also mine.”

She tried to smile, to look as if she were pleased, but her face felt stiff, as if she’d overdosed on BOTOX. She knew she should be happy for Gus; he had apparently succeeded in the areas of life she had somehow managed to bungle—career and romance. But every new nugget of information he revealed complicated her situation more and more. Rather than being happy, she felt more scared, more lost, more alone by the second.

“Do you have Ernie’s home number?” Gus broke into her thoughts. “I’m sure he’d enjoy hearing from you,” Gus said with all the personalization of a cruise director pairing people up for a square-dance class. “Or if you prefer, he comes in for breakfast most mornings. You could catch him then.”

And risk seeing Gus again before she had a chance to think…or take a large valium? “That’s not necessary. Thanks, anyway. I only stopped in to…to give him this.” She thrust the wrapped publicity photo out to Gus. “It’s more for the diner. It’s another photo. You’re welcome to it.” She made a face. “Or if you’re going to change the decor, perhaps you could pass it to Ernie next time you see him.”

She began to back up toward the booth where she’d left Bree. So much for a job at the only restaurant in town. Lilah decided swiftly and definitively that she’d made a mistake—another one—by coming home. Bree didn’t like it here, anyway…not that Bree was going to like any place without Grace.

“I’ve got to get back to my—” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “To…Bree.”

Instantly, Gus’s eyes shifted to the booth where Bree sat with her head still bent over her book. Lilah cursed herself for calling attention to the girl. Pointing her out would only invite questions and more conversation.

“Well, good to see you again, Gus,” she said, trying hard to convey the dispassion he seemed able to portray quite easily. “Best of luck with everything.”

To underscore her nonchalance, she managed a classic hair flip when she turned away. The one she’d perfected in high school. The flip that said I’m confident, I’m free, nothin’s botherin’me. To reinforce the image, she made herself swing around one last time, flashing a smile she didn’t feel. “Is the chicken-fried steak still the best in North Dakota?”

Gus nodded. “Everything’s the same.”

Not hardly, Lilah thought, but she nodded, turned and walked back to the booth, where she intended to encourage Sabrina to eat without chewing so they could get the hell out of here.

Chapter Four

“Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four…”

Lilah pushed coins across the scarred butcher-block table in Sara’s kitchen. She counted all the way to forty-eight dollars, looked at the money sitting in front of her and slumped until her cheek rested on the old pine.

The heavy thump of her heart and steady march of black hands across a cow-shaped kitchen clock provided the only background music to the impending disaster that had become her life.

It was ten minutes to 12:00 a.m. Between sips of hot cocoa laced with Irish Crème Liqueur, Lilah had counted and recounted every crumpled dollar bill and every sticky piece of change she’d scrounged from the bottom of her purse. She’d have to make another with-drawal from her checking account soon.

Groaning, she pounded a fist on the table—just once, because she was exhausted.

When Grace was sick, Lilah had asked her coworkers to sub for her so many times that eventually the manager had hired someone else. Then there had been the enticing dinners she had bought from the gourmet market to tempt Grace to eat, and the aromatherapy candles and food supplements and Chinese herbal remedies and organic potions and all the other ways Lilah had fought to keep Grace alive, to pretend they actually had some power in an ultimately powerless position.

Lilah’s bank account had dwindled, and she hadn’t been able to catch up. Still, she would learn how to cook cardboard boxes before she’d spend what was left of Grace’s savings. She’d counted on getting a job at Ernie’s. Jobs were not plentiful in rural North Dakota.

“I’m screwed. I’m just screwed,” she said, shaking her head as she pushed away from the kitchen table.

She’d gone to bed around nine—before, thank goodness, Sara had come home from her final patrol of the night. Lilah simply hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone, not until she’d had at least a little rest and could make some sense of her situation. Unfortunately, she hadn’t slept a wink, and her situation wasn’t looking any more sensible at 12:00 a.m. than it had when she’d gotten home from the diner.

Heaving her exhausted body out of the chair, she shuffled to the pantry, wondering if Sara had any Scooter Pies. May as well ditch the diet she’d been on for the past twelve years. Her career was dead, her romantic life was a non-issue, and when everyone discovered the lie she had been living with for more than a decade, it was possible that no one, not even her own sisters, would want to speak to her.

Settling for a handful of Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries, she ate over the sink, listening to her teeth grind the cereal and watching pink Crunch Berry crumbs dapple the scratched porcelain basin. When she finished, she stared through the window at the high half moon. She’d come home for comfort.

She’d come home hoping that her sisters—and she figured Nettie was her best bet—would see that taking care of Bree was wearing her nerves down to nubs. Look at you, her baby sister would say, you’re exhausted. This is too much for someone who is not used to children. Let me help.

The thought that had brought transient relief on the drive to North Dakota now turned the cereal sour in her stomach.

Standing still, Lilah covered her face with her hands. She wasn’t the one who had died, wasn’t the one who had slipped unwillingly away from a daughter she’d raised and nurtured and needed like a star needs the night to shine. Yet here she was, filled with worry, feeling sorry for herself and wanting someone to rescue her.

When she saw Gus at the restaurant and heard that he was building a home and a business in Kalamoose, there had been a part of her that thought—for a split second—that perhaps fate had decided they were not through after all. Perhaps that angry boy who had been all wrong for her at seventeen, but whom she had never been able to forget, was going to be her knight in shining armor now that they were both adults.

Maybe, she’d thought before he’d mentioned a fiancée, everything that’s happened was supposed to bring us together again.

Turning on the faucet, Lilah splashed her face with cold water. “You have become a poor excuse for a woman with a brain,” she muttered.

Twisting the squeaky knob again and drying her hands on the dishtowel Sara left draped over the faucet, Lilah braced her arms against the sink and hung her head. Gus Hoffman had spent the past twelve years creating a life that would give him contentment while she had morphed from a girl who had planned to conquer the world into a woman who wished someone would rescue her.

Pathetic.

All night she’d been fighting the memory of his expression as he told her he was getting married. He’d looked proud, but more importantly, satisfied. In the past, albeit the distant past, he had looked that way only when he was with her.

Hot and restless, she pulled at the neck of her tank top then reached over the sink to open the window and let in some air. Grunting, she pushed ineffectively at the frame until she realized that Sara had installed some funky new lock.

Dang Sara and her security measures. This is Kalamoose, not freaking L.A.

The thought had barely formed in her brain when she saw a shadow through the window. The shadow of a person standing in their yard.

At 12:00 a.m.

Lilah’s first impulse was to yell for her sister, but she didn’t want to alarm Bree, and she felt a sudden surge of adrenaline that told her to fight, not flee. She lived in Los Angeles, for crying out loud; she’d had her car broken into three times. She could deal with one small-town Peeping Tom.

Racing barefoot to the kitchen door, she grabbed the battered baseball bat that had stood sentinel for years—ever since Sara had placed it there to threaten the raccoons that routinely made a mess of their garbage cans.

Dousing the lights, Lilah peeked through the curtain covering the kitchen door window. The helpful moon bathed the person in the yard in an eerie glow, outlining the silhouette of a rather large man. Clearly, he’d seen her through the window. Now that she’d turned off the lights, he appeared to be waiting, though for what she had no idea. He stood stock-still, neither approaching the house nor turning to leave before he was caught.

The arrogance, Lilah thought and then immediately was struck by a rush of déjà vu so strong she felt transported to another time. Another time…but the very same place.

Unlatching Sara’s collection of dead bolts, she turned the knob on the kitchen door and stepped outside. Cool air bathed her bare legs and whispered softly around her shoulders and arms. Still clutching the bat, she shivered.

I know this moment. She’d lived it thirteen summers ago, though without the baseball bat that time. Just sixteen, awake with the thrill of secret love, she had flown outside under the light of this very moon to her lover’s arms. She recognized him now, thought he’d thrown no stones at her window and showed no intention of running eagerly across the lawn to meet her halfway.

Tonight Gus merely watched her as she descended the porch steps and walked toward him slowly, feeling vaguely as if she’d fallen asleep at the table and was dreaming this whole thing.

She walked until she saw his face clearly, stopping a few feet away.

His eyes roamed down her body, taking in the loose, mussed hair, sleeveless nightshirt, bare legs. Then his gaze wandered up again while hers traveled over a muscular frame dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. They studied each other unabashedly, like naked lovers viewing their partners for the first time.

She felt the old heady recklessness that had pumped her full of life every time Gus met her at night—despite rules, despite curfews, despite being too young to deal with any consequences. The struggle to suppress the feeling seemed, rather, to inflame them more. For a moment, she wanted to forget everything, every excellent reason for keeping her distance from him now, and simply fall into a wordless kiss.

The idea that she might be willing to ignore the fact that he had a fiancée repulsed her. She had been a lot of things—selfish, dishonest, shallow at times—but she had never yet been an adulteress.

“You’re trespassing,” she informed Gus in a voice roughened by suppressed emotion.

He glanced to the makeshift weapon in her hand. “You’ve got a bat and a sister who’s the sheriff—you want me gone, do something about it.”

“What are you doing here?”

A long moment passed before Gus answered. She wasn’t sure he was going to respond at all, but then he smiled, and in that second he looked like the old Gus—cocky, irreverent, bad.

“The same thing all ex-cons do, Lilah,” he said in a silky voice intended to travel no farther than her ears. He took three lazy steps toward her, and the glint in his eyes was positively sinful. “I’m returning to the scene of my crime.”