“Am I interrupting something?” I ask as I land Nessa’s bag of sketches on the table. “Perhaps the most elaborate and frighteningly romantic former stepbrother reconciliation?”
Noah scowls, and his dimples press in. “He wishes. I thought you had an intruder, so I came over to make an arrest. I should have shot on sight.”
Everett lands his beer bottle on a coaster before heading my way and wrapping his arms around me, landing his warm lips over mine. He pulls back a notch, and if I didn’t know better, those day-glow blue peepers are smiling at me.
“See?” Greer screeches. “I told you so! Isn’t it something?”
“Hey?” Everett glances around. “Has she been here the entire time?”
Before I can answer, Pancake and Waffles come out in a processional as rose petals rise around them in their wake.
Noah picks up Waffles. “Shows what you know. These are boys. My boys.” Noah presses a kiss over Waffles’ forehead, and it warms my heart to no end. My cats are akin to my children, and I love how both Noah and Everett treat them as their own.
Both Everett and I know that he meant Greer. I suppose with his arms wrapped around me, he can still hear the dead.
“Both Max and Greer are present,” I whisper to Everett and wince as if I were unsure. “Is this the right time?” I say it lower than a whisper as I glance to Noah. I did tell Noah that I would tell him my secret as soon as the three of us were alone.
He glances back to Noah and shoots him the death rays as if he’d like to add another spook to the list.
“If that’s what you want, Lemon. I fully support you.”
Noah perks up. “What’s this? Have I inadvertently stumbled upon a breakup party?” Noah lifts a brow my way. “Say it’s so, Lottie. I’ll move us both to the north end of town and buy us a big house. We can forget all about this error in judgment.”
A deep rumble emits from Everett. “I wouldn’t question her judgment if I were you. But then, we make different moves. That’s why my arms are around her, and you’re holding a couple of boys.” He blinks a dry smile. “And a big house, huh? I suppose you’ll need it to store your surplus of women.”
“Oh stop, you two,” I say, taking Everett by the hand and leading him back to the sofa. “Noah, this isn’t how I envisioned this conversation happening, not with the candles and flowers and those roses, my God.” I turn to Everett and give his tie a tug my way. “Thank you. This is exceptionally beautiful,” I whisper. “This will just take a minute.” I nudge my head toward Noah.
Noah steps over and lands on the ottoman between Everett and me.
“What is it, Lot?” He looks resigned to the fact he’s crashing a very private party. “What will just take a minute?”
Just hearing him repeat my words guts me.
Greer pops up next to him. Half her body is through the floorboards, and it’s an unnerving sight. “Oh, Lottie, he looks heartbroken.”
Max takes a seat on the coffee table—typically a strictly verboten move, but considering he’s missing a corporal form, I’m pretty sure the damage will be minimal.
“Listen, Lottie”—Max leans in just as I thread my fingers with Everett’s so he can listen in on the conversation—“I think you should take it easy on the poor guy. I was here before you came home, and they may not have been having any kind of a reconciliation, but Noah poured his heart out to Everett. This guy is in deep, and it’s a bottomless pit where he can’t stop falling—falling for you, Lottie. Those were his words.”
Everett expels a hard breath as if he couldn’t contest the conversation.
“Oh, Noah”—his name comes out more of a whimper—“I don’t know what to say.”
His eyes trace out my hand conjoined with Everett’s. “That’s okay. I think I’m getting the picture.” He starts to rise from his seat.
“No, no”—I push him back down—“I think this is a good time to have the talk.”
“The talk?” Noah lifts his head as he looks from Everett to me. “What talk?”
“The birds and the bees,” Everett grumbles. “We’ll demonstrate for you.” He shakes his head. “Lemon’s secret. What else would it be?”
Noah’s eyes enlarge the size of golf balls. “Really?” He jerks forward as if he were about to have the framework for the universe laid out for him.
“Really?” both Greer and Max chime in unison.
“Yes, really,” I say, looking to the two of them.
Greer moans out her disapproval, “Lottie, think about this. Once you reveal your big fat secret, who knows where this will lead?”
“It won’t lead anywhere,” I whisper to her, and Noah shifts his torso over a notch as if he had fallen out of my line of vision.
“Okay”—he blinks into the thought—“so it won’t lead anywhere. Lottie, you have to know your secret is safe with me.”
Max chortles out a laugh. “Until he can use it against you.”
“He’s not using it against me,” I say incredulously to the saucy specter.
Noah glances to Everett, confused. “Is this a part of it? She’s doing it again, isn’t she?”
My fingers fly to my lips. “Yes.” I swallow hard. “I’m doing it again.”
Greer shakes her head wildly at me and pretends to slit her throat. “Do not tell him tonight. You need to have an entire evening free to answer questions, to be with him. You can’t just kick him out on his ear so you and the judge can fornicate freely—romantic as it might be.” She swoons as she looks around at candles and the flowers.
I suck in a quick breath. “She’s right.” I look to Everett and close my eyes a very long time. “You’ve done so much, and I was about to ruin all of your effort.”
“You didn’t ruin anything.” Everett swipes his beer up and points the tip toward Noah. “He did.”
“Noah, I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind. I think I should have—”
“The night with Everett.” He leans back and folds his arms across his chest defiantly.
“No, that’s not what I was going to say. I think we need more time. We should do this here, but not tonight. Maybe tomorrow after work we can all meet here again?”
Everett flexes a dry smile his way. “It’s your date. That means you bring the candles.”
“Not happening.” Noah leans in once again. “Tell me tonight. I’ve waited months to know the answer to this puzzle, and it’s been killing me. Everett can wait another five minutes.”
“It’s not going to take five minutes, Noah.” My voice tenses just the way his did. “I can’t just leave you alone once you find out. You’ll have questions. We’ll make a night out of it. I’ll get a pizza from Mangia, and I’ll bake your favorite chocolate chip cookies.”
Everett rumbles with the idea of a laugh. “We’ll give you a nice tall glass of milk to enjoy them with and send you to bed.”
Noah shakes his head, his eyes growing darker as if his fury were piquing. “I don’t want pizza or cookies. I just want the truth. I’m a big boy, Lottie. I can handle whatever you tell me. If I have questions, I can save them for another time. Just blurt it out, and I’ll be on my way.”
“It’s not the kind of thing you blurt out.” It comes out louder than I anticipated, and if I were a stranger walking into the room, I’d think I just stepped into a shouting match. “And my secret deserves more time than some soundbite allows. So if you just cooperate with me and let me buy you a pizza and bake you cookies, this will be a heck of a lot easier on us all!”
“Oh yeah?” Noah jumps to his feet, his fury quickly melting away to disappointment. “Well, I’ll just be across the street then, waiting around for the two of you to finish whatever two adults do after they’ve been plied with roses and chocolate.”
I turn to Everett and gasp. “There’s chocolate?”
“Belgian.” He gives a sly wink.
I turn back to Noah. “Way to ruin the surprise.” I toss a pillow at him, and he catches it. A crooked grin comes
and goes as he lands the pillow back gently next to Waffles.
“It’s okay that you’re angry with me, Lottie. In a twisted way, it makes me think that you still very much care for me.” He heads to the door. “I’ll be up late if you want to talk.” He leaves with a soft click of the door, and both Max and Greer give a sorrowful moan.
Everett cranes his neck in their direction. “Where exactly are they, so I can throw a pillow at them?”
I slide over onto his lap and hug his neck. “Why does this have to be so hard?”
Everett lands a careful kiss to my cheek. “I’m sorry this backfired. I should have asked him to leave before you ever got home.”
“This did not backfire.” I pull him in close by his tie and take in his thick spiced cologne. “Everett? Since this is a night embedded with secrets, would you mind telling me yours?”
He buries a half-smile into his cheek and looks cuttingly handsome in the process.
“I will. But first, I want to show you exactly how I feel about you.” His eyes ride over my features, slow and steady, as his lids grow heavy with lust. Everett procures a box of chocolates from the end table behind him and offers me one. I finger a milk chocolate square, and he lands it partially in his mouth and feeds it to me that way.
Everett is a master at just about everything. He knows how to make you feel things on levels that normal people usually don’t experience during their entire tenure on this planet.
Everett lands his mouth over mine, and it’s an explosion of every good thing. He takes me right there before flying us to the bedroom and then he takes me again. And there’s not a single word in the human language to convey the art form that Everett has created just using our bodies.
“You are—wow.” A bubbling laugh bounces from me. “Are you sure you’re human?” I roll over and rake my fingers through his glossy thick hair. “I’m beginning to think your secret revolves around the fact you’re an alien inspecting our planet for a takeover. And, believe me, if they’re all like you, the women of Earth would welcome the invasion.”
A dark chuckle rumbles through him. “That would be a heck of a lot better than what I have to say.” He expels a short breath as a look of sadness takes over his features. “About six years ago, a woman by the name of Harlow James”—his voice breaks when he says her name, and this alarms me—“she was carrying my baby when the car she was driving hit a patch of ice, and it went into a body of water below.” He shakes his head. His stony eyes remain unblinking. “They didn’t make it.”
“Oh my God, Everett.” I pull him close and land a tender kiss over his ear. “I’m so sorry.” I pull back to inspect him. “You loved her.” I shake my head as if it were all coming together.
“I thought I did.” His finger glides over my cheek. “Until I met you.” Everett’s cheek flickers with a dull smile. “The truth is, I didn’t know Harlow that long. We dated, we fooled around, it happened quickly. She let me know that she was late about a week before it happened. And in that short span of a week, I had started to envision a whole different life for myself, one as a husband and father. I was determined to do what I felt was the right thing.”
A ragged breath escapes me. “Oh, Everett. I cannot express how terrible I feel.”
“Don’t. It happened, and that’s what reality presented. I picked up, moved on as best I could, and one day you landed in my courtroom.” He dots his finger over my nose.
Tears stream down my cheeks as I pull his hand to my lips and kiss it.
“In that case, I’ve never been so happy to have been hauled to court.” It was small claims court, and Everett was filling in for the judge that usually runs that courtroom. “I’d like to think that fate had something to do with it.” I press my lips to his for a moment. “But you were hurt, Everett. First with Cormack, and then with this horrible tragedy. It’s no wonder that you’ve spent the interim entertaining girls in your bed, willy-nilly.”
His finger bounces to my chest. “Is that what this is? Willy-nilly?”
“That is definitely not what this is. What this is, Judge Baxter, is—”
His finger presses gently to my lips. “It’s love, Lottie.”
My mouth falls open despite his best efforts to secure otherwise.
“Did you just say my name?”
His lips curl with devilish delight. “I believe I said I love you, and I do. I love you, Lottie Lemon.”
I bite down on a delicious smile. “It’s just Lemon to you.”
His expression grows somber. “I realize you still have a very real place in your heart for Noah. I understand that. I—”
My finger presses over his lips as I shake my head to keep him from proceeding. “Noah isn’t allowed here with us,” I say it sweetly even though my heart breaks because of it. I find it endearing that Everett would mention it. A prime example of the fact he cares about the things I care about, even if it’s the one thing—person, he can’t seem to stand.
Everett and I share a kiss, a dark, delicious kiss in which we share exactly how we feel without the limitation of words.
A spontaneous applause breaks out, and the two of us turn toward the door where I find Greer Giles and Max seated on my vanity.
“Oh my God.” I throw a pillow at the two of them, and they burst into laughing balls of smoke.
Everett pulls the comforter over our heads, and we continue our party in private.
Chapter 52
Saturday afternoon, once the rush dies down, and I sell out of every single lemon bar—despite the fact I made three extra batches, Noah walks in with his dimples inverted and a grin on his face that could make a piece of my heart believe we were still together and as solid as a rock. And perhaps in Noah’s heart we are. He seems to believe in us, the past us as much as the future us as if we were inevitable.
“Hey, beautiful.” He leans against the counter and produces a bouquet of lavender roses from behind his back. “These are for you.” He offers a sheepish grin. “I should be the only man giving you flowers,” he says it low, almost too quiet as if he were saying it to himself. “Among other things.” He flexes those dimples in and out once again.
“Noah. Thank you. They are so gorgeous. I just love this color so much.” I lean over the counter and gift him a kiss on the cheek. “And I love you so much.” I shrug because I couldn’t help it. “I guess I’m not so good at turning off my emotions, after all. Are you busy?”
“Too busy for you? Never. You want to get a room at the Evergreen? Rumor has it, you say I’m conventional in bed.” He flicks his eyes to Lily at the register, and I gasp.
“Oh, Noah. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. I do recall a rather private conversation a few weeks back where I was at a loss for words and I may have used such conciliatory language, but truth be told, you left me speechless.” I grimace because there was no delicate way out of that one. “But no, I didn’t mean for us to get a room. Although, I do see why you would choose the Evergreen Manor. Your wife and girlfriend are at the B&B.” I give a sly wink. “I’d hate to get you into trouble.”
His grin grows more devious by the second. “What’s going on?”
“I have Nessa St. James’ sketchbooks, and I wanted to run her drawings by you. And I happened to learn some pretty sketchy things about Nessa as well. Have a seat and I’ll bring out some cookies and the books.”
Noah does just that, and I sit across from him as Lily holds down the fort.
“These sketches”—Noah muses as he studies the page before him—“they’re pretty graphic.”
“I know. All of them are couples, the same couple, I think. In fact, I believe it was Nessa’s poor attempt at a self-portrait in every single one of them. Jenson mentioned that Nessa was a terrible artist, and she’s right. Noah, I think this is a diary of sorts. Look on the back. Each one is dated. The last one reads April sixteenth. Just a couple of weeks before she died.”
He thumbs through the stack of pages rather quickly and frowns.
“If that’s true, Nessa was sure getting a lot of action.”
“I agree. In fact, not only did Nessa like getting some action, she liked being in total control.” I spill everything I know about Nessa’s nest and the people she’s hurt and forced into her twisted cult. “How can a person be that powerful, Noah? It just doesn’t seem right.”
He stares past me with a vacant expression as if trying to piece it all together. “They gave her the power. And I’m pretty sure those men she was with weren’t that hard to coerce. Nessa was beautiful. Those guys were used to getting all the action they could, from high school on. Nessa was just another conquest to them. An accolade. They used her as much as she used them.”
Noah closes the book and pulls forth another one. “Did everything work out okay with you and Everett the other night?”
“That’s an odd question considering you hate the idea of Everett and me working out in general.”
“I just wondered what all the pomp and circumstance was about. With all that he’ll never say I love you chastising I did the other night—I thought maybe I might have pushed him too far in the other direction.”
“Which direction would that be?”
Noah knows we’ve slept together. How much farther is there to go?
“A matrimonial one.”
A breath hitches in my throat. “You thought Everett was going to propose?”
“I guess he didn’t.” He lets out a breath, and for the first time since he stepped into the bakery, Noah looks relieved.
“He didn’t. Can I ask you a question? Did Everett ever confide in you about a secret he was harboring?”
“Why would I?” a deep voice rumbles from behind, and I jump in my seat, only to find a tall, dark, and unfairly handsome judge standing beside me.
“Everett, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t going to tell Noah anything, I swear. I just wondered if maybe he had heard. My heart broke into a million pieces when you told me, and I’m still trying my hardest to process it all.”
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