They rode in silence for a while. When their exit came up on the right, he merged onto it.
“Maybe…” Lyla frowned out the windshield. “Maybe he’s been following us all along?”
Tate wanted to think he’d know if that was the case, but he hadn’t exactly been in the zone with this thing. “Maybe,” he conceded, “But I don’t think so.”
“Then he could be tracking us. Like…with one of those little GPS things they use in spy movies—he could’ve stuck one in my stuff at a signing, right?”
Tate clutched the wheel with a scowl and turned that idea over in his mind. “Could be, but again—it doesn’t feel right.”
Lyla wrapped her arms around herself and tucked in her chin, the picture of stubbornness. “I’m going to go through my things anyway,” she announced. “I just wish I’d thought of it before we left for my parents’ house. If there is a bug, I’m about to bring it right to them.”
“Want me to pull over somewhere?” he asked.
“Don’t bother,” she sighed, defeated. “We’re almost there. Their street is up ahead.” She pointed down the road, “First turn after the light.”
Moments later, Tate came to a stop in the long, steep driveway of a tidy little bungalow, and put his brother’s truck in park. Lyla eyed the house with obvious apprehension.
He didn’t want to make it worse, so he pasted a chipper smile on his grill and elbowed her. “Let’s do this. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. Are you excited? I’m excited.”
“No, Tate,” she moaned, dropping her head into her hands. “I am not excited.”
“Why not?”
“Because I never bring guys home,” she muttered. “And you’re…” Lyla looked up, gestured emphatically to him, and added, “And we’re…”
Then she flapped both her hands spastically between them.
“It’s because I’m a stone-cold fox, right?” Tate joked. “You’re afraid your folks might collapse in the face of all this hotness?”
Lyla rolled her eyes so hard she was lucky they didn’t pop out and trundle right on down the road. “I will never understand how you are able to rebound so fast. It’s a total offense to the natural order of things.”
“Defying the laws of nature is a learnable life hack,” Tate told her with a grin. “I can teach you some time if you’d like.”
“Maybe later,” Lyla said. “For now…don’t be offended, but I am going to introduce you as my security guy, and only my security guy. Okay? There’s no need for this to be complicated by my parents thinking you’re son-in-law material.”
Well, that took the wind out of his sails. Tate’s smile fell away. “Ouch.”
Lyla looked chagrined. “No—oh my God, no. I didn’t mean it like that. Tate, you would be spectacular son-in-law material, but you’re…you know. Come on.”
“I’m what?” He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know, however. The choices were ruthlessly endless.
Lyla emitted a startled little peep, then said under her breath, “You’re about to meet my crazy parents. Shit, here they come. Brace yourself.”
Tate looked toward the front walk, and sure enough, a genial couple was hot-footing it down the front walk, their faces wreathed in excited smiles.
His masochistic need to learn all the ways he was unsuited to be Lyla’s future husband would have to wait.
“On three,” he told Lyla.
Dutifully, she murmured, “One, two, three,” like they were learning the steps to a new dance, and it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen.
In perfect synchrony, they popped their doors and stepped out. Her parents stopped and looked between them, genuinely conflicted about which person to tackle first.
Tate made things easy for them by rounding the hood and falling into formation two steps behind Lyla.
Mrs. Lawson hugged her kid first, but her eyes stayed on Tate over her daughter’s shoulder the whole time. When she was done, she shoved Lyla toward her father, then bee-lined for Tate.
“Now, Lyla—who’s this hunk of cuteness here?” she demanded.
“Mom! I told you I was bringing him. Tate’s my security guy. Do not flirt with him!”
Mrs. Lawson’s brows shot up, impressed. “Nice perk of doing business,” she said drily.
“It’s standard on book tours,” Lyla lied. “For insurance purposes.”
Tate shot her a look and stuck out his hand. “Captain Tate Monroe, ma’am,” he said. Then, when Lyla’s father approached, he did the same with him. “Sir.”
Lyla announced, “Tate, these are my well-meaning but clueless parents, Jim and Peg.”
“Pleasure to meet you both.” Lyla’s mom was hovering at his shoulder, nearly vibrating from excitement. Out of the corner of his mouth, he told her, “I don’t mind if you want to flirt. It’s kind of a hobby of mine.”
Mrs. Lawson slapped playfully at his arm and crowed, “Oh you…I like you!” She told her daughter, “Lyla, I like Captain Monroe!”
Lyla sent him a baleful glare. “Okay, Mom? Settle down. Why don’t we all just…” she looked around desperately. “Let’s go inside for a bit. Tate and I have to be back in town later tonight, and I’d like to be able to visit for a bit before we have to leave.”
“Right this way,” her father sang, and led them into the house.
ONCE THEY WERE seated in a front parlor that was clearly reserved for guests and guests alone, Tate held to the whole bodyguard-without-benefits routine like he was trying to stay on top of a bucking bronco. As in—yes, he was still vertical, and no, it wasn’t fucking easy.
On its back burner, his brain was chewing on the fact that Lyla’s stalker seemed to have ESP about where they were going to be at any moment—and not liking how it tasted.
Tate was also fairly worried that the call he’d made to the therapist this morning might make it into his files and back to the Med Board assholes—thereby screwing up any chance he had of passing his next evaluation. Even though it’d been the only possible choice to make, it’d still been an agonizing risk.
Tate had been really careful to sound as sane and balanced as possible, but would it be enough? God only knew.
Last but not least, he was getting pretty angsty about what Lyla could’ve meant by him not being son-in-law material. Tate wanted to bond with these people—he wanted to get to know them and prove that he was a worthy candidate for their daughter, as if he had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever winning her.
And, he was having the devil’s own time trying to keep his grubby mitts to himself, as it turned out. Seeing Lyla with her parents, in the snug and cozy house she’d grown up in, had the unexpected effect of making him want to get up-close-and-personal with all of her nooks and crannies.
If you got his drift.
With all of that nonsense frying his circuits, Tate was, quite frankly, barely tracking the conversation they were having. He prayed his anxiety wasn’t apparent to anyone else.
It didn’t help that the room they were sitting in, while tasteful and tidy, was also faintly uncomfortable in the way that all unused rooms tended to be. It wasn’t helping him relax one bit.
Tate only hoped that the Lawsons would take his reticence as some kind of tough-guy professional reserve—and not a simmering pot of I’m a mental case that wants to screw your daughter.
They seemed to be unaware of his roiling thoughts. When he tuned back in, the topic wasn’t why are you wasting time with this moron, thank fuck. Instead, Lyla’s parents seemed to be happily recounting a recent lunch date with their pals next door.
That was normal enough. What wasn’t, was Lyla’s reaction to the news. Tate sat up straight and squinted at her.
Lyla scowled darkly and said, “I will never understand what you guys see in those people. They’re horrible. Truly.”
That was a bit extreme. Tate blinked at her, then turned to look at her parents on the opposite sofa.
By way of explanation, Lyla’s mom leaned in and confided, “It
’s not their fault. The Jones’s have never been the same since their son got sick.”
Lyla snorted, clearly taking exception.
Curious. Tate inquired politely, “Really? That’s a shame. What happened?”
Lyla’s dad tapped his head and made eyes at him. “Touched in the head, poor kid. Needs round-the-clock supervision.” It wasn’t much in the way of an explanation, but it got across Jim’s feelings on the subject quite handily.
Tate sat back and tried to mask his immediate, defensive need to react. The bum brain insinuation hit a little too close to home. Neighbor Jones, after all, wasn’t the only one short a few cards in his deck. Tate could relate rather intimately, at the moment.
Lyla’s mom took advantage of his silence to grind an ax that sounded as if it had been pulled out a time or ten before. “You’d think Lyla would be more understanding, given how long we’ve all lived here. But no—she’s just as touchy about them as she’s ever been.” She folded her hands in her lap and eyed her daughter critically.
Christ, if this was what a casual visitor got? Tate could only imagine what a potential suitor might hear. He was nearly slavering with the desire to find out, though. He wanted all of Lyla’s dirty secrets, stat.
Lyla was a tense bundle of nerves beside him. She spat out, “Brett is a jackass, mom. He was a jackass before, and he is still a jackass now. Come on.”
“You haven’t been very nice to him over the years,” her mom countered. “You guys were friends. You shouldn’t say things like that.”
“We weren’t friends!” Lyla cried. “Why should I start now?”
Her dad jumped in quietly, but with authority. “Bill and Midge would be very sad to hear you say that.”
She had a ready answer for that too, though. “Luckily, they won’t have to, will they?”
Tate didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how this was spiraling.
“Lyla,” her mom squawked, “I don’t understand—”
He jumped up and clapped his hands loudly, and all three Lawsons fell into stunned silence.
Tate turned and stared down at Lyla, so there’d be no doubt who he was talking to. “Hey, Lyla—I just remembered. Didn’t you say you had some old trophies up in your room that you wanted to rub my nose in?” He kept his voice bright and easy and hoped she’d play along.
Her dad grumbled, “Trophies? Lyla didn’t play sports. She doesn’t have any—”
Lyla popped right off that loveseat, though, and mimicked Tate’s pose perfectly. “Oh, just you wait, Mister. I’m going to blow your stupid football letters right out of the water.”
Her parents lapsed into a confused, hushed discussion down on their sofa.
“Peg, what’s she talking about? Lyla doesn’t have any trophies.”
“Maybe she means those old ribbons from art class?”
“Well, she did get those certificates—Honor Society, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, you might be right.”
Tate raised his eyebrows at Lyla, giving her an unequivocal get-moving stare.
“Right this way,” she chirped and dragged him to the stairs.
TWENTY-FOUR
ON THE WHOLE, Lyla generally thought her mom and dad were wonderful people—kind and generous, and happily engaged in the world around them in a way that her friends’ parents never seemed to be.
Her folks made friends with all kinds of people, all over town—but their lack of innate suspicion meant that they rarely saw the bad in any of them.
Since Lyla spent most of her time in the city, where things could get a bit more fraught on a day-to-day basis, she generally viewed her parents’ attitude as sort-of refreshing and sweet. Naïve, maybe, but still nice.
But—and this was a huge but, all things considered—the way her folks had taken to Bill and Midge Jones was beyond her comprehension. Lyla had never met a more oblivious couple in her life.
Case in point: while their son had bullied his way through his adolescence, they’d blithely continued to sing his praises to one and all.
Talk about your blind spots. The one they had for Brett was like a black hole, devouring the galaxy of the neighborhood in its complete cluelessness.
It just figured that Lyla’s mom and dad would trot out their tired old routine about the Joneses in front of Tate, too. Lyla had wanted to scream and rage in protest, but the whole thing was so unutterably stupid that she figured it would only make her look petulant to him.
Thank God Tate had the presence of mind to cut things off before she and her parents really got going. Lyla had never been so grateful to be handed a reprieve—a lifeline from the feeling that she’d gone back in time to her dorky fifteenth year, when she’d been frustrated by every inexplicable thing her mom and dad had said.
“Thanks for getting me out of there,” Lyla told Tate now. “We’ve had that fight so many times, I could probably recite everyone’s lines in my sleep.”
“No biggie,” he smiled. “Every family does it.”
“That’s kind of depressing.”
“Call me crazy, but the neighbors seem like a bit of a sore spot for you guys.”
Lyla snorted, “You think?”
“Have they lived here long?”
“Yup. Nearly as long as we have.”
Away from the fray, up here in her childhood bedroom, Lyla realized that it was going to take a lot more than a change of scenery to erase her irritation with the subject.
Why had she thought that bringing Tate here was a good idea? Now, instead of only him being grouchy, they both would be. Fun times.
He looked around her old room curiously. “This is cute,” he told her.
Lyla shrugged. “Hasn’t changed much since I went off to college.”
None of it had. Most times, that was a comfort—but right now, the lack of evolution felt like a restless itch under her skin that she’d never be able to scratch.
Lyla couldn’t wait to get home—her real home in the city, where she could be herself and breathe.
At least there in town, she and Tate wouldn’t have so much forced proximity to contend with. Except…that hadn’t turned out so bad, had it? Sharing rooms—and then beds—had worked out just fine until Tate had gotten all angsty on her.
He walked over to look out her window, then pulled the sheer curtain aside so he could see better. Lyla went over to see what had caught his attention.
Next door, Brett was in his back yard, pacing rapidly around the lawn and muttering to himself, as he sometimes did. He kept glancing quickly at Lyla’s house, then taking another agitated loop around the grass.
“That the boy wonder?”
“Yup.”
Tate pointed and asked, “Who’s that guy?”
On closer inspection, Lyla realized that Brett’s sourpuss father was out there, too, perched on the back stoop. So, it was a conversation, then, instead of a monologue. Not that it mattered.
“Meet Mr. Jones,” she said.
Lyla kept back by the wall, out of sight. If they spotted her up here, the whole crew would be over in a hot minute, wanting to grill her about her life.
She was too spent to go through that routine today, and she’d certainly never willingly subject Tate to it, either.
“Did you go through school with that dude?” he asked.
“Sure did.”
“Why does he keep looking over here?” Tate muttered. “He looks like a freaking tiger at the zoo.”
“Brett’s always like that,” Lyla told him. “He’s probably riled up because he saw the strange truck in the driveway. The entire family is nosy, though. I’ll bet you ten bucks that the minute we leave, Midge will be on the phone, wanting to know who was here.”
“And they say the city is crowded. At least people ignore you there.”
“Tell me about it. Why do you think I moved?”
Tate let the curtain fall back into place and went to sit on the edge of Lyla’s bed. He pulled one of her old yearbooks off the b
ookshelf nearby and absently began flipping through it.
“What’s your deal with those people anyway?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you react like that before, and you’ve had some pretty nutty fans come to your signings.”
Lyla sighed and flopped down next to him on her old patchwork quilt. “Honestly, it’s all so dumb. Brett was one of those stereotypical jocks in high school, lording it over everyone younger and weaker than him. He was straight out of a 1980s teen movie, trust me. Had the letterman jacket and everything.”
“Sounds like me, too,” Tate smiled, pointing at himself. “You’re looking at the Homecoming king, co-captain of the football team, and an Eagle scout. The works, baby.”
Lyla could see it, clear as day. He must have been irresistible. “Yeah, except you were probably the good guy, not the jerk,” she pointed out.
“True. I tried not to be an asshole. I was carrying groceries for grandmas all over town.”
“I believe it,” Lyla told him. And those old biddies had probably adored Tate as much as everyone else.
“So…what happened to that punk next door, anyway? Your dad kind of hinted, but he never actually said.” Tate shifted around and met her eyes, and Lyla was surprised to see a thread of discomfort there.
Of course he’d wonder, she realized. Lyla had seen the flash of uneasiness on his face when her dad had dismissed Brett’s condition so cavalierly, and though Tate might try to bluster about it, she knew he saw himself as damaged goods, too.
Why else would he feel the need to constantly reassure her that he wouldn’t fail her?
“I don’t know,” Lyla shrugged. Whatever it’d been, the Joneses no doubt would’ve found a way to spin it in Brett’s favor. “I heard he went off to college and joined a fraternity, and then next thing I knew, he came home again. I wouldn’t be surprised if he partied too much and flunked out, but he’s been living with his parents ever since.”
“How predictable of him. But what I meant was—”
“I know,” Lyla interjected. “But it’s never been clear what made him like…that. Knowing Brett, he probably OD’d or crashed into a tree while drunk or something. You’ll never hear that from Bill and Midge, though. They still think he’s the best thing since sliced bread.”
The Hero Was Handsome (Triple Threat Book 3) Page 22