25. Lydia
25
LYDIA
I was back in the plumbing section of the library trying to find the book I had checked out a few months earlier. I managed to get myself into a little trouble thinking I could go in and disassemble a drain to clean out the P-trap without having step by step instructions by my side. It couldn’t be that hard. I had convinced myself it couldn’t be that hard. And yet, when I had a sopping wet towel under a sink and desperately in need of a bucket, I realized maybe I had forgotten a step or two.
I passed by the wiring books in the DIY home repair section. I wasn’t ready to tackle that. And to be honest with myself, I didn’t think I would ever be ready to tackle electricity. It simply scared me too much.
“There you are, stranger. What are you working on now?” she asked as she found me among the rows of shelves.
“I’m back to struggling with the bathrooms up on the third floor,” I admitted.
I had a block of rooms that for some reason, I couldn’t manage to get guest-ready on my own. The problems didn’t seem so complex that I shouldn’t have been able to handle them on my own.
“Lydia, I have a question for you,” Evie said.
“Shoot,” I said. My stomach twisted with apprehension.
“Please don’t tell me that the man I saw you with is the baby’s father.”
If anybody was going to figure it out before they were told, it was going to be Evie.
“Busted,” I said with a grimace and a blush.
“Lydia, no,” she pleaded. She looked really upset.
“What do you mean, no, Evie?”
“How could you, Lydia?”
“How could I what? It’s not like Brad Pitt came knocking on my door,” I replied.
“But him, Lydia?”
I was confused. “What do you know about him that I don’t? What’s wrong with him?”
“Lydia!” Evie exclaimed. She was really upset, and I was getting even more confused.
“How could you? You’ve been sleeping with the man who wants to buy up Brookdale.”
I blinked a couple of times. “What? No. Evie, you must be confused. The man who wants to buy up Brookdale is middle-aged and shaves his head bald so that we don’t notice that he’s balding.” I described the snake who had ambushed me that day the previous winter.
“No. Lydia, JM Carlisle, that’s who I’m talking about,” Evie said.
“Right, Jackson Carlisle. The guy you saw me with, his name is Miles, James Miles.”
“No. Lydia, the man I saw you with is JM Carlisle. You said his name was James Miles. I bet if we look him up, we’ll find out that JM stands for James Miles,” she said.
“Then who the hell is Jackson?” I practically cried. “I remember a bald man named Jackson who wanted to buy the Sweet Mountain Inn.”
“But we met with him, remember?” Evie asked.
I shook my head, more confused and very uncertain of what she was talking about. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I wanted to throw up, but I hadn’t had morning sickness for a couple of months. I put a hand protectively against my baby bump.
“I don’t remember meeting him,” I admitted.
“Oh,” Evie said suddenly. “You weren’t at that meeting.”
“What meeting?” I asked.
Evie pushed her glasses up and ran her hands over her face. “It was a meeting with the Historical Society and the mayor and the JM Carlisle people. He was there and so was that bald man, Jackson, who you seem to think is Carlisle. But no, it was him, the man I saw you with, tall with dark hair.”
Suddenly, I was very shaky. I reached out and grabbed hold of the shelves.
“That can’t be right,” I said. “The developer wants to tear down the Sweet Mountain Inn. Miles has been helping me every time he’s in town. He fixes stuff and helps with painting or cleaning up. He moved everything out of Aunt Ruth’s old room for the baby.”
I started crying. Earth shattering, devouring me whole tears streamed down my face. This couldn’t be happening. Miles? My Miles?
“You honestly didn’t know?” Evie asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t know. How didn’t I know? “I thought he might have worked with them after Mayor Dan mentioned that the developer suggested that Brookdale focus on an industry to bring into town.” I gasped for air. The lump forming in my throat made it hard to speak. “The last time I saw Miles, I had shown him the gazebo and talked—oh, my God, I talked like some kind of romantic fool about how the gazebo, if surrounded with roses, and the trellises on the library were perfect for wedding pictures, and how Brookdale was so pretty, and how I thought other people would see it that way if we could just get them here. And so when Dan mentioned that the developers suggested becoming a wedding destination, I stupidly thought Miles could possibly… Oh, my God, he lied to me.”
My mind jumped from one place to another, barely letting me finish the thought, let alone finish the sentence.
“He lied to me. He told me he wasn’t a spy for the JM Carlisle Group. And you’re telling me he is JM Carlisle. He’s the ultimate spy. He had me convinced that he was somebody else. Evie, what am I supposed to do now?”
“What do you want to do now?”
I curled over my stomach, wrapping my arms around the growing baby bump. This was his baby. JM Carlisle, that lying scum. But Miles was not that man. Miles was sweet and helpful and caring.
“Maybe they’re twins?” I asked in a desperate attempt to not be as stupid As I had been. I had let that man seduce me multiple times. He asked me about the inn as if he cared about it because I did. He was only trying to get information he could leverage against me, leverage against the town.
I reached out and grabbed onto Evie’s arms.
“Please tell me you haven’t let some handsome stranger from out of town seduce you.”
She laughed. “What are you talking about?”
“If he could do this to me, would he have sent someone else to try the same thing with you, to get the library?”
Evie patted the backs of my hands. “Nobody’s trying to seduce the library out from under me.”
“Well, he’s trying to seduce the Sweet Mountain Inn out from under me,” I practically wailed. “And he tells everybody that the pie at the diner is so good.” I continued crying.
“The pie at the diner is good,” Evie said. “I’m surprised he didn’t try to compare it to some Michelin five-star dessert experience in New York City.”
“He said it reminded him of where he grew up, and it was the only good memory he had of that place.”
How could a man who liked cherry pie that much lie to my face the way he had?
“Are you telling me JM Carlisle is from a small town?”
I nodded. “I got the impression it wasn’t a good experience for him,” I said. “But he always seemed so interested in how I saw Brookdale. You know, he asked me to show him the town from my point of view and to show him all the good places.”
“As opposed to the bad places?” she asked. “It would be nice to have a few more amenities, like a movie theater or some more restaurants. I love Brookdale and I know you do too. So he got to see the town from your eyes. Maybe that will convince him not to build here.”
“Or maybe it convinced him how great Brookdale is and that he should build here. I never would have let him seduce me if I’d known who he really was,” I admitted.
She pulled the hanky out of her cardigan pocket and handed it to me. I dabbed in my eyes and blew my nose and tried to hand it back, but she told me to keep it, and then she stepped in close and wrapped her arms around me in a hug.
“Oh, Evie, what am I supposed to do? I can’t have the enemy’s baby.”
“JM Carlisle is definitely the enemy around here, isn’t he?” She half chuckled.
“But I think I was in love with him,” I admitted. “And I think Miles was in love with me. He went back to the city to get stuff so he could be here more. He was going to move here to be with me and the baby.”
“That doesn’t sound like some land grabbing developer,” she admitted. “Your Miles sounds like a completely different person from the JM Carlisle I met.”
“Are you sure it was him?” I asked. I felt tiny and small and like I wanted to disappear in a puff of misery.
“I’m sure it was him—tall, thick, dark hair. And if I weren’t so mad at him, I’d have to admit, he’s probably attractive.”
“What do you mean? Probably attractive? Miles is ridiculously handsome.” I was instantly defensive on his behalf, which I didn’t understand. He had been lying to me. Why was I defending the man?
“Yes, well, you’re the one in love with him, and I’m the one who wants to string them up by his toenails for even thinking about coming into this town and conning the older generation out of their homes.”
She wasn’t wrong. If Miles really was JM Carlisle, he had been nothing but a lying, manipulative jerk who was trying to seduce my history, my memories, my life away from me. Well, he couldn’t have them. He couldn’t have the inn. He couldn’t have me. He couldn’t have this baby. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to get his claws into Brookdale.