Page 46 of Layla Meets Her Match

“Lincoln,” she says in a stern voice threaded with a little laughter. “It’s ten thousand dollars!”

“Oh, come on.” I roll my eyes dramatically, and she laughs again. I’m addicted to that. “Layla. He made ten million on Phantom Hex, and he’s got so many endorsements right now, I bet that’s just the tip. So he gave you ten thousand? It’s lame.”

“It’s enough for me not to worry about rent for a while.” She shrugs and walks over to a small decorative table that seems to be serving as a desk. She puts the check in a basket on it.

“Margot deserves a lot more,” I argue anyway.

She turns and grins at me. “Of course she does. But what she deserves can’t be bought, and that’s all Jack’s doing here. Throwing cash at responsibilities he doesn’t want to have. And to be honest, I’m not in the mood to let him have any of those responsibilities. Maybe someday, but not now.”

My turn to heave out a sigh. “That’s fair.”

She tilts her head at me. “What’s up?”

I force myself not to react to her questioning why I’m here. My brain races through some things and snags on the guy that stopped me after I got the pancakes today at the bakery truck. “Thought we could talk about the case.” I shrug nonchalantly because there’s not anything to talk about. But I pull out my phone and bring up the picture of the guy who got a selfie with me this morning. “Recognize him?” I ask, like that’s the whole reason I came over and it’s not weird because I could have just sent this to her in a text.

“The guy that stopped you this morning?” She leans over to look at my phone and then shakes her head. “But I don’t even know if I would recognize if someone’s been lurking around, you know. We have so many regular customers, and there are days when everyone starts to look familiar. Did you tell Officer Brady?”

I nod and put my phone away. “I texted him the picture right after. And I took the German pancakes to Dillon, although it was hard. I wanted to eat one so badly. Hopefully he’s able to check them out quickly.” I’d feel bad about the extra work we’re giving him, but I can see why he and Landon are friends. Dillon has the same eagerness to help that Landon does, and it feels like I’m doing Dillon a favor every time I drop something off.

She plops down on the rug and pats a spot next to her, inviting me to stay and hang out. I obey her immediately.

“I’m curious about something,” she says.

Layla Delaford, I will tell you anything. But I stay cool. “Oh?”

“I’m wondering who’s on the list of people you take stuff to from the bakery truck.” There’s a twinkle in her eye and a smile that seems … proud.

It’s all I can do not to puff out my chest and brag. I’ve never thought a lot about sharing the cookies, cupcakes, muffins, cinnamon rolls, and whatever. I come to the bakery truck every day to see Layla, and although it’s already pretty weird, not buying anything would be over the top. And a dead giveaway.

I chuckle, like the whole situation is exactly what she thinks it is—me supporting Mila in her business. “There’s no official list.”

“There’s old people,” she points out. That makes a laugh burst out of me, and her grin widens.

“That’s Dottie Van Buren and her friends at Harmony Homes.”

Layla tilts her head, a contemplative quirk of her lips replacing the grin. “How do you know Dottie Van Buren?”

My breath catches, but only for a second, because with Layla words often come easy, and they do now too. “She was my grandpa’s mistress. We found out after he died and we found some letters in the false bottom of a drawer.”

Her eyes widen with every phrase. “Did you just tell me the plot of a soap opera?” She gives a shake of her head and then arches an eyebrow at me.

“Cross my heart.” I sober and look at the rug. It sounds funny when I say it that way, but processing all of this over the last year has been anything but. “He was my hero. He was a successful businessman, a pillar in his community, the guy I wanted to be when I grew up.”

She puts a hand on my arm. “The reason you serve everyone around you any way you can,” she says, getting it instantly.

The words man, I love you almost spill out of my mouth. Conversation is easy when the person you’re with can read your mind. Does she see how great we’d be together as more than friends?

I pause until I can get control of the words that are too easy to say. She squeezes my arm in support, like she thinks it’s emotion keeping me from continuing. And maybe there is some, but it’s so much easier to talk about it with her than to address my feelings for her and how I’ve been keeping them a secret for months.

“Except I think he was trying to atone for a ten-year-long affair no one ever knew about.”

She scowls. “Impossible. Ten years? There’s no way that was a secret …” I can see her creative brain rolling now, thinking of it in terms of a script, like she thought it might be at first.

I shrug. “My grandma died a few years before him, and as far as we can tell, she never knew. I thought he was devoted to her. I spent about a month out here in California every summer when I was a kid, and his marriage seemed as solid as my parents’. Even the few years I was out here playing before they died—honestly, Layla. I never had any clue.”

She reaches over, wraps her arms around my shoulders, and lays her head on my shoulder. “That has to be the worst. Not seeing any of the signs. Not knowing how to interpret any of it now that he’s gone.”

“It is,” I say quietly.

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