Page 26 of Irresistible

“I’d better make you sign something before we start. The last thing I need is to be sued again.” When she started laughing, she noticed that he didn’t join her. “I was kidding.”

“You know I would never doing anything like that.”

She stopped and made sure he was paying attention. “Of course I do. That’s why I made the joke.”

“Let’s go back to the stalker story. What happened after you filed a restraining order?”

“At first it seemed to work because she wasn’t within a hundred feet of me. That lasted for about six months, and then I’d find her sitting in a car at the end of my street. At one point, she had violated the order enough times that she was brought up on felony charges. My sister said the indictment was long overdue because she was always found with a gun as well as other items considered dangerous.”

“I’m guessing she served her time, and when she got out, she started the whole thing again.”

“You would be right.” Shoving her hands into her pockets, she shook her head. “I made a couple of mistakes that could’ve prevented the final disaster. The first was believing the woman wasn’t a serious threat, and the second was not trying to get her help. The system isn’t set up to get people treatment. It’s set up to incarcerate them and then let them go. Ruth has a form of schizophrenia. She suffers from delusions and attachment disorder as well as a handful of other things. Putting her in jail does nothing to solve the problem.”

“You seem to have a lot of compassion for a woman who threatened your life and terrorized you.”

“I didn’t arrive at this by magic. After the incident in my home, I went to stay with my parents and ended living with them for close to a year. I’ve spent a lot of time on a therapist’s couch. One thing I learned is that forgiveness is the only road to recovery. Once I understood that Ruth is mentally ill, I could move forward.” They rounded the corner and Lilly saw the bakery. “I’m going to need a big brownie.”

“Whatever you want, honey. I’ll get you a whole tray if that’ll help.”

Looking up at the mountain of a man next to her, she realized how good it felt to get the story out. She hadn’t spoken about it much in years, and telling Brock the whole thing somehow made her feel lighter. He seemed to be handling it okay, so maybe telling him wouldn’t make him go into overprotective paranoid mode. Maybe she wasn’t the only one who had grown up.

***

Brock sat in his truck and looked up at Lilly’s front door. It was after seven, and she’d nixed extending their twenty-four date any further. He had reluctantly left and made her promise to call him if there were any funny sounds around the house. When she gave him a faint smile in agreement and tapped her foot, he figured he’d pushed it as far as he could.

Driving away slowly, he made a mental list of the added security measures he wanted to install. As he got to the end of the street, his phone rang, and he saw it was his brother. “Brody, don’t tell me I have to come and get you out of jail.”

“You’ve never had to bail my ass out of anything.”

“What’s up?”

“If your girl has cut you loose, then I want your help over at the house. The weather has set us behind and I need another worker. We’re installing the kitchen cabinets tonight, and it’s all hands on deck.”

“Just so happens that Lilly wasn’t interested in extending our date, so I’m available.” His brother’s loud hyena laugh filled the car, and Brock waited patiently for him to get over himself. Nobody loved to see him suffer more than his brothers. Apparently, he’d cast a long shadow over them, and they took every possible opportunity to knock him down. At the same time, if he was ever in real trouble, those two would be the fiercest defenders in the world and the first in line to take care of any threat.

“Come over to the meat-pie queen’s house and you can fill me in on all the gory details. Did you even make it through dinner without getting in a fight?”

“Not that I’m talking about it, but we lasted twenty-four hours without so much as a negative comment.”

Brody whistled loudly. “Knew it. You two are either going to work perfectly together or blow one another up. I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty chance for either outcome.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t disagree with his brother, not that he would give him the satisfaction of telling him. “I’ll be over in about thirty minutes.”

“Thanks, brother. I’m staking a lot on this house coming in on time and it turning out perfectly.”

“Anytime. You can repay me by filling me in on Lilly’s stalker. I need to get as much intel as I can and want to hear what you have to say first.”

“She talked about that?” Brody asked quietly.

“Yeah. Popcorn barked in the middle of the night, and I checked the house and found nothing. When I told her this morning, she casually mentioned Ruth. If I didn’t have such a good poker face, I’m sure she would’ve figured out how upset I was. I played it cool and she told me the story. The thing that bothers me is that she was so calm about it. Almost like she was talking about it happening to someone else.”

“I’m not going to ask how you managed to spend the night after the first date,” Brody responded with a laugh.

“This first date has been years and years in the making, and I wouldn’t tell you anything even if you did ask.” Driving onto the highway, he noticed the sky had cleared. “How much do you know about the stalker thing?”

“Enough. After we’re done getting the cabinets in, you can buy me a dinner, and I’ll tell you what I know.” He cleared his throat and then went on. “I redid her kitchen and living room after the fire. It had been destroyed.”

“Fuck,” Brock said quietly.

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