Page 12 of Suddenly Dating
“Because I was too damn nice to you. Answer the question. What the fuck do youwant, Will?”
“To see if you wanted the puppy!” he shouted, sounding angry, too.
She’d gaped at him. Then at the dog. “What are you talking about?”
Will leapt to his feet and towered over her. “Will you keep your voice down? Everyone is staring. I’m talking about a goddamn dog, okay? Some guy gave it to Dani and we don’t have room for it or the time for it. I thought maybe—”
Lola never knew what he thoughtmaybebecause she’d slammed her hands into his chest and had shoved with all her might. The dog started barking as she marched away. She made it to the corner before she looked down and saw the terrible hole in her hosiery. Tears of absolute fury had begun to stream down her face, and she ran across the street, almost colliding with a taxi, whose driver laid on the horn. Lola flipped him off and kept running until her hose were bagging at the knees.
Thinking back on the afternoon now as she inched her way back down Juneberry Road, Lola muttered, “Thanks, Will. You actually gave me the balls to do this.” Because when she’d reached her apartment, she’d called Sara and accepted her offer.
Lola had remained furious for days. With Will, for asking her to take the dog. But mostly with herself, for having become the person who everyone assumed would take care of their problems. And for having hope, no matter how small. When would she learn that hope was for pussies? How many times would her smallest of hopes be crushed by someone like her mother or Will?
And still, even on that day of abject fury, Lola had taken care of Will’s problem. She couldn’t stand the thought of that little dog anywhere near such a heartless bastard, so she’d called a pet sitter she knew, who in turn called Will. A day later, Lola saw on Facebook that the dog had found a happy home.
“So yeah, Will, this is all because of you,” she said loudly. “You are the reason I am driving around like an old woman with dementia looking for a house that clearly does not exist—” She suddenly gasped. There it was, the house number she was looking for—4450.
Lola yanked the wheel right and turned into the drive, almost slamming into the pretty wrought iron gate. She rolled down her window, punched in the code Sara had given her, and watched the gate jerk and then slowly begin to retract. “This isit!” she said excitedly and, gripping the steering wheel, she pulled through the gate. She paused inside, just to make sure the gate closed behind her, then sent the rental puttering down a winding drive, through stately oak trees and blooming rhododendrons. It was beautiful, like a lovely country lane from a picture book.
Then she rounded a bend in the road. “Holy shit,” Lola muttered to herself.
This was a capital L, capital H lake house. It was timber and stone and glass, with decks off the sides and back of the house, and the lake glistening below. It was the sort of house HGTV showcased and then gave away every year. The sort of house that showed up in romantic comedy movies with sets designed by Nancy Meyers. It was fabulous, and Lola could hardly believe she washere.That she was going to live here, in this house, for an entire summer while she finished her book.
She pulled to a halt at the front door and gleefully hopped out of the car. Sara said there would be a key under the big flat rock next to the front porch. “You can’t miss it—it looks like a flying saucer,” Sara had said, and had sketched the rock onto the napkin when she and Lola had met for lunch last week.
There was only one big flat rock, and Lola practically skipped to it, giggling...
But there was no key.
She stood up, dusted off her hands, and looked around.
There was no other flying saucer, but there were a few rocks. She looked under every one of them. No key. She stood on the porch with her hands on her waist. “Now what?” she muttered to herself. Maybe the caretaker had left the front door open.
“Oh, by the way, I emailed the caretaker and fired him,” Sara had said in passing as they were leaving the coffee shop.
“Why?” Lola asked.
“Why? Because you’re going to be there. You can skim the pool and haul the trash up to the road as well as he can. And besides, he’s a snitch.”
Lola wondered what he would have to snitch about, but she thought it best not to ask Sara, who had a lot of conspiracy theories in general.
She tried the handle of the front door. Locked. Apparently, the fired caretaker wasn’t so mad about losing his job that he’d left the door open. She cupped her hands around her eyes and peered in through the sidelight. She could see a sunken living area just ahead, and wow, a stunning view of the lake through some big plate-glass windows and doors.
Okay, there had to be a way in. Lola walked around the house, picking her way through the garden on the south side, climbing over the small retaining wall, and jumping the couple of feet down to the terrace. Here, there was upholstered lawn furniture, and just below the main terrace, one of those fancy pools with water that looked as if it were spilling over the edge and into the lake. “Oh. My.God,” Lola said beneath her breath. “How did you luck into this?”
She put her face to the first window she reached and peered in. It was a bedroom. The bed was made, and there were some clothes neatly folded and stacked on a chair near the bathroom door.
Lola moved on to the big sliding glass doors, and gave one a half-hearted tug. Amazingly, the thing slid open like it was on bacon grease. “Oh, hey!” she said. She stepped cautiously into the house, pausing just over the threshold to take it all in.
The living room wasamazing. The floors were handscraped walnut. An enormous, thick shag rug was anchored by two white couches and a low marble coffee table. A pair of rocking chairs sat side by side at the window, a glass end table between them. A large stone fireplace dominated one wall, and on the other end of the room was a gleaming kitchen with stainless appliances, quartz countertops, and shiny white cabinets with glass pulls. The lights that dangled over the bar separating the kitchen from the living space looked like old lanterns. A small fireplace with a brick hearth for sitting anchored the kitchen.
It was amazing. It wasbeautiful.And it was so far above any of the rundown, dilapidated two-bedroom apartments Lola had grown up in that she felt as if she ought to get a sheet and carry it around with her to sit on, just in case any of the grime of her life still lingered.
She wandered down a hallway painted pristine white with built-in bookshelves. She found two more bedrooms, each with their own baths, glass showers, and claw-foot tubs. There was an office, which, she noted, looked as if the caretaker had recently used it, judging by the stack of papers and the fact that the printer was blinking.
Lola wandered back through the fabulous living room, and down another corridor that led to the master bedroom, the same one she’d seen through the window. She walked to the middle of the room, and turned a full circle as she took in the fireplace, the expensive modern art, and the bookcases. The closet was insanely huge, and still had a few of the caretaker’s clothes hanging in it. She walked into the bathroom, and admired the view from the enormous garden tub. She could picture herself in that tub, with that view, and a stack of books nearby.
Lola returned to the bedroom and, with a squeal of delight, she fell back onto the bed, her arms splayed wide, and kicked her feet like a little kid.
