Chapter 11

11

Lila

Uncle Al's home is an accurate representation of his life. Gold-crusted on the outside, held together with wet glue, popsicle sticks, and leopard-print thongs that I'd rather I didn't know about on the inside.

So, basically, it's like his office, except bigger.

I could turn the entire thing over to an auction house, but there might be pictures of my mom here, among other things, and so after work, Parker and Knox—who's in town for moral and muscle support—join me at the house to start tackling this disaster too.

"Hey, Lila, you want this platinum toothbrush?" Knox calls down the stairs.

"No, she doesn't want a platinum toothbrush," Parker yells back for me. "That's disgusting. Why would she want to keep a used toothbrush?"

"It's not used. It's in the art room."

I pause in sorting through the massive pile of bills that I found stashed under a couch cushion. "Art room?"

The stairs squeak and groan, and Knox appears with a two-foot-tall platinum toothbrush in hand. "What else do you call the room with all of this stuff in it?"

"Junk room number three."

Parker snaps a picture. "If you don't want that, do you mind if I take it home?"

Knox starts laughing. "Brilliant."

And I'm left studying both of them, once again on the outside of some private communication. "That doesn't really fit your jungle theme."

"She's Christmas shopping for her brothers," he explains.

She nods slowly. "That one's definitely for Jack. He's got this hang-up about having to look at other people's toothbrushes."

Friends aren't something that have ever come easily to me. In college, I was too weird. Just after college, I worked too hard, and I was still heavily on the paranoid side after handling too much life at too young of an age. I'm still moderately paranoid, and I've also been told I'm too intimidating, whatever that means. But a couple years ago, I started realizing what that emptiness in the pit of my stomach was.

I was lonely.

There was a void that reading books couldn't fill anymore.

And so I started making efforts to meet people. Art classes. Taking more chances on dating apps. Book clubs.

All failures until Wellington Holdings went into publishing and I needed an acquisitions editor. And now I have Parker and Knox, and I would basically give them this entire house if it would make them happy.

Which probably means it's time to cut ties, except I'm not in international espionage, and neither are they. I live a modest life in the city with a good job. They didn't know I stood to inherit a baseball team—actually, I'm not sure I did either—and Parker knows enough about the sport that she's spent half the day shuddering at some of the tasks I need to tackle if this is really going to be my new full-time occupation.

They're safe friends, and it's okay to get attached.

I need friends outside the pages of a book, because book boyfriends don't actually show up to help put a distant relative's affairs in order.

And more—I like knowing that when Parker has a problem, she can come talk to me.

It gives me a purpose beyond taking on challenges.

So I nod to Knox. "Unless it's a picture or…" Or what? The family bible with all of the deaths and births listed in it for the last six generations? A secret decoder ring? A hand-written letter from my mom that she stashed here naming the person she suspected would betray her? And what good would that do? "…or something personal, have at it."

He grins and sets the toothbrush next to the stairs. "Don't worry, Lila. I'll preserve every last letter to girlfriends and mistresses, and I'll even go through them myself first to spare you the pain."

"He's such a romantic," Parker says with a smile while he takes the stairs two at a time back up to the second floor. Also known as the fire hazard . "And speaking of romantic?—"

I look up from the bills again.

She grins over a stack of phone books dating back to 1983 that she's boxing up for recycling. "I know a thing or two about the awkwardness of working in an office where your work wife is dating the boss, so I wasn't going to mention it there , but, we're here now, so…what's the rest of the story with you and Tripp Wilson?"

"There's no rest of the story."

"Liiiilaaaaaa…"

"There's not. And even if there was, it's not going anywhere, therefore, there's not."

She drops two more phone books into an empty paper box that we brought here from Fireballs headquarters. "So something more happened, but you're not ready to talk about it. That's cool. I'm not ready to talk about what I walked into with my brother and Eloise the other day too. I get it. But answer me this—for all the times you've hung out with my brothers, including Brooks, who hit two grand slams against the Fireballs last year, why didn't you mention your uncle owned the team?"

"It didn't seem relevant."

She gives me the oh, right, you don't trust me look, and I buckle. It's not that I think she thinks I don't trust her, so much as I know I'm being ridiculous, and this is exactly the type of thing friends share.

"Tripp told me he was Levi the night we met," I whisper-blurt. "I thought I was making out with someone else."

She trips over the box of phone books, grabs a bookshelf to right herself, and the whole thing starts to tip.

" Aaaahh! "

"Duck! No, dive! Parker! "

I'm paralyzed. My best friend in the entire universe is about to be crushed by a bookshelf, and I'm paralyzed.

Fight or flight isn't happening. Freeze is, while everything happens in slow motion.

Books starting to cascade off the shelves.

A metal parrot paperweight slides against the wood on its way to tumble from the top of the six-foot piece of furniture. Hooves thunder on the stairs behind me.

And Parker spins and leaps, diving for a green-and-orange striped love seat, landing in a plume of dust as the shelves crash to the ground.

"Parker!"

"I'm okay!"

Shelves.

Exposed wall.

Secret passage.

My gaze flies to the wall, and?—

It's just a wall. No secret passage leading to an underground lair where my mom disappeared into an underground bunker to start a new life.

Of course not.

This house wasn't part of the family when Mom and Dad disappeared, and even if it had been, there wouldn't be secret tunnels.

It's been years since I read spy romances and amnesia romances and orphan romances, but I'm doing it again. I'm looking for stuff that won't be there.

"Lila?"

I blink back the hot sting and make myself move. Shake my hands out. Lift my buzzing feet to pick my way carefully to the couch, which I don't want to sit on for the same reason I had Uncle Al's office chair removed and a metal folding chair brought in today at Fireballs headquarters, but whether I want to sit or not, I need to.

"Is it normal to mourn someone you barely knew?" I ask, because it's the most logical explanation to give my friends.

"It's a lost opportunity," Knox replies. He's wiping dust smudges off of Parker's face, but he's also watching me. "And yeah. That's normal."

He'd know.

He lost his dad at a young age too.

"I feel like I'm saying goodbye to more than just my uncle." They know my parents disappeared. They know about boarding school. They know I spend the holidays at a spa in the Caribbean. And they know I hate talking about it. "Taco time?"

My friends share one of those married couple looks, and not the I want to tear your clothes off kind.

Knox nods and pulls out his phone, and Parker turns an overly bright smile my way. "Tacos and tequila?"

"Hell, yes."

"I asked Denise where to get the best tacos in town, and she said—whoa." Parker has her phone out too. She tilts her head at the screen, and she bursts out laughing. "What the duck?"

I press on my ear, because I didn't hear her right, and I don't like where my mind is going. "Weird taco special?" I ask.

"No, ducks . Brooks just texted. He's watching Tripp Wilson give an interview about Duggan Field's lucky love ducks."

If it's possible for ice to catch on fire, that's exactly what happens in my veins. Hot flash follows cold flash follows hot flash, and I yank out my own phone. "Where?"

A text pops up from Parker with a link, and I click it.

And the three of us sit there in Uncle Al's living room, all of us streaming the local Copper Valley news. A pretty reporter is standing with Tripp on the field . Right now.

Right now .

All the lights are on, and he's wearing an official red Fireballs pullover, freshly shaved, his brown hair styled like he's about to go on stage for a concert, a confident, subtle smile playing on his lips.

The man makes a striking picture, and whispers of Wilentine sneak back into my brain. It doesn't help that I had another fresh reminder today of what he can do with those lips.

Nor does it help that I wouldn't mind escaping my own thoughts with some physical distractions.

What does help?

When the reporter tilts the microphone his way. "Yes, Ms. Valentine, the Fireballs' new owner, and I were out the other night getting a feel for the field here when we ran across the ducks. Interrupted them, actually. Not on purpose. We didn't realize we were invading their new home."

"Do you think the ducks have any significance?" the reporter asks.

"You believe in luck?" There's that smile. That easy, confident, teeth-flashing smile.

"I don't believe it's been with the Fireballs the last few seasons."

Gah, and that chuckle. I want to throttle him, because I know what he's doing, and images of duck penis keep flashing in my head, but that chuckle . It gets to me.

It gets to me all the way to my bones.

"I don't believe we've had lucky love ducks with us the last few seasons either," he says. "I have a baseball consultant who tells me animals can bring all kinds of luck. If these two want to make a happy family here at Duggan Field, we're going to welcome them with all our hearts."

"You think they'll still be here when the season starts?"

"That's up to them. But as long as they want to stay, we're going to let them."

"And there you have it. Tripp Wilson, former hometown boy band member and new president of the Fireballs, promising us a family of ducks for luck for our lovable losers."

The screen goes blank as the segment ends, and I sit there, torn between wanting to throw my phone and wanting to text Tripp a big ol' middle finger.

"That's really cute," Knox says.

"Ducks for luck. I like it," Parker agrees.

"This isn't cute . It's war. That duck attacked me with its rabid penis. And he's throwing it in my face."

They both blink at me.

I sigh. "Go ahead," I grumble. "It can be funny to you."

"Aw, Lila…if it's not funny to you, it's not funny to us. I didn't know ducks had penises?—"

"They do," Knox interjects. "Freaky corkscrew things. And did you know duck vaginas?—"

Parker gets him in a headlock and covers his mouth.

"Thank you," I tell her.

"Nine times out of ten, it's awesome to be married to a librarian. That tenth time, though, I muzzle him for the good of all of humanity. So. Tacos. And maybe more of the actual duck story without mention of the penises?"

"That'll take a lot of tequila."

"Done."