Worth the Risk_ A Contemporary - Megan Hart Page 0,159

hadn’t called her first, of course, but she just hadn’t wanted to face her sister. Tomorrow would be soon enough to let Rivka know the romance with Tom had gone the way of the dodo. Extinct. She’d been a fool to think telling him she loved him would make everything work out all right.

Love. How long could it last in the face of the constant attention he received? The never-ending snide looks and catty comments? How long would it be before she started to get suspicious, resentful…jealous? How long could their relationship last under pressure like that? Not very long. Lila bit back a sigh and forced her eyes to blink away the tears threatening. She was absolutely exhausted.

When she climbed the stairs to her front porch, however, what she saw made her snap instantly awake. She’d tossed a plastic cover over her porch swing to protect it from the elements. The cover now hung over the railing. Below the swing, in the snow she had not yet had the energy or desire to sweep away, were two man-sized footprints.

What really had her heart hammering, though, was not the boot prints in the snow, but the words traced next to them:

LILA, I LOVE YOU. CALL ME.

Lila reached for the mangled broom she kept in one corner of the porch. The words were gone in seconds, along with the boot marks. Lila went inside.

The answering machine was blinking in double-time, an indication the tape was full. She’d had a lot of calls. Her finger hesitated over the button that would play the messages, but she didn’t push it. Maybe Tom had an excuse for what she’d seen tonight, and maybe he didn’t. At any rate, Lila wasn’t ready to hear it. When the morning came and bright light with it, maybe this whole damn situation wouldn’t seem so dark…but then again, it might. After walking over to the outlet on the wall, Lila unplugged the machine with a hard jerk of her wrist.

"Oops," she said without humor. "Power outage."

Then she went upstairs and got into bed.

Tom had waited on Lila’s front porch for hours, until he could no longer feel his feet or his hands. He had watched all the lights in the neighboring houses go out, one by one, and still she hadn’t come home. Damn it, where could she be?

Now, lying in his lonely bed, he continued shivering from being outside for so long. Though he’d taken a steaming shower, he still felt as though someone had dumped a truckload of ice cubes around him. Not even the memory of the look on Jennifer’s and Wendi’s faces when he told them to get lost could warm him…because the cold was on the inside. He was cold from eyebrows to toenails because of the look on Lila’s face when he’d opened his door.

He cursed aloud for having let the women inside. He knew how it must have looked. He had heard the whole story behind the "charity case" comment, too, and even though he understood how that must have made Lila feel, at the same time, anger twisted in his gut. Obviously her trust didn’t go too far if she had believed Jennifer’s snide remarks. She’d run away from the restaurant, and while she had clearly arrived on his doorstep to talk about what happened, she hadn’t given him any chance to explain. She’d just turned around and drove off.

He cursed again, the invectives rolling off his tongue so forcefully he almost bit off the tip. He had left so many messages on her machine he’d filled up the tape. She hadn’t returned his calls. He’d written his feelings in the snow, but though he was certain she was home by now, she still hadn’t picked up the phone to talk to him.

Tom tossed and turned beneath the covers, punching his pillow to ease his growing anger. He was mad at Lila, mad at Jennifer and Wendi, and mad at himself. He was even mad at Emma because, if she’d stayed home, she could have been a witness to what really went on. Not that he should have to defend himself. He punched the pillow again.

"Lila! Damn it, just call me!"

The phone mocked him with its silence. His fingers itched to dial her number again, but he resisted. He had made a fool out of himself already; he didn’t need to compound the error by trying her number again. If she didn’t answer, he couldn’t leave a message anyway, and