Worth the Risk_ A Contemporary - Megan Hart Page 0,166

at school. A love poem from a secret admirer she had later discovered to be the most popular boy in her dorm. They’d dated once or twice, but no more than that. And why? Because Lila had started dating a guy in her theater elective. What was his name? Tobin. He hadn’t been handsome. He’d been skinny, dark-haired, and a chain-smoker. Yet, something about him had been so exciting.…

All the men in her life. Lila riffled through the piles she had made. Some had hurt her, some she had hurt. Others had done neither. And what did that tell her now?

She sure wasn’t dumb; she’d always known that. Yet, she had allowed William to make her feel that way. She wasn’t ugly either, though he had made her feel that way, too. Lila felt the slow burn of anger begin again in her belly. All those young men in her life, and only one had ever made her feel unworthy of being loved.

She found the only photo of William she had. The surprise photo had been taken at her office holiday party. It was the only photo she had of William because he had always refused to allow her to capture him on film. At the time, she had thought it was because he wanted nothing to show just how pathetically unattractive his girlfriend really was. Looking at the photo now, however, Lila saw a different truth.

She wore a velvet gown of royal blue, her hair tied up in a complicated swirl of curls that William had complained made her look too fussy. She was holding onto William’s arm, laughing and looking up at him. He wasn’t even smiling. Lila was radiant, her cheeks flushed from laughing and her eyes asparkle. She looked beautiful, and William looked.…

"Not as handsome as I remember." Lila touched the tiny figures in the picture. "I guess nobody ever told you that you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Willy."

He’d hated being called Willy, or Will, or even Billy. Staid, arrogant, full-of-himself William. Lila crumpled the picture with a sudden twist of her fingers and stared at the wad a moment. Smoothing the picture carefully, she placed it back in the box with the others. She might need to look at it again, sometime.

William had been wrong about her. He had not been doing Lila a favor. It had been the other way around. Lila had done William a favor by letting him in her life. She had made him laugh once or twice, and it was probably the only time in his life he’d ever let himself go so wild.

All at once, as if the sun had come out from behind the clouds, Lila felt the weight of William’s betrayal fall away from her. It didn’t matter any more what he thought. What Tom had told her was true. You can’t hurt someone who doesn’t care about you. William couldn’t hurt her anymore because she didn’t care about him.

"I love Tom." The words filled her with a bubble of joy that tickled her insides.

So what if women were falling all over him? He had chosen to be with her, hadn’t he? Didn’t that say anything?

"I love Tom Caine. I love him!"

She was ashamed she had let Jennifer’s cruel words pierce her. The blonde hostess meant nothing to Lila, and nothing she said ever again could possibly bother her. Lila was also ashamed she had not trusted Tom. Because Tom wasn’t William.

Lila put the box back from where she had taken it and relegated it once more to the depths of her closet. She didn’t need to see anything in there anymore. Though the memories it held would always be pleasant, none of those romances could compare to what she felt for the tall man with hazel eyes whom she’d met at her sister’s art showing. The joys and sorrows of all those past relationships had shaped her into the woman she was, true, but what she had shared with Tom had shown her the woman she was going to become.

It was like growing up all over again. Struggling through the angst of adolescence, trying to find herself. Trying to see herself as others saw her, whether their opinions were based on her face, her soul, or where she lived and what sort of car she drove.

It didn’t matter how everyone else saw her now. All that mattered was how she saw herself. The reflection she saw in Tom’s eyes was how