Page 43 of The Homemaker (The Chain of Lakes #1)

Chapter Forty-One

Murphy

Never underestimate the power of the last bite.

“You’re on your own, babe.” Blair wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me before slinging her handbag over her shoulder.

“On my own?” I wipe the sweat from my brow with a towel, drinking electrolyte water in the kitchen.

It’s been a week since Blair and I “made up” of sorts. Alice has performed her homemaker duties without giving me too many second glances, and I’ve tried to pretend that I’m not thinking about her nonstop.

“Mom’s taking me to a wine tasting at Aunt Tammy’s house, and Dad just left to have dinner at the club with friends. Alice asked for the night off, so you’re on your own for dinner. Maybe order something to be delivered.” She glosses her lips just as Vera steps around the corner .

“She’s watching a play again. I think she said her nephew is in it,” Vera says, sliding her phone into her purse.

“Where’s the play?” I casually ask.

“Uh, I assume at the children’s theater,” Vera says.

“Why? Are you going to wait for her to get back to make you dinner?” Blair snorts.

“Think she would?” I smirk, and Blair rolls her eyes as expected.

“Before long, we’ll be married and living in New York without a homemaker. You’d better get used to takeout food.”

“Noted.” I shoot her a toothy grin.

As soon as they pull out of the driveway, I head to the children’s theater. Why did Alice lie to me about being an only child?

I laugh when I see the sign out front with the performance title. Alice in Wonderland.

The theater is less than half full. So it doesn’t take me long to find Alice’s long, wavy auburn hair in the third row from the stage.

I sit in the back and read through the program with the list of cast members.

If Alice’s real last name is Yates, and she has a brother, then his son’s name should be Yates too.

But there is no one listed with that last name.

During the standing ovation, Alice scoots out of her aisle, clutches her purse, and walks up the stairs to the exit. On a double take, she spies me and stops. As soon as I stand, she continues out of the theater and the building as if she didn’t see me.

“Don’t act like you don’t know I’m here,” I say, following her to her car parked along the street.

“I’m pretending you didn’t follow me because that would be creepy.” She unlocks her door .

“Curious. Not creepy. You told me you were an only child. Yet, you have a nephew. I’m confused.”

She sighs, rounding the car to get out of the street. “I’m an only child.”

I wait, but that’s all she gives me, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You just like watching plays? That makes sense because you said you acted. And your mom confirmed that.”

After a beat, she nods.

“I just want to know you. Really know you.”

“You’re engaged to another woman.”

“And I’ve cheated on her. So the least you can do is help me understand why.”

Her jaw drops. “Help you understand?” She coughs a laugh. “I didn’t back you up against a door and tell you to unbutton your dress. I didn’t kiss you, lift you onto a counter, and pull off your underwear. I didn’t cheat?—”

Callen.

He’s not so casual. I can see it on her guilty face. Maybe she’s not engaged, but she’s taken. Callen wouldn’t be okay with what happened between us. And I wouldn’t blame him.

“Yes.” Her shoulders relax. “I like watching plays.”

“So what were you doing at the soccer fields the day you met Callen?”

Alice frowns. “I’m sorry. I know you want to know me because you feel like you can’t trust me. And I can’t undo the past, no matter how much I try to make you understand it.” She holds out her hand. “I’m Alice Yates. Can we start over?”

“Start over?” I laugh. “Like erase the past? Which part of it? Just the tragic parts? The two weeks we spent together? The day you unbuttoned your dress for me in the bathroom? The encounter in the kitchen? The other bathroom?”

Her hand drops to her side.

“If I pretend none of that existed, then my feelings for you—which I can’t avoid—are incredibly inappropriate,” I say.

“They are anyway.”

I shake my head. “Alice,” I lace my hands behind my neck and drop my head, staring at my feet, “I think about you nonstop. When I’m supposed to be working.

When I’m running in the morning. Every time I see the swimming pool.

When Hunter plays music in his study. Morning, noon, and night.

” I look up. “I fucking think about you when I’m in bed with my fiancée.

Not because I want to. I don’t. I love her, and that should be enough to stop thinking about you for one goddamn moment, but it’s not. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”

Tears well in her eyes, so she averts her gaze and wipes them. “Yes,” she whispers.

“Can you tell me one truth?”

She sniffles and looks at me.

“Was I just an escape, an actor in your play, an illusion in your two-week break from reality? Or were we real?”

She flinches.

“I feel like”—tipping my head toward the sky, I rest my hands on my hips and sigh—“I’m lost. Buried in a dozen perfectly wrapped, nested boxes. And to find what I’m looking for, I have to rip everything apart.”

Alice furrows her brow, then returns several tiny nods. “I ripped everything apart.” She laughs, but it sounds like a partial sob. “Then I burned it to the ground with myself in the middle. ”

I don’t hear the cars on the streets, the people passing by. And everything around me blurs until it’s just us in a bubble.

“For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t trust me either.”

I sag in regret. Why did I say that to her?

Alice smiles, and it feels like an invisible lifting of my chin, as if I shouldn’t feel remorse.

“There’s a reason why you’re engaged and I’m living on the outskirts of someone else’s happily ever after.”

Jesus …

“Alice—”

She shakes her head. “Don’t. When I was unwell, I honestly didn’t think I’d make it to thirty.

After Chris died, breathing felt like a luxury I didn’t deserve.

Literally everything in my life gets compared to death.

When I didn’t have a job, I thought, ‘Well, at least I’m not dead.

’ Marriage? A family? Love? That feels incredibly indulgent for someone who probably shouldn’t even be alive. ”

“What?” I say like someone knocked the air from my lungs. Without hesitation, I grab her face, forcing her to look at me. Then I lower my forehead to hers. “Don’t ever say that. Do you hear me?”

She grabs my wrists and swallows hard.

“ Do you hear me?” I repeat.

“Yeah,” she whispers.

I lift my head and press my lips to the spot it had been.

“I should go,” she says.

“No. Let’s get something to eat. Grab a drink. Take a walk. Whatever. Just … don’t go yet.”

Indecision lines her brow. “You don’t have to burn everything down like I did.”

My thumb brushes her cheek. “What if I do?”

We walk to a nearby café, and she orders a salad while I get a piece of turtle cake with ice cream.

“Do you want me stealing your salad?” I tease her when she reaches across the table and sinks her fork into my cake, scooping up a generous bite.

She opens her mouth like a shark and shoves in the cake. When she grins with ice cream dripping down her chin, my heart feels as gooey as the caramel. “Help yourself,” she mumbles with her mouth full.

“It’s not too late to go back to your passion.”

She squints.

“Acting.”

“Mmm.” She nods. “What do you think I’m doing now? Every day, I put on a costume, do my hair and makeup, and take the stage. Only the stage is a multi-million-dollar home. And I get subtle compliments and access to a pool instead of a standing ovation.”

“That makes me an actor too?” I ask.

She sips her hibiscus tea and shrugs. “Sure. We’re all actors in this thing called life.

We take on roles: spouse, parent, child, friend, boss, employee …

lover.” Her lips twitch with a hint of amusement, but it fades just as quickly.

“We don’t even know why we’re here. To make the world a better place?

To love? To procreate? To simply exist? Or is it a game?

No one knows. But we don’t know what else to do.

So here we are doing whatever the ‘thing’ is.

And we have traditions and rules to live by that are supposed to make it easier and perhaps give life more meaning.

“But I feel like I’m not supposed to be here—” She quickly gives me a hard headshake before I can protest. “So in some ways, the rules feel like they don’t apply to me. And that’s freeing. However, you’re following a path, so the rules should matter to you.”

“What rules?”

“The kind that says you should love, honor, and cherish the one you’ve chosen and be faithful to her, forsaking all others.” She reaches her fork across the table again.

I block it, sliding my bowl away from her. “Nope. You don’t get to guilt me like that, then steal my cake. I don’t care that you think the rules don’t apply to you. I’m enforcing the no-sharing rule until you apologize for ruining a perfectly good night.”

Alice giggles. “I’m sorry.”

“Prove it.”

“How am I supposed to prove it?”

“Kiss me.”

Her cheeks flush. “Stop.”

I take another bite and close my eyes. “Mmm, this is so good and almost gone.”

She reaches for the bowl, and I shield it by curling my arm round it.

Taking another bite of her salad, she squints at me.

I scoop the last big bite into my spoon, and her gaze shifts to it.

In the next breath, she tosses her napkin on the table beside her plate and moves to my side of the booth.

I peer down at her, and we have a stare off.

When she leans in, I duck my head to kiss her because I need to feel her mouth against mine.

At the last second, she presses two fingers to my lips. “Say it,” she whispers.

It takes a few seconds to figure it out. Then I smile and murmur, “Hi,” against her fingers.

She mirrors my grin and drops her hand. It’s a slow kiss. One of her hands rests on my leg and the other slides along my neck until her fingers tease my nape.

Flick. Flick. Flick.

My irresponsibility threatens to ignite the fire that will burn my world to the ground.

After I pay the check, we find a side street to stroll down, hand-in-hand.

Callen who?

Blair who?

What marriage?

Nope. None of that. Just two lovers reuniting after years apart, falling into step once again in a secret affair. Reality is an afterthought when one’s heart speaks louder than the mind.

“Don’t pretend that doesn’t give you a hard-on,” she says, nodding to a pile of wood in the yard to our right where a recent storm took down a tree.

“I think you know what gives me a hard-on.”

She nudges me with her arm, and I right myself before stepping off the sidewalk. “I’m serious. Your father would be so disappointed in you for giving up on your art.”

“You never met my father. How do you know he’s not in Heaven still picking splinters out of his fingers, proud of me for coming to my senses and finding a different hobby?”

“Oh? What’s your new hobby?”

“I don’t know. Some of us don’t have natural talent at everything .”

“I can only imagine.” She smirks, tucking her chin.

“Is that a humble brag?”

“No.” She giggles.

“I think it is.” I release her hand and wrap my arm around her neck, pulling her into my side, teasing my knuckles over her head like an older brother would torment his younger sibling.

But, it doesn’t last long because, in the next breath, I slide all of my fingers into her hair and kiss her in the middle of the sidewalk.

Flick. Flick. Flick.

There’s smoke and heat. When we ignite, I won’t be able to stop.