“Wow. The two of you must really like each other if you’re willing to talk on the phone. But you’re right. That’s the opposite of juicy.”
“There’s been a lot of kissing.”
That was perhaps an understatement. They’d only seen each other a few times since their first kiss on her doorstep, but Layla estimated they spent about ten percent of that time talking and the rest joined at the mouth. She couldn’t get enough of the kissing, and the novelty of one of them kissing the other whenever they felt like it had not worn off for either of them.
Not even close.
Tonya sighed. “Kissing is so underrated. I’m going to kiss Tim when I get home. Just lay a big old kiss right on his mouth.”
“You should,” Layla said.
Annie waved as she was walking her boys in and then joined Tonya and Layla briefly on her way back to the parking lot. “I’ve gotta run, but I have to tell you that my kids love your song as much as I do, Layla. Seriously, they know all the words and we sing it at the top of our lungs on the way to school every morning.”
“Thanks,” Layla said. “Tell the kids we appreciate their enthusiasm. We need all the fans we can get.”
Josh came out of the building and headed toward his truck. As he passed them, he threw Layla a smile and said, “I’ll see you around five.”
Layla smiled back and gave him a quick nod. “See you then.”
To Tonya, she said, “We’re going to cook dinner together. That’s something else that’s underrated. I like cooking with Josh. We open a bottle of wine and we make a meal and then sit down together and eat it.”
“And then there’s kissing,” Tonya said. “For dessert.”
“Always,” Layla said. She turned toward Tonya, and the expression on her face was serious. “It really does feel good knowing that the person standing beside you in the kitchen wants you. And I don’t just mean in a romantic capacity. It’s so nice knowing that he gives a shit, Tonya. He wants to be there. And I want him to be there. It’s a good feeling.”
As she and Josh had already discussed, fun was in short supply when a relationship was grinding to its fateful end, but romance was something even more likely to have tapped out long before that. That was certainly true in Layla’s case. If the opposite of love was indifference, well, Layla knew a lot about what that emotion felt like. She and Liam had spent very little time together during the last year of their marriage, and when they were together, romance seemed to be far down on the list.
“I know,” Tonya said, reaching out to give her shoulder a squeeze. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Me too.” Being around Josh was fun and romantic and peaceful and Layla couldn’t ask for more than that.
* * *
As Layla was walking to her car at the end of that day, she was already thinking about Josh and how much she was looking forward to his arrival when a man walked up to her and said, “Are you Layla Hilding-Cook?” I am Layla Hilding, she thought, but she said, “Yes.”
The man handed her a legal-sized envelope and said, “You’ve been served.”
Her thoughts were racing so fast that she barely remembered unlocking her car door and sinking into the driver’s seat as she attempted to rip open the envelope with her other hand. No, she thought. It was a done deal. Her attorney had assured her of that.
But Liam must not have agreed, because according to the papers in the envelope, he wanted to reopen their divorce. Layla’s hands were shaking so violently that she dropped her phone twice. Tears blurred her vision and it took her two tries to find the right contact. The receptionist must have sensed the desperation in her voice, because a few minutes later, for once, her attorney came on the line, and the questions—so many questions—tumbled from Layla’s mouth.
It seemed that Liam wanted to reopen their divorce based on fraud. Layla had disclosed every penny of the money she had received from her parents, because it was not in her nature to be dishonest or hide things. That was Liam’s game and the last thing she ever wanted to be was like her ex-husband. But according to her attorney, based on the papers in the envelope that she read to him over the phone, it didn’t matter that Layla had disclosed the money. She had hidden it from Liam during their marriage and now someone had put a bug in his ear that maybe he should make sure she hadn’t been hiding anything else. And now, for good measure, he’d decided that maybe he was entitled to some of the money in Layla’s retirement account. And all the attorney fees for this round would be hers to pay, of course.
As she’d learned during the disclosure of their assets, Liam didn’t have a lot in his retirement account because he’d liquidated some of it in the last ten years.
To keep them afloat, he’d said.
Them.
He’d been very vocal about that, almost as if he’d been expecting her to thank him. As if his mismanagement of their finances and the bailout the retirement money had provided should somehow be her problem to share even though she’d known nothing about it at the time.
“Is this something that could actually happen?” Layla asked her attorney. “In what world would this be even remotely fair?”
“Divorce is rarely about being fair,” he said. “We can fight it and you’ll probably win. You didn’t have anything else, did you? Anything you didn’t tell me about?”
“No,” she said. And that was the truth. She had her retirement and she had the yearly gift from her parents, and she could not believe this was happening.
“Don’t do anything. Don’t contact Liam. Don’t talk to him about this. I’ll get back to you tomorrow and I’ll let you know what the next steps will be. Keep your chin up. At least he’s not asking for alimony.”
Layla made a mental note to fire her attorney when this was over. “Well, at least there’s that,” she said. Then she hung up the phone and made a call to Liam’s assistant, fabricating an emergency that made it necessary for her to know exactly where she could find him.
* * *
Liam was waiting in the parking lot of the surgery center when she pulled in. Good. That meant his assistant had already tipped him off and he was worried about having a conversation with Layla within earshot of the client he was meeting with. When he spotted her, he hurried toward her car as if he thought she would let him get in. She got out and she slammed the door and it didn’t matter that she hadn’t made it inside the building because everyone could probably hear her from the parking lot.
“I asked for nothing,” she screamed. “I walked away from everything we had, and if you fight me on this, I will do whatever it takes to ruin you financially. I will come after every single penny you ever manage to earn in the future. I will bankrupt myself doing it if I have to.”