Chapter 6

Leila

Leila strode into her home office, basking in the cheerful warmth from the light coming through the two bay windows on the opposite side of the room. She bit into a slice of toast smothered with as much strawberry jam as it could hold as she rushed toward her desk. She hadn’t had time to eat the larger breakfast that her mother and daughter were now enjoying—link sausages, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and pecan waffles, which were supposed to be Evan’s cook’s specialty. She hadn’t wanted to miss her appointment with a new client, a woman who was holding a winter soiree next year and wanted custom-made invitations. She would be one of many new clients in Chesterton that Leila had brought on board in the past seven months since she had opened her graphic arts studio in the guesthouse.

As Leila finished the rest of her toast, she dropped the high heels she had been carrying to the hardwood floor and quickly put them on her stockinged feet. She wiped the remaining bread crumbs from her hands, adjusted the elastic waistband of her linen skirt, and glanced around the room, making sure it was presentable.

At least she kept her office relatively neat. But the adjacent room and studio where she did most of her actual work was a disaster area, covered with spools of ribbons and acrylic accents, open sample binders and reams of parchment. Only a two-foot area directly around her Mac was clutter-free. But she liked the space that way. She seemed to be most creative in utter chaos, something that Evan couldn’t understand. He had stumbled into her studio almost a month ago and had nearly had a heart attack when he saw all the disarray. The borderline OCD in him wanted to charge into the room and start cleaning, to give the space some semblance of order. She had to physically pull him away and shut and lock the door to keep him from doing so.

But Evan needs order, she thought as she paused to remove a sample binder from one of the wall shelves. He needs to feel like he’s in control.

It was one of the few unfortunate traits he had inherited from his father, George, and something that she had known about him for years, ever since they were little kids. When they played board games together or kickball or tag, he was the one who always had to dictate the rules of play and chastise whoever broke those rules.

Leila could let his bossiness slide back then and just roll her eyes at the little dictator. But she couldn’t let it slide anymore, not when they were adults in a serious romantic relationship and talking about spending their lives together. She had relinquished control in her previous marriage, placing all her trust and hopes in Brad, and look where it had gotten her! She knew Evan was a very different man than her ex-husband, a loving and kind man who had no nefarious intent behind what he did, but she couldn’t . . . she wouldn’t relinquish that type of control again. She was no one’s puppet, including the man she loved. Evan had to understand that.

Just as Leila rounded her desk, her phone began to ring. She reached for the receiver and raised it to her ear while shifting a stack of folders aside on her desk. “Leila Designs,” she answered. “How may I help you?”

“Hello, Ms. Hawkins?” a voice answered. “This is Maggie Sutter.”

“Hey!” Leila said with a smile as she sat down in her rolling chair. “I was just getting ready for you.” She glanced at her wall clock and saw it was the scheduled time for their appointment. Her smile disappeared. “Are you running a little late? Is that why you called?”

“No, actually . . . uh, I . . . I wanted to tell you that I won’t be able to make today’s appointment.”

“Oh,” Leila said, feeling a little crestfallen. She had been excited to show Sutter her ideas, which mostly involved a winter wonderland theme. “Well, when would you like reschedule? I have a few slots open later this week and next week if—”

“Actually, I . . . I don’t know when I would be able to reschedule. At least, not . . . not now.”

“But I thought you wanted to get started on this soon. You said you were interested in save the dates, invitations, and maybe menus, correct?” She glanced down at her notepad where she had scribbled relevant information about Sutter’s event. “If it’s taking place in early January, I would have to start ordering—”

“Perhaps I don’t need as elaborate invitations as I thought. My husband is already complaining about the budget for this,” she said with an awkward laugh. “I thought I might save money by scaling back in some areas, like the . . . the stationery.”

Leila leaned forward in her chair, bracing her elbows on her wooden desk, feeling her baby shift. “Mrs. Sutter, if you want a simpler, more economical design, I can do that. Just let me know what your new budget for invitations is and I can—”

“I’m sorry but no. No, that won’t be necessary,” Mrs. Sutter rushed. “I apologize for wasting your time, Ms. Hawkins. Good-bye.”

She then hung up, leaving Leila staring at the phone receiver, dumbfounded.

That was weird, she thought with furrowed brows. She hung up the phone and shrugged off her bewilderment and disappointment and booted up her computer. Now that Sutter had canceled, she had time this morning to check and respond to her emails. But as Leila read through her emails, the furrow in her brows deepened.

She had received messages overnight from at least three other clients who were canceling scheduled appointments, including one scheduled for later that day. Another client was even canceling invitations she had already contracted, despite the fact that Leila had already ordered the supplies and the woman would have to pay a hefty cancellation fee.

“I’ve found services elsewhere,” the woman had written in her terse email.

“What the hell is going on?” Leila muttered as she stared at her computer screen.

If the trend of cancellations continued, she didn’t know what she would do. She needed clients to keep her new business afloat.

Still frowning, Leila powered down her computer. With a grunt and bracing her tummy, she rose from her desk and opened the door that led to her studio. Now that her morning was open, she had some time to work on her other projects. She kicked off her heels and headed to her crafting table. She sat down on her swivel stool after adjusting its height, reached for the place cards she had been finishing up yesterday, and got to work.

As she toiled with ribbons and a hot glue gun, her mind wandered. She thought again about the cancellations and why they had just started happening now. Was there some bad buzz about her studio? Was someone spreading it around town?

All of a sudden, she remembered Charisse’s words at the country club.

“I will make your life a living hell—and I’m only getting started,” Charisse had said.

Leila paused from her work and lowered the scalpel she was holding to the crafting table.

Charisse wasn’t sabotaging her, was she? Was that woman spreading lies about her around Chesterton?

No, I’m just being paranoid, Leila told herself.

It was purely a coincidence. A few cancellations did not mean bad buzz. She had never owned her own business before. Maybe trends like this were normal and she was just hitting a brief rough patch.

But still she couldn’t shake her unease, making it hard to concentrate on what she was doing. She pushed her stool away from the table in defeat.

“To hell with this,” she whispered. She wouldn’t spend all morning and possibly her afternoon with her brain stuck in a loop of the same thoughts and worries. She released a gust of air, pushed herself to her feet, and walked back into her office. She reached for her desk phone and dialed a number. The line picked up after the third ring.

“Hello!” Paulette shouted over the sound of a wailing infant.

“Hey, girl,” Leila said, smiling again. “It sounds crazy over there. Need reinforcements?”

“Oh, dear God! Yes, please!” Paulette yelled, making Leila laugh.

“Okay, I’ll be over in thirty minutes.”

* * *

“Lee, it is so good to get out of that house,” Paulette said as she adjusted the visor top of little Nate’s carriage.

“And good to get out of the office,” Leila concurred.

The two women were strolling along one of the asphalt trails of Macon Park, enjoying the warm sunshine and all the lovely scenery nature had to offer. Summer was drawing to an end and the first signs of fall were emerging in Chesterton. The canopy of leaves overhead showed a tableau of reds, yellows, oranges, and even shades of purple. The scorching heat was starting to wane and give way to balmy weather with a light breeze. It was a perfect day for a walk.

“Thanks so much for saving me!” Paulette said.

“I didn’t save you,” Leila insisted with a grin as she adjusted her sunglasses and smiled at a group of children who were squealing and playing on a nearby playground. “I just stopped by.”

“No, you saved me. Nate was losing it and I was on the verge of losing it, too. He’s been crying constantly for the past few days. I thought something was wrong with . . . you know . . . him being a preemie. I thought maybe he was suffering some complication, but then I took him to the doctor and she said it was just—”

“Colic,” Leila said with a resigned nod. “Yeah, I know. Izzy went through the same thing when she was an infant. She wasn’t premature, but she cried constantly the first two and half months. It almost broke me.” She sighed. “Of course, I was all alone. Brad was of no help and Mama was on the other side of the country. I had to figure it out myself. Eventually, I figured out that sometimes sun and fresh air helps. I don’t know why, but it does.”

“Well, thanks for letting me know!” Paulette gushed with relief, gazing down at her slumbering baby’s now perfectly angelic face. They approached a wooden bench perched underneath the shade of hundred-year-old oak trees. “But enough about my agony . . . how are things back home at casa de Murdoch? How are you and Evan doing? What’s he been up to?”

“Oh, you know your brother!” Leila said as she carefully lowered herself onto the bench, landing with a grunt. Paulette, who was no longer hindered by a bulging belly, gracefully sat down beside her. “Ev is pretty much the same as always: kind, giving, protective . . . and mildly manipulative and addicted to micromanaging,” Leila said with a droll roll of her dark eyes.

Paulette laughed. “That’s just how he is! You’ve known him for forever, Lee. You knew what you were getting into when you two hooked up.”

Leila sighed, rubbed her belly, and nodded.

“But the good outweighs the bad though, right? You two are still happy?”

“Of course we are!” she said a little too eagerly.

But the truth was that some days . . . some days she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure if she should start to rebel against the dynamic she and Evan had created. Charisse may have been happy to be Mrs. Murdoch, the pampered housewife of a very rich husband. She believed that it had been Leila’s goal all along to become the same, but that was far from the truth. Leila hated that Evan had all the money, property, and power in their relationship.

“You’re mine . . . and you’ll always be mine,” he had said just last night, giving her that intense gaze that let her know what he said wasn’t open to debate. She still chafed at the memory of those domineering words.

“You don’t own me, Evan!” she had wanted to scream at him.

But she knew in her heart that he loved her and she loved him. She wasn’t going to give up on them.

“So how are things between you and Tony?” she asked, changing the subject. “Is he adjusting to fatherhood well?”

“Oh, he loves it!” Paulette said, gently rocking the carriage back and forth, easing it with the toe of her Tory Burch slipper. “Ever since Nate came home from the hospital he’s been holding him and cooing over him. It’s so adorable.”

Leila gazed at the children on the playground, keeping her focus on a set of girls who were playing on the ladybug-themed seesaw, squealing as they went up and down. She didn’t think she could look at Paulette directly while she asked her next question.

“So Tony’s okay with . . . with everything? He isn’t . . . he isn’t angry about everything that happened?”

Paulette stopped rocking the stroller. She lowered her foot to engage one of the stroller brakes. “You mean is he okay with not knowing who Nate’s real father is?”

Leila’s eyes snapped toward Paulette’s. “I’m sorry for being so nosy. You don’t have to answer that. I just—”

“No, it’s okay. I’ve told you everything else, haven’t I? I could see why you’re wondering.” She took a deep breath. “Yes, Tony seems okay with it—shockingly so. He said he accepted Nate as his son no matter what, and it definitely seems like he means it.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘seems’?” Leila asked, narrowing her eyes at her friend. “Are you saying that you don’t believe him?”

Paulette shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t believe him. I think he really is trying to move on with our lives and wants to be a good father to Nate and a good husband to me. We’re happy together. We’re happier than we’ve been for a long while! He even moved out of the guestroom back into our bedroom. He finally got his mom to give back her key to our home and told her no when she tried to move in so she can come and help me out with Nate. ‘If she wants help, she’ll ask for it, Ma,’ he told her.” She chuckled. “I was so shocked, Lee. He hardly ever stands up to his mama! We’re better than we’ve been in almost a year, since we came back from our honeymoon in Cabo, but something . . . something still doesn’t feel . . . I don’t know . . . right, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he won’t talk about what happened! He doesn’t want to talk about the affair, about me keeping my pregnancy a secret the whole time. He won’t let me utter the name Marques.” She sighed. “I guess some women would be happy that he doesn’t want to bring it up, that he wants to forget. But to me, it doesn’t seem . . . healthy.” She turned slightly on the bench to face Leila. “You know I suggested to him that we go to a therapist or a marriage counselor to make sure that we’re really okay since we’ve been through so much. And he told me no! He said we didn’t need it.”

Leila frowned. “You didn’t need it?”

Of all the couples who needed counseling, Paulette and Antonio needed it the most, in Leila’s humble opinion. She didn’t see how they could have a healthy future if they couldn’t unravel everything that had happened in their tangled past.

Paulette shook her head again. “No, he said we were fine and that we should just . . . just move on. He said that he didn’t know what other secrets might come out if we started babbling to a counselor.”

“What other secrets? But you told him everything, right?”

“Yes! I don’t have anything else to hide! He knows just as much as I know! But he still refuses to talk to someone for . . . for whatever reason.”

Leila pursed her lips. “That’s so strange.”

“I know. But I don’t want to push him. I’ve already put him through so much. I told myself that people heal in their own way and in their own time. This is just his way. I guess I should respect that, right?”

“I . . . I guess.”

Just then, little Nate began to stir, whimpering softly underneath his blanket, curling his tiny hands into tight fists.

“Oh, I think we better get moving,” Paulette said, rising to her feet and leaning toward the carriage. “I don’t want him to start up again.”

“All right,” Leila said, pushing herself upright. It was starting to take more and more effort the further along she got in her pregnancy. “Let’s walk another half mile and then call it a day.”

“Don’t overexert yourself, lady,” Paulette said.

Leila waved off her warning. “Pssh, don’t worry about me!” She dropped her hand to her lower back as they stepped back onto the asphalt. “I can waddle with the best of them.”

Paulette broke down into giggles as Leila started to do an exaggerated waddle like one of the ducks in the nearby pond. “Girl, come on!” She swatted Leila’s shoulder, making her laugh too. “You and your crazy self!”