Summer of Love by Marie Ferrarella (easy to read books for adults list .TXT) 📕

Everett sighed. “Well, since you’ve kidnapped me, I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“I didn’t kidnap you,” Schuyler informed him. “You got into the car of your own free will.”

That’s not how he saw it. “You just keep telling yourself that,” he said. Laying his head back against the headrest, Everett closed his eyes. Running around and not getting much sleep was finally beginning to catch up with him. “Wake me whenever we get to wherever it is that we’re going,” he told her.

“We’re here,” Schuyler announced not five minutes later.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” Everett commented. Sitting up, he looked around as his sister got out of the car.

Schuyler had driven them to the Fortune Foundation.

Alert, not to mention annoyed, Everett glared at his sister when he got out. “Hey, why are we here?”

“You’ll find out,” she said cheerfully.

Neither his mood nor the look that he was giving her over the hood of her car improved.

“Schuyler, just what the hell are you up to?” he demanded.

“You’ll find out,” his sister repeated. She gave him what she no doubt hoped was an encouraging look. “Just give it a few more minutes.”

But Everett didn’t move an inch. “And if I don’t?”

“Then you’ll never know how things might have turned out.” When he still didn’t move, Schuyler looked at him plaintively. “Do it for me, Everett. Please,” she implored.

“Damn it, Schuyler, you owe me,” Everett snapped, finally coming around the sporty red vehicle.

Schuyler inclined her head and gave him a wink. “We’ll see.”

Lila was engrossed in drawing up the following week’s schedule for the volunteer doctors when Lucie walked into her office.

“Save whatever you’re working on, Lila,” Lucie told her. “I need your full, undivided attention right now.”

Surprised by Lucie’s serious tone, Lila looked up. “What’s going on?”

Instead of answering her, Lucie looked over her shoulder and beckoned to someone. Just who was she summoning to Lila’s office?

Totally stunned, Lila was immediately on her feet when she saw him.

Everett was the last person she’d expected to see here. After practically throwing him out of her house, she’d never thought she would see him again.

She fisted her hands, digging her knuckles into her desk to keep her knees from giving way.

She shot an angry look at her friend. “Lucie, what have you done?” she demanded.

“Saved two really nice people from a lifetime of loneliness and heartache,” Lucie answered. Then she stepped out of the way, allowing a bewildered-looking Everett to enter Lila’s office. But not before she gave a big grin and a high five to a well-dressed woman behind him.

Schuyler, Lila recognized.

Peering into the office around her brother, Schuyler declared, “I hereby officially call this intervention in session.”

With that, she stepped away from the doorway.

Following her out, Lucie told the two people who were left in the room, “And don’t come out until you’ve resolved this properly.” And then she closed the door behind her.

“This your idea?” Lila asked Everett.

“Hell, no,” he denied. “I think Schuyler cooked this up.”

“Not without Lucie’s help,” Lila said accusingly. Furious, she let out a shaky breath. And then she turned toward Everett. She was furious. “You know you can leave,” she told him.

“I know.” Lord, but he had missed her, he thought now, looking at Lila. “But since I’m here...maybe we should talk.”

“About what?” Lila wanted to know. “What is there left to say?” Restless, uneasy, she began to pace within the limited space. “I trusted you once and got my heart broken for my trouble.”

Her accusation hurt. But this wasn’t one-sided. “I could say the same thing,” Everett countered.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Everett, stunned. “You?” she questioned. What was he talking about?

“Yes,” he informed Lila. “I’d trusted you, too. Trusted that you’d be with me forever—and then you walked out. It wasn’t easy for me after we broke up. I might have gone on with my studies—because that was what I was supposed to do—but there was this huge, empty, jagged hole in my chest where you used to be.”

His dry laugh was totally mirthless as he continued. “I think I must have picked up the phone a hundred times that first year, wanting to call you and tell you about something that had happened in class or at the hospital, before I realized that I couldn’t. That you wouldn’t be there to answer the phone.” His eyes met hers. “Nothing meant anything without you,” he told her.

Lila stood there looking at him. The inside of her mouth felt like cotton and she struggled not to cry. She’d held her feelings in too long. For thirteen years, to be exact. Now she could hold them in no longer.

“I still think about our baby all the time,” she admitted.

Everett felt her words like a knife to his heart. More than anything, he wished he could go back in time to make things right. To do things differently. “Do you regret giving her up?”

“Yes,” she answered so quietly, he had to strain to hear her. And then Lila took a deep breath. “No.”

She blinked hard, telling herself she wasn’t going to cry. Forbidding herself to shed a single tear. Tears were for the weak and she wasn’t weak. She’d proven that over and over again.

“I know that our daughter has had a good life. The people who adopted her send me letters and photographs every once in a while, to let me know how she’s doing.” Lila smiled sadly. “Emma’s a beautiful girl and she’s doing really, really well in school.”

Everett looked at her in surprise. He’d had no idea this was going on. “Her name is Emma? And you’ve stayed in contact with the family?” he asked.

Lila nodded. “Yes. Not knowing what was going on with Emma was killing me so it took a bit of doing but I managed to get in contact with the family that adopted her. Emma’s parents are good people. They understood how hard it was for me