Just My Luck by Adele Parks (best romance books of all time txt) 📗

me he is a smart boy, a kind boy. And I think of more babies. Another son, maybe a daughter. She’d also play football or, if she didn’t want to, I’d sit with a plastic cup and pretend to sip from it at tea parties. I’d look ridiculous. I wouldn’t care.” Toma’s gaze is on the grass a foot in front of him. “Also, if Benke didn’t want to play football, if he was into music, theater or drawing, that would be good, too. Tea parties! This kid could be anything he wanted to be. I wouldn’t care. And Reveka.” He rolled her name around his tongue, around the dark night, and I could hear the longing as clearly as I could hear the happy singing drift from the house. “She’d pass her exams and become an accountant. She’d be very good. Very dedicated. She’d become a big boss. She might come home and be angry with me because I didn’t do the ironing, didn’t make supper the way she wanted. And I’d apologize. And I’d try harder to do more in the house. Even though this is not our tradition, we’d adopt a more modern and fair way.” He turns to me now. I look at him even though his pain is hard to witness. “I’d have thrown myself at all the bright possibilities of the world, exposing myself to anything that might blow in, a kid that needed expensive dentist work, an exam badly failed, a teen scraping the side of my new car, even finding a stash of drugs in their room. The stuff that happens to my friends. I’d have borne it all because those cold winds would have ruffled, possibly brought down a fence or two. But nothing more.”

I love the way Toma talks. He tries harder to grasp at what we mean, what life means, than most people bother to do. I don’t know if it’s because he comes from a different culture or language, or because of what he’s shouldered in losing his wife and child. I just know I could sit here and listen to him all night. He sighs. “I spend a lot of time thinking about that life and being angry with my different life. The one with storms—hazardous, brutal storms, where I try to numb myself. Where I became a man who drank too much and took antidepressants. A man who ended up living on the street.” He shakes his head. “Reveka would have been so sad to see that. Or angry. She could be fierce. She hated waste.”

I smile. “I’m certain I would have liked Reveka.”

“Yes, you would, but you would never have met.”

“I suppose not.”

“When they died, I lost everything. Them, yes, but also the glorious impulse to be better. Without them I had no one to let down but myself. Which I did.” He sighs, shakes his head. “You gave me a chance, Lexi. I can’t live that life. It’s gone. But you gave me a chance to live a different life. You gave me back the wish to be better. I think you have given me the chance of a very, very good life.”

“I just gave you money, Toma. You are deciding what to do with it.” I shrug.

“Question.” Toma taps a finger against my hand to get my attention. He has it anyway, but his touch sends a pulse ricocheting through my body. “Do you think less of me, Lexi, because I stopped searching for the people who owned the property? The people ultimately responsible?” I shake my head. “I thought maybe now I have all this money I should stay and hunt them down. The records are obviously purposefully confusing, but now we could hire private detectives.”

“What then?” I ask. “The man won’t be brought to justice because Winterdale took the fall. It’s a dead end.”

“If we found him, we could hire thugs to kill him.” My eyes widen and Toma laughs. “I’m joking. I’m not a killer. There was a time when I raged that way, but you poured oil on those waters, Lexi.”

“It’s better that you move on. That’s what I want for you. That’s why I gave you the money.”

Toma stretches out his hand. His thumb touches the bit of forehead above my eyebrow, and he strokes me there. I close my eyes and allow the caress. It is slow and gentle; it is as though he’s just found that bit of my body and it is the most erotic part of me. Or precious. He soothes away my cares. I feel my body slacken. He pulls the blanket up to my chin and I feel his firm hands tuck it tightly around me, so I’m snugly cocooned. He pauses, looks me in the eye and then moves forward, kisses my forehead. Chastely, but not really so. Tenderly. I can smell the cold night air clinging to him.

“I should call an Uber,” I murmur.

“Yes, you need to go back to your party.”

Back to my life. Or whoever’s life I am leading now.

CHAPTER 33

Emily

Ridley keeps hold of my hand as he strides through the party, across the field and toward the woods. He’s walking quickly, I can hardly keep up. The boots I’m wearing are high and even though the heels are quite chunky, I fall off them two or three times, hurting my ankle a bit. Every time I do, he rolls his eyes and says, “Seriously, Emily, how much have you had to drink?” And I like it that he’s concerned for me. Even if his concern comes out sounding a little like a condemnation. He’s right. I am drunk. I like it. It’s as if my fingers are candy floss, all malleable and melty, vapid. My fingers, my head, my body.

The neatly mowed grass gives way to longer, wilder stuff and then soon a tangle of brambles, twigs, foliage. I’m glad of the boots, otherwise my legs would be ripped to bits. Ridley only lets go of