How do I make whole words optional in the regex?

Namely, I wanted to customize my regex to recognize the following things apple and lemon, apple lemon, apple and and apple. I want the words and and lemon to be optional, currently I only managed to make and optional but not lemon.

It would be great if it's achievable with the current format of the regex.

Regex:

\b([a][\W_]*?)+(
[\W_]*?)+(
[\W_]*?)+([l][\W_]*?)+([e][\W_]*?)+(([a][\W_]*?)+([n][\W_]*?)+([d][\W_]*?))?([l][\W_]*?)+([e][\W_]*?)+([m][\W_]*?)+([o][\W_]*?)+([n][\W_]*?)+\b

Regex101:

https://regex101.com/r/Wte6Gg/2

The following expression needs to start with "apple", then the words "lemon" and "and" can follow, if they follow both, they need to be in the order "and lemon"
Does that help?

\b(apple)( ?and)?( ?lemon)?\b

https://regex101.com/r/gyj0yY/1

EDIT

In your format the following should work:

\b([a][\W_]*?)+(

[\W_]*?)+(

[\W_]*?)+([l][\W_]*?)+([e][\W_]*?)+(([\W_]*)([a][\W_]*?)+([n][\W_]*?)+([d][\W_]*?)+)?(([\W_]*)([l][\W_]*?)+([e][\W_]*?)+([m][\W_]*?)+([o][\W_]*?)+([n][\W_]*?)+)?\b

https://regex101.com/r/5wPyJ1/1

If that is what you were looking for, please mark it as the answer.

This is a more general solution - using two words, optionally joined by an 'and'

https://regex101.com/r/Z2TZ7T/1