An affection and intensity that was just like her father’s.
“Just be happy,” he mumbled into her ear, his voice shaking with emotion and at the sound of it, the feel of his embrace, she burst out crying. She wished she hadn’t but it was all too much, she couldn’t help herself.
So lost was she in her emotion, she barely registered it when Victor turned her into Nate’s arms and she cried into the hard wall of his chest. Cried for her gullibility, cried that she’d believed Jeff and Danielle, cried for what they all lost, including Laura and Victor, cried for what it cost them and cried for, well, everything.
Finally, when she’d spent her tears, she arched back against Nate’s arm and she saw him take something from Victor and then he handed her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes but he still lifted a hand to slide his thumb along her cheekbone.
“All right now?” he asked in a gentle voice and she nodded.
After nodding, she contradictorily shook her head and his dark eyes flickered with worry.
“I’m hungry,” she admitted on a trembling smile.
She watched as he grinned, the concern in his eyes fled and he bent his head and brushed his beautiful, smiling lips against hers.
“I’ll take you to get something to eat and then to the neurologist,” he told her and broke away.
“Let me fix my face.” She began to turn from them but stopped, hesitated and then leaned in to kiss Victor on the cheek. This startled a smile from the older man and it was not in any way tentative.
Lily felt, inexplicably, like an important piece of her life, thought lost and left gaping, had been put back, snug and comforting, into place.
Then she hurried from the room as she heard Nate ask, “Are you okay here?”
Victor replied, “Yes.”
“You know what to do?”
And then Lily was out of earshot, but she wasn’t listening anyway.
The words, Nathaniel had suffered enough, were ringing in her ears.
* * * * *
“Do you still have a motorcycle?” Lily asked.
“Yes,” Nate answered.
“Then I have another condition.”
Lily watched Nate smile.
They were in his Aston Martin, headed back to Somerset. It was after their delicious brunch at a posh patisserie in Kensington, her neurologist’s appointment (complete with an unnecessary and costly MRI) and the GP appointment (she was now in possession of birth control pills but, as it took a month for them to be fully effective, she was also fitted with a diaphragm). After all of this, she hoped she didn’t have to see another doctor for at least twenty years.
Although she had to admit to one highlight of her medical experience.
Upon leaving the GP’s examination room, she saw Nate sitting and waiting for her. The ankle of one of his long legs resting atop the knee of the other, his dark, handsome head bent to study a pile of papers in his lap. He was completely oblivious to every single woman in the room staring at him with longing, surreptitious glances.
And then, as if sensing she was there, his head came up and he watched her coming toward him, his eyes moving lazily from the top of her hair to the tips of her toes. His face registered a sort of triumphant satisfaction, communicated such a smug possession that she could swear that he, rich, powerful, tall, lean, urbane, gorgeous Nathaniel McAllister was proud to be with her, sheltered, plain, naive, Indiana-girl Lily Jacobs. The very thought of it made her nearly trip on her fancy high-heeled sandals and fall flat on her face.
Luckily she did not for that would have ruined the moment and he rose when she came closer. Again, as was becoming his custom, his hand moved to rest on her waist, his fingers pressing into her there as if he wished to brand her.
“All set?” he murmured, his eyes and voice warm.
She nodded and, she couldn’t help herself, she did it happily.
She could also swear, as they left, Nate’s hand at the small of her back, guiding her through the waiting room, that she saw one mother of a sick, snot-nosed child lean to another sitting beside her, jerk her head frustratedly in their direction and mutter, “Figures.”
They’d gone to the car and started straight away to Clevedon.
Lily had been surprised at this and wanted to go back to the penthouse to get her things but Nate assured her it was “being seen to”.
“What’s your condition?” Nate asked pulling her out of her reverie and her reaction to his smile.
“If you take Tash on the cycle, you can’t drive it the way you drove it when we were together. You have to be more careful,” she told him.
“Agreed,” he replied instantly then went on, “but what about when I take you on the bike?”
“Oh, I’m too old for bikes,” Lily responded airily, her body thrilling a little bit at the thought of being on a motorcycle again, especially with Nate. This thrill she tamped down with firm resolution.
At her words, he let out a sharp bark of laughter that filled the car and she smiled to herself at the sound of it.
“You already broke your own condition anyway.” She was letting their easy banter relax her even further. She hadn’t felt this carefree in, well, since she last was with Nate.
“I beg your pardon?”
“This morning when we, when you…” She broke off and thought how to put it delicately. “We didn’t use any protection,” she informed him.
“Yes we did.”
She was watching the scenery but, at his words, her head snapped around to stare at him.
“We did?”
“I did,” he amended.
“You did?” she queried in wonder.
“Obviously, I did it right,” he muttered to himself.
“How…?” she mumbled then went on. “Forget it, I don’t want to know.”
His answer was to take her hand from her lap and lift it to his mouth, brushing her knuckles with his lips all the while his eyes never left the road.
The lone gymnast in her belly liked it when he did that too.
Later, Nate expertly parallel parked in front of Lily’s house and before he’d fully helped her alight, Natasha had flung the front door open to the house and was rushing to them.
“Mummeeeeee,” she cried and Lily had just stepped on the sidewalk when Tash’s body slammed into her and her thin arms closed around Lily’s hips.
“Hey baby doll.” Lily bent to kiss the top of her shining, black hair, the blue gleaming in it from the still-strong sun.
“Daddy!” She disengaged and threw herself at Nate to give him one of her fabulous hugs.
He bent as well but to pick her up. He swung her in front of him and her legs closed around his waist and linked at the ankles behind his back as her arms rested around his shoulders.
“Natasha,” Nate murmured.
“Your things arrived,” Tash informed him cheerfully and Lily’s once-contented, now-startled gaze moved from her daughter to Nate.
“Good.” He was smiling at Tash.
“What things?” Lily asked, vaguely realising Fazire had also come out of the house and was emanating genie-rage all the way down their front walk.
Nate didn’t answer but his eyes moved to Lily’s.
“What things?” she repeated.
She’d asked Nate but Tash answered, “About a million suitcases and some boxes. There’s a few things for you in some glossy bags but not nearly as much stuff as for Daddy.”
At her daughter’s words, Lily crossed her arms in front of her, started to tap her toe and she glared at Nate.
He put Natasha down and Lily’s eyes cut to her daughter. “Go inside a sec, Tash, I need to speak to your father.”
Tash presented her with a child-scowl. “You’re always needing to speak to my father.”
Lily raised her eyebrows and Tash read the meaning swiftly after years of seeing her mother give her that look, she had lots of practice reading the meaning, unfortunately, Lily hadn’t learned about the eyebrow raise tactic
until it was almost too late. Tash ran inside and Fazire, with a jerk, followed and slammed the door behind them.
Lily whirled to Nate.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she snapped.
“Are we going to have this conversation on the pavement?” he enquired blandly, even in asking the question, he sounded like it was all the same to him.
Her hackles rose. There was simply nothing that penetrated his armour.
“Yes, we are.”
“You told me to move to Somerset,” he reminded her.
“I didn’t mean today!”
“When did you mean?”
She closed her mouth and glowered at him because she thought that was her safest bet considering she didn’t have an answer to his question.
His eyes changed, they became hard and glittering and she felt a thrill of fear at the sight.
“I’ve lost eight years. Eight years of you and seven years of my daughter. If it’s within my power not to lose another day, I’ll not lose it,” he told her, the force behind his deep voice almost like a physical thing, “and it’s within my power.”
She had to admit, he had a point, although she wasn’t going to admit that to him.
“It seems everything is within your power,” she grumbled perhaps a little unconvincingly.
Nate didn’t respond.
“So that’s it then, one day you live in London, the next you live in Somerset. Easy as that?” Lily asked.
“You did it for me,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“I didn’t have a penthouse and a multi-gazillion-pound company to run!” she retorted.
He took a step toward her and one of his steps brought him within an inch of her. His hand went to her jaw and she tilted her head back to look at him. His eyes had lost their steel and were glittering with something altogether different.
“Are you worried about me?” he asked softly.
“Well, what are you going to do?” she flared. “You can’t exactly commute two and a half hours one way. You’ll be on the road five hours a day. You’ll be home in time to kiss Tash’s forehead while she sleeps.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
His hand was at her waist again, his fingers biting into her there.
She turned her head and looked at her house. Perhaps she hadn’t thought this through.
He was right. They might as well start this family thing right away, no use delaying it if they didn’t have to, except, Nate was the one who’d be paying the price. She’d had Tash all this time, Fazire and Maxine were always an enormous help, she hadn’t been alone.
He hadn’t been nearly as lucky as her. He’d had Jeff and Danielle (and Victor and Laura but that was beside the point).
And she couldn’t get Victor’s words out of her head. They’d been bedevilling her all day.
Nathaniel had suffered enough.
What, exactly, had he suffered?
“Maybe we should move to London,” Lily mumbled, staring at his chest.
“Natasha is settled here,” Nate replied instantly, “eventually I’ll move some of my staff to Bristol offices. It’ll work, Lily.”
She wasn’t convinced. “We should talk about this.”
Her eyes lifted to his face as his arm slid around her waist. “You’re not giving up anything else for me and certainly Natasha isn’t,” he declared then promised, “It’ll work.”
Lily sighed then she warned, “I’m not sure how Fazire is going to cope with you being here.”
Nate’s lips twitched. “He’ll adjust.”
She sighed again. “I suppose.”
He drew her into his body and looked at her with an intensity that caused all the gymnasts to wake from a wee nap and start to tumble.
“This is going to work,” Nate vowed, that vein of steel going through his words.
Lily lifted her hands, rested them on his chest, leaned into him and relented, “Okay.”
Because there was really nothing else to say.
Chapter Twenty-One
Lily
Lily had to admit, Nate was right per usual, it did work.
In a way, if you didn’t count Fazire and a variety of other things.
Okay, perhaps a great many other things.
Okay, perhaps it seemed only to be working for Nate and Tash. And Tash was the most important so Lily tried not to worry about it too much.
Although she did worry, just not too much instead of worrying about it twenty-four hours a day, she only worried about it during waking hours which she thought consisted of “not too much”.
After Fazire heard the news that Lily and Nate were getting married and Nate was moving in, there had been a genie explosion that had to rock the Genie Richter Scale at about two hundred and eleven.
“Have you forgotten these last eight years, Lily-child?” Fazire stormed after fifteen minutes of bluster and shouting. He was floating so close to the ceiling he had to tilt his head to the side to accommodate his altitude. All of this was done while Nate was taking Tash out for a treat from The Witches Dozen in order to give Lily time to break the news privately.
“Why does everyone keep going on about the last eight years? I wasn’t alone, I had you and Maxie. We didn’t starve or live out of a cardboard box, for goodness sake!” she exclaimed.
“That is easy for you to say. You didn’t watch you slowly fade away, day in, day out, year after year,” Fazire returned, his dark eyes narrowing angrily.
“What’s that supposed to mean? I took care of Tash and you well enough!” Lily’s own temper was coming to the surface.
Fazire didn’t respond, just floated towards his bottle. “Just mark my words, if it happens to you again, Fazire will not be here to pick up the pieces.”
Shocked and angry, Lily breathed, “Fazire, I can’t believe you just said that.”
Lily was stunned and she truly disliked it when he referred to himself in the third person. Not that he could go anywhere until she had her final wish but the fact that he threatened to go somewhere was shocking, to say the least.
He turned his head away from her in a magnificent genie pout and his body began to vaporise but the words hung in the air.
“I’ve some channelling to do. The other genies are just not going to believe this!”
For the next week Fazire held resolutely to his pout even though it was like Nate wasn’t even there. Nate got up at an ungodly hour every morning, woke Lily (only partially) with a kiss, and went to London. He came home at an ungodly hour every evening, kissed the sleeping Tash (who didn’t wake for anything) and turned the sleeping Lily into his arms.
Lily didn’t know how he could do it, he was running himself ragged.
But he did it, day after day (after day).
Although Nate wasn’t there, all that was Nate definitely was.
Workmen arrived the day after he moved in with the edict to finish the house to Nate’s plans and Lily’s decorating specifications. There wasn’t just one of them or even two but a dozen workmen milling around the house which, according to Fazire, was another black mark against Nate’s name in Fazire’s Book as Fazire rarely left the house and didn’t like company very much.
And then there were the interior designers, three of them, showing her paint chips, fabric swatches, handing her catalogues of a dizzying array of bathroom fittings, furniture, wall coverings and the like. Amongst these she was to choose, to coordinate, to give them her “vision”.
Nate also ordered every item in the house that had a plug and was more than a year old, which was all of them, to be replaced by state-of-the-art, top-of-the line items. He also decreed that any piece of worn out or cheap-appearing (and thus likely to wear out) item in the house, which was most of it, be replaced.
The designers drifted through the house pointing at this sofa. “That has to go.”
And at that bookshelf. “That has to go.”
And the other chair. “That should never have been created in the first p
lace.”
It was part hilarious, part humiliating and part annoying, mostly the last part.
Lily called Nate’s office in London.
“It’s too much too soon,” she told him while watching her living room furniture being carted out the door.
“It’s too little too late,” Nate retorted firmly.
Quite clearly they were in a stalemate. And even more clearly, they were not going to discuss it because they didn’t have time to discuss anything and probably wouldn’t discuss anything even if they had time.
Lily had transferred her financial burdens firmly onto his very strong shoulders mainly because he’d demanded she do it. Seven million pounds in the bank or no, all the bills were immediately switched to be debited from his accounts.
This, for some bizarre reason, he’d commanded she do the very first morning he awoke beside Lily in their new bed. As it was an ungodly hour and she’d been half asleep at the time, she didn’t put up much of a fight and simply told him sleepily where she kept her household files.
“I do not like this,” Fazire said, standing outside the door of a room on the top floor. It used to be a room that held junk. Now three workmen were diligently making it into the bathroom part of a master suite for Lily and Nate that was to make up most of the top floor.
Lily tried cajoling. “When this is done, you’ll only have to share the bathroom with Tash.”
Fazire turned cold eyes to her, unimpressed.
Lily kept trying. “You can have my bedroom when we move out, it’s lovely in there now.”
Fazire’s eyes turned to stone at this reminder of Nate’s grandiosity.
“Fazire, I’m doing this for Tash,” she finally whispered.
His eyes flickered for a moment and then he whispered right back, “I know you, Lily-child. You’ll lose your heart.”
“No I won’t, I promise Fazire. I know exactly what there is to lose and I’m not going through it again,” she replied fervently, so fervently she half-believed it herself but the other half wasn’t so sure anymore.
In just days Nate was demonstrating, in every way, he was intent on taking care of them and exhausting himself and (likely) bankrupting himself in order to do it.