Then again, Nate had very few fond memories and most of them centred around two weeks eight years ago and his most recent three.
Not knowing any of this, Lily continued. “I’m thinking Disneyland Paris. Tash has been wanting to go there forever and I’ve never –” She stopped abruptly and then quickly went on, trying to cover her reference to what she and Natasha had done without over the years, a reference she knew would put Nate on edge. “Anyway, we’ll all go for a few days and then Fazire can take Tash to the park and perhaps you and I can go into Paris for a day, or a couple of days, just the two of us. I’ve never been to Paris.”
Nate was silent at this suggestion of a stereotypical family holiday with the inclusion of an intimate couple’s getaway. Lily was also silent.
Lily’s silence was expectant. Nate’s was stunned.
And pleased.
She finally broke it. “Well, what do you think?”
“I’ll have Jennifer set it up,” Nate replied.
“Yippee!” she shouted so loudly that he had to take the phone away from his ear and he couldn’t stop a small grin from forming on his lips as he heard her unconcealed glee.
Nate was also relatively certain his two employees heard her cheer especially since they glanced at each other with knowing looks and they definitely saw his heretofore unseen grin.
“I have to go,” Nate told her, his grin gone and he was sending a cold look to both his staff which immediately wiped any speculation off their faces.
“Oh, okay.” Her voice sounded disappointed and at that, Nate felt that strange, relaxed feeling in his chest again. “When will you be home tonight?”
“The usual time.”
“Oh, okay, she repeated then hesitated then she sighed deeply, and if he wasn’t mistaken, meaningfully, then she said, “Bye.”
“I’ll see you later.”
He waited for her to hang up. She didn’t.
“Lily?”
“Nate.”
“Hang up,” he commanded.
“You hang up,” she retorted.
His eyes lifted to his employees again and one of them had dropped her head to stare at her lap, the other one was looking to the side and his lips were twitching.
“Lily, I have two of my staff in my office with me.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “If you were busy, why did you take my call?”
“I’ve missed enough of your calls in the past, I won’t miss another one,” he responded and the steel in his voice, a far more familiar sound to them, caused both of his employee’s faces to go instantly blank.
Lily’s tone was warm and soft. “Nate.”
Lily saying his name in that tone went straight through him.
“I have to go,” he repeated, this time with a reluctance that he allowed to be read in his voice.
“Bye,” she said, that one word sweet and intimate and Nate felt it almost as if it was a physical touch and that thing in his chest loosened just a bit more.
* * * * *
Two weekends later on a Saturday afternoon came the most profound of a month full of surprises.
Nate and Victor had finished going over some business in Nate’s new study on the garden level. Father and son went in search of everyone else and found them in Lily’s office on the top floor.
The house was complete, the workmen and decorators gone, the furniture and appliances replaced and it was now what Nate considered a home appropriate for Lily and Natasha, a home of consequence and quality for his family. A home he provided for them. The kind of home they deserved, the kind of home he would work until he died to be certain they always had.
The mortgage was now settled and Lily owned the house free and clear.
The furniture and fittings were all top of the line and even if something happened to him, she’d not have to replace them for decades.
Lily had stamped it with her quirky style that was both refined and offbeat, muted colours mixed with bold; classical, elegant furniture twinned with distressed cottage-style antiques; the walls and most surfaces adorned with Fazire and her mother’s framed photographs of family and her home in Indiana.
Lily had decorated her office in eggshell white with furniture upholstered in grass green with lilac and sunshine yellow toss pillows and accents.
The usually tidy room was covered in opened magazines and catalogues with pages torn out and strewn all over the place. There were also torn and frayed swatches of fabric dotting the floor and several surfaces. Fazire was reclining in his usual armchair and he was, for some reason, partially covered in an enormous swathe of taffeta the colour of an eggplant. Maxine, wearing a turban nearly the same shade as Fazire’s swathe but not a part of the afternoons planning session, instead a part of her own bizarre ensemble, was seated at Lily’s white, spindly-legged desk, clicking through photo after photo on Lily’s laptop. Laura was reclining on Lily’s chaise, an enormous book open on her lap displaying invitation selections.
“No purple,” Lily decreed as Victor cleared the door and Nate stopped in it, taking in the scene.
“It has to be purple!” Maxine cried in a tone that said she’d absolutely expire if whatever-it-was-they-were-discussing was not purple.
“I agree,” Fazire announced pompously.
“No purple,” Lily repeated.
“Pink!” Tash shouted over the conversation.
Lily was on her knees on the floor, her bottom resting on her calves that were folded underneath her. Four magazines were opened in front of her and swatches of fabric in every colour of the rainbow were arrayed around and amongst the magazines.
Tash was standing behind Lily, her body pressed against her mother’s back and her arms around Lily’s neck. Lily was lightly holding on to Tash’s elbows, keeping her daughter close.
“No pink, doll baby,” Lily said softly then bent her head to kiss a spot just above Natasha’s wrist and at this sight Nate felt a warmth seep through him, starting in his gut and emanating upward.
“Grey. A nice, soft, dove grey,” Laura suggested, “no one ever uses grey.”
“What are you talking about?” Victor sat next to Laura on Lily’s green chaise longue.
“Wedding colours,” Maxine answered. “Fazire and I are agreed on purple. It’s the only colour that has more than one vote.”
“Purple isn’t very Lily, Maxie,” Laura put in.
“Dove grey is definitely not Lily,” Fazire stated firmly.
Nate leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms on his chest, surveying the scene with a vague sense of satisfaction.
Lily’s eyes lifted to him, they dropped to where he was lounging against the jamb and then back to his face. Then he was arrested when he saw a secret, intimate smile play at the corners of her mouth before she looked away.
“It’s Lily’s wedding, she should pick the colour,” Victor noted logically.
“Lily, can I speak to you privately?” Nate cut in to the discussion, deciding to assuage his curiosity about her smile the answer behind which he very much wanted to know, rather than wait for a determination of what their wedding colours would be the answer to which he didn’t care about in the slightest.
Everyone turned to stare at him but without hesitation Lily kissed Natasha’s arm again, gently disengaged from their daughter, stood and followed him out of the room, down the hall and into their newly completed bedroom.
Their room she had decorated in rich indigo, sharp vermillion and deep violet, somehow managing to make it both comfortably masculine and softly feminine, a place in their home that Lily was able to make for them both together and separately.
Once he closed the door behind him, she slid her arms around his waist and leaned her weight into his torso, a habit she had formed the last several weeks. It was something she did often, in fact, most every time she was near him.
“What’s your favourite colour?” she asked, her head tilted back and that strange, knowing smile still visible on her face.
&n
bsp; One of his arms went about her, the other hand cupped her jaw, his thumb running along her cheekbone.
New Lily, he saw, was firmly in place. She was a mixture of his sweet Lily, the Lily he had saved from the purse snatcher, the mature, but not lost nor broken Lily and something else altogether. She was cheerful, playful, teasing, loving and relaxed. She was also something different, something alluring and mysterious, as if she had a secret but not a bad one, a delicious one.
She’d begun spending the evenings in her office writing, using the laptop Nate had bought her or writing longhand in notebooks. Natasha would sit with her and watch the new flat screen television using her headphones or Tash would sit in Nate’s study when he was there, watching his flat screen television and wearing her headphones. Fazire would often join them when they were in Lily’s office, Fazire sitting in Lily’s grass green armchair, his feet up on the ottoman, reading one of his books (Fazire didn’t join Tash in Nate’s study, however).
Lily had also started the habit of calling Nate regularly at his office, not every day but several times a week. She had nothing to say and didn’t want to know much of anything. She’d ask what he wanted for dinner (he never had a preference, food was food). When he’d be home (he was home the same time every night, except five minutes earlier each time). What he was doing at that particular moment (always working). Did he want Chinese takeaway that night (again, food was food). How he felt about beef wellington served at their wedding reception (he only cared about Lily being legally tied to him, he didn’t care what they ate after that came about).
It was clear she didn’t really care about his answers, in fact, didn’t demand them as he often didn’t give them. It seemed, instead, as if she simply wanted to talk, as if she wanted a brief connection with him during the day and this connection had no strings. There was nothing loaded in their conversation, no wrong answer he could give, it was just her way of establishing a connection, any connection.
Each time she called, he dismissed anyone who was in his office with a sharp nod of his head, turned his chair to face the window, sat back and rested his ankle on his knee. Then he let her blather on, just like he let their daughter do when she called.
When Lily phoned, it, too, became known around the office as uninterruptible.
Without exception.
And during the last two weeks after Tash was in bed, there were three occasions when Lily asked Nate to go to the pub with her.
They quietly walked together down the sea path to her local. There, they sat outside by the sea, Nate drinking vodka and ice, Lily having a glass of white wine. Eventually, she’d lean into him and rest her head on his shoulder, his arm would slide around her and together they would watch the water. She didn’t ask probing questions, she didn’t demand details of his past. Often, something in her thoughts would make her sigh but he never asked her about it and she never offered any explanation. Other times she’d break the silence and tell him about her family, her father, her mother, her grandmother, her old limestone house. These stories could be sweet, they could be funny but always they were tinged with her grief.
After a few drinks, they’d walk slowly home, taking their time and holding hands, and he’d take Lily to bed and make even slower love to her.
After those three nights, Nate noticed he’d had the most restful nights of sleep he could remember and he could remember every night of his life.
Once, when he had work to go over, needing to make detailed notes before a meeting the next day, he’d stayed late in his study asking Lily, for the first time that he had been in Somerset, to let Tash read to her so he could finish.
In the wee hours of the morning, Lily came down and knocked on his door. When he called her in, she jumped up and sat on the side of his desk and began a sweet and strange interrogation, asking him questions about what he was doing and what his work involved.
He calmly, but not very informatively, answered. He had work to do, it was late, he wanted to finish and join her in bed and he knew she had to be in the shop early the next morning. He was trying to ignore the soft skin of her thigh that rested next to his forearm. He was trying to ignore when she’d lean forward and point at a graph on a document and ask a question, her cleavage bared to his view. He tried to ignore it when she regarded him levelly, her eyes warm, her thumb between her bared teeth, her mind obviously somewhere else, somewhere better as she watched his lips form brief words to answer her questions.
Eventually, she giggled, threw her hands in the air and stared for a moment at the ceiling. Then she jumped off the side of his desk, grabbed his wrist and held it out so she could slide into his lap.
Then she asked one final set of questions that swiftly ended the late night interrogation.
“What’s a girl have to do around here to seduce her fiancé? I mean, how obvious could I be? Should I do a striptease? Roll around on your desk naked?”
She didn’t finish, couldn’t, as his mouth cut off her words.
And she did end up on his desk naked but she didn’t have to roll around.
In their bedroom, with the entirety of both of their family next door, Nate’s hand drifted from her jaw to tuck her hair behind her ear.
“My favourite colour?” he repeated.
“Yes, you pick our wedding colours,” she demanded, her tone teasing.
“Lily, my favourite colour is red,” he told her, her eyes widened and she burst into laughter, her body pressing closer to his.
“Dracula’s wedding!” she shouted and Nate hoped Laura didn’t overhear, her heart would explode. “I love that! I’ll wear black with blood red petticoats and carry red roses and you can wear a tuxedo with one of those crosses at your neck. We’ll be the talk of the town.”
Nate smiled at her outrageous suggestion as she snuggled closer.
“I’d rather not,” he replied dryly.
“Me neither.” Her sexy, knowing smile was gone and her quirky grin was back. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“Nothing,” he replied. For some reason, her hilarity and the loss of that smile caused his curiosity to recede.
Her arms tightened around him and she kissed the underside of his chin.
Then she said, “Come on, Nate. You had something to ask?”
“It isn’t important.” He dropped his other arm to her waist but, to his surprise, she let out an exasperated noise, pulled away and then, sharply, she pushed him towards the bed with both her hands at his chest.
He didn’t move.
“What are you doing?” he asked as she planted one foot behind her and began to shove his chest with her full, leveraged weight behind her shove.
He still didn’t move.
She ignored his question and muttered to herself, “Forget it, you aren’t going to budge.” And then she stopped shoving and started to unbutton his shirt.
At her bizarre and unexplained behaviour, his voice was edgy and he grabbed both of her wrists.
“Lily, what in bloody hell are you doing?”
Her head came up and she leaned into him, ignoring his tone and allowing him to hold her wrists but now pressing her chest tantalisingly against his.
“I’m making you talk,” she explained with a jaunty grin.
“I’m sorry?”
Without warning, her head bent to the middle of his chest where she’d managed to get his shirt unbuttoned. He felt her tongue on his skin and fire swept through him.
He jerked her back by her wrists.
“Lily, Natasha is in the next room.”
Her grin turned devilish.
“Then you better talk quick before I ravish you.” She leaned in again and ran her lips along the underside of his jaw and he felt his body’s immediate reaction even as he bit back a smile.
“Ravish me?” he said, amusement in his voice.
His hands loosened on her wrists and she put them to good use, pulling his shirt free of his jeans.
“You think I can’t do it?” Her he
ad came up with her challenge and the midnight had nearly taken over the pale blue of her eyes.
He slid his hand into her hair at the left side of her head and gently fisted it at the back to hold her face tilted to his. His head descended and softly, against her lips, he said, “Oh yes, darling, I think you can do it.”
He felt, rather than saw, her smile and that feeling stole through him roughly.
“Tell me why you wanted to talk to me,” she coaxed, her hands edging lightly up the skin of his back.
He wasn’t proof against her playful mood and he gave in. “Tell me why you were smiling.”
His eyes were less than an inch from hers and he saw hers turn confused as her brows knitted.
“I’m smiling because you just admitted I could ravish you –” she began.
He shook his head and kissed her lightly then let his lips slide down her cheek to her ear, “Before, in your office, when you saw me in the door.”
She moved back and looked at him, and there it was, that knowing look in her eye, the smile twitching her lips.
“That?” she asked.
He nodded. “That.”
The smile deepened and, if it was possible, her eyes warmed further.
The she explained. “Remember when we first met, after Victor brought me back to his house and I was coming down the stairs when the police were there?”
Of course he remembered. He remembered like it happened only an hour earlier.
“Yes.”
“Well, you were leaning against the wall like the hero in a romance novel then and you were doing it again just now. And I remembered when you did it then and how much… how you…” she stopped for some reason and started again, “how I so very much wanted you to notice me when I saw you leaning against the wall like a romantic hero. And, well, and then you did, er… notice me that is.”
Her comment took him outside the playful mood, her words shaking him and he stilled.
“I’m sorry?” he queried.
She smiled at him, her eyes both alluring and dancing. “You’re just like the hero in a romance novel. I should know, I’ve read hundreds of them. So has Maxie, you can ask her. I promise, she’ll agree with me.”