I thought about what she might be doing in that cute place of hers. Painting her toenails, maybe. Or taking a shower. The image of her all sudsy with shower gel filled my head. Bubbles sliding over her nipples and down between her legs.
My original plan for that night had been to shoot some footage at the Moon River Brewing Company, but I had a way better idea for what the two of us could do together instead. All I could do was set the scene and open the door between logic and instinct, between responsibility and desire; it was up to her to walk through it. So I shot her a text to say:
We’ve got some more work to do tonight, Ms. Jameson.
Dots appeared to show that she was typing a response. When I saw them, I felt my goddamned heart start pounding in my chest. Three months ago, I was swimming in a Costa Rican lagoon with crocodiles and I hadn’t even been particularly nervous. Now, typing-in-progress dots were making my heart rate speed up. She got my gears grinding, no doubt about it. In a second, she replied with:
OK, Mr. Powers.
Just tell me where and when.
Pick you up at 7
I’ll bring dinner
A few hours later, I was showered and changed and walking back into Savannah Dry Goods and Grocery. Lily’s aunt spun around when she heard the bell ding as I came through the door. When she saw me, her face lit up with delight. “Well, hello again, young man!” She sprayed some furniture polish on the gleaming wooden counter and wiped it off with a towel. “Gabe, wasn’t it?”
“That’s me.” I didn’t even have to force a showbiz smile onto my face. This one was instant and genuine. I was going to treat Lily, and I was going to treat her right. I stood at the counter and took a deep breath as I scanned the old-fashioned rows of candies, the racks of fresh bread, and the cooler of fancy cheeses. The place was epic. “So it’s probably no surprise that I’m really interested in your niece.”
She beamed up at me. “Not hard to imagine. She’s the sweetest thing this side of sweet tea, after all.”
Sweet tea had nothing on her. Nothing. “I’m picking her up tonight, and I want to surprise her with all her favorite stuff.”
The delicate skin around Jennifer’s eyes formed into well-worn smile wrinkles. I could see a bit of Lily in her—that same full-hearted joy. “Oooh. How romantic. And thoughtful!”
“I mean everything. Flowers, favorite candies, perfumes, whatever she likes. Money doesn’t matter. If I need to spend the next two hours driving around town to get what she likes best, then that’s what I’ll do. But I figured you’d probably be the place to start.”
She gave me a series of quick, happy claps. “I know a thing or two about what she likes! How’s this strike you for a start?” she asked and hoisted a big picnic basket up onto the table.
It was dark wicker with leather buckles. She opened it, and I saw that the inside was rigged up with all the basics—plates, champagne glasses, forks and knives, and bright-white napkins. I pulled out my wallet and put my credit card on the table. “Let’s do this thing, Auntie Jennifer.”
She reached up and patted my cheeks with her soft, plump hands. “Oooooh. I like you, young man! I like you a lot!”
21
LILY
Ivan was asleep in his nursery, and I was in my sister’s bedroom, where she was helping me put the finishing touches on her choice for my outfit for the evening. Normally, I wouldn’t let her weigh in on these things—I was all about boatneck tees and cute shorts and floral sundresses. But my sister had different ideas about what to wear; ever since Boris had left her high and dry, Daisy had gotten seriously into dressing for herself and herself alone. It meant mom jeans and passive-aggressive feminist T-shirts. It meant no makeup and topknots. It worked like man DEET. Lord knew that tonight, I was going to need it.
I hadn’t explained who I was going out with or why, except to say, “I am doing some audio work for a guy from out of town. Things between us are a little . . .” I’d swallowed hard and searched for the word. If I’d ever known it, it had been permanently erased when I watched him dive into an icy Alaskan pond to save a sled dog from drowning, followed by an all-night Inuit celebration that made him an honorary tribe member. So instead of filling in the blank, I fanned my face to say hotcha-hotcha and added, “But I don’t want him to get the wrong idea.”
She’d peered at me like she was trying to read the second-to-the-bottom line on an eye test. “So we like him, but we know we shouldn’t have him. The last third in a pint of Cherry Garcia.”
Birds of a feather are sisters together. “Already leveled with the spoon and everything.”
Daisy had nodded once and flung open her meticulously organized closet. As a pair of ancient stonewashed jeans flew from her closet onto the bed, she’d said, “Makeup remover is in the bathroom. Get to it!”
Now I looked at myself in the antique oblong mirror that sat in the corner of her bedroom. I wore the high-cut jeans that she’d picked out, rolled once at the ankle. I wore a T-shirt that said I MAY BE WRONG BUT IT’S VERY UNLIKELY, and I had my hair in a high ponytail, secured with a bright-pink scrunchie that I was almost positive she’d stolen from me in 1991. No makeup, no perfume. And on my feet were a pair of blindingly white Keds.
“I didn’t even know they made this style anymore.” I lifted my toes. The rubber and canvas groaned as I did.
“They don’t. I bought five pairs online from eBay. Mint condition. Very collectible. Now, let’s try these.” She stood between me and the mirror and situated a pair of leopard-print reading glasses on the bridge of my nose. They were so thick that they made the world wobble, and I felt slightly nauseous. When she stepped away from the mirror, I was just a series of hazy smudges through the thick lenses.
“Excellent,” Daisy said. “You look like a lady who is in a committed relationship with her collection of leather-bound Jane Austens. If he tries to get fresh, tell him your sister will come deflate his tires. Every day.”
The outfit was just what I’d been hoping for, but the glasses and the hair tie were combining to give me the mother of all headaches. I just wanted to be unalluring tonight, not dizzy and miserable. So I yanked off the glasses, pulled the scrunchie from my hair, and roughed up my roots.
My sister put her hands on her hips. “I’m questioning your commitment to this! And we haven’t even gotten to purses!” From her bed she grabbed a fanny pack and one of those very unfortunate chintzy drawstring backpacks—two nylon ropes attached to a shiny square pouch. “I vote for this one”—she jiggled the fanny pack—“but I’m willing to negotiate.”
But before we could take that trip down fashion horror lane, a honk outside made my heart leap into my chest. I hurried out of her bedroom and sidled up to the dining room window to peek out without letting him see me. There he was, sitting in his big black pickup. He held the steering wheel with one hand at the very top. The other was casually slung over the bench seats where I’d be sitting.
I stepped away from the window and centered myself. I could do this. I could do this! On the wall in front of me I saw the cross-stitch that I had made and framed for Daisy for her birthday. It was of a cartoonish smiling uterus with the caption Don’t cramp my style!
Yes! I was a strong, proud woman! I didn’t need some hunk of burning love derailing my life plan or cramping my style either! I could handle this thing! Armed with that uterine solidarity, I caught one final glimpse of myself in the mirror by her front door. I looked . . . awful. Pale, bland, and shiny. Instinctively I reached for my little makeup bag in my purse but realized that wouldn’t fly with Daisy. “Is there an approved lipstick?”
She placed a tub of Carmex in my palm. “Voilà.”
I stared at the white-and-yellow container. I was about to face Gabe looking like I was ready for my eighth-grade school portrait and wielding nothing but mentholated petroleum jelly. But I was willing to do whatever it took. “All right.” I gave her a kiss. “Wish me luck.”
“I wish you the combined simmering fu
ry of two hundred years of women awaiting compensation for their infinite hours of free childcare!” she said and closed the door behind me.
Steadying myself, I took a deep breath in the front entryway and then marched outside with my plastic suitcase of audio equipment in hand. When Gabe saw me, he leaned across the seats and popped open my door.
Maybe he had gotten the message after all. Yesterday he’d come around to get my door and doffed an imaginary hat. Now I got a flick of a handle while the engine was running.
Yay? I guess?
Bracing myself for his electric energy and preparing to pull my eyes away from his thighs and bulge when I got in the truck, I was surprised to find something sitting on the seat between us. It was a big wicker basket that took up the entire center seat and even a little bit of my seat too.
A not-so-tiny part of my heart whispered that I might have overshot the mark on all this. I’d actually loved being pampered and fussed over. But I’d stood firm by the conduct clause, and now I had to share my seat with a wicker basket. Wonderful.
Gabe gave me that same sexy glance that he’d given me at Uncle Jimmy’s. He didn’t say anything about the fact that I was makeupless. He didn’t say anything about my shirt or my ridiculously unflattering pants. It was like he didn’t see any of it. Or didn’t care even if he did. “This is for you,” he said, and patted the basket as he put the truck in drive.
Very gingerly, I lifted the lid with one finger. The wicker and leather creaked as I peeked inside. On the top was a bouquet of at least a dozen of the paper-thin ceramic lilies that one of the galleries downtown sold for fifty dollars a stem. I often thought of buying just one for myself but could never justify the expense. Next to that was a box from my favorite chocolatier, with its gold-embossed foil seal on top. I pulled back the seal and the flap and saw half a dozen dark chocolate truffles inside, surrounded by chocolate-dipped gooseberries with their papery leaves. Beside that were two full-size clamshells of plump raspberries, dewy and ripe. Next to that, a huge bag of Sour Patch Kids. A box of rosemary and olive oil Triscuits. A loaf of fresh French bread and my favorite brie. Some of it I recognized as having come from my aunt’s store. But the rest of it . . . the candies, the chocolates, the lilies . . . he must have spent the entire afternoon going from store to store. He must have spent a fortune. All on me. “How did you know about all of this?” I shifted the box of truffles aside. Underneath that was a wooden box of ripe Bartlett pears, halfway wrapped in gold foil. Be still, my heart!
“Your aunt.” He hit the turn signal to head out of town. “She knows your weak spots. What she didn’t know, I asked about, like at the chocolatier.”
I opened the basket a bit more, as much to see farther inside as to steal a moment for myself behind the lid. It was all so . . . nice. And so kind. And thoughtful. I was utterly flabbergasted. There I’d been trying to put on man DEET, and he’d spent the afternoon tracking down all my favorite things.
But even in the face of delectable goodies and extreme thoughtfulness, I resolved to remain strong. Snacks, shmacks; lilies, schmillies, I thought as I rubbed together my Carmexy lips. No matter how yummy this whole situation was to me, I wasn’t going to be seduced by a picnic basket, thank you very much.
So I closed the lid with a creak and straightened up in my seat, glancing over at Gabe. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
Again he smiled at the road and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. He glanced over without turning his face toward me and said, “Lovers’ Lane.”
Of course we were. And right on cue, a baseball game that was playing over the radio erupted into cheers as the announcer said, “Going, going, gone!”
22
GABE
I drove us out to a spot overlooking the Skidaway River and the Isle of Hope. I backed the truck into a parking space so we’d have a view of the water from the tailgate and popped open my door. Not going around to open her door for her rubbed me the wrong way—chivalry isn’t dead yet—but I knew I was already pushing it. The picnic basket full of all her favorites had been a gamble, and I didn’t want to go over the top. If we were going to get back to the way things had been before she saw the contract, it was going to be on her terms. Mostly.
She joined me by the tailgate, where I hoisted the basket up onto the truck bed. She wasn’t wearing any makeup tonight, and it let me see her eyes in a new, more vivid way. Her skin was flawless, and in the evening light her handful of freckles was even more pronounced. She had a timeless beauty and grace that made me wonder why she wore makeup at all. I held her stare for a second, but she looked away first. She ran her fingers over the wicker. “Thank you for all this,” she said softly. She straightened out her T-shirt and lifted the toes of her sneakers, and then she glanced at me and my dress shirt. “I just feel a bit underdressed.”
The last thing I wanted was for her to be uncomfortable. So while I had her eyes on me, I began to undo my buttons. She gave me a stare that said, Gabe! But I kept going. She gripped the edge of the truck bed, her pink nail polish a beautiful contrast against the black paint. I undid my last button and slipped my shirt off, revealing one of my trusty old cotton tees below. This one was one of my favorites. It had a faded ThunderCats logo in the center, ancient silk-screening that had almost disappeared from so many washes in so many laundromats all over the world. “Now neither one of us is overdressed.”
“Pum-raaaaa,” Lily said, and swiped the air like a tigress.
All that and ThunderCats too. I balled up my shirt and tossed it into the corner of the bed and then patted the tailgate. Lily stood beside me, and the breeze let me have a hit of something sweet—her lotion, maybe. She planted her hands on the tailgate and tried to hoist herself up. But the truck wasn’t some little F-150. It was a serious piece of American engineering—the biggest truck I’d ever gotten to rent. She was way too short to get up on her own. She tried, though. A lot. Huffing and puffing and struggling so hard that it brought a blush up into her cheeks.
“Need a hand?” I asked her.
“Or a step stool!” she growled as she gave it another shot.
So I put my hands on her hips and turned her around to face me.
We had a moment—a serious fucking moment with energy and heat pinging between us. But I didn’t push it—not yet. She placed her hands on the tailgate for support, and I gave her a boost. I was in the perfect position to kiss her, but I stopped myself. She didn’t lean in to me, but instead, as her chest rose and fell with quickening breaths, she leaned back slightly to create some distance between us.
Message received. I took my hands off her and turned my attention to getting the champagne poured and everything else squared away. Chivalry wasn’t dead and never would be. All I could do was wait at her drawbridge and hope like hell she’d lower it down far enough to let me back inside.
Once we made a dent in the picnic, I grabbed one of my cameras from the truck. In the dying light, I took my chance to get a few minutes of footage. I hit the record button, with the lens focused on my face. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lily nibbling on a gooseberry, the stem pinched between her fingers. Three, two, one, action. “So we’re out here on Bluff Drive. The story about this place is a pretty classic lovers’ lane legend. In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, a young woman named Mary Goodwin came out here with her lover, William Hackett. It was to be their very last night before he went off to fight for the South.”
Next to me, Lily coughed delicately and whispered, “The Confederacy.”
I panned over to her. When she realized I’d gotten her on camera, she froze. Then she smiled, a cute and polite smile. Not the vixen but the sweetheart. It was more proof that nobody should ever believe what they see on television.
“I’m with my assistant again, as you can tell. She’s from around here, aren’t you, Lily?”
She stared at the camera. “Born and raised.”
“Which is good, because I clearly need to get schooled i
n the local lingo. So what I call the South, you call . . . the Confederacy.”
She nodded with more certainty this time. “Right.” She looked away from the camera and straight at me, which seemed easier for her. I sure as shit wasn’t complaining. She went on, “When you’re talking about that era, it’s the Confederacy. And it’s not the Civil War down here. It’s the War between the States.”
I panned back to myself. “This is why it’s good to have someone local, right? Just think of the emails I’d be getting from you guys.”
“All y’all,” Lily said.
“From all y’all,” I echoed back.
Lily snickered beside me. “You’re doing fine, though!” In the viewfinder, her eyes sparkled, and the deep-blue water glittered behind her. She got some sass going for the camera—hamming it up like only a gorgeous goddess could. Then she said, “He’s doing fine . . . bless his heart.”
“Ohhhh! Boom! The classic Southern shut-down, right?”
“Kinda!” she said. She talked right to the audience now. “Y’all know what I mean, though.” Now she’d put on her accent, thick and rich. Fucking sexy as hell. “He’s all right, though. For a Yankee!”
My belly laugh filled the air along with her giggle. She was a natural on camera. Totally herself, and just as she’d been the first time I saw her. Unselfconscious. Authentic. Beautiful.
“All right, so chime in here whenever.” I zoomed out so we were both in frame but kept the angle high so the picnic stayed our secret. “In 1861, at the start of the War between the States,” I said as Lily nodded approvingly, like a teacher giving the go-ahead to her student, “Confederate soldier William Hackett came out here to the road now known as Bluff Drive to spend an evening with the woman he loved.” Lily made a circle of her thumb and forefinger to give me the A-OK sign, so I went on. “He proposed to her that night, and she said yes. But Hackett was killed at the Battle of Antietam—”
Do You Feel It Too? Page 14