“Don’t flatter yourself. This isn’t about us—you. That…that thing you’re talking about.” She regretted the babbling and felt more heat, this time on her cheeks.
One of his brows lifted. “What is it about then?”
Lilly cleared her throat, folded her arms over her chest, then realized it pushed her breasts together, and some cleavage was already exposed by the V neckline of her dress. Her hands dropped to her sides. “Audra wants to know about Jacob. How he’s doing, I guess.”
Alec’s expression turned pained and he forked his fingers through his hair. “Really?”
“Yeah. I’m all for hearing he took a long walk on a short pier, but…” She shrugged. “Audra is Audra. She’s concerned, despite what he did.”
After a long moment of quiet, Alec sighed again. “Who understands love?”
“Not me. What I get is private parts and dull blades.”
Alec winced. “Bloodthirsty.”
Lilly stepped closer to him. “Do you know? Do you know what exactly is going on with Jacob?”
“He texted me the morning of the wedding to say it was off and he wouldn’t be talking about it or changing his mind. I was so pissed I didn’t even respond.” He hesitated. “Do you really want me to try and contact him?”
She looked down. “He’s your friend.”
Alec reached out, snagged her hand, drew her a couple of steps closer. He played with it and she watched the movement, fascinated by the way his bigger, longer fingers looked in contrast to her slimmer, paler ones.
“Audra is after some closure, I suppose,” Lilly said, her breath catching in her lungs as his fingers pushed between hers, widening the spaces there and sliding along the sensitive inner surfaces in a way that made her nipples prick beneath the cups of her bra.
He tugged her closer yet again, widening his knees so she was moved into that intimate space he created. “Alec!” she said, and this time her breathlessness was evident in the tight quality of her voice.
“Lilly.” He looked bemused, his head tilting. “You know, your name is all about the tongue. It’s like a short but very hot French kiss.”
A shiver scuttled down her spine and she frowned. “You shouldn’t say things like that.” Her glance lifted over his shoulder to see that busty blonde who’d practically mauled him standing no more than fifteen feet away.
“Why not? It’s true.” Catching the direction of her gaze, he looked behind him. A smile quirked the corners of his mouth as he turned back to Lilly. “An old friend, nothing more.”
“Right. Whatever.” Lilly gave a half-shrug to prove she didn’t care a thing about who the blonde was to him. But she couldn’t seem to pull her hand from his or move away. “So if you find out anything about Jacob, you can text me, okay?”
The hint of a smile on Alec’s face widened to a full-fledged grin. “You don’t want an in-person report?”
She hesitated, and then her brain scrambled as he drew the forefinger of his free hand over the slope of her shoulder and down her bare arm. Goose bumps followed in the wake of his touch.
His voice lowered, and the air seemed to thicken around them, creating a private capsule. She was hyper-aware of the heavy beat of her heart as she stared into his brown eyes, their color darkening as his pupils expanded. Trying to escape the exciting promise in them, she dropped her gaze only to fixate on his mouth instead, the lips looking so very soft in contrast to the hard angles of his cheekbones and jaw. His pure, vital maleness spoke to something deep and very feminine inside her.
Lilly’s thighs quivered and she felt a heated swelling between them.
Alec’s wandering finger meandered from the pulse pounding in her wrist to the delicate skin at the inner bend of her elbow. He traced the crease there, back and forth, like he had all the time in the world to indulge in just that one, single touch.
“I forgot,” he began, and Lilly met his eyes again, only to be snared once more by the sexual intent burning there.
She forced herself to breathe. “You forgot…?”
“To mention what else we have in common.” Now his finger continued up her arm, across her shoulder, then to her neck, where her pulse tapped out a frenzied beat she supposed he could see as well as feel.
“This,” Alec said, his thumb replacing his finger to caress the thin skin of her throat. “This…pull.”
Pull. Chemistry, attraction, allure, temptation, enticement. She felt helpless against it, a piece of flotsam caught in a riptide and dragged out to dangerous seas.
“I…”
A loud splash signaled someone entering the nearby pool and jerked Lilly from the spell Alec seemed to cast over her. Her hand yanked from his and she managed to step back. “Just text me,” she said unsteadily. “When you find out anything.”
He looked amused again, and if he felt as stirred up as she was, he certainly handled it with more savoir faire. “If I do you the favor, what do I get in return?”
Before, when they’d first met, they’d discovered they lived not far from each other and visited some of the same shops and restaurants. They’d marveled they didn’t recall each other from any of them. Unless she took measures, Lilly knew her luck on that end wouldn’t hold.
“You know it’s best we don’t see each other. It’s just…” Torture. Temptation. A path to bad outcomes. “…pointless.”
He forked his hand through his hair again, grimacing. “Because you and I aren’t going to—”
“Right.” She nodded briskly, not wanting him to spell it out. “So here’s what I’ll give you. That little market on the corner of Garnet and Carter. I won’t go there anymore. Except on Saturday mornings. I have to be able to get a croissant there on Saturday mornings.”
“What else?” His arms folded over his chest.
“Uh…the dim sum place. And that’s a sacrifice.”
He sighed. “Lilly—”
“Okay. Fine. You can also have Carol’s Coffee. I’ll find a new morning stop and we’ll never bump into each other on a caffeine run. We’ll never have to see each other again.”
With that, she spun on her heel and strode away. She was almost beyond earshot when she heard him call out, “Somehow I doubt that, sugar.”
Chapter 3
“Who was that pretty woman you were talking to earlier today?” Alec’s mother, Miranda, asked.
“How old am I?” he countered, but he was smiling down at her all the same.
She sipped her pre-dinner cocktail, a skinny margarita, her preference. Trim and youthful-looking despite time and tragedy, she gave a gentle but reproving slap to his forearm. “Thirty years old might as well be three to a mother.”
“I caught on to that when you warned me away from the edge of the pool a few minutes ago.” The guests of the Thatcher anniversary party were gathered at tables and chairs near that spectacular, lagoon-shaped feature before a dinner to be served on a private patio in an hour.
“I notice you didn’t answer the question.” She smoothed her honey-blonde hair, now layered in a fashionable style. It gleamed with good health and he supposed some high-end product from a high-end salon. Alec couldn’t be happier at this proof she was taking an interest in her appearance again.
“Even your dad noticed you looked…animated,” his mom continued. “He thought the young lady was very pretty too.”
Alec shot a glance at his father, seated a table away. Vic Thatcher had passed on his big-boned, lean build to his sons, and there was no stoop to his shoulders despite having recently celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. He kept himself in shape by golf, hiking, and participating in day-long beach clean-ups on a monthly basis. “Dad expressed an interest in Lilly? You better watch out, Mom,” he teased, knowing Miranda didn’t have a bit of concern on that score. His dad bought his mom flowers every Monday and left her love notes each time he left for a round of golf.
“So her name is Lilly…” Miranda said, casting him a curious glance. “Now that I have a name, you know
I have to learn the rest.”
Alec brought his beer to his lips, and swallowed his sigh with a swig of craft brew. Now that his mother had her verve for life restored, she wasn’t going to give up. Lowering his bottle to the table, he scooped up some peanuts out of a bowl and tossed a couple in his mouth.
“Alec?”
Yeah, she wasn’t going to give up. “Lilly Durand.”
His mother beamed. “She’s French.”
Hmm. “Maybe so.” It might explain that exotic dash about her. And there was something lurking beneath the cadence of her speech that made him wonder now if she’d grown up in a household with another language besides English. Maybe the lullabies she’d heard as a baby had been sung in French.
“You’re looking animated again,” his mom said.
Christ, he hoped that wasn’t a euphemism for aroused. Because this morning he’d been pretty damn close to having a boner at the bar when he’d been stroking Lilly’s skin and holding her hand. He shifted in his chair and took up his cold bottle again. “Mom—”
“For goodness’ sake, just tell me how you met her! Is that so much to ask?”
He laughed. “Then you’ll let it drop?”
“How come it’s such a big secret?”
Making her work for it was just feeding her curiosity, he realized. “It’s no secret. She was to be the maid of honor at Jacob’s wedding. Her best friend Audra was the bride to be.”
His mother’s face fell. “Oh, that must be terrible for the poor girl—being jilted at the last minute.”
“Yeah. So Lilly happens to be here at the resort with Audra for some post-cancelled-wedding R & R, I guess. We’re mere acquaintances.” And he’d had to accept she wanted to keep it that way. “Satisfied?”
His mother sipped contemplatively from her margarita. “Then how about Tina?” she asked, sending a significant look in the direction of the blonde bombshell—and daughter of old family friends—whom he’d once dated and who’d interrupted his conversation with Lilly at the bar.
Alec groaned. “Mom.”
“What?” she asked, all innocence.
“Tina and I were over and done with five years ago. So drop that, okay?”
“I can’t help myself. I’m at the age where I need to believe there’s hope of future grandchildren.”
“When is Jojo expected to arrive?” he asked, referring to his sister Joanna. “You can go to work on her about grandkids.”
“Jojo won’t be here until a couple of days from now,” Miranda answered. “And since her divorce, she’s been very distrustful about romance and marriage.”
“And you think I’m an enthusiast?” His mom had to know he hadn’t been pursuing anyone or anything seriously outside of work.
“I think you’re spending too much time at the office,” she said. “I think we all retreated to our preferred refuges and now it’s time to step out of them. You could go see my—”
“Mom, unless you’re about to recommend a masseuse, I don’t want to hear about it.” He rubbed at the itch at the back of his neck. There was only so far he’d let his mother into his personal life, no matter how much he loved the woman. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Have you ever tried online dating?”
“Oh my God, you’re insatiable.” He glanced around, trying to catch the eye of someone to save him from this conversation. Then his gaze found Kane Hathaway threading his way through the tables, in one hand the end of a leash attached to a roly-poly fluff of chocolate brown with short legs and a pink, wet tongue.
“Hey, Auntie M,” Kane said, greeting Alec’s mom. “Thanks for letting me show off your new puppy.”
Alec stood to give Kane his chair and then bent to rub his palms over the wiggling, boisterous chocolate Lab. Twelve-week-old Buster went ecstatic at the attention, his velvet-furred body quivering with joy as he tried to bathe every inch of Alec’s available skin in puppy slobber.
“Give him to me,” Miranda said, and Kane scooped up the dog and lifted it onto her lap. Alec’s mom kissed the top of the puppy’s head and hugged him close, her clear joy in the little guy written all over her face.
One of the resort’s other guests—not of their party—came over with a small child in tow, and Alec and Kane moved off so the kid could have a chance to admire and pet the squirming creature. They both watched the antics and Alec knew he wore an identical smile to the one on his second cousin’s face.
“It’s so great to see Auntie M like this,” Kane said. “And with a new pet besides.”
“Yeah.” Glancing over, Alec saw his dad was smiling at the sight too. “I think she’s turned the corner.”
“I think she’s passed it by a few blocks,” Kane said.
“You joining us for dinner?” Alec asked the other man.
He shook his head. “Got a date. New girl.”
For some reason Alec’s mind leaped to Lilly, though he didn’t think that Kane would go there, having seen Alec’s reaction when he’d mentioned it before. “Do you ask women out that you meet on the job?”
“You mean resort guests?” Kane mocked a deep shudder. “God, no. The ghost of Great-Great-Grandfather Hathaway would rise from the grave to haunt me. Very unprofessional.”
Now relieved, Alec smiled. “Of you or Grandpa Hathaway?”
“Hah hah,” Kane said, then glanced at his watch.
“You seem eager,” Alec pointed out. “Might this new girl be the one?”
Kane shuddered again. “If there will ever be the one, now is not the time. I am not looking for the one.”
“Don’t tell that to my mother. Besides planning parties and raising puppies, her new lease on life includes meddling into romantic affairs. You talk like that around her and she’ll take it as a personal challenge.” And bad though it might be of him, Alec hoped she’d switch her focus to Kane. At least it would get her off his back.
“I have no problem explaining to Auntie M that I am not in the market for anyone serious.”
“At the moment.”
After a pause, Kane concurred. “At the moment.”
“But what if the right woman passes into your life now?” Alec asked. “When you’re not expecting her, or looking for her, or ready for her?”
“If I’m not ready for her, then I won’t see her, right? Well, maybe I’ll see a pretty face across a crowded room and all that, but if I approach I’ll be able to tell she’s looking for something serious and move on.”
Alec raised a brow. “How do you tell that?”
“I’m pretty upfront about what I’m interested in, aren’t you?”
His exchange with Lilly floated through his mind. Her: I suppose you’d be satisfied with something you’d think of as ‘simple,’ like a one-night stand. Him: It’s probably the best I’ve got. Well, possibly a few nights.
Yeah, he’d been honest.
“But what if she’s the right woman and you lose her forever?” Alec heard himself say.
Kane was staring at him, a quizzical look on his face. “You’re disturbing me, man. Maybe we can trade diaries tomorrow. I’ll let you borrow my glitter pens if you lend me the ones you have that smell like bubblegum.”
“Fuck off.” Maybe he was disturbing himself just a little too. Gritting his teeth, Alec looked away.
And as if he’d conjured her, across the pool he saw Lilly strolling along a bordering pathway. His senses went on alert as he drank her in. She wore that little silky dress she’d had on earlier in the day and in his mind he could smell her perfume, the scent floral and clean. Then, he’d wanted to bury his face against her throat and breathe her in before stripping her clothes from her once and for all, ending the torment of not knowing the color of her nipples and the taste of her arousal. He’d been dying to get his hands on her, a palm cupping her mons, a finger sliding into her wet heat.
Just a single time with her and he’d be able to move on.
This fierce need for her would be assuaged in bed and he’d be
able to understand it for what it was…a bad case of desperate lust. No big deal.
Now she paused and brushed her hair off her shoulders, giving him a better look at her face. His hand curled into a fist as he took in her pensive expression and the small line of worry between her brows.
Damn, he hated to see that. But Lilly was devoted to her friend and likely fretting over Audra’s state of mind. It seemed likely that Alec’s small exotic brunette could use a friend of her own at the minute.
Without thinking, he began striding in her direction, planning to cut off her path so that he could…what?
His feet halted. She’d given him the grocery store, dim sum, and his favorite coffee place. He couldn’t repay her generosity by a pursuit she’d rejected.
The fact was, she had made it abundantly clear she didn’t want to see him again.
Fuck. Fuck. Now all ten fingers were curled into frustrated fists as his brain struggled against his gut instincts. They demanded he go to Lilly, to hold her hand again, to smell her hair, to do what he could to erase that disquiet on her face.
But she’d given him the damn dim sum, so he had to keep his distance.
A commotion behind him caught his attention. He swung around at the shouts and the sounds of chair legs screeching. Shit.
In one sweeping glance he understood the trouble. Rambunctious puppy Buster had freed himself somehow and was scampering about, evading capture by going under loungers and around people. Kane nearly cornered the pooch, but then he zigged and Alec’s father had to zag to head off the pup so he wouldn’t fall into the pool. That gave Buster a clear shot at the adjacent lobby.
And Buster took it, his leash trailing behind him.
The action had drawn Lilly’s attention and Alec saw her head toward the lobby as well. The woman and puppy’s paths should cross.
“Can you get a hold of him?” he called out to her from across the pool.
“I’ll try!” she called back and reached for the speeding pup.
It just eluded her grasp. Still, she followed after him and Alec followed after her, their own little parade through the lobby as the dog dashed around chairs and people and suitcases, toward the wide opening that led to the portico covering the wide drive.
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