“It fell out of that box when I accidentally knocked it over,” she told him, nodding her head toward the carton that was still on in its side. “Who is she, Chris?” Lily repeated. With each word, the deadness inside of her seemed to grow a little larger, a little more threatening. “She has to be someone because you wouldn’t have packed up this photograph if she wasn’t.”
“I didn’t do any of the packing,” he reminded her. “The movers did.”
The point was that it had been there, at his residence, for them to pack. The fact that he was being evasive right now just made her more anxious.
“Well, it has to be yours,” she insisted. “The movers wouldn’t have packed up a stranger’s things and put them into your moving van—besides, you’re in the picture and that’s your arm around her waist.” Each word tasted more bitter than the last. “Who is she, Chris?” Lily asked for a third time, growing impatient. It wasn’t as if they didn’t both have pasts, but she didn’t like the idea of not knowing enough about him—and his having secrets.
“She’s nobody,” he told her, taking the frame out of her hand and tossing it facedown on his rumpled bed.
Lily squared her shoulders defiantly. “If she was nobody, you would have said that right away. You don’t take a picture with nobody and then have it framed,” she pointed out. “Why won’t you tell me who she is?”
Christopher blew out a breath. He’d honestly thought he’d thrown that photograph—all the photographs of her—out. “Because she doesn’t matter anymore.”
Lily heard what wasn’t being said. “But she did once, right?”
“Once,” he admitted because to say otherwise would really be lying.
Lily’s voice became very quiet. “How much did she matter?”
Because he knew he had to, Christopher gave her the briefest summary of the time he had spent with Irene. “Her name was Irene Masterson and we were engaged—but we’re not anymore,” he emphasized. “We haven’t been for three months.”
Three months. The words echoed in her brain. She had him on the rebound. There was no other way to interpret this. She was a filler, a placeholder until he got his act together. How could she have been so stupid as to think this was going somewhere? Things didn’t go anywhere except into some dark abyss.
For a moment, Lily stared at him, speechless. She felt her very fragile world shattering and crumbling. “And you didn’t think that was important enough to tell me?”
He told her the only thing he could in his own defense. “The topic never came up.”
Was he saying it was her fault because she hadn’t interrogated him?
“Maybe it should have,” she countered, feeling hurt beyond words. “Preferably before things got too hot and heavy between us.” At the last moment, she had stopped herself from saying “serious between us” because it wasn’t. How could it be if he had kept something so important from her? She’d been deluding herself about his feelings for her. It was painfully obvious now that she had read far too much into ther relationship. There wasn’t a “relationship,” it was just a matter of killing time for him, nothing more.
“I don’t remember a single place where I could have segued into that. When was I supposed to say something?” he asked. “Just before we came together? ‘Excuse me, Lily, but in the interest of full disclosure, I think you should know that I had a serious girlfriend for a few years and we were engaged for five months.’”
Five months. The woman in the photograph had had a claim on him for five months—longer than they had known each other. Plus, it had only ended recently, which made her presence in his life shaky at best. The very thought twisted in her stomach, stealing the air out of her lungs.
“Yes,” she retorted. “You should have told me, should have said something.”
Trying to get hold of herself, Lily took a deep breath.
This was her fault, not his. Her fault because she’d given in to the longing, the loneliness she’d felt, thinking that she’d finally found a steady, decent man, someone she could love and go through life with. But Christopher wasn’t the guy. He couldn’t be with what he’d just gone through. She didn’t want to be the girl who picked up other people’s messes, a placeholder while the injured party healed.
Her voice was emotionless as she said, “Why aren’t you still engaged?”
Christopher lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a careless shrug. “We wanted different things. She wanted me to change, to be someone else, someone who fit into her blue-blooded world. I didn’t want to change.”
Lily was struggling to understand, to come to grips with what she’d just stumbled across. Trying to tell herself that it didn’t matter when every fiber of her being told her that it did.
“Did the engagement just disintegrate on its own?” she asked.
What could he say to make this right? To fix what he seemed to have broken? “It probably would have in time.”
Her eyes held his. “But?”
He had no choice. He had to tell her the truth and pray that he wasn’t going to regret it. “But with everything going on, losing my mother, I just wanted to get away and be done with it.”
Her expression gave him no indication what she was thinking. “So you broke it off?”
Christopher nodded. “Yes.”
She needed to get this absolutely straight in her mind. “You made a commitment to someone you loved and then you broke it off?” she pressed.
He wanted to deny it, to deny that he had ever loved Irene. But he had loved her, and if he lied about it he knew it would backfire on him, if not now then someday. That damage would be irreparable.
“Yes.”
The sadness that washed over her with that single word was almost overwhelming. She couldn’t stay here any longer, not without breaking down. “I have to go,” she said abruptly. “Jonathan!” she called, her voice growing edgy. “Jonathan, come!”
After a moment, the Labrador appeared at the bottom of the stairs, barking at her. Lily practically ran down the stairs. Not wanting to waste time looking for his leash, she grabbed the dog’s collar and as quickly as possible guided him toward the front door.
Christopher flew down the stairs right behind her. “Wait, I thought we agreed that I’d take him to the animal hospital for you this morning.”
Lily didn’t even turn around. “There’s no need. He’s coming with me.”
“Lily—” Her name echoed of all the hurt, the concern that was ricocheting through him.
“I’ve change my mind, okay?” she snapped, afraid that she would start to cry at any second. She had to get out of there before it happened. “You changed yours, right? Why can’t I change mine?”
Wanting to sweep her into his arms, to hold her against him until she calmed down, Christopher took a step back instead. His instincts told him not to press. “Sure, you can change your mind,” he told her quietly. “Will I still see you tonight?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she told him crisply.
Lily found she had to all but drag Jonathan away—the Labrador seemed reluctant to leave both his canine friends and the man who had treated him so nicely. When he resisted, Lily pulled his collar harder, said his name in a very authoritative voice followed by a command that Christopher had taught her. After a second, Jonathan followed her.
The training had worked out well, she thought, fighting back tears as she crossed the threshold. The trainer, however, had not.
“Lily,” Christopher called after her. “I don’t want you to leave.”
It took a great deal for him to put himself out there like that after he had promised himself not to even think about having a relationship with a woman until he had gotten over his grieving period. Telling himself that his mother would have really liked Lily hadn’t exactly tipped the scales in
Lily’s favor—but it hadn’t hurt, either.
“Now,” she said, aiming the words over her shoulder as she hurried to her car. “You don’t want me to leave now. But you’ll change your mind soon enough,” she said between clenched teeth. She had to clench them or risk beginning to sob.
Served her right for allowing herself to connect with a man so quickly. Lily could feel tears aching in her throat.
* * *
Two weeks passed.
Two weeks that moved with the torturous pace of a crippled turtle. Every minute of every day seemed to register as time dragged itself from one end of the day to the other. He felt as if he was going crazy. His work, rather than being his haven, became his trial instead.
He had trouble concentrating.
He tried to move on, he really did. Following his breakup with Irene, after the initial hurt subsided and after he stopped feeling as if he’d been a colossal fool for missing all the signs that had been right there in front of him, Christopher had actually experienced a sense of relief. The kind of relief survivors experienced after learning that they had just narrowly managed to dodge a bullet. The young woman he had thought he had fallen in love with wouldn’t have been the woman that he was supposed to end up marrying. Avoiding that was the part where the relief came in.
But in this case, with Lily, there was no sense of relief. There was only a sense of loss, a sense that something very special had somehow managed to slip right through his fingers and he was never going to be able to recover what he had lost.
Consequently, life had progressively become darker for him. It felt as if the light had gone out of his world and he had no way to turn it back on. Resigned to this new, grimmer view of life, he found his whole demeanor changing.
* * *
Theresa had alerted her that something was definitely up. She’d said that Lily had become very quiet and withdrawn these past two weeks and that the young woman had taken to bringing the puppy to work with her instead of leaving Jonathan with Christopher. But atypically, Theresa had added, Lily wasn’t talking. The pastry chef had told her that everything was “fine” every time she’d asked if something was wrong.
Maizie decided to find out some things for herself.
Which was why she popped into the animal clinic the following Tuesday, when things had slowed down in her own real estate office.
She came armed with one of Cecilia’s remaining puppies, telling the receptionist that she had recently acquired this pet and was going to give it to her granddaughter as a gift. Erika had managed to fit her in between scheduled appointments.
“Hi,” Maizie said cheerfully, popping into the last exam room where she’d been told she’d find the object of her visit. “Your receptionist—lovely girl, Erika,” she commented before continuing, “said you were back here and that it was all right for me to bring Walter to you. I hope you don’t mind my just dropping by. But Walter’s going to be a gift for my granddaughter and I just want to be sure he’s healthy before I give him to her,” she said.
Christopher stared at the puppy. It looked almost exactly like Jonathan. But it couldn’t be—could it?
“Where did you get him?” he asked Maizie.
“I know a breeder up north, around Santa Barbara,” Maizie replied innocently. “Why do you ask?”
Christopher tried to sound casual as he explained, but just the thought of Lily put longing in his voice. “Someone I know has a dog just like that. She said he just turned up on her doorstep a couple of months ago.”
Maizie pretended to take the story in stride. “I hear that Labradors are popular these days because they’re so friendly. That’s why I got one for my granddaughter.” She looked closely at Christopher as he proceeded to examine the puppy. “Is something wrong, dear?”
“The puppy seems to be fine,” he said as he continued with his exam.
“I was talking about you, Christopher,” Maizie said gently.
He shrugged, wishing the woman would just focus on the puppy she’d brought in and not ask him any personal questions. He couldn’t deal with them right now.
He’d left numerous messages on Lily’s phone. She hadn’t called back once. When he went by her house, there were never any lights on and she didn’t answer the door when he rang the bell.
“I’m fine,” he told Maizie again.
Maizie placed her hand on his shoulder—she had to reach up a little in order to do it. “You know, Christopher, I feel that I owe it to your mother to tell you that as an actor, you’re not very convincing. What’s bothering you?” she asked. “I might not be able to help, but I can certainly give you a sympathetic ear.”
He didn’t want to talk about it. Concluding his exam, he looked at her. “Walter’s very healthy. And as for me... Mrs. Connors, I know you mean well—”
Maizie took the puppy off the exam table and placed him on the floor. “You can call me Maizie at this point and hell, yes, I mean well.” Her eyes locked with the young veterinarian’s. “When my daughter looked like you do right now, it was because something in her relationship with the man she eventually married—wonderful son-in-law, by the way—had gone wrong. Now, out with it. You need an impartial third party to tell you if you’re overreacting or if you should give up—and since your mother’s not here to listen, I’ll be that party in her memory.”
Crossing her arms before her, Maizie gave him a very penetrating look that all but declared she was not about to budge on this. “Now, you might as well talk to me because I’m not leaving until you do. If you plan on seeing any more patients today, you had better start talking, young man.”
Chapter Fifteen
He wound up telling her everything.
It was against his better judgment, against anything he’d ever done, but he gave Maizie a condensed version of what had transpired, right up to Lily discovering the photograph of Irene and him, the one he had since thrown out.
Christopher secretly hoped that, in saying the words out loud, it would somehow help him purge himself of this awful deadness he was experiencing and had been experiencing ever since Lily had walked out.
It didn’t. It just made it feel worse, if that was possible.
Desperate, he tried to describe to Maizie what he was feeling.
“It’s like someone just sucked the very life force out of me.” He shrugged, embarrassed. He was being weak and that just wasn’t like him. “I’m sorry, I’m not explaining this very well and you didn’t come here to hear me carry on like some twelve-year-old schoolboy, lamenting about his first crush.” He sighed, resigned to his present state as he squatted down to the puppy’s level to scratch the animal behind his ear. “I suppose you do remind me of my mother and I guess I just needed a sympathetic ear.”
“Well, I’m very flattered to be compared to Frances, Christopher,” Maizie assured him. “Your mother was a very warm, wonderful lady.” Touching his arm, she coaxed him back up to his feet. “You know what she’d say to you if she were here?”
He doubted that the woman had the inside track on his late mother’s thoughts, but since he’d unburdened himself to Maizie, he did owe her the courtesy of listening to what she had to say. Besides, he really did like the woman.
“What?”
“She’d ask you if you really cared about this Lily you just talked about and then, if your answer was yes, she’d tell you to not just stand there and grieve, but do something about it.”
The laugh that Christopher blew out had no humor to it. “I think they call that stalking these days, Mrs. Connors.”
In contrast, Maizie’s laugh was light, airy and compassionate. “I’m not talking about standing beneath this young woman’s bedroom window, reciting lines from Romeo and Juliet or Cyrano. I’m suggesting doing something creative that would allow your two paths to cross—initially in public,” she added
for good measure.
Maybe the woman did have something up her sleeve. At this point, he was willing to try anything. He felt he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
“Go on,” he urged.
“What does your young lady do for a living?” Maizie asked innocently as she stroked the Labrador. “Is she an accountant, or a lawyer, or—”
“She works for a catering company.”
“A catering company,” Maizie repeated, seeming very intrigued. “In what capacity?” she pressed, knowing very well that Lily was Theresa’s pastry chef. “Cooking? Serving?”
“Lily bakes,” he answered, although the word was hardly adequate to describe just what she could do. “Creating delicacies” was closer to the actual description, he thought.
Maizie made sure she appeared properly delighted. “Ah, perfect.”
Christopher didn’t understand. At his feet, the puppy who was Maizie’s accomplice in this was beginning to chew the bottom of the exam table. Christopher took out a hard rubber bone and offered it to the teething puppy.
Walter took the bait.
“Perfect?” he asked Maizie.
“Yes, because I just thought of a plan. Every so often, the Bedford animal shelter has Adopt a Best Friend Day. The local businesses contribute donations or their time to help out.”
Since he volunteered at the shelter, they had taken to sending him their newsletters. “I’m aware of those events, but I don’t see—”
He never knew what hit him as Maizie went into automatic high gear. “I could pull a few strings, make a few suggestions, get this event up and running in, say, a week—two, tops—but probably a week.”
How was this supposed to get Lily back into his life? “I still don’t see how this has anything to do—”
Maizie held up a finger, about to make a crucial point. “Think how many more people might be attracted to come see the animals in the shelter if they knew that there were pastries being offered, the proceeds all going to keep the shelter operational? ‘Come sample the pastries and go home with a best friend,’” Maizie said, coming up with a slogan right on the spot.
Diamond in the Ruff (Matchmaking Mamas Book 13) Page 16