She wore not a single piece of jewellery, not even earrings, and she didn’t need to. Her sparkling eyes and shining hair that had been swept up and away from her face and off her neck, were the only accompaniment the dress required. Her feet were encased in high-heeled sandals a deeper green than the dress, the heel spiked with a daring strap around the ankles and two thin crossed straps around her toes. Toes, he noticed with his usual sharp eye for detail, which were no longer painted the deep wine of yesterday but now a pearly, iridescent pink.
She looked, regardless of the friendly smile, like a serene, unobtainable princess.
She also, Nate noted with firm detachment, looked good with Jeff. They made an excellent couple and Jeff quite obviously felt the same.
“Hello, my dearest.” Silently, Laura was at his side, touching his arm and he turned to her to bend low to allow her to give him a kiss on his smoothly-shaven cheek.
He looked at the woman who had become his mother, the only woman who had been a true mother to him and he smiled with genuine pleasure at her company.
“Having a good time?” he enquired.
“I hate this,” Laura announced honestly. She was an excellent hostess, she was very good at socialising but she much preferred to be in the company of her family or small gatherings of close friends than having a huge party. “But, Danielle was intent on making this a big deal so…”
Nate read the rest of her statement. What Danielle wanted both Laura and Victor, and now Jeff, gave to her. It was far easier than the tantrum that would result if they did not. Nate seemed to be the only member of the family who could say no to Danielle.
And he did it often.
“How’s Lily?” Nate found himself asking and at the sweet, knowing smile that twitched on his mother’s lips, he wished he had not. It had become very clear that both his parents had decided to play matchmaker.
“She’s better, I think, though I wouldn’t know. She’s determined to hide any stiffness or soreness. She was more distressed at my distress this morning when I found out she could barely move to get out of bed than at any pain she was feeling. Regardless of it all, she and I have had the best day.” She hesitated then leaned closer, saying in a quiet voice, “Nathaniel, it’s very strange but I feel like I’ve known her an age instead of a day. She’s so open, so sweet. You should hear some of the stories she tells about her family in Indiana. They’re hilarious,
she’s
hilarious.”
Nate continued to smile into Laura’s dancing eyes then turned back to regard Lily.
He had been to America on business on several occasions though he’d never been to Indiana. He wondered at her family. She was quite clearly from money. That purse she fought so hard to keep cost a small fortune. He knew, he’d paid for one for Laura for Christmas the previous year. Not to mention everything about Lily screamed class and breeding.
“How long is she here?” he asked, not shifting his gaze from Lily.
“I’m trying to get her to stay another day and night just to be certain she’s all right. She’s very intent on going home,” Laura answered.
Nate was surprised at this response.
“Is her holiday finished then?” he queried.
“I’m sorry?” Laura queried in return.
He reluctantly stopped watching Lily who was now talking to both Jeff and Georgia’s father and Georgia’s father seemed equally as smitten with her as everyone else. It wasn’t surprising, she’d said something that made both men throw their heads back and laugh.
Nate turned to Laura. “Her holiday, is she wanting to get back to Indiana?”
Laura looked confused for a moment then shook her head. “No, n. Lily lives here in England. Some seaside town in Somerset. She’s been here for years, came here for university, Oxford, and decided to stay.”
An American at Oxford who decided to stay
, Nate thought.
Definitely money.
This knowledge cemented his resolution to steer clear of her. He could win her, of course, but if she ever found out his background she’d turn her cute but cultured nose up at him.
And that he could not abide.
“Jeff seems taken with her,” he noted to Laura, his resolution making his tone sound unconcerned and his mother’s knowing face turned instantly to dismay.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly and Nate could even hear the disappointment in her voice.
“They make a handsome couple,” he remarked absently as he turned away from Lily, pushed her out of his mind and thought instead about a drink, a stiff one. “I hope something comes of it for you especially, if you like her so well,” Nate finished then bent and kissed Laura’s cheek fondly before he departed her now disappointed company to find himself a drink.
For the next two hours as the party became a crush (no one missed a Roberts party, even if it was postponed for a day, Victor was famously free with his bar), Nate didn’t even have to try to avoid Lily. He was often sought out at these events, business acquaintances and women both pressing for his attention.
After he felt he’d done his duty to his parents, he decided to step outside for some peace and quiet and a cigarette. Laura hated his smoking, thus he did not do it in the house and Victor tried to get him to switch to cigars which was what Victor smoked, but also not in the house. But Nate felt it somehow necessary to hold on to his vice, felt it said something about him, about who he was. And at least it was legal.
He made his way to the front door and opened it then froze when he saw Lily sitting on the front step.
He had not seen the back of her dress which was cut in a low ruffle-edged V exposing her spine passed her waist in a way that seemed both vulnerable and seductive. Her hair was pulled back in a messy chignon, haphazardly but stylishly pinned in place at the back of her head and tendrils of red-gold hair fell about her neck, face and delicate jaw.
She twisted around at his arrival and he saw her wince at the movement.
His lips thinned at the sight of her pain and he thought, not for the first time, that he should never have stopped squeezing that thief’s throat.
Her face registered some emotion at seeing him, something he could not read, something that seemed strangely melancholy then he watched as she tried to hide it, not completely successfully, and greeted him with a casual, “Hey.”
“Lily,” he greeted back, vaguely annoyed. He could not return to the house and close the door, it wouldn’t only have been impolite but also shown too clearly he was avoiding her. Therefore he walked out onto the front stoop and shut the door behind him. He stood next to her and leaned his hip against the glossy-black, wrought iron railing. He pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his inside jacket pocket and held them up to her. “Do you mind?”
She’d watched him the whole time, her incredible eyes never leaving him. Then they dropped to the cigarettes and something flashed in them.
“You shouldn’t smoke,” she said in a quiet but disapproving tone.
“You sound like Laura,” he told her.
“If I do then Laura’s right,” she returned, exhibiting a little bit of the spirit he’d been introduced to during her mad dash toward the purse snatcher the day before.
At her words he moved to put the cigarettes back in his pocket but she shook her head and looked away.
“No, no, go ahead. Really, I don’t mind,” she lied.
Even though, or probably because he knew she wouldn’t like it, he lit a cigarette with the gold lighter Victor had given him while she settled back in the position he’d first seen her in, leaning forward and resting her forearms across her knees, her hands grasping the insides of her elbows.
“Where’s Jeff?” Something compelled him to ask even though he couldn’t have cared less and her shoulders moved up in a careful shrug but she didn’t answer.
She continued her avid contemplation of the steps while he quietly smoked and continued his avid contemplation of the flawless skin of her bowed back. He wondered what that skin felt like, tasted like and lastly, he wondered at her strange mood.
“I didn’t thank you,” she said to the steps, interrupting his thoughts.
“Pardon?”
She twisted again, just her head, and lifted her eyes to him.
“For yesterday, for saving my… well, me… from the purse snatcher. I didn’t say thank you.”
He had no response so he didn’t make one.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He lifted his chin slightly in acknowledgement of her gratitude and fought back his pleasant reaction to her quiet words.
“It was very heroic,” she told him.
“It was hardly heroic,” he replied dismissively.
This put a crack in her contemplative mood and the corners of her lips moved up marginally.
“Considering there were approximately three thousand witnesses and not a single one lifted a finger to help, I’d say it was heroic.”
“I’d say three thousand is a bit of an exaggeration,” he returned, his tone light and faintly teasing. He found he was completely incapable of not responding to her small smile.
His words garnered him a full one at the same time her eyes brightened and he was momentarily transfixed.
“Is it an exaggeration? It
felt
like three thousand people,” she noted and leaned back, putting her hands behind her on the stoop and casually crossing her legs. The hem of her skirt rode up her knee exposing the barest hint of thigh and Nate felt his body heat at the sight of it. “I felt like a street performer, like you and I should have passed the hat around after we were done. I could swear some of them even took pictures.”
He felt his own lips twitching as her mood melted and she introduced him to her dry humour.
“They did,” he informed her.
She shook her head and laughed softly, a sound he liked so much, it felt almost as if it was a physical touch.
“People,” she muttered, the word was loaded with meaning and Nate found it adorable. She likely had absolutely no idea what people were capable of, what depths they could sink to. And then he found he wished, uncharacteristically rather fervently, that she never discovered that awful fact.
She sighed deeply and moved her head to gaze across the street.
“Even though I don’t know but a few souls in there, I should go back in,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed.
They definitely should go back in.
One more minute out here alone with her and he was going to forget his firm resolution to steer clear of her. He was going to forget a lot of things. Things he’d not allowed himself to forget for sixteen years.
He flicked his cigarette into the gutter and he noticed her body immediately stilled at this act.
Then she did something extraordinary.
“You just littered!” she accused hotly, jumping gracefully to her feet, glaring at the smouldering cigarette butt like it was about to explode and take out half of the street in a blaze of fiery destruction when it did.
Then her glare turned to him.
He hadn’t a word to say in response. She was, of course, right.
She was also somehow even more imposingly beautiful when she was angry.
“Fazire says you shouldn’t litter. He says humans litter too much.” While talking, she had turned and was stomping down the steps in agitation. Nate watched in stupefied fascination as she marched straight to his cigarette end and leaning down slowly she snatched it out of the gutter and held it between her thumb and forefinger like it was abhorrent, which in her hands, it was. “He says humans should take better care of where they live or we won’t have it very long.” She leaned forward and smashed it out against one of the steps, giving him a tantalising glimpse at more of her cleavage.
“Who’s Fazire?” Nate asked and watched as she straightened and he saw the flush of ire on her pink cheeks and he found his resolution of earlier this evening slipping another hefty notch after the notch it had slipped while seeing her cleavage, the other one that had slipped upon witnessing her smile and the
other
one that had slipped upon hearing her say “thank you”.
She was looking around for somewhere to deposit the cigarette.
“He’s a family friend. He helped raise me,” she explained distractedly.
“Lily, give it to me,” Nate said softly and her eyes came to him and focussed. He’d stretched out his hand and she walked up the steps, stopped two down from the top where he stood and then she deposited the remains of the cigarette in his palm.
After her rather vain attempt to save the earth by cleaning up his lone cigarette end, she seemed to realise belatedly how bizarre her behaviour and her words were. This realisation caused her to look hilariously mortified.
“I think,” she whispered, putting her eyes on anything but him, “that might have been a little rude.” She said it as if rudeness was the worst of sins.
“No more rude than my thoughtless participation in the destruction of the planet,” he drawled, definitely teasing this time.
Her eyes flew to his and at one look at him her chagrin instantly faded and she laughed, not soft or low, but with great feeling and it was so catching, he found himself grinning at her.