“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.