Three days after Lily left, Nate moved into his new apartment, the same day he disconnected his old phone. His secretary took a leave of absence due to an unexpected extended illness.
His temporary secretary had never heard of Lily Jacobs. When she took the calls from the woman, she lost most of the messages under a pile of ones marked urgent (nearly all calls to Nate McAllister seemed to be urgent and the secretary simply couldn’t cope). She lost a lot of messages in the two weeks Nate put up with her, none of them nearly as urgent as the ones from Lily.
The ones Nate’s temp didn’t lose, Jeff stole.
Danielle was awash with delight at the strange abrupt exit of Lily. So much so, weeks later, she made her last, desperate attempt at capturing his heart by seducing his body. He’d been so revolted and he’d told her, in more words than he would normally use, exactly what he thought of her. Unbeknownst to him, five minutes after he pulled his Maserati out from in front of his parent’s house after this somewhat dramatic scene, Lily had walked up the stoop for the last time with her beloved Fazire. It was very unfortunate timing as, at that moment Lily was the last person on earth Danielle Roberts wanted to see. And anyway, Danielle and her brother had prepared well for this moment.
Victor and Laura were, at first, confused then worried then they both became angry at Lily’s unexplained departure. Surprisingly, for the first time in Nate’s life, he saw Laura’s anger turn to rage and it didn’t blow itself out in a matter of minutes. She seemed to nurse it for days, weeks, even, if Lily’s name ever came up in conversation (usually by Jeff), years.
Jeff was also quite happy and very smug about Lily’s departure. He knew something; Nate understood this by the way Jeff acted. At first he was cagey and jumpy as if he expected whatever he did to backfire which happened often with Jeff. But when it didn’t the smugness was complete and it, too, lasted for years.
Nate knew that Jeff told Lily about his past life, how his relationship started with Jeff’s father and she ran. She had told him that nothing Jeff could say would change how she felt about him but she had lied.
Nate was well acquainted with people who lied. This didn’t surprise him one bit. A glorious, twenty-two year old virgin from Indiana who probably lived in a palatial home that looked like a plantation (at least, this is where Nate saw her in his mind whenever he thought about her, which was a great deal for the first few months but later, as a well-honed defence mechanism, not at all, or at least, not during daylight hours) and had been cosseted and sheltered all her life, confronted with what Nate was…
She was probably still showering to wash away the filth of him.
The day Lily Jacobs found out her parents died was the day the Nate McAllister that she’d breathed new life into died.
He found new women, none of them a single thing like Lily. His father became Chairman of the Board while Nate took over as CEO. He bought an enormous penthouse apartment and commissioned an even bigger bed.
And he slept in it, in the rare times he slept at home, alone (or, at least, most of the time).
PART FOUR
Chapter Twelve
Laura & Lily
Eight years later, Nate is thirty-six, Lily is thirty and it’s early in the month of May…
Laura Roberts was walking through Hyde Park.
She liked to walk, did it often, it kept her legs shapely (that’s what Victor told her at least). It kept her fit. It kept her young.
Hyde Park was her favourite place to walk with the Serpentine running through, all the trees, the different monuments and statues here and there, Diana’s Memorial, Speaker’s Corner, the people riding horses and there were so many dogs being walked and babies in prams. There was always something to see and it was never the same.
That sunny, beautiful, warm day, for instance, Laura saw a man who looked like he was wearing black kohl all around his dark eyes; he had hair nearly as black as Nathaniel’s but without the blue sheen, darkly tanned skin, a protruding belly and a pointed, black goatee.
He looked almost, Laura thought fancifully, like a genie but in regular people’s clothes.
She watched as he stopped and planted his feet wide apart and crossed his arms, his face mock-fierce with annoyance, just like Yul Brenner in The King and I. This made him look exactly like a genie.
With curiosity to discover what was annoying him, Laura turned her gaze to where the genie-man was scowling.
And then her entire frame froze.
Lily.
Laura couldn’t believe her eyes and blinked twice to see if it cleared her vision or if perhaps the woman she saw was someone else that looked like Lily but was not and Laura’s mind was simply playing terrible, horrible tricks on her.
But it was Lily. She looked nearly the same, except thinner. She was wearing a pair of very faded Levi’s and an even more faded t-shirt that said “Chicago Cubs” on it. She was running toward the genie-man and smiling that same, strange, quirky but beautiful Lily smile.
Except different.
Laura regarded more closely the woman who had broken her Nathaniel’s heart.
Lily looked pale, slightly drawn and even tired.
The Lily Light she thought she knew so well was gone.
Life, Laura saw, and felt an atypical satisfaction at seeing, had not treated Lily Jacobs very well.
Laura decided immediately to put Lily out of her mind. She would, of course, tell Victor about this but she’d never breathe a word to Nathaniel. Her son had never let onto how shattered he was at Lily’s unexplained departure but Laura, as any mother would, knew.
Lily Jacobs was truly the only person in the world that Laura Roberts hated. Laura knew all about Nathaniel’s past, Victor had told her. That Lily would bring such life and light to him, make him actually laugh (a lot), make him so happy and then tear it away without an explanation or even a good-bye…
Well, she was simply not worth Laura’s regard and she definitely wasn’t worth Laura’s kindness.
Laura started walking again in hopes she’d get away before Lily saw her. She couldn’t abide speaking to her not, she imagined, that Lily would ever approach her if she had a single decent bone in her body.
Then she heard the still familiar voice call, “Tash! Stop dawdling, baby doll.”
Laura’s head came up and then she froze again.
Running toward Lily and the strange genie-man was a little girl.
Nathaniel’s little girl.
Laura knew it immediately. It was stamped all over the child.
The same blue-black hair, the same (even at that distance, Laura could tell, she was Nathaniel’s mother after all) darker than dark eyes, the same bone structure, the same long-legged, long-waisted body, except feminine and in child-like form. Indeed, there was no mistaking it, no denying it; the child was Nathaniel McAllister’s child.
Laura watched in stunned, frozen silence as the little girl ran toward Lily and threw her arms around her mother. Lily bent to kiss the top of her head and was talking to her, smiling down on her. This smile was not tired and drawn. It lit up her face, just like the old Lily.
Laura couldn’t believe it. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to scream, to run forward and snatch the child from her mother’s arms.
Then Lily straightened from the girl, turning to lead them in the opposite direction and then Lily saw her.