Lily remembered that look. She had seen that look. He’d levelled it on Danielle on numerous occasions.
Her heart stuttered in her chest but she nodded and slowly moved away. Very slowly. Snail’s pace slowly. Moving slowly while hoping he’d call her back for a kiss, a touch, something, anything.
He did not.
He also did not turn to her when he finally came to their bed.
He was gone before she awoke, he didn’t wake Tash but he did leave a short, unaffectionate note for Lily (and a longer, very affectionate note for Tash) saying he left early for the office.
That afternoon, sitting behind the register in a quiet moment at Flash and Dazzle, she’d phoned him at the office.
He’d said he’d never miss another one of her calls and he hadn’t. She expected her calls came at times when he was busy but he always took them as, she now knew, he always took Tash’s calls when she phoned him when she got home from school.
“Mr. McAllister’s office,” Nate’s secretary Jennifer answered.
“Hi Jennifer, it’s Lily. Can I speak to Nate?”
Jennifer was quiet for a moment and Lily felt the now familiar stutter in her heart. These past weeks, Lily had chatted to Jennifer and although they’d never met, they’d built a rapport.
This time, however, Jennifer didn’t invite even a short chat, instead, she said softly, “I’m sorry, Lily. Mr. McAllister said he was not to be disturbed under any circumstances.”
Lily swallowed and nodded even though Jennifer couldn’t see her.
“That’s okay,” Lily replied, trying to do it brightly and fearing she failed. “Can you tell him I phoned?”
“Definitely,” Jennifer assured her.
When Lily got home from Flash and Dazzle, she found that Nate’s edict of not being disturbed didn’t apply to Tash who was, as ever, awash with news of her telephone conversation with her father. Although this wasn’t news from Nate, as Lily suspected Nate couldn’t get a word in edgewise and wouldn’t try anyway. It was more Tash’s news said in the form of, “I told Daddy…” and, “Then, when I described it, Daddy laughed.”
Instead of Nate taking Tash’s calls and laughing with her making Lily feel content, it made her fear and alarm turn to anger which she nursed quietly under Fazire’s watchful glare all night.
Nate didn’t make it home for Tash to read to him, nor did he call to say he’d be detained.
Lily monitored her daughter closely to see if her very astute senses were noticing anything different between her mother and father. However, Nate was shielding Tash from this and treating her exactly the same even while his behaviour to Lily was significantly different.
As Lily shut down the house for the night, Nate still not home, Fazire approached her in the hall.
“Lily-child –” he started gently, his eyes soft on her.
“No, Fazire,” she held up her hand as if to ward him off, “not now.”
Then before he could press as Fazire was wont to do, she’d run up the stairs. She got ready for bed but didn’t get in it, instead she paced. And she waited. And her mind tumbled over its thoughts, none of them good.
Very late, she heard Nate enter the house but he didn’t come up and, as minutes ticked by, she went in search of him.
She found him in their back garden, now lushly appointed with planters, pots and beds brimming with flowers and greenery, all of this well-tended by a weekly gardener. She was stunned to see him standing at the balustrade by the cliff looking toward the Victorian pier, smoking a cigarette. Not since their night on Laura and Victor’s stoop had she seen him smoke a cigarette or even smelled it on him.
She stood just outside the new French doors to the garden and called, “Nate?”
His body jerked and his head snapped around to look at her through the darkness. She was just as stunned that she’d surprised him. He was always alert to anything but most specifically her. Sometimes she felt he knew she was approaching a room even before she’d cleared the door.
She couldn’t imagine what had him so lost in thought but she wanted to know, needed to know and damned well was going to know.
She walked across the garden and stopped in front of him.
“You’re smoking.” Her voice was a soft accusation.
“Yes, Lily, I’m smoking. And you’re standing in the garden wearing your pyjamas,” he replied as if her transgression was as bad as his.
“When did you start smoking?” she ignored his comment.
“When I was nine,” he responded immediately, nonchalantly sharing a piece of his history with her like he did it every day and this information hit her like a blow.
Dear God, who started smoking when they were nine? She thought but he didn’t allow her to respond, he went on.
“Get back into the house.”
She blinked, momentarily thrown by his harshly voiced command coming so quickly after he’d shared something personal about himself, something she hadn’t had to wheedle out of him. Determined to get to the bottom of what was bothering him, she decided to ignore it.
“We need to talk. Something’s –”
“Lily, get back into the fucking house. No woman should stand outside barely clothed, especially not you. You’re the mother of my child, for God’s sake. This is a terraced house, the neighbours can see you.”
She had to shake her head trying to clear away his words, his tone, his meaning.
“Nate, it’s nearly midnight, no one –”
“Get back into the fucking house,” he snarled savagely, losing patience and leaning into her so menacingly, she couldn’t help but take a step back.
She hesitated, her heart stuttering again.
Then she squared her shoulders, determined to have it out even if it was midnight and she was in her pyjamas. Yes, they were pyjamas and yes, there wasn’t much to them but she wouldn’t describe herself as “barely clothed” for goodness sake.
“Don’t speak to me that way,” she snapped. “We have to talk. Something’s wrong with you and I want to know what it is.”
Without answering, he turned away from her and resumed his contemplation of the pier.
At this action, she tried a different tactic.
She stepped into his line of sight and put her hand on his arm.
“Nate,” she said in a gentler tone, “please talk to me.”
He looked down at her like he had when he was standing in his parent’s foyer and Victor was shaking her, like when they were in the conference room that awful day talking about Natasha’s custody, as if she was a not very interesting bug he was watching crawl across the pavement.
Pulling all her courage to her like a shield, she threw pride into the wind and leaned into him, putting her arms around him even though nothing about him was inviting her actions.
“Talk to me,” she urged, all her love for him in her words.
He didn’t touch her. Instead, he calmly flicked his cigarette over the cliff as if she was a mile away instead of holding him in her arms.
“Nate!” she cried, beginning to panic. “Talk to me.”
That’s when he touched her. His fingers went into the hair on either side of her head and held her there while his mouth slammed down on hers in the first kiss he’d given her in days.
It was not a loving kiss, it was hard, insistent, greedy, taking everything while giving nothing in return.
She was too happy he was touching her, kissing her, to let it register. She simply opened her mouth under his and gave him everything as she’d always done.
Lily heard his groan and was thrilled by it, but inexplicably he tore his mouth from hers. Then she was being lifted, carried, not to their room but downstairs to the family room. All the while he kissed her in that awful way, his mouth then moving to her neck, shoulders, behind her ear, his teeth sinking into her flesh in a dangerous, erotic way.