Lilly wasn’t quite sure how it had come to this. Hadn’t she protested? “I’m not sure…” she began.
Alec dropped into the chair on her other side. “Just go with it,” he advised. “Believe me, her iron will is more than a match for yours.”
“But Audra…”
He glanced over. “Shall I call your rooms? We can invite her to join us.”
“No, no.” Audra had hacked at the hem of her wedding dress again, shortening it to her hips, but she was still wearing the damn thing. Lilly wasn’t sure her usually meticulously groomed friend had showered or even brushed her hair since receiving the disastrous text.
“Is she expecting you back?” Alec asked.
Lilly considered lying, but instead let out a sigh. “She’s barricaded in her bedroom. I can hear the TV but she says she doesn’t want to watch it with me. Maybe tomorrow, she said.”
“Then you can enjoy our company.”
Around the table was a sea of unfamiliar faces who were already chattering amongst themselves and were clearly in a collectively upbeat mood. “I can’t barge into…whatever this night is about.”
“It’s part of the celebration of my parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
She gasped. “It’s a family event. I can’t stay. I’m intruding, I don’t know anyone—”
“Hush.” Alec found her hand in her lap and gave it a squeeze. “You know me. You’ll know Mom by the time the meal is over, I promise you. But be careful, she has a way of getting people to talk about themselves. If you don’t want to spill your deepest secrets, I suggest you say as little as possible to her.”
“Uh…okay,” Lilly said, even though her doubts were redoubling by the second. She didn’t want anyone knowing her secrets. Yet she didn’t want anyone to know she didn’t want anyone to know her secrets either, which Alec would suppose if she skedaddled like a skittish rabbit now. “I suppose I can stay,” she mumbled.
“Good girl.” He leaned closer, his lips an inch from her ear. “And if you want to sidestep Mom, all you need to do is give me your full attention.” The hand holding hers shifted, his thumb caressing the cove of her palm.
The light touch ignited Lilly’s nerve endings, one flaming after the other so her skin grew tight and her breath short. It was so simple, that gentle stroke, but the intensity of her reaction to it made her hot with shame. Delicate shivers rolled down her back and she stared at the table in front of her, hoping he wouldn’t notice her intemperate response.
“Hey,” he said, his voice going lower. “What’s the matter?”
A sudden longing overtook her then, a yearning to close her eyes and put her head on Alec’s shoulder and surrender to all that he could make her feel. This insane attraction compelled her to turn herself over to him, to cling, as if he were her rock.
He did that to her. He made her that weak.
She couldn’t afford to be weak.
“Lilly.” His voice sounded part concerned, part amused. “You look like you’re about to faint and I haven’t even kissed you yet.”
“Don’t,” she said, her throat suddenly tightening. There was a hot pressure behind her eyes. “Don’t…tease me.”
Alec’s hand left hers to tuck under her chin. He brought her face around to meet his. “Sugar. Seriously. What’s the matter?”
She hauled in a breath. “It’s been a stressful couple of days, that’s all.” Swallowing hard, she tried choking down all these unwelcome feelings. “I should probably go to my room and pull the blankets over my head.”
“Don’t do that. You’ll disappoint me. You’ll disappoint Mom.”
“You have all this family—”
“But she’s interested in you,” Alec said, then he hesitated. His fingers drifted to the side of her head, where he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Here’s the thing. She’s gone through some bad stuff and we’re trying to keep her happy.”
Lilly stole a quick glance at his mother, who was in an animated conversation with the person sitting across from her. Bad stuff? She looked healthy, perfectly happy. “Alec…”
But then servers converged upon the table, setting crisp salads in front of them and fresh rolls on the bread plates. Lilly’s stomach grumbled and she realized she’d had nothing but a smoothie and a quarter of a deli sandwich that day.
At that moment Miranda turned to her and offered up a charming smile. “Lilly. Now tell me what you do when you’re not rescuing wayward puppies.”
Her chance for a gracious escape was officially lost.
But the meal was delicious as promised, and Alec’s mother was an accomplished interviewer, also as promised. Lilly, however, was experienced in keeping much of her life private and talked easily of her current job as well as casually explaining that her parents had traveled around so much that she’d been raised by an aunt and uncle, along with a male cousin.
No one would tell by her expression or her words that in reality, her unwed mom had wandered off with some lowlife and never returned. No one knew the name of the man who had fathered Lilly.
Alec hadn’t noticed anything unusual in what she said, she was sure, because halfway through dinner he’d been easily coaxed by some teenage relatives to leave his seat for another at their end in order to mediate a heated dispute over a college basketball game. She’d waved away his look of apology, assuring him she was fine on her own.
Which she was. She wasn’t bad at extracting information either, so she learned that Miranda and Vic Thatcher lived in northern San Diego County, in a beach house they’d completed the previous year. Miranda worried about her daughter who’d recently been divorced and she thought Alec worked too much and didn’t spend enough time relaxing.
“Or pursuing romance,” she said, giving Lilly a pointed look.
“We’re just friends,” she said hastily. “Less, really. Acquaintances. We only met a few days ago. And the situation, with the wedding that’s never going to be, it makes it very awkward to think…impossible, really.
