Without looking over, his fingers covered hers, holding her in place. “I…I haven’t had to tell anyone in a long time,” he said.
“No?”
“It doesn’t come up in my professional life. In the course of a business day.”
Perhaps explaining his workaholic ways? But what was it? She could hardly help speculating now.
“Five years ago, my mother, my father, our whole family…everything changed for us in an instant.”
Lilly’s brows knitted. A financial setback? An illness? The elder Thatchers appeared hale and hearty, but he’d hinted that his mother had gone through something bad. However, she would swear that everything had ultimately come up roses for the family. They were just that type—good fortune and good times their inalienable right.
Alec cleared his throat. She stared at him now, trying to read something in the chiseled planes of his face and the tight muscles of his jaw. Was it true that he hadn’t gone to bed with a woman in two years? It seemed impossible for a man so good-looking and confident to avoid scratching what he must certainly consider a mere biological itch.
As she gazed at his features, tight with an emotion she couldn’t identify, something stirred in her belly. Nurturing had never been part of Lilly’s childhood and thus not part of her makeup, she’d always thought, but there was a new feeling springing forth inside her. The sudden and undeniable need to touch Alec, to take up his burden, to somehow make things easier for him.
Her hand turned under his so she could clasp his fingers in a firm, steady grip. “Tell me,” she heard herself whisper.
His head turned toward her.
“Tell me,” she urged again, even as part of her desperately wanted to snatch back the words and to smother this unfamiliar caring welling from deep in her belly.
Alec cupped her cheek in his free hand. “Oh, sugar.” Then he sighed again. “My brother, Simon…”
She hadn’t met him, nor heard anything about him. So far. “Simon?”
“He was two years older than me, six older than my sister.”
Was. Lilly felt her heart stumble in her chest.
“He was enrolled in med school.”
Was. Again. She cleared her throat. “A doctor.”
A small smile ghosted over Alec’s lips. “You should see the procedures he used to enact on our sister Jojo’s dolls. He always wanted to be a surgeon.”
Sitting quietly, she waited for him to speak again.
“Coming back from a study group, late one night…”
Lilly squeezed his hand.
“A drunk was driving the wrong way on the freeway.”
Cold poured over her skin and her heart seized. No. No.
“People had been calling 911 for several miles but the CHP hadn’t managed to catch up with him yet.”
Lilly found herself sliding to the floor, coming to kneel between Alec’s bent legs and then clutching at both his hands. Nothing truly bad could happen to a Thatcher, she tried telling herself. Nothing truly terrible.
“The man hit Simon’s car head-on. My brother died at the scene.”
My brother died at the scene.
Her entire body went leaden and white noise buzzed in her ears. Alec’s words began crawling across her brain like the chyron on a TV screen. He hit Simon’s car head-on. My brother died at the scene. He hit Simon’s car head-on. My brother died at the scene. He hit Simon’s car head-on. My brother died at the scene.
“I…” Her lips felt numb. “That’s terrible.” Her words sounded faint.
“Yeah.” Alec glanced away. “We all…were shocked. Distraught. My mom…we thought we might lose her, too. She’s just now coming back to us.”
That lovely, lively woman must have been devastated. Such a thing wasn’t supposed to happen to people like the Thatchers.
Without thinking, Lilly bowed her head to press her brow to their linked hands, hoping somehow the touch might ease him. The buzz in her head hushed and she could hear Alec’s steady breathing. Hers synced to it, and it seemed to connect them in a new, deeper way.
She was no stranger. Not to this man. Not to his pain.
Something about that felt right. Righter than anything. She pressed a kiss to his knuckles.
“Sugar,” he whispered.
Lifting her head, Lilly looked into his face, the lines of it more relaxed than before. He untangled one of his hands and stroked a thumb over her cheek. “Don’t cry.”
“I never cry,” she said, because she didn’t.
The corners of his lips quirked, and he stroked her other cheek. “Okay. It must be the rain then.”
“The rain?” Inside the room? What a silly idea.
“A slow, gentle rain.” He shook his head and caressed her face again. “It…feels good.” For a moment he was silent, as if considering that. “I feel…better.”
A rush of warmth filled her chest. “I’m glad,” she said. Uncommonly glad. Then she rose up to brush her mouth against his.
His lips caught hers…or maybe it was her failure to keep the contact casual. Either way, what she intended as comfort became fire, their mouths fusing, and it became a full-fledged kiss, his mouth hungry, greedy on hers. Then it was a chain of kisses, each one with a beginning, middle, and end, story after story of kissing, as decipherable as words on paper.
Your tongue is velvet. You taste like heaven. I can’t get close enough to you.
She made a sound in the back of her throat, a needy near-whimper. Alec jerked his head back, staring down at her with surprise and heat in his eyes. His breath panted in and out of his lungs.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said, his voice rough.
Lilly’s fought for air too. “What…” She swallowed, started again. “Was it supposed to be like?”
He shook his head, as if an answer wouldn’t come to him. “You had better go.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t go, I…” His head shake this time seemed more deliberate, as if the action might sort the thoughts jumbled there. “I’ll take you to bed.”
He looked so perplexed by that, she wanted to soothe him with her hands, her mouth, a hug, her previously unknown yearning to reassure rising up
