“Sure.” He dropped into the seat, eyed the half-glass of OJ in front of her. “Are you finishing up or just getting started?”
“Finishing up.” She crossed one slender leg over the other, her creamy thighs revealed by the short skirt of a blue dress splashed with pink flowers that matched her lipstick. “Did you have a good rest last night?”
He stared at her, contemplating his answer, knowing her breezy tone would be impossible to match. The truth was, he’d stared at the ceiling for hours, recalling every sound she’d made, every restless movement of her body, that moment when she’d shattered, her body a vice gripping his fingers, so damn hard it had shoved him over his own edge.
It probably wasn’t breakfast conversation, however. And perhaps she was going with his first inclination and was intending to pretend last night never happened…so he should follow suit. “I—”
“Wait. Let’s start over.” Her mouth turned down and she shook her head. “That sounded wrong and I don’t want you to think I’m trying to be coy or anything. We had…well, we sort of had sex last night. I’m not going to act otherwise.”
“It wasn’t sort-of sex,” he protested. The orgasms had been completely legit, damn it. He stared at her neck, looking for a light bruise he might have left behind, and with a caveman’s regret didn’t see a single mark marring her beautiful skin. It would have proved their passion.
She waved a careless hand. “You know what I mean.”
The condoms were burning a hole in his pocket. If he’d been so blown away by “sort-of” sex with Lilly, where would the pure act land on the charts? His mind had started to wander in that direction when she spoke again, her voice low.
“I want to say once again how sorry I am.” Her eyes cast down, she drew designs in the condensation on her juice glass. “Things like that—your brother Simon—shouldn’t happen to families like yours.”
His focus tracked back to her, his gaze sharpening. “Families like ours?”
She shrugged. “You know.”
He didn’t, but something told him a huge clue had been dropped. A clue to more fully understanding Lilly Durand and what made her tick. Because you always want to learn everything you can about a casual hookup, a smirking voice said inside Alec’s head.
He ignored it. “Lilly—”
The sound of metal clattering against concrete drew the attention of the breakfasting crowd. Both he and Lilly looked over to see a flustered waiter retrieving scattered bundles of napkin-wrapped cutlery. Alec was about to return his attention to his tablemate, when beyond the server he spied a familiar figure scuttling behind an ivy-wrapped pillar.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Is everything all right?” Lilly asked.
“Yeah.” He shot up from his seat. “I’m going to hit the buffet table, grab some breakfast, coffee. You stay right here until I get back.”
Without waiting for her acquiescence or refusal, he hurried in the direction of the weasel he’d seen skulking. Sure enough, he found Jacob Belcher just around the corner from the patio, lurking in a shaded corridor.
“What the hell are you doing?” Alec demanded.
“I knew you were staying here and I wanted to talk to somebody.” Dressed in board shorts, chewed-up flip-flops, and a faded shirt, Jacob crossed his arms over his chest. “No one will return my texts.”
“Because you fucking ruined a nice woman’s life, you asshole.”
“But you reached out to me.”
Christ, Jacob sounded like the whiney six-year-old he’d been on the bunk below Alec’s at summer camp all those years ago. But they’d forged a bond of sorts through sunrise nature walks and nightly charred marshmallows—the two youngest in the Walden Pond cabin. Eight Julys later, when they’d “graduated” from Camp Northwood, Alec had felt a responsibility of sorts for Jacob. Over the years, he’d saved him from angry hornets, a kayak excursion gone wrong, and an oversized bully called Moon-Faced Morton.
“You wanted to know how I was doing,” Jacob said now.
Not for anything would Alec say he’d made contact on Audra’s behalf. “I wanted to confirm you were properly miserable, you snake.”
Jacob hung his head, his dirty blond hair flopping forward. No expert on male attractiveness, Alec had to take his sister’s word for it that Jacob was what she termed a “California dime.” Jojo used a bunch of weird-ass lingo possibly understood only by herself, but he was told it meant a ten on the apparently higher, California scale of handsomeness. Then she’d told Alec, generously, that he qualified as a “California twelve and a half.”
Sisters.
Jacob’s head came up and he swooped his bangs off his forehead with his left hand, a boyish gesture that he’d been making as long as Alec knew him. “You think I should have gotten married when I didn’t want to?”
“I think you shouldn’t have gotten engaged when you didn’t want to get married.”
With a sigh, Jacob dropped his gaze to his toes. “Audra’s beautiful.”
“I hear she’s doing just fine, by the way.” Alec wouldn’t let the true nature of things slip. “Counting her lucky stars.”
Maybe he sounded harsh, but Alec felt no remorse. The pair had been engaged for fourteen months. Surely Jacob could have worked out his true feelings before the very day of the wedding.
His old friend began rotating a braided string bracelet at his wrist. The color of the twisted fibers looked bright and new and the thing reminded him of something an eighth-grader exchanged with his first crush. “Geez, Jake, are you seeing someone else already? You were just days ago engaged—”
“And that was a mistake,” Jacob said defensively. “Anyway, it’s not like you’re rushing to put a ring on anyone’s finger.”
“Me? Don’t bring me into—”
“How many times have you claimed you’re never getting married? Like three thousand times since Simon died and you started plowing through women.”
Oh, hell. Not this again. “Fuck, Jacob—”
“Maybe I just started seeing things your way. The stats are against it working out. Marriage, I mean. What is it, a fifty-percent failure rate?”
The numbers guy in him
