Ending the call without allowing him another word, she placed her phone carefully back on the table. If they were normal people, there were other ways to get them the money, like direct deposit via computer to an account at a financial institution. But a few months back they’d informed her they were operating on a cash basis only. She’d decided she didn’t want to know how they managed like that.
She glanced at her phone again, seized by a sudden impulse to disinfect it somehow, wipe it clean, clear the circuitry or whatever there was inside it of any voice print or vibration left behind by her relatives.
But that wouldn’t sanitize her childhood.
Or dispel the misgivings now skittering from the corners of her mind like the cockroaches at the old apartment. However unlikely, she couldn’t chance Frank making good on his “offer,” could she? She was going to have to go back.
Today.
Chapter 11
After Lilly left his room that morning, Alec had stifled his first impulse to follow her. With her emotions running high and his mind struggling to catch up with all that was streaming through hers, he’d decided to slow down. Think things through. Not go off half-cocked.
Which didn’t explain why he’d hunted up his sister that afternoon, the most impetuous of the Thatcher clan.
This thought he expressed to her now, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face. He could feel it.
She laughed at him, her eyes bright, her face glowing with good health.
“Don’t you have a hangover?” he asked, remembering her drunken state the night before.
“Timothée taught me how to avoid those,” she said. “The only valuable thing I got out of four-plus years of marriage.”
“What’s your secret?” he asked, curious.
“I charge for that,” she said. “Advice about your romantic life I’ll dish out for free.”
He’d mentioned Lilly’s name when Jojo had met him at her hotel room door. Now they’d settled on the attached balcony overlooking the lush green of the grounds. He leaned against the sturdy metal while Jojo lounged in a comfortable chaise, her legs stretched in front of her, ankles crossed.
Folding her hands one over the other, she rested them in her lap, her face lifted to his. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Alec opened his mouth, closed it. Where the hell should he begin? “I only said I wanted to see her again, once we get back to LA.”
“And?”
“She took off. It’s as if I demanded she give up a kidney.” It was nothing like that. And he’d implied a hell of a lot more than wanting to just “see” her again.
I think you should let me be something to you. I want you to be something to me.
“She brought up love,” he said, sounding both insulted and belligerent at the same time. “I didn’t say anything about love.”
But he’d danced around it, in his own mind, anyway.
“And…and even if that were a possibility,” he continued, “why the hell would that make her run? Am I such a shitty catch?”
Jojo shook her head. “Not so bad, though you’d be a better one if you weren’t acting all sullen little boy who lost the string to his bright new balloon.”
“Oh, come on—” But Alec’s automatically defensive protest subsided as he accepted the truth of that. Despite being fully aware that Lilly objected to relationships and anything beyond this short interlude in Santa Barbara, he’d thrown out his, I think you should let me be something to you. I want you to be something to me—and expected her to fall right in with his amended plan.
“We can keep it simple, stupid, and bring up the obvious,” Jojo continued. “Maybe you, Alec Thomas Thatcher, as unbelievably hot and eminently eligible as most women no doubt find you to be, do not actually do it for Lilly.”
He stared at his sister.
“Float her boat,” she added helpfully. “Flutter her gills, make her octopus arms dance.”
“You are seriously freaking me the fuck out.”
“I’m finding the ocean inspiring today,” she said with a guileless grin.
“Not about your ridiculous analogies. But because you think I wouldn’t know when a woman is genuinely into me. Into us.” Despite whatever words she said.
“There was that little inappropriate crush you had on the piano teacher,” Jojo said in a sing-song voice, her gaze sliding skyward.
“I was eight years old!”
“She did enjoy that Valentine’s card you made her that vowed endless love, spelled l-o-v-v-e.”
“Damn it, family lore needs an edit function, like Wikipedia. Nobody should remember that.”
“Forgetting is not an option,” Jojo said, serious now. “It’s what we have left, it’s what’s holding us back, it’s what’s keeping us together.”
He thought of his brother, he thought of last night’s movie, he thought of the last five years. “I hate it when you’re smart.”
“I’ll go back to being a smart-ass then.”
“No, Jojo. I need your thoughts, I do.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lilly had a rough childhood. I don’t want to tell things that are not mine to share, but it’s left her…cautious. No, beyond cautious, it’s made her certain she can’t have a man, children, a family life like…”
“Like we had. A marriage like Mom and Dad. I could tell from talking to her she admires it.”
“That marriage wasn’t perfect. Isn’t perfect.”
“No, but from the beginning they shared the same vision. That’s the foundation.”
He read between the lines. “You and Timothée?”
“Timothée was a rock-hard realist and I was wandering around in the clouds. We didn’t share the same plane of existence, let alone a vision.”
“I’m sorry, Jo.” Timothée had rubbed Alec wrong from the start and he should have been more mindful of his sister and the choices she was making. “I should have talked to you and—”
“We were all reeling, Alec,” she said. “Everybody coped in their own way.” A beat
