“Horny Girl moved to the single and Audra moved into your double?”
“Yep.” She nodded. “We shared space for all four years. My family wasn’t too…available, and so I spent a lot of holidays with the Montgomerys too. I owe them a lot, including the job I currently hold in the financial management department of their company.”
“So Audra, not to mention the entire Montgomery family, would consider it fraternizing with the enemy if I ask you to have lunch with me? A drink?”
She hesitated.
He questioned himself too. Why the hell was he pursuing this, beyond the obvious, that unflagging impulse to give in to his appetites and take his fill of her sexually? It only promised some awkwardness and regret when it all came to its predictable end, and she was a good, loyal friend, just as he’d said. He’d probably come to like her very much and then the foregone finale would leave him feeling shittier than the case of blue balls she’d given him from the instant they’d met.
“What’s the point of lunch or a drink?” she asked. “It would go nowhere.”
To my room, he thought, to my bed. “Well—”
“Anyway, we have nothing in common. Not to mention I don’t have a lot of time outside of work and I really don’t do relationships.”
“To the contrary then, we have amazing commonality. Because it’s like you read my mind,” he said, and paused. “I don’t want a relationship either.”
She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose you’d be satisfied with something you’d think of as ‘simple,’ like a one-night stand.”
Forget the one-night stand, what are you doing this afternoon? jumped to the tip of his tongue but Alec swallowed it back. “It’s probably the best I’ve got,” he confessed. “Well, possibly a few nights.”
For a moment he thought she was seriously considering the idea, and he held his breath, an unprecedented rush of sexual anticipation shooting straight to his cock. Then she shook her head, her shining locks of black hair catching the sunlight with the definitive refusal. “No, thanks.”
His blood cooled, fierce disappointment digging in. Christ, when had he experienced a rejection that clawed this deep?
“Don’t look so glum,” she said, faux-kindly. “There’s probably lots of women on these very premises who’d take you up on how little you have to offer.”
But not like you, he thought, and he should be scared spitless by the idea, but his logic seemed to have taken a hiatus. No one’s like you. His mouth opened to tell her so.
Then he heard “Alec!” and sensed a flurry of movement behind his back. He turned in the direction of the lobby just in time to catch an armful of blonde who launched herself straight at him. “Darling,” she said, looking down into his face. “I’ve been so looking forward to being with you again!”
Glancing over his shoulder, he caught Lilly’s smirk just before she walked away from him.
Never to be seen again, he supposed, because the woman willed it to be so.
Well, his common sense said, reasserting control, it’s probably for the best.
Lilly slipped into the bungalow, tiptoeing because she assumed Audra remained resting in her bedroom.
“Did you enjoy the yoga class?”
Lilly started, then her head whipped toward the living area couch. Audra sat there, legs drawn up, dressed in a pair of jeans beneath the damn wedding dress. She’d done something to the hem, taking some sharp object to it so now it ended unevenly at mid-thigh.
Instead of commenting on the new style, Lilly decided it would be best to ignore the change. It was an improvement, right? “It’s good to see you up,” she said breezily. “Are you hungry? We can order something from room service, or—”
“That must have been a long class,” Audra said. “Or did you take a second after it?”
At the swift kick of guilt, Lilly winced. Watching her best friend steeping in misery the day before had left her feeling frustrated, useless, and with an ache in her chest that just wouldn’t go away. So she’d rushed out to the first yoga class on the resort’s schedule this morning and had dawdled on her return.
The woman who’d rescued Lilly from her own misery freshman year and then gone on to become the truest friend ever deserved better than that.
“I wonder whatever happened to Suzanne Dobbs,” Lilly mused, naming the person who’d been her assigned roommate. Without her, she might never have met her BFF.
“She works at one of those all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean. Client relations,” Audra said.
“Of course it’s client relations,” Lilly replied, remembering how Horny Boyfriend had gotten the heave-ho for a succession of rangy young men that Suzanne had seemed to scoop up like candy bars and discard as easily as their wrappers.
“She’s doing quite well—a big promotion just a couple of months back.”
Lilly’s brows rose. “How do you know all this?”
“I follow her on social media. We text from time-to-time.”
Of course Audra would keep in touch with an old college acquaintance.
“I sent her a congratulations card on the career move.”
No surprise. Lilly had once told herself that thoughtfulness was another privilege of the rich, but the truth was, Audra was ever kind and always non-judgmental. She liked and trusted everyone…which went far to explain how she’d ended up engaged to Jacob the Jerk.
“Suzanne sent me a card too,” Audra said, her gaze falling to her lap and her fingers playing with the shredded edges of her dress. “Best wishes on the upcoming marriage and all that.”
Damn, Lilly thought, that ache in her chest expanding again. Why had she brought up Suzanne anyway? And why had she left Audra on her own this morning, when her friend was feeling stabby enough to go after her wedding gown?
“I’m sorry I was gone
