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All the while, Liam was watching me with a delighted look on his face. When I caught his eye, he nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking like a bashful schoolboy with that dimple. "Are you happy?" he asked eagerly.
"Yes!" I shouted. The warmth, the colors, the flowers - the whiskey - were all a swirl of excitement in my head. I laughed out loud.
And then threw myself into his arms and kissed him.
"Oof," he grunted. I could hear the smile in his voice and feel his lip curling in amusement under mine.
But when I pressed up against him, his amused peck became harder, rough and insistent. He pulled me closer, backing up so that we moved into a more private alcove. His tongue found mine, flooding my mouth with the taste of him.
Whiskey...and sex.
There was nothing polite, or gentlemanly about this. He cupped his hands to my ass and pressed me close, making me feel it. Making me feel him. The whole length of him. I moaned in spite of the people milling about us. Appearances be damned, I only wanted one thing.
More.
"Shay." The way he rasped my name set every nerve ending alight. "Let's go."
I rocked against him in answer. No second guessing the meaning this time. No, this was the moment we had both been waiting for. I needed him, needed all of him. Everything he had, I meant for him to give it to me. I was greedier than I have ever been...but I had never wanted something so much.
I slid my hand into his pocket, on a quest for for the object of my desire.
Something buzzed against my hand and we both froze.
I pulled out his ringing cell phone. His face crashed down into a thunderous frown. "Ignore it," he commanded.
But I had already looked.
I swallowed and stared at him. "Who's Lily?"
His eyes widened in alarm. Without a word, he snatched the phone from my hand and stalked into the crowd. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I could see it on his face. Anger, concern...and guilt.
No. No no no no no!
I watched him hang up, and then poke his head up from the crowd, scanning the edges of the greenhouse. Then he gestured, pointing to me.
Darius appeared next to me. "I'll take you home, Shay," he rumbled, taking my arm.
I shoved him back. "Don't touch me." My heart couldn't accept it, my brain refused to believe it. "What the hell just happened, Darius? Who is Lily?" I demanded. I whirled around, shouting for him, "Liam!"
But Liam was already gone.
Chapter Thirteen
"That sounds shady as fudge," Kiki declared in her preschool teacher version of potty mouth. "He just cut out like that? Right after kissing you?"
"Right after. Like...seconds after," I muttered darkly. "He was kissing me, I was kissing him, and things were getting pretty intense...."
"Is he a good kisser?" Jasmine interjected, with a clinical air. She looked like she wanted to take notes.
"The kiss was..." I waved my hands, at a loss for words. "Amazing, incredible. I was fucking married for a year and never got kissed like that, not once. But that's not really the point."
"The point is the phone call," Kiki said patiently, like Jasmine needed that cleared up.
Jasmine looked thoughtful. "Okay, well let's review the facts as I understand them." She began to count on her fingers, her researcher's mind in overdrive. "One, you met him when he was buying a bouquet for a woman." She raised her eyebrows meaningfully. "A very special, thoughtful bouquet." She let that hang in the air for a moment before continuing, "Two, he takes you on these impressive and thoughtful dates, but leaves you hanging afterward." I felt like I was attending one of her lectures. "Three, he'll drop you like a hot rock when a woman named Lily calls him." She rested her hands in her lap. "That's what we know, right?"
I knew what Jazzy was trying to do. Concentrate on the facts to slow my descent into wild speculation. It would have worked too...if I wasn't already so far gone. But after last night's debacle, I was too miserable for sense. I was in the mood to let my friends pick at my wounds, to count them and cluck over them while I drowned in self-loathing.
"And her name is Lily!" I moaned piteously, ignoring Jazzy's attempt to derail my pity-train. "In flower language, it means beauty. I bet she's some skinny blonde white chick with no ass, you know?" I grabbed my thick thigh and grimaced. "And, and, what's even worse, his mother's name is Dahlia!" I laughed hysterically. "I should have known from the start. You know what those me? Instability!" Kiki rubbed my shoulders sympathetically as I slumped forward. "Aside from everything else, those should have been the biggest warning signs?"
"Red flag city," Kiki nodded. She began to work on my neck.
I leaned forward and cradled my knees to my chest, and closing my eyes. "I feel like I'm swimming in a sea of red flags," I sighed, leaning into her digging fingers. "But I was somehow hoping that if I kept swimming the water would clear." Kiki's thumb found a tight spot and I gripped my legs tighter. "I'm making the same mistakes all over again, aren't I?" I moaned into the room. "It's right there in my face. I'm his other woman and I swore I would never do that." I turned and punched the sofa. "Dammit. Poor Lily."
Kiki patted my shoulder sympathetically and Jasmine slid the salsa bowl in my direction. Neither of them said what I should do next. I already knew.
But what was so strange was how much I was rebelling against doing it. He had proven my worst fears correct. Why did I still want to believe him when he said there was only me?
What was wrong with me?
Chapter Fourteen
My phone buzzed.
Then it buzzed again.
When it angrily vibrated its way right to the corner of the desk, I swore and shoved it into my purse.
When it kept buzzing, I swore again and kicked the whole thing across the office.
Now the buzzing was faint enough to ignore. I sat back down to my invoices and turned up the music on my iPod.
Let him stew. Let him be left hanging, with no explanation, for hours on end. Let him feel shitty about himself for a while.
Kit poked his red head in from the front of the store. "You okay back here, lover? I heard banging."
I gritted my teeth. "Yes, I'm fine." It was a lie that I needed to believe.
Kit stood there for a beat, waiting to see if I'd elaborate. When I didn't, he sighed. "It's deader than Shia LeBouef's career up here. I'm locking up and heading out. You ready?"
I frowned at the stack of unpaid invoices. After the optimistic rush of Valentine's orders, and the subsequent spending on inventory and payroll, we fell right back into the red. The longtime clients, used to Mrs. Young's lackadaisical bookkeeping, were up to their usual tricks. I needed to come up with new funds - and quickly - just so she could pay me. "Nah, I'll close up," I told him. "You go home."
"Okay, lover, don't forget to turn down the heat. Love ya." He sounded tired and dispirited. I understood.
I gathered the stack of invoices and the wheezing laptop and pushed through to the front. The sun was setting below the snow clouds, sending out a weird golden haze over the glass-fronted stores of 8th Street. The yellow cast it gave the snowbanks made the streets of South Philadelphia look like the dunes of the Sahara. It was weird and otherworldly and maybe that was why I jumped so badly when the door banged open.
"What the
fuck?!" I shouted as the icy blast sent my carefully cataloged invoices fluttering to the floor.
"Oh shit, sorry," Liam rushed to pick them up before they landed in the puddles of melted snow he left on the floor.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I demanded, snatching them away.
"Well when you didn't answer my texts," he bristled, "I decided I had better go see if you were okay."
"How about Lily, is she okay?' I shot back.
He stiffened. "Shay...."
"Don't 'Shay' me. I don't give a shit what kind of sneaky, underhanded stuff you do with your own life, but don't involve me in it. I'm not interested in being your other woman."
