Page 100 of Liberating Lily

Well, if that was the case, they should have mentioned it on the video, shouldn’t they?

Every time she’d checked it had seemed frozen in the middle, so she’d turned the oven up on high and taken the lid off the roasting pan.

Before putting it into the oven again, she’d mixed up the gravy, just like the video had told her to, and poured it over top.

That might have been a mistake too.

And now she was standing here sobbing because Harvey was home and the kitchen was a disaster. She was a complete mess, and dinner was totally ruined.

So much for her plan to seduce him.

Yes, that’s what she’d been planning to do. She wasn’t sure exactly what that would look like or how much she’d be able to do, but she wanted to show him that she wanted him.

And that she wasn’t made of glass.

So, she’d found this gorgeous dress in the closet with the other things that he’d bought for her and put it on. She’d even managed to put her hair up.

She didn’t have any makeup beyond what had been in her handbag, so all she had on was a bit of mascara and some lip gloss. But that was still better than nothing, right?

And then she’d set about trying to make a romantic dinner for them.

She’d actually managed to find a candle, which she’d planned on lighting, and had come up with the idea of cooking a pot roast. Men liked pot roast, right?

Well, they probably did when they weren’t frozen in the middle and burnt on the outside.

“Are you hurt? Lily, hey, hey, talk to me. Where are you hurt?” Harvey strode over to her, taking gentle hold of her arms.

“In my heart,” she cried.

“What?” He reeled back, gazing down at her. “What do you mean your heart hurts?”

“Because I ruin everything. It’s just me. I’m a ruiner. I ruin things.”

“Lily St. Clary, you will not talk like that,” he said sternly.

There he was. There was the Harvey who wasn’t scared to tell her off, to scold her when he thought she was doing something wrong. That was the Harvey she wanted back, the one who didn’t treat her like she was going to break at any moment.

“Shit, fuck, sorry. Sorry. It’s been a crazy day, and I shouldn’t have just done that. I just hate hearing you talk about yourself like that. I hate that you think it, and I hate that you say it. Are you hurt? Lily, did you burn yourself?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m not physically hurt. I’m just disappointed in myself. I was trying to cook you a nice dinner because, well, you’re always doing nice things for me, and I wanted to show you that I could do something for you, that I’m not useless.”

She clenched her hands into fists and slammed them down on the countertop.

“You are not useless. You need to stop talking about yourself like this.”

It was hard to stop though. It wasn’t just her own thoughts.

There were the things her mother had said to her over the years about how she wouldn’t amount to anything unless she got herself a rich husband. How that was the only way she’d get anywhere in life. That it was the only thing she was good at, being some man’s trophy. It was hard to imagine a different sort of life when the person who was meant to be your cheerleader was the one who was holding you down and telling you that you were useless.

“I just wanted you to see me as someone who isn’t delicate and fragile, who you have to take care of.”

He tilted his head to the side. “But I enjoy taking care of you.”

“You do?” she asked.

“Yeah, I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but I feel like a part of me was always missing, not quite right, like an itch that I couldn’t scratch. But looking after you, it’s scratched my itch . . . and that sounded really terrible.”

She couldn’t help but giggle. “I’m glad I can scratch your itch.”