Page 5 of A Complicated Bride

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m taken off guard.” I took a breath and a pause and this is where I decided to be real as hell. “I thought maybe I could get to know you, Lily. I sensed a spark between us thought we only just met.” The smile I felt now, felt pitiful, though completely uncharted in previous memory.

Lily smiled back, a watery, pitiable curve of her lips.

“I’m so ... glad. I … I’m no longer engaged after all. Maybe—“

“Maybe you ought to tell me what’s going on.” Julie took her cousin by the arm and pulled her in the direction of the back stairs. She gave me a look over her shoulder.

The strain of the next few breaths I took could be attributed to any number of things, but I had that feeling like my toes were hanging on the very edge of a precipice and Lily was waiting on the other side. Waiting to be rescued from something.

What the hell fanciful pills had I taken to induce this nonsense, I had no idea. I’d never taken LSD, but maybe this is what it felt like. I nodded my head and stared at Lily’s eyes, her face. She looked expectant and tragic at the same time.

Julie moved them away from me, but Lily stopped her and turned. Then to my astonishment, she reached out a hand and touched my arm. What astonished me most was the car crash sensation that ensued in my hammering chest and clenched muscles and fine buzzing through my system. The buzz led straight to my cock which grew with predictable determination. But I didn’t squirm and I wasn’t struck dumb. I was too polished for that.

“I’ll see you at dinner,” I said. My voice shamefully painfully smooth and confident.

“Yes.”

Julie tugged on her arm and moved her from my orbit. Or moved her orbit from me. Either way, was this a jaded jet-setting photographer of the stars being star-struck by a country girl? She was pretty enough, but so what? She wasn’t sweet, though she was vulnerable and brave enough to want to hide it. But not fake enough to hide a damn thing.

She was genuine, a woman without wiles, a knowing woman who didn’t hide her knowing. And that was all it took to skewer me with an cupid’s arrow?

I had no idea what to do with myself, standing there looking after the ghost of Lily at the top of the stairs, trying to discern wisps of her prior presence, smelling the perfumed air that surrounded me to keep her reality alive.

What had I thought I would do in this town where everyone had a day job—even my shamefully wealthy friend Jack?

There was only one place I knew of where I could go.