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Pull. Chemistry, attraction, allure, temptation, enticement. She felt helpless against it, a piece of flotsam caught in a riptide and dragged out to dangerous seas.
“I…”
A loud splash signaled someone entering the nearby pool and jerked Lilly from the spell Alec seemed to cast over her. Her hand yanked from his and she managed to step back. “Just text me,” she said unsteadily. “When you find out anything.”
He looked amused again, and if he felt as stirred up as she was, he certainly handled it with more savoir faire. “If I do you the favor, what do I get in return?”
Before, when they’d first met, they’d discovered they lived not far from each other and visited some of the same shops and restaurants. They’d marveled they didn’t recall each other from any of them. Unless she took measures, Lilly knew her luck on that end wouldn’t hold.
“You know it’s best we don’t see each other. It’s just…” Torture. Temptation. A path to bad outcomes. “…pointless.”
He forked his hand through his hair again, grimacing. “Because you and I aren’t going to—”
“Right.” She nodded briskly, not wanting him to spell it out. “So here’s what I’ll give you. That little market on the corner of Garnet and Carter. I won’t go there anymore. Except on Saturday mornings. I have to be able to get a croissant there on Saturday mornings.”
“What else?” His arms folded over his chest.
“Uh…the dim sum place. And that’s a sacrifice.”
He sighed. “Lilly—”
“Okay. Fine. You can also have Carol’s Coffee. I’ll find a new morning stop and we’ll never bump into each other on a caffeine run. We’ll never have to see each other again.”
With that, she spun on her heel and strode away. She was almost beyond earshot when she heard him call out, “Somehow I doubt that, sugar.”
Chapter 3
“Who was that pretty woman you were talking to earlier today?” Alec’s mother, Miranda, asked.
“How old am I?” he countered, but he was smiling down at her all the same.
She sipped her pre-dinner cocktail, a skinny margarita, her preference. Trim and youthful-looking despite time and tragedy, she gave a gentle but reproving slap to his forearm. “Thirty years old might as well be three to a mother.”
“I caught on to that when you warned me away from the edge of the pool a few minutes ago.” The guests of the Thatcher anniversary party were gathered at tables and chairs near that spectacular, lagoon-shaped feature before a dinner to be served on a private patio in an hour.
“I notice you didn’t answer the question.” She smoothed her honey-blonde hair, now layered in a fashionable style. It gleamed with good health and he supposed some high-end product from a high-end salon. Alec couldn’t be happier at this proof she was taking an interest in her appearance again.
“Even your dad noticed you looked…animated,” his mom continued. “He thought the young lady was very pretty too.”
Alec shot a glance at his father, seated a table away. Vic Thatcher had passed on his big-boned, lean build to his sons, and there was no stoop to his shoulders despite having recently celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. He kept himself in shape by golf, hiking, and participating in day-long beach clean-ups on a monthly basis. “Dad expressed an interest in Lilly? You better watch out, Mom,” he teased, knowing Miranda didn’t have a bit of concern on that score. His dad bought his mom flowers every Monday and left her love notes each time he left for a round of golf.
“So her name is Lilly…” Miranda said, casting him a curious glance. “Now that I have a name, you know I have to learn the rest.”
Alec brought his beer to his lips, and swallowed his sigh with a swig of craft brew. Now that his mother had her verve for life restored, she wasn’t going to give up. Lowering his bottle to the table, he scooped up some peanuts out of a bowl and tossed a couple in his mouth.
“Alec?”
Yeah, she wasn’t going to give up. “Lilly Durand.”
His mother beamed. “She’s French.”
