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“I met Jacob first, you know.”
His eyebrows rose. “Jacob Belcher? The runaway groom?”
“Yes.”
He poured himself a whiskey and a glass of chardonnay for Lilly. “Where?”
“His firm was doing some work for the Montgomerys’ company.”
That made sense. Jacob was an environmental lawyer; the company was involved in renewable energy.
Lilly took the glass he offered with a murmured thanks. “There’s a café on our ground floor and I was having lunch there. He asked to share my table.”
Of course he asked to share her table. Lilly would have caught the other man’s eye in an instant.
“I found him very charming,” Lilly admitted, still staring out at the pool. “I thought…”
“You thought he was hitting on you.”
She glanced over, scowling.
Fucking shoot him, but Alec found the disgruntled expression on her face adorable.
“I thought he was going to ask me out. There’s a difference.”
Not to Jacob, Alec supposed, but kept his mouth shut.
“But then Audra joined us—we often ate lunch together—and the minute I introduced them, it was as if I didn’t exist anymore.” She sighed. “I see now that wasn’t a good sign of his long-term reliability. But at the time…”
Curious, he had to prompt. “At the time…what?”
She ducked her head. Muttered. “I thought it was love at first sight.”
Alec hooted. “No. No way. Tell me you don’t believe that’s real.” When she went very still, he began to feel very bad. Shit. Could it be that Lilly Durand wanted to believe in love at first sight? “Think about it, sugar. If something like that’s so out of our control, you could…you could be in line at Carol’s Coffee one morning, say, and find yourself head over heels for some dude you’ve never met ordering his daily Americano.”
Like you, a voice inside him said. She could have found herself head over heels for you.
Lilly shrugged one slender shoulder. “If anyone could find a romance like that, it would be Audra.”
“But not you?” he asked, frowning.
“I don’t want to fall in love.” She turned to face him, her manner now brisk. “But Audra did, and lousy Jacob Belcher is still doing a number on her emotionally. Have you heard from him at all?”
Alec threw back his whiskey, then set the glass on the nearby side table. “Yeah. Turns out he didn’t go to Tahiti after all. He’s spent the last few days surfing up and down the coast.”
Lilly’s expression brightened. “Didn’t I hear of nearby shark warnings?”
He had to laugh. “Remind me not to get on your bad side. But, sugar, warnings or not, the sharks are always out there. Every surfer knows that.”
Lilly sipped from her wine. “I don’t know what to tell Audra.”
“The truth. She dodged a bullet and he isn’t going to come back around for a second chance.”
“We don’t want to get her hopes up,” she said, nodding slowly.
“There’s no reason to hope,” Alec agreed.
“Yes,” Lilly said. “You’re right. Men will be men, and all that. Your nature is to eschew commitment and keep on the hunt…like Jacob, seeking out the perfect wave or whatever the heck he’s doing. The thing is, Audra is a perfect wave and he’s stupidly paddling past…” She sighed. “There comes a time to drop the metaphor.”
He grinned, finding her adorable again. “You were doing so well. Can we try once more, this time working in a great white?”
With a roll of her eyes, she handed him her half-empty glass. “The point is, men of a certain age range prefer a succession of casual hook ups, while avoiding long-term pairings.”
Not all men, he thought, setting the wine aside. Maybe not even most men. “Well—”
“Casual hookups. Successive,” she repeated firmly. “Not long-term pairings.”
“Lilly—”
“Present company included, as previously acknowledged by present company himself.”
Her cynical viewpoint on men was suddenly bugging the hell out of him. It wasn’t as if he could say that he thought 180-degrees different about what, at the basest of primal levels, drove his age-and-gender cohort. And sure, he’d done his share of serial dating and fucking. But hell, people found happiness together, they got married, made families.
