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Lilly snickered, then quickly smothered the sound. “Sorry.”
“If you can’t laugh…” Jojo said with a small smile.
“I admire you,” Lilly said then, smiling at the other woman. Like all the Thatchers, she had a personal charm that was hard to resist. “Your attitude’s great.”
“God, no. Ever since I signed the papers, I wish I could stop listening to my conscience and take up smoking. My attitude goes with a pack-a-day habit.”
“Cynical?” Lilly said. “World-weary?”
“Exactly.” Then she took a long, assessing look at Lilly. “But let’s talk about you.”
“I don’t smoke. I never had a husband. I’ve been witness to a bad marriage and I never once found anything funny in it.” She paused. “Though maybe I should.”
“What’s going on between you and my brother?”
If she didn’t have to look at the other woman, she could get through this one without giving a thing away, she told herself. One foot in front of the other, she restarted their walk up the beach, her focus on the sand dunes in the distance. “We met because he was the best man and I was the maid of honor at a wedding. The wedding didn’t happen.”
“I heard about that.”
“My friend Audra, the bride, and I are staying at the resort to give her a chance to recover.”
“Oh, boy,” Jojo said. “Did she fall for that Heartbreak Hotel myth or something?”
Without admitting to anything—especially not that it had been her idea—Lilly just shrugged. “I don’t think she’s found any miracle cure yet.”
“Certainly not,” Jojo scoffed, then grimaced, sending Lilly a guilty look. “Please don’t let my dark outlook influence you. And I should say for the record, my brother is a really great guy.”
Uncomfortable, Lilly waved a hand, trying to communicate the recommendation was wholly unnecessary. “I—”
“Do you have any siblings?”
“No.” She thought of Frank, a petty bully at his best. “I was raised with a cousin, but…no.”
“Alec attended every one of Barbie’s funerals I ever organized, after Simon declared them lost causes post-surgery.”
It made Lilly smile again.
“Well, except for that time Simon pronounced Ken hadn’t survived an appendectomy. Alec said he refused to even pretend-mourn for a guy who came into the world without a dick.”
Lilly started to laugh.
“Simon said that’s why he hadn’t attempted any heroic measures to save the doll. Dick-less, he informed us, meant an automatic do not resuscitate.”
It took long moments for Lilly’s laughter to die back. “He sounds wonderful,” she finally managed to say. “They both do—Alec is. I like him.”
“That didn’t hurt so bad, did it?” Jojo said mildly. “I got the impression that Alec likes you too. Very much.”
“Oh, probably not that,” Lilly protested. They’d reached the dunes and when Buster attacked the nearest one, they trudged up in the wake of his leaps and bounds. “We’re just, um, acquaintances. Not even friends really.”
How many times had she trotted that out?
“After we leave the resort,” she continued, resolute to keep to her story. “We’ll never even see…” They’d reached the top of the dune and Lilly’s voiced trailed off as they came to a halt, both of them staring at the tableau below.
“It’s a bridal shoot,” Jojo said, explaining the obvious.
A couple of photographers were set up on the sand, with assistants ready with light reflectors and something else that was more like an umbrella. At the heart of their attention was a bride and groom. He wore a dark suit, tie gone, white shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His feet were bare and his pants were rolled to mid-calf.
She had on dreamy layers of gauzy white that caught the ocean breeze which also kicked up the gown’s hem to reveal anklets of freshwater pearls and tiny starfish. Matching circlets were on her wrists and another had been weaved into her sun-kissed hair that rippled past her shoulders.
“Maybe it’s for a fashion spread,” Lilly said, a lump gathering in her throat.
