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“I am,” Lilly said. “Now what do you want?”
“We haven’t seen you in a while. Dad’s truck—”
“I heard about that.”
“My tooth—”
“I heard about that too.”
Frank cleared his throat. “We just need a little more to get us by, honey.”
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her jaw clenched.
Her cousin huffed out a sigh. “It’s a simple request.”
“Yeah. Simple.”
“I could make it simpler for you,” Frank said, sounding eager. “I hear you’re at that fancy place, The Hathaway?”
Oh, no. “Frank—”
“We really need the cash, Lilly. I could drive up there, you could take me to lunch and—”
“No.” He didn’t have the gas money, she consoled herself. Nor the initiative to make the two-hour journey in Southern California traffic. “I’ll be back in a few days,” she said. “You’ll get what you want then.”
Ending the call without allowing him another word, she placed her phone carefully back on the table. If they were normal people, there were other ways to get them the money, like direct deposit via computer to an account at a financial institution. But a few months back they’d informed her they were operating on a cash basis only. She’d decided she didn’t want to know how they managed like that.
She glanced at her phone again, seized by a sudden impulse to disinfect it somehow, wipe it clean, clear the circuitry or whatever there was inside it of any voice print or vibration left behind by her relatives.
But that wouldn’t sanitize her childhood.
Or dispel the misgivings now skittering from the corners of her mind like the cockroaches at the old apartment. However unlikely, she couldn’t chance Frank making good on his “offer,” could she? She was going to have to go back.
Today.
Chapter 11
After Lilly left his room that morning, Alec had stifled his first impulse to follow her. With her emotions running high and his mind struggling to catch up with all that was streaming through hers, he’d decided to slow down. Think things through. Not go off half-cocked.
Which didn’t explain why he’d hunted up his sister that afternoon, the most impetuous of the Thatcher clan.
This thought he expressed to her now, his hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl on his face. He could feel it.
She laughed at him, her eyes bright, her face glowing with good health.
“Don’t you have a hangover?” he asked, remembering her drunken state the night before.
“Timothée taught me how to avoid those,” she said. “The only valuable thing I got out of four-plus years of marriage.”
“What’s your secret?” he asked, curious.
“I charge for that,” she said. “Advice about your romantic life I’ll dish out for free.”
He’d mentioned Lilly’s name when Jojo had met him at her hotel room door. Now they’d settled on the attached balcony overlooking the lush green of the grounds. He leaned against the sturdy metal while Jojo lounged in a comfortable chaise, her legs stretched in front of her, ankles crossed.
Folding her hands one over the other, she rested them in her lap, her face lifted to his. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Alec opened his mouth, closed it. Where the hell should he begin? “I only said I wanted to see her again, once we get back to LA.”
“And?”
“She took off. It’s as if I demanded she give up a kidney.” It was nothing like that. And he’d implied a hell of a lot more than wanting to just “see” her again.
I think you should let me be something to you. I want you to be something to me.
“She brought up love,” he said, sounding both insulted and belligerent at the same time. “I didn’t say anything about love.”
But he’d danced around it, in his own mind, anyway.
“And…and even if that were a possibility,” he continued, “why the hell would that make her run? Am I such a shitty catch?”
Jojo shook her head. “Not so bad, though you’d be a better one if you weren’t acting all sullen little boy who lost the string to his bright new balloon.”
