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“Huh,” she says, brow knotting. She sucks in a breath. “I ran into him too. At Cantina.”
“The taco place?”
“The one and only.” She meets my gaze, eyes narrowing. “He told me he saw you at the yacht club. Said you were on a date.”
“It wasn’t a date,” I answer automatically.
Lily turns her back to me. “None of my business.”
“It wasn’t a date,” I repeat.
“Even if it was, it still wouldn’t be any of my business.” She slides her gloves back on and starts scouring a pot again. “I told you I wanted things to be casual, and they are.”
I watch the way her shoulders bunch as she moves to scrub the pot soaking in sudsy water. She pauses when I slide my hands over her hips and bring my lips near her ear. “It wasn’t a date. It was a business lunch. I haven’t wanted to date anyone since the moment you walked into my grandmother’s bookstore.”
A shuddering breath passes through her, and I slide my arms all the way around. My hand slips under her shirt and I feel the warm skin of her stomach against my palm, and a deep feeling of rightness trills through me. I lean my chest against her back, then hook my chin over her shoulder.
This is where I want to be. This, right here, is why I rang her buzzer. Because I’ll never be able to feel calm unless my arms are wrapped around her.
I sweep my hand up from her stomach to her waist with slow, careful movements, as if she’s an animal that might spook.
Lily’s breaths turn shallow when my hands span around her ribs, so I ask, “Is this okay?”
She nods, her rubber-glove-covered hands leaning against the edge of the sink. Her body feels edgy until I sweep my thumb over her skin in a slow, steady circle. The urge to squeeze my arms around her and protect her from everything that hurts is so strong, I nearly crush her to my chest and keep her there.
“Rudy,” she starts, her voice so soft I hardly hear it. “You and I… It’s not a good idea.”
“I don’t care about the cancer,” I say, and I’m surprised to realize it’s true. I’m usually the first one to put distance between a woman and me. I have a bad habit of dating women who are emotionally unavailable—like, for example, Lily’s sister Candice—and backing away at the first sign of resistance.
An ex-fling once told me I was so afraid of commitment that I’d probably die alone in my house and no one would find the body for days. She was angry, obviously, but her words stung because they rang of truth. I keep everyone at arm’s length. I’ve done it since my last relationship fell apart and I lost the family I’d worked so hard to build.
So why do I feel like I need to be close to Lily? Why this urge to protect her from everything wrong in the world?
Closing my eyes against the onslaught of unfamiliar feelings, I widen my stance so my feet are on either side of Lily’s. I inhale the smell of her shampoo, a floral scent with a familiar thread that can only be described as Lily. Settled by the scent of her, I open my eyes again.
“I have a proposition,” I say, my lips moving against her ear.
She shivers as my breath skates over her skin. “Oh?”
“How about for the next twelve hours, we forget about the outside world? No past, no future. No talk of exes or cancer or anything else. We just stay with each other”—I inhale softly, my thumb still sweeping over her skin—“and see what happens.”
Lily’s lips tug ever so slightly, her body relaxing against mine. I nearly groan when she leans into me, the length of her pressed against me from shoulder to hip. She’s wearing faded jeans and an old tee, and she’s never looked better.
“Twelve hours,” she repeats, her head tilting slightly to rest against my shoulder, her lips half an inch from mine. “I might be convinced to forget about everything for twelve hours.”
I glance to the side, where the microwave proclaims the time to be just past four o’clock. “At 4:17 a.m. tomorrow morning, we rejoin the rest of the world.” My left hand slides down from her rib to her hip, coming to rest in the hollow between her pelvis and her thigh. I can feel the heat of her there, and all other thoughts leave my head.
CHAPTER 18
Lily
Rudy’s fingers are weaving some kind of spell on me. He has one arm across my stomach, with his hand tracing slow circles over the hollow of my waist. His other hand is flat against my jeans, fingertips inching closer to a very dangerous area.
He wants twelve hours, but I’d give him everything. He’s dangerous. He makes me forget all the bad things that have happened.
He makes me hope.
The hand on my waist starts a slow, torturous exploration of my skin, fingertips sliding up my ribs to tease the side of my breast.
