Stiff Suit: A Ponderosa Resort Romantic Comedy Page 7

  I turn and head toward my bedroom, tugging off my tie as I go. I’m struck by the memory of Lily at the wine bar today. That flash of mischief in her gray eyes, the glint of something else behind that.

  And the utter shock when I called her bluff and kissed her right there at the table.

  What the hell got into me? It’s not like me to kiss a woman in public—not on my front lawn, and certainly not in a crowded wine bar.

  It's also not like me to proposition a woman with no-strings sex. I’m not saying the no-strings sex has never happened—just never with such an open discussion about the arrangement.

  I know I’m pretending it’s just sex, and maybe that’s easier. But the fact that I can’t stop thinking about her doesn’t have much to do with sex at all. I loved talking with her, dammit. Normal, human conversation about something other than business or legal cases or whether my father could be locked away on federal fraud charges for obtaining a passport under a fake identity.

  I should not call Lily right now. That goes against everything we talked about as far as keeping things simple and unemotional and noncommittal.

  But somehow, I find myself slipping out my phone and dialing the number as I close my bedroom door behind me.

  She answers on the second ring, sounding breathless and downright cheerful. “Hello, James. Calling to cancel tomorrow’s meeting?”

  “What?” I drop into my leather armchair and fumble to find my place in a conversation that hasn’t even started. “No. Why would you think that?”

  “Thought you might have cold feet.” There’s a pause and some muffled mouth sounds. Is she drinking something, or have I interrupted a date?

  “My feet are perfectly fine.” There are other parts of my body in question, but that’s not why I’m calling. If I wanted phone sex, I’d call a 900 number. “I just wanted to—”

  I stop, realizing I have no clue how to end that sentence.

  What, genius? What did you want to do?

  Lily’s patient on the other end of the line, and there’s that muffled sound again. “What are you eating?” I blurt.

  She laughs, a musical sound that sends a ripple of warm fizz through my core. “Why, you want some?”

  Her words aren’t meant to be suggestive, but they hit me there anyway. “No, I was just—curious.”

  I expect her to flip me shit. To tell me that’s a ridiculous reason for calling someone, which it is. I can’t believe I’ve gone from being the king of polished courtroom monologues to tripping over my own stupid tongue.

  Lily’s voice is a sweet, soothing balm to the self-flagellating one in my own head. “Coconut water,” she says. “I just finished a workout and I like this better than Gatorade.”

  “Oh. You were working out.”

  “You thought there was some other reason I answered the phone breathing heavily?”

  My libido lunges, but I shove it back into its cage like an ill-behaved dog.

  Incidentally, that gives me a much better entrée to conversation. “What kind of dog is Magma?”

  Lily is too polite to point out this is a ridiculous segue. “I’m not totally sure,” she says. “The Humane Society’s best guess was Newfoundland and Saint Bernard. Maybe a little Holstein cow. She was just a puppy when I got her, so it’s been fun watching her grow.”

  I shift the phone to my other ear and kick off my shoes. Something about talking to Lily puts me in the zone to get comfortable. Or take off articles of clothing. “I’ve never had a dog.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope. But I’ve enjoyed getting to know Virginia Woof—Bree and Austin’s dog?”

  “I love Virginia,” she says. “We had a play date at the dog park last week and Magma only tried to hump her once.”

  “Why is it we always seem to circle back to sex?”

  I don’t mean it as a complaint, but Lily’s quiet for a long time. Long enough I think she may have taken offense. “You know it’s got nothing to do with sex when dogs mount each other, right?” she says. “It’s a dominance thing. Even females like Magma do it when they’re trying to exert authority or control over another dog.”

  “I didn’t know that.” And I feel like kind of an asshole for the implication. She’s right, I’m the one shoving things through a pervert filter. The heavy breathing, the fleeting thoughts about phone sex—that’s all on me. “Did you have dogs growing up?”

  “Yeah.” She laughs again, and I swear I could listen to this all night. Just a constant reel of Lily’s laughter. “We had this big Doberman named Tally, but I called her Tattletale because she was always getting me into trouble.”

  “How do you mean?” I cross one leg over the other so my thigh rests on my knee and I try not to think about what it would be like to have Lily here now. Would we sit close enough for our shoulders to touch, or is that not where we’re at yet?

  “I lived with my mom and my grandma growing up,” Lily says. “When I was five or six, I thought I could get away with scraping my green beans into the trash instead of eating them. But Tally, she’d drag them back out—probably because my mom made them with bacon—and my mom would sit me down and talk about starving kids in Ethiopia and how I needed vitamins to make me strong and smart.”

  I find myself smiling along with her, latching onto the memory like it’s my own. While Lily was sneaking veggies into the garbage and digesting her mother’s gentle correction and homecooked meal, I was listening to my father explain how the thing I’d seen him doing with the nanny wasn’t something my mom needed to know. Good times.

  “Are you and your mom still close?” I ask.

  There’s a long pause, and I instantly regret my question. “She died when I was seventeen,” she says. “Leukemia.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you.” I hear her breathing through the phone, and I wonder if she’s crying. When she speaks again, her voice is clear and steady. “It dragged out for a long time. I was a bone marrow match, so twice I got to be a donor.”

  “The scars,” I say softly. “On your back. That’s what that’s from?”

  “Yes.” She sounds surprised. “Usually, bone marrow donations are done through a non-surgical technique called PBSC—Peripheral Blood Stem Cell donation. But the second time was more complicated. They had to do surgery, so I ended up with scars.”

  And without her mother. Jesus, how horrible. “I’m so sorry. That must have been awful.”

  “It was,” she agrees. “There’s probably never a good age to lose a parent, though. You must have been—what, early thirties when your dad died?”

  My breath catches in my throat, and I nod even though she can’t see me. “Yeah.”

  “Were you close?” she asks. “Bree told me once that you lived with him the longest. That he stayed with your mother until you were seven or eight.”

  There’s a lump in my throat now, and I’m not sure if it’s guilt or regret that put it there. “He, uh—had a lot of wives,” I say. “My mom, Sean’s mom, Bree’s—” I stop there because it’s not like she needs a recitation of my father’s marital history. “My mother had the most sticking power, I guess.”

  “You don’t say that like it’s a good thing.”

  “I’m not sure it was,” I admit. “For her or for him.”

  I don’t know why I’m telling her this. I don’t know why I keep going, shifting the phone from one ear to the other and settling deeper into the chair. “There was a lot of overlap in my dad’s relationships,” I say. “Mark and Bree are only a few months apart because our dad managed to impregnate two women on opposite coasts during the same window of time.”

  “Wow,” she says. “I grew up without a dad at all. I guess I didn’t miss much.”

  “Your dad wasn’t in the picture?”

  “Never even met him,” she says. “It was just my mom and my grandma and me. Then just me and my grandma.”

  “She’s still around?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Lily laughs. �
�She’s a total firecracker. Owns an antique shop in town.”

  “Which one?”

  “Laminaxes Antique,” she says. “Corner of Bond and Brewer?”

  “I’ve seen that. Laminaxes,” I repeat. “That sounds French. Is that a family name?”

  She laughs. “Hardly. It’s a semordnilap—like a palindrome that spells a different word forward and backward?”

  I puzzle it out in my brain, piecing the letters together. “Sex Animal? That’s what Laminaxes means?”

  Lily laughs again. “Yep. Originally she wanted to open a sex shop—adult toys, pleasure aids, videos, that sort of thing.”

  “Your grandmother?” I’m picturing my own grandma in pearls and black cashmere with a perpetually stern expression.

  “My grandma,” Lily confirms. “City Council wouldn’t approve the sex shop, so she opened an antique shop and named it—”

  “—Sex Animal,” I finish, understanding a lot more about Lily than I did before. “Very clever.”

  “She thinks so.” Lily’s voice is tinged with fondness, and I can’t help thinking I’d really like her grandmother.

  “I wasn’t close with any grandparents,” I admit. “My mom’s parents passed away before I was born. And my father’s mother was—well, not the warmest person on the planet.”

  Come to think of it, there’s not much warmth in the whole Bracelyn family tree. Just endless rows of icicle-covered branches.

  “Your dad seemed to have some warmth at least,” Lily says. “I only met him the one time, but he was—friendly.”

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” I point out. “He was always friendly with beautiful women.”

  There’s an unexpected echo of nostalgia in my voice, and I hate myself for it. Lily’s quiet for a bit, and I wonder if she noticed. I also wonder what’s got me opening up like this. Normally, it’s like pulling teeth to get me to share anything. Just ask Bree or Dr. Hooter.

  But when Lily speaks, it’s like an invitation to bare my soul.

  “You miss him?” she asks softly. “Your dad, I mean.”

  “Sometimes,” I admit. “It feels weird to talk about him.” I clear my throat, conscious of the fact that the bastard is just down the hall. “You asked if we were close, and I don’t think I answered you, but the truth is that I’m not sure my father knows—knew what it meant to be close to anyone.”

  “You mean outside the basic biology of procreation and legally-binding vows.”

  “Right.”

  Thank God. She didn’t catch my slip. But then—

  “I do that, too, sometimes,” Lily murmurs. “Talk about my mother in present tense, like she’s still here, even though she’s been gone almost a decade.”

  “It’s a hard habit to break.”

  Fuck. I never slip. Never, not once with any of the secrets I’m tasked with hiding. I rake my fingers through my hair, desperate for a subject change. “What else did your tattletale Doberman bust you for?”

  “Sneaking out.” Her laugh floods through me like a hose-blast of relief. “When I was thirteen, fourteen, I used to sneak out to TP. Or forking—that was another big one.”

  Say what? “What are TPing and forking?”

  “Seriously?” She’s totally incredulous, but there’s kindness in her voice. “Forking I could maybe understand, you being a city kid and all, but surely you’ve toilet-papered someone?”

  “Toilet paper—oh, TPing?”

  “You have to have done it at least once, right?”

  “As God is my witness, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You swear you aren’t messing with me?”

  “Are you going to enlighten me, or mock?”

  “Sorry.” She laughs. “I wasn’t trying to mock. Let’s see, toilet papering is where you string toilet paper all over the trees and yard and house of your victim. Usually it’s a friend—someone you know whose parents will make them clean it up, but sometimes it’s a frenemy or even a teacher.”

  I’ve never heard of a frenemy, either, but I’d prefer not to add to the list of words Lily’s forced to define for me. “There wasn’t much opportunity to TP anyone at boarding school,” I admit. “We all lived on campus, but I did short sheet a guy’s bed once.”

  “There you go,” she says. “You have some notches on your belt for juvenile pranks.”

  “Glad to know my resume isn’t lacking.” I uncross my legs and glance at my watch. I know I should get to bed soon, but I don’t want to stop talking to her. “What’s forking?”

  “Forking is best done in a big group so you have lots of hands to help,” she says. “You sneak out in the cover of dark with one of those jumbo picnic boxes of plastic forks, and you plant them tines-up in the ground.”

  I struggle again to wrap my brain around the concept. “You’re hoping someone steps on them?”

  “What? God, no.” She laughs. “It’s just a pain in the butt to pull them. Sort of like TPing—you’re aiming to inconvenience someone, not maim them.”

  “I think I’m getting it.” I picture a pre-teen Lily scampering through the darkness, red hair blazing in moonlight as she giggles with her friends. “What else?”

  “Other pranks, you mean?” There’s a soft woof of delight, and I picture her settling back on her couch with Magma’s head in her lap. “Let’s see, there’s Saran wrapping someone’s car.”

  “Let me guess—you cover someone’s vehicle in cling wrap so they can’t open the doors?”

  “Exactly.” She sounds way prouder of me than she ought to. “Another relatively harmless prank meant to be a pain in someone’s ass.”

  “What about cow tipping?” I ask. “I read about that once.”

  “Not my scene,” she says. “I knew kids who did it, but it always seemed mean. Those poor, confused cows.”

  For some reason, this makes me like her more. Forget the sex appeal and smart mouth and beautiful face. Kindness to animals, the fact that she’s so clear about her lines in the sand—this is what’s great about Lily Archer.

  That, and the fact that she rescued me. I still feel like an asshole for that. “Look, I want to apologize again for what happened a few weeks ago.”

  She goes quiet again. “You’re not still hung up on the wedding thing, are you?”

  “Yes,” I admit. “I didn’t think about this being a small town, how people would see us leave the wedding together or see my car parked in front of your house all night—I hadn’t considered that people would talk. That it might be embarrassing to you.”

  I hold my breath, waiting for a response.

  “Are you high?” she demands.

  “What? Of course not.”

  “I didn’t mean that literally,” she says. “I just—okay, I’ll give you credit for not knowing me that well. But in case you haven’t heard, I give not one single fuck what people think about me.”

  “That’s—admirable.” It is, though I can’t wrap my brain around it.

  “I’ve got a bit of a man-eater rep, in case you’re not aware.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Her honesty is refreshing. Girls I went to school with fretted constantly about their reputations, which seems pretty antiquated now that I think about it.

  “I like sex.” She says it so abruptly I almost drop the phone. “Love sex, purely for the sake of pleasure and nothing more. Isn’t that how guys act all the time?”

  “I suppose I’d never thought about it.” She’s right, though. How many classmates did I have who shagged their way through the sorority houses, only to say shitty, judgmental things about the girls who’d gone home with them?

  “If anyone has a problem with how I live my life, they’re not someone whose opinion I value very highly,” Lily says. “Why is it that no one bats an eyelash when a guy sleeps around, but God forbid a woman loves casual sex—she must have some tragic past, or maybe there’s a moral in the story where she finds her way t
o purity and light and a lifetime of vanilla, missionary sex. Well, fuck that noise.”

  “Damn.” I grip the phone tighter, aware that my heart is pounding harder than normal. I don’t know if it’s excitement or what, but that’s the best damn speech I’ve heard in a long time. “In case you can’t hear me, I’m applauding right now.”

  Lily laughs. “In case you can’t see me, I’m bowing right now.”

  “Seriously though, I never thought of it like that. How everyone wants there to be a reason behind a woman’s openness about sex.”

  “Like enjoying sex isn’t enough.”

  “Exactly.” I shift in my chair, not sure how we went from a conversation laced with sexual innuendo to one about dead parents and childhood pranks and back to sex again. Sex, but with a more serious side. “I’m glad you rescued me, Lily.”

  “I’m glad I rescued you, too, James.” I can hear the smile in her voice. “And I’m looking forward to our meeting tomorrow.”

  “So am I.”

  As we say our goodbyes and hang up the phone, I’m struck by how very much I am looking forward to seeing Lily Archer again.

  Chapter 7

  LILY

  I take my time shutting down the lab and putting away my gear the next afternoon. I’m dying to get to James, but there’s no need to look too eager.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited about the possibility of the friends with benefits thing, but last night’s phone chat bubbled something else to the surface.

  I actually like the guy.

  Not with my hormones or my lady-bits or even with hands that are itching to palm those perfect pecs and squeeze. I like him with my brain. I like talking to him, laughing with him, hearing about his life and what makes him tick.

  Look, I’ve had lots of conversations with men. I don’t duct tape their mouths shut unless they ask me to, so I’m adept at pre- and post-coital chitchat.

  But last night’s call with James—that went beyond both the chit and the chat. I told him things even some of my best girlfriends haven’t heard, and I’m guessing what he shared about his father isn’t something he offers up to every woman he nails.