Three Wishes(102)

New Lily, he saw, was firmly in place. She was a mixture of his sweet Lily, the Lily he had saved from the purse snatcher, the mature, but not lost nor broken Lily and something else altogether. She was cheerful, playful, teasing, loving and relaxed. She was also something different, something alluring and mysterious, as if she had a secret but not a bad one, a delicious one.

She’d begun spending the evenings in her office writing, using the laptop Nate had bought her or writing longhand in notebooks. Natasha would sit with her and watch the new flat screen television using her headphones or Tash would sit in Nate’s study when he was there, watching his flat screen television and wearing her headphones. Fazire would often join them when they were in Lily’s office, Fazire sitting in Lily’s grass green armchair, his feet up on the ottoman, reading one of his books (Fazire didn’t join Tash in Nate’s study, however).

Lily had also started the habit of calling Nate regularly at his office, not every day but several times a week. She had nothing to say and didn’t want to know much of anything. She’d ask what he wanted for dinner (he never had a preference, food was food). When he’d be home (he was home the same time every night, except five minutes earlier each time). What he was doing at that particular moment (always working). Did he want Chinese takeaway that night (again, food was food). How he felt about beef wellington served at their wedding reception (he only cared about Lily being legally tied to him, he didn’t care what they ate after that came about).

It was clear she didn’t really care about his answers, in fact, didn’t demand them as he often didn’t give them. It seemed, instead, as if she simply wanted to talk, as if she wanted a brief connection with him during the day and this connection had no strings. There was nothing loaded in their conversation, no wrong answer he could give, it was just her way of establishing a connection, any connection.

Each time she called, he dismissed anyone who was in his office with a sharp nod of his head, turned his chair to face the window, sat back and rested his ankle on his knee. Then he let her blather on, just like he let their daughter do when she called.

When Lily phoned, it, too, became known around the office as uninterruptible.

Without exception.

And during the last two weeks after Tash was in bed, there were three occasions when Lily asked Nate to go to the pub with her.

They quietly walked together down the sea path to her local. There, they sat outside by the sea, Nate drinking vodka and ice, Lily having a glass of white wine. Eventually, she’d lean into him and rest her head on his shoulder, his arm would slide around her and together they would watch the water. She didn’t ask probing questions, she didn’t demand details of his past. Often, something in her thoughts would make her sigh but he never asked her about it and she never offered any explanation. Other times she’d break the silence and tell him about her family, her father, her mother, her grandmother, her old limestone house. These stories could be sweet, they could be funny but always they were tinged with her grief.

After a few drinks, they’d walk slowly home, taking their time and holding hands, and he’d take Lily to bed and make even slower love to her.

After those three nights, Nate noticed he’d had the most restful nights of sleep he could remember and he could remember every night of his life.

Once, when he had work to go over, needing to make detailed notes before a meeting the next day, he’d stayed late in his study asking Lily, for the first time that he had been in Somerset, to let Tash read to her so he could finish.

In the wee hours of the morning, Lily came down and knocked on his door. When he called her in, she jumped up and sat on the side of his desk and began a sweet and strange interrogation, asking him questions about what he was doing and what his work involved.

He calmly, but not very informatively, answered. He had work to do, it was late, he wanted to finish and join her in bed and he knew she had to be in the shop early the next morning. He was trying to ignore the soft skin of her thigh that rested next to his forearm. He was trying to ignore when she’d lean forward and point at a graph on a document and ask a question, her cle**age bared to his view. He tried to ignore it when she regarded him levelly, her eyes warm, her thumb between her bared teeth, her mind obviously somewhere else, somewhere better as she watched his lips form brief words to answer her questions.

Eventually, she giggled, threw her hands in the air and stared for a moment at the ceiling. Then she jumped off the side of his desk, grabbed his wrist and held it out so she could slide into his lap.

Then she asked one final set of questions that swiftly ended the late night interrogation.

“What’s a girl have to do around here to seduce her fiancé? I mean, how obvious could I be? Should I do a striptease? Roll around on your desk naked?”

She didn’t finish, couldn’t, as his mouth cut off her words.

And she did end up on his desk na**d but she didn’t have to roll around.

In their bedroom, with the entirety of both of their family next door, Nate’s hand drifted from her jaw to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“My favourite colour?” he repeated.

“Yes, you pick our wedding colours,” she demanded, her tone teasing.

“Lily, my favourite colour is red,” he told her, her eyes widened and she burst into laughter, her body pressing closer to his.

“Dracula’s wedding!” she shouted and Nate hoped Laura didn’t overhear, her heart would explode. “I love that! I’ll wear black with blood red petticoats and carry red roses and you can wear a tuxedo with one of those crosses at your neck. We’ll be the talk of the town.”