Three Wishes(65)
Maxie had wanted to expand and open a store in Bath but didn’t have enough capital to do it. As she had helped Lily incredibly over the years, Lily took the chance and invested in Maxie’s expansion. It had been a good investment, increasing her income just enough to make their financial situation move from “critical” to simply “grave”.
Maxine now spent her time flitting from one store to the other, bedazzling her customers with her extravagant personality, customers who came for the goods but came back for another dose of Maxie, and taking care of her clerks as if they were all favoured daughters.
Lily managed what she now thought of as “her” store. She’d been working there (except for the brief time she lived in London and the time she had been unable to work because of her pregnancy with Tash) for nearly a decade. She loved it there, she kept the flowers in the window box and tubs outside bright and cheerful all year long. She designed the displays of goods with a cautious eye for detail. She took care of her own clerks and all their various and sundry girl problems like they were her younger sisters. It was perfect as Lily could walk to work and thus not tax her stubborn car. She could make her own hours. And she could have Tash there whenever she wanted.
It wasn’t exactly comparable to being an award-winning, jet-setting, best-selling novelist but it put food on the table.
That day, like every day, Lily wore clothes and jewellery she bought from the store wholesale or she wouldn’t have been able to afford them, Flash and Dazzle was a very exclusive shop. Lily’s dress was salmon-coloured with spaghetti straps and dainty hot-pink flowers embroidered in it. The bodice fit her like a glove down her torso to flair very slightly at the h*ps and it fell ending mid-thigh. She wore this with a pair of hot pink flip flops and a set of brightly coloured, glitter-encrusted bangles in every shade of salmon, peach and pink jingled at her wrist.
Lily had no idea whatsoever that one look at her, stylishly sporting Flash and Dazzle inventory, made the majority of sales in the shop (though Maxine knew this, for certain).
She also had no idea that, even in her current state of slenderness, her glorious beauty had not faded over the years, in fact, it deepened with maturity. Her heartbreak had only added a mysterious allure.
She’d never learned to come to terms with her beauty and still didn’t fully know it existed. She had a feeling she was no longer the ugly duckling, though. She wasn’t deaf or blind and she certainly wasn’t stupid.
She was, that day, avoiding home. It was Saturday, it had been Wednesday when Nate and the Roberts had come to meet Natasha. Nate was back today, having arranged horseback riding lessons for Natasha. This was her daughter’s most desperate desire, but as these lessons cost nearly forty pounds an hour, Lily had been unable to afford them. She had been saving up to give them to her for Christmas. The fact that Nate could afford them without blinking an eye, Lily found highly annoying.
Now, Lily had seven million pounds in the bank, money that Alistair was arranging to put in trust for Natasha. Lily wasn’t going to touch even a single penny of it.
She decided this stubbornly, even though Fazire tried to talk her into keeping at least some it, to finish the final rooms in the house, this included the entire garden level which had yet to be touched and the three rooms she hadn’t started on the top floor, not to mention her disaster of a bedroom. Fazire told her to put some in savings and to give some more to Maxine, who wanted to open another store in Cheltenham. He tried, with great determination, thus throughout the conversation, floating precariously close to the ceiling, to convince her to invest in her own future.
Lily would not hear a word of it.
It was not her money. It was Nate’s money and now Natasha’s money.
And that was that.
And Lily had made another decision, this one strategic.
She had decided to avoid Nate altogether and she didn’t hesitate to put that particular plan into action.
Lily had not been home when Nate arrived that morning. She left Fazire to watch over Natasha and hand her over to Nate when he arrived. Fazire, incidentally, wholeheartedly agreed with her Dodge Nate Plan.
She didn’t even want to meet him in a conference room with solicitors, considering the last time he’d backed her up against a wall and held her face like it was the finest piece of crystal.
She certainly didn’t want to be alone with him, considering the last time they were alone, he’d kissed her.
Kissed her!
It was insane and it was, quite simply, unacceptable.
She forgave herself for giving into the kiss. She’d been wanting to kiss Nate for eight long years, wanting to touch him, hold him, have him back and never, ever, let him go. She was allowed to give into a moment of weakness, just that once.
But not again. Never again.
The rest of that day, when Natasha met Nate and the other members of her burgeoning family, had gone relatively well. Lily had been surprised at Victor and Laura’s appearance but, if she could handle Nate, she could certainly put up with Victor and Laura for a few hours.
They’d served Maxine’s treats and had more tea and coffee. Conversation was awkward and stilted and mostly made up of Natasha’s excited gibberish, Maxine’s hilarious quips and Laura’s soft, careful comments.
Then Laura suggested a walk on the seafront, which Lily encouraged with great enthusiasm, running up the stairs to drag her genie out of his bottle (Fazire was furiously channelling his friends to tell them the latest episode in the Lily Saga) and plan her strategy with her ever-helpful friend.