Page 17 of A Complicated Bride

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start my own CPA firm. I am a CPA after all. I didn’t need to work for Teddy. I could have worked anywhere or for myself.”

“That sounds perfect.” Nora’s face lifted as she took the pile of apples Lily had sliced and tossed them into the pie shell. “Uncle Billy was just telling me this week that our accountant is retiring and we’d need to find a new one—soon. Wait til I tell him we have one. You’ll do it for us, won’t you? I’d love to be your first customer.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll talk to Uncle Billy tomorrow and get you the details.”

“I’m glad one of us runaways has gotten out of the woods. Looks like you’re on your way to a new life, kid.” I took her chin in my hand and wanted to kiss her. I don’t remember ever stopping myself from indulging before, not since I was twelve.

Lily turned her eyes up to mine.

“Now you know about everything there is to know about me.”

I stood there silent, not paying attention to Aunt Nora, but watching Lily as if I were seeing a different person. Transparent. Genuine. That’s what I’d been looking for hadn’t I?

But she was not simple. She was one of the most complex women I’d ever met.

I didn’t know everything there was to know about her as she’d thought. I felt like I’d barely skimmed the surface. But maybe the fault was mine. Maybe I was looking for more than there was. Or maybe I was a goddamned blind man when it came to really knowing people because I’d been too damned consumed with playing games with the masks, the carefully painted exteriors that people had created for themselves, staged and artificial.

It had been a universe ago since I’d last photographed a genuine person with a soul worth exploring. That person was Julie Lamont. I cleared my throat. I was tired of being a chicken shit.

“I don’t think so, Lily. I’m far from exhausting the possibilities of who you are.”

She nearly gasped and turned a satisfying pink.

“I don’t know everything about you, but I don’t remember looking forward to anything as much as finding out who you are.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “In every sense.”

Nora was putting the pie in the oven, but I glanced her way to make sure she was occupied. Then I leaned in, dipped my head and put my lips to hers. It was quick and shocking. The touch of her lush mouth pillowing under mine, warm against mine, moist and giving, shocked my senses. For no good reason that I could think of.

But I could hardly think because blood raged through me wanting more, even as I lifted my head and backed a step away from her. She held onto my arms with her hands, face pink and eyes glassy, mouth begging.

It was the hardest and easiest thing I ever did at the same time to release myself from her grasp and back away.

“I’m going to change for dinner. I’ll see you in an hour. We’ll go together.” I turned and left the room. Fast and with a sense of urgency as if I were escaping something dangerous, life altering.

But that’s what I’d been after, hadn’t I?

It seemed impossible that I’d only met her that day. How could a woman I’d just met take up such a big space in my head, take over my mind and have a stranglehold on my hopes and wishes?

If I had a heart, she’d have a hold on that too.