Alice frowns. “That doesn’t sound like the Tyler I know. Are you sure about that?”
Another trumpet into the sodden tissue and I toss it in the trash with all the others. While Alice might be blind to Tyler’s faults, she needs to know what a rogue he is. Sure, I’d told him I wanted it to be casual, but that doesn’t mean I want to be discarded like a used tissue when it suits him.
“First off, it’s a visit to the aquarium with him and Zoe and that’s not even in the same town! Then they invite me on a picnic at the very far end of the beach where no one is around. And when that doesn’t work out, we hideout deep in the forest. Then he…”
Alice stares at me open-mouthed, the contraband cookie forgotten in her fingers. “He took you on an outing with his daughter?!”
Is that all she takes from this? Can’t she see that every time I’ve been out with him, it’s been in secret? “Yes, he did, but…”
Alice holds her hand up to stop me where I am. “Lily, in the four or five years since his wife died, I’ve never heard of him taking a woman out when his daughter was in attendance. Never!”
I take comfort in her words right up to a point. “And yet we were never where anyone could see us.”
After saying goodbye to Alice, I’m sitting in the car ready to leave when there’s a frantic knocking on my driver’s window. It’s Alice. For a second, I think she’s about to stuff the rest of the cookies through the now-open window to save them from being confiscated, but that isn’t it.
“Sweet pea, I just remembered something. When the Lucky Break boys fixed that leak in my ceiling, I overheard them talking about something. Apparently, their boss has a strict rule about them not fraternizing with the clients. Someone called Brad nearly lost his job over it, while others weren’t so lucky. Could that be what young Tyler meant when he said you shouldn’t touch him?”
“I don’t know. Don’t you think he’d have told me if that was the case?”
It isn’t until I’m driving away, my mind awhirl with possibilities, that something occurs to me. Could it have been that, being potentially concussed as he’d been, Tyler’s words hadn’t come out as he’d wanted?
TYLER
After watching Lily’s car disappear around the corner at the end of the street, I’m pleased Josh Hendrick is there to help me back up the path to the house. I really did a number on myself when I fell down that blasted hole.
After he’d propped me up on one side on the front porch, he’d left me to it, a bottle of water at my side.
While I can understand why I feel like crap, what I don’t understand is why Lily had lit out like she had. Even with my brain doing somersaults, it’d been easy enough to see how distraught she was after I’d said she shouldn’t have touched me in front of the others.
Dammit, doesn’t she know that if Ethan were to get wind of our relationship that I’d be out of a job? I take another swig of water while I think about it. It takes longer than it normally would for the cogs in my brain to click into place.
“You freaking idiot!”
“Excuse me?!” Cole Stillman follows this up by kicking one of my boots. “Mind your manners.”
I’m not in the mood for this right now. “Not you, me.”
A brief snort and Cole says, “You’ll get no argument from me on that front. But, safe to say, your secret’s safe.”
My secret? What the hell is he talking about? Am I usually this slow?
Next thing I know, Brad McKenna has joined Cole out on the front porch. “Dude, you might have thought you were hiding it, but damned if you weren’t stripping that woman every time you looked at her.”
“Yeah, you’re just lucky Ethan is busy with Lindsey and the pregnancy, otherwise you’d be up to your neck in it.” Cole nudges my other boot with his. “And speaking of crap, you look like it. Take a nap in that trailer of hers. I doubt she’d mind.”
His laugh after this has me itching to get up and punch his lights out, with it probably just as well I’m not capable.
I’m not even capable of getting back to the trailer on my own, with Brad helping me get there without walking into one of the many trees on the way. We complete the trip in silence, with Brad only speaking when I’m once again sprawled across Lily’s bed.
“We’ll cover for you, but you’ll need to be careful when Ethan is around.”
I try to assemble my thoughts to refute that there’s anything between Lily and me, but Brad talks all over me. “Sheesh, mate, don’t try that BS with me. Don’t forget, I’m living with one of our clients. If not for Ethan and me going way back, he’d probably have fired me for it.” He falls silent for a heartbeat. “And I know how much this job means to you, with Zoe and all.”
Brad leaves me to my thoughts after promising to check on me soon.
As I lie there mulling over how to proceed, I take in all the differences Lily has made to the trailer. Mostly this is down to removing the curtains, leaving the place brighter all round.
It’s a far cry from my dingy studio apartment in town. Much as I’d love to live with my mom and Zoe, there simply isn’t room. As it is, I only use my studio to sleep in, heading home each night after dinner with Zoe and my mom, followed by a bedtime story.
