Overnight Male (25 page)

Still, even though Lila knew how much Oliver loved Avery, there was a part of her that couldn’t believe he was going to go through with this. She and her partner might have grown up in entirely different environments and lived through entirely different experiences, but she’d begun to think the two of them were pretty much alike. Oliver had always been as restless as Lila, as discontented as she, as dissatisfied with life as she. He’d never voiced a desire to find the right woman and settle down, had never seemed even remotely the domestic-bliss type. He’d always struck her as the sort of person who couldn’t be happy unless he had a lot of action and adventure in his life.

Now Lila watched through the big window as Oliver draped an arm over Avery’s shoulder and pulled her close. She watched as he dipped his head the not insubstantial distance to drop a kiss on the crown of her head. She watched as Avery looped an arm around his waist without hesitation, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do. Standing like that, the two of them looked like one creature with two heads and four arms, an entity made doubly strong by having twice the strength and stamina, a being that just dared the world to try to smack it down, because it would give it right back double.

And that was when Lila understood.

It wasn’t a life of action and adventure Oliver wanted. It was someone to enjoy life’s action and adventure with. And what greater adventure could there be—and what better action—than to fall in love? And to stay in love. Against all odds. In a world full of flaws. Forever and ever and ever. Oliver had been restless and discontented and dissatisfied with life because it hadn’t been complete. Something—someone—had been missing from it. Now that he’d found Avery, that missing piece had fallen into place and had made his life—had made
him—
whole. He wouldn’t be settling down with her. Just the opposite. The two of them had a lifetime ahead of them filled with all kinds of experiences they couldn’t even imagine at this point.

Lila snuck a glance at Joel and wondered if maybe, just maybe, she’d been restless and discontented and dissatisfied for the same reasons as Oliver. And she wondered if maybe, just maybe, she’d been drawn to Joel for the same reasons Oliver had been so drawn to Avery. The same way Avery was unlike any woman Oliver had ever encountered, Joel was like no man Lila had ever met. Since that first night she’d tried to handcuff him in his home, she’d experienced some of the greatest thrills of her life. There had been moments of heart-stopping excitement, of breath-stealing exhilaration, of mind-scrambling ecstasy. There had been discoveries of feelings she’d never known she possessed, and the exploration of desires she’d never dared acknowledge. He’d filled needs and satisfied hungers no one had ever been able to assuage—not even her. Joel Faraday had been—

Well. He’d been quite an adventure. And very exciting.

Before she was able to do more than stagger at all the revelations bombarding her brain, Oliver turned and saw her and Joel through the window and immediately lifted a hand in greeting. Avery turned, too, and smiled, and Lila was stunned by the changes in the other woman. Gone were the long, childish braids and the little black-framed glasses. She’d put on some much-needed weight that had rounded her body and face and buffed away the edges. The shadows beneath her eyes—and the shadows
in
her eyes—had vanished.

She looked…peaceful, Lila thought. She looked comfortable. She looked like a woman who had landed in the place she was always meant to be, and it was more beautiful than she’d ever imagined.

“Come on,” Lila told Joel. “I want to introduce you.”

Without even thinking about what she was doing—or why she was doing it—she wove her fingers through his and gave his hand a gentle tug. Then she continued to hold his hand as she led him to and through the open French doors leading out to the garden. The moment they were outside, Oliver’s gaze, she noted, dropped to their entwined fingers, and a huge grin split his face. But he said nothing when Lila and Joel came to a halt in front of him and Avery. He only reached for her, without letting go of Avery, and pulled her into a fierce, one-armed hug. As always, Lila was startled by how incredibly handsome he was, with his jet-black hair and his pale green eyes. And as always, she decided this must be how a woman felt when she had an older brother she knew she could count on, no matter how much trouble she ever found herself in.

Wow, how about that? All this time she’d had a family without even realizing it. She’d just been adding to it lately. She snuck another peek at Joel, who had held firmly to her hand when Oliver swept her into his hug, and found him looking back at her with a soft little smile that sent warmth seeping into her every extremity. And she realized then that she could do a lot worse in life than to see him smiling at her like that every day.

“My second favorite woman in the world,” Oliver said with a laugh, tightening his arm around her neck…at the same time Joel tightened his fingers on her hand.

Lila laughed, too, looping her free arm around Oliver’s waist above Avery’s—though not nearly as snugly as the other woman’s was—and then pulled Joel in close, too. “Wow, I’ve come up in the world,” she said. “I used to be number three, after Angelina Jolie and Carmen Electra.”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about,” Oliver said.

Noting the way he was beaming, she replied, “Yeah, I can see that.”

She disengaged herself from the group hug and moved closer to Joel. And if she ended up moving a little—okay, a lot—closer than she’d originally intended, it was only because the eight billion acres of elegant Nesbitt gardens were so crowded with all those chairs and pavilions and apricot roses.

“This is Joel Faraday,” she said by way of an introduction. Still standing close. Still holding his hand. Still not caring what anyone—except maybe Joel—thought about that. “Joel,” she added, gesturing first toward Oliver, then Avery, “this is Oliver Sheridan, and his soon-to-be wife, Avery Nesbitt.”

Avery smiled, and Lila was again overcome by how much she had changed. Six months ago she would have been a flinching, cowering mess just standing this far away from the house. Even inside the house, Lila knew, Avery had had problems, because it hadn’t been her condo in New York. But she looked and seemed as comfortable here as a woman would be when she was surrounded by all the things she loved best and needed most. Looking at Oliver, Lila realized Avery was just that.

“Good to see you again, Lila,” Avery said. Then she smiled. “Thanks for using the front door this time. You scared the hell out of the dogs last time you were here.”

Lila chuckled. “I brought them some gourmet doggy treats in the hopes that it will get me back in their good graces.”

“Come on,” Oliver said, tilting his head toward the French doors through which Lila and Joel had passed only moments ago. “We have a wedding to plan for. And you,” he added, looking directly at Lila, “have a few responsibilities as my best man.”

T
HE WEDDING WAS BEAUTIFUL
,
of course—and, inescapably, elegant—but the reception was even better. Mostly because it was considerably less elegant. Mostly because a full quarter of the guests were Tanner Gillespie’s family—blue-collar laborers, every last one—who injected a lot more life into the party than the elegant Nesbitts could have managed on their own.

“It was an interesting courtship those two had,” Oliver told Lila and Joel as the three of them stood in the elegant—and massive—Nesbitt ballroom, watching Carly and Tanner take their turn cutting their wedding cake.

Lila sipped champagne from an elegant crystal flute, being careful not to spill any on the sleeveless black gown she’d chosen for her best-man attire. Carly had insisted all the women in the ceremony have their hair done by her stylist, so Lila’s had been swept up and artfully arranged by a guy named Eddie who looked like a dock worker and had hummed “I Feel Pretty” the whole time he was working on her.

“Yeah, I kind of guessed that,” she said. “Though I probably would have used a different word than
interesting.
”

“What gave it away?” Joel asked. “The fact that for their first dance as a married couple they chose the Talking Heads’ ‘Burnin’ Down the House’?”

Oliver laughed. “That wasn’t their first choice. But my new mother-in-law adamantly refused to have Jimmy Buffett’s ‘Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw’ played in her house.”

Lila shook her head. “I’m thinkin’ Tanner’s family has done a lot to shake up the elegant Nesbitts.”

“Whoa, yeah,” Oliver agreed. “But then, the elegant Nesbitts have done their part to rub off on Tanner’s family.” He pointed at Avery’s mother. “Felicia even got Donna—” now he pointed at the woman who had been introduced to Lila as Tanner’s mother “—an invitation to join her gardening club. And Desmond-Three got Frank, Tanner’s dad, season tickets to the Met.”

“There’s only one Met now?” Lila asked. “What happened to the rest of the team?”

Oliver leveled a look on her. “Smart-ass. The Metropolitan Opera.”

“Oooooh.”

“Anyway, they all get along surprisingly well now. Don’t think it was always like that, though. Tanner’s family hated Carly for a long time.”

Carly chose that moment to shriek in outrage, then shout something across the ballroom at the caterer about how the cake was
supposed
to be amaretto,
not
a proletarian chocolate assault on her senses.

“Imagine that,” Joel said.

“And the Nesbitts weren’t too crazy about Tanner, either,” Oliver went on. “But they eventually realized it was her he loved, not her money.”

“Go figure,” Lila said. “Though I guess the money is a nice bonus.” Still, seeing the way Tanner looked at Carly, it was clear the elegant Nesbitt greenbacks were not what he was looking forward to rolling in tonight. “They look really happy,” she said, smiling. Then she turned back to Oliver. “And so do you.”

He smiled back. “I never thought it could be like this, Lila,” he said softly. “The way it is with Avery and me. It’s just…” He sighed again, and, amazingly, it did nothing to detract from his manliness. “I just never thought it could be like this, that’s all. You really should—”

Whatever he’d intended to say got cut short by the announcement that he was needed to cut his own wedding cake now. The three of them looked up to see Avery, a vision in soft ivory, waving to him from near the table, so Oliver said, “Later,” and made his way toward his new wife without a single look back.

He really did look happy, Lila thought. He really
was
happy. The way she wanted to be happy, too. With someone in her life she knew she could count on, someone who would be there through good times and bad, someone who would love her and want her just the way she was, without expecting her to be anything else.

Joel didn’t care about anything but her, she reminded herself. He’d told her so. The same way she’d discovered over the past couple of weeks that she didn’t care about anything but him. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with her life without OPUS as a part of it. But that didn’t scare her, because she knew she’d land on her feet. She wasn’t sure what she would do with her life without Joel as a part of it, either. But that did scare her. Beyond words. Because without him, she would have nothing to hold on to, nothing to balance her, nothing to keep her steady.

Without Joel, Lila would have nothing at all. Without him, her life would be empty. Because without him, she had no one to love. And without love…Well, without love, what was the use of living?

No one could possibly know what the future held, she told herself. No matter how well they planned it. Which was all the more reason not to face it alone.

“What are you thinking about?” Joel asked her.

Oh, he did have such perfect timing, she thought. He’d come into her life right when it had begun to crumble, and had given her the hand she’d needed to hold on to until the earth began to steady under her again. And now he was asking her a question like that, right when she needed an opening to tell him how she felt.

She turned to look at him and smiled. “I’m thinking about how much I love you,” she said. “And about how incredible our life together is going to be.”

His mouth dropped open for a moment, then he smiled. “You love me.”

“I do.”

His smile grew broader. “You know, you say those two little words on a day like this, in an environment like this, the people who hear those two little words might think they mean something besides what you intend them to mean.”

Lila tucked her fingers up under his hair and curled them around his nape. Then she pushed herself up on tiptoe and kissed him. He looped an arm around her waist when she did, and for long moments they continued to kiss each other, nothing too passionate, but nothing too innocent, either. When Lila finally pulled away, she lowered her arm to circle it around Joel’s waist and nestled her body into his. Then she sipped her champagne as if nothing had happened.

So Joel leaned down and, moving his mouth beside her ear, whispered, “Tell me I didn’t just daydream that you told me you loved me and then kissed me.”

“Why? Did it feel like a dream?” Lila asked as she lifted her champagne for another sip.

He nodded, nuzzling her ear as he did. “Yeah, it did, actually.”

“That’s funny,” she told him. “It was supposed to feel like your future.”

He chuckled at that and tightened the arm around her waist. “
Our
future,” he corrected her.

And for the first time since meeting him, Lila had to admit that sometimes when it came to correcting her, Joel Faraday knew what he was talking about.