Summer of Love (11 page)

‘Young Mr Harper,’ Max said, and Lily shifted under his gaze. God only knew what Max thought was going on with her and Alex, but there was no way she could correct him with her mother in the room.

‘Cora’s cousin?’ Evelyn shook her head as she started to pour. ‘Why on earth are we talking about him?’

‘He’s taking a studio up at the Mill,’ Lily explained. ‘That’s all.’

‘We should be talking about how she’s going to apologise to Edward.’ Evelyn handed a coffee cup to Max, who raised a hand. ‘It’s decaf, for pity’s sake,’ she snapped.

Max took the cup.

‘I don’t want to apologise to Edward,’ Lily said. It felt good to say it, even if the statement elicited a death stare from her mother.

‘You have to. Tell her, Max.’

Max looked at the ceiling. ‘I’m not sure she should apologise either.’

‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’

Lily stared. Had she ever heard Evelyn say ‘hell’ before? If she had, she couldn’t remember it.

Shifting on the sofa to face Evelyn, Max sighed. ‘Look. If she’s unhappy – ’

‘That man was a saint! She was going to settle down and be happy. It was all planned out!’

‘But maybe I didn’t like the plan,’ Lily said, softly. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘Do you think you’re going to find a better one? Do you think anyone else could look after you like he did?’

‘What happened to “nobody’s too good for my daughter”?’ Lily asked.

‘That doesn’t mean he wasn’t good enough! You’d have been stable, settled –’

‘Miserable,’ Max finished and Lily nodded. ‘Face it, Evelyn. It’s over between them, and I think that’s for the best. So now we need –’

‘You need to get out,’ Evelyn said, her face stony. ‘If you’re not going to help me… Well. You can just leave.’

Lily blinked. Evelyn Thomas, stickler for propriety and politeness and hospitality, had just thrown her daughter’s boss out of her house for disagreeing with her. What was the world coming to?

Even stranger, Max looked just as shocked. Horrified, even. Like he couldn’t believe what was happening.

Finally, Max put down his coffee cup and got to his feet. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. Lily, I’ll see you at the committee meeting tomorrow. Evelyn…’ He inclined his head towards her, a gentlemanly gesture Lily hadn’t seen from him before. ‘Thank you for the coffee. I’ll show myself out.’

They sat there in silence for a moment after the slamming of the front door had finished reverberating through the house.

‘Mum,’ Lily started, but Evelyn stood up, moving away towards the door.

‘I need to start dinner,’ she said.

Lily sighed. ‘Can I help?’

Waving a dismissive hand, Evelyn said, ‘It’s fine,’ and disappeared into the kitchen to poke holes in the plastic on some microwave meals.

Lily stared at the coffee cups for a while. Time to get back to the unpacking, she supposed. It was either that or figuring out what the hell she did next.

Chapter Seven

Later that evening, Alex was reviewing the wedding shots when the hammering on his front door suggested something more urgent needed his attention.

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be enough to dampen his good mood. The studio at the Mill was this close to being his, the photos from Mabel’s wedding looked fantastic, and life was coming together nicely. He closed his laptop screen on a particularly lovely shot of Lily helping to adjust the bride’s veil, and went to answer the door as the knocking grew more insistent.

‘What the hell did you say to Lily?’ Without waiting for an answer, Cora swept past him into the house, standing accusingly in the middle of his lounge, tapping one high-heeled foot.

Alex tried to figure out exactly what he’d done wrong, and gave up quickly. ‘I’ve said a lot of things to her this week. She’s been helping me with the photography thing, remember?’

‘Oh, I remember. But what I want to know is, what did you say to her to make her leave Edward?’

Ah. That. ‘How did you hear?’

Cora scoffed. ‘Are you kidding? Everyone in town has heard by now. So I’ll ask again. What did you say to Lily?’

‘Wasn’t me. She came up with that all on her own.’

‘After seven years, she suddenly decided the man she agreed to marry wasn’t the right one for her?’

‘Well, he wasn’t! He’s an idiot.’

Cora’s eyes widened. ‘He loves her! They were getting married! And it seems highly coincidental that Lily should suddenly figure this out the week you come back to town.’

‘I have no idea what you mean.’ Except, of course, he did. The fact that Lily was now single opened up certain… possibilities, and of course that hadn’t escaped him. Not that he was about to admit that to Cora. He just had to keep reminding himself that she was a friend, and he was looking for a forever kind of love. Something Lily had made it very clear she had no interest in.

But right now, romance wasn’t the first thing on his mind. He was a busy man, with a new profession to build. In the hopes of conveying that to his cousin, Alex perched himself on the edge of the sofa and reached for his laptop again. After all, those photos weren’t going to edit themselves. And if Cora was going to talk around in circles like usual, he probably wouldn’t miss anything important if he got on with a little work.

‘Come on, Alex.’ Obviously not intuiting the logic behind his plan, Cora sank onto the sofa beside him, even as he opened the laptop screen. Could he work with her sitting beside him? Looked like he’d have to try, if he didn’t want the evening to be a total waste. ‘I know you’ve been talking a lot about settling down and stuff. But I know you, remember? I know the stories, and I know the sort of guy you are. I love you like a brother, but people don’t just… change overnight. Even if you really do want to find “the one”, you can’t tell me you’re not tempted. If you decided you wanted Lily, turned on the charm…’

His heart jolted in his chest as Cora’s words coincided with his laptop screen bursting to life again, revealing his favourite photo of the batch. Ostensibly, it was one of the bride, mascara mostly fixed, holding onto her bouquet with a grim, determined smile. But behind her, Lily stood, bent slightly at the waist as she straightened Mabel’s veil. Her bright, neat teeth bit into her plump lower lip, her hair falling just over one brow as she worked. Her navy dress, which had seemed so utterly un-Lily-like when he’d seen it in person, draped to a v at the front, giving just the barest glimpse of creamy cleavage. And, at just the moment when he’d pressed the button to take the shot, she’d looked up at him, her green eyes sparkling…

‘Are you honestly trying to tell me you’re not interested?’ Cora said, pointing at the screen as if it made her argument for her. Which it kind of did. ‘Alex, tell me truthfully. Did you set out to break up Lily and Edward?’

‘No.’ If he said the word firmly and swiftly enough, maybe he could forget how much he’d wanted to. ‘And even if I did –’ Cora groaned and pulled a cushion to her face beside him. ‘Even if I did, you can’t claim it’s not a good thing. How could you ever let her get involved with such an idiot in the first place?’

Cora peeked out from behind her cushion. ‘This is my fault now?’

The more Alex thought about it, the more convinced he became that, actually, yes. This had to be much more Cora’s fault than his. ‘Yes. Yes, it is. When I left Felinfach –’

‘Ten years ago,’ Cora interjected.

Alex ignored her. ‘When I left, Lily was sparky, individual, capable of anything. What happened?’

‘All that talking, and she didn’t tell you?’

‘Tell me what?’

Cora sighed, and placed the cushion in her lap, folding her hands over it. ‘It was just before I left for university. Lily wasn’t going; she’d dropped out of college, got some awful part time job somewhere. We weren’t speaking much at the time, to be honest. It was the first time our lives were going in different directions, that we weren’t doing things together. She’d moved in with her boyfriend. He was older, twenty-eight or something. He had a flat on the new estate. I never saw it; Lily never invited me over. Which should have been the first clue, really.’ She took a shuddering breath, and Alex felt a chill settle over him.

‘What happened?’ he asked, not sure he really wanted to know.

‘The night before I left, she showed up at Mum and Dad’s. Her face… Her right eye was swollen almost shut.’

Alex’s jaw ached, from clenching his teeth too hard. ‘Tell me you didn’t let her go back there.’

Cora laughed, a watery, humourless chuckle. ‘Are you kidding? Besides, this was still Lily. She promised me it was the first time he’d hit her, that he’d changed since she met him and he wasn’t the guy she loved any more. As far as I know she walked out and never saw him again.’

‘Does he still live in town?’ Because if he did, Alex wanted to meet him. And punch him through a window. Just the idea of some bullying guy touching Lily, hurting her… Every muscle in his body was tense with the need to do something about it. To protect her, save her, keep her close and safe and with him.

Still, it certainly helped to explain her fear of people changing.

‘It was eight years ago, Alex. You can’t make that better now. But you can try to understand.’

‘Understand what?’

‘Why Lily chose Edward.’

‘Because he’d never hit her? That seems a remarkably low bar to set.’

‘Because, after her dad dying, and after the abusive bastard who hit her, Edward was normal. Safe. Dependable. All the things she was supposed to want.’

‘And you let her settle for that?’

Cora sighed. ‘Look, Alex, you weren’t here. Edward… he was good for Lily. Helped her get her confidence back. They were sweet together, fun even. But seven years is a long time, I guess. Edward started working more and more, putting his career first. I tried to talk to Lily about it, but she said it was all fine, that she had Tiger Lily to focus on anyway.’

‘She said that they’d grown apart,’ Alex said. ‘Changed. When she ended things, earlier. I guess… I guess I just thought it had always been like this. That he’d just been trying to make her into the person he wanted her to be.’

Cora gave him a sad smile. ‘Don’t we all do that? We see what we want to see in people, and we assume they want the same things we do. Maybe I did the same thing. When Edward proposed and Lily said yes… I thought maybe she’d found what I had. Wanted what I wanted. I thought marriage, being wives, could be something we’d do together. Like everything else.’

‘It doesn’t work that way, Cora. You can’t just make marriage happen like that.’

Cora looked up at him, eyes serious. ‘Isn’t that what you say you’re trying to do? Deciding you’re ready to settle down, then coming here to find some hapless maiden to wed?’

Shifting uncomfortably on the sofa, Alex was aware of Lily’s eyes watching him from the photo. ‘That’s not it.’

‘Are you thinking you can make Lily the wife you need? Because she’s my best friend, Alex. And I won’t let you play around with her. She needs time to think things through. To realize what she’s giving up, not marrying Edward. I don’t want you confusing her. Or hurting her.’

‘I won’t,’ Alex said, stunned at the certainty in his own voice. Whatever else happened, hurting Lily was the last thing he wanted. ‘Look, we’re friends, that’s all. And we’re looking for different things. Like you say, she needs to figure out who she is now. So even if I were interested, it’s unlikely to happen. And even if it did –’

‘Which it’s not going to.’

‘She’d be much more likely to break my heart than the other way round.’

The level of disbelief in Cora’s eyes was, frankly, quite insulting. ‘Just be careful, Alex, please. Give Edward a chance to win her back. For her to remember how happy they used to be, and see if they can have that again.’

‘You’re not just saying this so you don’t have to redo the table plan for your wedding, are you?’ Alex asked, only half joking.

‘I’m saying it because Lily is one of the few things more important to me than wedding planning right now.’ Cora got to her feet and bent down to kiss his cheek. Pausing at the door, she turned back and said, ‘That’s a fantastic photo, by the way. I’m sure this new enterprise of yours will be a great success.’

As the door shut behind her, Alex was left staring at the photo, still trying to make sense of the whole conversation. And remembering that he had a wedding to attend on Saturday. With Lily.

* * * *

An hour later, buffered by a microwave chilli and an actual full glass of wine, Lily curled up in her childhood bedroom, ignoring the way it was now painted in inoffensive neutral colours instead of the teal and purple she’d chosen at sixteen, and called Cora.

‘How’s Evelyn taking it?’ Cora asked, when Lily had filled her in on the day’s events.

‘Shouldn’t you be asking how I’m taking it?’

‘Well, since I had three reports this afternoon of you drinking brandy in the Bull and Frog with my cousin this lunchtime – and don’t think I haven’t already spoken to him about that – I’m assuming you’re fine. Evelyn, on the other hand…’

‘Thinks I should apologise and beg him to take me back. But I did get a full glass of wine with dinner.’ Lily paused, and pictured Cora on the end of the line, lips pursed in her “I’m not going to ask, but you’re going to tell me anyway” expression. ‘And look, about Alex…’

‘Oh I’m sure it’s none of my business. I mean, he’s only my cousin. And you’re only my best friend, after all.’

Lily winced. Apparently she owed Cora a few girly catch-up sessions. It was just that Cora was all about weddings at the moment, and Lily really, really wasn’t. ‘Has he told you about his new business yet?’

‘The photography? Yes.’

‘Well, then you know that’s the only reason I’ve been spending time with him this week. Purely professional reasons.’

‘Hmm.’ Cora didn’t sound convinced.

‘Although…’

Cora sighed. ‘Yes?’

‘He is coming with me to my cousin’s wedding this weekend. As friends.’

‘Lily…’ The warning note in Cora’s voice sounded loud and clear.

‘As friends! It’s not… I know what people are going to say. That I left Edward for him. But that’s not how it is and, of all people, I’d hope my best friend would believe me about that.’