She wanted him to become Wyatt the lover.
It was crazy-Jackie was in the kitchen throwing together some dinner, and the others would be arriving at any minute-but Lily couldn't stop herself. Her eyes slowly opening, she lifted her hands, sliding them onto his shoulders, the tips of her thumbs caressing his neck. Held back by nothing, not pride or fear or intimidation, she looked up at him, silently asking him for the world, or just the little part of it he inhabited.
He smiled faintly, shaking his head. But he wasn't saying no. That expression told her that as crazy as it might be, the answer was yes.
"When this is over," he whispered.
"Tonight's meeting?" she asked, intentionally misunderstanding.
He barked a quick laugh. "You know what I mean."
Now it was Lily's turn to shake her head. "No."
"Yes, you do."
"I meant no, that's not acceptable."
"It's not, huh?"
She leaned closer, rising up onto her tiptoes so their mouths shared the same inch of air space. Then she eliminated it, pressing her lips onto his in a kiss so fleeting, so soft, that if not for the way her mouth tingled, she wouldn't have been certain she'd kissed him at all.
"If there's one thing the past few years have taught me, Wyatt, it's to take nothing for granted. Don't put off something you want for a future date, because for all you know, your future might not extend beyond today."
He opened his mouth to reply, and she didn't know whether he was going to start with another warning about why this was a bad idea, inform her he couldn't take advantage of her, caution that he was older, had been her boss, blah, blah, blah. She'd heard it before.
"I don't give a damn," she whispered before he got a word out.
"You should," he told her. "There are some things you don't know."
"Sweet man, all the things I don't know about you could probably fill the hard drive on my laptop. But there's one thing I do know, and it's all I need to know." She smiled. "I'm alive not only because of you, but merely because I am with you."
"Lily." He thrust a hand through his thick, dark hair, shaking his head. "You don't understand. There are issues we need to clear up before you decide to do anything." He appeared almost mournful as he added, "I've done things for the right reasons that have ended up hurting people. Even you."
She put her hand up, touching the tips of her fingers to his warm mouth. "I don't want to hear it."
He stepped away. "You're going to have to. Because we're not going to do anything about"-he waved a hand between them-"this until I tell you the truth."
"Your past is yours to keep, Wyatt. I didn't go snooping after that awful drunk shot off his mouth at the restaurant and I am not waiting for you to tell me all your secrets before we go to bed together."
Wyatt couldn't quite believe Lily had put that bald comment out there so readily. And while part of him was incredibly turned on by her certainty about where they were going, another part reacted with utter guilt. He sucked in a raw, shocked breath. His own past, his dark, awful, ancient history, hadn't been what he was referring to. He'd been thinking only of the role he'd played in Jesse Boyd's release from prison.
Now that she mentioned it, of course, all the other reasons he shouldn't be with her flooded into his head. The darkness that surrounded him and his family, the awful things he'd seen, and the way they had affected him merely added to the stockpile of ammunition against them as a couple. Lily was someone who deserved to be loved, who needed to find whatever happiness she could in her life, to get over the darkness and rediscover things like laughter and joy. How on earth could Wyatt be the man to help her do those things when he hadn't done them for himself and didn't really care to?
"That doesn't mean I don't expect you to tell me all that stuff eventually," she said. "I know you will."
He was already shaking his head before she finished.
"You think I can't handle it? Good Lord, Wyatt, with everything I've seen in my life, do you really think I can't deal with hearing you've had a tragedy or two in your own?"
"Not like this," he admitted, forcing the words from a throat tight with tension. "Not just what happened, but the reasons why it happened."
The betrayal. The rage. The madness. How was he supposed to explain away all the ugliness in his own family tree, and expect her to trust that none of it had been visited on his own psyche? Or, hell, stamped onto his own genes?
"Reasons or reactions, they're not much different, are they? Are you holding it against me because my twin sister slit her wrists in a bathtub? Some could say I'm tainted with the same kind of blood, that I'm as weak and selfish, predisposed to doing something like that, too, no matter how much it hurts those who are left behind."
Wyatt drew her into his arms, needing to hold her. She nearly shook with emotion, as she'd done the other night at the restaurant. She might mourn her sister, but that didn't mean she didn't carry the same impotent rage felt by every person who'd lost a loved one to suicide.
She melted against him for a moment, though he knew she wasn't trying to seduce him, or to initiate another kiss. She was merely taking what he offered, letting him support her. Then Lily nodded once and pulled away, looking up at him with clear eyes that held no tears.
Maybe she really was getting over everything.
"Tell me something," she said, proving how adept she had become at putting the past behind them. "Do you really want to have a big expository meeting before we finally give in to this and find out whether what we've been thinking about, dreaming about, fantasizing about, for months is as good as we both suspect it will be?"
Wyatt didn't answer. He couldn't answer. Because saying yes would be a lie, and saying no a catastrophe.
"Because I don't, and I'd really like to avoid wasting one more night on sleeping in the wrong bedroom of your house."
Before he could come up with some kind of response, they both heard a door slam outside. Lily turned away, visibly disappointed that their conversation had been interrupted. "They're here," she whispered, bending over to look out the front window again. "Guess you were saved by the car door."
"Lily…"
"Don't. We'll talk later, all right?" She kept her attention glued to the window, as if she didn't trust herself to look at him yet. "Though I'm really hoping this is settled and we don't have to talk about it anymore at all."
Damn, the woman could be stubborn. She didn't even look over her shoulder to see how he reacted, as if she'd reached the limit of her own brazenness. As if she knew he needed time to mull it over and eventually come around to her way of thinking.
It wasn't that he didn't think she was right. There was no doubt they wanted each other. They needed to be with each other. But that wasn't the end of the story.
"It's Dean and Kyle," she said, still focused on what was going on outside the front window.
Dean Taggert, dark-haired, intense-looking Dean, had just gotten out of the driver's seat of a car, his partner, barrel-chested, always smiling Kyle Mulrooney, leaving the passenger side. Kyle said something and laughed. Dean shot him a glare.
"I see nothing much has changed with those two."
"No, it hasn't."
Pulling up behind them was another familiar car. Parking, Alec Lambert got out of it. Lily hadn't known Alec very well at the time she'd been taken from them, since the former profiler had joined the team only a week before. Wyatt hadn't been sure she would want him included tonight. But Lily hadn't hesitated. As she'd reminded him, Alec had been the one who'd convinced her to talk to Wyatt about the side investigation she was conducting on Lovesprettyboys.