His paused. “Wait, you guys were at a strip club?”
Lily hopped to her feet and ushered them out into the foyer. “All right well, have a good night guys! Julian, you should know that she only went along with this as a favor to me.” She held up the blonde wig. “As repayment, I’ll let y’all keep this. I'm sure you two can find some use for it.”
At first he kept his straight face, ignored Lily, and ushered Josephine over the threshold. The door had almost closed behind them when there was a pause. Julian’s hand slipped back through the crack and Lily dropped the wig into it. Then, without a word, he shut the door.
“Knew he’d take it.”
Lily locked the door behind them and propped her back against it. She’d left her black beanie at the club. Her blonde hair was parted down the middle, falling down over her shoulders. Her tight black shirt had ridden up on the left side, revealing a little sliver of tan skin above her jeans. That patch of skin called to me. I dropped my glass on the table in the foyer and moved closer.
“Do I still smell like smoke too?” she asked as I wrapped my hands around her waist. I dipped down and buried my face in her hair. It smelled like her shampoo, a tropical scent filled with coconuts and sea breeze.
“You smell like Lily.”
She smiled against my neck and then her tongue slipped out and licked down my skin.
“You taste like Dean.”
I laughed and stepped back, forcing her along with me. We made it up to my bedroom slowly, pausing along the way so that she could tear off my shirt in the hallway. I stripped off her jeans on the stairs and she straddled me in the doorway to my bedroom, curving her hips against me until I lost track of where I was going. We were supposed to head into my bathroom and shower the strip club off us, but instead, I carried her to my bed and we fell back onto the comforter.
No one had control of me the way Lily did. I laid back on my bed as she rolled on top of me, her hair tickling my chest. She was a force of nature, a swirling tornado that made me feel weightless and free one minute, and slammed into a tree trunk at 130 miles per hour the next. I let her hold my hands to the side. I let her think she had control for once. I had a dopey smirk on my face as she kissed her way down my chest. Inside, my heart rioted, warning me to proceed with caution.
This was dangerous.
She was dangerous.
“Dean?” she asked, staring up at me with her honey brown eyes. “I’m really happy you were there tonight, helping me.”
She was opening up to me, confirming with her words what she was showing me with her body.
“We make the perfect team,” she said softly.
I could handle the Tiger Lily, the fierce, independent woman who fought with me every inch of the way—but this? The vulnerable girl opening up to me as she lay naked across my chest?
She scared the shit out of me.
I had goals. I had restaurants to open. I had Forbe’s lists to top, and Lily would get in the way of that. Lily wouldn’t be an easy addition to my life. She wouldn’t appreciate the time I gave her. She’d demand all of me, every ounce, siphoning my focus away from my work until I resented her for it.
Love changes a person. I couldn’t let Lily slip into my life and change the core of me. The need for more was always there, lingering in the periphery of my mind. When I took a long lunch or slept fifteen minutes past my alarm, I pushed myself harder to make up for lost time. I had the world to conquer and Lily would only stand in the way of that.
…
I took my time showering, trying to gather up the wits Lily had stolen over the last hour and a half. The water steamed up, burning the skin across my shoulder blades, but I relished the sensation until the water ran cold. Only then did I step out and wrap the towel around my waist.
I wiped my hand across the fogged glass and met Lily’s gaze in the mirror. I wanted more time away from her, more time to regroup.
She was standing at the door of the bathroom, holding up a gold-leafed invitation with one hand and clutching her towel across her body with the other.
“What’s this?” she asked, turning it over in her hand.
It was an invitation to the James Beard Awards, essentially the Oscars of the food world. I’d worked my ass off for years to be noticed in the community and finally, for the first time, I was nominated for an award: Outstanding Restaurateur. Just to be nominated was an honor beyond anything I could comprehend, but I’d held the achievement close to my heart.
A nomination wasn’t a win.
“It’s an invitation to the James Beard Awards,” I said, reaching for my toothbrush.
Her eyes widened and her grasp on the invitation tightened. She knows how important the ceremony is. “It’s next week and you haven’t returned your RSVP.”
I shrugged. “I don’t think they’ll mind. I’m a guest of honor.”
She carried the invitation in and set it down on the bathroom counter, meeting my eye in the mirror.
“You want me to fill it out for us and send it in?”
For us.
Lily took that blank card and filled it in for herself. She assumed I would take her because she thought we were a team; she’d said so herself. I looked up in the mirror and saw her eyes brimming over with hope for us; I couldn’t mimic her sentiment. Where she felt hope, I only felt fear.
“I’m going alone.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Lily
My face stung as if he’d slapped me. I held my hand up to my cheek, just to check, but there was no pain, only red hot heat. The blotchy blush spread from my cheeks down over my neck as Dean stood with his back to me, meeting my eyes in the mirror and daring me to push him on his comment.
I stood there in his towel, on his cold tile floor. I was naked with the scent of his body wash swirling up around me. I turned on my heel and found my jeans, pulling them on before I could find my underwear. I slipped on my bra and tugged my shirt back in place. My hair was still sopping wet and it seeped down the back of my black t-shirt, chilling me to the bone.
Dean came to stand at the door of his bathroom with his towel hung low on his hips. He crossed his arms and turned his dark eyes on me. In the light, when the sun caught them, his eyes turned a golden brown, so bright that I had to look away. In that moment, in the dim light of his room, they were dark pools of black, emotionless and cold.
“Lily, we’re making this up as we go along. I never made you any promises. You said it yourself, this thing between us is just sex.”
His voice sounded dead and my eyes stung with unshed tears.
I didn’t want him to speak and I sure as shit didn’t want to hear his explanations.
“You’ll find a better man than me.”
I stared at the ground and blinked away the tears threatening to spill.
“You think this is a life, Dean? You think those restaurants will make you happy? One day you’ll wake up and realize that you’re completely alone, and your insides will twist with regret. No man is an island. Not even you.”
I stepped toward him and pointed my finger at his chest. His jaw tightened, but he held his ground, committed to his decision.
“And you know what? I’ll have moved on. I’m not waiting around for you, Dean Harper. I’m not begging you to change or standing by as you pretend the past few weeks haven’t been the best weeks of your life. Challenging, yes, but don’t tell me that you’d trade them. So have fun at your awards ceremony. I’m sure it’ll feel good to stand on that stage alone with a bunch of strangers clapping for you.”
I turned away and he stayed in that doorway. I walked out of his room, down the stairs, and out the front door, and he stood still, watching me walk out of his life like it was the easiest thing he’d ever done.
I held onto the fact that I hadn’t cried in front of him. I convinced myself that the insults I’d flung had been well-worded. I wanted my barbed words to sink deep and fester inside him. I still had a thousand things I wanted to yell, but it was done. Dean was in his house and I was walking home alone with wet hair and wet cheeks. I skipped the subway and ignored the cabs. I walked until my feet hurt and I used the burn in my legs to distract me from the burn in my heart.