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If Dad knew what I was doing tonight, my time here and my business would be shut down by the time the sun was up.
But this man…whoever he was—he didn’t know me. Even if by some weird happenstance of fate itwashim, I’d changed a lotsince I was fifteen. I doubted he’d even recognize me. I was long past the black hair dye and heavy foundation that had hidden my freckles. These were forgotten, along with my obsessions over Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë and my flowing, mostly black wardrobe.
And if it wasn’t him, all the better. For a couple of hours, I could pretend that the man I’d had the most wildly inappropriate teenage crush on had somehow found his way back to me and was giving me a shot. I could let myself fall a little bit more into the escapism that beingLilygave me.
I could leaveAvaoutside.
Chapter 2
Adrian
Ispotted her the moment she appeared through the revolving glass doors.
A flash of long, auburn hair, hanging down over one shoulder in waves, caught my eye. Lily had warned me to watch for it—she’d said it was her most prominent feature, but with every clicking step she took in my direction, everything else about her seemed toshine.
The freckles that dotted her barely tanned complexion, the green of her eyes that looked almost as though sunlight were reflecting off dew-dampened moss, the flow of her patterned skirt and the white cardigan that stopped just beneath the swell of her breasts—all of it, every bit, was so vastly different from what I’d normally look for in a woman. It gave me pause, if only for just a moment, and luckily for me, she seemed in no rush to get across the room.
Even though her eyes were glued to me, wide as fucking saucers.
I wasn’t necessarily unaccustomed to the occasional glance or longing stare from passersby, but something abouther, something about the glimmer in her eye as she stepped up tome, her mouth moving, but the sound of the crowd drowning her out, was different.
Maybe it was how she was dressed so differently from every other woman I’d dated. Maybe it was how she was twenty years my junior and so obvious that she was going to look up to me. Maybe it was the one auburn brow raising and not a single wrinkle under her eyes. Maybe it was the almost ethereal way she moved, her twitching hands smoothing out the lines in her skirt and playing with the bell-like edges of her white knitted cardigan.
“Are you…deaf?”
Hervoice. It hit my ears and stirred something, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. “Sorry,” I laughed, letting my gaze take her in entirely, top to bottom and back to top. “I didn’t catch what you said.”
Her cheeks reddened. “I asked if you were John,” she said. She took a step back, nearly bumping into an older man with binoculars around his neck, and just briefly, her white teeth caught on her cherry-red lips. “I have the wrong person, I’m so sorry.”
In a flash, she turned, her long hair lifting and settling down her back. Somehow, I’d already messed up and spent far too much time ogling her than actuallylistening, and her calling me by my fake name just hadn’t registered. It didn’t snag my attention like a name was meant to.
Before she could take another step away from me, I reached out to her instinctually, one hand closing around the smallest part of her wrist. Her head whipped around again.
“You don’t have the wrong person,” I grinned, hoping it was enough of an apology so we didn’t have to keep dancing back and forth. “You caught me off guard, is all. You must be Lily.”
She blinked at me, her head tilting to the side like a confused puppy. “So youareJohn.”
Yes. But no.It still didn’t feel right, and I felt bad for lying to her, but I’d stick to the deception. “And you’re Lily,” I answered. A lie by omission was easier for me.
Her lips tugged up at the edges, and she stuffed her smile down, but not before I could see it. “Thank fuck for that,” she chuckled. She took a step toward me, and I let my hand slip from her wrist, the sensation of her skin touching mine fading and leaving me tingling. “Thought I’d just royally embarrassed myself in front of a stranger.”
Slotting myself in beside her, I motioned toward the hall on the right-hand side. The slow trickle of foot traffic headed in that direction, and rather than trying to go against the grain as I normally would if I were on my own, I didn’t want to be weaving between patrons as I tried to speak to her. “I am technically a stranger, Lily.”
“Nah,” she laughed. “I’ve spoken to you at least…twice?”
“Twice,” I nodded.
“Not a stranger, then.” Her hand reached for a pamphlet in a plastic container hanging on the wall, and a flash of plain, white-tipped fingernails caught my eye. The polish didn’t seem to clash with the rest of her outfit—not when everything else was so carefree. Those nails looked more like what I’d seen the women in my office block wear, and I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off her hands as she flipped through the pamphlet. “Oh my god, they’re showing Ai Weiwei’s work this month. How did I miss this?”
Ai Weiwei.She knew who that was. Fuck, that was attractive. “Lucky for you, I bought us tickets to both the museumandthe exhibition, so…”
I slipped the printed ticket the front desk had given me out of my jacket pocket and held it out to her. Her head whipped in my direction, those wildly green eyes flitting between mine and the slip of paper in my hand, and for a split second, that motionfelt like a wave of memories flooding into the back of my mind. A smile spread across her lips as she plucked it from my fingers.
“I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t sure if you’d be excited for it,” I chuckled. “You said you were into contemporary. Ai Weiwei isn’t only that.”
A single brow raised at me as we entered the main foyer. Massive glass panels above let in the cloudy sunlight, painting the marble floor and white walls in little dancing rainbows and soft lighting. People milled about around us, the gentle echoes of their footsteps bouncing through the bright space, but all I could do was look ather.
Whatwasit about her? She was gorgeous, of course, but my God, it was like I’d been knocked off my game.
