“The usual time.”
“Oh, okay, she repeated then hesitated then she sighed deeply, and if he wasn’t mistaken, meaningfully, then she said, “Bye.”
“I’ll see you later.”
He waited for her to hang up. She didn’t.
“Lily?”
“Nate.”
“Hang up,” he commanded.
“You hang up,” she retorted.
His eyes lifted to his employees again and one of them had dropped her head to stare at her lap, the other one was looking to the side and his lips were twitching.
“Lily, I have two of my staff in my office with me.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “If you were busy, why did you take my call?”
“I’ve missed enough of your calls in the past, I won’t miss another one,” he responded and the steel in his voice, a far more familiar sound to them, caused both of his employee’s faces to go instantly blank.
Lily’s tone was warm and soft. “Nate.”
Lily saying his name in that tone went straight through him.
“I have to go,” he repeated, this time with a reluctance that he allowed to be read in his voice.
“Bye,” she said, that one word sweet and intimate and Nate felt it almost as if it was a physical touch and that thing in his chest loosened just a bit more.
* * * * *
Two weekends later on a Saturday afternoon came the most profound of a month full of surprises.
Nate and Victor had finished going over some business in Nate’s new study on the garden level. Father and son went in search of everyone else and found them in Lily’s office on the top floor.
The house was complete, the workmen and decorators gone, the furniture and appliances replaced and it was now what Nate considered a home appropriate for Lily and Natasha, a home of consequence and quality for his family. A home he provided for them. The kind of home they deserved, the kind of home he would work until he died to be certain they always had.
The mortgage was now settled and Lily owned the house free and clear.
The furniture and fittings were all top of the line and even if something happened to him, she’d not have to replace them for decades.
Lily had stamped it with her quirky style that was both refined and offbeat, muted colours mixed with bold; classical, elegant furniture twinned with distressed cottage-style antiques; the walls and most surfaces adorned with Fazire and her mother’s framed photographs of family and her home in Indiana.
Lily had decorated her office in eggshell white with furniture upholstered in grass green with lilac and sunshine yellow toss pillows and accents.
The usually tidy room was covered in opened magazines and catalogues with pages torn out and strewn all over the place. There were also torn and frayed swatches of fabric dotting the floor and several surfaces. Fazire was reclining in his usual armchair and he was, for some reason, partially covered in an enormous swathe of taffeta the colour of an eggplant. Maxine, wearing a turban nearly the same shade as Fazire’s swathe but not a part of the afternoons planning session, instead a part of her own bizarre ensemble, was seated at Lily’s white, spindly-legged desk, clicking through photo after photo on Lily’s laptop. Laura was reclining on Lily’s chaise, an enormous book open on her lap displaying invitation selections.
“No purple,” Lily decreed as Victor cleared the door and Nate stopped in it, taking in the scene.
“It has to be purple!” Maxine cried in a tone that said she’d absolutely expire if whatever-it-was-they-were-discussing was not purple.
“I agree,” Fazire announced pompously.
“No purple,” Lily repeated.
“Pink!” Tash shouted over the conversation.
Lily was on her knees on the floor, her bottom resting on her calves that were folded underneath her. Four magazines were opened in front of her and swatches of fabric in every colour of the rainbow were arrayed around and amongst the magazines.
Tash was standing behind Lily, her body pressed against her mother’s back and her arms around Lily’s neck. Lily was lightly holding on to Tash’s elbows, keeping her daughter close.
“No pink, doll baby,” Lily said softly then bent her head to kiss a spot just above Natasha’s wrist and at this sight Nate felt a warmth seep through him, starting in his gut and emanating upward.
“Grey. A nice, soft, dove grey,” Laura suggested, “no one ever uses grey.”
“What are you talking about?” Victor sat next to Laura on Lily’s green chaise longue.
“Wedding colours,” Maxine answered. “Fazire and I are agreed on purple. It’s the only colour that has more than one vote.”
“Purple isn’t very Lily, Maxie,” Laura put in.
“Dove grey is definitely not Lily,” Fazire stated firmly.
Nate leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms on his chest, surveying the scene with a vague sense of satisfaction.
Lily’s eyes lifted to him, they dropped to where he was lounging against the jamb and then back to his face. Then he was arrested when he saw a secret, intimate smile play at the corners of her mouth before she looked away.
“It’s Lily’s wedding, she should pick the colour,” Victor noted logically.
“Lily, can I speak to you privately?” Nate cut in to the discussion, deciding to assuage his curiosity about her smile the answer behind which he very much wanted to know, rather than wait for a determination of what their wedding colours would be the answer to which he didn’t care about in the slightest.
Everyone turned to stare at him but without hesitation Lily kissed Natasha’s arm again, gently disengaged from their daughter, stood and followed him out of the room, down the hall and into their newly completed bedroom.
Their room she had decorated in rich indigo, sharp vermillion and deep violet, somehow managing to make it both comfortably masculine and softly feminine, a place in their home that Lily was able to make for them both together and separately.
Once he closed the door behind him, she slid her arms around his waist and leaned her weight into his torso, a habit she had formed the last several weeks. It was something she did often, in fact, most every time she was near him.
“What’s your favourite colour?” she asked, her head tilted back and that strange, knowing smile still visible on her face.
One of his arms went about her, the other hand cupped her jaw, his thumb running along her cheekbone.
New Lily, he saw, was firmly in place. She was a mixture of his sweet Lily, the Lily he had saved from the purse snatcher, the mature, but not lost nor broken Lily and something else altogether. She was cheerful, playful, teasing, loving and relaxed. She was also something different, something alluring and mysterious, as if she had a secret but not a bad one, a delicious one.