Lee dropped me by Fortnum’s, kissing me quickly before he took off in his Crossfire. I watched him go and tried to shut down my mind.
I failed.
I was trying not to think of the night before or that morning. I had a feeling of definitive joy mixed with complete and total fear. It was sinking into my brain that Lee told Kitty Sue we were together not because it was what she wanted to hear or because it got us out of a tight jam being caught in a clinch, but instead, because we were.
Together that was.
Liam Nightingale and India Savage, an item.
There was evidence that Andrea was right, he was serious.
Oh. My. God.
I put out a sign, closing Fortnum’s for the weekend, then walked home.
It was cool and comfortable in my house but it felt like it had been a week since I’d been home, rather than just a night.
In an effort not to think about Lee, I put the water on to boil for the macaroni, opened the backdoor to let in the non-existent breeze and checked my voicemail.
Seventeen messages.
Of course, it had been several days since I checked my mail but seventeen messages was an all time high. I listened to the messages as I got out the ingredients for my salad, thinking most of the messages would be Duke and Rosie sightings.
I was wrong.
The news had spread that Lee and I were together and every girlfriend I’d ever had (even some who had moved out of town and one who lived in England) felt it necessary to phone and get the lowdown first hand. Both Marianne and Andrea had called (Marianne twice), demanding updates.
For women far and wide who knew him, hooking up with Lee was a hot news item. Lee was the Holy Grail of boyfriend-dom. Especially since it was me, who had been on the sacred quest for many long, fruitless years. They all wanted the facts, all the facts.
If I but breathed a word of what it actually was like to kiss Lee, be held by Lee, or, dear Lord, what Lee looked like naked, I might cause a riot, even a war. I might have to arm myself and fight them all back lest Lee be torn limb-from-limb.
It was for the better health of the female population and peace in the land that I kept my mouth shut.
Of course, I had kinda told Andrea but I’d kept Andrea’s Richie Sambora secret, she’d keep my Lee secret, no sweat.
I made a pot of strong coffee and started cutting up pickles and onions and I let my mind wander.
Lee had made it pretty clear that I meant something to him and this was the cause of the joy that I couldn’t quite tamp down. He didn’t like me thinking I was a quick f**k, he didn’t like me crying, he didn’t like me trembling and he really didn’t like it when Terrible Teddy punched me in the face.
I shivered a little bit at what might have happened to Teddy if Lee’s boys had picked him up as Lee ordered.
Which brought me to the subject of just who Lee was. He said I didn’t have a f**king clue and at the rate he’d surprised me the last couple of days, I was thinking he was right.
I ran down the facts.
I thought Lee thought of me as his little sister. That obviously was not the case.
Lee had a workforce, people he employed, at least two of them, three if you counted Judy, the housekeeper. There were likely more. This meant responsibility and dependability. This meant people counted on him to keep them paid so they could put food on their table and roofs over their heads. This meant that somewhere along the line, Lee had become disturbingly grown up.
I, on the other hand, was avoiding growing up. My grandmother never grew up. I remembered many a time when my grandfather said to my grandmother, “Ellen, some day you’re gonna have to grow up.” And Gram would always say, “Why would I do a fool thing like that?”
I agreed with my grandmother, growing up didn’t sound like much fun. Growing up meant diaper bags, ironing your clothes and balancing your checkbook. That seemed really boring and I was avoiding it.
Then, there was the fact that Lee seemed to be a little bit better at this relationship stuff than I was. It had only been a couple of days but he talked casually about going out to dinner or when he’d pick me up from the store. He seemed pretty comfortable with me in his bed, in his house, my clothes in his drawers, my toothbrush next to his.
How this could be when Lee went through women like water was beyond me.
Granted, the longest relationship I’d had lasted eight months but there was a reason for that, none of the guys were Lee.