“Unless you pass out on me again. Then I get to nag.”
A little smile flickered over her pretty mouth. “Okay.”
Alex jumped out and went around to help his date out of the car.
~oOo~
After a dinner they spent avoiding too much personal talk and instead focused on making up stories about their fellow diners—a game Lia was ridiculously good at, building deep, fascinating stories for each person they landed on—and in which she ate a small salad and most of a slice of margherita pizza, Alex drove them to the Quiet Cove lighthouse.
He parked the GTO on the small paved lot and looked over at Lia. She’d hunched forward and was looking up at the white tower of the lighthouse.
As lighthouses went, it wasn’t anything special—pretty much like any other New England version, and quaint for that, but unless you were a tourist, it was just a thing you saw every day.
“Have you ever been up in there?” he asked.
“Inside? No. I didn’t think people were allowed in there.”
“Not the public, no. But my grandpa was the last lighthouse keeper before they automated it, and I still have his key. They’ve never changed the locks. All lighthouses are almost obsolete these days, with GPS doing the heavy lifting of navigation, but this one still gets put to work in bad weather. You want to go up?”
He had no idea if this was a good idea for a date. He’d intended to take her to a nice dinner, like you were supposed to do on a date, but there was her food thing he wasn’t allowed to talk about anymore. A fancy restaurant had seemed like too much pressure on them both, considering.
“Sure, yeah,” she answered.
“It’s pretty cool. You can see the city from the top.”
He helped her from the car and took her hand.
The walkway around the lighthouse had fallen into disrepair, and Lia caught a rough piece of wood on the heel of a boot and stumbled. She caught herself gracefully, but Alex reacted out of reflex and wrapped his arm around her waist. It was the closest they’d been since Monday afternoon, and the feel of her body against his ignited bright lights all around those memories.
For a minute, they stood there, outside the door, face to face.
A week ago, Alex would never had thought he’d be on a date with Lia Pagano. He wasn’t worthy of her, and he recognized that his life would hang in the balance if he’d tried to be with her. Even now, with her father’s grudging blessing, he knew there was risk here. If they didn’t work out—if something happened and he wanted it to end, if he hurt her, he would pay. Her father’s threat had not been empty.
But he couldn’t imagine hurting her. She might wake up and see he was just a grunt who’d had to run errands for bookies and shylocks to help his mother pay the bills, who’d gone deeper into that world when he’d lost the dream of going to college. Or she’d chase her own dream someday and run off to New York or Los Angeles. Or she’d simply find somebody more worthwhile to be with. He could see her leaving him lost and broken, but he couldn’t imagine hurting her.
He’d had a few girlfriends in his life, and he’d always been the one to reach the end of the line first and break up. But Lia was different. She was deeper. And that sadness lurking behind her brilliant eyes hooked him hard. The little girl standing a step off on her own.
He told her father she was worth it. What he hadn’t told him was that he’d been half in love with her before he’d ever kissed her.
“What are you thinking?” she asked with a fragile smile—and then winced. “God, that’s such a cliché. Never mind. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
“I was thinking that I’m lucky to be here with you.”
Her smile gained strength. “Me too.”
He began to lean toward her, to kiss her for the first time since her apartment, but just then a brisk autumn sea breeze kicked up between them. Lia’s hair blew across her face and the chill cut through their clothes.
“Let’s go in.”
~oOo~
The smell inside the generally disused lighthouse was like an attic—musty and dry, a little bit of rot—with an undercurrent of machine oil.
“Oh, it’s like a little house in here,” Lia said after Alex flicked on a desk lamp.
She was right. Though the trappings of any person’s presence