when he got her to forget everything else and just be in the moment with him, when she let what they were doing fill every corner of her mind, there was literally nothing better in his life.
In just a few short weeks, the lighthouse had become their home away from home. He figured they would get caught there sooner or later. For one thing, they’d sort of settled in lately, leaving stuff behind, so when the next site check happened, the lock would probably get changed, at least. Or it would eventually get too damn cold without heat. They were already near the middle of November, and a New England winter was not exactly tropical.
But for now, they had this little fairy-tale cottage setup, and Alex was frankly resentful when he couldn’t get her there and get her clothes off.
She gazed up at him now, and he saw her try to sort out what she’d overheard, and his assurance, grab hold of one and set the other aside.
He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed each one. The bracelet he’d given her for her birthday slid down her arm. She wore it all the time. “I won’t make you cry, Lia. I promise.”
She smiled—so sweet—and let him pull her close for a kiss.
~oOo~
Dinner went well. As if they were in fact dining with royalty, his mother had set a pretty table with the best family heirloom stuff. Alex put some effort into the presentation of the food, plating each person’s meal in the kitchen, with sprigs of parsley, cherry tomatoes, and curls of parmesan.
Lia remarked sweetly on the table and the food. Alex was pleased to see she obviously truly liked the meal he’d made her—she ate a whole chicken breast and a helping of green beans, and she even nibbled at the piece of garlic bread Alex’s mother set on her plate without asking.
Alex’s mother—who was actually a very nice person and worked hard to make up for what Lia had overheard—used the sharply-honed conversational skills of a hairdresser to keep a lively, lighthearted chat going, just the right balance of questions, stories, and gossip so that everyone was interested and no one felt on the spot.
Lia was a delight, too. Alex thought he saw her put on ‘pleasant dinner guest’ as if it were a role to play, but after a while, she lost herself in the conversation and was just the girl he knew and really liked.
When, about halfway through the meal, his mother told Lia to call her Carla and not Mrs. Di Pietro, Alex knew she’d been won over.
Afterward, his mom shooed them from doing any cleanup, so Alex took Lia into the living room, meaning to sit and talk for a bit and not be rude and leave while his mother was washing dishes.
But she stood before the sofa and studied the photos on the wall. She’d noticed them earlier, when he’d first brought her in, but then there’d been the whirl of meeting his mother and whatever, and she hadn’t lingered. She did now.
He’d examined her family gallery, too, that night he’d picked her up for her first date. It was interesting to see what images a family chose to memorialize, and the story they told about who they were.
She pointed to an old photo of a man, a woman, and a little girl, standing in front of the lighthouse. It was focused on the family more than the background, so it was taken too close to the lighthouse to show what it was. It just looked like any old building, unless you knew what you were looking at.
“Is that your grandparents and mom?”
“Yep, that’s right.”
“There’s a lot of pictures of you and your grandpa. Your dad was never around?”
“Not really. He worked a lot.” He’d made air quotes around the words ‘worked a lot.’ Lia frowned and cocked her head..
They hadn’t talked about childhood stuff much yet, and Alex didn’t like to talk about his father, but that was what couples did at the beginning, right? Got to know each other—who they were and how they got to be that way.
Honestly, he hadn’t ever gotten that deep with a girl before. Maybe that was why he’d always been bored after a few weeks or a couple months.
So, to Lia, he explained. “We thought he was working, and I guess some of the time he was. But the truth was, he had another family, with kids and everything. Three kids, the oldest