more firmly. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t more enthusiastic earlier. It was unexpected and I was just a bit surprised, that’s all. Congratulations. I hope—no, I know—you’ll both be very happy.’
‘Thanks and we will.’
Lily heard the elation and the hope in her sister’s voice and felt her heart squeeze. ‘I think I might be the teensiest bit jealous,’ she said. Because she could remember how Zoe was feeling all too well. The giddy happiness. The permanent grin. The excitement about the future...
‘Are you all right, Lil?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said, to her irritation her voice cracking a little.
Down the line came a sharp intake of breath and the sound of the heel of a hand hitting a forehead. ‘Oh, crap. Tonight’s your anniversary, isn’t it?’
What would have been her seventh. Not that she’d been counting. Until the clock had struck midnight and she’d been reminded of it at the most inconvenient moment imaginable. ‘It is, but it doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it does,’ said Zoe. ‘God, I’m sorry. And here’s me banging on about Dan and getting engaged and stuff. I really am quite spectacularly insensitive. I should have thought.’
Lily shrugged as if it didn’t bother her in the slightest. Which it didn’t. Generally. ‘Forget it.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Sure?’
‘Quite.’ She didn’t want to even think about it, let alone talk about it, although that was proving annoyingly difficult to achieve this evening.
‘OK, well, call me if you do. Any time. Really.’
Lily knew she meant it. Zoe had been a rock following the divorce, and looking back Lily didn’t know how she would have got through it without her. ‘Thanks. I will.’
‘Look, I’d better go. It’s late and you have an early flight.’
‘It is and I do.’ A smile spread across her face at the thought of the week’s holiday she’d booked following the week of work she had to do first. It would be the first holiday she’d had in ages and she couldn’t wait. ‘And shouldn’t you be snuggling up to Dan instead of calling me?’
‘Plenty of time for that later, I hope. Anyway, he’s gone to get our coats and I wanted you to be the first to know.’
Lily’s smile deepened. ‘Thanks. You do realise that the second I get back I’ll be grilling you for details?’
‘You might regret saying that.’
‘Never. I want to hear every single—’
The ring that reverberated through the silence of the house cut off her sentence and made her jump.
‘What’s that?’ asked Zoe.
‘Someone at the door,’ she said, her smile fading and her heart sinking a little at the thought of who it might be. ‘I should go.’
‘Are you sure you ought to be answering it this late?’ said Zoe, sounding like the older sister she was. ‘I mean, I know there are first-footers and whatnot around, but you are on your own and it is well past midnight.’
‘Don’t worry, it’ll probably be Nick,’ said Lily, despondently pushing herself off the counter and heading into the hall. ‘He left his scarf.’ She’d texted him to say she’d put it in the post, but maybe, despite the disastrous outcome of the evening, he didn’t want to have to wait that long and had decided returning to pick it up was a risk worth taking.
‘Who’s Nick?’
At the interest in Zoe’s voice, Lily inwardly cringed because Nick was history, that was what he was. Unfortunately.
Earlier, however, he’d been the guy she’d invited over for dinner. Nick was an interesting, intelligent, entertaining, good-looking man who made her laugh, and even though they’d only been on three dates she’d been ready to take things to the next level. Had wanted to take things to the next level, because from what she knew about him so far he seemed pretty much perfect: in addition to his favourable personality and looks, he didn’t want children, he didn’t make her pulse race and didn’t appear to have any problem with communicating.
In her book those last few qualities especially made him an ideal future partner, hence the invitation to spend New Year’s Eve with her.
The early part of the evening had gone swimmingly, and exactly according to plan. Nick had turned up on the dot of nine bearing a bottle of champagne and a warm smile that had turned even warmer when Lily had presented him with a deliberately lavish designed-to-seduce menu of four courses, vintage champagne and handmade chocolates.
Over the table and the next couple of hours they’d chatted easily and flirted outrageously, and things had been looking promising. Then they’d moved to the sofa in her sitting room to have coffee and chocolates in front of the roaring fire and at midnight he’d leaned forwards to kiss her.
And that was when everything had gone wrong.
The clock had been striking twelve and as Nick had drawn closer and closer she’d been suddenly and totally unexpectedly hit by a snapshot of her wedding day.
She hadn’t thought about it for years, but around the sixth chime the image of her and Kit wrapped in each other’s arms on the dance floor and kissing as they wished each other a happy new year was there flashing in her head as clearly as if it had happened yesterday.
The image had been deeply unwelcome—and not only because it couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient moment—and she’d tried to blink it away. So much so that Nick had eventually pulled back a fraction and asked her if she had something in her eye.
At that she’d stopped blinking, which hadn’t been working anyway, and instead had told herself to ignore the memory and keep her focus one hundred per cent on the man next to her, who was leaning in once again for a kiss.
She’d studied his eyes wondering exactly what shade of green they could be described as, run her hands through his fair hair and then lowered her gaze to his mouth, but that hadn’t worked either because within seconds she’d found herself imagining she was looking into the dark chocolate-brown eyes of her ex-husband, running her hands through his thick dark hair and kissing his mouth.
Then a bolt of desire had shot through her, her bones had begun to dissolve and her stomach had started to melt while her heart rate doubled.
Deeply unsettled by her body’s behaviour, because first she was pretty sure the desire had nothing to do with Nick and second she’d spent the last five years deliberately avoiding that sort of head-screwing stuff and thus was not happy to feel it now, she hadn’t been able to help jerking back a moment before Nick’s lips touched hers.
Clearly and justifiably surprised, he’d sat back and frowned and asked what was up. She’d been so confused and disturbed by what was going on that Lily hadn’t been able to do more than mutter an apology and something about having an early start.
Nick had said that in that case he ought to be making a move, and it was hard to say who was more startled when she jumped to her feet and thrust his coat into his hand practically before he’d finished speaking.
He’d left, sans the scarf, which in her haste to bustle him out had been overlooked, and she hadn’t been expecting to see him again. Now it seemed she would, and what a way to round off New Year’s Eve that was going to be.
‘Never mind,’ she muttered, because there was no point in Zoe being interested in who Nick was when she’d so well and truly screwed this evening and a potentially perfectly decent relationship up.
Zoe huffed. ‘Never mind? That’s all I’m getting?’
‘Yup.’
‘Hmm.