Page 17 of Friends Who Fake It

“Ah, yes, but not like my mother’s,” Willow said with a lift of her shoulders. “She was hired to help care for me,” she said. “Meredith had taken a gap year from university, not sure if she wanted to finish her degree. Her parents mentioned it to Baxter, and then, there she was, in our house, looking after a four-year-old whose whole world had been plunged into grief by the sudden, inexplicable loss of her mother.”

Willow was glad for the interruption of the coffees arriving, because it gave her a chance to blink quickly, surreptitiously forcing away the unexpected—and unwanted—moisture that had built in her eyes.

“She’s hard on me,” Willow continued, “because she wants to show the world that she’s raised me as my mother would have wanted. I sort of understand it.”

His dark, moody eyes rested on her face, scanning her features for so long she forgot the thread of their conversation and lost herself in the depths of his gaze instead, in the flecked brown tones of his eyes, in the way they shifted and moved. Her hands trembled a little as she reached for her coffee, lifting it towards her lips and taking a quick sip.

“Good coffee,” she murmured, self-conscious because he was still staring at her in the way he had.

“Do you think this is how your mother would have wanted you to be raised?” he asked, finally.

Willow’s heart twisted. “Who can say?”

“Your father, for one.”

“You’ve met my father, haven’t you?” she joked. “I mean, I love him, but he’s pretty laid back. Meredith stepped into a role he needed filled—he wanted a wife and mother, and there she was. I don’t know if he even notices that she has a certain…quality to her.”

“Has she always been like this with you?”

Willow laughed then, a soft sound of incredulity. “I’m sorry, it’s just—yes, of course. It’s just who she is.”

“But not with the twins,” he reminded her.

She bit into her lower lip, the pain of that something she’d lived with for a long time. Knowing that she didn’t belong. That she wasn’t as highly valued. That she had to be utterly perfect, all the time, or she risked not being part of their family. Feeling that her connection was tenuous and transient.

“Do you mind if we change the subject?” she asked softly, taking another sip of her coffee.

Francesco’s eyes rested on her face for a beat and then dropped to her hands, which were still slightly unsteady, as they replaced the cup in the saucer.

“Certamente.Tell me about your lover.”

It was such an unexpected statement that she almost spat her coffee. “My lover?”

“This man you’ve been dating.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed bright pink at the vivid description of Tom as herlover.It was just so physical. So descriptive. Beneath the table, she shifted unconsciously, but the motion brushed their legs together in a different way, the friction sending little darts of heat and awareness through Willow’s whole body.

“Tom,” she said, slowly, thoughtfully, not sure if this conversation was any better.

Francesco raised a brow, almost skeptically, which made her lips twitch with a smile.

“He’s great,” she said, trying to think of ways to describe the other man. “Kind, and smart, and thoughtful. He’s a painter.”

“An artist?”

“No,” she shook her head a little. “A house painter. He took over from his father a few years ago,” she added, defensively, but Francesco only nodded, no hint of judgement in his expression.

“How did you meet?”

“In a bookstore,” she said. “He was buying a gift for his sister; I was knee deep in the romance section. I helped him find a book, he asked to buy me dinner to say thanks.”

Something sparked in Francesco’s eyes. “I see. And yet you are not currently together?”

She shook her head. “We broke up a few months ago.”

“For what reason?”

“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

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