Page 101 of Tempting as Sin
It was Monday, Lily’s day off, and the fourth day Bailey had been with her. The two of them, Rafe, and Chuck were hiking up a future ski trail at the edge of Lily’s land, then reaching a gate that Lily unlocked and held open for the others before locking it again behind her.
“From here on,” she told Rafe and Bailey, because Chuck didn’t care, “we’re on Forest Service land. And we’re hoping somebody didn’t find my secret huckleberry stash over the weekend.” She wondered if she should have given Bailey her own bear spray. Surely not. She and Rafe each had a can clipped to their backpacks. The problem with bear spray was that it was basically tear gas. You really, really didn’t want to spray it by accident.
“But people are still going to ski on it,” Bailey said. “How can it belong to the ski resort if it belongs to the Forest Service? The Forest Service is, like, the government. That’s why they have green trucks. The government doesn’t have ski resorts. The government is just rules and things.”
“The government has green trucks?” Rafe asked.
Bailey gave a little huff that showed how far she’d come in four days. “Green is for trees. And money is green, and that’s from the government.”
“Ah,” Rafe said. “Gotcha.”
“People lease from the Forest Service,” Lily explained to Bailey. “That’s what Brett Hunter is doing. He pays them to use the land.”
“He must be really rich,” Bailey said.
“I imagine he is,” Lily said.
Bailey appeared to consider that. “Is he married to anybody?”
“No,” Lily said. “He’s available. A little old for you, though.”
Bailey said, “Maybe you could marry him. My mom’s friend Terri was always talking about marrying somebody really rich, so she could just have pedicures and go shopping all day.”
“Oi,” Rafe said. “Excuse me? Could be I’d object to Lily marrying Brett Hunter.”
“Oh, right,” Bailey said. “Like in that movie you were in. The one where you only killed two people.” She and Lily had been catching up on their Rafe Blackstone filmography, at least the ones that weren’t rated R, which Rafe had good-naturedly put up with. “At the end, when the bride walks down the ramp in the church and everybody’s standing up there, and the guy says, “If anybody has, uh…”
Rafe filled in, his voice sonorous. “If any person can show any lawful impediment why these two persons may not be joined in matrimony, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
“You don’t just know your own lines,” Lily said, “you know everybody else’s.”
“Good memory,” Rafe said. “Not as good as Martin’s, of course.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said, “and then you came in the door from the back and everybody turned around, because they were all wearing fancy wedding clothes and you were wearing your jeans still. And you said, ‘I have an impediment. I love Rachel, and she should be marrying me.’ And then you looked at her really hard, and she dropped her flowers and ran up the ramp to you and you picked her up and kissed her.”
“Made an impression, eh,” Rafe said. “Well, we’ll hope it made an impression on Lily, too.” He turned around on the path, walking backwards uphill like it was easy to do, not one bit out of breath, and said, “Fair warning, Lily. You try to marry Hunter, and I’ll turn up in church and embarrass you.”
She laughed, and he grinned, then turned around again. “Also,” he told Bailey, “I don’t want to be that cocky Aussie, but I’m a wee bit rich as well.”
“You are?”
“You don’t have to sound so skeptical,” he complained.
“But your house is really small,” Bailey said. “People who have one bathroom aren’t rich. You have to have lots of bathrooms to be rich. Also, Brett Hunter wears fancy clothes. You always wear jeans. Jeans aren’t rich either.”
Rafe sighed. “I can see I’ll have to convince you. Could be you’ll have to come visit my actual houses and see for yourself. Possibly in a stretch limo.”
Bailey giggled. Rafedidbring out the girl in her, but then, Rafe brought out the girl in everybody. Rafe was one hundred percent estrogen surge. “You don’t have a stretch limo,” Bailey told him.
“Nobodyhasone,” he said. “Youhireone. If you’re a wanker.”
“What’s a wanker?” Bailey asked.
“It’s a bad word,” Rafe said. “Never mind.”
Lily smiled, said nothing, and didn’t think about Rafe leaving for New Mexico in two days to start his film. He was coming back every other weekend, he’d informed her already. She’d hold onto that and not think about what would happen after shooting was done. About the impossibility of living in Malibu again, even with Rafe, of leaving her goats, her shop, herplace.
No need to look so far ahead, she reminded herself. Life wasn’t the movies, and things didn’t always wrap up in a bow. Sometimes, your heart chose, and hers had chosen him a long time ago. Future pain or not. Stretch limo or not.
