Three Wishes(60)
Author: Kristen Ashley

“What are you talking about, sweetling?” Maxine asked.

“Can’t you see it? Look! Behind Mummy’s car. Daddy had it delivered today, it’s a present for Mummy. The keys are in the house.”

Lily’s eyes shifted behind her car and she saw a sleek, handsome, shining, sporty, blue Mercedes convertible.

“Dearie me,” Maxine exhaled in an unusual understatement.

Lily felt as if she’d been running for miles flat out then all of a sudden she slammed into a wall. Her breath, quite suddenly, had been knocked right out of her.

“Dearie me, dearie me, dearie me,” Tash sing-songed and danced to the car, threw her arms wide and then she actually hugged it. Just as quickly, she turned back to them and asked, “Isn’t Daddy the greatest?”

Lily was saved from answering when she heard the phone ring.

“I shall get that,” Fazire grumbled from behind them.

Lily was still recovering from the car as she followed Tash who was skipping delightedly into the house in front of them.

“What are you going to do? Maxine asked, her voice both concerned and filled with awe.

“I don’t know,” Lily answered and indeed she didn’t. She couldn’t return the car and she had to use it. Natasha had hugged the damned car, for God’s sake.

“It’s for you.” Fazire was walking down the hall, holding the phone between his thumb and forefinger like it was a putrid piece of rubbish. He handed it to her and Lily, still stunned by the car, put it to her ear.

“Hello,” she greeted.

“Lily.” It was Nate and his velvet voice saying her name caused her to shudder.

She didn’t need this right now. She could barely string two thoughts together, she certainly couldn’t go head-to-head with Nate.

“Nate,” she replied.

Conflicting emotions tore through her. She didn’t know whether she should rail at him for he was using her daughter against her, there was no denying that. Or whether she should thank him because the bedroom was fantastic, the mattress firm but comfortable and so much better than her old one it wasn’t comparable, and Lord knew, she needed a car, though a Mercedes was definitely over-the-top. Or lastly, whether she should tell him to call Alistair if he wanted to speak to her and then hang up on him which was what she should do, she knew this because Alistair told her more than once, in fact at least a dozen times.

She thought he was calling to ask if she got the furniture, the car, maybe to have a bit of a chat.

She was wrong.

He called her because he was angry. His voice was rumbling with it and she could practically feel it through the phone line.

“Your solicitor told mine that you’ve put the seven million in trust for Natasha.”

She hesitated. Why this would make him angry, she could not fathom.

“Of course,” she muttered.

“I’ll take care of Natasha. I’ve already set up a trust for her,” he bit out.

Lily stood in her hall, her lovely fairy lights twinkling up the stairs.

She didn’t see this. Already stunned, she became immobile with shock. Her daughter, just over a week ago, had some clothes in her wardrobe, a decent amount of toys, a selection of expensive bears Maxine had given her and the love of three people.

Now she had two trust funds.

Lily had no chance to voice a reaction even if she’d been able to come up with one for Nate carried on.

“That money was for you,” he clipped.

“I…” she began, she hadn’t known it was for her. She couldn’t even believe it was for her. She wouldn’t begin to know what to do with seven million pounds.

“Release it from the fund,” he commanded.

Too astonished to think straight, she replied honestly, “I can’t. It’s impossible to touch until Tash comes of age and then only she can get to it.”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’ll have more transferred tomorrow.”

“No!” she cried instantly, horrified.

He ignored her outburst, “If you give that away, I’ll have more transferred.”

“Nate –”

“Do I make myself clear?” he demanded.

“I don’t want your money.” She was beginning to surface out of her stupor.

Really, what next? Was she going to come home to a personal jet parked on a floating runway in the Bristol Channel behind her house?

“Apparently I don’t, but I will,” Nate declared, this, Lily recognised immediately, was not a threat. It was a promise.

Without a word of good-bye, he hung up on her.

As promised, another seven million pounds (she called her bank, Maxine made her) was transferred into her bank account the next day.

“What are you going to do?” Maxine asked again that next evening as they were closing Flash and Dazzle.

“I don’t know,” Lily mumbled again, and still she didn’t even though she did.

“Sweetling –” Maxine said cautiously.

“I think I’m getting a headache.”

This was true. Although it wasn’t one of her migraines, she was definitely getting a headache. She felt badly using that ploy but she knew in her heart of hearts that Maxine wanted her settled and happy and not to be so alone anymore. And it helped that the person Lily would be doing that with was impossibly handsome, a romance novel hero come alive.

And at that moment, she couldn’t face the discussion.

At the mere thought of one of Lily’s headaches, Maxine backed off. “Get home, have yourself a nice bath and don’t think of any of this.”

Maxine kissed her cheek, got in her tiny, old Mini which she’d had painted pink and which she refused to part with even though it was a worse clunker than the Peugeot, and drove off.

Lily walked home and she tried not to think of “any of this”, but it was impossible.

As Maxine instructed, she had a bath. During her bath she allowed the thoughts and worries to crowd into her mind.

Then she made a decision. It took less time than she expected but then again, there wasn’t much to it.

Marry Nate or don’t marry Nate.

There were only two options and really only one, when you got down to it.

Fazire, who was living in a temporary fog of happiness that no further grand gesture had been made by Nate (he didn’t know about the money and Lily wasn’t about to tell him), made fish fingers and mushy peas for dinner, Tash’s favourite, though Lily detested it.

After dinner, Lily climbed to the top of the stairs to the unkempt room where they kept their computer. She’d had dreams, when she bought the house, of making that room her office and writing her bestselling novels there. It was at the back of the house and had a gorgeous view of the channel, the pier and Flat Holm and Steep Holm islands and, of course, the coastline of Wales.