Three Wishes(71)
Author: Kristen Ashley

“Do you want some coffee?” Victor pointed to a silver service and Lily nodded.

“I’d kill for some coffee,” she answered and Victor moved to get her a cup. “Two sugars and milk,” she told him.

“I’m not surprised you like it sweet,” Victor mumbled to himself as he poured her a cup. “Laura made it, so you don’t have to worry, it tastes good. You just missed her. She left not five minutes ago.”

He offered her the cup and Lily took it.

“Please thank her for me, for what she did yesterday, for the clothes.” She put her arm out to show him her outfit. “If she gets me the receipts, I’ll pay –”

“Rubbish,” he snapped and she tensed immediately, her eyes flying to Nate who, she noted, regardless that he was on the phone, was watching her so closely she couldn’t imagine he heard a word that was said by the person on the line.

She moved her gaze back to Victor and she just stopped herself from taking a step back at the intensity she saw in his eyes.

“We owe you more than a pretty skirt,” he was saying.

“I’m sorry?”

“Jeff, Danielle… me. We owe you more than some bits of fabric.” Lily held her breath at his words and he lifted his hands in a gesture of agitated frustration then he spoke with surprising bluntness. “How do you go about paying a girl back for eight years of her life, marking her with bruises?” He was still intense but seemed, underneath it, lost and uncertain.

She was shocked at his honesty, shocked and touched.

“Victor…” She moved toward him, responding to the “lost and uncertain” bit and without taking a sip, she set her coffee back on the table.

She was only feet away from him when Victor announced, “I disowned them.”

At these words, Lily froze. Then she breathed, “What?”

“Jeff and Danielle, cut them off without a penny. The wills are already changed, Nate, you and Natasha inherit everything.”

Lily blinked. “But they’re your children,” she protested, forgetting, for that moment, how truly hideous they both had acted, taking her note, not telling Nate her parents had died, telling Lily Nate was dead. This was not the behaviour of kind, good people.

But disowning them?

Sarah had always threatened to disown Lily or Becky or Will, depending on who angered her but it was always an empty threat and she didn’t have much to give anyway, not like the Roberts did.

But to go so far as do it?

“Yes,” Victor replied firmly, “they are my children and for that reason they have whatever’s left in their trust funds and I’ve left them to their lives each with a good education to make something of themselves, finally.”

Lily took another step forward. “I hope you left the door open, just a crack, in case they’re sorry and they come back,” she said softly and hesitantly she put her hand lightly on his arm.

He looked at his arm where her hand rested and then at her. The intensity drained from his eyes and the Victor she knew replaced it.

“You have a kind heart, Lily,” he told her quietly. “I’ll take them back only if they convince you and Nathaniel to forgive them. Not before and if you don’t, not ever.”

She squeezed his arm and moved into him another several inches. “Laura?”

Victor put his hand over hers on his arm. “She agrees.”

Lily closed her eyes as the pain of another mother ran through her.

She opened them again and said, “It had to cost her.”

Then he said something strange, something that made Lily immensely curious, scared her out of her wits and, most importantly, it rocked her to her core. He said it in a low, quiet voice that was meant not to be heard outside their tête-à-tête.

“Nathaniel had suffered enough in his life. He didn’t need to suffer the last eight years. Laura knew that and I know it too. He’s our son, they hurt him, what were we meant to do?”

For the briefest second she thought it was a statement in the guise of a question but then she realised he expected her to answer. To tell him she approved, to give him other guidance or show him another way.

She shook her head and because her answer was unworthy, she turned into him and closed her arms around his shoulders, enfolding him in a hug.

She closed her eyes tightly and whispered in his ear, “I don’t know what to say.”

His arms came around to embrace her and there was violence in it, an affection so strong, it took her breath away.

An affection and intensity that was just like her father’s.

“Just be happy,” he mumbled into her ear, his voice shaking with emotion and at the sound of it, the feel of his embrace, she burst out crying. She wished she hadn’t but it was all too much, she couldn’t help herself.

So lost was she in her emotion, she barely registered it when Victor turned her into Nate’s arms and she cried into the hard wall of his chest. Cried for her gullibility, cried that she’d believed Jeff and Danielle, cried for what they all lost, including Laura and Victor, cried for what it cost them and cried for, well, everything.

Finally, when she’d spent her tears, she arched back against Nate’s arm and she saw him take something from Victor and then he handed her a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes but he still lifted a hand to slide his thumb along her cheekbone.

“All right now?” he asked in a gentle voice and she nodded.

After nodding, she contradictorily shook her head and his dark eyes flickered with worry.

“I’m hungry,” she admitted on a trembling smile.

She watched as he grinned, the concern in his eyes fled and he bent his head and brushed his beautiful, smiling lips against hers.

“I’ll take you to get something to eat and then to the neurologist,” he told her and broke away.

“Let me fix my face.” She began to turn from them but stopped, hesitated and then leaned in to kiss Victor on the cheek. This startled a smile from the older man and it was not in any way tentative.

Lily felt, inexplicably, like an important piece of her life, thought lost and left gaping, had been put back, snug and comforting, into place.

Then she hurried from the room as she heard Nate ask, “Are you okay here?”

Victor replied, “Yes.”

“You know what to do?”

And then Lily was out of earshot, but she wasn’t listening anyway.

The words, Nathaniel had suffered enough, were ringing in her ears.

* * * * *