hey’re here,” Jane called.

“Make them wait,” Alistair Hobbs replied.

Lily was looking out the window of Alistair’s conference room and ignoring this exchange between Alistair and his assistant, Jane.

Alistair Hobbs was a friend of a friend of Maxine’s. He was tall, slender and had ginger hair and eyebrows. In a vague way (as usual when it came to these sorts of things), Lily noted he was quite good-looking. Lily had met him at Maxine’s store, seen him in the market several times and they’d chatted. He’d asked her out once but she’d said no.

Lily never went out, ever. She didn’t have the time or the inclination.

Alistair didn’t seem to take offense to this. Regardless of his profession, he was a very nice man.

Maxine took offense to it, she thought Alistair was the bomb.

Now, as Lily was his client, it was a moot point. Alistair couldn’t ask her out again because he was her lawyer.

Or, at least he couldn’t ask her out for awhile.

She couldn’t afford him, of course. She couldn’t afford much of anything. She certainly couldn’t afford to go head-to-head with Nate and the entire Roberts Clan in a custody battle for Tash. Lily had no idea how rich they were but she knew from their homes, cars and clothes they had a lot more money than she did.

Lily, Fazire and Tash had no sooner got home to Somerset when Victor was good at his word and she received a letter, hand-delivered, from their attorneys.

Nate, alive and well, kicking and breathing and apparently angry, was going for full custody although Lily had no idea why Nate should be angry. Lily didn’t get her sister, had she had one, to brush off her unwanted boyfriend by telling him she was dead.

The letter said he wanted full and complete custody.

Nate was going to try and take her daughter from her.

Lily couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe Nate was even alive much less he would do something so vicious and cruel.

Granted, he had a daughter he knew nothing about for the first seven years of her life but that wasn’t Lily’s fault.

It had been only days since that humiliating scene in the Roberts’ entryway with Victor. The living, breathing Nate staring on like… like… she didn’t know what it was like. Like she was a creepy crawly and he was watching Victor scrunch her under his shoe.

Lily couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t manage to put even two of her thoughts together much less the number of thoughts it would take to figure out this mess.

Why?

Why, why, why?

She closed her eyes.

She knew why.

He had been finished with her. Just as he’d finished with his girlfriend Georgia. One second an item and talk of an engagement ring. The next second they were over.

Lily had to admit she was surprised they’d lasted as long as they did. Lily was not exactly in Nate’s league. She was an inexperienced virgin for one. For another she wasn’t beautiful and slim. And another, she was a sheltered Indiana girl and not a droll, cosmopolitan sophisticate.

She must have gotten very boring, very quickly.

Well, obviously she had.

When he heard the story, Fazire had been enraged. He was beside himself and Fazire beside himself was a sight to see.

He channelled all his genie friends in hopes of a wayward wish so he could turn Nate, Victor and the entire Roberts family into vermin and he was going to do it, he assured her, floating barely inches from the ceiling.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, there weren’t any wayward wishes to be had. There never were, Lily’s family were the firsts in Genie History to hang on to their wishes and their genie.

And Lily wasn’t going to use her last wish for that.

She had bigger battles on her hands. Much bigger battles.

“Lily,” Alistair said softly.

Her eyes opened, her head shot up to look at him and he was smiling at her kindly.

“You know the plan?”

Lily nodded.

She knew the plan. She knew the plan but she hated the plan. She hated it with a passion.

But she’d do anything to keep Tash. Anything to keep her precious daughter.

Anything.

Alistair knew everything, her whole, sad, stupid, gullible story. Lily had told him every humiliating detail of her meeting with Nate and her life for the last eight years. Her difficult pregnancy; the bills; the state of her house when they’d moved there, not fit for Fazire and Lily much less a baby; the second jobs she had to get to put in decent wiring and plumbing, Lily herself doing most of the other work on the house; Lily’s saving up for Tash’s special school.

Everything.

When she was finished talking, Alistair stared at her a moment with a funny look on his face. Then he picked up a glass paperweight on his desk and threw it across the room. Lily wasn’t certain that was professional lawyer-type behaviour but she’d let it slide.

“Send them in,” Alistair called to his assistant and then turned back to Lily. “Don’t say anything, Lily. Just leave it to me.”

Lily nodded again.

She had thought about it in her rational moments, of which there were few, and she didn’t mind letting Nate have visitation rights though she wasn’t keen on Tash spending a great amount of time with Danielle or Victor or, indeed, Jeff. However, Tash needed a father and never expected to have one and didn’t even know she did have one… yet.

For Tash this would be a boon from the gods. Lily had been telling her daughter stories about Nate since she was born. Huge, lavish, adoring, heartsick stories that made Nate seem like any prince in any fairytale. Tash was going to be overjoyed when she heard Nate was alive. Tash thought Nate had been a superhero, the leader of the free world and a saint all rolled into one.

This was indeed a boon that neither of them ever expected. A boon that Lily would have wished for if Fazire would have done it, which, he informed her, he would not. Indeed, she did wish for it, prayed for it, begged for it, cried for it nearly every day for years and years.

When she’d seen Nate, standing, breathing, living, she thought every dream she had of his return from the dead had come real. It had been the most glorious moment of her life.

For about two seconds. Then it became every nightmare.

And then it got worse.

Now she was going to have to humiliate herself again. Have her whole sordid story and naive stupidity laid out for all to see.

All for Tash, her perfect, sweet, brilliant, beautiful Tash. Tash, who Lily had clung to in those dark days. Tash who looked just like Nate, a fact Lily used to think was a treasure, a precious gift. Tash, who was the only person besides Fazire (in his less annoying moments), who could truly make Lily smile anymore.

Tash was the only beautiful thing that had come out of eight, hard, dead years.

Alistair put his hand on her arm and squeezed reassuringly.

Lily winced carefully so he would not see her doing it. The deep, angry bruises that Victor had given her were still there. She did not tell Alistair about the bruises, after the paperweight incident she thought that omission was sensible.

“You don’t have to worry, we have them Lily,” he promised in a whisper.

“Hobbs,” a voice said from behind them and Lily turned her head to look.

Jane was leading in four men, two of them she knew.

She held her breath in surprise and fear.

Victor was there, wearing a face that was a mask of fury. And Victor’s fury was a scary thing, this she knew now all too well.

Nate was also there, wearing a well-tailored, unbelievably expensive-looking suit. He was no less tall, no less handsome, the years had only deepened his impossibly good looks until they were nearly unbearably good looks. He was looking at her, or more to the point at Alistair’s hand on her arm, with a look that could only be described as contempt.

If her heart had not already turned to stone, it would have at that look.

Instead, it pulverised.

It was then Lily became numb. Nothing worse could happen to her, not after losing her grandmother then both her parents then, she thought, Nate then her dreams of a bright future as a best-selling novelist, living with her dreamy romantic hero husband and creating a family together. Finally, Tash coming and it being so very hard after that. So, very, very hard.

Numb, she thought in a vague way, was a good way to be.

Alistair led her to her seat. Alistair had explained the drill. Jane would be courteously getting drinks, lulling them into a sense of security before Alistair unleashed his plan.

Automatically, Lily stated her preference for coffee to Jane and Lily was so removed from the scene, she was surprised when she was served her drink.

She didn’t touch it.

Alistair had arranged for the informal meeting to happen at his offices in Bristol. He’d been pleased to win that small battle but Lily didn’t care, though she was happy not to have the added expense of going to London.

She’d go to Sri Lanka if it meant keeping Tash.

Lily had dressed carefully in an outfit that Maxine bought her. Maxine had done a great deal in the eight years that had passed. She’d given Lily back her job. She’d taken care of Lily when she was recuperating after Tash’s birth. She held Lily’s hair back when she vomited in the throes of one of her excruciating migraines.

Lily owed Maxine a lot and more than just her lovely outfit.

It was a tan suit with a straight skirt that hit her just above the knees and had a deep slit up the back and a safari jacket belted at the waist. She wore a scarf pattered in tan and shocking orange jauntily tied at her throat (tied by Maxine who did everything jauntily). This was accompanied by a pair of tan, high-heeled pumps with a shock of patent-leather orange at the pointed toe.

“You’ll knock ‘em dead,” Maxine had told her upon looking at Lily in her suit.

Lily was too scared to care who she knocked. Fear was the only emotion she had anymore, fear and humiliation. The rest was just… dead. As dead as she thought Nate was. As dead as everything she ever felt for him.

And she had felt everything for him.

“Can we begin?” one of Nate’s solicitors was asking and Lily, who had been staring at her hands, felt her head come up as if it had a mind of its own (which, of course, it did, but normally Lily controlled it, now nearly everything in her life was out of her control).

She saw Nate coolly staring at her from across the table, again as if she was an insect and he was biologist getting ready to pin her to a board.

Strangely she had no reaction to this. She was beyond reacting.

He hadn’t said a word to her, not a single word.

This wasn’t unusual for Nate but perhaps he could have at least said a single word. Though, from the look in his eyes, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what that word might be.

Lily’s eyes swept down the table. His two solicitors sat side-by-side. Alistair said this was all just show but the fact that Lily could barely afford one and Nate could blithely bring two scared her socks off. Victor sat to Nate’s left and glowered at her with a hatred that eclipsed that of Danielle and even Laura who Lily would never have thought had it in her but apparently she did.

Lily decided to look back down at her hands. She figured that was her safest line of sight at the present moment.

“Firstly, I’d like to say thank you for accepting this informal meeting. We’re here to discuss a visitation schedule for Natasha Roberts McAllister Jacobs,” Alistair announced somewhat grandly.

At Tash’s full name being read out something immediately shifted in the room. Lily felt it but was too numb to register it. Instead, she lifted her head to watch Alistair as he spoke.

“We’re not here to discuss visitation. We’re here to discuss custody. As you know, Mr. McAllister wants full custody of the child,” Nate’s solicitor pointed out.

“Obviously my client isn’t warming to that idea,” Alistair retorted and Lily didn’t move her eyes from him.

“For seven years, since the girl’s birth, Ms. Jacobs kept knowledge of the child from that child’s father. My client obviously doesn’t warm to that idea,” Nate’s solicitor returned.

“She could hardly tell him she’d given birth when she thought he was dead,” Alistair parried swiftly.

Another shift came about the room and Lily’s head dropped again to stare at her manicure. She needed one, she decided distractedly. Of course she could never afford one but that didn’t change the fact that she needed one.

“That’s preposterous. It’s quite apparent that Mr. McAllister is alive as he’s sitting at this very table,” Nate’s solicitor shot back.

Alistair retorted smoothly and immediately, “Yes, of course, she knows that now but she only discovered that fact a few days ago.”

“This is an interesting defence,” Nate’s other lawyer decided at this point to throw in his lot and he did so sarcastically.

“I agree. It is most interesting,” Alistair commented absently all the while sorting through his papers lying on the table as if trying to find something. “Let me see. Yes,” his head came up, “here it is,” he said even though he wasn’t looking at a single sheet of paper.

Then he launched into “the plan”.

“Our story begins eight years ago when Ms. Jacobs was living in London with Mr. McAllister. However, she had to leave the country urgently due to a family emergency.”

“Considering the ‘he-was-dead’ defence, I’m sure this will be hugely entertaining.” Lily didn’t see it but she heard the scoffing behind Nate’s attorney’s tone, that would be attorney number two or Sarcastic Attorney. Her startled eyes moved to the man who, she noted distractedly, was staring at her with extreme distaste.

“Well, I’m not sure one would describe losing both of one’s parents in a plane crash as ‘entertaining’,” Alistair noted blandly.

It was at this comment that the room didn’t shift, it tilted on its axis and the tilt was caused by Nate. Lily felt it, felt it so surely that her eyes slid to him of their own accord.

He was no longer staring at her coolly, leaning back in his chair arrogantly. His face had paled, he’d leaned forward and he was staring at her anything but coolly. And the power of his intensity rocked the room.

Lily immediately looked away.

Alistair continued. “Ms. Jacobs informs me that the minute she heard the news, she tried frantically to get in touch with Mr. McAllister but no one was answering at his office. She left an urgent message with Mr. McAllister’s sister, a Ms. Danielle Roberts, to have Mr. McAllister’s mother return her call. However, Mrs. Laura Roberts did not return Ms. Jacobs’s call before Lily was forced to leave to catch her plane. Ms. Jacobs wrote and left a note but was assured by Mr. McAllister’s brother, a Mr. Jeffrey Roberts who had stopped by for a visit, that he would get the news to Mr. McAllister.”

“There was no note.” This was Victor, Lily knew, and she watched as Alistair turned his head to her in question at his stated fact.

Lily nodded once.

“There was a note,” Alistair affirmed stoutly.

“There was no goddamned note,” Victor snapped and Lily looked at him.

He, too, was white as a sheet and he didn’t look furious anymore. He looked upset and confused and in so being trying to bluster out of it.

Victor carried on. “And anyway, when she got back, she could have come to the house. We haven’t moved, we live in the same damn –”

“I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Roberts, for Lily did go to your home. She realised, while home in Indiana dealing with the business of her parents’ tragic death, that she was pregnant. From Indiana she called Mr. McAllister at his home and at his office on several occasions. His home phone was disconnected. The messages left at his office were not returned. When Ms. Jacobs came back to England to return to Mr. McAllister, she was informed he no longer lived at the flat in which she resided with him. She went immediately to your house and was told by your daughter that Mr. McAllister was dead.”

Lily’s eyes flicked to Nate to see his response to this news. He was definitely way beyond cool, composed and arrogant. Cool, composed and arrogant were all a fleeting memory.

“This is ridiculous. She could have come back. She could have talked to someone else. Why on earth would Danielle Roberts tell –” Nate’s attorney burst out.

“Why indeed?” Alistair broke in. “Nevertheless, it’s a moot point because Lily couldn’t come back. The pregnancy was complicated. Ms. Jacobs had difficulties and nearly lost the baby twice. She was not allowed to travel and forced to stay in bed for the last three months of her pregnancy.”

“After that –” the solicitor interrupted.

“After that, Lily was recuperating and then dealing with significant financial hardships. The birth was described to me by Lily and also by her obstetrician, who I spoke to myself yesterday. The doctor, in his own words, remembers what he describes as that ‘hideous day’ like it was yesterday. The labour, intense and excruciating, lasted for days. In the end, in extreme distress at the length of the labour, the baby nearly died. Lily did die. She was flatline for two minutes and thirty-eight –”

Alistair didn’t get the opportunity to finish his grand statement because Nate surged out of his chair so fast, it flew on its wheels and shot across the room, slamming into the wall.

“Mr. McAllister…” Alistair said warningly but Nate was coming swiftly around the table, coming at her.

At this sight, Lily, too, jumped out of her chair in a panic, her numbness not that complete, and backed away in self-defence as Nate came at her, came at her with purposeful, long strides. She backed up jerkily, one hand behind her, one hand in front, retreating until she hit the wall. Before she knew what he was about, his hard chest came up against her hand, pushing it back and his body pressed against hers.

Terrified and confused at this sudden change, she looked to the right and to the left, anywhere for escape, anywhere but at Nate.

And to her shock, his hands caught her face, resting one on either side, gently trying to force her to look into his impossibly dark eyes.

“I didn’t know,” he whispered and the absolute ache dripping from his first words said to her since she found out he was alive cut through her thin shield of numbness like a razor.

She attempted to pull her face free but his hands tightened.

“Lily, I didn’t know,” he repeated, and she caught his eyes and they were glittering dark with something that she couldn’t read, something hideously painful and she had to get away from it. Was desperate to get away from it. She needed to flee.

She tried to look over his shoulder but he was too tall, too close. Things were happening in the room, there was urgent talk, maybe even a tussle. But all she could see was Nate.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

She frantically shook her head against his hands.

“Lily, look at me.”

At his soft, gentle words, she couldn’t stop herself, she looked at him. She looked into his impossibly handsome face.

And then, for the first time since she knew he was alive, she spoke to him. She said the words she’d been saying in her head for days.

“You told me you’d never let me go,” she whispered but it was an accusation.

His eyes closed and the pain in them swept over his entire face and settled there like it would never, ever leave.

Then he shocked her again. He dropped his forehead to hers and kept his hands on her.

Something out of her control made her continue.

“You told me,” she said in a shaky voice, “you’d always take care of me.”

He opened his eyes and stared into hers. He was so close that if she moved the lower half of her face forward, less than an inch, she would have been kissing him.

“You didn’t take care of me,” she murmured, stating the obvious.

“Mr. McAllister, step away from my client,” Alistair demanded from somewhere close.

Nate didn’t move, not a single muscle.

“Mr. McAllister!” Alistair snapped.

“Let him be!” Victor shouted fiercely and then, “Let them be,” he said this last in a voice that, Lily noted dazedly, was utterly broken.

Alistair was not to be denied. “Mr. McAllister!”

Nate ignored him, his eyes drilling into hers.

She couldn’t bear it a second longer, she couldn’t shift moods this easily. Something was happening but she had no idea what it was. She had so little fight left in her and she had to concentrate. She wasn’t strong enough, in that moment with Nate’s hands on her, his warm body pressed against hers just like she’d been wishing for years, his forehead resting on hers. She simply couldn’t bear it.

“Nate,” Lily said softly, beseechingly, “let me go.”

He ignored her too, for a moment.

Then, just as abruptly as he pursued her, he did as he was asked and let her go.

And just as swiftly, he walked back to his chair, righted it to the table and sat down.

After a moment of stunned silence where everyone seemed immobile, the entire assemblage did the same though not nearly as quickly.

Nate watched Lily as she slowly, shakily walked back across the room and resumed the seat Alistair was holding for her.

“Are you quite all right?” Alistair asked once he’d also sat down and was leaning into her, peering at her, his own face beyond angry and she was glad there were no paperweights in the room or there would have been hell to pay.

She nodded, undone by the whole scene and wanting nothing more than to leave. To go back home, to Tash and Fazire, and recoup, recharge and fight some other day.

Worse still, her head was beginning to ache and she felt more than slightly queasy and she had the terrible feeling that a migraine was coming over her.

“Let’s just get this over with,” she begged, her voice so small it was tiny.

She had no idea her voice betrayed to the two men in the room she knew a very short time many years ago, one she had come to care about deeply, one she had adored more than life, that she was now just a mere shadow of the former Lily Jacobs.

At her words Alistair fully lost his temper and his head jerked around toward the others.

“Right. Then. I suppose after that scene I don’t have to go into detail about the financial situation all that left Ms. Jacobs in. There was not a great deal of wealth in her family, Lily had attended Oxford on a scholarship and had been working in pubs and shops since her arrival in England. Due to the pregnancy, she was unable to work, had a mortgage that went unpaid for months and was nearly thrown out of her home. She was not entitled to National Health Service so the birth and subsequent hospitalisation were all private and cost a fortune. She was forced, even though she didn’t wish it, to sell her family home in Indiana but death duties and a bad exchange rate meant that money was practically gone before it got to the country. She –”

Nate’s solicitor interrupted Alistair wearily, sensing they’d lost the upper hand they’d been so certain of when they’d entered the room. “Just tell us what you want.”

Alistair didn’t hesitate. “We want five hundred thousand pounds for back child maintenance for the last seven years. We want two thousand pounds a month starting now. Mr. McAllister can see his daughter one weekend a month, two weeks during summer holidays and alternating school holidays. Ms. Jacobs wants Natasha every Christmas. The first meeting of Mr. McAllister and Natasha will be supervised by either Maxine Grant or Lily’s long-time family friend, Fazire.”

Alistair was on a roll, he was asking for more than they agreed. If Lily wasn’t already wound up by all that had happened, she would have spun like a top at what he was currently demanding.

But he was interrupted.

“Give it to her.” This was Nate’s deep voice cutting in and Lily’s head jerked to him.

He was staring at her. Staring at her so intensely she felt his eyes like they were a physical touch on her skin.

“I’m sorry?” Alistair asked, nonplussed at being disturbed in his postulation.

“Give it to her. Have the money transferred to her account by the end of the day.” As he said this, Nate’s head moved to look at his solicitor and it was clear it was an order.

“But, Mr. McAllister –” his solicitor threw in.

“The five hundred thousand?” Alistair was, Lily saw, thrilled.

“A million,” Lily’s head jerked back to Nate and her mouth dropped open in shock.

“A million pounds?” Alistair was nearly bouncing in his chair.

“Yes, a million pounds…” Nate stated and Alistair was about to shoot to the moon when Nate continued, “for each year Natasha has been alive.”

Lily blinked, her shock so profound a stampede of buffaloes could have stormed through the room and she wouldn’t have moved. If Alistair had done a back flip out of his seat, Lily would not have been surprised.

“Seven million pounds?” Alistair was now, simply, agog. Lily didn’t know anyone who had seven million pounds much less could transfer it into another bank account “by the end of the day”.

“Yes,” Nate said flatly.

Lily couldn’t look at Nate, her eyes moved to Victor and he was staring at her in a way, in a way…

In the way he used to look at her.

She had no time to process Victor’s look as Alistair pressed, “Do you agree to the visitation schedule?”

“No,” Nate noted implacably.

Lily, already stunned, became so still a single touch would have sent a crack running through her body. She had known it was too good to be true.

“I’m sorry?” Alistair parroted his earlier question.

“I want full custody,” Nate declared.

It was Lily’s turn to shoot out of her chair. At his words, all the shock and numbness fled and the fight came crashing back into her.

“What?” she shrieked.

Nate rose too, albeit slowly. He faced her, his eyes looking directly into hers, the expression on his face carefully controlled.

“I want full custody of my daughter,” he told her calmly.

“You can’t have it!” Lily shouted, not at all calmly and forgetting her promise to Alistair not to say anything.

“She’s moving to London to live with me,” Nate stated.

“No!” Lily yelled.

Nate went on. “And you are too.”

“What?” This time it came out as a high-pitched scream.

“What?” Alistair shouted, also jumping up from his chair.

Victor, not to be left seated, also got up.

Eyes never leaving Lily, Nate announced, “You’re moving to London.”

“I am not,” Lily returned.

“You and Natasha are moving in with me. You and I are getting married in two months.”

“What?” Lily screamed again.

“This is insane,” Alistair threw in.

Nate’s gaze sliced to Alistair and he repeated, “Lily and I will be married. She and Natasha are moving to London, moving in with me.”

Lily leaned forward and put her hands on the table. This was too much, just too damned much. She’d had enough.

“You forget, I tried that before and it… did… not… work!” Lily flung at him.

Nate’s carefully controlled face flinched.

“Lily –” Victor said softly.

She interrupted whatever Victor was going to say. “No! No, no, no!” Lily pushed away from the conference table and looked at Alistair. “I’m leaving,” she declared flatly.

Alistair was visibly grinding his teeth. If there was a paperweight close by, at that moment she would have gladly handed it to him and showed him where to aim.

He stopped grinding long enough to grunt, “Go.”

She grabbed her bag where it was sitting on the table, whirled and headed smartly for the door, not looking back.

She was brought to an abrupt halt with a strong hand on her upper arm.

She winced uncontrollably in pain when the hard fingers closed around her bruised arm and she turned and looked at the familiar, strong, long-fingered hand then at Nate who was standing behind her.

He watched her wince at his touch and something anguished flashed through his eyes.

“Take your hand off my client,” Alistair, seething, was walking swiftly toward them.

Nate ignored him.

“I want to meet my daughter,” he told Lily.

“Fine,” Lily snapped, wanting nothing but escape. Her head was beginning to pound.

“I want to meet her tomorrow,” Nate demanded.

“Fine!” Lily clipped.

“I want you there,” he pushed.

“Fine!”

“Lily, don’t say another word,” Alistair warned from beside them.

“You’ll be there tomorrow,” Nate ordered, it should have been a query but it was a command.

“Yes!” she cried. She would have said anything to get away.

She wrenched her arm free as Alistair said her name sharply in frustration.

She didn’t pay attention.

She turned away from Nate and ran away as fast as her high heels would carry her.