Love Arranged (Lakefront Billionaires, #3)(59)

“You don’t want to end up upsetting the wrong person one day.”

“I agree.” I shut her door before getting behind the wheel. “Can we restart the weekend?”

She doesn’t answer right away, so I follow up with “Please.”

With a sigh, she nods. “Fine.”

“Thank you,” I say in earnest.

Out of all my cars, Lily seems to be the most interested in this one, to the point of her checking out the center console, dashboard display, and glove compartment. She even asks me a few questions about the way it drives after she notices the chair cushioning her when I turn.

“Do you like it?” I ask after hitting the button that turns on her chair massager.

She delicately traces the edge of the leather seat, and for one deranged second, I’m jealous of a chair.

You’re…

No. Don’t you even think about saying it.

She looks over at me with those doe eyes of hers and nods. “It’s…fancy.”

I make a show of connecting my phone to the display—a feature her dinosaur of a car is lacking, along with blind spot sensors and a dash cam.

“Imagine not having to use a portable speaker every time you want to listen to something,” I say when music softly begins streaming through the car.

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Manny told you about that?”

“He was impressed by the system you jerry-rigged.”

Her eyes fall to her lap. “I could’ve replaced the speakers, but then I would’ve had to cut back on buying clothes.”

“Who needs functioning speakers anyway?”

“Exactly. I knew you’d get it.” Her small smirk turns into a full-blown smile.

“Your dad gave you that car, right?” For some reason, I’m not ready to put the conversation to rest. When I think of Lily driving around town in that shitty car, I get this uncomfortable tightness in my chest that is impossible to ignore.

“Yeah. He bought it for Dahlia and me to share.”

“That’s a nice gift.”

Her throat visibly tightens from her swallow. “Yeah. Money was tight, so we were surprised when he decided to get us a new car versus a used one.”

“Only the best for the people’s princess.”

She groans. “You know about that nickname?”

I smile. “Impossible not to hear it whispered whenever you walk into a room.”

She shoves my shoulder with a laugh. “Shut up. That’s so not true.”

I shrug. “If you say so…principessa.”I

Her eyes roll.

“Not a fan? Okay. What about cucciola?”II

“Immediately no.”

I choke on a laugh. “We’ll have to workshop some options.”

“I like the classics. Like baby. Babe. Love, but only if you’re British.”

“What about amore mio?”III

Her cheeks flush, and I officially have her new nickname.

As much as I want to keep the conversation light, I can’t shake the idea of her driving an old car. “If your dad were here now, would he want you to be driving around in that car?”

Her hands, which were lying flat against her lap, curl into tight fists. “You’re not letting this go, are you?”

“Do people typically give up by now?”

Her silence is confirmation enough. I tell myself not to push, to let it go and move on to another topic, but maybe that’s Lily’s issue. Maybe everyone is willing to give up at the first sign of upsetting her, and while that has its place, it shouldn’t come at the price of her safety.

So you’re her protector now?

My own hands tighten around the steering wheel. “What if there was another way to hold on to his memory without anchoring yourself to a two-ton relic?”

She glances over at me from the corner of her eye, likely assessing my angle. “I don’t know.”

I pull the dice from my pocket and hold them out for her to grab. Her fingers brush against the soft flesh of my palm, sending a few sparks scattering across my skin as she takes the dice.

“There are other ways to honor someone that don’t compromise your own needs. With the Moirai, I was stubborn. I didn’t want to accept that it wasn’t the same buzzing casino my father built and managed, so I held on.”

She rolls the dice between her fingers, back and forth like I do, clearly lost in thought. I don’t want to interrupt whatever silent conversation she has going on inside her head, so I focus on the road until she is ready to talk.

“Letting go was hard, but I found a way to always keep a piece of it with me.”

She is silent for a while after that, and I give her time to process what I said.

She turns in her seat to face me. “Let’s say—hypothetically speaking, of course—I was ready to get a new car… Would you mind going with me to the dealerships?”

My breathing stutters because that was not what I was expecting her to ask.

“Sure,” I say, knowing this is only the start of blurred boundaries and broken rules.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and me offering to help Lily find a car is the first step down a dark, obsessive path.

I can’t say I’m sorry about it though.