The wind howled in my ears.
I set the flowers down over the stone.
“Tulips and daisies, your favorites. I still think they make an ugly bouquet, but hey, not everyone is blessed with good taste, right?” I smiled at the flowers, at the stone, and pretended my mother was there with me.
I always felt her presence more in the summertime, when the air was warm and the grass was lush. She’d been a sun chaser her whole life. Every winter she’d complain and moan about the cold, the snow, the rain. She’d hole up inside and gaze out the windows, daydreaming of warmer weather and sandy beaches.
“Spring is coming,” I told her. “Soon enough summer will follow. I think I might try to take some time off. Maybe Casey and I can reconnect. I don’t know if she’d want that or not. I could take her somewhere like Greece or something. I think she’d like it.”
Sighing, I lifted my face to the cloud-heavy sky.
This was the exact kind of day my mother would have hated.
I shifted in the grass and went to my knees even though the ground was cold and hard. “Dad’s doing pretty well. Staying busy, at least. I’ll be seeing him this week for dinner. Casey, too. Unless she’s still pissed at me. Sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t complain so much about your other daughter. That’s not why I come here. Work is going well. Better than ever, actually. You’d shit yourself if you saw my last paycheck. Pardon my language.” I pushed up to my feet. “You’d have wanted for nothing if you were still here, Mom. You’d have that yellow Corvette you always told Dad you wanted. It might be silly, but it would have been the first thing I bought.”
A particularly strong gust threatened to blow my flowers away. Cramming my hands deep into my pockets, I turned my back to the wind. I began scouring the grounds for a heavy rock I could place on the stems to hold the flowers in place, and after I found one and set it down, movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.
I peered up the hill. Standing in front of an elegant and private mausoleum was a man in a black peacoat. He had a dark red scarf swirled around his neck and his hands were in his pockets. He looked as cold as I felt, but unlike me, he didn’t speak to the dead like a crazy person.
He just stood there, still as the stones marking the souls of the departed.
Not wanting to disturb him, I said my goodbyes to my mother and turned to retreat to the warmth of Lexi’s car. I gave the man one last glance and hesitated. I recognized that posture and his side profile.
Suddenly, my feet moved of their own volition, and I found myself walking toward him. When I was only a few paces behind him, I cleared my throat.
He didn’t flinch. He lifted his head and glanced over his shoulder.
“Storm?”
He blinked in surprise. “Laila? What are you doing here?”
I gestured around at the headstones. “Same thing as you, I assume. Saying hello.” I stepped up beside him and admired the massive mausoleum. Wind howled through the iron gate. Inside, I saw a tomb made of stone. It felt ancient, but the dates marked on the marble plaque outside proved me wrong. This man had only been dead for four years. “Who is he?”
“My father.”
Right, of course.
I reached up and touched the plaque, which was polished clean and so much smoother than my mother’s. “Hello, Mr. Thornton. I’m a friend of your son’s.”
Storm chuckled. “A friend?”
“For right now,” I said. “I come here once a month to visit my mother. She’s over there.” I pointed down the sloping hill. “I’m sorry that these are the circumstances under which we’ve run into each other. He died this month, didn’t he?”
“He died four years ago to the day. Your mother?”
“Eight years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
Another blast of wind battered our backs. We tucked our chins as the wind burned our eyes and scorched our cheeks. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could last out in this weather, but part of me felt compelled to stay as I watched Storm out of the corner of my eye. His gaze lingered on the plaque, never faltering, and his jaw flexed.
What thoughts were going on behind that green stare of his?
I saw hardness in him—in the tension in his shoulders and his jaw and the intensity of his stare. Something told me the relationship with his father had been strained, or at least unusual, because he did not stand here like a doting son who missed his father. He stood here like a man who wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here in the first place.
When he spoke, I had to lean in to hear him over the wind. “Please don’t feel obligated to say yes because of where we are, but I have to ask one last time. Do you want to grab a bite to eat together? I know a hole-in-the-wall place where nobody will see us, and if they do, they won’t care. The food is as good as it gets.”
“Okay.”
The tension in him evaporated as he looked over at me. “Seriously?”
“Why not?” I nodded down the hill to where Lexi was parked. “I just have to tell my bodyguard that I don’t need a ride home. Walk with me?”
Storm offered me his arm. We walked down the gently sloped hill, each of us turning only once to look over our shoulders and say silent goodbyes to our dead parents. I said mine with a smile, where no such thing graced Storm’s handsome face.
At Lexi’s car, I knocked on the passenger window.
She rolled it down with a frown. “Yes?”
“I’m going to grab dinner with Storm.”
Lexi blinked. “You’re doing what now?”
“Dinner. With Storm. You don’t have to worry about driving. Take the rest of the night off.”
Lexi cast a judgmental gaze through the back window at Storm, who stood on the curb with his back to us, giving me privacy. “I don’t like it.”
Smiling, I reached through the window to grab my purse. “You don’t have to like it. But I want to join him.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Fine. Call me if you need me?”
“Always.”
Lexi drove off, undoubtedly checking her mirrors to watch as I got in the passenger seat of Storm’s luxury sports car. It smelled brand new inside, and as soon as he got behind the wheel and turned it on, heat blasted through the vents.
I held my hands in front of them and relished the warmth. “Thank goodness we finished all our shots and didn’t have to be outside in this in our underwear.”
He pulled away from the curb, palming the wheel and glancing over his shoulder. “I would withstand any weather to be beside you while you’re wearing lingerie. I can’t lie.”
I looked out the window to hide my blushing cheeks. “So where is this hole-in-the-wall restaurant nobody will find us at? It better not be your estate or I’ll call Lexi and tell her to come get me.”
He laughed. “No, it’s not my house. It’s a real restaurant, I promise.”
We drove for about half an hour before I realized we were no longer cruising the safer streets of New York. We’d pressed into more rundown areas and neighborhoods I’d never been through before. Storm parked his car outside a broken parking meter and came around to help me out.
Out here, the city smelled like wet dog and McDonald’s. It certainly didn’t seem like the sort of place a man like Storm Thornton would frequent.