The warmth of her touch slashed through him with all the subtlety of a lightning bolt. He pulled his hand back.
“They’re just people,” Lily said, shaking her head as she took another bite of whipped-cream-topped milkshake. “And people, in general, love to talk about someone else’s troubles.”
“True.” He flopped back against the seat and stretched his legs out, bumping into Lily’s neatly crossed ankles and then shifting guiltily away. “But this is Binghamton. I thought—”
“That because the town was named for you, your family would be gossip free?”
“Oh, hell—’scuse me—no.” He shook his head and smiled at the thought. “If anything, growing up a Bingham around here was like growing up in a fish tank. Everybody wanted to be the one to catch you skipping school or toilet papering the principal’s house.”
“So you already know what this is,” Lily said, picking up her straw and jamming it into the frothy pink ice cream.
“Sure. Human nature. The bigger they are, the more enjoyable the fall.”
“Exactly. But why,” Lily wondered aloud as she lifted the straw out and watched ice cream slide down and then drip into the glass, “does it seem to be that someone is actually going out of their way to make Mari look guilty?”
“You see it, too, do you?” Eager to hear someone else echo his own thoughts, Ron sat up straight again and automatically reached for his coffee.
“Of course. I’m not blind. How can you drink coffee when its so blistering hot outside?”
“I’m not outside.”
“Have some shake.”
“No.”
“Try it.”
He scowled at her. “I stopped drinking milkshakes when I was eighteen.”
“Wow.” Lily’s eyes widened dramatically. “I didn’t know you could outgrow milkshakes. Gee, what else? Sunshine? Rainbows?” She lowered her gaze to his plate. “I see that cheeseburgers are ageless.”
“Oh for—”
“You should probably break it to me gently,” Lily went on, scooping up another bite of ice cream, then licking her lips with a slow, thorough motion.
Ron’s stomach tightened, but damned if he could look away. “Break what to you?”
“What else is off-limits.” She waved her spoon in the air like a maestro with a baton. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to tempt you with anything else ‘unseemly.’ Lemonade, for instance, would that be all right?”
This is what he got for forgetting that Lily was crazy. “You are the most annoying woman….”
“Thank you,” she said. “Shake?”
“Give it here.”
She slid it across the table with a victorious grin, and he avoided meeting her eyes as he dipped his spoon into the frosty glass and pulled up a sizable portion of pink ice cream. The minute he put it in his mouth, flavor exploded. Icy cold chills raced along his spine and shot back up to his brain. The taste, the smell, the feel of the ice cream melting on his tongue, unlocked memories he hadn’t dusted off in years. Summer nights. Picnics.
Sweet times with Violet.
And just the thought of his late wife’s name was enough to remind him that he shouldn’t be sitting in the diner sharing a milkshake with Lily Cunningham. This wasn’t high school. It wasn’t a date.
He’d had his share of love, and now that part of his life was over.
Pushing the milkshake back across the table to her, he said, “Thanks. Better than I remembered.”
It was all better than he remembered. That sizzle of attraction, the hum of electricity in the air. And because he was enjoying himself, Ron felt guilty as hell.
Chapter Three
“I don’t understand,” Ron said a moment later when the awkward silence over the milkshake had passed. Maybe he shouldn’t say anything at all, but this had been bothering him for months. Every time he saw her, he wondered why she’d really come. And just how long she planned to stay.
“What?”
“What you’re doing here.”
“Eating dinner?”
“Clever. I meant here in Binghamton.”
“Well that’s blunt.”
“Yep.”
“You do that to annoy me, don’t you?” Lily asked, tilting her head to one side as she studied him. “The one-word answers, I mean.”
“Yep.” Hell, why should he be the only one irritated and annoyed? And something else, his mind whispered, but he paid no attention. If he noticed that her hair shone blond in the sunlight drifting through the plate-glass window, it was simply an observation. Right?
“That’s what I thought.” She paused, glanced up as the waitress delivered her hamburger and said, “Thank you, Vickie, it looks great.”
“Enjoy, Ms. Cunningham.”
Lily sighed. “She’s still worried that I’ll yell at her some more. Did you see how she walked backward from the table?”
He’d noticed. And he had a feeling a lot of people walked a wide path around Lily. Any woman who could go from calm and cool to red hot and blistering in a matter of seconds was one to keep an eye on. “Could be she was treating you like a queen.”
Lily laughed outright. “More likely she was afraid I’d jump at her.” She shook her head and on a disgusted sigh, added, “You’d think I’d be able to control my temper better after all these years.”
“Everyone’s got a temper.”
“Not everyone uses it.”
True. Most folks played the game of being nice while biting their tongue to keep the angry words inside. For himself, he much preferred a good flash of temper. Truth usually spilled out then, and he’d rather know exactly where he stood with a person than to have to try to guess.
He nodded at her as he watched her slather ketchup on her hamburger bun and then drizzle a river of it across still-steaming French fries. She’d never struck him as the ketchup type, Ron thought. There was more “caviar and champagne” about her than “beer and pretzels.”
“I’m better than I used to be though,” she said, piling tomato, onion, pickles and lettuce onto the open-faced burger before slapping the other half of the bun down on top of it all.
“Yeah?” Fascinated now, he watched as she tipped the hamburger over, took off the bottom half of the bun and used her knife to spread potato salad on the toasted surface.
“Oh
