Lover Beware

by his curiosity about these people—Lily’s people—and by his awareness of the woman at his side. That, too, was a sweet distraction pulsing through him, making even the moon’s call less compelling.
    It didn’t take long for him to note a common theme in the comments of her relatives. The unspoken text emerged in jokes that weren’t quite funny, in sympathetic comments or the blanks left by avoiding one particular subject.
    Lily’s family didn’t approve of her job. They didn’t want her to be a cop.
    On their way to the terrace he met cousins, uncles, aunts, one of Lily’s sisters and her date, along with miscellaneous offspring, spouses, or significant others. And he met Lily’s mother.
    Julia Yu was a slim, elegant woman who towered over her daughter by nearly a foot. She had beautiful hands, very little chin, several pounds of hair piled in elaborate twists on top of her head, and Lily’s eyes. They opened wide when she saw his face.
    She recovered quickly, greeting Rule with a polite smile. She smelled faintly of herbal soap and hair spray. “I didn’t place your name at first, Mr. Turner, but your face is instantly recognizable. I’m so glad you could join us tonight.”
    “I’m delighted she asked me,” he said with perfect candor. Sharing Lily with all these people wasn’t his first choice, but he could learn a great deal about her from her family. Especially her mother, he thought, and smiled. “Please call me Rule. Your daughter has your eyes, doesn’t she? Lovely and full of mysteries. Her voice is rather like yours, too—lower than one would expect, and with the random music of a waterfall.”
    She blinked in surprise. “What a lovely compliment. Thank you. Lily also has something of her father’s stubbornness, I’m afraid, and an unfortunate sense of humor. I’m not sure where that comes from.” Something in the look she gave her daughter freighted her next words with hidden significance. “Have you introduced Mr. Turner to Grandmother yet, Lily?”
    “We’re making our way there now. I told her to expect him, of course.”
    “Ah.” A subtle change in her posture told Rule some tension or worry had eased. “I won’t hold you up, then. I believe your father is on the terrace with Grandmother.”
    Rule wasn’t ready to abandon the conversation that quickly. Between Julia Yu’s courtesy and her curiosity about a man her daughter might be interested in, he was able to hold her in conversation for several minutes. By the time he and Lily moved away, he’d had the satisfaction of coaxing a smile of genuine pleasure from her.
    “You flirted with my mother,” Lily said.
    He wasn’t sure if she was upset or amused. “I said nothing that wasn’t true.”
    “You also flirted with two of my cousins, my sister, my great-aunt, and the wife of one of my brother’s business partners. With every woman you’ve met tonight, I think. Is this a lupus thing, or is it just you?”
    “It would be rude not to acknowledge a woman’s beauty.”
    Her eyes were puzzled. “I expected you to say it didn’t mean anything.”
    “That wouldn’t be true. I…” He struggled to explain what was too basic to be fitted comfortably into words. “When I compliment a woman, it always means something. Not that I intend to take her to bed, but that I appreciate her. That I know she’s a woman, and lovely.”
    “You meant everything you said, didn’t you? You told Mrs. Masters—who must be seventy—that her pearls made her skin glow. You looked at her as if you enjoyed looking at her, and you meant it.”
    “Of course.”
    She didn’t say anything more, but she took his hand. He felt absurdly pleased, as if he’d been awarded a great honor.
    The rear of the restaurant overlooked the beach. The sun was slipping down the western sky when they stepped onto the terrace, an incandescent ball flipping its light scattershot across the waves it would kiss in another thirty minutes. He couldn’t see the moon, but felt it hovering near the horizon to the east, a silvery song in his blood. The air was twenty degrees warmer than inside, and smelled wonderful. He breathed deeply of salt, sand, and ocean.
    Rule was suddenly reluctant to proceed to the people knotted up at the other end of the terrace. “I wish we could walk on the beach together.” Or run. He yearned to feel the sand beneath the pads of his paws while air screamed through his lungs as his muscles flexed and flung him