Page 25 of Daring Lance

“Lance—”

He kissed her again, this time on the lips and as quickly as he had on her nose moments ago. “I know. I said we will remain friends with benefits for as long as it works for us, and I meant it. I’m not going to pressure you for anything more.” He kissed her again, and this time it lasted for more than a few seconds. When they finally broke apart, they were each smiling, and Lance was relieved, not entirely happy, but relieved. “Willow, I want to be clear. I’m not going to stop loving you, and neither do I plan to stop saying it to you. You’re going to have to accept it as one of the benefits.” He broadened his smile, forcing a cheerfulness to his expression that he didn’t feel.

“I told you—”

“Nope.” He pressed two of his fingers to her lips. “I don’t want to hear it. Consider my love as a benefit, nothing more—no strings attached. Deal?”

Willow let out a soulful breath and to his relief, finally returned his smile. “Deal.”

“And if you want to love me back Willow, I’ll consider it a benefit as well.”

“Lance—”

He cut her off with a kiss that left them both breathless. “Willow, I want nothing more than to keep you wrapped in my arms for the rest of the night, and I plan to do that later, but we need to take the dogs out right now.”

Willow straightened in his arms. “Oh, no! Did one of them wet in the house?” She wiggled out of his embrace, her gaze rapidly sweeping the floor for evidence. Lance cringed when she finally found proof of their misdeeds.

“That purse is only four days old! I can’t believe they chewed it!” She rushed over to pick up her handbag from off the floor. The strap was gone, and parts of it were probably in each of the puppies’ intestinal tracks. The outside pocket of the purse now dangled by a thread. Lance hastily clasped leashes on to the terrible trio’s collars, hopefully before she noticed her half chewed flip flop on the other side of the room.

Willow shook her head as she placed what was left of her purse on top of the kitchen table. “I refuse to believe it was Daphne because this is one of her favorite brands. I even bought her a collar to match it.”

“Of course, you’re darling would never do such a thing. I’m sure that pink thread hanging from the corner of her mouth was something she picked up off the floor.”

Lance held out Daphne’s leash to Willow, and she took it, but not before she snatched the thread from the puppy’s mouth and stuffed it into the front pocket of her jeans. Lance chuckled under his breath as Willow proudly lifted her head in the air and walked toward the front door, past him and his two male canine counterparts. “Come on, Daphne. Don’t listen to him. Those three barbarians know you are a lady and would never do such a thing.”

He grinned. While she hadn’t told him she loved him and he had promised to accept their relationship as friends with benefits, she hadn’t continued to argue with him when he’d informed her that loving her was one of the benefits, at least not once he’d kissed her. He understood that their situation wasn’t anywhere near perfect, but after moving a newly chewed gym shoe from the path to the door, he asked himself, what was?

NINE

“Willow, we want you to stop looking for Ruby’s benefactor.”

Willow took a tiny sip of the mango margarita, afraid that if she drank more than a third of her drink, she would fall over face first to the floor. The ladies in her building didn’t know the meaning of restraint when it came to enhancing recipes with tequila, and they added it to most things. Willow had learned that the hard way one evening when they’d asked her to be a sub at one of their canasta games. Two drinks had landed her with a headache for three days and her wallet forty dollars lighter. “Benefactor? Why, Bernadette? Did you discover who it was?”

Lily slurped up the last of her margarita, then placed it on Willow’s kitchen table with a thud. “Oh, my, no dear, we’re far too busy to spend time figuring that out. We’ve simply decided that it doesn’t matter.” The old woman burped and then giggled like a teenager. “My goodness, Courtney, these drinks are tasty! You must have used the whole bottle of Cuervo Gold on this pitcher. I am going to need to add six more bottles to my nextDoorDashdelivery.”

Willow pushed her glass toward the center of the table and as far away from herself as possible. Drinking margaritas at ten in the morning, and with more tequila in one glass than she had probably drunk in the last year, would not turn out to be one of her best ideas. “Why does it no longer matter? Did the deposits stop?”

Ruby swallowed what Willow estimated to be her third brownie in under five minutes, and Willow wondered if Lily had made a trip to the local dispensary for ingredients before she’d baked this morning. Ruby wiped her the corner of her mouth with a napkin and then replied, “They did stop, but only after I received a big honker of a deposit.”

Willow looked back and forth between the women, each with a smirk on their lavishly lip-sticked mouths. “A big honker? How big is a big honker?” Willow knew it would probably be a mistake to ask but was unable to keep herself from doing so.

Bernadette licked the salt from the side of her glass before she gulped down half of her margarita. She smacked her lips together when she’d finished. “Yum, that was good. Two hundred big ones.”

“Oh.” The four women seated in her kitchen fist bumped each other. Willow sat up in her chair. “Wait! What? Do you mean two hundred thousand dollars?”

Ruby wore her ever present pink curlers in her hair. Did she ever take them out? Willow couldn’t recall a time the woman didn’t have them all over her head. She had her fourth brownie halfway to her mouth when she responded. “You betcha. I withdrew all of it the same day and paid off four of my grandchildren’s college loans and then invested the balance into a college fund for the last two kids so they will be all set as well.”

Willow collapsed back in her chair. “That is incredible.”

Ruby heaved her large girth to the side and patted Madison’s hand. “Oh, no dear, it’s actually quite simple. There are a lot of online investments you can choose from, tax-free, for your children’s education. When you and Lance have children, I’ll make sure to show how to set up an account. We’ve already done the online paperwork as a surprise for Luke and Madison. Now it’s only a matter of those two getting down to business so we can push submit. We’re anxious to start babysitting some little ones.”

Willow shot upright in her chair. She knew when she had time to think about it that she would be terrified with the thought of her four geriatric guests babysitting Luke and Madison’s children, but right now the only thing that was sending shock waves to her brain was Ruby’s reference to Willow and Lance’s children. “Ruby, Lance and I are only friends. We are not going to have children.” She shot a glance at the four other women seated around her kitchen table, each with a very large margarita in front of her.

“Ha, that’s a good one!” crooned Bernadette as she slapped her bony hand on the kitchen table. “If I had a friend like Lance, I’d need my pacemaker batteries changed more often.”

Lily nodded. Her hair was now dyed a bright purple, and her sausage curls looked similar to slinkies bobbing around her head in every direction. “Willow, whatever do you mean? You must be the one Lance referred to at the pool on Tuesday, especially after that hot one he landed on you while you were on the balcony. That was sure a treat after a Sunday sermon that had Courtney snoring through half of it. That boy sure knows how to pack a whopper of a smooch!”

Willow doubted her cheeks could burn a darker shade of pink. “Ah, well, um, that was um—”

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