Page 37 of Daring Lance

She let out a soft moan. “I don’t think I can think at all right now.”

Lance unbuttoned the top of her jeans and slid the zipper down, easing the denim over her hips and toward her ankles. “Good, because I plan to make you forget all about K-dramas for the rest of the evening.”

Willow braced her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t know Lance, that might be hard to do—”

“I’m willing to try.”

Willow pressed a soft kiss against his lips. “Did I mention how sweet I think you are for wanting to have something in common with me, and so you decided to watch K-dramas and to study several foreign languages?”

Lance sighed. “You know about the language app, too?”

“Yeah.” She pressed another feather of a kiss against his mouth. “We could practice some of them now if you—"

Lance silenced her with a kiss as his fingers found her G-string. As promised, he made sure Willow forgot all about K-dramas for the remainder of the night.

EPILOGUE

“Lily, pour me another mimosa please. I read that it’s important to get plenty of vitamin C in your diet, and while I don’t want to be accused of being one of those new age health nuts, I do think we owe it to ourselves to stay in tip top shape!” Bernadette held out an oversized martini glass, hand-painted with flamingos, that was part of a six-glass set, complete with matching pitcher, that Ruby had picked up on senior citizen day at Goodwill. The set was now the envy of all the bargain hunters in the building, including Willow.

Willow stole a glance at Lance, seated at her side in an Adirondack chair, a smirk twitching at his lips. He obviously found the octogenarians as entertaining at eight a.m. as she did.

Courtney eagerly jumped up and down in her lawn chair. “Oh, my yes, it is. And with an extra shot of vodka, you can’t go wrong. My grandfather used to say that a good, strong shot of vodka could kill off the nastiest of germs, and he was right. He drank a liter of vodka a day and lived to a hundred and one, and right before he passed out after dinner, he swore every day that his good health was attributed to his commitment to vodka.”

Bernadette raised her glass in the air and the other three women did the same. “Cheers to that common sense.”

“Amen,” exclaimed Lily.

“Oh, my yes,” said Ruby between bites of coffee cake. She had made a trip to the dispensary earlier in the week and had been trying out new dessert recipes, to the delight of the Regency Palms residents. “I added turmeric to the coffeecake because I read in a magazine at the gastrologist’s office that it helps with heart health, and if we are going to be planning a wedding, we need to be in prime condition.”

Willow had been sipping a bottle of water that she had brought to the beach. She had found out the hard way that drinks from her neighbors’ coolers were not always what they were labeled. She turned to Ruby. “A wedding? Whose wedding are you planning?” She looked at Courtney, her hair tinted pink at the ends and matching the giant hibiscus randomly printed on her Mumu. “Courtney! Are you and Art getting married?”

All four women emitted a cackling sound from their generously lipstick-garnished mouths. “Oh, my no!” exclaimed Courtney. She took a long drink from her glass, draining more than half of the contents. “I do love a strong mimosa in the morning.” She patted the corner of her mouth with one of her endless supply of linen napkins and smiled at Willow. “I’m eighty-seven years old, dear. I don’t need a ring on my finger to have a little hanky panky now and then.”

Lance coughed into his fist, and Willow rested her hand on top of his knee and squeezed. “Oh,” was all she was able to eke out. The thought of Courtney and Art participating in any hanky panky was more than she wanted to think about, ever.

“Willow, you and Lance are going to be thrilled because we called this meeting to discuss your wedding,” announced Bernadette. “That’s why we asked you to join us at the beach. Lily had the fabulous idea to hold the ceremony out here by the ocean, and we all agreed that it is a splendid idea.”

Lance sat up so quickly in his chair that Willow half expected him to fall over face first into the sand. “Our wedding?”

Ruby paused, a piece of coffeecake halfway to her mouth. “Of course, Lance. It’s been two months since you’ve returned from Costa Rica and announced you were engaged. It’s time to move things into high gear. You two aren’t getting any younger. A honeymoon baby is all we can hope for now. Lily? An extra shot of vodka in these mimosas would enhance the fruit flavor. Pass me the bottle, please.”

Willow bit down on her lower lip to keep herself from laughing out loud and thought she better set the seniors straight now. “We thought, when we do decide to get married, that we might hold the reception at a banquet hall? Perhaps in a hotel?”

“Most of my family is in Chicago, so we will probably do something up north when the time comes.” Lance placed his hand on top of Willow’s. As Willow only had her parents, who would fly in for the event from Seoul, South Korea, the location didn’t matter to her, and she had told Lance as much. It was whom she married, not where, that mattered to her, that as long as you were with the one you loved, your address was irrelevant.

“A banquet hall? Always ends up too crowded and the bathrooms are difficult to find. As for hotels, goodness, those places can be so drab, and the drinks are always water downed,” chirped up Ruby.

Lily nodded. “That’s right. We can set up a bar in the Grand Salon, and Micky from 1202 has already offered to bartend for us. That man knows how to mix a drink.” Lily took the large bottle of vodka from Ruby’s outstretched hand and filled her glass to three-quarters full. She then added a shot of orange juice to it. Willow was pretty sure that the percentage of each were supposed to be the opposite, but any suggestion she made to the old women would likely only be ignored, just like the rest she and Lance had already provided.

Bernadette pointed her bony, bejeweled finger at Willow and Lance, and Willow knew she and Lance were in for a lecture. “We need to get through the wedding the sooner the better so we can start making plans for the daycare center. Lance, we’re going to need your crew to demolish the fitness center for us as that’s the only space large enough. Doesn’t get used anyway. No one’s willing to risk a heart attack on the treadmill, not since Norm in 815 set the incline too high, and it caused his pacemaker to short circuit. Bless his soul.”

“Such a tragedy,” added Courtney.

“Tsk, tsk, it was,” chimed in Lily and Ruby simultaneously.

Lance gave her a strangled look, and Willow could only shrug. Once the ladies of Regency Palms got an idea into their head, there was no stopping them.

“We don’t have any children in the building, Ms. Bernadette. Why do we need a daycare?” Lance shot Willow a perplexed look, and all she could think wasyou asked for it, Lance.

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