They were back-to-back again, Cam standing very still whenever he felt Lilith’s bare skin brush his. He closed his eyes and imagined the Hawaiian dress sliding down the curve of her hips.
When she turned around, Cam was delighted to find that she’d plucked a white silk orchid blossom from a selection of fake plants in the corner of the dressing room. It was tucked behind her ear. “Aloha,” she said, batting her lashes.
“Aloha yourself,” Cam said.
“Boy knows how to work a poncho,” she said, looking him up and down, approving.
Cam put on his cleanest Mexico City accent and took Lilith by the hand. “I know we come from different worlds, se?orita, but now that I have laid eyes on you, I must take you back to my rancho.”
“But my father will never allow it,” Lilith said, pulling out an impressively convincing Hawaiian-priestess voice. “He’ll kill you before he lets you take me away!”
Cam kissed her hand. “For you, I would risk anything, even the eternal flames of Hell.”
“Hello!?” Luis shouted from outside the curtain. “What’s going on in there? Have you guys found your look yet?”
Lilith giggled and pulled back the curtain, doing a little hula dance.
They found Jean wearing a black fedora and a tan trench coat. Meanwhile, Luis had found a football uniform, complete with pads, and somehow pulled it on over his clothes. “Mess with me now, jerks!” he shouted to the ceiling.
“Great.” Jean glanced at each of them and shook his head. “We’re going to look like the Village People.”
“We aren’t done, man,” Luis said. “We just got here!”
“Well, so far, we look pathetic,” Jean said. “Except for you, Lilith. Now, come on, let’s try a little harder.”
“Says the guy who picked a fedora,” Luis said as they both disappeared into an ocean of corduroy.
“What now?” Cam said as he and Lilith returned to the dressing room. “We might get in trouble with Jean if we keep fooling around.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Lilith teased. She glanced around the dressing room, sifting through the hangers. “Let’s surprise each other.”
Again, they turned back-to-back. Again, Cam felt the dress slide over Lilith’s head and fall to the floor at his feet. Again, he shivered with barely checked desire.
He eyed the clothing rack in front of him, reaching at last for a long, beige Indian caftan. He pulled it over his head and tied it at the neck.
“What do you think of this one?” Lilith asked a few moments later.
He turned to face her.
Lilith was wearing a gauzy white floor-length gown embroidered with deep-green leaves. “I couldn’t help noticing you at the village well the other day…,” she said in a slow, husky voice.
She was still playing, but Cam could hardly breathe. He hadn’t seen that dress since…
“Where did you find that?”
Lilith gestured at the heap of clothes piled against the back wall, but Cam couldn’t take his eyes off her. He blinked and saw his bride-to-be, sunlight dappling her shoulders as she stood beside him at the Jordan River three thousand years ago. He remembered precisely the way that feather-light fabric had felt between his fingers when he wrapped his arms around her. He remembered the way its train had trailed as she left him.
It couldn’t be. The fabric would have deteriorated long ago. But in this gown, Lilith looked exactly like the girl he’d lost.
Cam leaned against the rack of clothes, feeling faint.
“What?” Lilith asked.
“What what?” Cam replied.
“I look bad in this, obviously.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“If you could read my mind, you’d apologize for that comment.”
Lilith stared down at the dress. “It was supposed to be a joke.” She paused. “It’s stupid, I know, but, for some reason, I…wanted you to like the way I looked in it.”
She left the dressing room to stand before the mirror outside. Cam followed, watching her finger the embroidery at her waist. He watched the skirt swish as she swiveled her hips a little. A change came over her expression. Her eyes turned dreamy again. He took a step closer.
Was it possible? Was she remembering something from their past?
“You are the most remarkable creature I have ever seen—” he said before he knew what he was doing.
“We must marry in the temple,” she said sharply.
“What?” Cam blinked, but then the answer came to him. They had spoken these same words to one another before, on the riverbank in Canaan, the last time she wore this dress.
Lilith met his gaze in the mirror. Suddenly, anger flooded her eyes, contorting her features. She spun to face him, full of fury. The past she couldn’t remember was rippling forward into the present. He could see that Lilith was confused by why she felt so angry but absolutely certain that it had everything to do with Cam.
“Lilith,” he said. He wanted to tell her the whole truth. It gutted him to understand what she was feeling better than she could.