Chase felt like leftover mashed potatoes. His head hurt, his shoulder hurt, his ass hurt where he’d fallen in Lacy’s shower. Everything hurt. He hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours.
He fit the key into the lock and pushed open his condo door. The sight of his place in shambles made him want to hit something, or better yet, someone. He’d love to take a swing at Officer Short, the IA investigator who had interrogated him for thirteen hours.
It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had proof. The book containing photos, witnesses, and detailed notes that the wanna-be cop Pablo had left in the gym locker incriminated Zeke up to Zeke’s eyebrows. Oddly enough, Pablo had done a damn good investigation.
In his notes, Pablo had stated that he had stumbled across someone who suspected Zeke of selling cocaine—cocaine Zeke had ripped off from a drug bust. Pablo had accumulated quite a bit of evidence, but Zeke caught on and things backfired. Pablo found himself running for his life. That’s when the man had left all his evidence in the locker, thinking Zeke wouldn’t kill him as long as he knew the evidence was out there.
Of course, even with all of that evidence, IA wanted more. Just because Zeke is guilty that doesn’t make you innocent, they had said.
Chase knew where to go. Big Bruno! As soon as IA turned Chase loose, he and Jason had searched and finally found Bruno in a club, kicking up his heels to some hip-hop times. Now Bruno would probably be dancing to the tune of about ten years. Zeke wouldn’t get off so easy; the system generally came down hard on dirty cops, and Zeke had dirt embedded deep in the soles of his feet and under his fingernails, murder being the worst.
According to Bruno, Zeke shot Pablo and asked questions later. Pablo’s last words were that Chase knew everything and would take him down.
Bruno’s confession cleared Chase, but one of IA’s questions kept slapping against Chase’s brain. “How could you be his partner and not know he was dirty?”
The answer hurt, and it made Chase face the truth again. He’d lived in a vacuum these past two years, if he could even call it living.
Chase stepped over his toppled three-thousand-dollar stereo system and made his way to his bedroom. Hitting the light switch, he moaned at the mess. In a way, his slew of belongings mirrored his emotions right now.
His gaze shifted around and settled in the middle of the floor, on the picture of him and Sarah. He picked it up, staring at Sarah’s face, at her tender smile. The ache in his heart doubled. It wasn’t, however, the same pain that he might have felt last week had he stared into the picture. This pain had a different name. This wasn’t about losing her. This was about saying good-bye. This was about admitting that life went on. About knowing how much love could hurt. It was about love being worth the pain.
And he loved Lacy.
He loved her with the same intensity that he’d loved Sarah. What if something happened to her? What if some freak accident or illness took Lacy? Could he withstand watching another person slip away? Could he stand upright with dignity and watch another coffin being lowered into the ground? The vacuum, the gosh-awful vacuum he’d lived in these past two years, suddenly felt like a safe house.
I saw the picture and I saw the clothes in the closet, he remembered Lacy telling him. Standing, he set the frame back on the dresser then went to the closet. He hadn’t kept all her things, just those tied to the more special memories.
He ran his hand down the soft yellow sundress. She had worn it on their first date. The cotton, faded to a silky softness, slipped through his fingers. And right then he became snared between the past and future, caught between taking that last step into the real world, a very scary world, or going back to his vacuum where even the pain felt familiar. Familiar got points for being easy. Familiar he knew he could deal with.
• • •
Almost forty-eight hours and not one word. Lacy’s mother walked into Lacy’s bedroom with a tray carrying a tomato-basil soup and hot tea. “You don’t have to do this,” Lacy said.
“Yes, I do.” Karina shooed Leonardo from the bed. “What kind of mother would I be if I let you go hungry?”
“I wouldn’t starve myself to death,” Lacy said. “I ate a whole gallon of chocolate mint ice cream at Kathy’s last night. And then Sue brought over pizza with pineapple for breakfast.”
Her mom set the tray down on the bedside table and edged down on the corner of the bed. “Oh, sweetie. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? I could run to the store and pick you up another gallon of chocolate mint ice cream. Or maybe chocolate fudge? I could call my masseur and have him bring out a table and give you the rubdown of your life. Or I could hire a hit man to take that jerk out.”
Lacy smiled through her pain. “I’m fine.” Then, reaching up, she gave her mom a hug. The woman drove her crazy, but when the poop hit the fan Karina was always there, pooper-scooper in hand.
She squeezed Lacy’s shoulder. “You know, the only thing that hurts worse than a broken heart is seeing your child dealing with one. You’re so special, and if that idiot can’t see that, he doesn’t deserve you.”
“It’s not his fault,” Lacy said. “I knew when this started that he wasn’t open to committing. I just thought . . . I thought I could keep my heart out of it.”
“The heart is a strange thing, Lace. You can’t control it. It loves when it loves.” Her mom handed her the tea and tucked a curl back behind Lacy’s ear. For just a second, Lacy felt like a child again, and she wanted to wallow in the safe cocoon of her mother’s love.
But even that cocoon allowed a few feelings to penetrate. Lacy looked at her cup and found the courage to ask the question she’d pondered for a long time: “Did you love them all? Did you love the men you married?”
Her mother’s eyes clouded over. “I thought I did at one point or another. But the truth is, no, I didn’t love them all. I liked them all and—” she grinned “—the sex was always great.”
Lacy held up her hand. “Please, Mom.”
Her mother ignored her objection. “No, you need to listen to me. Because sometimes I feel guilty about how my mistakes might have affected you. Did you know I’m seeing a therapist?”
Having sipped her tea, Lacy choked. “You are?”
“Yes.” Her mom stared at her. “I’m not beyond admitting I need help, Lace.” She let out a deep sigh. “Mr. Black, my therapist, is making me see a few things about myself that I would really prefer not to see.”
“What kind of things?” Lacy balanced her cup in her lap.
“I loved your dad so much. We were young and . . . naive. We didn’t know what it took to make a marriage. When we got the divorce, I thought I would die. I loved your dad like I’ve never loved anyone. And he loved me. It was that kind of love that fit, that felt like slipping on a silk glove. Perfect. But we were young and . . . let things come between us.”
Her mother took Lacy’s hand in hers. “We had half decided to remarry when he was sent to serve in Germany for six months. He begged me to make it legal before he was sent out, but . . . I wanted to take things slow, to be sure. I thought we could use the six months to figure out how to do it right. And then . . .” Her mother stared at the wall. “He was killed.” She smoothed a wrinkle from her skirt. “The biggest regret in my life is that I didn’t take that chance on us again. I let the opportunity go, Lace. So now whenever a man asks me to marry him, I . . .” She pressed a manicured nail against her lips.
“You feel as if you’re making the same mistake,” Lacy finished for her.
“I want love.” Her mother’s voice tightened with emotion. “And I don’t want to let the chance get away.” She cupped Lacy’s chin. “But you’re not me, sweetie. You can’t make decisions about your life based on my mistakes. We can’t even make decisions based on our own mistakes sometimes. We have to weigh our mistakes against our fears, and then let our heart and brain fight over what’s right.” Karina stroked a hand through Lacy’s hair. “Do you really love this twerp?”
Lacy stared down at
her tea, suddenly not sure how much of her refusal to call Chase was due to her believing he didn’t want her, or her fear of marriage and of turning into her mom. “I think so, but I’m scared. It all happened so fast. One minute I thought he was going to kill me, the next I was fantasizing about getting him fitted for his tux. What if I’m fooling myself? What if we get married and then it doesn’t work?”
“I knew your dad only five days when we got married, and he was the true love of my life. I’m not saying that this man is right for you. I’m just saying you shouldn’t not try to work things out because you’re afraid. Just like I shouldn’t marry the next guy who asks just because I’m afraid.”
Karina let out a deep breath. “If you think you love him, you owe it to yourself and to him to give it a fighting chance. Hey.” She gave Lacy’s hand a squeeze. “I didn’t raise a quitter.”
Lacy chewed on her bottom lip and remembered what she’d discovered about Chase. “I’m not quitting. But . . . he still loves his late wife. He doesn’t want to love again. He—”
Her mother touched her lips to quiet her. “His wife is in the past. I saw the way he looked at you. He’s ready to move on.”
Lacy gazed at her mother, wanting to believe, wanting to put her fears behind her once and for all.
Her mother cleared her throat “I’m not saying you should marry him. But what would it hurt to drop by his place, to let him know that you’re thinking about him? Maybe he’s waiting on you to make the first move.”
“You think so?” Lacy asked.
“Yeah, and if he turns you down, then I’ll hire that hit man.”
Lacy grinned and pulled back the covers. “You’re right. I should at least go find out where I stand.”
“That’s my girl,” her mother said.
• • •
After her mother left, Lacy pulled off her Divorced, Desperate and Delicious shirt and grabbed a shower. Feeling a mite desperate and wanting to feel a bit delicious, she dug deep into her closet, to the clothes from before her anti-men campaign. She needed something sexy, something that said wow, something that could compete with Jessie. A dark feeling of jealousy surged through her, but she ignored it.
A red fitted silk dress with a scooped neckline was about as wow as she had. Lacy grinned, deciding that some matching underwear would make the outfit say double-wow.
After drying her hair and banana-clipping it, she even put on a bit of makeup. A pair of red pumps, gold hoop earrings and a squirt of Red perfume added the final sparkle. Smiling into her mirror, she winked. “Watch out, Chase Kelly.”
She knew there was a chance that Chase would turn her down, but she felt optimistic. One way or the other, she would deal with what happened. If Chase didn’t want to continue seeing her, well, she would move on. She might tell her mother to go ahead and pay the hit man, but Lacy Maguire was finished hiding.
She drove through rush-hour traffic to get to his place. Like air from week-old balloons, by the time she cut off the engine her courage had seeped out. Her stomach hurt and her hands felt sweaty, but she forced herself to get out of her Saturn and walk up the stairs. Remembering the pass-code, she let herself in. As she moved to the elevator, a man walking past stopped and smiled, his gaze brushing over her in definite male appreciation. Her courage rose a notch. But her heart thumped against her breastbone when the elevator opened on the second floor.
She took a deep breath, stepped out, and started down the hall towards Chase’s unit. Two more steps, and she heard someone whistling a lively and familiar tune. Lacy paused as the words ran through her head. It was “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”
She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. There, fifty feet from her, his back to her, Chase ambled down the hall. She opened her mouth to call his name, but her voice box seized. He carried a bouquet of red roses in one hand and a plastic grocery bag in the other. He stopped, juggled the items in his arms, and knocked on a door. On Jessie’s door.
Lacy froze. Sometimes, the truth was hard to swallow and it took her a couple attempts to get this bit of truth down her throat. The truth being that Chase preferred women who didn’t care, and his returning to Jessie could only mean one thing. He really hadn’t cared about her. Her lungs shut down and the snag in her heart started unraveling for good this time.
Jessie’s door opened. “Chase? Oh, my God!” The woman’s voice seemed to bounce down the hall and slap Lacy right between the eyes. “I’ve been worried sick. Oh, my, you brought me flowers.”
Swerving around, Lacy repeatedly hit the elevator button. When it opened, she stumbled inside and punched the button at least four times to close the door. An allergy attack hit full force, but she fought back the tears, remembering her vow to move on. She hadn’t gotten dolled up to go home and cry— she could always do that later. Some guy, somewhere, was going to enjoy the red outfit. And maybe even the red underwear.
• • •
Chase placed another log on the fire and paced the wooden floor in Lacy’s living room. All four of her animals sat on the sofa and observed him, their heads turning left then right as he moved. He’d had the evening all planned out. However, his plans had a serious flaw.
When he had found her gone, he’d decided to surprise her. He’d pulled his car around back and started dinner, grateful for the time to figure out exactly what he needed to say. But that had been three hours ago. Now he’d practiced his speech so much that he felt sure even Fabio knew it by heart. Leonardo had gotten bored and sneaked into the kitchen and eaten the baby’s breath that came with the roses. And dinner had long since grown cold. The grandfather clock struck ten times. Where could she be at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night?
Car lights sent a beam of brightness through the front windows. Chase stepped to the door and started to open it when he heard voices. He moved to the window in the dining room and peered out. His heart plummeted.
It was Lacy, wearing something far too sexy to be standing next to any man besides him. She stood on the front walk next to another man.
Chapter Thirty
Divorced, Desperate and Delicious Page 31