The Great Escape

by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Temple was slumped against the wall, her head resting against the arms she’d folded over her bent knees. Lucy knelt next to her and offered it. “Eat this.”

  Temple’s teary red eyes reflected only betrayal. “Why are you sabotaging me?” she said hoarsely.

  “This isn’t sabotage.” Lucy struggled to find the words. “It’s—it’s life.”

  Temple ate it. Not gulping it down but savoring each small bite. While Panda leaned against the doorjamb and watched, Lucy sat cross-legged at Temple’s side and tried to think what to say. In the end, she said nothing.

  “That was good,” Temple said in a small voice. “Can I have another?”

  Lucy thought for a moment. “No, but I’m making dinner tonight.”

  Temple’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I can’t do this any longer.”

  “I know.”

  Temple buried her face in her hands. “It’s all going to come crashing down. Everything I’ve worked for.”

  “Not unless you want it to,” Lucy said. “You’ve fixed your body. All you need to do now is fix your head.” She rose and faced Panda. “I’ll be back in an hour. Unlock the pantry.”

  Chapter Twenty

  THE HOUSE WAS QUIET WHEN Lucy returned from town. She unpacked the groceries and a small charcoal grill from Panda’s trunk. While the coals heated, she tossed a worn cloth over the picnic table, set it with a hodgepodge of dishes, and shucked four ears of corn.

  When she was back in the kitchen, she poured herself a generous glass of wine and unwrapped some freshly caught, but mercifully cleaned and de-headed, trout she’d bought at the marina. She stuffed the trout with spinach leaves, some wild chives she’d found growing in the back, and a few lemon slices. After brushing the fish lightly with olive oil, she set the pieces on a platter waiting for the grill. She wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing, but she did know Temple couldn’t keep on like this any longer—obsessed, tormented, and destined to regain all the weight she’d lost as soon as she left this Fat Island she’d created.

  Panda appeared while she was making a quick salad, this one supplemented with pine nuts, slivers of ripe pear, and a creamy crumble of forbidden feta. “Do you really think this is a good idea?” he asked.

  “Got a better one?”

  He watched glumly as she mixed up a light dressing from a splash of olive oil and a fruity balsamic. “Why did I ever take this job?”

  “Because you owed her.” She handed him the platter of stuffed trout. “The grill’s outside. Don’t overcook it.”

  He gazed at the trout, his expression vaguely dumbfounded. “Do I look like a guy who knows how to grill?”

  “Just don’t poke at the pieces until they’re ready to flip. You’ll figure it out. It’s in your male genes.”

  He stalked outside, muttering under his breath. She checked the water she’d set to boil the corn. Instead of sabotaging Temple’s diet, she wanted to awaken her senses to something other than deprivation.

  Temple wandered into the kitchen, her hair scraggly and eyes red, looking more like the scullery maid than the Evil Queen. Lucy poured her half a glass of wine from the bottle of sauvignon blanc she’d just bought and handed it over without speaking. Temple brought it to her nose, inhaled, then took a small sip. She closed her eyes and savored.

  “We’re eating outside tonight, and I want flowers on the table.” Lucy gave her a lumpy blue pottery vase that looked like a grade-school art project. “Scrounge around and find something.”

  Temple was too drained to protest.

  Her effort consisted of hosta leaves, Queen Anne’s lace, and a few black-eyed Susans. Predictably, the end result didn’t fit her definition of perfection, so she hated it, but Lucy couldn’t imagine an arrangement more suited to the faded red-rooster tablecloth and unmatched dishes.

  The picnic table, turned for a lake view, sat under the oak. Panda took the bench across from Lucy and Temple. Lucy set an ear of corn on Temple’s plate and her own, but gave him two. “I forgot to buy butter,” she lied. “Try that instead.” She pointed to the lime wedges lying on a child’s plastic Sesame Street plate.

  As she’d hoped, the explosive sweetness of the corn combined with the tang of fresh lime juice and a sprinkle of sea salt made up for the lack of butter. She wanted to feed Temple’s soul but not sabotage her body. Despite a few charred places, Panda had done a good job grilling the fish, and the interior was moist and flavorful.

  “God, this is so good.” Temple uttered the words like a prayer.

  “Amen.” Panda moved on to his second ear of corn, eating far more tidily than either Temple or Lucy.

  Temple examined her cob for a kernel she might have missed. “How did you learn to cook like this?”

  Lucy didn’t feel like bringing up the subject of White House chefs. “Trial and error.”

  After Temple had chased the last remaining pine nut around her empty plate with a moistened fingertip, she studied Lucy with genuine curiosity. “What’s in this for you? We all know I’m crazy. Why do you care what happens to me?”

  “Because I’ve grown weirdly fond of you.” Besides, trying to fix other people was a great distraction from trying to fix herself. With her deadline less than a month away, she hadn’t written even a page of the material her father wanted, she wouldn’t let herself think about going back to work, and she barely talked to her family. All she’d accomplished was to bake a lot of bread, perfect her honey caramels, and have a dead-end affair with a man she was using as a sexual convenience.

  “Lucy’s been taking care of people all her life,” Panda said. “It’s in her DNA.” He studied her in a way that made her uncomfortable. “She saved her kid sister. She got her parents together. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Lucy, it’s doubtful her mother would have become president.” He brushed a fly away. “You could say that by the time Lucy was fifteen, she’d changed the course of American history.”

  His vision of her made her uncomfortable, and she got up from the table. “How about dessert?”

  “There’s dessert?” Temple sounded as if she’d just heard that the Easter Bunny was real.

  “Life is meant to be lived.”

  Lucy returned from the kitchen with a square of dark chocolate that she broke into three small pieces. “You gave him more,” Temple grumbled. And then, “Forget I said that.”

  But as Lucy and Temple nibbled at their own chocolate, Panda’s square remained untouched. He crushed his napkin and dropped it on his plate. “I’m handing in my resignation.”

  The chocolate stuck in Lucy’s throat. Temple’s breakdown … The meal Lucy had just fixed … He’d found the excuse he’d been looking for to leave the island and, in the process, get away from her.

  “Like hell you will.” Temple sucked a chocolate smear from her finger.

  “You hired me to stop exactly this sort of thing,” he said calmly. “Cheese, chocolate, corn on the cob … I didn’t do my job.”

  “Your job’s changed.”

  His calmness evaporated. “Exactly how has it changed?”

  She made a vague gesture. “I’ll figure that out.”

  “Forget it!” He pushed himself up from the table and stormed across the yard toward his brooding place.

  As he disappeared up the rocky slope, Temple looked at Lucy. “If you want to land this guy, you’ll have to work faster. Your time’s running out.”

  “Land him? I don’t want to land him.”

  “Now who’s hiding from the truth?” She reached for the chocolate he’d left, thought better of it, and tossed it over the bluff. “Patrick Shade adores you, despite his grumbling. He’s one of the sexiest men on the planet. He’s also ethical, caring, and just screwed up enough to be interesting. You’re in love with the guy.”

  “I am not!”

  “Now who needs a shrink?”

  Lucy tossed her legs over the picnic bench and grabbed her plate. “This is the thanks I get for feeding you real food.”


  “Unless you want to lose the best man you’ll ever meet, you’d better pick up your game.”

  “I don’t have a game. And Ted Beaudine was the best man I ever met.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Lucy stormed toward the house. “You clean up. I’m going into town. And no more exercise the rest of the night!”

  THE COMPASS SAT A BLOCK off Beachcomber Boulevard, a weather-beaten one-story building with fishing nets draped across the front and pitted brass ships’ lanterns mounted on either side of the door. A sign advertised LIVE MUSIC AND HAPPY HOUR ALL DAY.

  In love with Panda? Total rubbish. She knew the difference between real love and an affair.

  The interior smelled of beer and buffalo wings. More fishing nets hung on the walls, along with plastic floats, fake compasses, reproduction ship’s wheels, and a collection of bras. The wooden tables were pressed close together with an open space at the rear for the band. The bar, which had a reputation as a hangout for the younger vacation crowd, was just beginning to come alive.

  Lucy watched the band tune up while she sipped a watermelon margarita. Why would Temple even think such a thing? Just because Panda was hot? So were a lot of men, maybe not to the same degree—definitely not to the same degree—but love was more than sex. Love implied common interests, an ease being with each other, a shared sense of values. Okay, so she and Panda did have some of that—a lot of that—but …

  She was relieved when a beefy jock type sidled up to her. “What’s your name, foxy lady?”

  “I go by Viper.”

  “Like windshield viper?” He was already visibly drunk, and he blew a series of hee-haws through his nose.

  “No,” she replied. “Like, if-you-piss-me-off, I’ll-kick-your-ass Viper.” She blew her own silent hee-haw.

  Only as the kid backed away did it occur to her that, between her dreads, tattoos, and tough talk, she might be too scary for the average male, which kind of defeated her purpose in coming here. But as she watched jock boy retreat, she had to admit she loved the idea that goody-goody Lucy Jorik could frighten anybody away.

  She’d dressed in full-out goth-skank mode: a little black skirt that barely covered her butt, a one-shoulder black halter top with a grommet border, and her only pair of heels—studded black platform mules. With her tats on full display, nose and eyebrow rings in place, heavy dark eyeliner, she definitely stood out from all the college girls in their cute little shorts and flip-flops.

  She drifted toward a kennel of males: a golden retriever, a greyhound, a pit bull, and a couple of mongrels. All of them were watching her. She almost asked permission to join them before she remembered who she was. “I’m Viper.” She set her beer on the table and took the only empty chair. “If you hear any stories about me, they’re probably true.”

  WHERE THE HELL WAS SHE? By midnight, Panda had checked every bar in town before he remembered The Compass. Lucy had taken his car, so he’d had to come into town by boat, leaving Temple alone. For all he knew, Temple had downed the rest of the chocolate Lucy had bought. He no longer cared.

  He surveyed the crowd and spotted her right away. She was dancing in front of the band with a skinny, long-haired kid who looked like a young Eddie Van Halen. If you could call that pelvic grind she was doing “dancing.” Both the lead guitarist and bass player were singing right to her, a cover of Bon Jovi’s “Runaway.” She looked tough, dangerous, and barely legal in her trashy top and trashier shoes. Her skirt wasn’t much more than a handkerchief and showed way too much leg, along with a new tat of a snake coiling up one calf, its fanged head pointed toward Nirvana. Hard to remember that two and a half months ago this tough-as-nails man-eater had been wearing pearls and preparing to settle into domestic bliss with the most respectable guy in Texas.

  He was attracting his own kind of attention, but he’d long ago lost his taste for coeds. The song came to an end. She hooked her arms around the young stud’s neck, leaned into him, and kissed the son of a bitch. Long and hard.

  Panda plowed through the crowd and gave the punk a nudge on the shoulder. “Get lost.”

  She turned her head just far enough to lift her phony-pierced eyebrow at him, then tightened her hold on the kid’s neck and stuck her lips near his earlobe. “Ignore him. He’s not as tough as he looks.”

  Panda didn’t have to stare at the kid more than a few seconds before the kid figured out that wasn’t true. The boy broke Lucy’s hold. “Later, okay?”

  Lucy watched the kid hurry off, then glared at Panda. “Go away,” she shouted over the music. “I’m drunk, and I was just getting ready to make out with him.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Congratulations. At this rate, you’ll be done with your list in no time.”

  She stomped her metal-studded shoe. “Damn it, he’s leaving, and I was going to sleep with him. Now it’ll have to be the greyhound.”

  Like hell. He didn’t know who the greyhound was, only that this she-devil wasn’t sleeping with anybody but him tonight. “Here’s the thing, babe … I don’t share my woman.”

  She looked way too outraged. “I’m not your woman. And I’m not your babe!”

  He kissed her before she could say any more. She tasted like booze and cinnamon lipstick. But she didn’t throw herself into the kiss the way he wanted. Instead she nipped his bottom lip with her teeth and backed off. “Nice try, Patrick, but no dice. I’m partying with new friends, and you aren’t invited.”

  “Hold on. You told me you wanted to make out in public.”

  “And you said you wouldn’t.”

  “Changed my mind.” He was a shitty dancer, but he figured what she’d been doing wasn’t exactly dancing, so he pulled her against him.

  She refused to cooperate. “Buy me a drink first.”

  “You’ve had enough.”

  She glued her feet to the ground. “No drink, no dance. Get me a kamikaze.”

  He gritted his teeth and stalked over to the bar. “Make me something that tastes like a kamikaze,” he told a female bartender who looked like a prison guard. “But without the booze.”

  “What are you?” she growled. “Some kind of religious nut?”

  “Just make the damned drink.”

  The final concoction tasted more like an orange Popsicle than a real kamikaze, but maybe Lucy wouldn’t notice. He spotted her perched on some guy’s lap. The kid was tall and almost comically skinny, with a long nose and longer neck. The greyhound.

  He bought himself a beer and sauntered over to the table. The greyhound saw him coming and got up so fast he nearly dumped her. Panda nodded at him and handed Lucy her drink. “I see you’re up to your old tricks, babe.”

  She gave him the stink eye.

  “A word of advice, boys …” He sipped his beer. “Check your wallets before you let her get away. She can’t help herself.”

  As they reached for their pockets, he set down his beer and pulled her back to the dance floor, where the band had launched into an off-key ballad. She smirked at him. “No need to make out with me. Like I told you, I’ve already done that. With two of them.”

  “I’m impressed.” He cupped his hands around her butt and moved his mouth closer to her ear. “How about getting felt up in public? Is that on your list, too?”

  “No, but …”

  He squeezed. “You should put it there.”

  He was hoping for a little embarrassment on her part, but he didn’t see it. He backed her to the wall next to a wooden whale and kissed the hell out of her. This time he got a reaction. She wrapped her arms around his neck, right where they belonged. She seemed a little dazed, or maybe that was him. He tugged at her earlobe with his lips. “Let’s get out of here.”

  She acted as though he’d dumped a bucket of ice water over her head. “No way, dude. I’m staying.”

  “Think again, dude,” he retorted. “You’re going with me.”

  “And how exactly are you going to pull that off?”

  She had a point. As mu
ch as he might want to, he couldn’t exactly throw her over his shoulder and drag her out without attracting the attention of at least a few good Samaritans, right along with the prison guard behind the bar, who probably had a handgun tucked away somewhere.

  Lucy sauntered off, ass wiggling. She found another table, this one holding an older and tougher crowd. His temper surged. She was a big girl, and if this was the way she wanted it, to hell with her.

  He began to elbow his way toward the door, then paused. Some of the women were watching her a little too closely, probably because they didn’t like the male attention she was attracting. But maybe they were trying to place her face, and if that happened … He imagined cell phones pulled out, cameras clicking away, people pressing in on her …

  He ordered a club soda, leaned against the bar, and watched her until the men at the table got uneasy and stopped talking to her. She tried another table, but he had his glare on good and strong, and they didn’t roll out the welcome mat either. Instead of calling it a night, she came toward him, the ass-wiggling a thing of the past. Her footsteps were firm, her eyes steady, and beneath all that makeup, she looked like a woman who knew her way around the world’s power centers.

  “Thanks to whatever it was you ordered for me, I’m sober,” she said with deadly seriousness. “I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need your protection.” She lifted her chin. “I’ve spent a decade under guard. That’s more than enough. As of right now, we’ve broken up. I want you to leave.”

  A blinding fury claimed him, the kind of fury he’d thought was behind him. He slammed his drink down on the bar. “You’ve got it, sister.”

  LUCY HAD GOTTEN RID OF Panda, but she’d also lost her party spirit. Why did he have to show up and spoil everything? Still, she shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that. It was Temple’s fault. Her smug certainty that Lucy had fallen in love with him had made Lucy panicky.

  She shouldn’t be. Temple was wrong. Lucy wasn’t the kind of woman to fall in love with one man two and a half months after she’d been in love with another. And she especially wasn’t the kind of women to fall in love with someone who was so guarded that he refused to reveal anything about himself. Still, some part of her wished she hadn’t announced they were breaking up quite yet, even though summer was nearly over and he’d be leaving soon.