Lucifer's Lover

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Catherine saw Lindsay as she tried to hide behind the secretary who was escorting her and rose from her desk with a smile on her face.

  Which meant every man turned to look at her.

  Lindsay could feel her cheeks burning and she tugged at the hem of the long sweater she wore over her simple skirt.

  “Lindsay, darling. You’re here. Wonderful.” Her mother floated over to her—Catherine always seemed to float, for she wore flowing garments in elegant silks and extravagant materials that gleamed dully and felt wonderful against the hand.

  Lindsay suffered her cheek to be kissed, painfully aware of the businessmen watching them. She cringed as her mother put her arm around her and turned back to the men. “Gentlemen, this is my daughter Lindsay and today is her sixteenth birthday. I’m taking her to lunch after the meeting and then—” she brushed at an invisible speck on Lindsay’s sweater, “some shopping is definitely in order.”

  “Wonderful idea.”

  “Happy birthday.”

  “Congratulations,” came the various murmured responses.

  Lindsay could feel herself curling up at the edges. “Hi,” she murmured. Her cheeks couldn’t get any hotter. Surely, if her mother had a meeting to get through, she would shove her out the door with the secretary—who had disappeared—and Lindsay could go recover somewhere private. She fervently hoped so, anyway.

  The secretary reappeared carrying a heavy tray full of black porcelain.

  “Ah! Coffee. Lindsay, you’re just in time. I believe Barbara has a Dutch chocolate cake hidden away somewhere for special occasions. And this is a special occasion, after all.”

  Her mother was pulling her toward the group of men and Barbara was nodding and smiling, as she laid out the coffee service on the low table to one side of the desk.

  The men were rearranging their chairs around the coffee table.

  Lindsay’s heart sank even further. She had been looking forward to time alone with her mother. There was a boy at school she wanted to tell her about and ask her advice. This was too overwhelming. Too grown-up for her right now.

  But her mother’s arm around her allowed no protest. Lindsay was being led to the table.

  Murphy was alive and well that day. Lindsay noticed the raised edge of the beautiful Persian rug as she approached it and even as she mentally told herself to be careful not to trip over it, her toe caught under the edge. Her leg was yanked back by her forward momentum and Lindsay tottered on the brink of balance, arms wind-milling, as she desperately tugged her foot, trying to bring it forward to prop up her balance.

  Just as Barbara was arriving with the chocolate cake, of course.

  Lindsay’s shoulder slammed into Barbara’s hip. The cake was flung across the table. A good proportion landed on the lap of the Japanese gentleman and the rest skidded across the glowing wooden floor, smearing brown and white mess right up to the door of the office.

  Barbara fell backward, knocking over one of the other men, who swore shockingly and landed on his butt with an undignified “hummpppfff!” and Barbara fell on top of him.

  Lindsay, bumped aside by her collision with Barbara, slid across the coffee table top, sending every single piece of china skidding across the glass top to shatter on the floor beneath.

  She came to a stop spread-eagled on the table, her hair hanging in the pool of steaming coffee spreading across the floor and soaking into the rug, turning the white fringing a deep ecru.

  She lay staring at the floor through the table top, unable to believe what had just happened.

  “Bloody hell!” one of the men said, his voice awed.

  The silence that followed was strained.

  “Oh dear,” said her mother.

  Lindsay closed her eyes and rested her burning face against the cold glass.

  “Mr. Ikabanu, we can have housekeeping take care of your suit for you. Barbara, are you all right, dear? Take Mr. Ikabanu to the penthouse suite and let him use the facilities.” It was her mother, taking charge, organizing. Recovering. “Is anyone injured?”

  “Your daughter might need some assistance,” someone suggested dryly.

  “Yes, of course. Lindsay, sweetheart?”

  She felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder. She had to get up. She had to face them all. There was no way around it. She couldn’t die right now and shrivel up and blow away. It wasn’t going to happen.

  Lindsay pushed herself up off the table, onto her knees, then carefully stepped onto the floor, finding a clear space for her feet.

  She couldn’t lift her gaze from the floor. It was too much. She didn’t dare look at any of her mother’s business associates. She’d die before she did that.

  Her mother laid her hand on her shoulder, firmly. “I think we can safely call this meeting adjourned, gentlemen. Barbara will arrange another appointment for us all—tomorrow, I think. Lindsay—”

  Lindsay lifted her chin to look at her mother and only her. Catherine’s green eyes were glittering with an unguessable emotion but her face was pleasant, gentle. “Go with Barbara. She’ll get you another room. You can clean up and…recover. I’ll be along shortly.” She gave her a smile.

  Tears blurred her vision and Lindsay nodded mutely. Catherine wasn’t angry with her. That was more than she had expected. She turned and stumbled away, heading toward the office door by instinct.

  Behind her, she heard her mother—managing, again.

  “Gentlemen, I apologize for my daughter’s behavior. I have no idea where she gets her clumsiness from—not me, that’s for sure.”

  There was a little laugh.

  Something cold, big and hard grabbed Lindsay’s heart and squeezed hard. She couldn’t even breathe, so chilling was the shock of it.

  Centuries passed, while Lindsay absorbed the betrayal. Then she picked up her feet and walked out of the office to wait for Barbara to find her.

  * * * * *

  Her mother came to the anonymous hotel room a little later and by that time, Lindsay had her emotions under a tight control. She sat on the corner of the bed and watched her mother gracefully stride over to her and run her fingers through her still-damp hair.

  “You never do things by halves, do you?” her mother said, with a small smile.

  “I’m sorry,” Lindsay told her.

  “Well of course you are,” Catherine answered with a little laugh. “I know you didn’t deliberately ruin a three-million-dollar deal for me. Others might accuse you of it but I know better.”

  A touch of relief speared her. “I’m so glad you’re not mad at me! Mom, that was so embarrassing. And in that wonderful office of yours and in front of all your people. And all I really wanted to do was be like you, I would die to be like you—to have the clothes, the office, the attention…”

  But Catherine was shaking her head, a little crease between her brows.

  “You will never be like me, sweetheart. Never.”

  Lindsay stared at her. “I beg your pardon?” she said through lips that wouldn’t work properly.

  Catherine smiled and cupped her chin. “You’re sixteen now, Lindsay. Old enough to face truth and take it in stride. You’re not like me at all. You’re too much like your father. Your intelligence frightens me sometimes. I’m already fielding calls from Radcliffe about enrolling you early.” She dropped her hand and straightened up. “You’re not a people-person, darling. You don’t have the talent to mix with people. What happened in my office is a prime example.”

  “That was…” Just nerves. Lindsay stared mutely at her mother, unable to accept what she was saying.

  Catherine shook her head. “I know it must be disappointing, darling but trust me—you’ll thank me for it later. You’re just not cut out for this type of career. Your social skills are inadequate despite the best training I could get you and, well, subtlety is not your strong suit.” She smiled as if she wanted to take the sting out of the terrible things she was saying.

  Lindsay watched the smile forming but the warmt
h it was intended to convey didn’t register.

  “The thing is, darling, you just don’t have the edge to beat men at this crazy game they insist on playing.” Catherine sighed. “But you will make a wonderful doctor of something or other, my dear. Your father says yours is one of the best minds he’s come across in many years. He would know.”

  She patted Lindsay’s shoulder. “Shall we go and get that lunch now, hmmm? I think an early break is called for. And then, some shopping.”

  Lindsay remembered the casual flick of her mother’s fingers across her sweater and nodded.

  They went shopping at Saks and Lindsay wouldn’t let her mother buy her anything but business style skirts and jackets and button down shirts.

  When she got home to Deerfoot Falls, she burned the sweater.

  It was her first deliberate act of defiance.

  * * * * *

  Luke listened to the quietly spoken tale with growing horror. What had her mother been thinking of? Apologizing like that, within Lindsay’s hearing?

  Then he recalled Lindsay’s rush for safety at the Christmas party. Her biggest fear had been that he might be forced to apologize for her.

  He closed his eyes, letting it sink in.

  “My mother used to commute to New York every Monday and come home on the red eye every Friday night.”

  He jumped a little. That was what he did, in reverse.

  “She didn’t come home that Friday after my birthday.” Lindsay spoke so casually that for a moment Luke didn’t grasp the significance. Then he felt giddy shock. “God, Lynds, you mean, that’s the week she died?”

  “That Friday night, on the way to the airport. Traffic accident. They say she wouldn’t have had a chance to know she was dying.”

  “Is that when you decided to do what she did?”

  “No. That came after. After Radcliffe. I thought I was sophisticated and worldly and I was going to prove my mother wrong no matter what it took.” She sighed. “The really ironic thing is, she was right. I don’t have what it takes. I am lousy with people. I don’t have the killer instinct she did. I just steam roller over everyone and get what I want that way.”

  “But Lindsay, you still made director of marketing on your own terms. Nobody got the job for you.”

  “Doctor of something or other,” Lindsay murmured. “She couldn’t even be bothered giving it a name. Just so long as little Lindsay was pushed off into her geek box in the corner, out of sight.”

  “I don’t think she meant it that way.”

  “I do.” Amazingly, Lindsay yawned. “I’m tired…”

  “I’m not surprised.” He said it quietly. “That’s a big load you’ve been carrying for a long, long while.”

  Lindsay slept, still curled up against him, while he indulged in some very heavy and long overdue, thinking.

  The answers he formed frightened him.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I thought I’d find you here.” Lindsay’s voice in the empty house echoed a little. She rested her hand on the newel post and stared up at Luke where he perched awkwardly across three stairs, replacing some of the railing.

  Luke looked around. When he saw her he smiled a little. “So…sleeping beauty awakes.” He straightened up from his side sprawl, wincing a little.

  “Yes, to find herself tucked into bed like a little girl.” She tried to school her voice into a stern tone.

  His were lit with merriment. “It seemed appropriate.”

  She relented. “Thank you.”

  “De nada.”

  She nodded toward the railing. “What are you doing?”

  He grimaced. “Replacing some of the down rails. The banister and the newel posts are oak…they’ll last another century but the rails were replaced sometime in the past and the new ones were cheap and they’ve almost rotted away just around here, where there was a leak from the bathroom.” He turned back to his job and Lindsay crept up the stairs to look.

  He picked up the rail he was trying to fit in under the banister. “By the way, I checked in with Tim. Everything’s under control at the office, so you don’t have to rush back in today.”

  “Thanks. I phoned him before I came looking for you.” She seated herself on the step below him. “You’re not going in?”

  He glanced at her. “No. It didn’t seem…appropriate. Could you hand me that—”

  She picked up the hammer he had been about to ask for and gave it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said absently, already tapping the post into place. Satisfied, he put the hammer down. “So. What now, Lynds?”

  “Meaning?” She handed him the electric drill.

  He fished a wood screw out of the packet by his hip. “I’ll need the two-eighths drill bit,” he said, pointing to the case of bits next to Lindsay.

  She popped the appropriate metal bit out of the plastic and handed it to him.

  “I mean,” he said, screwing the bit into the drill, “Are you going to keep working at the Derwent?”

  “No…Yes…” She frowned. “I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any real reason to do that anymore, does there?”

  He frowned, looking down at the packet of screws. “Damn, I meant the three-eighths wood bit,” he said.

  “That’s what I gave you,” she said.

  He looked at the drill bit and grinned. “So you did.” He sprawled across the stairs again and drilled through the post and into the railing above. He blew the sawdust away. “So you don’t think you should stay but you don’t want to go.”

  “Not exactly. I just don’t know where to go to.” She handed him the screwdriver bit and took the hot drill bit back. “I never really considered what I might do if I failed.”

  “You haven’t failed,” he said quickly, sitting up. His eyes snapped fire. “Don’t start thinking of it as failure, Lindsay, because it isn’t. You didn’t achieve what you wanted—an almost impossible set of goals as it happens. But in everyone else’s terms, you’re still doing just fine.” He rested his forearm across his knees. “It’s just not what you want to be doing.”

  He lay back down again, preparing to drive the screw home. “You just have to figure out what you want.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “And I have no idea where to start to figure that out.”

  He screwed the screw into the banister and then tested the rail to see if it was secure and turned to her. “So, what are your interests, then? What do you do outside the office?”

  Nothing. The answer was a bleak one.

  Luke grinned. “I forgot for a moment. It’s Lindsay Eden we’re talking about. Home, office, home again.”

  She felt a tiny spurt of irritation. “It’s not funny,” she said.

  “No, funny isn’t in your repertoire.” He grinned. “I had a cousin who—”

  Lindsay groaned.

  “What?”

  “Another one of your mad relative stories?”

  “Mad relatives?”

  “Well, you’ve got to admit, Pierse, you have one of the most eccentric families in America.”

  “Says Lindsay who has a genius rocket scientist for a father, who spends his time making furniture for charities while she spends all her time proving her dead mother wrong.”

  She could feel anger wanting to grow in her. It smoldered. But Luke gently added, “I envy you.”

  Her anger evaporated. She stared at him, lost for words. “Why?” she said at last.

  He started screwing the screw home and she realized he wasn’t going to answer her question.

  “Anyway, my cousin—Des, his name is—he runs an employment bureau on Staten Island. He—”

  “Successful?” Lindsay interrupted.

  Luke pushed his lips out, weighing his answer. “Not at all,” he admitted finally. “Des spends too much time trying to find jobs for misfits and long term unemployed and given the location of his bureau, that’s ninety percent of his clients.”

  “How on earth does he make a living, then?” />
  “Barter, mostly.” Luke grinned. “He agreed, once, to accept a pork roast as payment and was delivered a whole pig—live and kicking. He had to butcher it at home and his wife nearly divorced him as a result.” He frowned. “You distracted me,” he said, trying to sound vexed.

  His complaint reminded Lindsay sharply of the last time she had distracted him. Warmth stole through her, prompted by the memory.

  “Anyway, where was I?” Luke murmured. “Right. Doug’s greatest talent is in inspiring some of those deadbeats to better themselves. He can get inside them, open them up and help them figure out what they really want in life. I’ve seen him doing it. He can dig out latent desires, hopes, dreams that some of these people didn’t even know they had. And he usually started with a series of questions.” He looked squarely at Lindsay. “What are your strengths, Lynds? What are you good at?”

  “I can demonstrate one thing I’m good at,” Lindsay told him. She climbed two steps so that she was straddling Luke’s thighs and crouched down, pushing against his shoulder, forcing him to lie back against the steps behind him.

  He looked a little startled but there was a knowing gleam in his eyes. “Oh?” he prompted.

  A perverse demon was driving her, one she didn’t understand. All she did know was that she felt an incredible lightness, a freedom from worry and toil and it was influencing her actions. She rested her knees against the steps and reached for the buttons on his shirt, slipping them undone. She pull the shirt from his jeans, opening it all the way and sliding her hands across his chest to part it and push it back over his shoulders.

  Luke drew in a small, sharp breath as she leaned forward and kissed each small erect nipple in turn and slid her tongue across each. Her hands were busy undoing the button on his jeans and his own hands came alive, sliding up to her hips.

  “Lindsay…”

  She slid the zipper undone just before he pulled her on top of him, his mouth capturing hers and his hands holding her against him. Warmth bubbled through her, mixing with the headiness that already possessed her. She delighted in the feel of his hands on her, his mouth against hers, his body so large and warm and responsive. He was matching her mood, her speed—raining little kisses on her mouth, helping her unbutton her shirt and peel it away, deftly divesting each of them of the rest of their clothes, quickly, furiously.