by Various
“Who said I didn’t leave?”
“Oh.” She frowned and lifted one palm in question.
He worked on his steak, eyes on the plate rather than on her. “Short version? I graduated from Lindsey Point High and went up to New Haven for college on a scholarship.”
“What kind of scholarship?”
“Football.”
The warmth spread, and for a moment all she could think about was those hands on a football, around her waist, on her bare shoulders as he tasted his way along her collarbone, continuing what he’d started in the keeper’s house that afternoon.
“...came back after I graduated,” Lucas was saying.
Sophie did her best to tear her eyes away from his hands. And his mouth. Oh, hell, she was in trouble. Where else was she supposed to look?
“My parents grew up here too, in case you were wondering. And my grandparents on my father’s side.” He finished his meal, leaned back, and folded his arms. Biceps popped from under the sleeves of his polo shirt. “Mom turned sixty in the spring. We had a big party over at the fire hall. Cake, stripper, everything.”
Sophie’s wine glass stopped halfway to her mouth. “You hired a stripper for your mother’s birthday?”
He laughed. “Yup. Should-a seen her face when he walked in the door and started dropping his fireman’s uniform. But she’s pretty cool, as moms go.”
“I bet.”
“She stayed home with me and my sister ’til we both got into high school. Then she went back to school. Works part-time now as the children’s librarian downtown. Dad’s a custodian over at the elementary school, thirty-plus years.”
Freakin’ perfect family. “Is your sister older or younger?”
“Older. She’s a doctor up in New Haven. Family practice.”
Of course she was. And her younger brother was the resident handyman and all-around good guy in his All-American hometown. And they all lived happily ever after.
Lucas waved a hand in front of her face. “Earth to Sophie.”
“Sorry. Just, ah, thinking.”
“’Bout what?”
She pushed her chair back and crossed her legs, full and warm from the food and the wine and Mr. Sexy himself, sitting across the table and sending her thoughts, not to mention her hormones, into a whirlwind. “You really want to know?”
His gaze narrowed. “I’m not sure.”
“The redhead,” Sophie said after a few seconds. “The one walking down the sidewalk yesterday morning. Tell me about her.”
She’d heard about the picture-perfect family with the white picket fence. Now she wanted Lucas to tell her what had broken him. She wanted to know the other side.
Chapter 10
His face changed. In a flash, the light in his eyes vanished, and his gaze dropped back to the table. “Start with an easy one, why don’t you.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” She wasn’t, but he didn’t look like he was about to answer. Her fingers played with the stem of her wine glass and she tried to think of something else to ask. “I take it back. Forget I said anything.”
But Lucas shrugged after a moment. “It was over a long time ago.”
She waited.
“We were engaged a few years back.”
“Oh.” And now they weren’t. “She grow up here too? You go to school together?”
But apparently that was a worse question than the first, because the look on his face changed from discomfort to downright pain. For an instant, Sophie wondered if he’d eaten something that didn’t agree with him. “Lucas?”
“It’s complicated.” His voice turned gruff.
Wasn’t it always? She opened her mouth to change the subject, maybe talk about tomorrow’s shoot, but apparently he wasn’t finished.
“I was friends with her sister back in high school. Sarah.” He stopped, as if it hurt to say the word. The cleft in his chin deepened.
“Oh.” Another single syllable in response. But she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and she was too busy trying to understand why Lucas looked as though he might throw up all over Russ and Ryan’s white linen tablecloth. Sure, a broken engagement would sting. But years later, to look as though she’d walked out on him the week before seemed odd.
“We didn’t date, didn’t really know each other, until Sarah died.”
Sophie sat back. “She died?”
“Our senior year. Well, Shannon and I were seniors. Sarah was a junior.”
“How?” Sophie wasn’t sure what she expected to hear. Maybe cancer, maybe suicide, maybe even a car accident. “Hang on. That cross outside of town, next to the road. Is that for her?”
“It’s for all of them.”
Sophie frowned. “All of who?”
But Lucas sighed, a great heaving breath. “You know what, could we not talk about this? It happened a long time ago. I’m not good at digging stuff up.”
“Ah, sure.” Not a break-up, not in the traditional sense. That wasn’t what Lucas saw every time he looked at his ex-fiancée. Not the loss of a girlfriend, but something more profound. What exactly had Sarah meant in his life? Sophie spun her unused spoon on the tablecloth.
“You want coffee?” he asked after a minute.
“Sure.”
He waved Russ over.
“Decaf for me,” she said.
“Regular,” Lucas said.
“Doesn’t keep you up?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I gotta shift at the station later.”
“The station?” A damned iceberg, Lucas Oakes was turning out to be. One little peek at the tip of him, and all it did was hint at enormity below the surface that she couldn’t even guess. A cameraman. A handyman. Hell, there was a lot more going on across the table than a couple of part-time careers strung together. The stirring feeling returned to her stomach, but this time reporter’s curiosity mixed with straight-up desire.
She folded her fingers under her chin. “Let me guess. “You’re a volunteer firefighter, on top of everything else. You run into burning buildings and rescue kittens stuck in trees. Deliver meals to the homebound on your days off, I bet. And you probably play Santa at Christmastime.”
He let out an exaggerated sigh, but light touched the corners of his eyes, and a little relief too, if she had to guess. “No, Miss Smarty Pants, I am not a firefighter. I fill in at the 911 call center sometimes. I mean, yeah, I have my EMT training, half the guys in town do, but I don’t work a regular shift. And I have never rescued a kitten.” He paused. “I do play Santa Claus, though. At the Methodist Church, every December.”
“Oh. My. God. Of course you do.” She dropped her forehead onto her hands and tried to picture little kids sitting on his lap, whispering their dreams into his ear. Not that hard, actually. Her shoulders shook with silent laughter, but longing swept through her too. Wouldn’t mind sitting on that lap, myself. Her cheeks warmed.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “You have to admit I’m the perfect size. Put on the beard and the wig, and I’m a dead ringer.”
She chuckled as she emptied two creamers and one packet of sugar into her coffee. He shook his head at her offer of both.
He took his coffee black, huh? Bitter and strong and straight into the veins.
“So how did you get this gig?” Lucas asked after a minute.
“The show? Small Town Secrets?”
He nodded.
“I went to an audition in the city about four years ago. I was doing some work for a local station in New Jersey before that.”
“You always want to do this? Reporting?”
She traced the pattern in the tablecloth. “Pretty much. I used to watch the news, any channel I could get, even when I was a little kid. Forget cartoons or sitcoms...”
He grinned. “Kinda strange.”
“Thanks a lot.” But she smiled too. “I think it hit me the day the Twin Towers fell. We were living in a suburb of New York when it happened, ’bout fifty miles north of the city. I came home from school and sat
in front of the TV for hours. Couldn’t tear me away.”
“You’re kidding.” He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t watch more than a few minutes of that shit. Too depressing.”
She shrugged. “Maybe that explains my fucked-up nature.”
“Are you? Fucked-up, I mean?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Sarcastic and cynical are two words most people use to describe me. If they’re being nice.”
“Did you know anyone who died in the attacks?”
“No. Not personally. People who lived in our condo complex, though–a couple of them lost family members. And a teacher at my school, my favorite art teacher actually–her husband died. And there was a big commuter lot at the end of our block, by the train station, and I remember walking by it for like a week after, and all the same cars were still parked there. There was this woman who went around and tied yellow ribbons around all their antennas, hoping, you know, maybe their drivers would come back. Even days after.”
“Shit. Now that’s depressing.”
Sophie ran her finger around the edge of her coffee mug. “And this is weird to explain, but I think that’s why I ended up going into reporting. My father died, and I didn’t know him. All these people died on the planes and on the ground, all those firefighters and cops, and I didn’t know any of them. But I saw all these people mourning for months after all this grief, memorials put up overnight, people whose lives totally changed in an instant.”
“Sure. Of course.” His words, terse, dropped onto the table between them.
“And I couldn’t understand it. I had no mechanism for dealing with any of it. All I knew is that I was fascinated by the depth of their grief.” She stopped. “I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Lucas’ expression grew serious. “So you report on other people’s loss because you never had any of your own. It’s a vicarious sort of thing.”
“No. God, I’m not some kind of vulture, chasing ambulances and sticking my mic into people’s faces the minute they watch a loved one die on the side of the road or something.”
“No, you wait around, like, fifty years or so, and then do it.”
Was he angry? Or being sarcastic? She looked into his eyes and tried to tell. “I’m sorry if that’s how it seems. But I don’t report from the scene anymore, so it’s not the same. This is better, this show. It’s a better fit for me.”
“Hmm.”
She finished her coffee. “Listen, you want to get out of here?”
He pushed away his own empty mug. “Yes. Please. For a minute I thought we were gonna talk about death all night.” He waved Russ down for the bill and pulled out his wallet. “My treat.”
“Lucas, no. I can expense it. Not a big deal.”
But he’d already sent off his credit card. “Forget it. This isn’t a work dinner.”
“No?”
“No.” His hand slipped to the small of her back as they left the restaurant. More than one customer waved goodbye as they walked by, and Sophie had a feeling they’d be the talk of Lindsey Point by tomorrow morning. She didn’t care, though. It had been too long since she’d felt a man’s eyes on her, too long since she’d leaned into someone’s touch and wanted it in other places. Fire. Spreading from her cheeks to her nipples to her lower belly and all the places in between that had been neglected for a long damn time.
“Sophie.” He’d parked in the far corner of the lot after picking her up at Francine’s, and the one light outside the restaurant didn’t have a prayer of reaching them now. He’d planned this, she realized, and the desire inside her went from humming to downright symphonic.
Lucas placed one hand at the back of her neck and pulled her to him, tugging at her hair lightly enough so her head fell back. His mouth touched the base of her throat. “God, you taste good.” He licked the hollow in her neck, and his lips moved to her collarbone, to her ear, and finally to her mouth, where his tongue teased her until she opened to him.
“Oh, Lucas.” She couldn’t say anything else, could barely breathe with his hands on her skin and her own finding their way down his chest–every inch of it muscle, and good God how often did this guy work out?–to the belt loops of his jeans, and suddenly all she wanted was him, here and now and naked. If it had to be in a pickup truck, then it sure as hell would be.
As if reading her mind, he reached around and opened the driver’s side door. In the next motion he’d picked her up and rested her on the seat, legs wrapped around him and her skirt riding up above her knees. He ran his fingers along the inside of one leg, starting with her calf and moving upward in maddeningly slow degrees.
“You’re killing me,” she murmured. From where she sat, her lips met his almost perfectly, and she reached forward to pull him closer. Her mouth to his. Legs around his waist. One strap of her dress falling to her elbow. No bra, just skin that wanted his touch so badly it burned. “Please.”
He broke the kiss enough to brush his lips across the tip of her nose. “Please what?”
She closed her eyes. Don’t stop, she almost said, but a shout from across the parking lot interrupted them.
“Hey, Luc!”
His hands froze in place, one on a bare ankle, the other on her waist. She opened her eyes, ready to kill him. Whoever he was.
A man Sophie didn’t recognize came jogging across the gravel lot. “Oh.” He skidded to a stop a few yards away. “Sorry, man. Didn’t know you were–” His eyes moved to Sophie. “Thought you were alone.”
“You thought wrong.”
Sophie adjusted her skirt and slid to the ground.
“Hell, I was on my way home, saw your truck and thought I’d catch you.” The guy paused. “Can you work my shift at the station next Tuesday?”
“Shit, man, that’s what you had to ask me?”
Sophie wanted to say the same damn thing.
Lucas sighed. “Yes. I can take your shift.”
“Thanks.” The guy spent another moment looking from Lucas to Sophie, then turned and walked back toward the street. For the first time, she saw another truck parked there, lights on and motor running.
Lucas shook his head. “Sorry about that.”
She readjusted her purse on her shoulder. “Guess that’s what happens when you live in a place where everyone knows everyone else, huh? Phones are a poor substitute for, I don’t know, hollering across the street to your friend.”
He chuckled and ran his fingers over her cheek. “Too late to try this again?”
Hell, no. Not even close. But she checked her watch. “Yeah, I guess. I should call it a night.” But she groaned inside. Was she crazy? Did it matter if she got seven or five or no hours of sleep at all, if the option was spending time inside Lucas’s truck while he did wonderfully indecent things to her under the moon? But Sophie knew the answer, which was why she avoided looking straight at him. “I don’t film well without a decent night’s sleep. I get these dark circles under my eyes that are impossible to cover up. My makeup artist lectures me every time.” Stupid eyes. Stupid makeup artist.
“Ah.” Disappointment filled his voice, but he didn’t protest. “Okay.” He helped her into the truck and pulled onto Main Street without another word.
It’s not that I don’t want to, Sophie almost said. Touch me and I’ll be mush under your fingers. She glanced at Lucas, the strong jaw outlined by moonlight as they pulled into Francine’s drive. Then she sighed. Getting mixed up with a local, even a sexier-than-hell local who from all signs so far would be amazing in bed, wasn’t the best idea. She’d be leaving Lindsey Point in less than a week, and thirty was getting too old to have a one-night stand.
Ten minutes later, face washed and teeth brushed, Sophie slipped beneath the sheets and closed her eyes. If she repeated those thoughts enough times, she might have a chance of believing them.
Chapter 11
“...and so, on many moonlit nights, locals still claim to hear the cries of a woman being brutally murdered. The splashing of a dist
raught man falling from the top of the lighthouse. And once in a while, a ghostly figure runs down the beach, arms outstretched as if to ward off her captor. The mystery of the Lindsey Point Lighthouse may not be solved for some time, if ever, but the hauntings seem real enough. Spend a night in this Connecticut town, and you might agree.”
Sophie turned, her expression solemn. A breeze blew strands of hair across her face. The camera moved out, and her face grew smaller by degrees until the lighthouse replaced it. Tall and ominous, it towered over the beach as her final words hung in the air. Eerie flute music played, and the camera moved from the lighthouse to the keeper’s house to the beach to, finally, the ocean itself.
“I don’t like it.” Lon leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. The crew plus Lucas and Tom Allen Nickerson–local consultant, according to Lon; creepy stalker, according to Sophie–sat in a tight semi-circle around the computer screen in Francine’s parlor. “Something’s missing.”
Sophie slid her sunglasses from the top of her head onto her face. “I think it’s fine.”
“Of course you do. You look terrific. You sound terrific. But it’s not there.”
Lucas folded his hands around one knee and waited. Wasn’t about to offer his opinion, not unless someone asked him. He slid a glance Sophie’s way. They hadn’t talked about last night, not the dinner, the hot-as-fire kiss, the awkward goodbye, not any of it. Of course, they hadn’t been alone for a single moment today to even broach the conversation. He wondered if that was deliberate on her part.
He also wondered if she’d thought about the kiss half as much as he had. He’d lain awake until long past two, still feeling her hands around his neck and seeing her eyes, heavy-lidded, in the moment before his so-called best friend interrupted them. Damn. He’d texted Finn the minute he got to the station and warned him if he ever came between Lucas and a beautiful woman with her skirt hiked up around her thighs again, he’d personally chop off one of his buddy’s balls.
Shit, said I was sorry, came the response moments later. She’s cute.