by Various
He nodded and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “You think anyone else ever suspected it might be Peterson Smith?”
“Like people in my neighborhood?” She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. It wasn’t like we had reporters knocking on our door or anything.” But a breeze raised gooseflesh on her arms. “Why? Why are you asking?”
“Whose idea was the Lindsey Point story?”
Now he was creeping her out. Serious expression. Not a hint of dimple or light in his eyes. She took another sip of wine and tried to figure out why that mattered. “We get letters from people all over the country who want us to film their stories. All the time. I don’t know whose idea Lindsey Point was. Terrence does most of the research.”
“Not Lon?”
“Sometimes Lon. Sure. But I have no idea.” She paused. “Does it matter?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. No.”
But it did. He’d asked for a reason.
“You think Lon knew?” No. She wouldn’t even consider it. If her producer had any suspicion she was personally connected to this story, he would have said something from the start. They were almost damn blood, as close as they could get without being born that way. No way would he have kept something like that from her.
“Where’s your mom now?” Lucas asked.
Sophie looked at her plate. “She lives in an assisted-care facility outside of Boston. Been there a little over a year.”
“Aw, man. How old is she?”
“Fifty-eight. But she has early-onset Alzheimer’s. Diagnosed about four years ago.” Lon had gone with them both the day they’d admitted her. He’d let Sophie cry on his shoulder all the way back to New York and even stayed with her until the morning, taking care of her when she got good and drunk on cheap wine.
She shook her head. There was no way he’d cooked up Lindsey Point to get ratings in the event Sophie was the grandchild of the Smiths. No way in hell.
“That’s lousy,” Lucas said. “The kid becomes the parent pretty quick, huh?”
“I won’t lie, it’s been tough to deal with.” In a way, though, the diagnosis had come as a relief. No more frustration at her mother’s forgetfulness. No more wondering why her mother was ten, thirty, ninety minutes late for lunch with her daughter. Or why she never showed up at all. But no more answers either, and that certainty bit into Sophie’s heart more and more each day.
She stared across the water.
Lucas put his hand on top of hers, and she had a sudden urge to crawl into his lap and curl into a ball against his chest. “I don’t think I was fair the other night. When I was talking about the plane crash. You do know what grief is like. How it changes you.”
Her gaze moved to meet his. She hadn’t thought about it. How had she not ever thought about it? Her mother hadn’t died, after all. She still recognized Sophie sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. She still walked on the treadmill at Windy Hills Resort–which was such a funny name, Sophie’d always thought, more suited for a country club or a condo complex, although to be honest most of the residents thought that’s where they were. She still watched Jeopardy and Real Housewives every night, still dressed herself each morning and put on full makeup even if the only place she was going was to the dining room and back.
But death wasn’t the only way a person left, was it?
“Man, I think I knew every single relative, my parents and my sister and my grandparents on both sides and all my aunts and uncles and every last cousin, the whole time I was growing up,” Lucas was saying. “I don’t think I’d know what to do with myself if I didn’t have all of them.” Pause. “You only have your mom. And I guess not even all the time anymore.”
“Yeah.”
“Lindsey Point’s a small fucking town. But it was always the place I belonged. I knew exactly who I was there.” He reached over and moved a strand of hair behind her ear. “I have no idea what your kind of life would be like.”
“Coffee?” The waiter materialized from behind the lattice, and Sophie nodded. “Please.”
“My life was fine,” she said after a silence. “My childhood was kind of ordinary, believe it or not. My mom raised me all by herself. We moved a few times, but other than that, it was stable. I was happy.” Sadness slipped around her shoulders like a cloak. It’s you and me, Sophie Sweetpea, to the end.
When was the last time she’d heard those words?
She pulled herself from the past and looked back at Lucas. “That doesn’t make me a freak, by the way. Lots of well-adjusted people are raised by single parents.”
“I didn’t say you were a freak.”
“You were thinking it.”
He smiled. “I wasn’t. You might be a lot of things, but a freak isn’t one of them.” He held up one hand and ticked off a list on his fingers. “You’re fairly well-adjusted, if a little mouthy at times. You know how to dress. Know how to work a camera like few people I’ve seen before.” He grinned. “And you look damn good in anything and everything you put on. None of which makes you anything close to a freak.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You’re saying that so I’ll sleep with you.”
The smile turned into a chuckle. “Maybe. Hopefully. But it’s still all true, whether you do or whether you shut the door in my face at the end of the night and tell me to get lost.”
Somehow she didn’t think she would. In fact, it was hard enough to keep her hands to herself. She was about to suggest they skip the dancing-slash-people-watching and head back to Lindsey Point when he caught her gaze and winked. Yup, his look seemed to say. He was thinking the same thing.
Sophie pushed back her chair. “Where’s the ladies’ room?”
He pointed inside. “Past the bar. Near the front entrance.”
“Thanks. Be right back.”
Taking her time, favoring her ankle, she negotiated her way through the dining room, which was pretty packed for a weeknight. Past a group of women poured into strapless sundresses and a few businessmen with ties loosened, jackets tossed over chairs and sweat beading across their brows. A couple of good-looking guys somewhere around Lucas’s age winked at her from the bar. Finally she found the door marked with a huge red W and pushed it open.
A blonde reapplying her lipstick stared as Sophie inched her way into the tiny, two-stall space. “Oh my God!” She turned all the way around. “You’re that woman from the TV show, right?”
“Hi. And yes.” She kept her eyes on the blonde’s face, not on the skin-tight tube top or the over-tanned cleavage or the leopard-print stilettos. “I’m Sophie.”
“I love your show.” The woman swiped on another coat of bright pink lipstick and then stuck out her hand to shake Sophie’s. “How do you like Lindsey Point? Do you love it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “And the lighthouse, right, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I mean, of course the whole awful murder thing happened there, but I guess you just don’t know about people, right? I guess, I mean, something like that could happen anyplace. I guess some people might even call it romantic in a way. He couldn’t live without her if she was really cheating on him.”
Sophie’s head spun as she tried to follow the conversation. “I–yes,” she finally said, and that seemed to satisfy the blonde, who patted her on the arm as she left.
“It was nice meeting you.”
“You too.” The door swung shut, and for a few seconds Sophie had some space and silence to herself. She checked her makeup and reapplied a few drops of scented body lotion on the crucial pulse points. Wrists. Elbows. Behind the ears. Along the collarbone. All places, she hoped, Lucas’s mouth would be visiting later.
Two teenage girls giggled their way into the bathroom, and Sophie squeezed out past them before they could recognize her or say anything. Tonight, for a few blessed hours, she didn’t want to be any kind of well-known face. She wanted to be a regular girl going home with a regular guy to have a night of something that, she hoped, would be anything but regular. She made her way p
ast the bar, which looked even fuller than five minutes ago, and peered through a few broad shoulders at their table on the deck. She wanted to see him first, wanted to know whether he was looking for her or catching up on texts or lost in thought as he sat there alone.
Sophie stopped in her tracks. Because Lucas wasn’t sitting at the table anymore, and he wasn’t alone. Their coffee mugs had been cleared away, their wine glasses too, and he sure as hell wasn’t looking for her in the crowd. Instead, he was standing at the balcony looking out over the water, with a tall, attractive woman who looked an awful lot like his ex-girlfriend snuggled up all smiles beside him.
Chapter 26
“Shannon?” Sophie came up behind them, relying on surprise more than anything to reveal the truth. An ember burned in the center of her chest, a little one to be sure, not a full-fledged inferno, but jealousy shot through her all the same. She could almost understand why Lucas was giving his ex a second chance. They had years of history between them, death and recovery and loss and a diamond ring, to top it all off. His parents still obviously liked her. Made sense he’d try to rekindle something. But she wished he’d been honest with her from the start.
The minute the redhead turned, though, Sophie saw it wasn’t Shannon O’Brien. Whoops. She stuck out her hand. “My mistake. I thought you were someone else.” Her gaze flicked over to Lucas. “I’m Sophie.”
“Amanda Knightly. It’s nice to meet you.” She looked to be somewhere in her early twenties. Definitely younger than Lucas. Tall, with a lot of boobs and even more hips, but everything balanced proportionally. A friendly smile. Green eyes. Dressed in a low-cut top and jeans that showed off her curves but left something to the imagination.
“Hello,” Sophie said. “But I didn’t mean to interrupt, if you guys were talking.” She backed away, hands outstretched in a go ahead gesture. “Lucas, I’ll be inside.”
“Sophie.” He caught up with her before she’d taken more than a few steps and grabbed her elbow. “For God’s sake. Where are you going?”
“I wanted to give you some space.”
“Space? For what? You see me talking to another woman and you automatically assume I’m ditching you? Please. Give me a little credit.”
Hmm. Maybe she’d jumped to conclusions a little quickly. Still, he and the redhead had looked awfully cozy for those few moments on the deck. “I gotta tell you, two people don’t normally stand so close together when they’re old friends catching up.”
“I didn’t say we were old friends.”
She waited.
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Amanda and I were dating a couple months ago. She lives about twenty miles from here, closer to New Haven. We met at a bar when I was up visiting my sister.”
“She looks like Shannon.” Sophie hadn’t meant the words to come out, but there they were.
“What?” His brows flew up. “She doesn’t look anything like Shannon.”
Whatever. The guy definitely went for the tall, long-legged, red-haired type, and Sophie wasn’t it. Damn. Why did she care so much? “So what happened?” she asked. “Please tell me she’s not your out-of-town girlfriend, and this whole thing between us was a way to pass the time.”
“Is that really what you think?”
She dropped her head. She wanted him to answer that question, not ask it of her.
He put one finger under her chin and lifted it so she had to look him in the eye. “Amanda and I were taking a break.” His gaze moved over her, hot and wanting, and suddenly Sophie knew what Lucas was going to say before he said it. “She went to Colorado to visit some friends. Got back last week. We were supposed to get together this weekend.”
She met his gaze, understanding everything inside it. “And then you met me.”
He pulled her to him, one strong hand on the small of her back. Her insecurity fled. “And then I met you.”
“Were you guys serious?”
“Not really. Not on my end.” He brushed a kiss along her temple and set her on fire. “Though we’d decided when she came back, we’d see where things went. Maybe end up getting serious, work our way in that direction.”
“Work your way in that direction?” Sophie leaned back and looked up at him. She didn’t know exactly what that meant. If you didn’t fall head over heels for someone, if you didn’t think about them every day until you were half-crazy, if you didn’t want to spend every damn moment with them in every damn position until you greeted the morning in sweat and silk sheets, you weren’t ever going to be serious about them. You couldn’t work your way up to something like that. Falling in love wasn’t a rational act, as far as she was concerned. It wasn’t something you worked up to. She’d done it only once, back in college, but she’d done it right. She’d given her heart, her body, her everything to him, and for a few blissful months the sun had risen and set on the way they’d looked at each other.
And when they’d broken up, she’d felt ripped in two. Shattered. Changed from the inside out. That, my friend, was love. That was getting serious. Not a namby-pamby working our way in that direction, for God’s sake.
Her hands slipped around Lucas’s waist to pull him closer. So tall. Almost out of reach. She crooked her neck and stood on her tiptoes. Lucas cupped her cheek with one hand. Eyes on hers. Mouth smiling, waiting, wanting until their lips met. Sweet, like the first time. Then deeper and hotter, one slow moment at a time, like the second.
“Sophie.” He broke the kiss and whispered the word into her hair.
“Mm?” She couldn’t come up with a word. Every inch of her skin, every cell, vibrated with desire. She could barely open one eye and look at him. “What?”
He slipped his fingers through hers. “You want to get out of here?”
“God, yes. Like ten minutes ago.” She followed him to the truck, feet barely touching the ground. And when they got back to Lindsey Point, she was going to show him how thankful she was. For everything.
* * * *
Sophie tucked her hand in Lucas’s and kept it there the entire drive back. His thumb moved over hers, and more than once she caught him looking sideways at her.
“What?”
“Nothin’.” He slowed at the turn for Francine’s.
“No,” she said.
“No what?”
“Let’s go to your place.” She didn’t want any kind of audience, even a downstairs, far-from-her-own-bedroom one. She wasn’t sure Francine would appreciate a headboard banging against the wall. And there would definitely be some banging going on, if she had anything to say about it.
“You sure?” Lucas said. “It’s not in the neatest shape right now.”
“Meaning what? You have dirty laundry all over the living room? Dishes in the sink? Or porn magazines in the bathroom?”
“God, Sophie, no. And no. What kind of guy do you think I am?”
She laughed. “Actually, you seem to be a fairly clean, polite guy who was raised by a no-nonsense mom and dad.”
“A-yep. Pretty much.” He toed the accelerator and left Francine’s behind them. They headed down Main Street until they passed the bar where Finn worked. He took the next right. The street narrowed, wound its way behind Main, then veered off toward the countryside. Sophie tried to mark the turns and keep track of where they were, but no hope. Not without streetlights and clearly marked intersections. For a moment she thought they’d end up somewhere near Marcia and Lila’s, but the road curved a couple of times and Lucas pulled into the driveway of a two-story brick duplex instead.
“Nice.” She looked around as he opened the door and helped her to the ground. “But where are we?”
He pointed. “Ocean’s that way.”
She listened until she could hear the waves. “Mm.” She closed her eyes and breathed it in the distinct scent of countryside. Zero pollution. Salt and pine and maybe a little bit of desire mixed with her perfume and his cologne filling up the space between them. She wished she could bottle it and take it back to th
e city with her.
Lucas led her to the door on the right and up the stairs to his second-floor apartment. “You’ve been warned in advance,” he said as he dug a key ring out of his pocket. “I didn’t know I was having visitors tonight.”
But Sophie didn’t say a word when she walked in, not at the dishes in the sink or the laundry folded on the couch or the turtle sitting inside an aquarium on a table in the living room. He tossed his keys onto the kitchen table and grabbed two glasses from a cabinet.
“Want something to drink? Water?”
She shook her head.
“Not thirsty?”
“Lucas.”
He set the glasses down on the counter. “What?”
“Come over here and kiss me.”
His smile crooked. “Or what?”
She took two steps toward the kitchen, and he took one toward the living room, and they met in the middle. “Or I’m going to go crazy.”
He placed his hands on her cheeks and kissed her forehead.
Sophie closed her eyes, waiting for the slow, inevitable slip of his mouth down her neck. To her curve of her collarbone. Maybe lower.
“There you go,” he said. His hands went away.
Her eyes flew open. “That’s it?”
“You said you wanted a kiss.”
Her fists landed on her hips. “Ha ha. Funny guy. So funny, in fact, I think I’m gonna recommend that comedy special you were talking about to Lon. He’s looking for a new show, you know. Maybe you’re the next big thing.”
Lucas swung her off the ground. Her arms went around his neck and her mouth ended up a fraction of an inch below his. “Maybe I am.” He kissed her again, this time not on the forehead. And not sweetly. “What do you think?”
But she couldn’t answer, couldn’t think of anything at all except his tongue teasing hers, her legs wrapping themselves around his waist and holding on like she’d never held onto a man in her life. Fire sizzled up her spine, and the air in the room went hot. Her hands–God, her hands couldn’t get enough of him. They wanted to be everywhere, in his hair and on his face and unbuttoning that damn shirt and taking off her own dress that was so in the way right now.