Either way, he was glad she was here.
He quietly put his briefcase down on the floor and hung up his jacket then rounded the corner to peer into the kitchen. Lucky was wearing a pair of snug white shorts and a clingy black tank, which softly emphasized her provocative curves. Colin leaned against the jamb and crossed his arms, enjoying the sight she made from behind as she stirred something in one pan then added spaghetti to another. Her feet were gloriously bare and her hair was tied into a loose knot at her shoulders. She was summer and its sultry heat wrapped up into one irresistible package.
Something warm made its way through Colin’s bloodstream. Something that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with…love.
He swallowed hard. The sound must have been loud enough for Lucky to hear because she swiveled around to face him, the wooden spoon she held dripping red sauce on the black-and-white tile of the floor.
“Oh!” she said, quickly putting her other hand under the spoon. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
He grinned, watching as she moved the spoon to the sink then rinsed the sauce from her hands. Colin grabbed a paper towel and crouched to the floor at the same time she did to wipe up the spot. The position put him exactly where he wanted to be: face-to-face with Lucky.
He looked into her flushed face, his gaze taking in every familiar feature. Then he kissed her, nearly knocking her back on her heels. She smiled at him. “Where did that come from?”
“Hmm…I don’t know. But there’s lots more if you want it.”
She smiled at him in that way that made his stomach tighten and his arousal stir. “Mmm. A man with a one-track mind. I like that.”
Colin kissed her again, lingering there against her lush lips. Rather than a man with a one-track mind, the train in his head had come into the station a while ago and was now facing myriad other tracks. And he wanted to explore all of them with this amazing woman.
She pulled away and laughed. “You sure know how to sweep a girl off her feet.”
“Then let me help you back onto your feet.”
He easily got up and held his hand out, helping her to stand in front of him.
“I hope you like spaghetti,” she said, turning back to the stove.
“I love spaghetti.”
Was it him or was there a stiffness about her?
“There’s a bottle of wine breathing on the counter over there. Pour us a couple of glasses?”
He did and handed her one.
“Thanks,” she said, taking a sip.
She seemed to be extraordinarily interested in what she was doing on the stove.
Of course. Kissing her nearly had made him forget their run-in outside his office.
Colin leaned against the counter next to the stove. “About this morning,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did when I saw you. I’d just met with my attorney and was distracted. I’d forgotten it was your day with Morgan.”
She stirred the spaghetti with a fork. “So you thought I’d stopped by to see how I could heat things up?”
He reached for a lock of her hair, rubbing the silken strands against his skin. “Mmm.”
He debated telling her what had happened at Maddox’s, but felt that doing so would be akin to offering up an excuse for his bad behavior. And he was never one for excuses. An apology was better.
“So how did everything go?” she asked, taking the spaghetti from the burner and turning the con tents into a colander.
“With my attorney? Not so good.”
She glanced at him while she ran cold water.
“What happened?”
Colin ran his hand over his face.
She shut off the water and leaned her hips against his. “Now look what I’ve gone and done. I’ve chased the grin from your face.”
He smiled down at her and grasped her rounded hips.
“That bad, huh?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Let’s not talk about it, then. It always makes things worse to talk about bad news.”
Colin blinked at the classic signs of avoidance as she turned off the last burner then picked up a plate and began piling spaghetti on top. “Tell me when.”
He did, only he found himself wishing he could say “when” to her.
This cat-and-mouse game they were playing with their relationship was beginning to wear on his nerves. He didn’t like not knowing what was going on in her head. He didn’t like not knowing what resided in her heart.
Within moments they were both seated at the kitchen island instead of the formal dining-room table in the other room. Lucky opened the foil-wrapped garlic bread she’d taken out of the oven.
“Lucky…tell me something about yourself,” he asked quietly. “Your hopes, your dreams. What you were like growing up. Tell me something no one else knows about you.”
He watched as she seemed to have a hard time swallowing.
“Did you want to talk about what happened with your attorney?” she asked.
“No. This isn’t about me. This is about you.”
That casual atmosphere took a very chilly nosedive and there was nothing Colin could do to change that.
“So we’re back to that again,” Lucky whispered, pushing spaghetti around her plate without eating it. “Look, Colin, I don’t come here to delve into the past, to examine every aspect of my life under the light of a microscope trying to figure out why this happened or how I might have been able to circumvent that. I come here to forget.”
“But you can’t, can you?”
She grasped her wineglass and took a long sip.
“Whatever you’re running from…it’s starting to find you here, too, isn’t it?”
13
MUCH LATER that night Colin jerked awake and pushed up to lean his weight against his elbows. What was that? He glanced around his darkened bedroom, not sure if it was something in his dream that had awakened him or a sound in the apartment.
He glanced at the empty spot next to him, then tossed the top sheet from his waist and sat up.
Tonight had not gone the way he’d planned. In fact the entire day had seemed to play out slightly off-kilter. But he’d counted it as a good sign that Lucky hadn’t left when he’d pressed her for answers during dinner earlier that night. He hadn’t made any headway into understanding what made her tick, but perhaps he’d made a small dent in her armor.
And armor was exactly what it was, wasn’t it? Not just one simple reason why she welcomed him between her thighs yet kept him away from her heart. Whatever was behind Lucky’s behavior ran deep and had damaged her to an extent he could only guess at.
He rubbed the sleep from his face. Sometimes it sucked being a psychiatrist. He couldn’t look at someone without wanting to know what had made them into the person they were.
He couldn’t look at Lucky without wanting to possess her fully, heart, mind and soul.
He glanced toward the empty bathroom then put on his boxers and stepped into the living room. A sweep of the kitchen and the rest of the large penthouse showed no sign of her. It was only when he walked back into the living room that he spotted one of the French doors slightly open, the sheer curtains billowing in the light breeze.
He pulled back the gauzy fabric and opened the door farther, immediately spotting Lucky sitting on the marble tile of the balcony, her back against the wall of glass, the remainder of the bottle of wine from dinner next to her along with a single glass. She didn’t seem to be aware that he’d joined her. She merely sat staring sightlessly out across the Maumee River.
But she was still here.
As he took her in, from the way her shoulders slumped, to the sadness on her face, he grabbed onto that thought and held it close.
She was still here….
LUCKY KNEW the moment Colin had joined her. But she was slightly foggy from the wine and the enormity of her thoughts and couldn’t seem to make herself respond. Not to sit up straighter. Not to greet him in some way. Not even
to acknowledge his presence.
He pulled a chair out from the large glass table positioned a short distance away and sat down, his body angled toward hers. He didn’t say anything. And she was glad for that.
Lucky closed her eyes and stretched her neck to accommodate her hard swallow. She was thirty years old and had long ago gotten used to the cycles of her life. Despite what the court thought, liquor was not her drug of choice, sex was. And the better the sex, the more successful she was at keeping her many demons at bay.
But the instant the excitement associated with sex began to wane, when she either grew bored or the guy started asking too many questions, started making commitment noises, she was out the door, the latest cycle complete.
And that’s when liquor entered in. A little something to tide her over until she met the next guy.
Only this time the cycle had come full circle sooner than it ever had before.
And it wasn’t because the sex had lost its appeal—if anything, the heights she achieved with Colin were higher than she’d ever reached before. It wasn’t because she was bored—Colin fascinated her on so many levels that he emerged somewhat like a Christmas present with an infinite number of smaller presents wrapped inside.
And it wasn’t even because he had started making commitment noises.
No, this time the cycle was different.
Because this time she’d fallen in love.
She reached for the wine bottle and poured the last bit into her empty glass. But she didn’t drink it. Instead she nudged the glass around by the base on the tile, watching the contents swirl around. She was as numb as she was going to get, which was not numb at all. She had the sneaking suspicion that no amount of alcohol was going to make her all right this time around.
“I can’t have children,” she said into the dark night.
She blinked, unaware that she’d said the words aloud until she heard them.
There was no response for a long time, making her wonder if her mind was playing tricks on her, if the wine was making her imagine things.
“I’m sorry,” finally came Colin’s soft response.
She slowly turned to look at him, her head still resting against the glass door behind her. “Why are you sorry? I made the conscious decision not ever to have children.”
He squinted at her. “So what you’re saying is that you don’t want kids.”
“No. What I’m saying is that I can’t have kids. I paid for a tubal ligation when I was nineteen.”
Any other man might have looked at her strangely. But not Colin. While curiosity and concern painted his handsome features, he didn’t judge her for her actions. He merely accepted her.
And, curiously enough, didn’t question her.
She gave a small, sad smile. After all the questioning he’d done in the past week, it was ironic that he wasn’t asking any questions now. Was it because he knew she was ready to tell him herself? Or having caught a glimpse of what she’d kept hidden for so long, was he afraid of what she might reveal?
“I’ve never known you to drink,” he said quietly.
She looked at the glass she was still toying with. “Funny, don’t you think, considering that’s the entire reason we met?” She cleared her throat.
“The reason you haven’t seen me drink until now is that I haven’t needed to drink.”
“But you need to now.”
She looked at him. “Yes.”
DESPITE HER WORDS, Colin had yet to watch Lucky take a sip from the glass since he’d joined her on the balcony. Oh, he was aware that the bottle was empty. But he felt a burst of gratitude that she wasn’t chugging down what remained in her glass then going in search of something else inside the penthouse to blur her pain with.
And pain is exactly what he saw written all over her. From her beautiful face and the uncaring way she held her body to the dark shadow in her eyes, it was obvious this woman had been hurt and hurt deeply in the past. And that hurt had never gone away.
He clasped his hands tightly between his knees, considering her surprising desire never to have children and the actions she’d taken to make sure she never would. He knew of few doctors who would agree to perform the surgery on a nineteen-year-old. Which further emphasized the severity of her reasons for having done it.
Children. Yes, he admitted, he wanted them. At least two. As an only child, he’d always wondered what it would have been like to have a sibling. And depending on the soundness of his career after Jamie got done with him, he might like to have three or four mini McKennas running around the place.
The thought that there was no chance of having them with Lucky twisted his stomach in a way that went beyond physical pain.
It was then he realized that despite the appearance of their relationship being strictly sexual, he’d secretly begun imagining a future with Lucky, a future that included weddings and baptisms and Christmases spent in front of a roaring fire.
An undetermined future Lucky had the power to give him…or take away from him.
The chair he sat in squeaked as he leaned back. He’d never been this close emotionally to somebody this damaged before. No, he didn’t know the details behind her pain, but he’d suspected from the beginning that Lucky was different. He’d kidded himself into thinking she was just more of a free spirit, more sexual. And while almost everyone had his or her neuroses, Lucky didn’t have a fear of heights or of commitment or of touching objects like doorknobs that somebody else might have put their germs on or anything like that.
Rather he sensed her problems were not ones that could be fixed with a year’s worth of therapy. No. Hers would take an entire lifetime to address, and still she might not ever come close to fixing them.
“Do you want to know why I became a psychiatrist?” he said quietly into the dark.
She didn’t say anything and he was afraid either she hadn’t heard him or had decided not to respond. Then, finally, she looked at him, her glorious long hair shifting on the smooth glass behind her. “Because you grew up in a dysfunctional family and wanted to save the world?”
He smiled faintly at that. “Because I couldn’t stand the sight of blood.”
She blinked at him.
“That’s right. The very first day of my residency at St. V’s, a patient with an arterial wound was wheeled into emergency—the type of wound that if not immediately addressed can cause death in less than fifteen minutes. Essentially the patient bleeds to death.” He looked out at the waters of the Maumee. “When I released the tourniquet and blood spurted across my neck and the front of my smock, I choked. I couldn’t move.”
He remembered standing there completely frozen as the other staff moved efficiently and quickly around him, unaware of his dilemma.
Will, who was doing his residency at the same hospital and happened to be on with him that day, had caught onto what was happening and stepped in to see to the patient. His friend had been completely unaffected by the thick, red substance coating his arms and gloves.
Colin hated to think of what might have happened if Will hadn’t taken charge.
“It was your first day,” Lucky said quietly.
He looked at her. “It only got worse from there.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his brow. “So what becomes of a doctor who can’t hack it in the emergency room?”
“He becomes a shrink?”
He laughed softly, marveling at her attempt at humor given her precarious emotional state.
“That’s exactly what he does.”
The sound of a plane passing overhead, moving in the direction of the Toledo Airport some twenty miles outside of town, caught his attention. Colin watched the blinking lights as it passed, then stared at the sliver of moon seemingly suspended in the sky by a string.
“My father was a doctor. A surgeon.”
Lucky’s words surprised him. Given what he’d seen of her, the jobs she held, the way she lived, he’d guessed she’d come from simpler means.
Of course
she’d never offered up information to dispel that image. But he still felt chagrin at his incorrect snap judgment of her.
“And your mother?”
She finally picked up the glass, stared into it, then swallowed the contents. “She died of pancreatic cancer when I was fourteen.”
Colin stiffened. She’d revealed more about herself in the past half hour than she had in the past three weeks. And while he was grateful for the insight into her past, he couldn’t help the feeling that it was just a glimpse. That the wounds she bore went deeper still.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Such ineffectual words. But the only words he had.
She nodded.
And just like that Colin felt the connection between them snap.
Lucky pushed to her feet, picked up the bottle and glass and turned to face him. If she hadn’t needed him to move in order to pass, he suspected she would already have been inside.
“Excuse me,” she said quietly.
Colin looked up at her shadowy face from where he still sat in the chair. Considered the even larger shadows that resided within her.
“No.”
The word was simple but meaningful. What ever had started tonight had to continue tonight.
He wasn’t going to give up that easily.
Lucky began to try to pass and he gently grasped her wrists, forbidding her passage.
“Please, Lucky,” he pleaded with her softly.
“Tell me what’s causing you so much pain.”
The unmistakable glisten of tears in her eyes made his chest tighten.
“Let me go,” she whispered, her body going rigid. “Please.”
The problem with her request was that Colin feared she didn’t mean just let her go now…but let her go for good.
And he couldn’t do that.
“Please,” she said again.
She jerked her arms to free herself and he strengthened his grasp. The wineglass slipped from her grip, breaking into scattered shards on the tile beneath their bare feet, shattering the silence of the night.
Colin swept her up into his lap, holding her so tightly he couldn’t breathe. He took the bottle from her hands and put it on the table behind him.
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