This Loving Feeling (A Mirror Lake Novel)

by Miranda Liasson

  “I’m not the impulsive kid I was when we started this.”

  Tony snorted. “Your brand doesn’t involve being smitten over an old hometown honey. Love is the kiss of death for an up-and-coming music sensation like you.”

  “I don’t live my life for my brand.”

  “I can deal with the occasional angry female who curses you for breaking it off. I can even deal with you telling Simon Cowell to kiss your ass after he insulted you on Twitter. But this . . .”

  Lukas took a deep breath. “This is different. This woman matters.”

  “The hell she does. Was it worth it for a piece of ass?”

  “Tony, so help me God, if I weren’t tied down I’d come over there and kick your ass . . .” Lukas flexed and unflexed his fists, trying to remember why he put up with this guy. Oh, yeah, because he was the best in the business. Because he’d brought him up from nothing and turned him into a superstar. That made him calm down a little. “Look, just do damage control. That’s why I pay you.”

  “Just do damage control,” Tony mimicked in a mocking voice. “As if that’s easy.”

  “Got any good news? How’s the wife, the kids? And why are you here in the first place?”

  Tony rolled his eyes and finally sat down on a stool in the middle of the room. “Actually, I do have some good news. Mick heard the song.”

  “Mick who?” Lukas asked.

  Tony raised a bushy brow. “There’s only one Mick who counts. He says it’s different from your other ones. More passionate, more feeling, and he thinks it’s going to be a huge hit. He wants you to open for the Stones at Madison Square Garden in two weeks and then finish out their summer tour with them.”

  Whoa. Lukas closed his eyes. Mick Jagger? The Stones? Two weeks? Opening for them was the opportunity of a lifetime. It would secure his future and identify him as a heavy hitter in the industry.

  That couldn’t help but be a good thing for Stevie and for Sam, right? Even if he had to go back on the road sooner than he’d thought.

  “I have to think about it,” Lukas said. He’d talk it over with Sam, but she’d probably be thrilled.

  “Think?” Tony looked at him like he’d grown a couple extra heads. “What’s there to think?”

  Lukas shrugged, or at least tried to.

  “This woman is really doing a number on you, isn’t she?” Tony asked. “Fine. You go ahead and think. But the contract’s going to have to be signed in a couple of days. Now, I’ve got to go outside and make sure all the media have moved. In the future, I’d appreciate better behavior.”

  “Lighten up, Tony. That was great news. Quit acting like someone died.”

  “Which they might,” Ben said, suddenly standing at the door, “if you don’t get those camera crews to move away from the ambulance drop-off area. Now, please.”

  Tony left and Ben finally unstrapped Lukas from the backboard. He sat up, rubbing the back of his head and cracking his neck.

  “So your head and neck scans were fine. How does your head feel?” Ben asked.

  “Hurts like the band used my head for their drum set.”

  He chuckled. “You’ll have to take it easy for a few days.”

  “Look, Ben.” Sam’s brother stood propped against the counter, his arms folded, quietly assessing him. He had had the same big eyes as Sam, although Sam’s were green and Ben’s were brown. “I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean to ruin the donor event. I couldn’t sit around and let Harris propose to Sam. He’s not right for her.”

  “And you are?”

  Lukas paused long and hard. He’d never thought so before. But he was different from six years ago. Better. Grown up. He knew how to make her smile. Did that have anything to do with being good for someone? It seemed a paltry offering. “I care about her a lot. I’ll do everything in my power to make her happy. I want to do things right this time.”

  Ben heaved a sigh. “I don’t suppose Sam’s ever gotten over you, either. But if you break her heart again, I won’t hesitate to strap you to that backboard again and perform some surgery on your man parts.”

  A sharp rap sounded on the door. A woman wearing multicolored scrubs popped her head in. “Dr. Rushford, security just pulled a cameraman out of our linen closet trying to make his way back here. The police from Deep River had to be called in to help control the traffic. And Millie thought she just saw Ryan Seacrest. Things are getting crazy.”

  “All righty then,” Ben said, slapping Lukas on the arm. “I guess you’re discharged.”

  “Look, you’ve got to help me get to Sam. Please.”

  “Funny, I was just planning on throwing you to the lions.”

  “Please, Ben.”

  “Oh, fine. Who am I to stand in the way of young love?” Ben scratched his beard thoughtfully. “We may have to put you in a plaster body cast and haul you out on a stretcher to get past the media. Or maybe we can toss you in a hearse with a couple of the stiffs from the morgue.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Lukas said with a grin.

  “Well, for the record, I was kidding, but that’s the right answer. You’re all right, Lukas.”

  Finally.

  “Yes, Effie, I’m fine,” Sam said into her phone from her seat in the balcony section of the old theater. “Lukas’s bodyguards took me to get my car from the art museum but photographers were everywhere, so I let myself into the back entrance of the theater. Ben told me a bunch of them are still camped out in front of the Donaldsons’ driveway. He’s keeping Stevie with him and Meg tonight. But I’ll be okay sleeping in the office. I have some snacks in my desk.”

  So much for spending the night with Lukas.

  “Well,” Effie answered, “I hate to see you alone there in that big, dark theater with the town half run over with paparazzi. Let me send someone over to stay with you.”

  “Too risky. I’ll be fine by myself.” She’d fallen asleep in the office plenty of times over the past few months. It even had a little couch. Being here didn’t scare her—how could it, when it was one of her favorite places?

  The phone suddenly got muffled. There was rustling. She heard Effie’s voice in the background saying, “What was that, Ben?” More rustling, then Effie was back. “Oh, we ordered you a pizza. With everything. Side door, ten minutes. Enjoy!”

  The line went dead.

  This was the weirdest night ever. Yet Sam felt a strange sense of peace, despite the dinner being upended in the worst way. She hadn’t even stayed to do any damage control, so God knew how many of the donors would actually donate after tonight’s fiasco.

  She did know Harris’s parents were not happy. Meg told her they’d left immediately after Harris punched Lukas, not wanting any association with the ruckus that ensued. They hadn’t even stayed to help their distraught son. That made her sad, but it also supported everything she’d expected, that the Buckhorns valued appearances more than anything.

  Well, after tonight, she’d certainly blown any chance of ever ingratiating herself into that family. For some reason, that made her chuckle, the sound echoing across the vast rows of red velvet seats. She was sitting in her favorite spot, the front row of the balcony. The Moorish castle façade on either side of the stage basked in a beautiful golden glow, and she’d gone backstage and turned on the sky of twinkling stars overhead. One of the perks of knowing this place inside and out.

  Funny, but she wasn’t sitting there doing what she would have typically done, obsessing about ways to soothe things over for Harris’s pragmatic parents or even for Harris himself, who had seemed a little brokenhearted. The semblance of security and safety and family values had brought her back to him after they’d broken up the first time, so long ago, but it wasn’t enough now to keep them together. Maybe she’d finally figured out those things were only an illusion with him.

  While she was being brutally honest with herself, she also admitted she didn’t have to work at herself so much when Harris had made it so easy for her to dissolve into his big
personality, his mission, his causes.

  She’d given up her job for him, and she’d been willing to do whatever it took to help him get his career off the ground. Why hadn’t she seen the fact that he’d actually encouraged her not to get another job in Boston as a red flag? He was fine with advancing himself at her expense. She wondered if it was too late to get her job back, and made a mental note to talk to Joe Malone as soon as possible to find out.

  Being safe, not risking anything, hadn’t got her what she wanted for her own life.

  Be with me, Lukas had said.

  She was ready to take the chance. It felt right, in the sweetest, worst way. She couldn’t wait for them to be together, and she refused to think of anything beyond right now. Just then, her phone buzzed. Lukas.

  The shot of adrenaline that coursed through her made her fumble the phone and she nearly dropped it off the balcony. “Hello?” She looked around, half expecting him to somehow magically appear.

  “Pizza’s here. But it got a little wet.”

  “What . . .” She turned around. There he was, walking down the side aisle from the top of the balcony section, making his way toward her, a pizza box in one hand and a big bundle slung over his shoulder. She thought she recognized Tom’s old thermal silver minus-twenty sleeping bag, compliments of Effie, no doubt. As he emerged from the darkness, she saw a bottle of wine in his other hand. He was wearing green Mirror Lake Hospital scrubs. And he was completely soaked.

  He handed her the pizza. A slow, steady grin spread over his face.

  She couldn’t help smiling back. “It’s pouring out there,” Lukas said. “But the good news is, I don’t think anyone followed me.”

  “Great.” He was great. They stood there for a moment, just looking at one another, grinning dumbly, until finally she said, “There better not be peppers on there or I’m totally making you return it.”

  Effie knew damn well she liked her pizza plain. Clearly Lukas was the everything Effie was talking about. Her everything.

  She started to tear up, so she made a big show of checking out his face. His nose was swollen and bruised, and he had another bluish swelling on his forehead. All she wanted to do was dive into his arms and kiss him all over, tell him how glad she was that things had happened as they did and now they could finally, finally be together. But suddenly she felt nervous and shy. “How did you . . . how did you get in? If you got in, someone will just . . .”

  “Ben gave me scrubs and a surgical hat and got some off-duty paramedics to bring me here. And Effie gave me a key.”

  Effie. Of course.

  He touched her cheek. “You okay?”

  “I am now that you’re here.” To her embarrassment, more tears welled up. Before she could brush them away, he set down all the stuff he was carrying and wrapped his big, strong, inked-up arms around her. Like she hadn’t felt them in six long years.

  His fingers tangled through her hair and suddenly his mouth was on hers, and oh, the feel of that mouth, kissing her like they’d never been apart and like there was no tomorrow, and not a second could be wasted.

  For now, that was all the security she needed.

  “I have to tell you something.” Lukas was brushing back her hair, caressing her face, and it was so hard to focus on what he was saying.

  “What is it?” she asked, reveling in his presence, his heat, the freshly showered, soapy, delicious smell of him.

  “I’m sorry I ruined your event tonight. I wasn’t thinking, I was feeling. I was afraid I would lose you forever if I didn’t do something.”

  “I’m glad you came for me, Lukas. It was Harris who did the ruining.”

  He gathered up her hands in his big ones. “Sam, I’ve never felt this way about anyone.”

  That made her bawl more. She rested her hands on his forearms. Felt the hardness of his muscle, the softness of his skin, the light grazing of hair. “Oh, I have,” she said.

  “Who was he?” he growled. “I might have to go after him.”

  “It was a long time ago. A lonely boy named Spike. Used to work at Clinker’s.”

  “That boy has wanted you for a long time. He’s never stopped wanting you, Sam. And he’s so happy to be here with you.”

  He released her hands and walked over to where he’d left the sleeping bag, unbound and unzipped it, and spread it over the fantastical red carpet that covered the floor under the seats—a pattern of green and gold parrot feathers and exotically swirled designs. Then he peeled off his scrub top in one swoop. And holy theater ghosts, all thought ceased at the sight of that amazing, perfect chest. “Dr. Lukas is here to make it all better, sweetheart.”

  She would’ve laughed at his shenanigans but his eyes weren’t joking. They were dark and intense and serious and oh, lordie, they meant business. She slid out of her one shoe, which was just a low-heeled pump because of the Aircast on her other foot. “You’ve never been short on confidence, that’s for sure.”

  He shrugged out of the wet bottoms and tossed them over a chair. Guess he was a boxer-briefs guy, who knew. Black, of course. What else? “I had no confidence six years ago. I was just so desperate to make it in some way that I managed to fake it.” He walked over to her and took her into his arms.

  Sam closed her eyes. She must have stiffened because he pulled back. “What did I say?”

  She suddenly felt awkward. Really awkward.

  “Sam, what is it?”

  “It’s just—it’s been a long time since we’ve been together.”

  “Come here.” He helped her maneuver herself and her cast down on the sleeping bag. She laid her head on his chest, and frankly, touching that sculpted masterpiece of a chest practically had her coming right there. “We’ll go super slow. We’ll just lie here and look up at the stars, okay?”

  His smile turned wolfish, and she thought she detected a twinkle in his eyes.

  “Are you serious?”

  “No, but I thought you wanted to hear that.”

  She rested her head on him, tucked it right between his neck and shoulder, inhaling his clean scent, the scent that was him and only him, as he stroked his hand slowly up and down her arm. It wasn’t cold in the theater but his touch made goose bumps rise up everywhere. Then she tipped her head back and looked up at her beloved stars.

  “Tell me about the stars,” he said, nodding toward the ceiling.

  “Well, they’re fiber-optic.”

  “No, I mean, they look like constellations.”

  “They are—the ones you’d see in Africa. It’s the southern hemisphere. So there’s the Big Dipper.”

  He started nuzzling her neck as she pointed up at the sky, his soft lips a contrast to the coarseness of his unshaven cheek scraping against her sensitive skin.

  Until he winced and she realized she’d touched his bruise as she’d worked her fingers though his hair.

  “Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she said, tracing around the sore spot. “Does it hurt?”

  “Yeah. Really hurts,” he said solemnly. “You’d better kiss it.”

  And so she did. As she was leaning forward, she heard a pfff as the zipper on her dress ran down her back. In a flash he helped her shrug out of the dress, and gently slid it off of her, taking extra care not to snag it on the Velcro of her ankle contraption. The exclamation he made when he saw her had her lifting up a prayer. Thank you, Victoria, for your secrets. She was so, so glad for her lacy black bra and panties. And judging by the look on his face, he was, too.

  Then the bra straps were down and her left breast was exposed to the cool air and his mouth was on it, kissing and tickling it with his tongue. She arched a little, because she couldn’t help it, which had the effect of giving him more to have his way with. “But”—she gasped a little—“our constellation lesson isn’t over.”

  “It is for tonight,” he said, and she felt his smile against her sensitive skin. He cupped her other breast in his hand, and it felt so damn good she let out a whimper.

  “Sam,” he
whispered.

  She swallowed hard. He reached up and tucked her hair behind her ears. “You know I’d never do anything you didn’t like. And if I did, you’d tell me, right? We’ve come too far not to be one-hundred-percent honest with each other.”

  “I promise. But I have to ask you something.”

  “What is it, sweetheart? Ask me anything.”

  “Could you—could you please do that again?”

  “Do what?”

  “Everything.”

  And he did.

  “Um,” she said, struggling a little, because talking was getting very difficult. “You’ve got a bruise on the other side of your forehead, too.”

  “Kiss it.”

  She obliged. “And your nose. Your nose is really bruised right—here.” She traced a line across the bridge.

  “Kiss me there. Kiss me everywhere.”

  “Everywhere?”

  “Yeah. Because full disclosure here, Samantha, I’m not leaving a single inch of you unkissed tonight.”

  Good thing she was lying down, because his words made her stomach drop and her legs turn to jelly. He traced a finger along the edge of her lacy panties, a move that made her quiver. Again, that smile. The smile of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and couldn’t wait to continue. One that promised much, much more. He whispered in her ear as his long, beautiful fingers began to wander, along the waistband, tracing the sensitive skin below her waist. Dropping featherlight kisses along her neck, then along her ear, finally whispering, “You are so beautiful, Sam. You have no idea what you’re doing to me. Take a look up there at that sky. Take a good look, and then close your eyes. Because I’m going to make you see a whole different kind of stars.”

  Then he swept the thin lacy scrap of her panties aside and touched her, slowly tracing the sensitive flesh, the silky folds.

  “Are you ready to make beautiful music together?” he murmured against her mouth.

  “Quit talking like a rock star,” she said, grabbing his amazing ass. Running her hands up his spectacular back, feeling the elegant planes of muscle. Kissing him deep, their tongues wet and tangling.