by Candy Caine
The rest of his day had gone well. It had been a long one due to evening appointments to accommodate those people who worked during the day. Mentally exhausted, Lucas was ready to go home and relax by nine when his last patient left. Raven would be with her aunt, so he was on his own. Somehow being alone didn’t feel right anymore.
He grabbed his stuff and walked Renee to her car. His hands were cold and he reached into the pocket of his coat for his gloves. His pockets were empty. When he got into the car and saw his gloves weren’t there, he thought perhaps he’d left them in the office. Only they hadn’t been on his desk. How strange, he thought.
* * *
Raven stopped at the supermarket on her way home and picked up a bucket of fried chicken, onion rings, and French fries. She knew her aunt loved fried chicken, but wasn’t sure if she should get onion rings or French fries, so she got both. The smell coming from the bag made her mouth water as she drove the short distance to the house.
Dottie greeted her at the door. One whiff and she knew exactly what was on the menu. “Wise choice,” she said, as she pecked her niece’s cheek. “It must be the result of your fine upbringing.”
That elicited a chuckle from Raven as her aunt took the bags from her and went into the kitchen. Raven took off her coat and hung it in the hall closet.
The kitchen table had been set, complete with glasses and napkins. Dottie removed the chicken and placed it into a large serving bowl. The onion rings and French fries were in smaller bowls. Raven went to retrieve a pitcher of ice tea from the refrigerator. She noticed how tired Dottie looked. She feared that her aunt’s condition might be due to something more than just standing on her feet all day beyond a counter. Forcing a smile, Raven tamped down her unpleasant thoughts.
“What?” Dottie asked, noticing a smile.
“Nothing. I’m sorry that I haven’t been at home as much lately.”
“I was young once, too. At least I’m going to share you with a very nice man.”
Raven’s smile widened. “That he is.”
Dottie bit into a piece of chicken and took a sip of tea. “Lucas is established and intelligent. You needed a man like that.”
“I would’ve never dreamed of falling in love with a psychologist, of all people.”
Dottie smiled, obviously thinking of Lucas. “At least he’s not the stuffy, old kind of psychologist who has his patients lie down on a couch. He doesn’t even have a couch, just big, overstuffed, comfortable chairs.”
Raven lowered her glass. She felt a rushing sensation in her ears as her blood began to pound. She fought to keep the chicken she’d just swallowed down. Through narrowed eyes she peered across the table at her aunt.
Dottie saw the immediate change in her niece’s demeanor and stopped eating. “What’s wrong, Raven?”
Raven glared at her aunt. “How would you know something like that?”
“Like what?”
“Don’t play games with me.” Raven snapped. “You know exactly what I’m referring to.”
“I’m not exactly sure what I said wrong,” Dottie said.
Raven’s eyes were now heated lasers boring into her aunt’s eyes. “How would you know what Lucas’s office looks like? How would you know there wasn’t a couch?”
“I—I don’t know. Perhaps he mentioned it to me.”
“When did you have a discussion with Lucas about the furniture in his office?” Raven asked accusingly.
“You know, I really don’t remember. This is a silly conversation, and I don’t understand why you’re getting so upset,” Dottie replied.
“You don’t remember, because you never had a conversation. You know about his furniture arrangement because you were there.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. Suddenly several things that had previously appeared to be coincidences no longer seemed to be so. First Lucas’s stopping into the ice cream parlor out of the blue, and then his bumping into her at the restaurant.
“Oh, yes, you were there, all right. When I left my job at the law firm, you went to him for help. Do you deny being there?”
Dottie’s mind went blank. She didn’t know what to say to Raven, and she certainly didn’t want to argue with her. “What has gotten into you, Raven? Has something at work upset you?”
“You upset me.” Raven got up from the table, wiped her hands, and dumped the contents of her plate into the garbage.
Dottie rose out of her seat, as well. “Where are you going? I don’t even know what you’re angry about.”
“Try being in cahoots with Lucas. Our entire relationship is based on collusion. You asked Lucas to go to Flavor of the Week to psychoanalyze me. I was just a damn specimen on a slide to him,” Raven said, storming out of the kitchen. She ran into her bedroom, packed a couple of bags, and carried them to the front door, where Dottie was now waiting to intercept her.
“There’s no need to do this, Raven. Besides, where will you go?” Dottie asked. “It doesn’t matter how your relationship began with Lucas. If you love him and he loves you, that’s all that matters.”
Raven turned to face her aunt. “Really? How do I know I’m not just a lab rat to him?”
“Because you both love each other.”
“He’s a damn psychologist. He studies people. He studied me for you, and I fell for it.” Suddenly it occurred to her that perhaps she hadn’t outgrown her naivety after all. Her judgment in men was just as faulty now as it had been with Gordon White.
Raven shrugged into her coat. “If our relationship is based on a lie, it can’t possibly remain strong.”
“I don’t follow your logic.”
“That’s not my problem,” Raven replied smartly.
“Please think this out before you go off half-cocked,” Dottie pleaded.
“Why do you care?”
“I care because you’re my niece and Lucas is a good man. You may never find another like him.”
“He’s all yours,” Raven said, grabbing her bags. Without another word, she left, slamming the front door behind her.
Raven carried the bags to her car and threw them in the trunk. Her throat had tightened and she was breathless with anger. She wasn’t just furious with her aunt and Lucas, but angry with herself for not seeing the entire sham unfold. How gullible had she been? She realized now that Lucas had never stopped analyzing her from the get-go. It was no wonder he always seemed to know what she wanted.
Since she needed a place sleep, she decided to pick a hotel near work and headed back into Manhattan. Her mind, now a retrieval system, began to replay those moments when Lucas first came into her life. When the thought of his first kiss surfaced, she quickly swept it away. Instead, she thought about the day he walked into Flavor of the Week. The excuse Lucas had given Raven for his stopping in for ice cream had sounded a bit lame at the time, but she was concentrating more on his good looks. His over-the-top questioning had nearly driven her crazy then, but now she realized what his game plan had been. He had kept her talking while he pressed her buttons in an attempt to see if she was mentally impaired.
When Lucas had showed up for lunch that day at the coffee shop, it had seemed to be a coincidence and nothing more. Now looking back, he had been there because Dottie had asked him to go. How else would he have known she ate there every day?
Everything made perfect sense now, Raven thought, as she analyzed the entire scenario as if she were preparing a case. When she had first told her aunt that she’d quit her job and decided to work in an ice cream parlor, Dottie freaked out. And when Dottie couldn’t get her to go back to the law firm, she panicked. Obviously, she feared Raven might have lost her mind and sought outside help. Unfortunately, because Raven disliked psychologists, there was no way to get her to see one. Somehow Dottie had managed to persuade Lucas to go to Flavor of the Week and check her niece out. There was no way that Lucas could psychoanalyze someone in five minutes and probably told Dottie that. However, her aunt, refusing to give up, devised the entire lunch scenario as a Hail Mary. R
aven grit her teeth. Why hadn’t she listened to the little warning voice in her head?
Her cell phone chimed. She’d gotten an incoming text. It was most likely her aunt or Lucas, and she didn’t want to speak with either of them.
Dottie’s words came back at her like the incessant buzzing of a mosquito. “It doesn’t matter how your relationship began with Lucas. If you love him and he loves you, that’s all that matters.”
Yeah, well, it does matter, Aunt Dottie. It means if my entire relationship was based on a falsehood, how can I truly trust the man? I refuse to allow myself to get hurt again.
* * *
After Raven stormed out of the house, Dottie collapsed into a chair and sobbed. What had she done? How could she have been so careless? Lucas had cautioned her early on about a casual slip of the tongue. He’d realized then how sharp Raven was, and he’d been so right. Dottie knew what she’d said had triggered Raven’s explosive behavior. Of course her niece’s reaction was over the top, but what did that matter if the result was lethal? Poor Lucas had no idea what was going to rain down on him. This was all on her, and she needed to warn him.
* * *
Raven stared up at the darkened ceiling of her hotel room at the Marriott. She purposely refused to think about the last time she’d been here with Lucas. As if she could. That memory and a myriad of others were caught up in a kaleidoscope of thoughts, none of them good for her mood. She was so angry and disgusted for allowing herself to have been duped. Granted, her aunt had acted out of love, but what she’d done was so irresponsible. However, ultimately, Raven had only herself to blame for hooking up with a psychologist in the first place. The minute he’d told her what type of medicine he practiced, she should have laid tracks right out of that restaurant. She had dismissed her gut instincts and now she was paying for it—big time.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucas tried in vain to call Raven, but calls went directly into her voicemail and eventually she turned it off entirely. How could he try to engage her in a constructive conversation and explain his and Dottie’s intentions if she wouldn’t even take his calls? He took no solace knowing that Raven was avoiding her aunt, as well. Short of waiting for Raven to show up at the building where she worked, he had no way to reach her. And stalking her wasn’t the way to go.
The following day, being a repeat of the previous one, was no different. Lucas couldn’t understand why Raven had overreacted. She had to know by now how much he loved her. Would he have asked her to marry him if he hadn’t? How they met shouldn’t matter in the least—especially at this point in their relationship.
Raven’s behavior both annoyed and upset him, but Lucas truly felt awful for Dottie. She blamed herself for setting in motion the wrecking ball that destroyed his relationship with her niece. She couldn’t apologize enough. For Dottie’s sake and to a great extent his, he tried to put a good face on the situation. Perhaps it was best that something like this had happened now and not after they were married. Or then again, in a day or so, it would all blow over. However, when his engagement ring was messengered over later that day, he knew there was no longer a good way to spin things. With a heavy heart, Lucas called Dottie to let her know.
“Oh, Lucas, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’d hoped my niece would have come to her senses by now. I still can’t believe it was my stupid carelessness that caused this.”
Lucas could hear the sadness in the woman’s voice.
“Stop beating yourself up, Dottie. If Raven hadn’t lost it over this, she could have over something else, I’m afraid. Obviously your niece doesn’t like to be bested. She feels she’s the victim of our little conspiracy.”
After the call ended, Lucas put the phone back down on his desk and tried to look at the situation through Raven’s eyes. Everyone’s character and personality colored their view of things and Raven was no different. Being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated career, Raven had to be competitive and highly intelligent. She couldn’t help but be confrontational after discovering her aunt had enlisted a psychologist, a person she’s always perceived as an adversary in the past, to help her get Raven back on what she’d considered the correct path.
And then there was what happened between her and Gordon White. It was a trust issue. She felt that both he and Dottie had lied to her. In essence, they had only misled her, but to Raven that would just seem to be splitting hairs. Raven would probably forgive her aunt once she accepted that she acted out of love, but right now Raven perceived her aunt’s actions as nothing less than being manipulative.
He could just imagine how furious she was, especially with him. The most upsetting thing about all this was he didn’t know how he was going to patch things up with her.
* * *
At ten o’clock that evening, Lucas’s emergency service called and informed him they’d gotten a distress call from Susan Smith. He thanked them and dialed the number they had given him for Susan. She answered on the second ring.
“Oh, Dr. Lusk,” she said, sounding out of breath. “Thank you for calling back so quickly.”
“What’s wrong, Susan? You sound upset.”
“I need to see you. My skin is crawling, and I’m hearing terrible voices in my head. I’m so afraid.”
“Voices?” Lucas asked, wondering what triggered this symptom.
“They’re telling me to do terrible things. What should I do? I don’t how much longer I can take this.”
He couldn’t risk the chance that she would act out on what she was implying. “Calm down. Take deep breaths. That will help. Can you get to my office now?”
“I can be there in ten minutes. Thank you. I was so afraid I’d never make it through the night.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Lucas said as he scooped up his keys and grabbed his coat. “Do you need me to stay on the line?”
“No. Knowing you’ll soon be with me helps,” Susan said. “More than you can imagine.”
“Just hang tight. I’ll be there in a few,” Lucas replied.
As Lucas drove to his office, he thought about Susan. He hoped to put out a little flare-up rather than deal with a tragedy.
He pulled into the parking lot of his small medical complex. His office was the fourth door down to the right. At this time of night, most of the offices were closed. He didn’t see Susan waiting outside, so he assumed that he’d gotten there first. He went to unlock the door, but found it was already open and went inside. Thinking that strange and probably not a good thing, he reached to flip on the light switches. Just then, Lucas sensed movement behind him. Before he could turn to see what it was, he felt something slam against the back of his head, causing a terrible searing pain and then nothingness.
Lucas eventually opened his eyes, but found it difficult to focus. His throbbing head felt as if an elephant was using it as a footstool. He was lying on the floor, his head next to the leg of an overturned chair. Using the side of the chair to steady himself, he tried to ignore the white-hot pain in his head as he slowly raised himself to a sitting position. The room spun around him as he tried to focus his eyes once again. Bile rose to his throat, but he forced it back down. It looked like his office had been trashed by a herd of buffalos.
A familiar voice spoke. Instead of being tremulous, it now had a hard edge to it.
“Good, you’re finally awake,” Susan Smith said, glaring at him. “I thought you’d be out all night.”
Ignoring the pain, Lucas struggled to focus his eyes and saw her sitting behind his desk in the shadows. Remembering why he had come to his office, he said, “I’m sorry, Susan—”
“You’re going to be a lot sorrier when the cops show up.” She got up and started to walk toward him. It looked like she was holding his souvenir Mets baseball bat, but his vision was still going in and out of focus and he saw double at best.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re going to arrest you, the great Dr. Lucas Lusk,” she taunted.
“Arrest m
e for what? I didn’t toss my office.”
She gave him a maleficent smile. “Why, for assaulting me, of course,” she said as she walked into the light.
Lucas saw that something was very wrong with the way she looked. His head swayed back and forth. Her left eye looked half-closed and swollen, and her lip was cut and bleeding.
“What happened to your face?”
“You should know. You did it.”
“Are you crazy?”
She gave out a bark of a laugh. “That’s funny, coming from you.”
“But I didn’t touch you. Wouldn’t it be my word against yours?” Lucas said.
“True, doc, but in this case they’re gonna believe me. Do you wanna know why?”
Lucas shifted his body and the world around him spun. Again his stomach roiled. When his eyes stopped rolling and he was able to focus again, he saw what she was holding up in front of his face. They were his missing gloves, and they were blood-stained.
“My blood is all over your gloves, doc. You’re going to jail. I’m gonna ruin you.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Lucas asked, trying to keep the bile from rising to his throat.
She gave him a grotesque smile. “For revenge.”
“Revenge? For what? I’ve only tried my best to help you.”
“I’m not avenging me, doc.” She shook her head. “It’s for someone I loved. Remember that person from my past that I hate? It was you.”
Lucas groaned. He tried hard to understand what she was saying. With the brass band in his head, he found it hard to concentrate on anything but the pain and nausea.
“You are so clueless, aren’t you? And you haven’t the faintest idea who I really am.” Smith taunted him.
“I give up. Just tell me. Who are you and how did I hurt you?” Lucas said and winced.