Nobody's Angel

by Sarah Hegger

  They stood looking at each other awkwardly.

  “I should go,” she said, her voice dipping a little lower.

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  They moved in silence through the house until they came to the front door. They stopped just inside the vestibule by tacit agreement. So much emotion gathered up in his chest he felt squirrelly with it. He couldn’t let her walk out like this. There was more to be said.

  “I almost feel like I should thank you, Luce.” It came out gruff and raspy, which was what the place inside him felt like.

  She turned to him in surprise, those green eyes opened wide and luminous. It was all there for him to see, the best of Lucy Flint in glorious detail. With no subterfuge or manipulations, pure and unadulterated Lucy. It hit him like a two-by-four to the back of the head and before he’d even consciously recognized the impulse he reached for her.

  She seemed to move toward him at the same time. And she was in his arms. Lucy Flint was in his arms, again. It felt like fucking heaven. Every curve of her pressed against him. She held him like she used to. One arm wrapped around his waist and one around his neck. As if she couldn’t get close enough to him. It was like she tried to melt into him.

  His body remembered. It woke up with a great, big roar of interest that rushed straight to his crotch. He should move away and put some inches between them. His track pants would do nothing to hide his visceral reaction. Not yet. For a few seconds the need to indulge in her was too strong and Richard dropped his head and inhaled the scent of her. L’Eau d’Issey, still the same subtle scent after all these years and mixed with the cinnamon undernotes of Lucy.

  The small hitch in her breathing rocked him to his core. And then he kissed her. Without his mind having formed the thought, his mouth found hers and feasted on the forgotten sweetness. The taste and feel of her exploded through his sense memory like a tsunami. His tongue thrust between her lips to find the honey his body still remembered was right there for him. A rough sound grated in his throat. Hot and needy, he wanted more of her. Shock slammed into him and he wrenched away. Dragging his mouth away, he scrambled back a few steps to put distance and sanity between them.

  Her eyes were huge in her face, mirroring the shock he felt. “I … ?” She pressed her shaking hand to her mouth.

  “GO,” he growled, furious with her, furious with himself, and shaking with the effort it took not to reach for her again.

  Chapter Ten

  Lucy woke up to a familiar sound and her stomach clenched. Carl’s voice became more insistent from the room next door. In direct proportion to his increased agitation, Lynne’s tone grew more conciliatory. The call to action of her youth: Carl harangued and Lynne capitulated. Even now the lash-out-irrationally button blinked at her. Push Me.

  For a moment she was a little girl again, lying in her too-big bed and listening to her parents in the room next to her own. She took a deep breath and reminded herself she was not that little girl anymore. Last night and Richard hovered outside her awareness, but she was too cowardly to go there yet. She pushed the memory of the scene away, especially the last part, the part where he had kissed her. Richard kissed from his soul. It was pointless to think anyone else would ever kiss her like that. And wasn’t that a cheery little thought to start the day on.

  Lucy focused on Carl as he progressed to the name-calling. Her mother never retaliated. Where the hell had Lucy learned to stand up for herself? Actually, she grimaced, she had not always stood up for herself and certainly not against Peter. A brief interlude between Elliot and more Elliot landed her with Peter. Even now it was hard to fathom she had allowed some man to make a punching bag out of her. She got out of bed, more to escape the dark thoughts than anything else.

  Elliot. It seemed the safest place to put her thoughts this morning. He’d been calling Mads and that couldn’t be good. Elliot had been her knight in shining armor, the quintessential prince, waiting patiently in the wings to rush in and rescue his tattered princess. Only, the princess was not so sure she didn’t want to have a crack at the dragon herself right now.

  Elliot always urged her to take responsibility and stand on her own feet. He just never meant where he was concerned. She had left Seattle with things very much up in the air. Last night and Richard had, unfortunately, made a few things glaringly obvious. Lucy pushed the memory away ruthlessly. It was over, done, and best forgotten, a product of too many raw emotions spilling out of control. The thing to focus on was the amends and she’d delivered it. She took a deep breath. It was done.

  The voices next door snatched away her moment of peace. A new note crept into Carl’s voice and Lucy slipped out of bed and closer to the door.

  “You’re a stupid woman.” Lucy sucked in a hard breath.

  “Now, Carl, it’s just a chair.” Her mother always placated him.

  Lucy pulled on a pair of sweats.

  “I know what you’re doing,” Carl said, his voice growing louder.

  “I’m not doing anything, dear,” Lynne wheedled.

  Why didn’t her mother leave him? Lucy frowned at her own thought. It seemed strangely disloyal, but it stuck like peanut butter to the roof of her mouth.

  Well, why hadn’t she left Peter? Her thoughts came full circle. You didn’t have to be at the business end of someone’s fist to feel isolated and unworthy. It had taken a stranger, appearing as if by magic at the side of her hospital bed. A stranger with café au lait skin, obsidian eyes, and a voice like gin and cigarettes, to tell her there was another way to lead her life. Lucy smiled despite the grim direction her head went.

  Peter had landed her in the hospital the last time. After a drunken brawl between them, Lucy remembered nothing except waking up and seeing Mads standing by her bedside. And Mads had offered her a way out of the increasing insanity of her life. Surely her guardian angel must have been on duty that day because, despite everything, Lucy had listened. She had still been hearing those words three days later when Mads had picked her up from the hospital. She’d been sober ever since.

  Lucy opened her door and snuck into the bathroom. She really didn’t want to get dragged into the argument. Her teeth felt as if she had a layer of fur growing on them. She made it to the bathroom with a small sigh of relief. Now, it was time for coffee. Getting to the kitchen would be more of a challenge.

  “Lucy?” Her mother’s voice and Lucy groaned. The coffee might have to wait. Lynne had always dragged her into these fights. As if her presence ever did anything to soothe her father. One look at Lucy would send Carl straight over the edge. “Lucy, would you come here, please?”

  But, no, this was how they did things in the Flint household and not much, if anything, had changed in her thirty years of being part of it.

  “I’ll be right there, Mom.” Lucy splashed water on her face and braced for Carl. Thus far, his success in drawing blood had been limited. But Carl was like HAL 9000: He watched, he waited, he listened, and he learned. Lucy pulled a face at her reflection in the mirror. Was there some kind of special place in hell for people who had these thoughts about their parents?

  She remembered something that made her grin. In the French version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL had been called CARL. That was better than a shot of caffeine. Lucy trotted across the hallway.

  “What’s up?” She leaned her shoulder against the door frame.

  “You still here?” her father snarled at her. Nope, Lucy decided, no place in hell for her. More like a haven of eternal reward for tolerating the old fart.

  “Still here,” she confirmed with a pleasant nod. “What is it, Mom?”

  “Oh, Lucy.” Lynne turned huge, pleading eyes in her direction. “It’s that chair.”

  Lucy almost burst out laughing, but Lynne’s face persuaded her this was not a laughing matter. The chair in question was only a little younger than God. In fact, it may even have appeared in the painting of the Last Supper.

  “What about the chair?” Other than the fact that it was c
at-sick yellow and unmentionable brown, ripped and sagging. It no longer Lazed at all, the handle long broken and the footrest sort of hung half-mast between the floor and the swaybacked seat.

  “It must go,” Lynne wailed.

  “Over my dead body,” Carl growled. It was too easy. Lucy kept the pleasant expression on her face.

  “I am trying to clear out some of the debris.” Lynne turned to her in mute appeal.

  “And you will try and get rid of me next,” thundered Carl as he sat in the chair defiantly. Springs groaned in protest, but Carl stayed put. “The chair stays for as long as I do.”

  Again, Lucy bit her tongue.

  “Now, Carl.” Lynne went into her soothing routine. “You know that’s not the way it is. I want to give the place a bit of a spruce-up. Maybe we can get that Realtor in, like we talked about. And maybe you and I can move to something smaller. You always said you wanted us to have a house of our own.”

  “The chair stinks.” Lucy added her two cents worth from the doorway.

  “It does not.” Carl rounded on her belligerently.

  “Just saying.” Lucy shrugged and the full force of her father’s wrath turned in her direction.

  “You put these ideas into her head, didn’t you?” His eyes narrowed venomously in his face. “You want to get rid of me.”

  “It’s not my decision,” Lucy told him frankly. “But I do think Mom is looking tired and somewhere smaller would be easier for her to manage. One level would also be better for both of you.”

  “We do fine without you and your suggestions.” Carl’s face went alarmingly red.

  “You’re upsetting him, dear,” Lynne whispered urgently and Lucy stared at her. That’s what you got for waking up in the Flint house.

  “Okay.” She straightened away from the doorjamb. Last night she’d delivered an amends to Richard. This morning she was exhausted, wrung out like a dishcloth, but strangely liberated. She was not going to get dragged into her parents’ battle. “Does anyone want a cup of coffee?”

  It was comical the way both Carl and Lynne stopped and turned to stare at her. Lucy kept a pleasant expression on her face. “Coffee?” she prompted.

  Lynne frowned a little and then turned back to Carl. “There is not enough room in here for two chairs. So, I guess we’ll have to cancel the new one and leave that one there.” And the battle was on again.

  “What new chair?” Carl narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Lynne. “Have you been spending money again?” Lucy looked at her mother. This was news to her too. When had Lynne been ordering new chairs?

  “Well,” Lynne said, screwing up her face. “It will cost twice as much to have that one repaired. I thought it would be better to get a new one. They have such lovely fabrics now and leather in all sorts of colors. But there is not enough space in here for two chairs.”

  “Mom.” Lucy turned to leave. “He doesn’t want a new chair. If he wants his smelly old chair, let him have his chair.”

  “I never said that.” Predictable as clockwork, Carl thundered at her.

  “Whatever.” Lucy shrugged over her shoulder.

  “We don’t have money to spend on nonsense,” Carl decreed from his tatty throne. “You would know that if you ever bothered to come home.”

  Now that was an out and out lie. The money part, at least, because Lucy knew Carl had squirreled away a small fortune over the years. God knows, he hadn’t spent a cent on anything in her lifetime. Somehow, she couldn’t drum up the enthusiasm to engage the battle. Coffee, on the other hand, now that she could get excited about.

  “Well, that’s that then.” Lynne said it so calmly Lucy snapped back to attention. Her mother was up to something.

  Lynne started to gather up the debris from Carl’s breakfast. “It doesn’t really make any difference to me.”

  “What are you blathering about?” Carl snapped, intrigued despite himself.

  “Oh, nothing,” Lynne breathed airily. “We were talking about putting the house to order. One thing led to another and we got to thinking it might be time for some new things.”

  “What new things? We don’t need any new things.”

  Yup, good old Dad. Tight as a bear’s ass in fly season. Carl was business as usual but Lynne, now there was the revelation. Lucy decided to stay a while and watch her mother at work. Which triggered another thought. For all her unobtrusive and submissive behavior, Lynne managed to make her will count when it was important to her.

  “You’re quite right, of course.” Lynne picked up the tray. “It was nothing important really, or even useful. A new chair, definitely. That one is in a terrible state. And then Lucy suggested one of those new televisions.”

  Say what? Lucy blinked at her mother.

  Lynne headed for the door. “The ones that go on the wall and get high definition and all that stuff. I know nothing about it but the nice young man at the store explained how much clearer the picture was and, I must say, they had some hockey playing and it was almost like being at the game.”

  Way to go, Mom. Lucy almost cheered out loud. Clearly, Lynne had skills that were vastly underestimated. Lucy knew she had a new appreciation for Lynne’s methods, and she was fairly sure Carl hadn’t a bloody clue he was being calmly and quietly arranged into a useful position.

  Carl looked marginally less bellicose now. A crafty grin played around the corners of his mouth.

  Man, had she ever underestimated Lynne. Not only did he play right into his wife’s hands, he thought he had the win. It was all something of a revelation.

  “I don’t need a new TV,” Carl grumbled.

  “No, you don’t,” Lucy agreed quickly. “It would be wasted on you, you never watch anything.” She thought she’d give her mother a hand.

  “I watch TV all the time.” Yup, you could bet the farm on it.

  “Sure, you do.” She snorted. That should just about do it.

  “Perhaps a microwave instead?” Lynne mused as she left the room. “Or you know what, Lucy. That old dishwasher of mine has clearly seen better days.”

  “You just got a microwave.” The enraged bellow followed them down the stairs.

  Lucy watched her mother with newfound respect as she followed her into the kitchen. Already more questions were starting to crowd her brain. Lucy pushed them away. She had more than enough to deal with for the moment.

  Lucy wrestled the grim-smelling old relic out onto the driveway. Lynne offered to help, but Lucy left her doing what she did best, appeasing Carl.

  The weather had improved slightly today and the temperature was bearable. A light snow drifted like tiny cobwebs through the air. That should really put the chair past saving.

  She shoved it down the porch, her legs slipping and sliding as her feet failed to gain purchase on the new snow. It may not be a thing of beauty, but the chair was certainly built to last and weighed it. Determined not to be daunted she gave another mighty push and the chair moved a gratifying two feet. This was her badge of honor, her medal of courage, her triumph over Carl. It was not much, but it was the thin end of the wedge.

  Good. Lucy stepped back and surveyed her handiwork. “Only another twenty or so feet to go.”

  “Are you talking to yourself?”

  Lucy’s heartbeat accelerated all by itself and it had nothing to do with her difficulties with the chair.

  His dark head covered in a navy cap, Richard appeared at the end of the driveway. He was all wrapped up in his winter coat and boots, carrying a snow shovel. The moment hung awkwardly between them as Lucy searched for something to say.

  “You seem to spend your life doing that,” Lucy said, nodding toward the shovel.

  “I don’t mind it,” he said, shrugging. “It gives me a chance to clear my mind.”

  “Is that why all the running and cycling?”

  He smiled at her. It was the first honest, real Richard smile and it lit Lucy up from the inside out like a storm lantern. She stood there and basked in its glory.

 
; “Richie Rich?”

  “My pet?”

  “Pet?”

  “Give me a break here, I am running out of names.”

  “I love your smile, you know.”

  “Of course you do, it’s part of my awesome package.”

  “Package?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So what’s with the chair?”

  Lucy jerked her attention to the malodorous mess she was heaving around. “This,” she said, patting it gingerly, terrified of what might be hiding in there. “This is more than a chair. This is a moral victory.”

  “Uh-huh?” He folded his arms over his chest.

  He was different today, a bit more relaxed and almost—approachable? The air between them felt clearer, freer, as if they had both managed a bit of breathing space. If she’d done nothing else with her amends, she’d done that.

  “I managed to liberate this from the house. Over the voluble protests of my father, mind you. This chair is a portent of change.”

  “And here I thought it was a really old La-Z-Boy.”

  “That’s because you lack vision,” Lucy said, grinning at him. For once he didn’t stare at her as if he were cast in granite. He cracked another smile and Lucy’s cup ranneth over.

  Then, he did one of those Richard things she hadn’t remembered, but it all came back to her in a rush. He strolled over and hefted the chair onto his shoulder. He carried the chair effortlessly to the sidewalk. It would stay there until somebody decided they must have it or the city came to get it. Lucy’s money was on the latter. She was reasonably sure it should be condemned as a biohazard.

  She followed Richard down to the sidewalk and smiled. It was always like this with Richard. He opened doors, carried heavy things, stood when a lady left the table, a hundred small, old-fashioned, and nearly forgotten courtesies he performed as easily as if he were breathing. All the brothers were the same.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “You.” Lucy’s smile widened when he looked surprised. “You always had the most beautiful manners. Other boys were not like you. If they did do something polite, they made a big deal. You got on with it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.”