by Carole Buck
Chris had paid attention to her in the past, of course. Indeed, she’d found the way he listened to her during their courtship to be remarkably erotic. She’d been accustomed to men who tended to discount the importance of women’s conversations. To state her opinion on a subject and not have it brushed off with a patronizing “Yeah, yeah, I hear what you’re tellin’ me, babe” had had a startling effect on her libido.
But there was one big difference between then and now, Lucy reflected with a flash of painfully acquired self-knowledge. Back then, she’d harbored some serious doubts about the value of what she had to say.
She didn’t harbor any such doubts now. While she was as prone to an occasional bout of insecurity as the next person, she was certain of her worth.
“I think we’ve gotten our roles reversed,” she finally observed, fingering the stem of her almost emptied wineglass. She’d ordered her usual, the house white. She had no memory of having drunk any of it.
Chris cocked an eyebrow. He’d asked for Scotch on the rocks. The glass in front of him was almost untouched, the ice cubes it contained nearly melted. “What do you mean?”
“The girl’s supposed to get the guy to talk about himself and his work, not vice verse.” It was an oblique way of letting him know that she was aware of what he’d been up to. A sudden glint in his gray-green eyes told her that he’d gotten the message. It also sent a frisson of physical awareness prickling up her spine.
“When did you start subscribing to gender stereotypes?”
“Oh...” She gestured, trying to ignore the sexual energy that was coursing through her body like an electrical current. “...I’ve been known to make use of them every once in while.”
“Ah, yes.” Chris’s gaze flicked from her face to her breasts and back again. Lucy shifted involuntarily and crossed her legs, acutely conscious of the sleek glide of her slip over her panty-hosed thighs. “I seem to recall you expounding about that on several occasions.”
“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,” she paraphrased, wary of starting a walk down memory lane. Although she knew that their shared past was ripe for review, it was better—safer—to stick with a discussion of the present.
“Mmm...” Her ex-husband took a sip of his drink. “Tell me more about this seldom-seen boss of yours, John Gulliver. He sounds a little like the mysterious employer in that old TV series, ‘Charlie’s Angels.’”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head decisively, determined to reverse the conversational flow and defuse the attraction she was feeling. “It’s time to talk about you. What’s the business that brought you to Atlanta?”
It seemed to her to be a very straightforward question. Hardly the kind of query that necessitated a lot of thought. But Chris lowered the glass slowly back to the table, appearing to weigh his answer very carefully. Finally he said, “I’m considering a job offer.”
Lucy gasped as the implications of this quietly uttered statement sank in. “H-here?”
“I’ve been asked to become executive legal counsel to...” He named a well-known philanthropic organization.
“That’s quite a departure from being a partner in a high-powered New York law firm!”
The blurted-out words seemed to hang in the air over the table. Lucy would have given just about anything to be able to pluck them down and jam them back into her mouth.
“And just what do you know about my being a partner in a high-powered New York law firm?” Chris queried after a few keenly uncomfortable seconds.
Lucy grimaced inwardly, cursing her wayward tongue. She’d always been prone to blabbing first and thinking through later. Her verbal impulsiveness had been a source of contention during her marriage. Although Chris had professed to admire her penchant for speaking her mind, she knew there’d been occasions when he felt she’d gone over the line.
“There was an article about you in the New York Times a few weeks back,” she admitted stiffly. “Gulliver’s Travels booked a couple on a cruise that turned out to be a front for a drug-smuggling ring. Everything worked out in the end, thank God. I mean, the couple came through the mess safely and the bad guys were busted. The Times has given the case a fair amount of coverage. Which, because of the agency’s involvement, I’ve tried to follow. One of the stories jumped to a page in the business section that happened to have a photograph of you. There was a profile underneath. I... skimmed...it.”
“I see.” The response was mild to the point of seeming indifferent. It also sounded more than a little superior.
Damn him! Lucy thought, her anger at herself veering off toward her ex-husband. There had been a time when Chris’s cool, self-contained style intrigued her. In the beginning, it had been the contrast with her own rather volatile temperament that compelled her interest. Later, it had been the erotic kick of knowing that as buttoned-down as Chris appeared in public, he was more than capable of letting it all hang out when the two of them were alone together behind closed doors.
She’d gone into her marriage confident that, despite his tendency to hold himself aloof from other people, Chris would open up to her without reservation. And for a while she’d believed that he was. But as the halcyon haze of honeymoon bliss gave way to everyday reality, she’d begun to suspect that she’d been deceived.
Even at their moments of greatest intimacy, when she felt her own identity and independence slipping away, she’d been plagued by the nagging fear that some part of Christopher Dodson Banks remained impervious to her. No matter how much she’d given. No matter how hard she’d tried to make herself into what she thought he wanted her to be. It had never seemed to be enough. Something about him seemed to stay just...out...of...reach.
“I haven’t been keeping tabs on you!” she insisted. It was the truth. Unfortunately, the natural corollary—that she hadn’t given a damn what had happened to him after their split—was rather less valid.
“With nearly ten years and a divorce decree between us?” her ex-husband shot back, without missing a beat. “I should think not.”
Four
Lucy recognized the words as her own, of course. Her temper spiking into the red zone, she scooted back her chair and started to get up.
“This was a mistake,” she announced, reaching for her purse. “I’m out of here. Happy New Year. Have a swell life.”
“No!” Chris leaned across the table and snagged her wrist.
She tried to pull free. His grip tightened to the bruising point. His lean build and gentlemanly demeanor made it easy to underestimate his physical strength. Her mind flashed back to a night when her brothers had maneuvered him into helping them unload a truckful of supplies at the restaurant. Chris had matched her bulked-up siblings move for move and barely broken a sweat. Vinnie, Joey and Mikey had been openly impressed.
“Let go of me!” she demanded, shoving the memory away.
“I’m sorry.”
Lucy froze, her breath backing up, at the tone of this apology. It was the same tone Chris had used when he uttered the word please in connection with his attempt to persuade her to have a drink with him. It was fierce with feeling, yet very, very vulnerable.
She’d never heard him speak in such a manner until this evening. Not even in the throes of sexual ecstasy, when he’d cried out his need for her in hoarse, barely understandable syllables. If truth be told, she’d come to believe that he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. At least not within her hearing.
Maybe he’d spoken that way to the woman in whose arms she’d found him ten days before the first anniversary of their wedding. Lucy didn’t know. She’d never asked. She’d told herself that there was no point in finding out. Betrayal was betrayal, no ifs, ands, buts or mitigating explanations. Her father, brothers, uncles and cousins had backed her up, citing. Falco family honor with a fervor that suggested they were immigrants just off the boat from vendetta-prone Sicily rather than second- and third-generation Americans with roots in the Lombardy region of northern Italy.
But now...
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“Sorry for what?” she questioned, managing to keep her voice steady. She wished she could do the same with her heartbeat. She wondered whether Chris could feel the herkjerk of her pulse.
“Would you like a list?”
“Do you have one?”
His mouth thinned. His gray-green eyes clouded with emotion. “Can you spare a day or two to listen?”
Lucy exhaled on a shaky breath. Her knees started to wobble. “Chris—”
“Something I can do for you folks?”
The query came from their server, a spiffily dressed young man with ponytailed hair and a gold ear stud. Although his manner was polite, something about his stance suggested that he’d hustled over to their table because he scented trouble.
Lucy felt Chris release her wrist. She sank back down into her seat, giving the waiter a quick smile. “No, thank you.”
“A refill on your white wine, maybe?”
“I’m five.”
“Another Scotch, sir?”
“No, thanks.”
“Would you bring the check, please?” Lucy requested after a moment.
The young man hesitated, his gaze flicking assessingly from one side of the table to the other. Finally he inclined his head and said, “Right away, ma’am.”
“I guess the sparks were a little obvious,” Chris observed with an edgy laugh after the waiter moved away.
Lucy felt a tinge of heat enter her cheeks. “Apparently so,” she replied, flexing her wrist and glancing away.
A few seconds ticked by.
“About your asking for the check—”
She brought her gaze back to her ex-husband’s face. She noted, not for the first time that evening, that the passage of time had barely touched him. A few new wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes. A slight deepening of the lines that bracketed his mouth. Maybe a couple of silver strands at his temples. But aside from that, Chris looked much as he had the first time she caught sight of him.
“We agreed to have one drink,” she pointed out.
Chris’s well-shaped lips twisted. “That we did. And with no strings attached.”
She lowered her gaze and began fiddling with the stem of her wineglass again. The hum of physical attraction was still there. It was a far cry from the incendiary desire that had once come close to consuming her, to be sure, but it was more seductive than anything she’d felt since her divorce.
Which was not to say that she’d had her libido on hold for the past decade. She was a normal, healthy woman with normal, healthy appetites, for heaven’s sake. She’d dated. She’d gone to bed with several attractive, eligible men. She’d even discussed the possibility of moving in with one of them. But when it came down to making a commitment, she’d pulled back. There had been something... missing.
There had been something missing from her marriage, as well, of course. Particularly at the end. And who knew? Maybe in the beginning, too. That was one of the thoughts that had been going around and around in her head as her certainties about what had happened between her and Chris slipped away.
“I am sorry,” Chris asserted quietly, drawing her eyes once again.
“Oh?”
“For the crack about the nearly ten years and the divorce decree. It was totally uncalled-for.”
She gave a ragged little laugh. “I said it first.”
“True. But you’re entitled.”
“Entitled?”
“To take a shot at me. Or shots.”
“You ... think?” Lucy’s heart performed a curious hop-skip-jump.
“Don’t you?”
Of course she did! He’d broken the wedding vows he’d taken and shattered the happily-ever-after resolution they’d made. And yet—
“It was a long time ago, Chris.”
“The past is over and done with, don’t rake it up?”
Lucy licked her lips, buffeted by a series of contradictory emotions. Finally she sighed and said, “Not tonight.”
Her ex-husband studied her silently for several moments, then nodded his head in apparent acquiescence to her wishes. “All right.”
Their waiter returned with the bill. Lucy retrieved her purse, opened it, extracted her wallet and took out a credit card.
“Be back in a sec,” the young man promised, bustling away.
“Were you serious before?” Lucy asked. “About the job offer from the foundation?”
“Very much so.”
“What do your parents think?” It was a dicey question. To say that her wedding-night confidence about being able to come to terms with her blue-blooded in-laws had proved misplaced would be to understate the case. Still, she was curious.
Chris picked up the glass of watery Scotch, took a long drink, then set it down with a clunk. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“You haven’t told them?”
“When did you tell your family you were contemplating going to work for Gulliver’s Travels?”
Lucy flushed, remembering the scene. She also realized she’d been put on notice that, although her ex-husband might consider her “entitled” to take shots at him, he wasn’t declaring open season on his mother and father. She could accept that. Respect it, even. The importance of family loyalty had been drummed into her from infancy. For all that her feather, brothers, uncles and cousins might drive her stark raving crazy on occasion, she’d defend them to the death against outsiders.
“After the fact,” she admitted, grimacing.
“After the fact?” Chris looked shocked. “What did you do, Lucy? Send them a change-of-address card?”
“Of course notI” Which wasn’t to say that there hadn’t been moments when she secretly wished that she could have found the nerve to opt for such a no-holds-barred assertion of her independence. “I told them after I’d agreed to take the job.”
“But before you moved to Atlanta.”
“Yes.”
“How did they take the news?”
“Compared to what?” The way they’d taken the news that she was getting married, maybe? Or how about the way they’d taken the news that she was filing for divorce?
“Lucy—”
“You don’t really want to know, Chris:”
He tilted his head, a frown line appearing between his sandy-brown eyebrows. “I can understand them not wanting you to leave Chicago,” he commented slowly. “But weren’t they-aren’t they-proud of your professional success ?”
“Of course they’re proud.” What was she supposed to say? That he’d been more supportive of her ambitions in the space of one no-strings drink than her relatives had been during an entire decade? “They just have trouble expressing how-”
“Here we go,” their waiter announced, swooping in with a credit-card slip and a pen.
“Thank you,” Lucy said, grateful for the interruption. She checked the addition on the bill, tacked on a generous tip, then signed her name with a flourish. After separating off her receipt and the accompanying carbons, she handed the remaining portion of the credit slip and the pen back to the server.
“Thank you, ma’am!” the young man said with a broad grin. “And have a very happy New Year.”
“Forty percent of the bill?” Chris asked in a teasing undertone as the waiter moved away. “That’s a little over-the-top, even for you.”
Lucy refused to rise to what was very familiar bait. “I appreciate good service.”
“You mean you empathize with people who have to spend their holidays waiting tables.”
“Having done it myself, yes.” She smiled wryly, recalling the long days she’d spent schlepping food and beverages at her family’s restaurant. She also recalled having seen Elizabeth Banks’s impeccably lipsticked mouth compress into an unpleasant line when she talked about that experience. “But to tell the truth, it’s more than that these days. The buzz in the travel biz is that women are lousy tippers.”
“And you’re bent on proving that’s a vile canard.”
“Well...”
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Chris laughed. Not mockingly. Quite the contrary. The sound was warm. Almost... tender. It sent a quiver dancing through Lucy’s nervous system. Her gaze met and mated with her ex-husband’s. For a breathless moment, everything seemed to stand still.
“Lucy ” Chris began, the humor fading from his expression.
“It’s time to go,” she said quickly, looking away. She got to her feet and began collecting her things. Her hands were only marginally steadier than her pulse and breathing pattern.
She wondered later whether she’d wanted Chris to press her-perhaps even to plead with her—to stay. She could never say for sure. That she might have taken pleasure in making her ex-husband grovel for her company was not a particularly edifying thing to contemplate. Still...
There was no denying that she felt a pang of disappointment when Chris abandoned whatever he’d been about to say and stood up.
“So, tell me,” he began in a casual tone, retrieving the classic tan trench coat he’d draped over the back of his chair before they sat down. His taste in clothes didn’t seem to have altered much in ten years. She’d felt a definite rush of sartorial déjà vu when he unbuttoned the trench coat and revealed that he was wearing a midnight-blue suit, white shirt and burgundy silk tie. “What would you being doing right now if we hadn’t run into each other?”
Lucy shrugged into her own coat, a black cashmere wrap she’d purchased on sale the previous winter. While she was happy to overtip, the thought of paying full retail price for clothing was anathema to her.
“Oh, I’d probably be curled up on my living room sofa with a bunch of” She broke off, frowning.
“Lucy?”
She glanced around with a sense of dismay, then looked across the table and asked, “Did I have bunch of files with me when I came in here?”
Chris considered for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. Why?”
“Damn.” She expelled a frustrated breath. “I had a stack of work I was going to take home with me. I must’ve left it on my desk when I rushed out of the office.”