by Carole Buck
“We’re divorced,” Chris said without inflection.
“She’s your ex-wife?” Butch’s voice rose sharply. “You’d trust your ex-wife not to go running to the police so they’d move in with SWAT teams and blow all of us away, including you?”
“Jeez.” Tom snorted. “If it was my ex-wife—”
Dick cut in. “Don’t start bad-mouthing Dora-Jean.”
“Why not? You divorced her, too. Twice.”
“So? It doesn’t mean I want to hear people sayin’ nasty things about her.”
“You were both married to the same woman?” Lucy’s head was whirling. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized that Chris hadn’t answered the question Butch had put to him. Did he trust her to such a degree? After everything that had happened between them? After ten years of going their separate ways?
“Not at the same time,” Dick assured her.
“We went back and forth,” Tom elaborated. “Him. Me. Him again. And he calls me stupid!”
“Damn you—”
“Shut up!” Butch bellowed, ripping off his smiley-face mask and throwing it on the floor. “We’ve wasted enough time in here. We’ve got a wall to get through and a vault to crack, and we don’t have until next year to do it!”
Tom peeled up the alligator headpiece and started scratching his bearded chin. “You know, Butch,” he said slowly. “We sorta do. Have till next year, I mean.”
The balding man glared at him. “Which part didn’t you understand, Tom? The shut or the up?”
“I understood both of ’em just fine. But you said it to Dick.”
“He meant both of us, you idiot.”
“Oh,...”
Lucy felt Chris shift. She squirmed a little, too. Her bottom was beginning to get numb.
“Butch?” her ex-husband finally asked. “What do you say to letting Lucy go?”
“Absolutely not!” They’d have a fight on their hands if they tried to turn her loose, Lucy vowed furiously. They’d have to drag her out of the building, kicking and screaming. The struggle she’d put up earlier would look like a game of pattycake by comparison. “I’m staying here with you, Chris!”
“Well, Mr. Harvard Lawyer Banks,” replied Percival Johnson. “I say my mama raised me to believe that when a lady says no, a gentleman has to respect it. Looks like you and your ex-missus are gonna see in the New Year together.”
Six
Chris drew a long, slow breath as the storage room door clicked shut, leaving him and Lucy alone once again. He emptied his lungs in a carefully calibrated exhalation. Stay calm, he told himself, flexing and unflexing his fingers. Stay cool.
He didn’t usually need to coach himself along these lines. Staying calm and cool—more or less detached from life-was pretty much second nature to him. Self-control had been bred into him from the cradle. It came easy.
Except with Lucy.
Lucia Annette Falco was like a force of nature. His life had unexpectedly intersected with hers eleven and a half years ago and...kablooey. Goodbye calm, cool Christopher Dodson Banks. Hello to a guy with raging hormones and a heart overflowing with emotions he could barely handle.
It had scared him. Oh, not at first. After he resolved his concerns that he might be using his involvement with Lucy to make some psychologically screwed-up point about who he was or wasn’t, he’d pretty much given himself over to the roller-coaster ride. At least temporarily.
He’d been crazy in love, and he’d gloried in it. But once sanity began to reassert itself, he’d begun to get the jitters. He’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted Lucy. Never...needed...anyone with such intensity. Whether she’d asked for it or not, he’d ceded her enormous power over his life. The implications of his doing so had shaken him to the center of his soul.
He’d pulled back. He admitted that. Or maybe he should say he’d tried to pull back. Although Lucy had accused him of holding himself aloof from her during the last few months of their marriage, he’d always felt intensely engaged and dangerously vulnerable.
Chris closed his eyes, flashing back to the private words he and Lucy had exchanged just a few scant hours after they traded very public vows.
Eleven years ago, that had been. Eleven years, to this very night. Possibly to this very hour.
“I think we should make a resolution,” his new bride had said. Her dark eyes had been glowing with equal parts of promise and provocation. Her lips, rouged and tender from his kisses, had curved into a bewitching smile.
“A resolution?” he’d asked, registering the allure of her expression with every fiber of his being. Echoes of the ecstasy they’d shared a short time before had resonated through him. Blood began to pool and pulse in the flesh between his legs. He’d wanted her again. And again.
“To live happily ever after.”
He’d smiled back at Lucy at that point, achingly aware of the throbbing heaviness in his loins. He’d seen her nostrils flare, as though she’d scented his renewed arousal. She’d flushed. He’d known that if he eased down the sheet she had draped around her, he’d find the petal-pink satin of her nipples pebbled and their budding peaks tight and hard. He’d also known that if he slipped a hand between her thighs, he’d discover a luscious welcome.
“Together.”
“Abso—” she’d hiccuped “—lutely.”
Chris opened his eyes.
To live happily ever after.
Lord.
He’d had little idea of what those words signified when his wife uttered them on their wedding night. He’d had even less understanding of how to go about translating them into an enduring reality. But somewhere in the back of his mind—and this was one of those dig-down-into-the-gut truths he hadn’t grasped until years after his divorce—he’d latched on to the belief that Lucy did. Without perceiving what he was doing, he’d shifted the emotional burden of their marital relationship to her. She was to be the keeper of true love’s flame. While he...
Chris grimaced. He wasn’t certain how he’d defined his role in their marriage but he was damned sure that it hadn’t corresponded with Lucy’s expectations. Damned sure now, that is. He’d been clueless back then. He’d botched things up without realizing it, then compounded his unwitting mistakes and sins of omission by trying to pin the blame on his essentially innocent wife.
It had taken him a long time to face up to the responsibility he bore for what had happened. It wasn’t that he was a shirker. God, no. The Banks family code didn’t allow for that. He simply hadn’t understood what he’d done.
He’d heard women talk about men who didn’t “get it.” Well, except for a few incandescently fine interludes, he’d been such a man when he was with Lucy. If the ugly truth be told, he’d been such a man for quite a while without her, too.
In the immediate aftermath of their breakup, he’d allowed himself to be semibrainwashed by the oh-so-sympathetic postmortems of his relatives and friends. Even after he purged himself of the influence of their insidiously pernicious comments about Lucy’s alleged failure to “fit in” to “his”—and their—world, he’d clung to the conviction that he’d been driven to do what he did ten days before their first anniversary.
Yes, his actions had been wrong, he’d acknowledged to himself. But what other choice had he had? He’d been trying to save their marriage, not sink it! If Lucy had stood her ground, as he’d anticipated she’d do, instead of running home to her father, her brothers, et cetera, et cetera and so forth, they might have been able to work things out.
Chris winced inwardly as he remembered the shattered look he’d seen on Lucy’s face when she walked into his law office and found him embracing another woman. A woman who, in many ways, was her antithesis. A woman with whom—by most rational standards—he had a great deal in common.
He should have realized the instant he saw Lucy’s expression what a hideous misjudgment he’d made, and he should have gone down on his knees to beg her forgiveness. But he’d been too blinded by injured p
ride and stupidity to comprehend what was going on before his very eyes.
He’d gone after his wife...eventually. But by that time, the Falco males had closed ranks against him. And instead of trying to find a way through, around, over or under the familial phalanx they’d established, he’d angrily decided that Lucy’s seeming dependence on their protection was conclusive proof that she’d chosen them over him.
She’d filed for divorce. He hadn’t contested it. He’d told himself that he no longer gave a damn.
Except he did.
Still did, in point of fact. He cared so much he hurt with it.
Chris took another deep breath. Expelled it in another consciously controlled exhalation. Finally he said, “They would have let you go, you know.”
He heard Lucy huff. Felt her toss her head. Her hair tickled the nape of his neck, sending a series of quicksilver tingles cascading down his spine.
“Good for them,” she responded, in a tone that communicated precisely the opposite.
No one in his life had ever been able to make him so furious so fast. He was tinder. She was matches. A couple of words, and whoosh. A conflagration of temper.
“Dammit, Lucy—”
“I got you into this, Chris,” she said, cutting in fiercely. “I’m here for the duration. Deal with it.”
His anger dissipated in a rush of bewilderment. He opened and shut his mouth several times, not quite believing he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.
“You got me into this?” he repeated incredulously, mentally cursing his inability to see her expression. Although Lucy unquestionably had acquired a great deal of polish during the past decade, their conversation in the hotel bar had given him ample opportunity to discern that she was still prone to wearing her emotions on her face. “How in heaven’s name do you figure that?”
“I knew there was something strange about the security guard, and I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t take the time to check the credentials of those two supposed repairmen, either, and I should have.” The words came in a rush, like floodwaters through a just-breached dam. She’d obviously given the matter a lot of thought. “Because I wanted to impress you with my job and how great I am at it, I put on this big song and dance about needing to go back to the office to pick up my files. The truth is, there’s nothing in them that couldn’t have waited until next week. I also gave in to the idea of sharing a taxi with you. If I was going to come back here at all. I should have come back alone! Then I let myself be caught off guard by Tom and Dick Spivey. And because you were here—where you wouldn’t have been, if it hadn’t been for me—you raced to my rescue and nearly got your brains bashed in by an ex-convict named Percival Johnson!”
Chris blinked, slightly overwhelmed by this impassioned recitation. Yet, as absurd as his ex-wife’s self-castigating assertions were, he wasn’t really surprised that she’d made them. Lucia Annette Falco had always been quick to hold herself responsible when things went wrong. Quicker still to try to fix them.
He was on the verge of doing something beyond stupid—like inquiring when she was going to get around to blaming herself for the hole in the ozone layer or the lack of civility in American political discourse—when his brain replayed a fragment of what she’d said.
Beccause I wanted to impress you...
Chris was jolted by an emotion he couldn’t—or was it wouldn’t?—put a name to.
“Why would you want to impress me, Lucy?” His voice was tight. So was his throat. There was a constriction in his chest, too, and it had nothing to do with the physical ties that bound him to his ex-wife.
“Wh-what?”
“You said you put on a big song and dance about needing to come back here and pick up your files because you wanted to impress me. Those ten years and that divorce decree are still between us. Why should my opinion matter to you?”
No answer.
“Lucy?”
“Why do you think?”
“I don’t know.” He wasn’t going to let her stonewall. “That’s the reason I’m asking.”
Lucy started to tremble. Her breathing pattern frayed.
Tell me, he urged silently. Whatever it is. Tell me.
“I didn’t mean to say it,” she whispered after nearly a minute.
“Obviously. But you did.”
“Leave it alone, Chris. Please.”
“I can’t.”
“Won’t, you mean.”
“Lucy—”
“I did it because I wanted you to know how much I’ve changed!” she burst out without warning. “Because I wanted you to understand I’m not some blue-collar bimbo anymore!”
There was an awful silence.
Chris swallowed convulsively, stunned right down to his socks. Dear Lord, he thought. He’d asked for it, and she’d hauled off and given it to him. The implications of the words she’d flung at him were shaming. Did she really, truly believe he’d perceived her in the way she’d suggested? Was that the impression he’d left with her?
“Lucy...” he began very carefully, feeling as though the words he was about to utter were razor-sharp and had the potential to slice his throat open. “I knew you’d changed the moment we bumped into each other.”
“My hair.” Her voice was bitter.
“No!” He clenched his hands, wondering if he was going to end up adding that impulsive comment to the list of things he would regret till the day he died. “Okay. Okay. Yes. Yes, I noticed you’d cut your hair, and I blurted it out. I tried to explain why I did that. But if you think I thought—If you think I think—God, Lucy! Give me a little credit. Or, if you can’t manage that, give yourself some. Heaven knows, you deserve it. You were all potential the first time we met. Now you exude accomplishment. Achievement. I recognized that long before you did your routine about the files. I looked into your eyes tonight and I saw it. I listened to you speak and I heard it in every word that came out of your mouth. As for the other...” He broke off, inhaling sharply, trying to rein in his runaway emotions. “Yes, your background is different from mine. And yes, I was aware of that difference during our relationship. But I newer... ever... considered you a bimbo.”
“So I just imagined you ogling my boobs that first night you came into my family’s restaurant?”
Chris cursed under his breath. He’d admitted to and apologized for that ungentlemanly behavior shortly after he introduced himself to Lucy. She’d subsequently teased him about it, seeming to relish his susceptibility to her feminine charms. Had that playfulness been a front?
“What do you want me to say, Lucy?” he asked rawly. “You have a gorgeous body. I noticed it eleven and a half years ago. I noticed it again tonight. I couldn’t help it. If truth be told, I’m not sure I’d want to help it if somebody gave me the option! I’m not blind. I’m not a eunuch. I’m not dead! But my checking out your chest doesn’t mean I don’t know you’ve got a hell of a lot more going for you than a beautiful pair of breasts! And just for the record, the first thing I noticed about you that night in Falco’s Pizzeria was your smile. It had me hooked hard and deep long before I started fantasizing about what was under that little white T-shirt you had on.”
There was no response from his ex-wife. No sound. No movement.
Chris strained against his bonds. It was a futile effort.
Still no response.
He licked his lips, feeling a bead of sweat course down his spine.
“Lucy?”
“You...you never said anything like that before, Chris.” It was impossible to get a fix on her tone. Despite her proximity, her voice seemed to be traveling across a great distance to reach him.
“I thought you knew,” he answered, then reconsidered. “No,” he amended with a small shake of his head, realizing he’d been less than honest. “I assumed you knew. I never really thought about it when we were together.”
“But you’ve thought about it since?”
“Oh...yeah.” He left it at that. He doubted he had the wo
rds—or was it the nerve?—to go any farther at this particular moment.
“While you were visualizing me?” A hint of wryness crept into her voice. Chris suspected the infusion of it was deliberate. He had the feeling that Lucy wasn’t ready to go any farther with this line of discussion, either.
“Well—”
The door to the storage room opened. Torn between relief and resentment, Chris turned his head. Dick Spivey—previously Tom the security guard—stepped in, sans his plumed and spangled mask.
“Oh, this is good,” he announced approvingly, rubbing his palms together. “This is very good.”
Although he was far from being certain he wanted to know the answer, Chris felt he needed to ask. “What’s good?”
“You two. Talking to each other.” Dick beamed. “I heard you through the door.”
“You were eavesdropping on us?”
Dick’s smile vanished. He shifted his gaze from Chris to Lucy, clearly hurt by the accusatory tone of her question. “You were yelling.”
Lucy slumped a little. Chris’s fetters tightened as a result of her sagging forward. “Oh...God.”
“I didn’t hear everything.” Dick tugged at the collar of his uniform, his scraggly mustache twitching. “You don’t have to be embarrassed, okay? It’s very important for married people to—”
“Chris and I are not married! That’s not, Dick. N-O-T. As in, we got a divorce!”
The would-be robber of the mysterious Red Treasure rolled his eyes. “I know that, Lucy. Unlike some people I could name, I listen to what people tell me and I remember it.”
“Except when it involves locking doors,” Chris muttered, recalling an observation Butch Johnson had made.
Dick made a huffy sound and crossed his arms in front of his less-than-impressive chest. “That’s a cheap shot,” he said sulkily. “Even for a lawyer.”
It probably was, Chris acknowledged to himself. Still, it might help alleviate some of the guilt with which Lucy had so unnecessarily lumbered herself if he drove home the truth behind it. And if that happened...