She drew her brows together, wondering if she should tell him what she had seen. The two of them in a photo a lot like the ones on his father’s desk, with two little angels standing in front of them, golden ringlets and strawberry curls. A boy and a girl. She smiled and knew she still had a whole lot left to do in this lifetime.
“Meg? You gonna tell me what you saw?”
She blinked and met his eyes, saw the love in them, knew it was going to last. “You parked in a terrible spot. You’re going to get a ding in the Mustang.”
Sam smiled slowly. “That’s my Megan.”
“Yours?”
“Oh, yeah. And I’m not leaving this room, even if someone’s going to total the Mustang.”
“No?”
“No. And as long as you’re still having visions, I’d like you to try one on for size, will you do that for me?”
“I . . . guess I could try.”
He nodded, taking both her hands in his. “Look into the future, honey. See if you can make out a long and happy one—one you’ll be spending with me.”
“I don’t need any psychic skills at all to see that, Sam. If we want it, we can make it happen.”
“I want it, Megan. Do you?”
“With all my heart.”
He leaned closer and pressed his lips to hers. “Then that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Shocking Lucy
SUZANNE FORSTER
Chapter One
“No, please! Don’t touch that thing!” Lucy Sexton was only half-kidding as she scurried through the men’s section of Blanchard’s department store and seized the last attaché on the display. She’d been shopping all morning, searching for exactly this elegant Cavalli calfskin case. Now, finally, Frederick would be happy, and she could relax.
She hugged the case to her chest and nodded reassuringly at the shoppers who hazarded a glance her way. Probably thought she was crazy, but they didn’t know how hard these cases were to come by—or how picky Frederick could be. No. Discriminating. Her fiancé was discriminating. And a very sweet man, really.
Still hugging her prize, she headed over to the counter to pay for it. And if a checkerboard pattern hadn’t caught her eye, she might have made it there. The new Hermès ties for fall? Was that really a checkered Hermès on the rack? Frederick loved them, and this one was perfect for him. Black and silver, his favorite colors. If she bought the tie, she could slip it inside the attaché case when she gave him the gift.
Should she? They were so expensive.
She abandoned the attaché on the nearest counter for just a second to rub the cool silk between her fingers. She was already over her wedding budget, and she and her mom were footing the entire bill. She shouldn’t be considering anything extra, even if it was her gift to Frederick. Her mother had recently made her a full partner to celebrate the success of their mediation company, but there’d been plenty of lean years when they didn’t know where the rent was coming from.
She draped the tie around her neck and began to loop it into a knot. Did she remember how to tie these things? She peered into a countertop mirror. Over, under, and then what?
“Oh, excuse me!” she said as someone bumped her from behind. She turned to see an alarmingly tall stranger manhandling her attaché.
“Sir, I’m sorry. That’s my case.”
The man seemed perplexed. Lucy noted marine blue eyes and a flash of straight white teeth as he smiled. Rolled-up denim shirtsleeves revealed strong tanned arms. Chestnut brown. Outdoor work?
“Handsome is as handsome does,” she murmured.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, nothing.” She shrugged it off. “Just something my mom used to say.”
Actually, Lydia Sexton used to say it a lot. And mostly about men with dreamy blue eyes and heartbreaker smiles. Her mother would not have approved of this guy, just on principle. Still, Lucy was secretly glad she’d worn her wool jersey wrap dress today instead of her usual gray blazer and slacks. At Frederick’s suggestion she’d been trying for a more sophisticated look, which included taming her unruly dark auburn waves with a no-nonsense claw clip.
“The case still has the tags on it,” he said. “How could it be yours?”
“I picked it out. I was just on my way up to pay for it.”
He turned the case over. “Doesn’t look like it belongs to anybody.”
Lucy felt a ping of exasperation. “It’s a gift for my fiancé—my wedding gift to him—and he specifically asked for a Cavalli. Could I please have it back?”
The case ended up under his arm. “We may have a problem,” he said. “I’ve been looking for one of these, too.”
“You?” She raked him over with her gaze, inspecting him from the shock of dark hair that fell onto his forehead with reckless disregard for his vision to the scuffed toes of his work boots. Work boots? He was wearing torn jeans and a tool belt, too. You didn’t see a lot of that in the men’s section of Blanchard’s. Too bad, she thought, resisting a smile. It was sexy as hell.
“Why would you need an attaché?”
“To visit my Swiss bank account. Never judge a guy by his tools.” He returned her skepticism with a hint of amusement. “Why do you need a tie?”
“Oh!” Lucy pulled the checkered silk from around her neck and offered it to him. “I’ll trade you,” she said, boldly taking hold of the case’s handle. “The tie for the attaché. Can I have it back?”
He held fast to the attaché. “This is for your fiancé?”
“Yes, please!”
“He doesn’t need it.”
“He doesn’t? Why?”
“He has you. What else could he possibly want?”
His blue gaze was so intent that Lucy felt her stomach go hollow, and the attaché slip from her grasp.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s very generous of you.”
“No, wait! Frederick really wants that case. He even suggested this store.”
“Tell Frederick I’ll trade him.” With that he gazed straight into her eyes, giving her a thrill that could have rivaled the explosion of confetti on Time’s Square at New Year’s Eve. If she’d let it.
“Trade him what?”
“The briefcase for you.”
Lucy might have been shaking her head. She wasn’t sure.
“No deal?” At least he had the decency to look disappointed as he waited for her reply. “My loss,” he said softly. With that, he gave her a nod, turned, and headed for the counter with her precious gift.
Watching him whip out a money clip brought her back to life. “You want him to trade me for a briefcase? Be serious.”
He glanced at her, the heartbreaker smile tinged with irony. “Maybe I should sweeten the deal? How about an hour of your time?”
Lucy realized she was negotiating with a total stranger in the middle of Blanchard’s. They were twenty feet away from each other—and miles outside her comfort zone.
“Never mind,” she said, unable to disguise her sharp disappointment. “Enjoy your new briefcase.” She turned away to begin the search for another gift. Frederick would just have to get over it. Maybe cuff links would ease his pain.
She was looking through the glass case at a pair of gold and silver links when she felt another bump from behind. She didn’t excuse herself this time. A second bump turned her around, ready to give the rude person a stern look. Excuse me? There’s plenty of room in this store for both of us.
“You?” she said under her breath. He’d been waiting for her to turn. She could tell by his expectant smile. “What’s your problem?”
He held out a purple and gold Blanchard’s bag. “I don’t ever want to make anyone look that unhappy. That’s my problem.”
Lucy peeked inside the bag and saw the attaché. “Did you buy this?”
“Call it a wedding gift,” he said. “Your fiancé is lucky to have someone who cares so much about him.”
She took the bag from him, aware of his outstretched palm and how the pu
rple satin rope handle dangled from his fingers. They were long and calloused at the tips, those fingers, as golden brown as toast drizzled with honey. You had to wonder about what those hands would feel like scraping your soft skin. You just had to.
“I’ll pay you for it, of course,” she said.
He shook his head. “Take it with my blessings. Be happy.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. I didn’t want to be the cause of your unhappiness.”
“Would you like the tie?” Lucy didn’t know what else to say.
“No, I’ll live without the tie.”
A subtle smile sent tension rippling through his jaw and made the blue of his eyes look smoky hot. Lucy watched the changes with fascination. He seemed to return her interest, and their gazes locked for long enough to make her want to look away. Instead she found herself smiling back at him as he nodded a good-bye and left her standing there with his bag. When he got to the door, he stopped and turned, as if for one last look at her. His expression seemed to say the tie was easy. It would be much harder living without her.
Now there was a fantasy. Where did she get that from?
Lucy took the case from the bag, wondering why she wasn’t thrilled to have it. She ought to have run after him and insisted on paying him back. He couldn’t just hand her an expensive attaché like this and leave. Instead, she watched him disappear from sight with a sense of loss that left her confused. Her thoughts were all aflutter. Her heart was pinging. This was the most excitement she’d had in ages. Really.
The case for an hour of your time?
What was he going to do with her for an hour?
Her mind started to run with that one, and she felt herself getting breathless just standing still. But within seconds she had talked herself out of any romantic notions. The man was a total stranger, and obviously some kind of rogue. Look at those eyes! In her mind they were still as bright as a sunlit bay. Handsome is as handsome does.
She had the case. She had Frederick. Of course she would be happy.
“YOU’RE all sparkly this afternoon. What’s up?”
Lucy plunked her packages on the table and sank into one of the vinyl chairs, watching her mother make a fresh pot of coffee for the company lounge. “Really?” she said. “Sparkly? I’ve been shopping for Frederick.”
“Oh, poor baby.”
“Now, Mom, don’t start that. In two weeks, Frederick will be your son-in-law.”
Lydia Sexton looked around at her daughter, concern in her sapphire blue eyes. At fifty-three she was still strikingly beautiful—and ageless except for the pearl gray hair cut close to her head.
“I just don’t understand what the rush is, Lucy.”
“Rush?” Lucy blinked. “We’ve been engaged four years.”
Lydia brought two huge mugs and sat down at the table across from Lucy. The steam pouring off the freshly brewed coffee was redolent of amaretto and cream, her mother’s favorite flavor. A mug with the company logo came sliding across the table at Lucy. She caught it and knew without looking that her mother had a contagious smile on her face.
Lucy rolled her eyes, fighting an answering grin. She lost, of course. This was their ritual, and it had nothing to do with Frederick. Not so very long ago, Sexton Mediation Services couldn’t afford personalized mugs or specialty coffee. They couldn’t even afford an office. Now they had a suite of offices, a full complement of mediators, and a top-flight clerical staff—and, given her mother’s penchant for it, probably every flavor of gourmet coffee known to humankind.
“Where is everyone?” Lucy asked, checking her watch. It was lunchtime, but some of the crew usually brown-bagged it and ate in the lounge. Lucy’s assistant, Valerie, was one of those, and Lucy needed to ask about a rescheduled appointment for a divorce mediation.
“That training seminar on office communication,” her mother said. “We gave everyone the afternoon off to attend.”
“Oh, of course, it’s Tuesday.” Lucy slapped her head. She really was distracted.
“Lucy?” Her mother laced her fingers around the mug and leaned forward, a pleading tone in her voice. “Hold out for the man of your dreams, darling. Frederick doesn’t make you sparkle, and he never will.”
Lucy sighed. “Mom, I don’t want to sparkle. I want appliances that sparkle. I want a kitchen that sparkles. Frederick can give me that.”
“You can give yourself that. You just bought yourself a condo. Buy another one. You don’t need Frederick for that.”
“I don’t want two homes. I want one home, one husband, and at least two children. I’m thirty years old and I want a family. But most of all, I want a husband who’ll be there when his kids are growing up.”
Her mother blew on her coffee. “No one understands that better than I do, dear. I just don’t want you to make the same mistake I did.” She brought the cup to her mouth and took a pensive sip.
Lucy wished there was something she could say to ease her mother’s mind. Her parents had divorced when Lucy was eleven, and her mother had never remarried. Bart Sexton had betrayed his wife in so many ways, including stealing from the hardware store her father left her, that she was unwilling to let another man into her life.
Lucy had never blamed her for that, especially considering all the sacrifices her mother made. She’d gone back to school in her thirties, earned degrees in both communications and law, and started the mediation company. She’d thrown herself into it, working brutal hours to secure a better future for herself and her daughter. But sadly, now that she’d achieved success beyond her dreams, and brought Lucy in as a partner, she had regrets.
She looked up from her coffee. “I missed out on too much,” she said. “But what haunts me most is that you grew up without a father and a stable family life.”
Lucy’s shrug said Look at me, I’m fine. “It doesn’t seem to have done me any permanent damage. Hey, I just want the same things for my kids that you wanted for me. That’s why I’m marrying Fred.”
Lydia Sexton looked as if she might cry, which wasn’t like her at all. “Lucy, are you certain he’s the man you want to be with the rest of your life? If you are, I’ll shut up. You have my word. I’ll support you and Frederick one hundred percent.”
Lucy reached over and gave her mother’s hand a squeeze. “I’m not only certain, I can prove it to you. Give me a sec.” She turned and started rummaging.
“You know, sometimes it’s good to be a packrat,” she said as she found her purse in the clutter of shopping bags she’d left on the table. She pulled out her wallet and retrieved a folded square of paper. “Came across this list in my college yearbook. I went through it to be sure I hadn’t excluded any old friends from the guest list for the wedding.”
Lucy waved the tattered notebook paper. “Tah-dah! Exhibit A. One dateless Saturday night, a few of my girlfriends and I decided to get even with all the campus zeros who hadn’t asked us out.”
Lydia smiled. “Really, and how did you do that?”
“By coming up with the top ten traits of the perfect male. Fantasy Dude, we called him. We each made lists and compiled the data. Very scientific, huh? Our perfect male had a great smile, a great car, a great job, and so on and so on.”
“But that’s not your perfect male,” her mother pointed out.
“I know.” Lucy carefully opened the folds and smoothed the paper. “What I have here is my original list. This is Lucy’s Fantasy Dude. Ready?”
She ticked the first three off in a singsong voice. “ ‘Great smile, great job, great car.’ Okay, so I wasn’t an original thinker. But, listen to this. ‘Urbane sense of humor, snappy dresser, good social skills.’ That’s Fred to a tee.”
“Fred is snappy,” Lydia conceded.
“ ‘Sweet and attentive,’ ” Lucy read in a bright tone. “Can’t argue that.”
“I could, but I won’t.”
“Thank you. These next two are body parts.” She grinned. “ ‘Nice hands, cute tush
.’ Fred’s tush isn’t bad.”
Before Lydia could comment, Lucy raced through the last three. “ ‘Good morals, values, and goals,’ ” she said, folding up the list with a pleased smile. “That’s my Fred, solid as a rock. There’s not a dishonest bone in the man’s body. And more important, he’s what I want. He’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“That’s the whole list?” her mother asked, looking skeptical.
“Mmm, there’s one more, but it doesn’t count.”
“What’s that?”
Lucy wrinkled her nose and unfolded the list. “It’s only on here because the other girls had it on their lists, and I didn’t want them to think I was weird.”
“What is it?”
“Great kisser.”
“Nothing wrong with that. What’s your definition of a great kisser?”
“I don’t know. Someone who makes me shiver and gives me goose bumps, I guess.”
“Really? Frederick gives you goose bumps?”
“No, but the Fantasy Dude does. Or would, if he existed. But it really shouldn’t count. It’s on the list under false pretenses.”
Her mother had that look. “Has anyone ever made you shiver, Lucy?”
“Mom.” Lucy’s mind paid an unbidden visit to Blanchard’s, and her chance encounter with a stranger whose gaze had reached so deeply into hers that she’d felt “seen” for the first time in her life. Who was he, and why had he singled out her? The attaché couldn’t have been the only reason. If it had, he wouldn’t have given it back to her.
A sensation of cold made her clutch her arms. No, it was heat. Strange. Could you burn and freeze at the same time? Her stomach had that feeling of confetti being tossed high in the air.
Lucy felt her mother’s eyes on her. She’d rarely been able to hide anything from the woman who raised her, but she had no intention of admitting these feelings. Her mother was at a different place in her life. She might even be ready to take some risks again, but Lucy wasn’t. Her father’s failings had devastated her—not because he’d let her down, but because she felt responsible. Once, in a fit of anger, he’d told her that she was an accident, and he’d never really wanted children. After that she’d always wondered if she was the cause of the troubles between her parents. It was a heavy burden, and she didn’t want her own children to go through anything like that.
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