Pretty sweet. Pretty bold.
Lucy Sexton, girl on a mission. Get married, have children, create the solid family unit she never had. The only thing she’d forgotten was matching blinders to go with her outfit. She saw what she wanted to see—what she needed to see—and very little else. It was a dangerous way to navigate through life. You could get blindsided.
How did he know all that about her? He just did. Call him the Marriage Angel. He wasn’t out to create problems for her. He wanted to help prevent them. And he’d known she needed help from the moment he saw her in the men’s store. She was asleep at the wheel and had no idea that she was about to crash the car. He’d been there, done that. Sadly, nobody got his attention in time to prevent the accident.
The table where he’d left his toolbox was cluttered with rolls of electrical tape, pliers of all kinds, wire caps, and a voltage meter. He scooped up an armful of the supplies and dropped them in the box. Within minutes he had everything packed and the restaurant locked up for the night. He took the steps to the elevator two at a time, hit the button, and drew in a breath, wondering if the lingering hint of fragrance he picked up was Lucy. It smelled like her, but it wasn’t perfume. Vanilla, maybe?
The best part of her sudden appearance was the weather-inappropriate outfit she wore. If the gooseflesh on her arms was any indication, she was freezing to death. She didn’t look terribly comfortable in the dress and heels, but he loved them. Nothing better for a lonely guy than watching a woman in ultrahigh heels who was unsteady on her feet. Better than ESPN any day.
Lucy Sexton, girl on a mission. She was about to make the most important decision of her life, and she was in an emotional coma. Sleeping Beauty had nothing on her. It wasn’t his goal to steal her away from her fiancé. In fact, he might be the last kind of man she would ever be interested in. Still, saving her was not an entirely selfless act on his part. He couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the prince who kissed her awake.
Chapter Four
TONIGHT Lucy was dressed for the weather in her fa vorite snug-fitting jeans, a black cashmere cardigan, two buttons demurely undone at the neckline, and Birkenstock sandals for comfort. She’d thought about restraining her dark auburn mane in a claw clip, but there was such a thing as too prim. When she wore her hair down, like now, the long waves tended to fall onto her face, veiling one eye like a thirties movie vamp. Naturally, her mother loved the look, but her mother didn’t have to deal with impaired vision. Still, it did force Lucy to toss her head occasionally, and she’d heard men loved that.
Yesterday’s winds had blown every bit of haze from the air, and the vast dark sky twinkled with fiery stars. It was a lovely fall night, cool, crisp, and clear. She didn’t live far from the beach, but she seldom made the trip. She didn’t do much these days that wasn’t directly related to work or her marriage to Frederick. Those were her two main thrusts in life, and they seemed to consume every minute. Maybe she secretly liked it that way. At any rate, she had no time for distractions, which begged the question: What was she doing here?
Meeting a man on a pier for the purpose of giving him back a briefcase? That wasn’t the reason, and both she and the mysterious Mr. Hightower knew it, which begged a second question. Where was he?
She’d walked almost to the end of the pier, but she didn’t see him anywhere. A young couple came toward her, too involved with giggling and trying to feed each other catsup-smeared French fries to notice the woman wandering around all by herself and tossing her head to keep the hair out of her eyes. Lucy quietly moved out of their way. At the very end of the pier, where a take-out seafood bar stood closed for the season, several fishermen dangled lines in the water. None of them seemed to be catching anything. Apparently it was a quiet night for everybody.
Lucy heard footsteps on the pier behind her, and her heart rocketed. He had come after all. She turned and saw an older couple, out for a late-evening walk. Not him. There was still no sign of him, but the way she’d reacted forced her to face an embarrassing reality. She had really wanted it to be him. An image had flashed into her head of rich, dark hair, lit with honeyed tones, and those eyes. Bluer than blue, those eyes. She hadn’t caught her breath yet. His height was nice, too. It was the first thing she’d noticed about him. Having to tilt your head back that far was a little disorienting, but she’d sensed that he would have caught her if she’d lost her balance. Definitely, he would have caught her . . . and who knew what would have happened then.
Something quickened in the pit of her stomach. The shivery sensation she felt made her want to sit down and cross her legs. Tightly.
Shivery was not good. How and when did she get hung up on this guy? It wasn’t just his looks. That had never been her thing; well, not entirely. It was his manner, his easy confidence and penetrating comments.
She stopped for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Below her, the waves broke gently against the pilings, and each one sent up an explosion of tangy brine. A gull touched down on the railing next to her and immediately took flight again. Its cry was eerie and wild.
Her watch said it was nearly nine-thirty. He wasn’t coming.
She’d been stood up on a date she hadn’t even wanted to keep. How about that for a rejection? She started back toward shore, her sandals slapping against the wooden planks. An angry toss of her head got the hair out of her eyes, but not for long, she knew. She tucked the errant waves firmly behind her ears. Enough vamping already.
She had to be out of her mind agreeing to come here. She counseled people every day about rational decision-making. It was her specialty, and yet she’d been making nothing but irrational ones. Her compulsion to give the briefcase back to a near stranger made no sense. Who cared about the damn briefcase? Certainly not him. He was just using it to manipulate her.
The shopping bag bumped against the railing as she walked. She would give the attaché to Burt, the elevator man, and be done with it. As for the electrician, he could stick his finger in an open socket. She needn’t bother even to speak to him again.
“DRIVING too fast, Lucy,” she chided. She let up on the gas and glanced in the rearview mirror for any sign of flashing red lights. No point adding a speeding ticket to her already long list of screwups. She was on her way home to drown her troubles in a steaming hot shower and maybe something fast, unhealthy, and therefore decadent, like instant chocolate pudding with a big dollop of Cool Whip, but first she had to stop by the office.
She’d forgotten to take files that needed to be reviewed for tomorrow’s mediation sessions, something she’d been doing like clockwork for as long as they’d had cases to review, which had been about five years now. Every night the next day’s files came home with her, and she went over them in bed, making notes and sipping a cup of blueberry vanilla herbal tea. It was a ritual by now. That afternoon, she’d actually put the files in her doorway on the floor, so she couldn’t miss them on her way out.
How did you step over a stack of files and not see them?
She glanced in the rearview mirror again, and frowned at her own reflection. You had a man on your mind was how. You looked at a pile of folders and you saw blue jeans, sexy narrow hips, and a tool belt.
As she pulled onto the street where her building was located, she noticed lights on the roof. They were like glittery white diamonds, blinking on and off. It reminded her of a Christmas display. She watched for a while, then realized the lights were spelling out something, one letter at a time: L. U. C. The next letter looked like a Y. And what came after that could have been a question mark. LUCY?
Her name? She watched as it appeared again, one letter at a time.
Lucy didn’t know what to make of it, but she was going to find out. Her building had a porte cochere at the entrance, much like a hotel. She pulled in, grabbed the shopping bag, and left the Blazer there, hoping it wouldn’t get towed. The lobby was empty as she burst in, which didn’t surprise her. The night security guards patrolled only the exterior
of the building.
The elevator seemed slower than ever before, but maybe it was her racing pulse. Anything would seem slow in comparison. She could have scaled the building. Finally, the doors let her out in the restaurant’s entry. The dining area was dark this time, but she saw lights in the lounge to the right.
As she entered, the spacious room appeared to be nothing but windows, a vast panorama of glass overlooking the city and, in the distance, the twinkling coastline. Candle flame was the only light in the room, and it was flickering everywhere—on the tabletops, in the wall sconces and torchères, and especially in the graceful iron chandeliers that hung from the ceiling.
Lucy wasn’t sure she’d ever seen more candles, even in a cathedral. It gave the dark room a hushed, magical effect.
“And where has Lucy been all day? Shopping again?”
Noah’s voice. She couldn’t see him. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted. But he was nearby, close enough that she could hear the traces of sarcasm.
“Where have you been?” she asked him, searching the shadows. “I went to the pier. I’ve been there since nine, waiting for you.”
The lights came up slowly. Recessed panels along the baseboard and the ceiling created a glow that gave the crescent-shaped room a sense of intimacy. A track of spotlights illumined the bar area and another lit a small bandstand at the opposite end of the room. The candles dimmed, and Lucy realized they weren’t real. The electric flames had fooled her.
Noah was standing just across from her by the windows, a remote in his hand, from which he apparently controlled the known universe, not to mention the lighting in the room. She thought she heard music playing softly, strings and woodwinds.
“You were at the pier tonight?” He came closer, the lights illuminating his confusion.
“Of course, we agreed to meet at nine.”
“Right, nine this morning.”
She gaped at him. “Who goes to the pier at nine in the morning?”
“I did—and waited until noon for you to show up.”
“You were there? You weren’t just playing games with me?”
“Of course not. Why would I do that?”
She wanted to believe him. She really did. “I don’t know. I’d begun to think everything about this situation was a joke. Are you sure someone didn’t put you up to it? Like my mother?”
He smiled. “Am I sensing some mother-daughter friction? I can assure you your mother’s hands are clean. I’ve never even met her. You have only me to blame.”
She wanted to ask him all over again what his interest in her could possibly be, but he’d already told her. He seemed to think she was about to make the biggest mistake of her life, and apparently, he had some fantasy about saving her from herself.
“No one sent you?” she asked.
He looked around, as if to see whom she might be talking about. “You mean like divine intervention?” he said with a glance at the ceiling. “No, I’m not an emissary from up above.”
“Or down below?”
He laughed, but Lucy’s shrug said Hey, it could happen.
She could feel herself relaxing. Now that the lights were up, she could see that the lounge was complete to the point of décor. It had been designed to take advantage of the view, with terraced rows of velvety black booths accented by white linen, calla lilies, and crimson anthuriums, which were either silk or someone had been watering them, she realized. The room was spectacular, but she wondered if anything was what it seemed. The stars twinkling outside? Were those real or something he created?
“How did you manage to do all this?” she asked.
“Most of it was done when I got here. I’m the bells and whistles guy. In this case, the owner wanted candlelight, but no candle wax, so I tried to oblige.”
“It’s a work of art,” she said as she set the shopping bag on the table. “I didn’t know you could do things like this with lighting.”
Noah thanked her and looked at his watch. “You brought my Cavalli attaché. Does my hour start now?”
“Well, I guess technically it started ten minutes ago, when I got here.” She smiled and left the bag behind, walking toward the windows—and toward him. But she was looking past him, outside.
“I thought I saw my name from the road,” she said. “It looked like Christmas lights.”
“I’m to blame for that, too,” he admitted. “It’s called an electronic billboard. My company makes them.”
“How did you do it?”
He pointed to an exit doorway with a sign that said OBSERVATION DECK. “It’s out there. Come on. I’ll show you.”
She was curious enough to follow him outside, and was immediately glad she’d worn her cardigan. It had turned chilly in the last hour. He directed her to a platform that jutted like a diving board, from which she could look back and see the six-foot billboard lashed to the railing of the observation deck. It was similar to signs she’d seen on the freeways, announcing traffic jams and accidents, but this one spelled out her name, which was strange to see. She imagined it could probably be programmed to spell things backward, forward, and upside down.
“Curious about how I did it?” he asked.
“I’m more curious about why you did it.”
“My motives were pure.” He pressed his hand to his heart as if he were about to take the pledge. “When I got back from the beach yesterday, I went to your office, but you weren’t there. I didn’t want to be indiscreet, so rather than leave a message with the receptionist, I did this.”
“Putting my name in lights on the roof is discreet?”
“I figured there had to be more than one Lucy in town, but you were the only one who would know for sure that it was intended for you.”
She couldn’t help but smile and shake her head. Clever beast.
He walked to the railing and joined her, looking out at the sky and the sea. The music could be heard outside too, if it was actually music. The silvery sighs and soft rustlings might be the lullaby of ocean waves in the distance, ebbing and flowing. Lucy even picked up the wood smoke of beach fires.
She shivered. They were up high, and it was breezy, but that wasn’t why she had chills. She was touching shoulders with a wildly attractive man.
Well, technically it was his bicep her shoulder touched.
“How tall are you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe six feet four. Why?”
It wouldn’t have been appropriate to tell him why, but in all honesty when you had to tilt your head back to look at a man, one of the things that naturally came to mind was kissing. Not him, necessarily, and not now, of course, just the experience of kissing someone so tall, and wondering what that would be like.
“Interesting that you’re looking at my mouth.” His tone was conversational, but his expression wasn’t. He was searching her face.
“I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were. You still are. What’s with that?”
“Maybe I’m interested in reading lips.”
“Then read mine.” He looked into her eyes and enunciated every word. “Maybe you’re really interested in that other thing we do with our lips?”
She supposed it would be silly to keep denying it. “All right,” she said, “it did cross my mind. I was just wondering what it would be like to kiss someone so tall.”
“Is that right?” His smile was wicked. “I was talking about eating, Lucy. Food. That other thing you do with your lips.”
“You lie!”
He started to protest, then laughed at the face she made. “Okay, maybe I had a fleeting thought about kissing you.”
She turned her attention to the view, hiding her breathlessness. “Well, thank you for admitting it. And by the way, it doesn’t mean anything. People are always thinking about things they shouldn’t. It’s human nature.”
“I have news for you, Lucy. People who are madly in love aren’t thinking about anyone’s lips but their significant other’s. Maybe you have some doubts?”
“About Frederick or you?”
“About yourself, smart-ass. About your feelings.” He rested his elbows on the railing, staring out at the world beyond their perch.
“Everyone has doubts at this stage. It’s jitters, perfectly natural.” She took his silence for skepticism and plunged on. “At some point you have to take it on faith,” she insisted. “Although no one seems to have any faith in my choice but me.”
“You mentioned your mother. She hasn’t given you her blessing?”
“I think she’s finally accepted that I’m going to marry Frederick, but in her heart she wants me to hold out for the man of my dreams.”
“And that isn’t your fiancé?
“In her opinion, no, but Frederick meets all the criteria on my list except one—and don’t ask me what that is.”
“You have a list?”
She felt like taking the Fifth, but he didn’t give her a chance.
“What kind of a list? The perfect man? Mr. Wonderful?”
“Something like that,” she said, feeling the need to defend herself. “But I was just a kid when I made it up. What does an eighteen-year-old know about men? It’s not really relevant now.”
“In that case, you might as well tell me where Frederick falls short—if it’s not really relevant.”
He almost had her there. “You wouldn’t be interested. The whole idea of a list—it’s so immature.”
“No one ever accused me of being mature, Lucy. I’m interested. So . . . Frederick leaves his clothes lying around, he snores, he isn’t a good lover?”
She flicked the hair from her face and gave him a look. “Of course he’s a good lover. He’s a magnificent lover. He can’t help it that his kisses don’t . . .”
She hesitated, wanting to be accurate.
“Don’t what?” he prompted. “Curl your toes?”
“Sounds painful.”
“Make you swoon? See stars?”
“Yes, that’s part of it.” She sighed. “My mother and I were having this discussion the other day, and I couldn’t put it into words then either. I guess the word I want is shiver. His kisses don’t make me shiver.”
Man of My Dreams Page 19