“I did something, but not that bad, and yes, the airport is open. All those people need to be recycled.” Lucas tried to laugh. He felt anxious knowing Emma was coming, yet she still hadn’t called. Doreen hadn’t called back, either. He guessed she’d given up and gone home. He would have, and let him and Emma deal with their own problems.

The workers tossed onto the ground plywood that had been used during the last storms. Much of it had disintegrated from too much water.

“Lucas, how honest can I be with you?” Mo said, his Spanish accent sounding musical. He was about to share some wisdom.

Lucas eyed his friend. “You want to get paid today?”

“Okay,” Mo said, “straight up. You haven’t seen her in a long time. Eight months. The house isn’t finished and you’re not a raving lunatic. You would think you’d want everything to be perfect. Do you care?”

Caught off guard, Lucas considered his question. “Yeah. You saw me pressing Rog.”

“Our talk was a little more extensive. I promised him a few things for the family. It’ll cost you about a hundred dollars. You have to pick them up while I run to the airport. I’ll make a list.”

Lucas snorted good-naturedly. “The bastard.”

Both men chuckled.

“All I’m saying is when you first got here from New York, I had to institute a ‘no cell phone’ rule on the job.”

Lucas smiled.

“You stepped off the roof eave backwards, fell half a story and separated your shoulder. You fell through the floor at the Wilcox mall refurbishment, requiring an ambulance and fifteen stitches. I don’t know how a nail was shot through your index finger, but that was a lot of paperwork and a hospital visit.”

“That shouldn’t count,” Lucas argued halfheartedly. “That extern from the technical school shot me from across the room.”

“But if you hadn’t been on the phone with Emma you’d have seen him playing with the nail gun. Since you and Emma have cooled it,” Mo went on, “we’ve had no accidents.”

Lucas couldn’t argue with the truth. “You’re very observant,” he finally said.

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” Mo wiped his hair back and put his cap back in place, shielding the skin around his eyes that looked like it was made from cracked glass.

They walked to the back of the property, finding nails in the grass and pitching them into buckets along the walkway.

Mo’s daughter had stepped on a nail last year on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Since then, the men cleaned up after themselves.

Lucas and Mo leaned against the back fence, admiring the gray house with the pink accent shutters.

“I gave Emma an ultimatum: be on the plane tomorrow or it’s over.”

Mo looked as if he’d tasted something sour. “You’re not too bright today, huh?”

“First you say I don’t care, and now I’m not smart?”

They gathered up the old shutters the workers had taken down and loaded them into the back of the pickup.

“Lucas, you can’t issue an ultimatum to a woman and expect her to give you food and sex.”

“I didn’t give it to her. I told Doreen.”

“Her assistant? You just officially crossed over into wimp territory.”

“Emma hasn’t returned my calls.”

“Dude, do I have to explain what that means in women’s language?”

“No.”

Mo just shook his head as Lucas picked up the street sign he’d knocked down and dragged it inside the gate to deal with later.

Once they were done for the day, Lucas went inside and dialed Emma’s number. All he got was a message that her voice mail was full.

Everything that had and hadn’t transpired between them over the last eight months came flooding back. The promises that she’d come down to Key West, his disappointment when she hadn’t. His messages asking her to call him, her failure to phone back. The cancelled trips, Emma’s emotional distance and his nonchalance about it, their missed phone calls, their tendency to mainly communicate via voice mail.

Before he could hang up he was transferred to Doreen’s voice mail. “This is Doreen Gamble. I’m away from my desk, but if it’s important you can page me at 5546, or leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you right away.”

He had no doubt that she’d call him back.

Her voice was as warm and welcoming as her smile and he’d taken advantage of her. Lucas’s first inclination was to page her, but he didn’t. He needed to settle things with Emma. The beep sounded in his ear, and he took a breath to speak, though he didn’t know what to say.

“You deserve better than this,” he said, and hung up before “I’m sorry” could come out.

He’d have to do it when he was thinking clearly. Maybe tomorrow. Just not today.

Doreen waited patiently for Emma to finish her conversation with the president of Regents Cable. For having been promoted only a month ago, she was confident and personable with the head honcho.

“Yes, Jeffrey, I’ll be glad to attend the network meeting with you next month. I’m honored you chose me.” She nodded her head as if he could see her and smiled brightly, giving Doreen the thumbs-up, her new symbolic gesture of success. Doreen just hoped she didn’t do that at the Black Greek convention. They’d skewer her.

Emma had made it. She’d moved on up, as the old saying went.

Shaquemma Rowena Johnson had been born and bred in Brooklyn, had attended State University of New York at Buffalo, and had graduated with a degree in communications. She’d worked her way up through the ranks of three networks and two cable companies.

In seventeen years since college graduation she’d shed her heavy accent, thick eyebrows and overbearing attitude, and had polished, injected and dieted away all other unseemly features.

She’d studied women of power, and now she was the one wearing the expensive suit, carrying the top-of-the-line Louis Vuitton briefcase, having power lunches. She was now legally Emma Jones, a woman to be reckoned with.

Emma hung up her phone, caressing the black receiver with her fingertip.

Without looking up at Doreen she said, “I need you to go to Key West and end my engagement to Lucas.”

Doreen blinked at her. “What?”

“Break up with Lucas and I’ll give you five extra days of vacation.”

“He’s expecting you to be there tomorrow.” All the respect Doreen had for Emma was sucked up by Greta’s vacuum cleaner as she moved by the executive’s outer door.

Emma glanced at her iPhone and pouted for a fraction of a second. “I’m not going to Florida. You already knew that. I’m heading to the Poconos. Do this for me, and you can write your own ticket. Do you understand what that means, Doreen? This is how business is done.” She folded her hands and finally looked up. “Within reason, what would you like that I can do for you?”

It was August, and suddenly Doreen felt like she was being treated to an early Christmas she didn’t deserve. Though her heart raced at the idea of meeting Lucas face-to-face, she couldn’t under these circumstances. “Lucas loves you, Emma.”

Her lips popped out again. “No, he doesn’t. He loves what he thinks we have, but it’s not true. Lucas wants that more than anything. I’m too selfish for him. The last eight months have taught me a lot about myself. Besides, Lucas changed the rules. When I met him he was living up here and was a successful architect and builder, but after his job he moved back, and I understood. His business was growing by leaps and bounds there, but New York still has a lot to offer. His heart is in Florida with his mother and his friends, but mine isn’t.

“Over time I thought I’d change my mind, but I haven’t. It’s too bad because he’s a good man. But at my level, I can get one of any race, any age.” She shrugged as if that was all there was to getting a man.

“Ten days vacation,” Emma then offered, the heartfelt, melancholy woman of seconds ago gone. “Do you feel better?”

Doreen hated to admit that she did. “Marginally.”

Doreen decided not to make this easy. Emma would be gone soon, and extra vacation days under a new manager could easily be reversed. No, she wanted more.

“Emma, months ago you said you’d recommend me for the new position of director of special events. I’d like to move forward with that now.”

“Mmm.” Emma twisted her hands and her lips. “I’m not so sure you’d get it going from being my assistant. Dream a little smaller.”

Doreen’s skin began to crawl. How dare she all but promise her the job, and now try to weasel out of it? And who’d told Shaquemma Rowena Johnson to dream small?

Doreen got up and headed for the door. “Good night, Emma.”

At Emma’s slow clap, Doreen turned. Their office was across from the Broadway theatres, but the theatrics in the office were overplayed. “I’m glad to see you have tenacity. That’s what the job needs. I’ll be glad to recommend you. Meet Lucas in the baggage claim area by the carousel.”

Doreen didn’t turn around and kept her hand on the door.

“I’ll wait five minutes for your glowing written recommendation, and then I’ll go to Key West and take care of this for you.” Doreen finally turned around.

The fact that Emma was impressed showed in her quirked lip. “You’ve been doing your homework. Very good.”

Doreen’s heart broke for Lucas. “I had a good teacher. I’ll need your credit card to make the reservations.”

“It’s already on your desk.”

Chapter 3

Doreen held her stomach as it pitched during the bumpy landing. The bagel and cream cheese she’d eaten before takeoff now felt like a Michelin tire in her stomach.

Nerves were getting the best of her. She didn’t like being the bearer of bad news or flying in rainstorms.

But a much larger problem loomed as voluminous as the clouds that suffocated the Florida sky. She hadn’t broken up with a man since college, almost ten years ago. She’d been really cocky last night with Emma, but in the soggy light of day, she’d stared into her mirror and saw her unlined, amber-colored eyes, and the chicken in them was real.

How was she going to tell Lucas, a man she secretly crushed on, that his relationship with Emma was over? Oh, and it was nice building this house with you long distance. Goodbye.

This morning when she’d gotten up, she’d still been angry at Emma, and even now the anger simmered within her. She wanted to cry, but all she could do was squeeze out a throat-burning burp. Doreen pushed her fingers into a steeple formation around her forehead while she stared at the floor.

What were the appropriate words to end another’s engagement?

I’m sorry, but Emma doesn’t love you anymore.

Emma sent me to break up with you.

Emma’s an idiot.

Oh, and by the way, I have a crush on you.

All of it was just wrong.

The plane bounced as it landed and taxied to the gate, and her stomach gurgled loud enough for the lady across the aisle to glance at her sympathetically. She watched the rain slant against the window, then unbuckled her seat belt and stood with the rest of the passengers.

She retrieved her computer from the overhead compartment and silently waved goodbye to her luxurious accommodations in first class. If Emma wasn’t going to clean up her own mess, she was at least going to pay for a first-class garbage cleaner.

Lucas watched Doreen in the two-piece black suit circle the baggage carousel, knowing she wasn’t his fiancée, but had been dispatched by her. New York women wore black as if it were prescribed by a physician exclusively for them.

She was tall with a face like Vanessa Williams, except her color was a few shades deeper, reminding him of honey. She had an amazing body, curvy in places women were meant to be; soft and slim in all the right places, too. Her hair reminded him of summers in the Keys, with the way it hung down and breezed airily over her shoulder as she searched the airport. She looked down and saw the unmoving baggage carousel; her hand slid up to her neck and she stepped back, resting her weight on her left foot, hand on her hip.

He was disappointed because his engagement was over, but he couldn’t help but feel he’d been granted a reprieve. One thing he did not understand: why didn’t the loss seem greater?

Still he watched Doreen. Her collar was open, and she caressed her neck as she perused the baggage claim area and consulted her watch. Men noticed her, but she was oblivious to them, her actions indicating her schedule was tight. She kept reading a card she took out and reinserted into her pocket repeatedly. Was she practicing what she was going to say to him on behalf of Emma? Apparently this wasn’t a game to her.

Finally the last of his heart broke with a clap of thunder.

Doreen’s back bowed and he stepped out of the shadows.

He was no longer engaged, and he needed to let his ex-fiancée’s assistant know that he knew.

Lucas put his hands in his jeans pockets as he walked up behind Doreen, who was digging for her phone. “You don’t have to call me. I’m here.”

Doreen turned around, her mouth kissable and open. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “She’s not coming, Lucas. I’m—I’m here to break up with you for her. I’m so sorry.”

The baggage carousel surged behind her and she turned to watch. Lucas wasn’t one for mystical or symbolic signs, but his mother would have said that meant to move on. Why wasn’t he surprised?

He shook his head. This was so Emma. They were so wrong in what they’d done to themselves and, more important, to Doreen. Who exactly did they think they were? Hollywood celebrities?

He touched Doreen’s arm and she looked at his hand, then his eyes.

“We haven’t officially met, but I feel like I know you already. Lucas McCoy. Terrible way to meet, but it is what it is.”

“You do know me, Lucas,” she said, touching his hand. “I’m so sorry.” She then did an unexpected thing: she hugged him.

Instinct made him hug her back, but the man in him enjoyed the feel of a woman who genuinely wanted to comfort him. He caught his breath and let his mind race back over the last months to all the signs he should have paid attention to. All the questions he should have asked. The additional trips to New York he should have taken. He needed to officially end things with Emma.

Doreen stepped back.

“There,” she said, looking embarrassed. “At least I feel a bit better. I’m still sorry, though.”

“Don’t apologize unless this was your idea.”

Her smile was quick. “It definitely wasn’t.”

“Emma and I should have had a conversation on the phone and saved a whole lot of money.”

“Sometimes those conversations are the hardest ones to have, Lucas. I guess that’s why she couldn’t come. I’m not making excuses for her. I’m suggesting that she just couldn’t say the words.”

Doreen shrugged and turned to look at the luggage. Her hair was gorgeous as it swung well past her shoulders, cut into a shagged V, ending between her shoulder blades. The cut didn’t make sense to him, but it looked good.

“You expecting a bag?” he asked.

“I am.”

“So you’re the bearer of bad news? This in your job description?”

Pain seemed to shoot up her right cheek and end in her forehead. All of the muscles moved and she stopped them with her fingers, and he was sorry he asked.

“Yes, it is.”

“What color is your suitcase?”

“Red.”

“Not black? That’s good. Easier to spot.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t usually so sarcastic. He searched for another line of conversation, but he decided that silence in the midst of the airport noise was better.

Her bag popped up, and like a New York woman Doreen reached past businessmen and wrestled her bag off the conveyer. Men stepped to the side, some acting scared, others laughing. She ignored them and him.

“Doreen, let me get it.” Lucas eased it from her hands. “How long are you intending to stay?”

“I have a flight out tonight, but I thought perhaps we’d have time for a bite and I could see the house.”

“First thing’s first. Leaving tonight isn’t going to happen. While you were flying down, all of the flights going out for today were canceled. You see that long line over there?” Lucas pointed to the row of people snaking up and down like the security check-in line.

“Yes.” She looked crestfallen, her mouth hanging open.

“That’s for flight reservations to get out of here.”

“That’s terrible.” She looked even more uncomfortable. Her black bag slipped down her shoulder and landed in her fingers. She looked like she was thinking of her next move. “I need to get back.”

“Not happening tonight. Let me borrow your phone.”

Lucas dialed Emma’s number and she picked up immediately. “How’d he take it?”

His heart didn’t skip a beat as it had earlier when reality had set in. It hadn’t yesterday or last month. His body didn’t go through any of the physical transformations it used to at the sound of her voice. None of the reactions happened that used to happen, and he knew they were over. He hadn’t heard her voice in two weeks, and for a second he wished their end could have been different, but they’d been over for a while and nothing would change that.

“I’m taking our breakup just fine, Emma. It would have been better if you’d just come out and told me, though.”

Doreen walked off and he appreciated her discretion.

“I’m sorry, Lucas.”

“Yeah, me, too. Why couldn’t you just tell me it wasn’t working for you?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to get into an argument. I could ask you the same thing.” There was no accusation in her voice, just a bit of melancholy.

“I’d hoped we could have fixed whatever was broken this weekend.”

“I’m not a piece of wood that can be crafted. We would have had a chance if you’d stayed up here, but you chose to go to Key West.”

“You’re right. But work took me up there to New York and brought me back here. Had you not agreed to come here, I wouldn’t have started with you,” he said gently. “This is the last thing I wanted.” His family was so small. Just him and his mother. While she was alive, he wanted to be near her.

“I know, sweetheart.”

She relented her tough New York stance, the ball-breaking woman she’d sometimes become when she had to have her way. He’d loved to watch her move between both worlds, though she’d done it rarely the last few times he’d seen her. Lucas blamed himself. He should have known then she was making a permanent change. He doubted he’d ever see this side of Emma again—if he ever saw her again.

“I know your business is important, and your mom,” she said. “You know I don’t need my family, and I didn’t mind the idea of moving away from them, but it’s New York I’d miss.”

“You’re a hustler, baby. You love your job, the pace of the city, and the wheeling and dealing. Key West is too sedate for you.”

“NYC is in me, Lucas.” Emma laughed softly and he joined her. “Just like I know it’s not in you.”

“Come on, now. I liked New York well enough,” he said. “But there comes a time when you have to follow your priorities. Money isn’t everything. Family, love, all mean something to me.”

“We hadn’t had love for a while. I never had the guts to ask you to come back here when it wasn’t in your heart, Lucas. I just hoped you’d want to and you never did. If you’re honest, you’ll find out you stopped loving me a while ago, but honor made kept you pursuing our relationship. Now I’m going to let you go.”

“Wait.” He sighed her name softly. People were coming in from the rain, but he focused on none. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

“Me too. I’ll never forget you.” Her voice cracked. “You’re a really good man.”

He turned, looking at Doreen and her brown highlighted hair. Crouched over her bag, she pulled out a coat and was unzipping compartments in search of something else. Every minute or two she’d scoot up to keep up in line. Why was she in the car-rental line anyway?

He pulled himself back to his phone conversation. “Listen, Emma. No more flights are going out tonight, so Doreen will be here overnight. Maybe a couple nights, depending on the hurricane.” He rubbed his eyes, ready to hang up and drink a beer to forget this day.

“No problem. Tell her to call when she’s on her way home.”

“Okay. Well, I guess this is where we part.” Lucas dropped his head to end the call privately.

“Goodbye, Lucas.” The words still hurt just a little.

“Bye, Emma.”

As Lucas ended the call, thunder clapped so loud people in the crowd ducked, including Doreen.

“We’d better get going,” he said, handing her the phone. “It’s over. Thanks, Doreen.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked around. Everywhere but at him. “You can leave me,” she said. “I need to make a hotel reservation.”

“You can stay at the house. There’s more than enough room.”

He’d seen her happy and now she’d lost her glow. Now that her job was done, she seemed lost. “I don’t want to impose, Lucas.”

Lucas grabbed her bag, her words raising his ire. He turned around and Doreen bumped right into him. “Ow, sorry,” she said, so close he could smell the mint from her gum.

He steadied her but didn’t let her go. “You’re not imposing, it’s not a bother, and I don’t want to hear any more about it. You were in the wrong line anyway. All of those people,” he said, as he gestured to another line of people that had wrapped around a bank of phones, “are waiting to make hotel arrangements. You’re in the car-rental line.”

Her gaze ricocheted from the line, the signage and back to his. Thunder boomed again and she shook. He moved closer to let a skycap by with a cart full of unclaimed luggage.

Her breasts grazed his chest and her hands slid up his arms. “That’s so loud.”

Lucas didn’t move. God wasn’t being cruel. Life had just dealt him a fair hand. He hadn’t felt breasts in eight months. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little thunder.” Lucas almost didn’t believe her. But this was Doreen. The woman who’d walked in a marathon for breast cancer because a friend of a friend had suffered with the disease and she’d wanted to help.

He waited for the familiar sizzle of lightning and she shivered and nearly covered her ears in response to more thunder. “Sounds like the building is being demolished.”

She looked up as if she half expected something to fall from the sky. Each time thunder rumbled, she sucked in her lips and shook just a little. She wasn’t going to like it down here. Lucas grabbed the bag again, watching her.

“Born and raised a city girl, right?” He carefully stepped away from Doreen and guided her to the short-term hourly parking lot and his truck. He placed the luggage in the bed, secured the covering and held her door while she got in.

“Small town in New York State called Oswego. I told you before, I used to go to my grandmother’s house every summer in North Carolina. But I never got used to the storms. Now I go to a friend’s house so I’m not by myself.” She looked at the grayish sky with concern.

It struck him that there wasn’t any pretentiousness about Doreen. She was honest about her fear and he didn’t feel right teasing her like he would have Emma. He’d have to be gentler with Doreen.

He got in and coasted to the automated exit, paid the fee and accessed the highway before taking an early exit and driving through the residential streets.

The first thing he noticed was that Doreen didn’t have an open magazine on her lap like Emma would have. Doreen was looking at the houses, muttering that she liked this or that. She rolled her window down even though a light mist fell from the sky.

“That is so sweet,” she declared, pointing as they drove by a small, weather-worn white house. “How much do you think it’s going for?”

<1 2 3 >

На страницу:

Перейти

2 из 3