All I Want...

Because the sooner he could turn the company around, the sooner he could hand the running of it back to his father, and leave again.

LUCY MARLOW SLIPPED out of the bed she shared with Link in their beautiful Cambridge condo and tiptoed out of the room. Three in the morning and she hadn’t even managed to close her eyes. Insomnia wasn’t new to her, but lately she’d been bursting into tears for no apparent reason, and she couldn’t stay in bed and cry. Link would waken, he’d want to know what was wrong. And how often could she say “nothing” or “I don’t know” without him rolling his eyes as men had been rolling their eyes at those answers for centuries, maybe millennia?

She went into their living room, chilly with the heat turned down at night, and curled up on the window seat, looking out at the parked cars on Garden Street. This time of year was always tough, when the calendar said ho ho ho, merry merry, happy happy, and somehow her mood and stress levels never quite made it there. Gifts to buy for Link, for Mom and Dad, for Krista, for Link’s relatives, her relatives, friends, coworkers. She made it harder on herself, she knew that, and Link was always telling her as if he thought she didn’t. Having to find the perfect presents, having to decorate the house, having to make cookies and volunteer and organize the office party…

An old Volkswagen van putted by, like the relic her parents had when she was very young. That seemed to be enough to trigger the insane tears that were her all-too-regular visitors these days.

Was this simple unhappiness? She didn’t feel unhappy, necessarily. She had a lovely home in a beautiful city. She was engaged to a man she loved, though he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get married or buy her a ring.

They weren’t ready for children, Link said, and what difference did a piece of paper make in how they felt about each other?

Logically? Intellectually? No difference.

But emotionally…

Well, women were the emotional ones, weren’t they. He’d marry her if she insisted, she knew that. But she couldn’t bring herself to insist. She didn’t ever want to be standing up at an altar without being one hundred percent sure the man next to her would rather be there than anywhere else in the world. Marriage should be entered into gladly and with light hearts.

These days her heart was about as light as a brick.

The beautiful, sad tears turned to fairly unattractive sobs she fought hard to keep as silent as possible. Link slept like a rock, but you never knew.

Everything else about her life was going fine. She had a nice job as an administrative assistant in a law firm downtown. She’d chosen the work deliberately, to keep her mind and energies fresh for performing, though these days she’d made friends with her limitations there. Lucy’s natural reserve was her enemy on stage—people like Aimee would always get ahead. While Krista would cheerfully disembowel the poor woman, Lucy understood the casting decision.

In retrospect, she’d taken the audition more to please Krista than herself anyway. Krista had enough ambition to spare for everyone. Lucy was a creature of habit, of routine. Unlike her sister, she wasn’t comfortable or happy constantly searching for new heights to scale.

What was really important to her? Family, friends and Link. Not in that order of course. She had a close family, a lot of friends locally. The people in the law firm were wonderful and kind. Her boss, Alexis, was fair and pleasant. One of the lawyers, Josh, had even been flirting with her lately, and that was harmless fun.

A thrill ran through her and she curled the fingers of her left hand, feeling the missing ring keenly tonight. Josh knew about Link, he knew about their so-called engagement, but he kept coming around, and lately she hadn’t done enough to discourage him. A ring would make her feel more taken, show the world she belonged to Link in a way she wasn’t sure the world knew right now. And maybe not her either.

Because she was taken. Thoroughly. Just because Josh turned her insides over and around and upside down when he smiled at her…

She spun suddenly to face the room. So? Plenty of happily married—or involved—people developed crushes which had no significance and faded. She’d had them, too, once or twice in the years she and Link had been together.

The intensity of this one stemmed from it hitting when she was particularly vulnerable. When she and Link were having a particularly bad time. When she was not at all sure why or how to go about fixing whatever had gone wrong. Relationships inevitably encountered rough patches, but this one seemed…ominous. Lately she’d been wondering how much longer she could go on without listening to the doubting voices in her head, without looking at the discouraging signs along the way.

Tonight she’d come home from singing at Eddie’s to find the dinner dishes still stacked in the sink, Link sprawled in front of the TV. She’d gone to him, kissed him, he’d mumbled a question about how the show had gone, and had barely noticed her response. Then she’d gone into the kitchen, cleaned up, made her lunch for the next day, hearing the canned laugh track mingle with Link’s occasional laughter, louder than his usual. It was hard not to feel as though he was rubbing it in that he was enjoying himself while she slaved.

But she couldn’t think that way. Link worked hard, too—most architects did, long hours and often late—and she wanted him to have his wind-down time, his leisure.

She just wanted him to need her with him enough so that maybe one day he’d turn off the TV and come in and help her. Really talk to her and really listen. The way he used to.

But those things she had no control over. She wanted him, but she couldn’t make him want her.

Lucy sighed and pulled her feet up on the window seat, arms around her knees. Big sister Krista would tell her to get therapy or go on antidepressants or kick herself out of it.

Krista would tell her to leave Link and start a relationship with Josh.

Krista had never been in love. Though what Lucy called love, Krista called codependency—or had once in a particularly bitter argument in the ongoing series of arguments they’d been having about Lucy’s relationship.

Everything in Krista’s life was crystal clear, black or white, right or wrong. She knew unswervingly how everyone around her was supposed to behave in every situation she and everyone else found themselves in.

Sometimes Lucy thought nothing would make her happier than for Krista to fall passionately, inextricably in love in a situation so complicated and hopeless that her world would turn upside down and she’d be reduced to angsting uncertainly over every aspect of her existence for hours at a time.

But then, that wasn’t particularly sisterly or charitable of her, was it.

Mom would say she was going through a stage, that love was hard and life had its yin and yang and she needed to buckle down and chin up and get through it.

Dad would chuck her under the chin and wish fervently that his little girl would be happy, then go back to watching the Celtics.

Link would look at her like why was she making such a big deal out of everything? With the implied “again” at the end. Life is beautiful, he’d say. You wake up, you do stuff you enjoy, you go to bed.

Wake up. Do stuff. Go to bed. Every day. Yes, but there used to be more magic, even in that.

The tears slowed; she sniffed and wiped them away with the back of her hand.

A slight sound made her jump; she turned to see Link, bed-ruffled, puzzled, half-asleep, swaying in the doorway, his tall, beautifully muscled body illuminated by the white light from the street behind her.

“Lucy.” He frowned and peered at her across the room. “Why’d you get out of bed?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

He squinted and took a step toward her. “Are you crying?”

She hesitated. If she said no, she’d be lying. If she said yes, she’d have to explain.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean sort of?” The irritation was starting in his voice already. It seemed to be his regular tone of communication these days. “Are you crying or not?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“Go back to bed, Link. I’ll be fine.”

“Why are you crying?”

“It’s nothing.”

He made a sound of exasperation. “You’re sitting here crying in the middle of the night in the dark for no reason.”

“Yes.” She barely got the word out for the hot, miserable weight in her chest.

He put his hands on his hips, glaring at her. Opened his mouth to say something, then lifted one hand and let it slap on his flannel-covered thigh. “Fine. No reason. Good night.”

He walked out of the room, stumbled and swore. She heard the headboard bounce against the wall as he flung himself into their bed. He’d sleep badly now and blame it on her. Wake up in a bad mood and they’d eat the breakfast she prepared in a silence that was starting to become horribly familiar.

Lucy hugged her knees close to her chest, rested her chin on top of them and let the tears flow again.

She loved Link. Loved him with all her heart and had since they’d first met in college—six years ago at the beginning of their senior year—and begun dating within a week.

But something wasn’t working. She didn’t know what it was or when it had happened or even how to identify it so she could begin to fix it.

And she was terribly, deathly afraid it would end up tearing them apart.

2

SETH SWAGGERED INTO the offices of the Boston Sentinel, sunglasses on, Red Sox cap pulled firmly onto his head. A tiny gold hoop hung off his left ear, and his knees had felt the December breeze through the holes in his jeans. The hood of his sweatshirt bounced against his upper back as he walked. He had a major ’tude going. And he who had expected to be seething with resentment over this utter waste of his time…was having a ball.

Not a soul would recognize him as Seth Wellington IV, heir to the vast Wellington fortune, CEO of the very respectable company. He hadn’t done anything like this in almost two years. Not since his traveling days, when he’d experimented with different personalities in different towns, tried them on to see how people reacted.

Er, okay, mostly to see how women reacted.

He approached the receptionist, a young perky blonde, and leaned his forearms on her desk, wishing he could whip off his sunglasses and make eye contact but not daring to reveal that much of his face. “Hey, how you doing today?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” She held herself formally, but a tiny smile was trying to curve her lips. “Can I help you?”

“Sure, yeah. I’m Bobby Darwin, old classmate of Krista. Is she here?”

“Krista…”

“Yeah.” He grinned at her. “Marlow.”

“She was in this morning. You just missed her.”

“Damn.” He slapped the desk and straightened, hands on his hips, shaking his head. “Missed her at home, now here. You know where she went?”

“She said she was going to lunch.”

“Yeah?” He opened his eyes wide, looking appalled. “And she didn’t invite you?”

The receptionist giggled, blushing peaches and cream. “No.”

He leaned forward again. What he wouldn’t give to be twenty-two again and free to charm this one into a date. “What’s your name?”

“Charlisse.”

“Well, let me ask you this, Charlisse. You know where she was heading? I’d kinda like to surprise her, you know? We’ve known each other, whoa—” he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe how many years had gone by “—long time. I’m in town, thought I’d look her up and surprise her, but I keep just missing her. What’s up with that?”

Charlisse giggled, clearly warming to him. “I don’t know. Bad karma maybe.”

“Exactly.” He let the silence go a beat too long. “So Charlisse, can you do something for me?”

“What?” She tilted her head and looked at him coyly.

“Well…” He turned right and left, as if checking for eavesdroppers, then leaned on her desk again. “Can you turn that bad karma around and tell me where she went?”

“Um…” Charlisse frowned and her pink, edible mouth twisted.

“I’m not a creep. I swear.” He stood up and crossed himself. “I’m a good Catholic boy, schooled by nuns.”

Charlisse giggled, reminding him of Aimee. “Well, if I was going to tell you, I think I’d tell you she has a lunch date with her sister at Thai Banquet around the corner from Symphony Hall.”

“Fabulous. You are beautiful, Charlisse, thanks.” He backed away a few steps, then stopped and spread out his hands. “If I had roses, I’d give you some.”

“You’re welcome.” She giggled again and reached for the ringing phone.

He waved, strode back down the hall and stepped out into the chill, breath frosting, adrenaline pumping. That was serious fun. He’d found some information about Marlow this morning on the Internet, including that she’d gone to Framingham High School. He got the name Bobby Darwin from one of those online find-your-classmate sites. Who knew what Bobby Darwin looked like now or where he was or whether she knew him in high school. It didn’t matter. Even if she was still best friends with him and figured out Seth was an imposter when Charlisse mentioned him, he’d be long gone, back into his Prada and paperwork, back inhabiting his father’s office.

Around the corner from the Sentinel, Frank, his driver, pulled the car up to the curb. Seth wasn’t wild about the idea of a chauffeur, even less about being driven in a 1988 Lincoln Town Car, but Frank had been in his father’s employ for twenty years and would be able to retire in three. Seth didn’t have the heart to fire him. Frank loved the car, and with the traffic in downtown Boston, a vehicle Seth didn’t have to find a parking space for was a godsend.

From the backseat he directed Frank to Thai Banquet, took off the hat, sweatshirt and earring and changed into wool suit pants, perfectly polished shoes and his lightly starched white shirt, feeling his giddy excitement shutting down further with each button. A respectable businessman once again. Damned depressing.

The car pulled up opposite the Thai restaurant, known for inventive curries and fabulous noodle dishes. One thing he could say about Krista, she knew her Thai food. The place was one of his favorites.

He thanked Frank and emerged into the street, stepped up on the sidewalk and strode to the restaurant front door, decorated with green and red blinking lights for the season. What new information could he discover about Ms. Marlow beyond the basic résumé stuff? Ohio Wesleyan University as a journalism major. Links to articles she’d written. But nothing that explained why she was targeting his stepsister.

If she was eating with her sister, chances were he’d hit the jackpot. Women close to each other couldn’t help spilling every bit of their souls at every meeting. Exhausting to his way of thinking. His local friendships were pretty basic “guy” friendships, not that he’d been in touch with many of them since he’d been back in town. How ’bout them Red Sox? and How’s the golf game? and Angelina Jolie…whoa. He liked them that way. His soul belonged to himself—he saw no reason to empty it onto other people at regular intervals.

Inside the restaurant, inhaling the blissful scents of curry and galangal and lemongrass, he discovered another stroke of luck—Ms. Marlow was eating late and the regular lunch crowd had thinned, leaving him a better shot at sitting close by. He kept on his sunglasses and smiled at Panjai, the hostess, while scanning the diners. Now if Krista would just do him the favor of looking exactly like the fairly plain, gawky high school photo he’d found online….

Uh…no.

Blond and blue-eyed hadn’t changed, but plain and gawky had fled. She now sported one of those wispy, flippy hairstyles that made her look elfin and very, very appealing.

Krista Marlow was not what he’d expected. She was sexy as hell.

She laughed at something her sister said and her face came even more alive with energy and radiance.

Wow.

She was tiny, slender, and dressed fashionably in a black-and-white sweater with pink accents. He’d expected a butch Amazon with a dour expression, dragging on a cigarette and pontificating in a growly voice about how no one deserved to live but her and those select few who could make her life easier.

He requested the booth next to the sisters, keeping his face averted as he passed. From his seat directly behind Krista he’d be able to eavesdrop shamelessly. A peek before he sat told him they’d just been served their entreés, so he’d have some time to listen, though he needed to be back in his office by three for a conference call with the new head buyer he’d hired. Which sounded a lot less fun than what he was doing right now.

Because it was.

Marasri came by to take his order, a round, matronly woman he particularly liked who got her job done with remarkable efficiency for someone who seemed never to move quickly. She filled his water glass and winked. “You ready? You don’t need to look at the menu, I know.”

“I’ll have the chef special soup and green curry chicken, please.”

“No Singha?”

He grinned and shook his head. “No beer today. I have to get back to work.”

“Ah, you work too hard.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “You need to play more.”

He shrugged. If she only knew. “Who has time?”

Marasri gave him a you’ll-never-learn look and ambled off to put in his order. Seth leaned back, ready to listen to whatever his stepsister’s thorn chose to say. With any luck, the conversation would turn to Aimee, and he’d get some idea where the extra dose of bitterness and sarcasm Krista reserved for her came from.

But even if the conversation stayed on other topics, he had to admit he was just plain curious about her. After reading her blogs and some of her articles, this Krista Marlow person intrigued him.

Probably more than he wanted her to.

“SO.” LUCY FORKED UP a pineapple chunk from her yellow curry shrimp and tasted it gingerly. “What’s next for you workwise?”

“Oh, let’s see…” Krista glanced up as a thirty-something man in a business suit walked past and took a seat in the booth behind her. Unfortunately she didn’t get much of a look, but he gave the impression of being attractive.

She turned her attention back to Lucy’s question, digging into her pad thai noodles, wondering when she could safely change the subject to Link and the need, in her opinion, for him to be extracted from Lucy’s life. “Travel, actually. I’m doing a story about affordable off-the-beaten-track romantic getaways for couples wanting to escape holiday pressures. Maybe you and Link…”

Lucy was already shaking her head. “He’d say it sounded remote and chilly.”

Krista shrugged, thinking she could say the same about Link lately. “People shouldn’t have to suffer through all this holiday stress. Christmas should be about love—family love, romantic love, religious love. Love and traditions, like our family’s, caroling and candelabra lighting and making Christmas Eve dinner together. Anything but buy, buy, buy and then buy more and, while you’re at it, buy again…”

She stopped when Lucy’s eyes glazed over. Okay, so she preached her version of the gospel too often. “Anyway, I leave tomorrow for Maine. A place called Pine Tree Inn, way past Skowhegan.”

“Which is…?”

“On the road to nowhere. That’s the point. Get this—forty-five dollars a night.”

“And all the moose you can eat?”

Krista laughed and fluttered her eyelashes. “It sounds sooo romantic, no?”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, there is that.” She sighed. Unfortunately alone was more familiar to her than involved. “I’ve decided to think of it as research for my next fling.”

“The word is re-la-tion-ship.” Lucy enunciated as if she was teaching a two-year-old something new. “Can you say that?”

“Ree-lay-shin…something.” She shrugged helplessly. “I got the ‘lay’ part.”

Lucy rolled her eyes, barely suppressing a smile. “Ha. Ha.”

Krista grinned. She enjoyed playing the role of the great sexual predator. They both knew better, and it made Lucy smile, which Krista desperately wanted her to do more often. “And so, Ms. Lucy, speaking of ree-lay-mumble-mumbles…”

“Oh no.”

“Come on, you knew I was going to ask. What’s up with Lincoln?”

Lucy’s beautiful face shut down and Krista wanted to put down her fork, reach across the table and shake some sense into her could-have-been-a-model, should-be-a-star sister. Fact one: Lucy was miserable with Link. Fact two: Lucy was miserable with Link. And it’s…fact three! He’s outta there! The relationship is retired!

“Things are bad. I don’t know what to do.”

“Get out?”

Her eyes grew defensive. “Krista…”

“Lucy…”

Lucy sighed and chewed a tiny bite of shrimp as if it was enough for a whole meal.

“I know, I know.” Krista waved her sister off. “You hate me saying that. But it seems obvious to me that—”

“Of course it seems obvious to you.” She gestured with her shrimp-impaled fork. “Everything seems obvious to you. The fact is, I love this man.”

“And…?” Krista looked at her blankly. “To quote Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it? He makes you unhappy. You aren’t enjoying your day job, your performing career is stalled, you look tired and defeated…. Hello? What’s wrong with this picture?”

“You don’t understand.”

Krista leaned forward on her elbows. “Try me.”

“He is The One.”

“The one what? The one guy you’ve ever dated seriously?”

“The One. The love of my life.”

Krista let out a growl of exasperation. “Lucy, the issue is not whether you love him or not. The issue is that you’re not good for each other anymore.”

“We are.” She tightened her lips, looking exactly as stubborn and scared as she had at ten when Krista had talked her out of a ladder-climbing dare she’d accepted from a neighbor kid. “We’ve just lost our way right now.”

“Can I be totally brutally honest here?”

Lucy’s expression turned incredulous. “Like you’re ever not?”

“Point taken.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “You’re clinging to the past, to this ideal of Link that no longer exists, to this dream of marrying him and having babies and—”

“It’s not a dream.” Lucy’s voice broke. “I am going to marry him and I am—”

“When?”

“When he’s—when we’re ready.” She folded her arms across her chest and sank against the back of the booth.

“Think you’ll get a ring at Christmas this year?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re hoping?”

Lucy gave a small sad shrug. “It’s all I want.”

“Jeez, Lucy.” Krista stared miserably at her sister. Didn’t she hear what she sounded like? Was the person being stifled by a crappy relationship always the last to know? Or at least to admit it? “I’m watching the Titanic head for the iceberg here. You marry this guy, your shot at a lifeboat is gone. You think a ceremony is going to fix your problems?”

“No.” Lucy lifted her chin and met Krista’s eye defiantly. “But what we have is forever.”

“That’s a line from some sappy movie on the Lifetime Channel.” She forced herself to lower and gentle her voice. “This is reality we’re dealing with here. Or trying to.”

“You don’t understand. You’ve never been in love.”

“I—” She snapped her mouth shut. Kaboom. There it was. The horrible, tremendous truth. Lust, oh yes, infatuation, sure, sometimes pretty strong. But love? Nope. Emphatically not. When her relationships ended, she was over it in a week, sometimes two. And she wasn’t quite sure why.

She took a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. I haven’t been. Not for real.”

“Because you always fall for creeps.”

Another deep breath. “But, I—”

“Bad boys who excite you for about twenty minutes until they ejaculate and run.”

“Lucy…”

“Am I wrong?”

Krista wrinkled her nose. “Exaggerating maybe. But how about we get back to you?”