Page 17 of Lucas & Melissa Falling in Love
“I haven’t had that many drinks,” I lied.
“I don’t mean you’re drunk, though you’re on your way.” She paused for drama. “I mean you’re head over heels in lust with that man.”
“Who’s to blame her,” Betsy said. “A face and a voice and that charm— “
“Not to mention those muscles, that hunk of— “
“Sure. Stop. I get it.” I drained the champagne. They were right about him. Right about me. I hated being so transparent, so vulnerable. We pulled up to the bar. I straightened my spine and asked the bartender for a glass of ice water. Hoping it wasn’t too late to get my head on straight.
“It’s not a bad thing, Lissy, to be so captivated,” Betsy said.
When she put it that way, I was almost fooled.
“I wouldn’t mind being captivated by Lucas,” Angela said.
And even though she would never go for him, not even touch him, because it was who she was and she had this code she lived by that her friends came first, before men, I felt a shot of jealousy strike me, fast and hard. My mouth opened, but the possessive sting had disappeared as soon as it had struck.
“On second thought,” Angela said as she took the ice water from the bartender and handed it to me, “Maybe you do need this. You look like you were struck by a bus more than cupid’s arrow.”
“Lissy, are you okay?” Betsy rubbed my back as I took a sip.
I nodded. “It’s the martinis and the noise and I…” I had no idea what to tell them, other than the truth which I absolutely could not do, that would make sense. There was no way in hell I was confessing that I’d lost everything, that I wasn’t myself tonight because I had nothing left. It was surreal to think the thoughts and I wished Lucas was there at my side to anchor me.
I don’t know when he’d become my anchor to reality, to my new reality, but he had and that meant I was in deep trouble.Because he was a damn stranger.
“Do you want to go home?” Betsy said. She looked kind and sincere and like she was trying to find what was underneath the martini half-truth.
I wanted to tell her that I wished I could go home, but I couldn’t because I had no home anymore. I thought of my parents, of Cold Spring and took a bracing breath, adjusting my direction like a giant locomotive straining and grinding through the change in tracks. The tightening in my chest didn’t help. I told them the only truth I could at that moment.
“I want to go back to Lucas, to…”
“Sure, sugar,” Angela said. “Go for it. We have to find Margo and George to say hello.”
Betsy gave me one last pat on the back and they disappeared into the crowd.
Feeling off-balance, I told myself it could be partly the martinis and I stopped at the buffet for a mound of delicious chestnut-stuffed phyllo cups. They’d always been my favorites and this was the only caterer in New York City that made them. I felt like I hadn’t seen Lucas in an age and the need went beyond the obvious sexual draw. I needed a shot of that sureness, that solidness, that bold confidence in me that he had. The kind I used to have in me. When I went to find him, Lucas was no longer sitting at the piano.
Eyes half lidded in that perfect tipsy-drowsy state, I felt the warmth of the crowded room full of friends, the holiday cheer. In spite of the phyllo cups, the three candy cane martinis plus a scotch and champagne tilted me toward the dangerous past-tipsy state I’d always tried to avoid. Where was Lucas?
I needed to find him, needed to see that sculpted face, made from the opposite of stone—whatever that was. I was too tipsy and needy to figure it out. I didn’t see him and wandered toward the hall with the powder room then toward the entry, where I saw the door to the den showing an inviting slit of flickering firelight.
Sliding the door open a little more, I found him. My Lucas—although I had no right to think of him as mine, I did, if only for tonight. He sat on the plush rug, leaning against the chair, one leg bent, like a cliché in front of a crackling fire and sipping what looked like brandy in a snifter. The vision would have made a perfect Christmas card, except I wanted to be in that perfect picture with him. I opened the door just enough to step inside. I wasn’t too tipsy to have the wherewithal to slide the door closed behind me before I approached him.
“Well don’t you look right at home? Like you relax here, contemplating life every evening.”
He looked up at me and gave me that killer smile with his dimpled cheek and square jaw.
“All familiar except for the brandy. I don’t usually drink. But this is the holidays, and when in Rome . . .” How his powerful muscled shoulder could shrug with such elegance, I had no idea.
“You’re a pretty easygoing guy, aren’t you?” I stood in front of him and hesitated about sitting on the floor next to him. Instead I sat on a nearby hassock, almost lowered to his level but not all the way.
“And you have a problem with that.”
“I do not.”
He chuckled but his eyes had a sad cast.
“Don’t panic. I only meant that you’re a classic type A personality. Come here, Melissa.” He patted the spot beside him on the rug. It was fluffy. He looked warm and inviting, or maybe it was the fire and the martini-fueled desperation. I did a mental shrug and sank down to the floor with him.
