Page 22 of Lucas & Melissa Falling in Love
Chapter 7
Even though Margo and George were perfect hosts for breakfast in the morning, I couldn’t help feeling that I was intruding on their newlywed Christmas. Plus, I was antsy to get back in the car with Lucas and get on the road. As if returning to his car would take me back to where I was when I met him, like the rewind of the clock. I needed re-orienting.
I needed to see if this had all been a fluke, some crazy out-of-body, out-of-my-mind experience. I wasn’t comfortable being so wildly impulsive. I was unsettled by everything that had happened, the loss of my business and my apartment and my possessions, but most of all I was unsettled by Lucas and his affect on me.
I needed to get back to a place where I knew who I was. Maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that we were going all the way back to Cold Spring. I may not have always fit in there, but it was familiar ground. And my parents loved me and would comfort me.
And I felt like a big baby needing my parents’ consolation.
That was my frame of mind as I sat in his car, seat warmers on full blast, as Lucas tossed the last of my couture luggage in the back seat. In the light of day, I noticed the coat he wore looked like good quality, but old and worn, like something you might find at a chic second-hand store if you were lucky. He got in the car and warmed me with a look that said I was his. Or maybe it was my imagination.
Once he put his hand over mine, I knew it wasn’t imagined. He was mine for the taking. Or I was his?
What the hell did it matter? I wanted to ride this bubble out with him until reality was inescapable. Which would come soon enough.
“Now you finally have to tell me all about yourself. The whole story, and don’t leave anything out.” I felt like I had license to ask after last night and did my best to ignore the trepidation in my gut.
Where are you going with this, Lissy?
I didn’t know. I wanted to stay inside the insular bubble of limbo for a while longer. With him. I needed to.
He heaved a sigh and I thought I saw a shuttering of emotions, a closing down as he stared more intensely at the empty road lit by the crispy clear cold of the morning. Wishing I had the same patience as he did, I gave into the fact that I didn’t.
“It must bother you not to spending the holiday with your family. You’re Italian, right?” It was a stupid thing to say, but that was my new normal. Lucky for me his dimple showed his amusement and he reached out and squeezed my thigh. I wasn’t sure if this was acknowledgment that I was right or if it was the kind of gesture you give a darling child or pet when they’ve done something stupidly charming.
I would have said more, but his silence relented.
“You’re right on both counts. I do miss my big fat Italian family.”
“So tell me about them.” He was infuriatingly slow to part with his story and I was starting to doubt the wisdom of a long drive with a total—well notquitetotal—stranger. But I knew he was hiding something. I also knew it had to be something relatively harmless—compared to an ax murderer with bodies buried in his back yard. I was certain he hadn’t axed his big fat Italian family to death.
“I’m what you would call the black sheep of the family. The one who didn’t follow the family tradition, or stick with the plan my well-meaning family had laid out for me.”
“Aha. I knew there was intrigue. Tell all.”
“Mostly it’s my father. We haven’t gotten along since I dropped out of the engineering program in undergrad and switched to philosophy. My mother shakes her head about it, I’m herbambino, her favorite son.” He turned to me and I was struck by the definite pain I saw under the purposefully too lighthearted, rueful tilt of his mouth. It melted my heart to see that perfect mouth not smiling its perfect smile.
“Her only son.”
For once I didn’t prompt him, mostly because I had no idea what to say. Philosophy was a very impractical major, but I wasn’t about to side with his father against him. I decided I was on his mother’s side, too charmed by him to feel critical in any way.
“What was your undergrad major?” He asked.
I didn’t expect the question and spit out the proud truth without my usual thinking or calculation. Of course. My new overly forthright self was still in charge.
“I went to the Wharton School of Business and majored in finance.”
He nodded, keeping an eye on the road after a quick admiring glance at me.
“My father would approve.”
“How about you?”
Did you just ask for his approval, Lissy? Like a needy teenage girl?
Maybe it was the impending return to the scene of my childhood that had me regressing to the less-than-certain adult I’d become. I was pushing almost thirty and I shouldn’t still be feeling this way, should I? Like I needed a man’s approval?
He squeezed my thigh and flickered a heart-melting glance in my direction.
