by Lisa Plumley
“So…” Force of habit made her strive for casualness as she raised her face to his. “I’ve been wondering…. What are your plans for the future?”
He looked as if she’d asked him to try on a tutu.
“The future?”
“Yes, the future. You know, what are your plans for next week? What will you be doing next month? What are your plans for after Blue Moon’s finished? That sort of thing.”
She waited expectantly.
Nada. Maybe more explanation was needed. After all, Luke might not be attached to her yet. She’d only just realized their connection herself.
“Pretty soon my dance school will be up and running. There won’t be as much work to be done around here.” It occurred to Josie that this conversation was veering dangerously into lady of the manor versus handyman territory. She gentled her voice. “I know we haven’t talked about it. But you must have plans for the future, right? Hopes? Dreams? Fantasies?”
She gave him an encouraging nudge. Just as she’d hoped, her mention of fantasies made a fraction of the tutu-terror leave Luke’s eyes. Feeling more sure of things, Josie snuggled up to him. She looped her arm around his taut middle, enjoying the warmth and chiseled feel of his body. This was one of those moments, she realized—one of those “couple” moments when two people really bonded while discussing their future.
“I want to know,” she coaxed. “It’s important.”
Luke cleared his throat.
“I don’t talk about the future.”
Then, obliterating all possibility of further discussion, he disentangled himself from her arms and walked away.
Chapter Thirteen
On-board the good ship S.S. Extravaganza, Tallulah straightened her vintage Pucci headscarf and gazed up at the sunshine. Being on vacation was good for her, she decided. Even a working vacation.
“About this cruise line.” She transferred her attention to Ambrose, making sure he was listening. “I’ve decided to invest. So get that deal cooking, because I’m ready to sign.”
Her attorney blinked at her from the shade of his ever-present sun umbrella. He gave no sign of what he thought of her decision. He had his laptop computer open in front of him, a bottle of disgustingly healthy V-8 vegetable juice beside him, and a stack of Wall Street Journal issues at his elbow.
“Don’t sit there gawking at me like a pig in deep mud!” she groused. “Get cracking with the paperwork, why don’t you?”
Ambrose raised his dignified hand to his aristocratic face. He thumbed his nose at her, fingers waggling.
Tallulah laughed. There was a reason she and the old geezer got along. Unlike most people—her beloved, departed Ernest being the other exception—Ambrose wasn’t afraid of her. He was persnickety, tightfisted, and as ticklish as a trout, but he wasn’t afraid of her.
“If you’d quit blabbing, I would,” he said with asperity. “A person can’t work with you motor-mouthing over there.”
“You can’t work anyway. You went senile ages ago.”
“I’m surprised you realize it. You did, too.”
With another laugh, Tallulah reclined on her deck chair. Maybe they were both a little less than razor sharp. But today she didn’t care. Today she felt almost like her old self again.
At the realization, a helpless sigh of near-contentment overcame her. Shocked, Tallulah glanced quickly at Ambrose to make sure he hadn’t noticed.
Predictably, he had. But he’d misinterpreted it.
“Try some of my Mylanta. It’ll fix you right up.”
She smiled, her secret safe. The source of that sigh was true enough, though. She wouldn’t be able to hide it forever. This trip had been good for her, however much Tallulah hadn’t expected it to be. The cruise ship was a cocoon of sameness, a reassuring regimen of blue skies, blue ocean waves, and blue cocktails. After all the changes she’d endured since poor Ernest’s passing, its constancy had felt like a blessing.
Bobbing around on the S.S. Extravaganza had taught Tallulah a valuable lesson. Things could never really stay the same.
Even if a person wanted them to, they couldn’t. Human beings required change, or they’d go stark raving mad. How else to explain the insane dining options offered here? They ranged from early breakfasts to full breakfasts, mid-morning snacks, light lunches, full lunches, brunches, afternoon noshes, Grand Victorian teas, multicourse dinners, late-night munchies, and gala midnight buffets—all in the course of twenty-four hours. There had to be a master plan involved.
Fortified by the thought, Tallulah ordered another cocktail. A virgin one. Yes, without any kick. She made the cabana boy lean very, very close so she could order the alcohol-free version without alerting Ambrose. He didn’t need to know that this constant proximity to his tediously wholesome habits was beginning to rub off on her.
All the while, her attorney tapped industriously on his computer. Tallulah found the familiar click-click of the keys ridiculously reassuring. Things were moving forward now. Life was moving forward, and she was moving right along with it.
“There. Initial contacts made,” Ambrose announced. He lay one patrician hand atop his notebook’s hinged screen, surveying her with a strange expression. “This ought to augment your portfolio nicely.”
“Good. I’d suggest you quit looking at me that way, then. You resemble a lovesick moose. Frankly, it’s not appealing. I don’t know how the former Mrs. Ambrose put up with it.”
He went on giving her that peculiar look. “This is a big step. The last acquisition your husband was working on before…” Ambrose cleared his throat. “Before everything.”
Tallulah frowned. She didn’t want to think about before. Or, quite honestly, afterward. Or everything. Not yet. The damned sunshine wasn’t that potent.
She grumbled.
“I mean it, Tallulah.” Ambrose’s voice softened. “Ernest would be proud of you. For all you’ve done, for all your strength, for all your courage. Very proud.”
A lump rose in her throat. Coughing, Tallulah tried to clear it away. The ridiculous thing was as stubborn as her attorney. It wouldn’t leave her alone, either.
“I’m proud of you, too,” Ambrose said.
She humphed. “Sentimental mush does not entitle you to a larger retainer,” she pointed out. “Drink your V-8 juice before its damned healthfulness starts affecting my thinking, too.”
Ambrose only smiled.
“Tonight,” he declared, “we’re celebrating. I’m ordering a bottle of champagne and a private dinner, and you’re putting on one of those fancy designer dresses from your stateroom, and we’re celebrating.”
Considering it, Tallulah glanced at her attorney…her friend. They’d worked together for a long time. Years. Eons. But he’d never invited her to put on one of her cherished Chanel gowns just for him. She wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” she asked. “You missed your two o’clock application of SPF one billion. You might need to go lie down instead.”
To her consternation, Ambrose only waited—with the damnable patience of a man who cheerfully read six newspapers every morning before breakfast. He shook his head, smiling slightly.
“We’re celebrating.”
“Fine. I insist on wearing my pearls.”
“You’ll look ravishing in them.”
Tallulah gave him a narrow-eyed look. “During your morning jog around the promenade deck, did you bump your head?”
“No.”
She didn’t believe him. “I knew all that fresh air and exercise was dangerous.”
“Be quiet.” He appeared to be attempting a stern look. A smile kept intruding, and it was very unusual. “I have work to do. Memos to write. E-mails to read. Look, here’s one from—”
“I don’t care who it’s from.” Flummoxed by this bizarre change in his behavior, Tallulah frowned. Ambrose seemed positively lighthearted. That wasn’t like him at all. “We were in the middle of discussing our celebration plans.”
“That’s not strictly true. You agreed to our plans—indirectly, I’ll admit, but I’m accustomed to that—by saying you planned to wear your pearls. In reply, I stated the obvious—that you would look ravishing in them. After which you attempted to divert my attention by insulting my fitness routine. You never could accept a compliment.”
Tallulah stared. What was happening between them? It was true that sealing the cruise line deal was a breakthrough of sorts for her. She hadn’t been able to face the thought of finalizing Ernest’s unresolved interests until now.
But this, with Ambrose….
Unable to cope with all the changes at once, she resorted to the time-tested tactic of women everywhere—picking an argument. It was childish, but she didn’t care. “None of this matters. I can see you’d rather work than talk with me.”
Ambrose—dear, crotchety Ambrose—gave her an uncommonly astute look. “You don’t believe that.”
Tallulah swept her gaze to his humming laptop computer.
“I see.” He snapped it shut, lifted it in his arms, and carried it to the Extravaganza‘s railing. He hurled it overboard.
“There.” He dusted off his palms. “Now about our celebration—”
Oh, Ambrose. He really meant it.
“Our celebration’s already begun.” Giving up her first real smile of the past year, Tallulah eased sideways and patted her deck chair. “Come into the sunshine, you old fart. We’ve got plans to make.”
Oh, no. No way. Nobody ditched Josie like that and got away with it.
I don’t talk about the future.
Ha. As if that was going to hold water. No woman alive would have accepted such a lame excuse for dodging a conversation. Determined to get a straight answer—now that she’d recovered from her initial shock—Josie bolted after Luke. They had a connection, damn it. He wasn’t avoiding it with some cheesy exit line.
I don’t talk about the future.
“You do now, buddy.”
Head held high, Josie veered for the front door. Luke owed her an answer—one that made sense.
Outside, her bare feet struck the front porch floorboards. At the same time a loud, familiar rumble hit the air, reverberating through her body. Luke’s Harley. After riding on it with her arms clasped tight around him, Josie recognized that dangerous rumble—and what it meant. She hurried down the steps.
Too late. Luke roared past, grim-faced and headed in the other direction.
She stared, disbelieving. It couldn’t be true, but it was. Luke. Leaving. Really leaving. His T-shirt fluttered against his broad back, buffeted by the wind. His shoulders tensed, his thighs gripped the motorcycle’s seat, his whole body leaned toward escape. Without looking her way, he revved the engine, then raced around the curve of the drive.
I don’t talk about the future.
He couldn’t be gone, just like that. Like a bad boy out of a movie, like a heartbreaker on a Harley. Gripping the porch post, Josie waited. She listened to the motorcycle engine, poised to meet Luke halfway if he decided to turn around.
Gradually that rumble faded.
Next it disappeared altogether…just like Luke.
Gawking at the empty drive, Josie realized the truth. Luke wasn’t coming back. Not now, and maybe not for some time. She might be attached to him, but if he felt the same way about her—and she’d have bet her last sequined showgirl’s halter top he did—he wasn’t giving in.
But why? What in the world was in his future that could send him roaring away like that? Stymied, Josie drummed her nails on the porch post. She’d known men who couldn’t commit. Men who refused to share, who wouldn’t open up, who hid things such as a wife and twin daughters in Topeka. But Luke wasn’t like them. He’d told her lots of things about himself. They’d laughed, they’d talked…they’d started falling in love.
Or at least she had.
Now Josie felt like a fool. She’d bared her hopes to Luke, and for what? For a choking waft of exhaust and a prime view of his motorcycle prowess in action, that’s what. At the moment, she wasn’t in the mood to admire his form, finesse, or expert cornering, either.
Frustrated, she smacked her palm against the porch post. The resulting sting restored a little of her clearheadedness—as did the sound of male laughter carrying across the lawn from the carriage house.
TJ. He’d know what the story was on Luke.
Josie grabbed the wrought iron pull on the carriage house’s old-fashioned entrance. She slid open the heavy door with superhuman strength, powered by indignation and determination. Inside, a pungent whiff of motor oil, cold engine parts, and burned Pop-Tarts greeted her.
This was where Luke and TJ spent much of their time when not working on the rest of the estate. Josie didn’t get the appeal of disassembled motorcycles, hydraulic lifts, and grimy engine parts. But she knew Luke loved it, so she didn’t mind leaving things as they were for now.
Spotting TJ with a shop rag in hand, she headed toward him. She maneuvered past two motorcycles and a battered car being worked on—her trusty Chevy convertible, with its hood up and the engine exposed. The sight stopped her. She’d thought Luke had been repairing the starter, but now it looked as though TJ was…never mind. She had more important things to deal with.
“TJ, I need some answers,” she announced.
TJ angled his head from beneath the hood, looking surprised but prototypically cheerful. “Hey, Josie! How’s it going?”
“Not very well. Luke’s gone. He peeled out on his Harley and drove toward the highway.”
With a shrug, TJ wiped his face with the shop rag. “Don’t worry about it. Luke does that all the time. It just means he’s thinking.”
Thinking. Hmmm. “Good thinking or bad thinking?”
“Just thinking.” TJ scratched his head, then shot a glance toward the staircase leading to the upstairs apartment portion of the carriage house. “He’s always done that.”
“You’ve known Luke a long time, then?”
“I guess so. Five or six years, maybe. Since we started working together for the first time.”
Excellent. That meant TJ was the perfect informant. Settling in, determined to get some answers about Luke’s mysterious future, Josie leaned one hip on her car’s driver’s-side door. She watched TJ as he examined the engine.
“So, can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.” He pointed one greasy finger toward the workbench. “But first hand me that socket wrench, would you?”
She did.
He stared at the tool in his hand. “You actually did it. How’d you know which one was the socket wrench?”
“I helped my dad fix stuff sometimes when I was a kid. It was kind of fun, actually.” She missed those days. Glancing up, she caught his skeptical look. “What’s the matter? Did you think all showgirls were born wearing a G-string and a headdress?”
“Nah. But I kinda hoped they sprouted that stuff when they turned nineteen and never wiggled out of it.”
She couldn’t help but grin. “You try having a permanent wedgie. You’d ‘wiggle out of it’ sometimes, too.”
“I guess so.” TJ tightened something with the wrench, then leaned back to examine the engine. He glanced sideways at something Josie couldn’t see. He frowned.
“So, about Luke,” she began.
“Right. What do you want to know?”
“We were talking about the future a little while ago, and—”
A clatter near the stairs stopped her in mid-sentence. Surprised, she looked up to see a man galumph from the upstairs apartment carrying two cans of Pepsi. He stopped cold at the sight of Josie.
“Dad! What are you doing here?”
Obviously caught off guard, Warren Day only stared at her. Then he started to smile. Josie’s spirits rose. An instant later, an uncertain look flashed across his weathered face, then a mulish one. She plummeted back to earth again.
“Did you come out here to fix the cable? Luke and TJ said you installed it,”
she said, striving to sound normal—to sound as though her heart hadn’t suddenly started pounding like crazy. “I guess the SuperCable wiring always was a little touchy, right?”
She gave an awkward titter—all the laughter she could manage to lighten the situation. Her father hesitated.
Josie held her breath. This felt completely ridiculous. She was treating her own father as though he were a shy wildebeest at the local zoo. But maybe that was what he needed, she reasoned. That and a nice bribe of his favorite episodes of M*A*S*H on DVD.
He cleared his throat, then glanced at TJ. “I didn’t know you had company, TJ. I’ll just take off, then. We can always watch that game some other time. See you later.”
Josie hadn’t heard so many words from him all strung together since she’d come back to town. But, she couldn’t help but notice, none of those words had been directed at her.
Hurt, she watched her father turn away. He seemed at a loss as to what to do with the sodas in his hands. He settled on clunking them on the workbench, then grabbed his jacket.
At the sight of it, a familiar melancholy gripped her. That was the same banded-collar red windbreaker her dad had always worn in the springtime, whether the weather demanded it or not.
“Don’t want to get caught in the rain,” he’d always told her and Jenna, cheerfully shoving his arms in the ratty thing. “Better to be ready.”
“Yeah. Ready for the nerd parade,” she or her sister would say. And everyone in the family would laugh. It wasn’t for nothing Josie had cultivated her love of knock-knock jokes.
Now, though, her father avoided her gaze.
“Josie,” he mumbled tersely, then turned to leave.
Another hello-good-bye.
That was it. On the heels of Luke’s defection and days’ worth of being beaten down by skeptical, snooty townspeople, Josie had finally had enough. She wanted her father back.
“That’s it!” she cried. “I’ve had enough of men who won’t talk to me—men who bolt at the sight of me!” She stepped in front of her startled father, blocking his exit. “We’re going to talk, and we’re going to do it right now.”
