“Damn.” Molly looked disappointed. “I’ve done it. I don’t think it’s a crime. But okay. Snubbing is good. But while Jonas is gone, let’s go back to you. Owen Bancroft? Would you really rent to him? Is he as cute as he looked the other night while he was dragging that woman out of the car?”
“Yeah, if you like that rugged McDreamy look, sure.” Lucy shrugged.
“Who doesn’t? Three words: Hit that shit.”
“Ew! No.” Lucy’s answer was too quick and she tried to cover it up. “You know. Not really my type.”
“What kind of book is he?” Molly knew how Lucy categorized people.
Lucy thought before carefully choosing her words. “I think he’s a thriller. Like a paperback espionage novel. Suspenseful. Guns and forged passports and spies.”
“Hot,” said Molly. “But you’re a really bad liar. That’s not what book you think he is.”
“I hate you sometimes.”
Molly held up a finger. “One quick sec.” She looked to see that Jonas was busy clearing a booth before scuttling around the back of the bar. She shot a finger of Baileys into her coffee and raised the bottle toward Lucy’s cup.
“No, thanks. I’m on call, remember?” Lucy pulled the pager out of her pocket and waggled it at Molly.
“Oh, yeah.” Seated next to her again, Molly said with a satisfied air, “Now. Really. What book?”
Lucy sighed and said in a whisper, “Wuthering Heights.”
Molly laughed so hard she almost came off her bar stool.
“It’s not that funny.”
“Oh, God!” Molly tried to gasp for air. “Yes, it is. Heathcliff. To your—your Cathy . . .”
Lucy sat. She waited.
“You done yet?”
Molly giggled. “I think so. I’m sorry. It’s just funny. Thinking of you on the moors . . .” She wiped her eyes with a cocktail napkin.
“Stop! Seriously.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t read it with me last year for book club? Too”— Molly choked—“difficult?”
Lucy spun on the barstool to face her, trailing the yarn behind her. “Shhh! Look, it’s not funny, and I’m well aware that it’s moronic, but that was a hard time for me.”
“It was high school. I was in New York, not out here on the Wild West Coast, but it was hard for all of us.”
Molly had no idea. Looking at the stitches on her needles as if they held the answer, Lucy said, “I was his math tutor. I was the bookish one. The smart one. And then one night . . . I thought he really saw me, that someone finally had seen me. And the best part was that the someone who had seen me was him.” With each word, she jerked a stitch. They’d be tighter than the rest on her next row.
Molly leaned over and put her head briefly on Lucy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. You don’t talk about him, and I’m just trying to figure out what happened in high school to my best friend. Will you forgive my teasing and tell me?”
Lucy groaned and gave up. “Long story made blessedly short. It was the grad night party of his senior year. I was a junior. I had a nice boyfriend, Tim Snopes, who was on the football team: running back. We held hands and necked on Friday nights, but he had strep throat and couldn’t take me to the party. Owen had twenty-two girlfriends and he did more than neck.”
Molly snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“I could list the girls for you. In either alphabetical or chronological order.”
With a whirling hand motion, Molly indicated for Lucy to go on.
Lucy made sure Jonas was still over by the dartboard. She sure as heck didn’t need her older brother hearing about her sad love life. Behind her, Silas’s nose was still buried in his book. He’d never hear them talking, even if he were sitting closer.
“I’d been his tutor for six months. I was crazy, horrible, sick-to-my-stomach in love with him. He never even really knew my name. We’d meet in the public library on Thursday nights and I’d take bets with myself whether or not he’d get my name right or not. Laura or Lisa or Luann—every once in a while he got it right and called me Lucy. I told myself he was teasing me, but I wasn’t sure if he was or not. He wasn’t good at math, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t smart. There was stuff going on at home—he’d come in with dark circles under his eyes, and kids told stories about the screaming coming from his house, his father beating his mother, and he came in with black eyes sometimes. He blamed it on his motorcycle.”
“Swoon,” said Molly.
“I know, right? Remember Matt Dillon in The Outsiders? Dallas Winston? He was that tough and dark and scary and sad. And hot. I sat next to him and we talked numbers. He never met my eyes.”
“And you went to a party . . .” Molly prompted her.
“I’m getting there. I tried the punch. My first alcohol. I was practically begging to be a John Hughes movie, I know. I was a moron. I wore this fuchsia dress with big puffed sleeves and a net bodice—it was horrible. I had dyed fuchsia shoes to match that made my toes pink for weeks. My mom still has the outfit in a closet somewhere, I have no idea why. I drank too much, of course. I saw him standing in a corner when I was waiting for the bathroom and when I came out, I saw him go into a side bedroom. I followed him on a drunken whim, and as soon as I entered . . .”
Molly said triumphantly, “A la John Hughes, he stole your panties and put them on the bulletin board at school!”
Lucy groaned. “I wish. He’d been waiting in the dark for a girl. I’m not even sure which one, but he thought I was her, so when I wandered in, not knowing what I wanted, and suddenly he had his . . . hands all over me, I was surprised. But I went along with it.” She stared across the bar into rows of colorful bottles.
She had shut the bedroom door behind her, and the noise of the party that had been roaring like an unfamiliar train behind her was suddenly silenced, and all she could hear was his breathing, close, right in front of her.
“You came,” Owen had said to her.
And even though the small part of her brain that was still processing normally knew he hadn’t meant her, knew that he’d been waiting for someone else, she irrationally hoped he’d seen her backlit by the open door and that she was, in fact, exactly who he’d been waiting for. She’d nodded, even though in the dim light he would barely have seen it.
Both of his hands slid around her waist, and he pulled her tight against him. Her breath left her body as if she’d fallen from a great height, as if it had been knocked out of her. Her head felt light. He didn’t take his time. His lips moved to just below her jawline at the same time that his hand crept up to cup her breast. Then his mouth claimed hers.
And time stopped.
She swore it did. For Owen, too.
The kiss deepened. Their breath became ragged as their lips touched, danced against each other’s, parted and returned. She couldn’t bear her mouth to be far from his and she noticed that his hand at her breast became less insistent as all their focus spun around this one kiss, this perfect, perfect, kiss. Everything depended on this moment. Just to breathe against his mouth, to feel him gasping against her, was enough. Their hands touched each other’s faces, they drew back and gazed in the dimness at each other in wonder, and then returned to what was the ultimate kiss, the kiss Lucy knew she’d been waiting for her entire life.
“Lucy,” he’d whispered raggedly. “I never . . .”
He’d known her name. He knew her. “What?” she said, breathless.
Then the overhead light snapped on.
Whitney Court, dressed in a pale pink strapless dress with lots of tulle, danced into the room, camera flashing. “Smile, kids, this is history in the making!”
Lucy watched Owen’s face go from completely unguarded to totally closed and spitting furious in the space of half a second. It was frightening, like watching a lightning storm move in over the ocean.
Whitney was still snapping pictures, the flash bouncing around the room, making Lucy’s head hurt. She couldn’t smile. Probably shouldn’t smile. Mo
re people had followed Whitney into the room, kids laughing, carrying red plastic cups full of the toxic punch.
“What the fuck, Whitney?” snapped Owen.
“We heard you were in here with an A student, just wanted to document it for posterity,” she trilled. “Don’t worry, darlin’, it’s all in fun.”
Owen’s eyes met Lucy’s for one desperate instant, and for that one second Lucy was sure that he’d felt the same thing that she had, that his heart had been beating as hard as hers, with the same amount of passion that wasn’t just lust stirred by youth and hormones, but by something more.
Lucy covered her mouth with her hand and ran out of the bedroom just as Owen said, “Whitney, you’re a fucking bitch.”
He followed her out of the room and into the living room, Whitney on his heels.
And there, in the middle of the party, in the living room, where the only kids who hadn’t witnessed her humiliation had been, if not dancing, then swaying to the music, Lucy threw up, splashing Randall Lawson with green punch and bile.
Giggles followed, laughter turning to full-blown drunken roars. It would be legend by Monday morning and carved in stone by her senior year. Lucy’s head spun. Her eyes felt wobbly, and her legs followed suit as she stumbled outside into the front yard, desperate to go home.
“It was the lead photo in the Moments We’d Like to Forget section of the yearbook. Whitney submitted it. Me, in my fuchsia net dress, vomiting all over the outgoing seniors, the juniors watching. Me, with a whole year to go. I still can’t believe they printed it.”
Molly’s cup was suspended halfway to her lips. “But what about Owen? He took you home? And?”
“Oh, yeah. He took me home, all right. He put me in the front seat of his blue Mustang. Held my hand all the way to my house. I sat there praying for the courage to tell him that I loved him, that he meant everything to me, but instead I worried too much that he’d try to kiss me when I’d just thrown up, so when he pulled up, I ran inside and slammed the door. He left the next day, left town completely and pretty much never came back. Never called, never left a note. . . .”
“Vile.”
Lucy took a sip of her latte and shrugged. “I thought so at the time, but really, we were just kids. Right? But you can see why I was—”
“So madly in love with him? Oh, yeah. You’re in trouble, for sure. And . . .” Molly leaned sideways so that she was looking just to the left of Lucy.
“What?” asked Lucy.
“You might want to . . .”
Lucy turned, but she already knew. The front door was still swinging, and Owen was three bar stools down from them. He leaned forward, one hand on the top of the bar, the other stuck in the pocket of his black leather jacket that looked as well-worn as his jeans.
Her heart rattled like the dice in the cups Jonas carried toward them.
Jonas thumped them down in front of Lucy and Molly. “Wanna play?”
Molly shook her head. “I always lose at Bullshit. Which is ironic, because I’m so good at it in real life.”
“Nah,” said Lucy. “Too rich for my blood.” Then she waited for Jonas to go back and serve Owen.
Instead, Jonas started washing glasses.
Owen took his other hand out of his pocket and put it on top of the bar also. He cleared his throat.
“Jonas,” started Lucy. This wasn’t like her brother.
“What?” Jonas said.
“Can I get an Anchor Steam down here?” Owen’s voice was polite, but firm.
Jonas folded his lips together and nodded, without looking at Owen. He drew a beer and slid it across the bar, accepting payment without ever appearing to make eye contact.
“Thanks,” said Owen.
Jonas jerked his chin in response and returned to stand in front of Lucy and Molly.
“What’s your problem?” hissed Lucy, hoping the sound of the jukebox covered her voice.
Jonas shrugged. “Nothing.”
Lucy felt the pulse at the front of her throat beat wildly as she turned as casually as she could. “Hi,” she called down the bar stools.
“Hey there.” Owen half smiled, but there was a reserve to him, a set to his mouth that Lucy didn’t blame him for. Jonas had been deliberately rude, and Lucy was embarrassed.
Lucy wanted desperately to ask him to move down and join them, but she couldn’t seem to make her vocal cords say the words. Her mouth opened and closed. She knitted faster.
“Come down here and sit with us,” said Molly.
Lucy smiled.
Jonas harrumphed and went into the back room, where he started rearranging kegs with thumps and bangs.
“I’m Molly,” Molly said, turning on her signature full-wattage smile, “and that’s Silas over there.”
Silas barely looked up from his book before dropping his eyes back to the page.
Lucy found that her voice worked again. “You’ll have to forgive my brothers,” said Lucy. “One has no social graces. And the other one, well, he has no social graces either.”
Molly smiled. “Silas wouldn’t notice if a bomb went off in here.”
“If the bomb made him lose his place, he’d notice. But not until then,” Lucy agreed. She turned the row on her sock, flipping the yarn, and noticed that Owen was watching her hands. She was conscious of the way her fingers were moving in a way she usually never was.
“So Owen, I hear you’re the local black sheep, returned to pasture.” Molly cocked an eyebrow.
Owen’s eyes darted to Lucy’s, but then he nodded. “Yep. The proverbial bad penny.”
That wasn’t right, thought Lucy, but correcting Molly would make it worse. Owen was neither of those, not a black sheep returning nor a bad penny turning up. He was just a man coming home.
But before she could say something, the door to the bar swung open with a bang. Whitney Court entered, holding a large plate covered with cookies.
“Hello, darlings!” Whitney’s voice was a trill. “I went a little overboard in the butterscotch-pecan-cookie department tonight right before I closed, and I thought you all might like a little sample of my wares.”
Silas’s head rose from his book so fast Lucy thought he might get whiplash. Owen said, “Cookies?” Molly grinned. Jonas poked his head out from the back room. And the two drunk college guys who had been arm wrestling over who got to break the rack on the next game of pool unlocked hands and tripped over each other in their haste to get to Whitney.
The eponymous Whitney’s Bakery sat next door to Lucy’s bookstore. Lucy was used to people tromping through her store, a muffin in one hand, a fancy caramel latte in the other, browsing books with sticky fingers. And even though she kept trash cans at the front of the store just to catch their empty wrappers, she still found cookie crumbs behind the biography section and empty coffee cups perched on the romance shelves.
The college boys slapped each other’s hands in their rush to grab a cookie, elbowing each other out of the way. They were obviously drunk and they were making Lucy uncomfortable, but Whitney seemed relaxed. She always seemed at home around men. It drove Lucy crazy.
“Oh, now, boys. There’s plenty for everyone.” Whitney’s laugh was gorgeous, light and silky. She wore a sweet pink dress with a full skirt, cinched with a red belt. The wide red headband that held back her long chestnut brown hair matched her red belt, as did her red patent kitten heels. She looked perfectly sexy and wholesome at the same time, and as usual, Lucy felt a mixture of both admiration and jealousy, and didn’t like either feeling.
Whitney held the plate in front of Silas, who was still seated at his booth. “Cookie, Silas?”
He nodded, the bobbles on the end of the earflaps on his cap bouncing up and down.
“My darling, you have to say the magic word.”
Lucy felt heat rise to the top of her head, and she inhaled sharply. It wasn’t that Silas had a speech impediment, or that he stuttered. He just didn’t like to talk. And no one made him, no one told Silas he had t
o talk.
No one, that was, except for Whitney, who was drawing the plate back away from Silas’s outstretched hand.
“What’s that teensy little word, you handsome brute?”
Lucy looked at Jonas for help, but he only seemed amused, the traitor.
Silas frowned, a deep furrow across his forehead. Then he finally muttered, “Please.”
“That’s it! There, now was that so hard? You can have two cookies for that, you sexy thing, you.” Whitney smiled in triumph and looked up at Lucy.
“Oooh! The gang’s all here! Goodie! You have to have one of these.” The skirt of her dress swayed, a full bell, showing off her shapely legs to full advantage as she brought the plate to Lucy.
Whitney’s eyes never met Lucy’s, though—she was too busy staring at Owen. Holding the cookies dangerously high under Lucy’s nose, she said, “The rumors are true, then.”
Owen leaned backward, his elbows resting against the bar, his head at an angle. Lucy couldn’t read his face. “Depends on what they’re saying.”
“That Owen Bancroft is back in town to stay.”
“Sounds like a rumor to me.”
“So you’re only passing through?”
“Not planning on sinking my roots in too deep.”
Whitney said to Lucy, “Do you mind?” and gave her the plate to hold.
Lucy looked at Molly, who rolled her eyes. Twisting, Lucy placed the cookies on the bar behind her. Jonas snatched three of them, scarfing two before Lucy could even snarl at him.
Whitney stood directly in front of Owen, placed her hands on her hips, and struck a pose. “Do you remember me? I’m sure you do. I’m positive you couldn’t forget.”
Owen pressed his lips into a thin line and crossed his arms. “Can’t say that I do.”
Lucy felt a wild surge of relief. He didn’t remember that party, then, if he didn’t remember Whitney. Maybe he didn’t remember that night. Or that kiss at all.
“Oh, you! I know you do.” Playfully smacking his knee, Whitney said, “Come on, remember the tree house?”
A grin broke across Owen’s face. “I’m just teasing you. Of course I remember you, Whitney. You haven’t changed a bit.”
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