LUCIEN: A Standalone Romance

by Glenna Sinclair

  “They’re here,” Adam said, appearing out of nowhere, as he sometimes had the habit of doing, his step purposeful as he headed toward the back doors.

  “Should I come inside?”

  “Stay there for now. I’ll come get you when Nicolas is ready.”

  I watched him go then turned my attention back to Vivienne. She made a funny little sound, and her eyes began to droop. Time for her nap. I pulled at the cannula in her nose, adjusting it a little. The tubing ran under her head to a canister propped up beside the rocker. It was flowing well, I could feel it against my fingers. And she was breathing smoothly, a positive sign. She had a doctor’s appointment next week. Hopefully they would reduce the amount of time she had to be on oxygen then.

  “Ana?”

  I looked up and smiled as Daniel poked his head out the back door closest to us.

  “Hey. I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Virginia doesn’t drive much these days, so I drove.”

  “How’s it going? Is Nicolas being nice?”

  “Extremely polite. I think if he says please or thank you again, his head might explode.”

  “It’s an awkward situation.”

  “Yeah.” Daniel stepped outside and came around so he could see Vivienne. “She’s beautiful,” he said as he reached down to brush her cheek. Vivienne made a soft sound, but then she snuggled back down and fell into a deep sleep.

  I looked up and caught a small frown crossing Daniel’s face, but then he caught my glance and smiled.

  “I was wondering,” he said, “you wouldn’t happen to know where Kelly is right now, would you?”

  “I think she’s on her way to Kenya, but I’m not sure. Why?”

  He shrugged. “She might not have mentioned it to you, but we had coffee together that day after we left your hospital room. It was…quite nice, actually. I thought we hit it off. But every time I text her, she’s either too busy to talk, or she doesn’t answer.”

  “The curse of the flight attendant. She doesn’t always have service everywhere she goes.”

  Daniel nodded, a touch of relief crossing his face.

  “She’s supposed to be in LA again next week. She promised to stop by and see the twins.”

  “Yeah?”

  I smiled, unable to ignore the eagerness in his expression. “Yeah. I’ll let you know what day, if you’d like. Maybe you could come by and talk to her in person?”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  “But you should know, Kelly’s had a few bad breakups over the last year or two. She’s a little weary about guys right now.”

  Daniel nodded. “She told me about the sex fast.”

  “Oh, well, you must have really hit it off if she told you about that.”

  Again, his smile was irresistible.

  “Ana,” Nicolas said from just inside the living room, “could you come inside?”

  I glanced at him, instantly recognizing the tight expression on his face. It made my smile disappear as I carefully shifted the baby to my shoulder and gathered her oxygen canister, careful not to twist the lines. Daniel followed, his hand brushing the small of my back until he caught Nicolas’ expression and stepped aside, giving me a wide berth.

  Virginia was on the couch gazing at Cole in his little infant seat. There was a slight frown on her face as she studied him.

  “Hello, Mrs. Davis,” I said as I slowly approached.

  She looked up and did something of a double take when she saw the oxygen canister in my hand.

  “What is that? I thought both babies received a clean bill of health when they left the hospital?”

  “Vivienne’s lungs weren’t fully developed when she was born because of the lack of amniotic fluid. She just needs a little extra oxygen is all.”

  I settled down on the couch beside her and moved Vivienne so that I could easily pass her over. But Virginia raised her hands in refusal.

  “I don’t want to hold her with all those wires and things.”

  I glanced at Nicolas. He offered a slight shrug, but I could also see relief in his eyes.

  “Virgi,” Daniel said, “she’s your granddaughter.”

  Virginia didn’t acknowledge Daniel. Instead, she flicked the thin receiving blanket away from Vivienne’s face so she could see her clearly. A frown, like the one she’d had on her face when she was staring at Cole, crossed her face. Then she sighed and pushed herself to her feet.

  “Thank you for allowing this visit. We’ll get out of your way now.”

  “You’re allowed a full hour,” Nicolas said.

  “Yes, well, I saw what I wanted to see.”

  She marched toward the door, making it quite clear that she meant what she said. Daniel shot me an apologetic glance then turned to Nicolas. “Thank you,” he said politely. “I’m sure she’ll be in touch in a few days.”

  Nicolas didn’t say anything in return, but he nodded just as politely.

  As soon as we heard the front door close, Nicolas spun on me.

  “How do you know Daniel?”

  “I met him at Virginia’s.”

  “That—” He gestured toward the back porch—“didn’t look like a casual acquaintanceship.”

  “He came to see me in the hospital. He wanted to apologize for Virginia. He didn’t think she should be suing for custody and he was trying to talk her out of it.”

  Nicolas frowned, his eyes searching mine. “And?”

  “And…he’s a nice guy. And he hit it off with Kelly.”

  “Kelly? Your best friend, Kelly?”

  “Yeah. She had a layover at LAX right before the babies were born, and they happened to visit on the same day.”

  “So he came to see you more than once?”

  “Twice. I would have told you, but you weren’t exactly talking to me at the time, and then I went into labor, so it kind of slipped my mind.”

  Nicolas turned away, his eyes moving to the bar in the corner of the room. But then Cole made a noise and he turned back, his gaze moving over Cole and me and Vivienne. It was like someone had punctured his balloon with a tiny pin. The anger just slowly seeped out of him, and he came over to sit on the couch next to me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  I leaned into him. “Never be sorry for caring.”

  Chapter 31

  In one of those rare moments when both babies were sleeping, I wandered into the kitchen to talk to Constance. It felt like we hadn’t talked to each other in weeks about anything other than the babies.

  “You should be sleeping,” she said the moment she saw me. “A mother should sleep when her babies are sleeping.”

  “Yeah, well, I feel like I’m either sleeping or nursing twenty-four hours a day. I wanted to do something different for once.”

  “I don’t know about that. You don’t seem to sleep much at night.” She winked at me. “I change the sheets on the beds in this house, remember?”

  I blushed. I’d spent every night with Nicolas for the last month or so, since that night he found me in the nursery alone with Cole. We hadn’t officially moved my things into his room, but they were migrating there, a stitch of clothing and a toothbrush at a time. I’d thought it was our little secret, but I forgot how much the housekeepers and maids and other household staff tended to see in a typical home.

  “You don’t approve,” I said.

  Constance shrugged. “It’s not mine to approve or disapprove, mija.”

  “Actually, it is. You’re the closest thing I have to family now that mi mami is gone.”

  Constance just nodded, dropping her eyes to the task at hand. She was washing dishes left over from breakfast while watching over the tamales she was steaming for lunch. The kitchen smelled like my childhood, so filled with Mexican spices that I wanted curl up there and live in the memories it conjured.

  I missed my mom.

  “You don’t approve.”

  “I worry, mija.”

  “Why?”

  She
glanced at me. “There are things you don’t know about Nicolas Costa.”

  A blush burned my cheeks. “I don’t think we have as many secrets as you think.”

  Constance made a face. “I don’t talk about sex.”

  “We do other things, Constance. We talk.”

  “About his past?”

  “I know about this mother.”

  “Yes, because Adam told you.”

  I settled down on one of the low chairs set around the kitchen table, pulling my legs up underneath me. “Nicolas would have told me,” I said, watching her turn back to the dishes, a snort the only response to my comment. “He would have,” I added, a little wiggle of doubt waking up in the back of my mind.

  “He is not as perfect as he seems, and I blame myself for your assumption that he is. If I hadn’t told all those stories in front of you, maybe you wouldn’t be in this position now.”

  “My choices have nothing to do with your stories.”

  “Don’t they? Didn’t you volunteer to be their surrogate because of me?”

  “I agreed because mami needed expensive medical treatment, and I needed her to be okay.”

  Constance crossed herself as she turned back to face me again. “Your mother would feel very guilty if she was still here.”

  “Everything turned out alright. Nicolas is a good man, and we’re going to raise the babies together.”

  “Are you? What happens if that woman gets custody?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it.”

  “Do you think he’ll want you around then? A reminder of what he’s lost?”

  Fear sliced through me. Did I know what he would do? Was our relationship solid enough to survive that? Was I strong enough?

  “You said he was a good man, that he was generous with his staff, that he didn’t act like the other rich people you’d worked for. You told us stories about the parties he threw here and the people who came by and the things he did. How could you be so kind to him in your stories, but so afraid of a relationship between us?”

  Constance grabbed a hand towel and wiped her hands as she walked to the table and took a seat across from me. “I was entertaining my friend and her young daughter. It never occurred to me that you would grow up and fall in love with him.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and studied her as she studied me.

  “What do you know that you think I don’t?”

  Constance glanced over her shoulder as though she was afraid Nicolas might walk in on us. Then she focused on me again.

  “He has a drinking problem, mija. It wasn’t bad when I first came to work here. I would come in sometimes and find him sleeping on the couch, an empty bottle of bourbon next to him. Just, once or twice a month. Then it was once a week. Then several times a week. And then there were the parties, the girls, all of it alcohol fueled. I overheard arguments between him and Adam—that’s how I found out about his mother. Adam compared his drinking to his mother’s addiction and Nicolas threatened to fire him.” Constance reached over and took my hand. “It got worse and worse, until one day I came to work and found an ambulance outside. Adam found him passed out in a puddle of vomit. He breathed it in and was in the hospital for a week, fighting pneumonia because of it.”

  I felt the color drain from my face as she talked. I remembered coming back here after Nicolas’ arrest, finding him drinking glass after glass of bourbon. He was so drunk he almost couldn’t stand up as I maneuvered him into the shower. But then…he drank a lot, but it didn’t seem to faze him for long.

  “He doesn’t drink.”

  Constance nodded. “He went into rehab after the pneumonia. It was all very hush-hush. I wasn’t even sure that was what had happened until he came back and I found the sobriety chips on his dresser one morning.” She squeezed my hand. “Things changed after that. No more parties, no more women. He took on more projects, worked longer hours. And then he came home with Aurora.”

  “She was the first woman he was with after rehab?”

  “As far as I know,” Constance said. “And he was so in love with her. She looked at him and there were dollar signs in her eyes. She never really loved him.”

  “You knew that?”

  “Oh, yes.” Constance sat back, pulling her hands from mine. “There is very little a person can hide from their housekeeper. I knew what was going on in that marriage. Aurora was a cheating little puta.” She spit on the floor and then rubbed the spittle away with her foot. “There were men coming and going in this house all the time while Mr. Nicolas was out. But, still, he loved her.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “What you’re saying, he sounds like a good man who chose the wrong woman. Why would you object to me and him together?”

  “Because he stopped being a good man, mija. He got sober, and he couldn’t hide his emotions in alcohol, so he started indulging them. The fights they had—sometimes I expected to come into work the next day and find her murdered and him on his way to jail.”

  “He was violent?”

  “Very violent.” Constance gestured to her wrists. “Some mornings, Miss Aurora would come downstairs to breakfast and she would have these horrible bruises on her wrists. Once or twice, there were bruises on her throat. If she’d lifted her shirt, I’m sure there would have been bruises there, too.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I saw it with my own eyes, mija.”

  I stood up, still shaking my head. I couldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. I knew he was sober; I knew he attended meetings, even up to the time I was meeting with Aurora at the beginning of our surrogacy contract. She mentioned it once or twice; I was just too dumb to realize what she meant. She told me he was out with his friend Bill—Bill W., one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. She told me she thought it was ridiculous. I should have seen…I mean, I knew he had a temper, but I couldn’t make myself believe he was capable of beating his wife.

  “He didn’t hurt her. And he definitely didn’t kill her.”

  Constance shrugged. “Believe what you want to believe, mija. I just want you to have all the information before you go running into this thing. I know you love those babies, but you—”

  She stood and came to me, resting her hands on my shoulders. “Your mother was always more than mi amiga. Ella era mi hermana. I can’t just stand here and watch you make a mistake without putting my nose in it.”

  I nodded, aware that she was doing this because she thought she was looking out for me, but I still couldn’t make myself believe Nicolas was capable of this kind of thing.

  “Why did you take those drugs I found in his bathroom away if you thought he was guilty? You could have told the police.”

  “And risk it coming back to hurt you? I couldn’t do that.”

  “Then you think he’s capable of murder.”

  “I think a man who loves that deeply is capable of many things when the woman he loves does not love him back.” She touched my cheek. “Please, think about what I’ve told you. Don’t let yourself become someone your mother would not be proud of.”

  I kissed her cheek lightly. “You’re wrong. And you will see that someday soon.”

  Chapter 32

  I went to settle in the living room, the baby monitor in my hand, thinking I’d do a little reading while the babies continued to sleep. But then I realized that the book I’d been reading in the hospital—the book I hadn’t had a chance to even pick up since the babies were born—was upstairs in my bedroom.

  I climbed the stairs, wondering if that counted as exercise, humming a song I’d heard early that morning on the radio under my breath. It was something about loving the same person until each was old and thinking out loud or something…I couldn’t remember all the words, so I was murdering the lyrics as I pushed through the bedroom door and came up short.

  Nicolas was sitting on the edge of the bed, a bag of drugs in his hands.

  “Wh
at’s this?” he asked.

  “Why are you in here?”

  “It’s my house.” He got up and came toward me, the bag extended between two fingers. “Why is this in here?”

  His voice was low, steady, but there was anger dancing in his eyes. He looked at me the same way he did on Thanksgiving Day, the same way he looked at me just seconds before he grabbed me around my throat.

  “I found it. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  I backed up a little, Constance’s words, so recently uttered, dancing through my mind.

  …bruises…on her wrists, her throat…if she’d lifted her shirt…

  “Did you hit her?” I asked before I even realized the words were on my tongue.

  That shocked Nicolas into stopping his forward progression. He stared at me, anger turning into confusion.

  “Did I hit who?”

  “Aurora.”

  “What?” He stared at me, disbelief in every line of his handsome face. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Constance saw bruises. She thinks…” I stopped, my eyes falling to the bag of drugs. Xanax. The same drug that killed Aurora.

  Did she take them willingly? Or did someone force her into it?

  “Constance thinks I beat Aurora?”

  There was genuine hurt in his voice. He stared at me and then something clicked. He opened his mouth, a sound like someone might make if they’d been punched in the gut slipping from between his perfect lips. He stared at me for a long time, his gaze unwavering, but the emotion rushing through them ever-changing.

  He turned away, balling up the bag of drugs and throwing them against the far wall. The bag hit with nothing more than a slight tap, falling to the floor undamaged.

  “Do you believe her?”

  “I don’t want to, but there are so many secrets between us still that I don’t know what to believe.”

  He nodded, his shoulders drooping as though a heavy weight were resting on them. “Then I guess it’s time we fix that.”