Fallling for the Prodigal Son

by Julia Gabriel

  "So how does it feel to be home?" Sterling asked, as he braked the car to a stop at a red light.

  Lucy looked out the window. Home. What did that mean anyway? Lost Cave had been her home, once. Then Washington, DC when she was married. For the past five years, it had been St. Caroline. Who knew where home would be next?

  "This is my hometown," Lucy replied. "But it's not my home anymore."

  "You don't feel any sort of connection to it still?"

  "Well, sort of. But it's like the connection you have with an ex-boyfriend. You used to know them really well, but now they're not a part of your life. So there's both an intimacy and a distance at the same time."

  Sterling seemed to consider this as he drove. "I'm not sure I ever felt that St. Caroline was my home. My family has been such a fixture there. It's like we belong to the town."

  "It's a nice place to call home."

  "Lots of people think so. And I can see that, objectively. I just don't feel it."

  "Well, you haven't really lived there as an adult," Lucy pointed out. "Maybe you need to try and see it from a new angle. Open your heart to it."

  How do you open your heart to a town, Sterling mused. He had enough trouble opening his to people.

  They spent the evening driving up and down the hills around Lost Cave, Lucy pointing out significant locations from her childhood. The best swimming hole. The woods where the kids always party after the senior prom. The field where the summer fireman's carnival was held, the highlight of the summer as far as kids were concerned. Lucy showed him her high school, the fields in need of mowing. The old stone church where she was baptized. The abandoned sewing factory, where her mother had worked for awhile, now just a brown brick building pockmarked with broken windows.

  When they pulled into the Rt. 1 Motel, the sun was setting. The motel was an old, two-story building with individual entrances on the outside. A covered balcony ran along the second floor.

  "I'll see if there's a vacancy. Be right back." He got out of the car and stretched his legs, tight and tense from the long drive. He scanned the flat parking lot. Considering the number of cars there, he wasn't worried about there not being rooms available.

  In the office, he rang the bell and a bleary-eyed young man emerged slowly from a back room.

  "Help you." It was more of a statement than a question.

  "Do you have two rooms?"

  The boy looked at him like there were horns growing out of Sterling's head.

  "Do you want adjacent rooms?" the boy asked.

  "No. But close together. I'm traveling with my sister." Adjacent rooms. No, that would not be a good idea, Sterling thought. Too close, too easy, too tempting. He wanted Lucy far enough away so that he'd have to get dressed to walk outside to her room. Even then, he wasn't sure that was going to be enough of an obstacle.

  Sterling returned from the motel office and held out a key to Lucy.

  "Your room is number sixteen, two doors down from mine."

  A look of disappointment flitted across her face. She dropped her gaze quickly to hide it. Oh Lucy, you have no idea how badly I want to be in your room tonight. He could snatch that key back out of her fingers and she would let him. He knew that. He could make love to her tonight. He could easily make that happen. They had physical chemistry, he knew that too. What he didn't know was whether they had anything else. And it was the "anything else" that he was starting to want.

  He had wanted to see Lucy's hometown for himself so that she would be less able to throw that rich kid-poor kid meme in his face. He wanted to knock that chip off her shoulder. But there was more to it than that. He wanted to just spend time with her, away from the Inn, away from the camp, away from the mess he'd made by impulsively firing her. He wanted her company for awhile and when she had marched up those bleachers last night, it occurred to him that maybe she wanted his, too.

  Sterling walked her to her room. Last chance. You could go in there with her. No. If he went into Lucy's room, they wouldn't come back out. They would end up spending the entire weekend holed up in the Rt. 1 Motel. Not that that wouldn't be pleasurable, but it wasn't why he had driven seven hours to get here.

  He leaned down and dropped a chaste kiss, practically an air kiss, on her cheek. She unlocked the door and went inside. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 22

  Lucy ordered coffee and a bowl of oatmeal at Edith's Diner. Edith was long gone and the diner had gone through several owners since her, but no one had changed the name of the place. Even if they had, everyone in town would continue to call it "Edith's Diner." That's just what it was.

  She watched Sterling dig into a huge western omelet and home fries. If there was one good thing Lucy could say about Lost Cave, it was that you could get a good breakfast there. And get it cheap.

  Sterling was wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Even in that kind of an outfit, he radiated raw sexuality. To Lucy, anyway. His hair was damp from the shower, and curling a little around his ears. Looking at him made her want to, well, get a room and drag him back up to it, cavewoman-style.

  "How did you sleep?" she asked instead.

  Sterling grimaced. "I've slept in better beds, I suppose."

  "It's not the Ritz Carlton," Lucy said with a wary smile.

  "So how about you? Sleep well?"

  "No. Can't say I did." But that wasn't because of the mattress, Lucy thought. She'd spent half the night lying awake, wishing she were in Sterling's room instead. She finally fell asleep sometime around three o'clock and she had the dark circles under her eyes to prove it.

  The separate rooms had disappointed her; she'd been surprised at just how disappointed. When he kissed her the other night at the concert, she had thought, maybe ...

  She pushed the idea out of her head. He had just been proving to her that no one was paying attention to two individuals sitting in the back row while there was a Grammy award winning singer onstage. They were here today because he had wanted to see Lost Cave and if that could perhaps push him a few inches further toward changing his mind about the camp, then Lucy was willing to swallow her disappointment. I mean, honestly? Me and Sterling Matthew. Who's kidding whom here?

  She turned her head to look out the plate glass window next to their booth. Outside, a middle-aged couple carried plastic bags of groceries down Main Street. An elderly gentleman with a cane was walking a small, scruffy dog. Other than that, the street was deserted. In St. Caroline right now, the church bells would be ringing. The restaurants and cafes would be wiping down their sidewalk tables in preparation for the after church brunch crowd. Shop owners would be getting ready for another afternoon of tourists.

  "So what do you think so far?" she asked, biting her lip nervously, not looking away from the window.

  "I think it's remarkable that you are the woman you are today."

  Lucy's head snapped back to the table and her dining companion. Her mouth opened to speak. Slow down. She sipped her cooling coffee, and waited for her knee-jerk reaction to sink back down into her stomach. She wasn't going to say it. She wouldn't mar the day by bringing up the camp and the role it had played in getting her out of Lost Cave. She had to be subtler than that, and trust that Sterling would see things for himself.

  Besides, Sterling drove and the last thing Lucy wanted was to find herself angrily left behind here. In California, she felt as though he was turning her back into the teenager from Lost Cave. Maybe the real purpose of this trip was to actually take her back to Lost Cave and dump her here. That would solve some problems, now wouldn't it?

  "What's so funny?" Sterling asked.

  "Nothing." She pursed her lips.

  Sterling cocked his head to one side. "Lucy, I don't know if you realize this or not, but you don't exactly have a poker face. It's not hard to tell when you have something amusing on your mind."

  "That's not good, being so transparent."

  "It's good for me. I can always tell when you're mulling over whether or not to kill
me." Sterling reached over and covered her hand with his, a move that sent spikes of sensation through Lucy's arm. "So what was so funny a minute ago?"

  "I was just hoping you don't get so freaked out by Lost Cave that you jump in your car and hightail it out of here. Leaving me stranded." Well, that wasn't exactly what she'd been thinking but it was close enough. she reasoned.

  "I don't freak out that easily. And I definitely won't leave here without you. I promise."

  No way am I leaving here without this woman, Sterling thought. And he wouldn't even have noticed the crappy quality of the bed last night if she'd been in it with him. It had taken all his willpower not to go outside and knock on her door at three am. He hadn't even kissed her properly, for fear of not being able to stop. Oh, he wanted to make love to Lucy again, wanted to with every fiber in his body. With some women, making love to them once or twice had sated his curiosity, his desire for them. But not with Lucy. Making love to her only made him want her more.

  Of course, there was always the matter of what Lucy wanted. On that point, Sterling was baffled. While it was easy to tell what Lucy was feeling just by looking at her, figuring out what she was thinking was much harder. She was attracted to him, physically anyway. He knew that much. But she was also still angry with him. Her anger over the camp was like dry kindling. One tiny spark and she was afire.

  That's not the kind of fire I'm trying to light.

  The waitress cleared away their plates. "More coffee, hon?" she asked Lucy. Lucy put her hand over her cup. She could make even refusing something look graceful, he thought.

  "So now what?" she asked him.

  "How about a stroll down Main Street, since we're here?"

  "There's not going to be much open here, on a Sunday."

  "We can window shop," Sterling suggested.

  They peeked into the windows of the hardware store, a children's consignment shop and the tidy, neat office of a lawyer, who also doubled as the town's mayor. Sterling was charmed by the old wooden floors of the hardware store.

  "I loved going into that store when I was a child. The floors creak and groan when you walk on them, like they're alive. And there was a penny candy machine in the back."

  "I always loved going to the supply department to fetch nails or duct tape for someone on staff. It wasn't as charming as this, of course, but the supply supervisor always had lollipops."

  Further down the street, a woman was perched at the top of a ladder, painting the trim on a store window. The woman looked to be about Lucy and Sterling's age. He was walking around the ladder when he heard, "Lucy Hahn. I thought you'd vanished from the face of the earth." The woman climbed down the ladder to the sidewalk.

  "Laura Hagel," Lucy exclaimed.

  "Are you visiting?" Laura asked. She looked at Sterling out of the corner of her eye, checking him out. Sterling noticed Lucy noticing.

  "Yes, just for the day. This is Sterling Matthew ..." Lucy hesitated and Sterling knew she was unsure of how to describe him. Her former boss? Her on-and-off lover? Her first crush? He smiled at that idea.

  "Lucy and I are friends in Maryland," he rescued her. Lucy gave him a grateful glance.

  "I spent my entire childhood sitting behind Laura in class. Hagel then Hahn."

  Hahn. Her maiden name. Sterling repeated the name a few times in his mind. He liked "Lucy Wyndham" better.

  Laura looked down at her paint-spattered outfit. "Sorry I'm such a mess. I'm trying to get this place ready to open next week. The inside's good, but the front ..." Her voice trailed off and she looked mournfully at the chipped and peeling paint.

  Sterling and Lucy peered inside. The space was one big room, barely furnished. The walls were freshly painted white and the newly refinished wood floors gleamed, even through the window.

  "It's a yoga studio," Laura offered. "I used to teach over at Grace Church, in the big meeting room downstairs, but we're outgrowing that space. So my husband and I are opening an official place here."

  "Yoga? Sterling here spent six months in an ashram in India."

  Sterling felt his face grow warm. He was blushing. Lucy looked at with a small smile and a slightly arched eyebrow. Obviously, this fact provided her no end of amusement. That was okay with Sterling. If she was making fun of him, she wasn't scowling at him.

  Laura looked hard at him, both of her eyebrows fully arched in surprise. "An ashram? I think that's my dream vacation. Maybe when the kids are grown and we win the lottery." She laughed.

  "Can we go inside?" Sterling asked.

  "Of course! Forgive my rudeness. I was here 'til midnight last night. I haven't had enough sleep lately."

  Inside, Laura interrogated him about the ashram in India while Lucy wandered off to look around the studio. He watched as she strolled slowly around the perimeter of the room, taking in the floors and the simple light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. She leaned her head back and he followed her gaze up to the building's old tin ceiling.

  A low rustic table ran along one wall. He could tell from the way Lucy held her arm as she moved past that she was counting the votive candles that were placed every few inches. Sterling silently counted along with her. Twelve candles.

  Sterling answered Laura's questions as best he could, but he was really seriously distracted by being in a yoga studio with Lucy. It brought back memories of the class they took together with Sreenivas. Sterling had been as surprised by Lucy's interest in yoga as she had been surprised by his.

  Would he have still fired her if she had told him about Derrick Jones and the concert in advance? Ah, probably. He had been so blindsided by it, and by the notion that Lucy could be that devious. He still had trouble believing it. Look at her, he thought. She had such a peaceful expression on her face, her arms swinging by her side as she walked. She looked utterly uncomplicated at the moment.

  She turned and caught him staring at her. At last, she returned to where Sterling and Laura had been standing all along.

  "It was lovely to see you again," Lucy said and gave Laura a warm, genuine hug. "Good luck with this. Maybe I'll stop in and take a class the next time I'm in town."

  Outside on the sidewalk, Sterling said, "I thought you were never going to come rescue me."

  "Laura is nice." He detected a note of injury in her voice.

  "Yes, she is. But my six months of yoga in an ashram in India was really more like one month of yoga, six times over."

  "So now what?" Lucy asked. "Are there any more social ills you want to see?"

  Now it was Sterling's turn to look injured. "I don't think your friend's yoga studio is a social ill." Apparently, the peacefulness she was feeling had evaporated the minute they stepped outside.

  "No, it's not. And good for her. But it'll most likely be closed the next time I'm in town."

  "True. But businesses that never open are failures, too. You don't succeed by not trying." Sterling laid his arm across her shoulders as they walked down the street. "You still haven't taken me to see your childhood home."

  "My mother and I lived in a bunch of places, actually, when I was growing up. Some of them torn down by now, thankfully. I don't exactly have an ancestral family home."

  "Does your mother still live in town?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you think she's home right now?"

  "Sunday morning? Yes, she's probably home. I don't think she goes to church anymore."

  "I'd like to meet her."

  "Why?"

  "Because I would like to. Do I need more of a reason than that?" Sterling replied. "Not to mention that you can't come into town and not see your mother. Even I don't do that."

  "Lucy! What a surprise," her mother cried out when she opened the door to find Lucy and Sterling standing awkwardly there. "Come in. You should have let me know you were coming."

  Lucy surveyed her mother's outfit. She was wearing a denim skirt way too short for her age, a red tank top and brown leather flip flops. She sighed inwardly. Why did she agree to coming here? It
was going to be a disaster, an unmitigated disaster. She hoped Sterling was having plenty of fun. At her expense.

  "Uh, it was a last-minute decision."

  "You drove all the way here this morning?"

  "No. We stayed at the Rt. 1 Motel last night."

  Lucy's mother lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing. She looked Sterling up and down appraisingly, then looked back at Lucy. "So are you going to introduce your friend?"

  Lucy was flustered and uncomfortable and suddenly feeling like a teenager again in her mother's house. Sterling stepped forward and extended his hand to Lucy's mother. "Sterling Matthew, ma'am. CEO of The Chesapeake Inn."

  "CEO, you say?"

  Uh-oh. Lucy could practically hear the wedding bells chiming in her mother's head right now. Her mother had been devastated by Lucy's divorce from Josh, and she was upfront about her belief that Lucy was to blame. That she just hadn't been able to hold onto her husband.

  Her mother turned to Lucy. "I always pictured him as older. From how you described him."

  "That would have been my father Lucy was talking about," Sterling explained.

  "He passed away recently," Lucy said quietly.

  "My condolences. Are you two staying awhile? Can I get you something to drink? A soda? Tea?"

  "Tea would be lovely," Sterling said.

  "I'll come help you," Lucy said, following her mother.

  "No, no," her mother hushed at her. "Stay out there with that gorgeous hunk of man. He might make me forgive you for Josh." Lucy rolled her eyes at her mother. "Lucy, you need to think more strategically."

  Yeah. Trying to think strategically worked great. I made a fool out of myself by sleeping with my boss and the camp is still dead at the end of the summer.

  Lucy spent the longest ten minutes of her life sitting silently with Sterling in her mother's living room. She tried to see the room through his eyes. The worn-out carpet, the broken blind on one window, the threadbare sofa they were sitting on, the lingering smell of cigarette smoke. She wanted to tell him that this wasn't really her childhood home. She and her mother had lived in over a dozen houses in Lost Cave when Lucy was a child. Whenever her mother couldn't make rent, they had to leave and find another landlord who remembered what a beauty Serena Hahn had been when she was younger or who pitied them because Lucy's father had abandoned them.