Lucifer's Lover

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “Is that… Is this family of yours the reason you came to Deerfoot Falls?”

  He pursed his lips, considering. “Sort of. Maybe. It was time to move on. To get away.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. Her mind kept slipping back to marvel over the similarities between Eliza and her mother. It was frightening, in a way.

  “You see now, don’t you, why I’m the worst person in the world to want in your life?” He waved his hand around the office. “I could be blood brother to the woman who made your life a complete misery.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that. Tiredness was pulling at her mind.

  “I need to think about this,” she told him.

  He was silent for a long time. “I guess that’s fair,” he said, at last. “Where are you staying? I’ll drive you there.”

  She looked at her watch. “I’m booked on the five thirty flight back home.”

  His brow lifted. “Home. Okay…”

  She sat up, bringing her feet back to the ground.

  “Are you going to be all right to fly?” he asked.

  She grimaced. “After all this? Flying will be relaxing.”

  He looked away and Lindsay cursed herself. “Luke, I appreciate you showing me—for introducing me to your aunt. But you knew it would be a shock. You told her I’d seen a ghost, so you knew ahead of time.”

  “Why do you think it’s taken me so long to tell you?” he shot back. He took a deep breath. “I kept chickening out.” and he lifted a stray lock of hair from her temple and brushed it back. “I wanted to enjoy it a little longer…”

  Lindsay could feel herself responding just to the touch of his fingertips in her hair and hated herself for the weakness.

  She was going to have to be strong now. Luke had no more mysteries to reveal. She had all the facts now. She clasped her hands together.

  “Now I know it all, I have to think about the future. I have decisions to make.” She touched her belly. “This child means I can’t afford the weakness of emotional choices. I can’t just think about me anymore.”

  His eyes were very black and totally unrevealing. “I know.”

  “I’m going to go back to Deerfoot Falls. What do I tell Doug?”

  He frowned. “I’ll deal with him.” It was almost a growl. He stood up and held out his hand. “Come on—I’ll get you to the airport. I can tell you from extensive experience that it’ll take a good hour to get there at this time of day.”

  It took two hours, for first she had to check out of the motel she had stayed in the previous two nights while she was tracking down Luke. She hadn’t quite been able to stay at the Derwent. The discomfort level would have been too high even if she wasn’t watching her bank account right now.

  Throughout the two hours Luke was the charming, funny PR man she remembered from the Derwent. The change was uncomfortable. It showed her just how much Luke’s behavior had began to change when he was with her and how comfortable she had become with the man she had begun to think of as the hidden Luke.

  But that man was back in hiding and it was her fault he’d retreated.

  Luke waited with her until her flight was boarding and then walked her to the boarding gate. She hesitated a little, unwilling to simply say goodbye and walk away—yet she couldn’t really think of anything appropriate, either.

  But Luke’s hand on her arm, pulling her aside, halted her. She turned to face him and realized with a jolt that he’d dropped his mask. The real Luke was looking at her. He cupped her face in his hands, studying her with the intent gaze of someone storing up details for later. He didn’t say anything and she didn’t know what to say, either.

  His dark eyes seemed to be trying to tell her something she couldn’t quite read.

  “Take care of yourself,” he murmured at last and she sensed there was far more he wanted to say but couldn’t. Something was blocking the words.

  “I will,” she answered inadequately. She added, “Thank you too. For showing me. For letting me in.”

  He shook his head a little. “Ah, Lynds, you were already in. Didn’t you know that?” A tiny furrow appeared in his brow. “You just won’t take up residence.” His voice was a rough whisper.

  He kissed her, then, a gentle touch of the lips that lingered a little. She found herself clenching his jacket lapels and fought the impulse to pull him closer, to make him stay.

  He dropped his hands and tried to step back but she still held his jacket. He rested his hands on her fists. “Time to go.”

  The attendants announced the final call just then and Lindsay knew they were probably gently trying to nudge her aboard the plane too, for they could see her from their desk at the side of the gate.

  Panic gripped her.

  “It wouldn’t work,” she said quickly, trying to spill it all out instantly, to explain herself. “We wouldn’t work. You wouldn’t change. I can’t change. And you’re bad for me. You said it.”

  “I said it,” he agreed heavily.

  “You’re New York. I’m Deerfoot Falls. And your family—”

  “Lynds, don’t do this.”

  “I can’t help it!” she confessed. “I don’t know how to get on that plane.”

  His hands on hers tightened and her fists were plucked away. “Go,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Just turn. Walk away. Don’t look back. I won’t be here, anyway. Hell, I’ve got things to do. I should have been doing them for the last two hours except I had to make sure you didn’t get mugged on the way to the airport like some hick tourist.”

  Even as he said it, she knew he was lying. Knew he was helping her leave.

  “Thanks,” she whispered. She picked up her cabin bag and walked swiftly toward the gate. And she didn’t look back but not because he’d told her not to. It was because she didn’t want him to see her tears.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Spring was threatening when Lindsay went for her first ultrasound scan. Both the spring and the scan acted like a cattle prod, pushing her out of the nice, comfortable bolt-hole she had been hiding in since her return from New York.

  Like the lingering winter, she had been sluggishly pretending she was getting her life organized for the last few weeks.

  In truth, she had been hibernating. It was too much to have to think about the future when her alternatives seemed to be so few and so bleak.

  She had never been a big spender and consequently had a good financial cushion to tide her over. An immediate financial crisis might have got her moving and the lack of it helped make it easier to procrastinate each day over the tasks she must undertake to get herself organized for the future.

  Each day she put it off, the easier it became the next day to do it again.

  Except the baby in her was an alarm clock that could not be ignored. Her timeline was not open-ended at all. By the time this baby was born she knew she had to have her life settled so that she was ready to cope with the demands of motherhood. Alone.

  But it was easier to let it all slide for now. Fall next year seemed to be so far away that she could convince herself there was plenty of time to get things done.

  When she entered the examination room, her biggest concern was the pressure from her bloated bladder.

  Her first dose of cold reality was when the technician helped her onto the table. “Hi. I’m Gillian. The baby’s father won’t be coming to watch?”

  “Er…no.”

  Gillian cocked her head to one side. “That’s a shame,” she said breezily. “The first scan is always so exciting. I’ll videotape it for him, then, okay?”

  “Oh…uh…sure.” She could feel her cheeks starting to warm. It was the first time she had been confronted with the fact of her single-parenthood and the natural assumptions that people would make about her and she hadn’t really rehearsed the words to explain it all.

  Gillian pushed a videotape into the maw of a bank of high-tech equipment and settled onto a stool. She smeared a gel onto the
handpiece and slid Lindsay’s gown back to reveal her belly.

  “Did you drink plenty of water?” she asked.

  “Six cups, as they said.”

  “Good. Then things should show up nicely.” Gillian pressed the handpiece into her flesh just above the pubic bone and quickly made a few adjustments on the console, before nodding happily. “There we go.”

  She moved the handpiece around a few more times, pausing here and there to study the monitor in front of her. And a couple more times she nodded, as if she was pleased.

  “Let me just measure the cranium here.” She punched buttons. “I calculate you’re about ten weeks into the pregnancy. Does that sound right to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve got a nice, healthy baby growing there, Ms Eden. Everything looks good.” She swiveled a monitor around so Lindsay could see the screen and the grainy black and white triangular image. “There’s your baby.”

  “Really?” Lindsay couldn’t make head or tail of the mass of snow.

  Gillian pointed to a vaguely solid line, a thin moon shape. “That’s the head there, see?”

  “Sort of…” Lindsay offered doubtfully.

  Gillian smiled. “I work with this stuff all day. It’s as plain as print to me. But hang on…” She moved the handpiece around again, small adjustments, until she froze.

  “There,” she said, tapping the screen. Where she tapped was a cloudy patch that seemed to pulse frenetically. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”

  “No! Already?”

  “Oh yes—there’s a heartbeat from a very early stage. That’s life you’re looking at.”

  Lindsay lay back, as thick, heavy shock settled into her bones. My child. Abruptly the nebulous concept of a baby somewhere in her future coalesced into a concrete, undeniable reality. Her child lived. It was here already. And she could not put off its future any longer.

  “Do you want to know the sex of your baby?” Gillian asked softly.

  “Can you tell that?” Her voice was husky and she could feel tears pressing at her eyes.

  “Not always but this time, yes, I can definitely tell.” Gillian smiled, with a twinkle in her eyes and waited for her decision.

  “Tell me.”

  Her smile broadened. “You’d better stock up on blue, honey.”

  “It’s a boy?”

  “Absolutely.”

  A son. Luke’s son.

  And suddenly, she began to cry in weak, breathless little hiccups that hurt and made her cry more.

  All her high-minded principals, all the agonizing and decision making she had been putting off, all melted away beneath the tangible reality of a child.

  “Oh, hey! Ooops…where’s the box?” Gillian exclaimed, reaching for a tissue box sitting on top of the equipment. She handed Lindsay a few tissues and patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, honey, you go ahead and cry. You’re not the first one to turn on the waterworks in here, by a long shot.”

  “I’m sorry…” Lindsay managed to blubber.

  “Pshh! Like your hormones aren’t already messed-up big time by the baby, anyway. You ain’t got much choice over what’s going to upset you and what isn’t for the next little while.”

  “I wish—I wish Luke could see this.”

  Gillian grinned. “Oh…all those big men—they’re even worse than the moms, let me tell you. I’ve seen ’em break down and sob.” She started punching keys furiously. “Tell you what—I’m going to put an annotation on the screen.”

  “For what?”

  “So your Luke can see it for himself. I’m going to put a great big arrow to the heartbeat and add a note. See?” And on the monitor, a white arrow did appear and HEARTBEAT floated next to it.

  “That’s on the videotape?” Lindsay asked.

  “Everything that shows up on this monitor is. Even the head I showed you. You’ll have to show him that one, though, okay? I can’t back up the tape on this.”

  Lindsay mopped at her face but tears were still oozing from her eyes and the tight constriction in her chest and squeezing her throat told her she wasn’t finished yet.

  Gillian removed the handpiece and wiped away the excess gel from Lindsay’s stomach and lowered the gown. “And now, I know, you’re dying to go to the washroom.”

  “Yes!”

  Gillian pointed and Lindsay hopped off the table and raced for the indicated door. When she returned to the examination room, Gillian held out the video cassette. “They’re going to charge you an extra twenty dollars for the tape, okay? Just letting you know so you don’t get a shock when you get the bill.”

  Twenty dollars? For a blank tape? It was an outrageous price but Lindsay would cheerfully have paid double.

  * * * * *

  She found a bench beneath a bare tree, out in the grounds of the hospital. She sat in the weak sunshine, hugging the videotape and occasionally wiping at her eyes.

  Just like the almost-spring day, she was waking up. And her perspective was a new one.

  All the lethargic thoughts that had been plaguing her for weeks, begging for an answer, came back now in a rush and the answers supplied themselves readily. Easily.

  After twenty minutes, she rose and walked back to her car, to drive home. But she detoured downtown and stopped off at the tiny film production company that made its living from supplying footage of mountains and snow to other productions in the east and in California. There, she paid another exorbitant fee to have the tape copied.

  The copy she slipped into a padded mailer, along with a note she wrote on some old Derwent notepaper she found at the bottom of her bag.

  Freud sucks. Logic doesn’t count. This is reality. L.

  And, after a moment of chewing her lip and hesitating, she added at the bottom, I’ve finally figured it out.

  Quickly, before she could change her mind, she stuffed the note into the mailer, sealed it and took it to the postal counter to get it weighed and posted.

  The address she wrote on the front she had memorized weeks ago.

  * * * * *

  After that, her days seemed brighter and her energy and enthusiasm came back in a rush, although she found she was physically tired more often than usual.

  She began looking for work, even though she cheerfully accepted that no one was likely to hire her until she’d had the baby and her child-care arrangements were in place. Besides, in a little tourist town like Deerfoot Falls, there wasn’t much call for a masters degree in spatial mathematics—a fact that amused both her and her father.

  She also started building a list of necessities for the arrival of the baby and a second list of arrangements she would have to make for the birth and after.

  Most of her spare time she spent working in her father’s workshop and these were some of her most peaceful hours. With the world left at the top of the stairs, she worked free of care and troublesome thoughts.

  The peace lasted for a week.

  Edward had been expecting a friend and fellow woodworker to drop in for coffee and a long ambling discussion about their shared passion. Lindsay answered the door, expecting to find George Waschuk and fell back a step in confusion when the door revealed Luke instead.

  “Hi,” he said, simply.

  Her heart gave one enormous, hurtful beat, then returned to a fast, furious patter.

  Hungrily, she studied him. He was in jeans and a polo-neck sweater. Black, of course, which emphasized the dark eyes and brows. The solid shoulders, built up from constant hard labor on his houses and which his suits always seemed to disguise, were agreeably outlined by the sweater. The jeans were worn and snug around his hips.

  She found her gaze lifting to his mouth. She ached to be kissed. She missed his caresses, the marvelous sensations he could provoke in her, the feel of his body against hers. But above all, she missed his kisses.

  When he kissed her, it was the hidden Luke who kissed her. There was a fundamental honesty and directness in his kisses that made her yearn for more.

&
nbsp; She recalled, fleetingly, the last time she had dared to kiss him. The low, deeply felt “damn you” he had uttered.

  All that had happened an eon ago.

  She realized Luke was watching her, puzzled. She had been standing and staring at him wordlessly.

  She shook her head, to bring her attention back to the moment and Luke’s brow lifted enquiringly.

  She spoke the thought closest to the surface. “It’s too soon.”

  “It’s been eight weeks,” he said mildly, although she thought she could see confusion in his expression. “Way past time, for most people.”

  “You got the tape.”

  “Tape?” He shook his head, his confusion more than apparent, now.

  He hadn’t seen the tape. Then what was he doing here? And the realization made her mouth open a little in shocked wonder.

  He was here for his own reasons.

  Her heart, which had begun to slow and steady, suddenly leaped again. Raw, undiluted hope shot through her and she began to tremble.

  He pushed a hand through his hair—a mannerism whose familiarity made her breath catch. He was unsure of himself.

  “You know,” he drawled, “most people would invite a visitor in on a raw day like this, boss.”

  She blinked furiously at the sting of tears in her eyes.

  Don’t lose it, she warned herself.

  “You’re here for tea?” she said, fighting for a casual, flippant tone and managing it. Just.

  “Hell, no, I just stopped by to change the flat tire on my camel and water my petunias.” He took a deep breath. “Please, Lynds.” It was a softly spoken plea.

  She stepped aside and motioned him in.

  In the lounge, he stopped in the middle of the floor, looking around.

  “It looks bare or something,” he said.

  “The last time you saw it, there was a huge great Christmas tree in the corner,” she pointed out.

  He nodded slowly. “That’s how I remember this place. From Christmas.”

  She reached for the normal to cover her nervousness. “Do you want tea?” she asked. “Or coffee?”

  He ran his hand through his hair again. “No. Thanks. The way I’m feeling, I’d spill it or something.”