Catching Lucas Riley

by Lauren Winder Farnsworth

  “Hey,” she said, catching him by the arm before he headed for his car. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” he said noncommittally, pushing a hand through his blond hair.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. She purposely kept her voice soft and nonaggressive, knowing he wouldn’t respond well to her usual form of address. “Why are you willing to expend so much time and effort to help me? I’ve never really gotten the feeling that you liked me all that much, so I’m confused as to why you would do this for me, without making any kind of demand.”

  “I thought I told you that I had my reasons,” Sealey said, but his voice wasn’t harsh or irritated. He sounded more uncertain than anything.

  “You did, but I thought that just meant you were going to wait to go in for the kill,” she responded. “Like you wanted me to get in so deep I couldn’t get out before you revealed what you wanted from me.”

  Sealey whistled. “You really don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you, Foamer?” he said, one eyebrow cocked.

  “I just hear a lot of frankly brutal things about you,” Alex responded. “It seems like you typically play hardball. You haven’t been fully conforming to that stereotype thus far, and it’s making me nervous.”

  Sealey sighed. “Well, we wouldn’t want that,” he said, with an edge of sarcasm. “Have a seat.” He gestured to the steps in front of the apartment building.

  Surprised at his capitulation, Alex sat down on the cement steps, leaning back on her hands. She tried to keep her anticipation hidden, afraid that if he noticed it, he’d take back his willingness to be so forthcoming. She let her head fall back, long auburn hair sliding from her shoulders down to tickle her arms. The night air was cool and pleasant, smelling like summer nights always do.

  “You’re probably not aware,” Sealey began as he sat next to her, “that Luke is currently writing a missionary.”

  Alex sat up straight, feeling suddenly winded. No, she had not known that. She’d been encouraged by the fact that Lucas so rarely distinguished a particular girl above the rest, but now that she knew why, she felt the encouragement evaporate. “He is?” she almost wailed. “Who is she?”

  “Her name is Olivia,” Sealey responded. “They’ve been friends since they were kids.”

  “Is it serious?” Alex asked, really afraid to hear the answer.

  “He’s more serious about her than I’ve ever seen him about anyone else,” Sealey replied. “But that’s not to say his feelings can’t change.”

  “So . . . why do you seem to want them to?” Alex pressed, noticing the furrow between Sealey’s eyebrows.

  “I don’t . . . necessarily,” Sealey hedged. He glanced at her face and sighed. “Look, Olivia is . . . well, she’s beautiful. And I mean really beautiful. And she’s smart and funny and . . . well . . .”

  Alex squinted at Sealey, trying to figure out if he was purposely torturing her or something. But then suddenly everything slid into place in her head. “Oh my gosh!” she cried. “You want her! You’re trying to distract Lucas from Olivia so that when she comes home, he’ll no longer be interested and you can be there to pick up the pieces!”

  Sealey winced. “Well, that makes it sound so much worse than it really is.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s every bit as bad as it sounds,” Alex emphasized. “You’re seriously trying to steal your best friend’s girl?”

  Sealey looked at her. “Yes,” he said straightforwardly.

  “Wow . . . ,” Alex muttered. “You know what I said earlier? I take it back. You are every bit as hardball as I’ve heard.”

  Sealey looked at her steadily, his face stony. “I’ll see you later, Foamer.” Without another word, he got to his feet and walked away.

  ALEX SMILED AS she walked out of the hospital room of her last new mom for the day. While she considered herself more of a “grown-up person” than a “kid person,” she loved being surrounded by the warm fluffiness that was the hospital maternity ward. You know, as long as all the new babies weren’t screaming at once.

  Alex, as one of the on-call dietitians for the maternity ward, was happy to consult with new moms on the best diet for themselves and for their babies once they left the hospital, but mostly, she acted as a certified lactation educator. She always found it somewhat ironic that she was expected to be an expert in something she had never actually experienced for herself, but the moms she consulted with didn’t seem to mind. In fact, they were usually relieved and grateful every time she walked into their rooms, especially the first-time moms. Alex also kept office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that these new moms could come in for help and advice once they’d returned home with their soft, cooing (or sometimes shrieking) new additions.

  As Alex headed for her office to pick up her purse, she felt the pocket of her scrubs vibrate for what seemed like the twelfth time that day. She typically didn’t carry her phone around with her on her rounds, but Sealey had forbidden her to so much as put it down. This afternoon was to be her first “drive by” with Lucas, and he wanted to be able to check in with her regularly as nuggets of wisdom and direction occurred to him. Sure enough, as Alex pulled the quivering device from her pocket, she saw that she’d received four text messages in the past twenty minutes. She was sure all of them were from Sealey.

  “Man alive . . . ,” she muttered as she swiped at the text message icon on the screen. Rolling her eyes, she began to read.

  Change of plans. Luke just called, and the location is changing from Smith’s Food and Drug to Lee’s Marketplace. He’s picky about his produce. For that reason, your rendezvous point is the strawberries—those are his favorite.

  Alex shook her head in disbelief. What was she supposed to do, just stand there until he showed up? Or was she going to be bobbing in and out of aisles attempting to look busy until she caught sight of him, and then make a beeline for the fruit? She ground her teeth as she read the next message.

  Don’t doll yourself up too much. Remember you’re supposed to be grocery shopping, not cat-walking down a runway.

  Alex rolled her eyes again as she moved on to the next message. No worries there. She was planning on heading straight to the grocery store from the hospital. But a little mascara touch-up never went awry . . .

  Don’t hover. Just make sure you’re within sight of the strawberries so you don’t miss him when he gets there. Then drift over casually when you see him. Subtlety, Foamer. Subtlety.

  Ah, well. That at least answered her first point of concern.

  Don’t talk to him unless he talks to you. I mean it.

  Huffing as she pushed her phone back into her pocket, she pushed her office door open just long enough to grab her purse from the drawer and slip back out. Locking the door behind her, she headed for the exit. Now that she had an established plan, she felt a little better about this first encounter with Lucas. Squaring her shoulders, she felt a confident smile bloom across her face. She could do this.

  Alex wondered how long she could conceivably be studying a cantaloupe for ripeness before she started to alarm the other customers. When she felt she had considered that fruit for too long, she moved on to the watermelon. Then the grapes. By the time she made it to the apples, she was getting desperate. She’d been haunting the produce section for a full twenty minutes and her basket was empty. The produce associate was eying her warily. Where was Lucas? Was she too late? Had she missed him?

  Just as she was about to head for the nearest aisle, just to escape the awkwardness around her, she saw him. He had a grocery basket in his hand, containing only a bag of potato chips and a Gatorade. Alex froze next to the lemons and immediately began examining them, her eyes flicking back and forth between the bright yellow peels and the Adonis headed her way. Lucas shuffled past the grapefruits and headed straight for the strawberries, just as Sealey said he would. Alex began her slow, meandering journey, aiming to intersect her path with his.

  The problem was, Lucas wasn’t waiti
ng for her. With no hesitation whatsoever, Lucas grabbed the nearest carton of strawberries, deposited it into his basket, and moved immediately toward the dairy section.

  No! Alex thought, panicked. I thought Sealey said he was picky about his produce! Determined to bag her prey, she began speed-walking after him. The next thing she knew, the world tilted and she found herself on her back in a sea of canned tuna. Cans were rolling in every direction as the display she had disrupted continued to collapse. The racket was spectacular. Cans of fish fell from several feet all around her, and Alex raised her arms defensively over her head. Sure she was about to meet her death by seafood, she marveled at the complete lack of poetic justice.

  “Are you okay?”

  The familiar voice was the very last thing she wanted to hear at this particular moment. She tried not to meet his vivid green gaze as she answered through clenched teeth, “I think so, but you may not want to get too close. I don’t think the carnage is over yet.”

  She looked up at the teetering tower of tuna, imagining how fond Lucas would be of her after receiving a concussion by way of canned fish. At least it’s the good kind, Alex thought weakly. If he has to die with me, at least we’ll be victims of name brand merchandise.

  Unexpectedly, she heard a chuckle. She glanced up at him, wondering how on earth he could laugh in the face of death. And then she stopped. Every mental faculty froze in the face of such magnificence. She stared into his green eyes, entranced, as he attempted to pull her to her feet. Finally yanking her thoughts back to the present situation, she managed to get her legs under her, relieved to realize that the leaning tower of tuna appeared to finally be stationary.

  “Oh no,” she groaned, taking in the mess on the grocery store floor. “Do you think they’ll make me pay for all of this?”

  “I doubt it,” Lucas said, smiling at her. “Nothing’s broken. Most of the cans don’t even look damaged. Come on, I’ll help you put them back.”

  “Oh, you really don’t have to do that,” she protested. “It was my own fault. You shouldn’t have to suffer.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” he said, smiling at her as he squatted to begin gathering cans. He glanced at her curiously a few times before opening his mouth again. “You look really familiar to me. Do we have a class together?”

  “Oh,” Alex murmured, half mortified and half relieved that he didn’t remember her. “No, actually. We’re in the same ward. My name is Alex Foamer.”

  “Alex!” Lucas exclaimed, dropping a can as he stretched out a hand to lay it softly on her arm. “Oh my gosh, I’m so embarrassed I didn’t recognize my own date auction savior!” He squeezed her arm as he grinned openly at her.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” Alex replied, trying desperately to sound offhand but unable to keep the breathlessness from her voice. Criminy, he was so beautiful. She wrenched her attention away from his face back to the mess of tuna cans, knowing her thinking would only remain coherent as long as she wasn’t looking at him.

  “I’m really looking forward to our date in a couple of weeks,” he said as he too began picking up more cans of tuna and placing them back on the display. “I always enjoy getting to know someone new.”

  “Me too,” Alex replied, still not looking at him.

  She was pushing the tuna cans onto the display so fast that her vision was blurred as her eyes followed her hands. This encounter had been an unqualified disaster, and the only thing she could think of was to end it as quickly as possible and hope that the next one turned out better. She wondered how successful she would be at avoiding Sealey when he called to get a report. But that would be pointless. If Sealey couldn’t get a satisfactory report from her, he’d simply use his wiles to get some semblance of a report from Lucas. She sighed as she thought of the scolding she was going to get from her mentor.

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Lucas comforted, putting an arm around her shoulder as they both crouched next to the tuna. “No harm, no foul. I doubt anyone even noticed.”

  Alex smiled quickly at him, allowing him to think her sigh had been an indication of her embarrassment. She stacked the last can of tuna on the display as Lucas went to retrieve the ones that had rolled far and wide. She watched him, feeling her mouth pull into a smile. He caught her look and smiled back as he headed toward her, his arms full of the small cans.

  “There we go!” he said, placing the cans on the display and wiping his hands on his cargo shorts. “Calamity officially nullified.”

  “Thanks, Lucas,” Alex said sincerely to him. “I appreciate the help. I think we’re probably even now. We’ve traded public humiliation for public humiliation.”

  “Not even close,” Lucas insisted. “I’d have to save you from several hundred tuna collisions before we reached that point.”

  Alex winced. “Don’t jinx me,” she choked. Lucas laughed and picked up her grocery basket for her.

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling at her. He looked down into her empty basket. “Do you need to pick up a few things before you head out? I’m happy to walk with you.”

  Alex blushed, remembering why she was at the grocery store in the first place. “You know, I don’t even remember what I was here for,” she said, blushing deeper.

  “Guess I don’t blame you.” Lucas laughed. “Come on, let me buy my stuff real quick and then I’ll walk you out.”

  Alex stood awkwardly silent next to Lucas as he paid for his purchases. He smiled at her occasionally as he chatted in a friendly way with the cashier, who appeared to be someone he knew. Alex felt like an imposter, knowing she was there by design. For the hundredth time, she wondered what had possessed her to engage in this subterfuge. But as Lucas grabbed his grocery bag, reached back, and pulled her with him toward the door, she suddenly remembered.

  I’d knock over a grocery display every day for a lifetime if I got to have him help me pick it up, Alex gushed in her head, following the adorable brown curls out into the summer heat.

  Alex walked dreamily into her apartment, reliving the feeling of Lucas’s hand on hers as he led her out into the sunshine of the grocery store parking lot. He’d smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners, as he’d chatted merrily with her, although she honestly had no idea what he’d said. She was too focused on those green eyes. Sea foam. That’s what they were. She sighed sappily.

  “What’s up with you?” Jaclyn asked from the couch as Alex sauntered by, her head cocked dreamily to one side.

  “Oh.” Alex straightened suddenly, realizing she was on public display. All of her roommates sat in the living room, watching a recorded episode of The Bachelorette. “Nothing. Just a good day.”

  “Uh-huh . . . ,” Sage said, looking unconvinced. “A look like that can only mean one thing. Your meeting with Lucas went well.”

  “Well, actually, no, it didn’t,” Alex said, sinking down onto the floor and crossing her legs in front of her. “It was lousy and humiliating, but he was . . . just . . . ,” she trailed off, and she could feel her eyes going all dreamy again.

  “I hope you did something other than just stare at him with that look on your face,” Kacey said straightforwardly. “If not, I doubt you made the impression you were hoping for.”

  “No, I was coherent,” Alex defended. “Well, mostly.”

  “Hey, I don’t blame you,” Meredith said, coming to her rescue. “It’s hard to keep your thoughts lucid with those eyes fixed on you. You could just drown in them.” Her voice began to get a bit dreamy too.

  Kacey rolled her eyes. Alex was starting to think that Kacey probably had the most success with men of all her roommates mostly because she seemed to be thoroughly unimpressed by them. Kacey was the kind of girl Sealey would need to find if he ever wanted to get married. She couldn’t imagine a girl being brave enough to take that on.

  Speaking of Sealey . . .

  Alex groaned when she felt her phone vibrate in her scrubs pocket. Again. She seriously considered ignoring it, but she knew that if she didn’t pick up
, he’d just show up on her doorstep in person. Scowling at her phone, she reluctantly hit the “Answer” button.

  “You were supposed to call me,” Sealey’s flat voice echoed in Alex’s ear.

  “I just barely walked in the door,” she replied. “Besides, I don’t remember making that arrangement.” She attempted to keep her voice light, hoping it would help keep the fear she felt from becoming too apparent. Had Sealey already talked to Lucas? Did he know about her failure?

  “It was implied,” Sealey informed her. “How am I supposed to help if you don’t report back to me? So. Report.”

  Alex suppressed a groan with effort. “I’m pretty sure you really don’t want me to,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Oh, I definitely do,” he answered smoothly. “Especially since I have the impression you made a complete fool out of yourself, therefore invalidating the purpose behind the entire exercise.”

  “Well, as you appear to already know the story, I don’t see the good in rehashing it.”

  “Lucas is not known for his storytelling prowess,” Sealey pressed. “All he told me was that he ran into Alex Foamer at the grocery store and had to save her from tuna fish. What did you do, fall into the fresh fish display case?”

  “No,” Alex said defensively. At least it hadn’t been that bad. She’d escaped any kind of olfactory disaster. She doubted Lucas would have been as eager to walk her to her car if she’d smelled like raw fish. “It was canned.”

  “Oh . . . perfect.” Sealey sounded like he was talking through clenched teeth.

  “Hey, it wasn’t entirely my fault,” Alex protested. “I was insufficiently prepared . . . yet again. You told me that Lucas liked to take time over his produce purchases. He didn’t give me enough time to approach him at the strawberries before taking off. I ended up having to chase him! So . . . get off me.”

  “Seriously, Foamer?” Sealey sounded incredulous. “You ran after him? It didn’t occur to you to just casually follow and intercept him in the next aisle?”