The full-throated howls of six Irish wolfhounds rattled the walls of the stone room. Miranda, a wine goblet in each hand, grabbed Lucas’s arm. He grinned at her. Rather than making her shrink away in embarrassment, his smile encouraged her to hold him a bit tighter.
“Are you afraid of dogs, Miranda?”
“Dogs, no. Ponies with fangs take some getting used to.”
Lucas steered her through a sea of tall dog. He removed the bar from a second heavy door and swung it open. Reg and his family bolted onto a gravelly stretch of moonlit beach and Lucas and Miranda followed slowly behind.
The view stole Miranda’s heart. The dark, orange-pearl moon was partially shrouded by a thin layer of broken clouds and seemed to sit directly before them on the dark sand. The dogs ran at the moon, and Miranda had no doubt that they were capable of dragging it home for their adoring master.
“Did you plan this, too?” she asked.
“What? Walking the dogs?”
“This night. The way the moon scatters its light upon the black waves. The way the breeze holds just enough warmth to feel like a kiss on my skin.”
Lucas gazed at her in awe.
“What…,” she said self-consciously. “Do I still have mustard on my face?”
“You have a poet’s eye, Miranda,” he said. She blushed yet again, and this one, by moonlight, made Lucas take one of her wine glasses so that he could hold her hand. “Your words paint beautiful pictures.”
“It’s easy, when beauty is right in front of you.” And it was. It was in the ocean blue of his eyes and the sultry curves of his lips. It was in the shape and strength of his hand as he offered it to her, to help her over a particularly rocky part of the beach.
“How is it that you decided to become a sportswriter?” he asked.
“My dad used to play baseball, so I grew up with sports, and I like the newspaper business. Women are becoming so dominant in the sporting world, on the field and off. Women’s gymnastics and figure skating have always been popular, and female tennis and softball players galvanized their sports. But now we have women’s professional basketball, we had soccer and now we’re dabbling with football. Of course, the Herald-Star doesn’t give women’s sports the space they deserve, but I’m working on changing that.”
“What sports do you like most?” Lucas stopped at a large outcropping of rock overlooking the sea. He leaped onto it, and took Miranda’s hand to help her up.
“To play or to cover?”
“Both,” he said as they sat.
“I like covering baseball and women’s college basketball. I like playing basketball and tennis, when I can make the time. I was pretty good at volleyball and softball when I was in school.”
“I played football—soccer, to you—and rugby in school.” He poured the wine and handed a glass to Miranda. “I was quite good, actually.”
“Hey, soccer is football to me, too. To half of me, at least. My mother is from Brazil. We used to go there in the summers when my dad retired and started scouting for the major leagues. I follow the Brazilian national team—”
“Canarinho!” Lucas declared. “‘Little canary.’”
“That’s right,” Miranda said. “Because of the yellow jerseys they wear for home games.”
“There’s a saying about football and Brazilians,” Lucas started. “‘The English invented it, and…”
“…the Brazilians perfected it,” Miranda finished. “No truer words were ever spoken.”
“So you’re a staunch supporter of Team Brazil?”
Miranda took a sip of her wine and nodded. “I like a few of the African teams, too. Cameroon’s been so innovative in the past few years, and Ghana’s coming up, too. I love watching soccer matches. Soccer players have the best ass—” She caught herself mid-syllable and finished with, “accents.”
Lucas took off his sweater and folded it. He invited Miranda to use it as a cushion, which she accepted, once she could think straight. I must be drinking this wine too fast, she thought after watching him take off his sweater had made her jaw drop. It’s not like he was topless, she told herself. But just thinking of that image set her cheeks on fire. As he sat in his white T-shirt with the night breeze playing in his hair, Miranda knew that she had to get a hold of herself, and fast. “Did you always want to be a singer?”
“Actually, I tossed about the notion of being an architect. I was keen on building things when I was in school. Music was always a hobby I happened to do well at. Then came our first single, and the hobby became a career.” He gazed out upon the waves and watched them break against the shore. “I have the best job in the world. I get paid an obscene amount of money to do what I like. Few people have that luxury.”
“You seem as though you have regrets.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Miranda studied his profile, and thought she saw a hint of sadness in his face. “I shouldn’t,” he said. “I’ve been incredibly lucky with my music for twenty-two years. My band mates are my best friends. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever know what to do with. I’ve got nothing to complain about, but…”
“But?” she encouraged, sitting closer to him to offer what comfort she could.
He turned and looked at her, and his gaze sent a blazing current of longing directly to her heart. “It’s a lonely life.”
“Millions of people all over the world adore you. You live in a castle with a staff of what, about two hundred? All you have to do is snap your fingers and you’d have an instant party.”
“Do you really think it’s that easy for me?”
“Yep.”
“You’re right. It is. But do you think that’s what I really want?”
She dropped her eyes to the tiny bubbles exploding to the surface in her wine glass. “I don’t know you well enough to know what you want.”
He hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. He held her gaze long enough for her to consider the possibility that what he wanted was the same thing she wanted: honest companionship. “I’d like to change that. I’d like to know you better as well.”
She shrank away from him. “Mr. Fletcher—”
“Lucas. Please. Mr. Fletcher is my father.”
Miranda clapped a hand to her forehead. “This is very strange.”
He looked surprised. “I was enjoying the sheer normalcy of this. I’m sitting on a moon-drenched beach having a lovely conversation with a smart, fascinating woman. The only thing strange about the evening is that you actually accepted my invitation.”
“I didn’t really have a choice,” she admitted. “My publisher made it clear that my job depended on going through with this date.”
“I’m sorry, Miranda. That wasn’t my intention.”
“It isn’t your fault. It’s the way Rex Wrentham operates.”
Lucas swirled his wine in his glass. “Is that the only reason you came here? Because of your boss?”
She took a breath and opened her mouth to answer, but she was distracted by laughter from farther along the beach. Miranda saw a couple playfully chasing each other along the shoreline. “I assumed this was a private beach,” she said. “Or that your dogs would have eaten any other visitors.”
“This is a private beach.” Lucas grinned and shook his head as the couple neared. “Even so, the whole town is welcome to it.”
“Do you know those people?”
“The tall one is my father. The short one in the skirt is my mum.” He stood to greet his parents. Miranda followed suit.
“We didn’t know you were out, Luke, or we’d ’ave carried about down coast a bit,” said Mrs. Fletcher.
Miranda scarcely understood a word through the woman’s heavy Welsh accent.
“It’s all right, mum,” Lucas said. “We were just enjoying the view. Mum, Da, I’d like to introduce you to Miss Miranda Penney.”
“How do you do?” Miranda said.
Mrs. Fletcher reached up and took Miranda’s hand in both of hers. “Aren’t
you the most darling thing? Very pleased to meet you. I hope you’re enjoying your visit to Conwy.”
Miranda nodded, having understood only the gist of what Mrs. Fletcher said.
“Me son tells me you’re a writer, for sports,” Mr. Fletcher said as he shook Miranda’s hand.
“Yes, sir, I am,” she said, relieved to understand him. Like Lucas’s, his accent was softer and sounded more English than Welsh. He was heavier than his son and his hair was streaked with silver, but his resemblance to Lucas was uncanny. Miranda enjoyed the preview of what Lucas would look like in another few decades.
“What can you tell me about the Yankees pitching this season? Will it carry ’em to another World Series?”
“Ignore him, Miss Penney.” Mrs. Fletcher took her husband’s arm and dragged him back a step. “We spent a summer in New York City, and he’s been addicted to American baseball since.”
“The Yankees, my darling rib, not just American baseball,” Mr. Fletcher clarified. “Year after year, the Yanks are far and above the best baseball organization the world has ever seen. From Joe DiMaggio on down to Derek Jeter, who by the way is the shortstop by which all others should be measured— ”
“As a Boston sportswriter, I’m afraid I have to stick up for the Red Sox,” Miranda said with a smile. “No team shows more heart than the Sox.”
Mr. Fletcher’s eyes twinkled so much like his son’s. “Aye, that might be an argument worth having. But—”
“Miranda, it was a pleasure,” Mrs. Fletcher broke in, “but it’s time I got this crusty old codger home and to bed before he starts reciting Roger Maris’s home run record.”
“Home and to bed.” Mr. Fletcher bounced his heavy eyebrows. “That’s exactly the plan I had for you, love.”
“Cheeky rascal!” Mrs. Fletcher swatted at her husband, who trotted out of her reach, luring her into a chase down the beach.
“Sorry about that.” Chuckling, Lucas resumed his seat and guided Miranda down beside him. “They don’t seem to know that they’re not teenagers any more.”
Miranda watched the Fletchers scurry along the shoreline. Mrs. Fletcher caught her husband, and they held hands, moving shoulder to shoulder before pausing for a long kiss. “How long have they been married?”
“Forever. That summer they spent in New York City was their honeymoon trip to the U.S.”
“They seem very happy. And very much in love.”
“They are.”
“My parents have been married for thirty-two years.” Miranda leaned back on her hands and crossed her legs at the ankle. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them look at each other the way your parents do. I’ve never even seen them hold hands.”
“People have different ways of expressing their love for one another.”
“My parents don’t love each other.”
He spun to face her. She stared unblinking at the sea with tendrils of her hair dancing on the breeze. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he said.
“Don’t be.” She folded her legs beneath her and struck sand from her hands. “They’ve learned to live with it. I guess I have, too. I know that they care for each other, in their own ways. My father plagues my mother with gifts. Flowers, jewelry, expensive vacations…It’s generosity built on guilt. I give him credit for always working hard and providing well for us. My mother was a stay-at-home wife and mother, the ultimate Latina June Cleaver.”
“What went wrong?”
She sighed. “I suppose things were never completely right, from the start. When I was first hired at the Herald-Star, I was sent to Baltimore to cover a Red Sox-Orioles game, and I was so excited. Camden Yards is a fantastic ballpark, the people in Baltimore are wonderful, and I was on an expense account on my first road assignment. I was the third man, so to speak, and the two other reporters decided that we should have dinner before the game. I got outvoted and we ended up at Hooters at the Inner Harbor, which is right near the ballpark.”
Lucas spun a bit to face Miranda, who resolutely kept her gaze on the churning ocean as she recounted one of her most painful memories.
“We’d just been served our chicken wings when I saw this tall, handsome black man walk in with a red-headed woman. He was kissing and groping her and carrying on like a senior on prom night. The thing is, I probably wouldn’t have given them a second glance if the man had not been my father. The woman was definitely not my mother,” she laughed bitterly. “I went to him and he looked properly surprised, but then he acted like being with another woman wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Later, I found out that it wasn’t.”
She quieted, and she appreciated Lucas’s silence. She spent a moment wondering if it was the soft music of the tumbling sea or Lucas’s presence beside her that dulled the pain she usually endured whenever she recalled the moment she caught her father cheating on her mother.
She stared at her hands in her lap as she said, “I didn’t know what to do. I thought maybe he was having some kind of late mid-life crisis thing. For two weeks I agonized over whether I should tell my mother. I didn’t want to betray my father, but I also didn’t want my mother to hear it from someone else, or to be surprised if my father told her that he wanted a divorce.”
“Miranda, you’re trembling.” Lucas took his sweater and draped it around her, carefully moving her hair from the collar. He put an arm around her and hugged her into his side. A hard lump formed in her throat at his unexpected attempt to comfort her. “No one should ever be forced to chose loyalties between parents.”
“I decided to tell her,” Miranda croaked around the lump that refused to budge. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I flew home, sat her down, and told her, but she already knew about the redhead in Baltimore. She knew about another woman in New York City and another one in Atlanta, and all the women that had come before them. By my mother’s reckoning, my dad started cheating on her less than a year after they were married.”
Miranda reluctantly pulled from Lucas’s embrace to face him directly. “I never knew. Through vacations, Father-Daughter dances, charity events, family reunions and funerals, I never knew that my father wasn’t faithful. He never forgot an anniversary or birthday. When I was sixteen, he bought me a used Honda and I thought he was the greatest dad in the world. The only complaint I had about my upbringing was the amount of traveling my father did for his job. I never knew that my family was held together with deceit and selective blindness.”
“Perhaps, in their own ways, your mum and dad have found happiness,” Lucas offered.
A tiny burst of rage flowered and died in Miranda’s chest. “My mother isn’t happy. How can she be, with her husband spreading himself thin with God knows how many other women? She makes me so angry! How can a smart woman be so dumb?”
Miranda’s overly long shirtsleeves covered her hands as she gesticulated wildly before Lucas. “My mother is nothing like me, Lucas.” She slapped a hand to her chest. “She’s so beautiful and poised. When she met my father, she was a twenty-one-year-old college exchange student at the University of Southern California. She went to a baseball game in Anaheim and my dad was playing first base. He saw her in the stands and got the team’s publicist to fix him up with her. They’ve been together ever since.”
In a rush of words and emotion, Miranda further extolled her mother’s virtues. “She speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese, and she has a degree in public health. And she’s gorgeous, Lucas. She’s negro branca, a Brazilian of African descent with very, very light skin. But she isn’t enough for my father.”
Miranda didn’t realize she was clenching her fists until Lucas gently pried her fingers apart. “My mother thinks everything’s okay as long as he always comes back to her, as long as he’s a good provider and a good father. It wasn’t okay.” Her voice broke on a sob she managed to swallow back. “It’s not okay.”
Lucas embraced her and she hid her face in his shoulder. “This has been bottled in you for a long time, hasn’t it?”
She laid her head on his shoulder, thankful for the solid, secure support. “I’ve never spoken to anyone about it, other than that one time with my mother.”
“Why did you tell me?”
She looked at him, her face kissing distance from his. “Because of your parents. I want what they have.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone to love me truly, for always.”
I’m halfway there, Lucas thought as he traced her jawline with the tip of his left index finger. Although she tried, Miranda couldn’t suppress the thrilling shiver generated by his touch. “May I kiss you, Miranda?”
His words had already kissed her, his lips were so near hers. She wanted to kiss him, to clap her hand to the back of his head and bring his mouth down upon hers. But she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop at one kiss, not from this man. One kiss would lead to another kiss, and another, and then senseless abandon right there on that big rock.
And then what? Her bags and her Bernie would probably be hastily packed and rushed to the airport for a red-eye back to Boston. In a moment of weakness she had let herself be drawn into Lucas Fletcher’s web. She wouldn’t compound the mistake by kissing him. She sat up and returned his sweater to him. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She began climbing off the rock.
“Why not?” He jumped off the rock and landed next to her in the coarse sand.
“Because the last thing I need is a one-night stand with a rock star.” She started back to the castle. “I’m sorry if I led you on. It was an accident. Honestly.”
“I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t invite you here to take advantage of you in any way. You have my word on that as a gentleman.”
She slowed her pace. “Why did you invite me here, Lucas?”
Because you are someone I could truly love, for always, was the first response that sprang into his head. But he knew that voicing such an irrational thought would send her to Morgan, demanding to be returned to Boston immediately. “Your eyes. That night on the stage, when I looked into your eyes, I felt…right. All the way through.”
Crush Page 6
