The Greatest Risk

by Cara Colter

  Maggie would probably approve of his going out for lunch with his mother.

  I don’t give a flying chicken what Maggie cares about, he thought stubbornly, but he knew his last-minute substitution of the word chicken for his more favored choice, even in the privacy of his own mind, meant that he did.

  “Prelude’s at noon? Tuesday?” His mother’s voice was all sugar and hope.

  “Mom,” he said patiently, “I work. And not in a suit. You don’t want me showing up at Prelude’s at noon on Tuesday, believe me. We’re pouring concrete. It is not pretty. The maître d’ will frown at mud on the carpets, holes in my jeans and my hands.”

  “Your hands?”

  “Concrete eats holes in your hands if you touch it wet.”

  “Then why do you?”

  Another happy phrase from his childhood. Only then it had been, Why do you do this to me?

  Why did he do anything? Why did he drive too fast and leap motorcycles over ravines? Because he was impulsive, that’s why. And impatient. Driven. Because there was a hole in him, and not in his hands, big enough to drive a cement truck through, that he kept trying to fill.

  “You’re back at work?” his mother said when he didn’t answer her other questions.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “But that can’t be good for your back. Darling, it’s way too soon. Let me slip a little money into your account.”

  Let me look after you. Let me be there.

  Was there a nice way to tell her it was too late? No, there wasn’t. Besides, he wasn’t back at work because he needed money. He was back at work because he needed to be busy, to keep his mind off things. According to Brian he wasn’t really succeeding.

  “I don’t need money,” he said, trying for a patient note. “I make good money.” She seemed to have it set in her head that because he got dirty at work and had to use muscle he was just squeaking by in the financial department. Though in terms of his family dynasty, his earning power would be considered small potatoes, but Luke was satisfied.

  Aside from the residential construction business that he owned and operated, he had an eye for houses that needed a bit of work. He fixed them up in his spare time and turned them over for a profit.

  The money kept stacking up in his bank account, much more than a man of his simple needs required. His biggest expense was motorcycle parts. And medical insurance.

  Of course, if there was a picket fence and a swing set in his future, that could change in a heck of a hurry.

  There is no picket fence or swing set in your future, he told himself roughly.

  “There’s no what in your future, dear?”

  “No lunch at Prelude’s,” he said firmly.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice small and hurt.

  “Look, there’s a little pub close to where I’m working. I think it’s called Marcy’s. I could meet you on Wednesday for a quick lunch.”

  “Oh,” she said again, happily this time, as if he’d given her a million-dollar diamond bracelet to match her million-dollar diamond earrings. “I’ll be there.”

  He sighed and looked at the phone. She’d hung up before he had a chance to tell her to leave the diamonds, stiletto heels and Chanel suit at home. But then who was he to tell his mother how to dress? Or anything else, for that matter.

  “Something else to look forward to,” he told Amber glumly as he marked the date on the calendar next to her, which was current. He polished off his soda and crushed the can in his hand.

  Amber liked juvenile displays of masculine strength. He studied Amber’s picture. She was as perfect as ever, wasn’t she?

  But tonight he noticed the black of her eyes was not a true black. Maybe dark brown. In fact, on close inspection, her eyes looked vapid and a little bit vacant. If she ever cried because someone told her a lie about being committed to someone else, she’d look like a mime with her two tons of black mascara running down her face.

  But what was he thinking? Amber wouldn’t cry over something like that. She’d probably clunk him over the head with a beer bottle, which was about what he deserved.

  He continued to study her in a strange new light. Amber’s bottom lip looked a little too puffy; she either bit it repeatedly or had had collagen injected into it. And she was pretty skinny in other places, so it was probably a whole pile of silicone spilling out of that black leather jacket. Her hair was a shade of brassy copper that could only come out of a bottle and her lipstick was way too red.

  He had never looked at Amber with such a critical spirit before. It was with great disappointment that he admitted Amber looked as phony as a three-dollar bill. She probably didn’t even know how to ride that gorgeous bike—exactly the same model as his—that she was leaning over!

  He grabbed the calendar off the wall and slammed it facedown onto his kitchen table. He had a zillion real girls he could call if he wanted company.

  He had a drawer by the phone full of little scraps of paper and business cards and bar napkins with numbers scrawled on them. He went over and pulled open the drawer, pawed through it, trying to attach faces to names. Tiffany. Brittany. Sandy. Gail. Paula. Joan.

  He slammed the drawer back shut.

  Every single one of them suddenly struck him as being as phony as Amber. He wasn’t sure he could tell them apart. Grabbing another soda, he headed out the back door.

  “Sorry, honey,” he called. “Our first fight.”

  Once upon a time it was a great source of amusement to him to talk to Amber. Now it just seemed silly. Pathetic.

  He went across his backyard, which indeed needed mowing since he had been in hospital for a couple of weeks, to his detached shop, a big barn of a building perfect for working on all sorts of motorized machines, and for storing all those collectibles that went with motorized machines, like nuts and bolts and spare seats, extra windshields, chrome pipes and parts.

  He unlocked the shop door and turned on the light. He took a deep breath of the air in there. It smelled good, that wonderful old garage smell, kind of dank and musty, with overlays of oil and metal and all things manly.

  His street bike had been hauled here by somebody after the accident, and since he had arrived home, Luke had been finding refuge in here, unbending metal, making lists of parts, sorting through buckets of oily bolts. In a moment, forgetting he had not had anything to eat, he was up to his elbows in thick black grease.

  He even started whistling, but after a while he realized it wasn’t “What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor?”

  At first, he was not even sure what it was. He stopped pulling the wrench, whistled a few bars experimentally and found them sad and haunting and ultimately hopeful.

  “Love on a Summer Night.”

  He groaned and, heedless of the grease on his fingers, he went over and turned on his radio, fiddled with the tuning dial until he found a real head-banger special.

  If he listened carefully he could discern the words.

  In effect the singer, if that merciless shouting could be called singing, thought life was not nice, would not get better, that it sucked every single day and then you died. This message was interspersed with enough curse words to make even a hardened construction worker like himself feel faintly uncomfortable.

  Maggie wouldn’t like—

  He stopped himself. The song, after all, summed up the state of his own life rather nicely. But when he tried to hum along, he couldn’t get the tune.

  “Maggie,” Kristen said, “what on earth is wrong with you? That’s the third time in less than an hour that I’ve asked you a question and gotten a blank look. Are you ill?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so. You’re not eating as if you’re ill.”

  Maggie had tried to avoid Kristen for this very reason. Her best friend always saw way too much. But Kristen had a nose for something being wrong, and today she hadn’t taken no for an answer about a lunch date.

  At least Maggie had talked her out of Morgan’s Pub!


  “Thanks for noticing I’m eating well,” Maggie said glumly. If she kept it up, shortly she would no longer fit into that red dress.

  And that was a good thing, wasn’t it? That dress only reminded her of the woman she had thought she could pretend to be. And had failed so miserably to be.

  She had even stopped using the NoWait. What did she care if she turned into a one-ton hippo?

  This morning she had retrieved her camel-colored suit from the bag destined for Goodwill. She’d let it hang beside the shower, and the worst of the wrinkles had come out of it. She had put it on, resigned to who she really was.

  “Maggie! The question? What is wrong with you? If you aren’t ill, what’s the matter?”

  “I’m fine,” Maggie said. “Sorry, I’m just distracted.”

  “Distracted? You look like hell. You’re eating like a horse. You’re body is in this room with me, but your mind is not. Gosh, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say it was a man.”

  Maggie was silent.

  “Oh, God,” Kristen said, “it’s a man.”

  Maggie sighed and took a deep drink of her non-diet soda.

  “What is going on? How can you have a man in your life without me knowing about it?”

  “His name’s Luke,” Maggie said, “Luke August.” The words started to flow out of her like rainwater out of a barrel that had been shot full of holes.

  It felt disgustingly good to be purging herself. In her own ears it sounded ridiculous—that she’d asked a man out on the strength of him running her over in a wheelchair. She sounded like a teenager, hopelessly infatuated with a man she knew nothing about.

  Of course, the extent to which she had known nothing about him had only become shockingly clear to her a few nights ago. She was still dazed by it, by how wrong she had been about him.

  “He had a girlfriend,” she finished her sad tale, licking the last remnants of chocolate drizzle from her cheesecake off her fork. “Live-in. He went out with me, and then, when he was released from the hospital, he went home to her.”

  “No,” Kristen said, incensed. “The snake!”

  “That’s right,” Maggie said with a sad shake of her head. “The snake.”

  Kristen regarded her through narrowed eyes, and then declared, “You still have feelings for him!” The tone was definitely accusatory.

  “Believe me, I’m trying not to.” It was true. Maggie was doing her best to feel righteously angry, betrayed, scorned. Instead she would think of his eyes caressing her, and his lips, and feel a chasm of loneliness open up inside her.

  “Trying is not good enough,” Kristen said. “Tell me he is banished, Maggie. Banished.”

  “Kristen, I just can’t believe I could have read him so wrong.”

  “That is not banished!” Kristen looked at her sadly. “Honey, you seem to have a talent for reading men wrong.”

  Wasn’t that just the understatement of the century? “This was different, Kristen, I felt as if I knew him. As if I had always known him. I trusted him so completely.”

  “Didn’t you feel that way about Darnel?”

  “Kristen, I have never felt this way.” It was true. She had felt safe with Darnel, comfortable. He’d been like a favorite rocking chair, or a warm bath on a chilly evening. Unexciting, but comforting, soothing.

  “Tell me how you feel,” Kristen said.

  “When I was with him I felt as if I had awakened from a long sleep. Life seemed to sizzle with possibilities it had never had before. Kristen, I felt as if I was on fire with life, ready to throw wide my arms and embrace the whole world.”

  It sounded ridiculously poetic when said out loud, and Kristen looked suitably cynical. “You cannot be in love with a snake!” she said, horrified. “There are lots of men out there, for God’s sake. How about Donald Anderson?”

  “Do I know a Donald Anderson?”

  “He’s an ordinary-looking guy who takes the Bold and Beautiful seminar with us. He looks so nice.”

  Maggie was pretty sure she’d seen Donald playing tonsil hockey with someone in Morgan’s. Besides, how did you settle for ordinary after you’d had extraordinary? Being with someone like Luke set a whole new standard.

  “Maggie, you have to be careful of those handsome men. They are just too used to getting their own way. Having women throw themselves at them.”

  “It’s a moot point now. No more handsome men for me. And no more Bold and Beautiful seminars,” she announced. “And I’m not using the NoWait. I’m accepting my lot in life. I’m not trying for the new improved Maggie anymore.”

  “Oh, Maggie.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for me. After Darnel, I’ve had all the pity I can handle for one lifetime. I want to go live a quiet life in a convent now.”

  “A convent? With nuns? Maggie!”

  “Don’t worry. They appear to prefer Catholics.”

  “You checked?”

  “You can find anything on the Internet, even convents. Unfortunately they are retreat centers, not recruiting projects for the brokenhearted. I can’t even run off and join the convent. My sense of failure is complete.”

  “Nonsense,” Kristen said. “We’re going to see Dr. Richie right this second. His advice got you into the predicament and he can advise you how to get out of it.”

  “I’d rather have another piece of cheesecake.”

  “No.”

  Her broken heart seemed to have made her very pliable, because before she knew exactly what had happened, Kristen had locked her elbow in a firm grip and was marching her down the street and toward the Healthy Living Clinic.

  Suddenly, confessing all to Dr. Richie, with his warm, sympathetic eyes, seemed to be the most inviting of scenarios.

  She had a feeling that Luke wouldn’t approve, but then who cared what he approved of or didn’t? He was a snake. And no longer part of her life.

  “Dr. Richie, Maggie Sullivan is here. She wondered if you had a moment.”

  Richard tried not to flinch at being called Dr. Richie by his receptionist. Almost everyone called him that now! He had thought he was going to get used to it, but he hadn’t…yet. Really he should never have allowed it to start. The nickname was disrespectful of his true title and accomplishments.

  Of course Dr. Terry Browell let people address him by his title and first name. Richard blamed his own lack of judgment in the matter on that. But what was the point of having changed his name to something so strong as, well, Dr. Strong, if it never got used? Still, even Dr. Richard would be better than Dr. Richie, as if he was some comic-book character.

  “Maggie? Oh, yes, from the seminar.” He shouldn’t really see her without an appointment. She might think it was all right to drop in casually, and of course it wasn’t. Not if he wanted to look like a busy and important man. But perhaps, just this once, it would be all right.

  He liked Maggie. He considered her one of his success stories. Why, when she had started in the Bold and Beautiful workshop she had been about as memorable as a dishcloth hung over a faucet to dry.

  But at his last seminar, the one where he had delivered the line “Go after what you want. Erase self-doubt,” he had noticed she looked quite stunning, her true feminine beauty shining through, a sparkle in her eye that had not been there before.

  He had paraphrased that line from the daily installment of “Living Airy with Dr. Terry,” which Richie taped faithfully and then watched with a black heart.

  How dare that little fat man, who bore an appalling resemblance to a balding leprechaun, discuss weight loss when he obviously never intended to lose a pound himself?

  Still, people adored the TV doctor and couldn’t seem to get enough of him. Richard had seen Dr. Beachball doing guest segments on Larry King, and “Oprah” and “Saturday Night Live.” There was talk of moving “Living Airy with Dr. Terry” to prime time.

  Why was Dr. Terry getting what Richie deserved? Still, Dr. Terry did come up with memorable one-line exercises, and Richie had pilfered that one abo
ut erasing self-doubt. He’d delivered it with aplomb, but then lived in fear that someone would recognize it and call him on it, but no one had. After a while it started to feel as if maybe he had said it first.

  Anyway, back to Maggie. That night after the seminar he had been in his office. He liked the idea of people walking by outside and noticing his light on. He felt it looked so good when people worked late, as if they were single-mindedly and passionately dedicated to their life work—which of course he was, so naturally he would want to look that way. But that night he had been watching yet another tape of Dr. Terry. It was not unlike doing research in his field, or consulting with a colleague, though Dr. Terry was more a showman than a real doctor. Richie liked to fill in the dull moments on the show—of which there were many he felt—by coming up with new names for Dr. Browell like Dr. Eatwell and Dr. Beachball.

  But Richie, while fast-forwarding commercials, had glanced out the window, and he had seen a woman in a red dress getting out of her cute little gold Beetle in the parking lot shared by the hospital and his own clinic. He had nearly dropped the channel changer when he recognized her as Maggie Sullivan!

  Naturally, he could make a little time in his day for such a success story, especially since she did look so fine in a red dress.

  Would it be professional to invite her out for dinner?

  The thought fled his mind when she came through the door. Oh, dear. His protégée had taken several giant steps backward.

  Maggie was in a crumpled suit that looked like it had been rescued from the recycle bin. It was the unfortunate color of porridge.

  She wore no makeup and it was obvious from the puffiness around her eyes that she had been crying.

  “Miss Sullivan,” he said in a soothing tone, “what can I do for you?”

  “Oh, Dr. Richie,” she said, and it all came out. About how she had been doing the homework and trying so hard to be bold, and how she had met a man.

  And he had betrayed her.

  Dr. Richie looked at the pain in her face and was taken aback at how heartbreak transformed her from the beautiful woman he had seen a few nights ago…to this.