“That’s Sophy Jones. She works for me, too. And I just got a new housekeeper, named Gloria. I’m becoming a one-woman enterprise.”
“You’ve always been that.” He glanced out the window, then rose from his chair. “I believe I’m going home to stretch out in that hammock and have some lemonade with my two best girls. You should head out, too.”
“I’ve got work to do.”
“You have a comfortable lawn chair?” When she nodded, he went on. “And I know you’ve got a laptop and a cell phone. What more do you need? Or—don’t be too shocked; this is only a suggestion—how about simply taking off the rest of the afternoon? There aren’t any major crises or disasters anywhere. The office probably wouldn’t miss you at all.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said dubiously. “Enjoy your hammock.”
She returned to her office down the hall, getting a stuffy “Ms. Barone” greeting from her secretary as she passed. Inside she took off her jacket, sat down, then eased off her shoes and stretched out her legs. If she swiveled her chair ninety degrees, looked out the window, and squinted really hard, she could barely make out her house, a dark spot surrounded by a green clearing and a mountainside of trees. The temperature was usually a few degrees cooler up there, and most of the time a breeze rustled through the leaves, making it seem even cooler.
When was the last time she’d taken off early? Not scheduled time off, comped time to make up for a trip, time for a doctor’s appointment or a funeral, but honest-to-God, spur-of-the-moment I’m-outta-here time. It was an easy answer—never. Not once in thirteen years.
Maybe it was time to break a perfect record.
With her jacket and briefcase in one hand, her purse in the other, she stopped by the secretary’s desk. “I’m going home now, Tasha.”
“What do you mean, you’re going home?”
“That house out there on the hill—it’s home, and that’s where I’m going.” She gestured, though Tasha’s window faced the wrong direction. “I’ll have my cell phone, so if anything important comes up, you can refer calls to it. Would you make an appointment for me with the mayor for tomorrow morning? Also, find out who the best swimming pool people are and get me an appointment with them, too—no later than Friday afternoon.”
“But—but—” Tasha jumped to her feet and followed Lynda to the elevator. “Ms. Barone, I don’t know what’s important! You always said everything was! This is very irregular! You can’t— You’ve never— Ms. Barone!”
The closing elevator doors cut off her protest.
Lynda watched the numbers light up, then flash off. She figured she had worked virtually every day of the last thirteen years, putting in eighty-hour weeks and more. She’d taken fewer than five vacations, and all of them had been combined, to some extent, with business. Leaving like this was very irregular. Unheard of. Some might even say peculiar.
Others might say it was no big deal. Just a complete and utter conformist … caught up in the smallest act of rebellion.
When he was sixteen years old, Ben had developed a crush on a pretty little redhead by the name of Peggy Louise Boudreaux. She’d been nearly a foot shorter than him, her waist so tiny he could circle it with both hands, and she’d kissed … Oh, man, just the memory of her luscious mouth made him hot all these years later. They’d had a couple of serious encounters of the most intimate kind before she’d remembered to mention that she was going steady with the captain of the football team.
Unfortunately, she’d remembered after the guy had beaten the living daylights out of Ben for messing with his girl. Studying him, with his black eye, broken nose, and bruised ribs, Emmaline had shaken her head and unsympathetically announced, “I hope you learned a lesson.”
He’d learned several of them. Never fool around with someone whose boyfriend outweighed you by fifty pounds of solid muscle. Never let him sucker punch you. And never risk life and limb for any girl unless you were sure from the get-go she was worth it.
Peggy Louise Boudreaux had definitely been worth it.
Not that she had any bearing whatsoever on the situation he found himself in at the moment. Actually, it was the pain Earl the football star had inflicted on him that had brought the memory to mind. Pain much worse than what he was feeling right now, but at least then he’d had the pleasure of Peggy Louise to make it worthwhile.
He was sitting on a chaise longue in Lynda’s backyard, his T-shirt wrapped around his right arm and the arm cradled protectively to his chest, his head tilted back, eyes closed. He thought the bleeding might have stopped, and the pain in his wrist had eased to a dull agony, though it would be quick to leap back into the swearing zone with the slightest movement. He’d already done plenty of swearing, widening both Sophy’s and Gloria’s eyes before they hustled inside to put together an ice pack.
“So this is how you spend your days—resting in the sun, working on your tan.”
He opened first one eye, then the other, and squinted at Lynda. When he was reclined like this and she was standing in her heels beside him, she looked about ten feet tall and intimidating as hell—though not in the she-could-unman-him-without-breaking-a-sweat way she was probably shooting for. This was more of a jeez-she-was-one-hell-of-a-beautiful-woman thing. “So our secret’s out,” he said, hearing the strain in his voice. “We work an hour a day, then eat your food, use up all your ice, and bask in your sun until it’s time to go home. Guess you’ll have to either fire us … or join us.”
“Watch it. I may decide to join you, and then you’d have to give me that chair. I don’t bask in anything less than ultimate comfort.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He started to salute, winced, and let his hand sink back down.
“What did you do to your arm?”
“I, uh, fell.” It wasn’t an easy admission to make to a woman who moved as gracefully as any world-class dancer. “I took a dive off the roof, scraped my arm on something on the way down, then tried to catch myself, with limited success.”
She looked toward the house, at the tools on the first-floor roof and the ragged-looking bushes immediately below them, then gazed back at him. “You guys are hard on my landscaping. It’s a good thing I was planning to replace all that shrubbery when everything’s done.”
“Oh, Ms. Barone, you’re here!” Sophy’s voice was heavy with relief as she came out of the house carrying towels, a plastic bag filled with ice, and an elastic bandage. “Gloria and I told him he needs to go to the emergency room, but he’s being stubborn. He probably needs stitches … and a cast … and something for the pain.”
Lynda laid her things aside and crouched next to the chair. His wrist was swollen and starting to discolor. She wrapped one clean dish-towel around it, molded the ice bag to fit, and used the second towel to hold it in place, then secured the elastic bandage over his shirt and the laceration that started at his elbow. “They’re right. You need to go to the hospital.”
“I’ll stop by on my way home.” Provided he could get himself home. The GTO was a stick, which would make for some interesting one-handed, left-handed driving.
“I can take you,” Sophy volunteered.
In spite of himself, Ben laughed. “No offense, darlin’, but the only person in the entire state of New York I might even consider letting behind the wheel of my car is Melina, and she’s not here.”
The remark didn’t seem to bother Sophy at all, but he would have sworn it somehow made Lynda more distant. Did she still believe he was interested in her friend? Did she care? And why? Did she think Melina deserved better than a carpenter from Georgia?
Or did she want him for herself?
Oh, yeah, sure she did. And his wrist and arm would magically heal, all his sins would be forgiven, and Melina’s Bug would beat the GTO head-to-head by a country mile.
“I’ll take you in my car,” Lynda said in an aloof, standoffish way that set his teeth on edge. He wanted to say no, thanks, don’t put yourself out, but truth was, he needed the ride, so he li
ed instead.
“I would appreciate it.” He swung his feet to the ground, then stood up. At the Mercedes, he asked Sophy to lock up the tools in the garage before she left, then eased into the passenger seat with much less grace than Lynda showed. He fastened his seat belt left-handed, then settled back for the ride.
The electronic gate was closing behind them before he broke the silence. “Can we stop by the motel so I can pick up a shirt?”
The look she gave him came from the corner of her eye and barely made contact before drawing back. “And deprive the female emergency room personnel of admiring you like that?”
He bit back the impulse to tell her that the only female admiration he was interested in was hers. “My grandmother passed on some old-fashioned notions about what was proper. Going out half-dressed didn’t qualify.”
“Not even if you’re injured?”
“Only if you’re bleeding from an artery, gut-shot, or having a heart attack. And this cut is just a scratch.”
“Where does your grandmother live?”
He fell silent for a moment, the ache in his arm forgotten for one in his chest. “She … she passed on a few months ago. She was eighty-seven years old and never slowed down until just before she died. She was quite a woman.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stir up bad memories.”
“None of my memories of Emmaline are bad.” Except for the knowledge that he’d disappointed her tremendously when he’d broken up with Berry rather than face the responsibility of fatherhood. And that never meeting her great-granddaughter broke her heart.
“Emmaline. That’s an unusual name.”
He chuckled. “The South is filled with unusual names. It’s part of our charm.”
“So how is it you wound up named Ben? Did your parents lack imagination?”
“Nah. They just didn’t care enough to bother. If Ben E. King’s music was good enough for my old man to listen to, then his name was good enough, too.” He gazed out the side window, well aware that she was looking at him as much as or more than the road. It was a curious look, a he’d-said-more-than-he’d-intended-and-she-wanted-to-know-even-more look. It made his skin warm and his nerves taut. Finally he irritably said, “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Look at me like I’m some sort of bug trapped under your microscope.” He turned his head and caught her at it. “My parents and I aren’t close. So what? You get along with yours?”
“Of course.”
“Of course,” he repeated. “Even though your mother spends her time trying to find you a man.”
Something about his tone—the insolence, probably—offended her and made her get all stiff and distant again. As far as he was concerned, distant was exactly the best way for her to be. Out of his reach. Too far away to tempt him, to make him think about taking the pins from her hair and letting it fall over his hands, or about removing every single item of her prim and proper clothing and finding out just how improper she could be with the right coaxing.
“You think I can’t attract a man on my own?” Now she was keeping her eyes on the road. Her fingers were clenching the steering wheel and her jaw was clamped tight enough to show. “I’m worth a fortune.”
He waited for her to name the rest of her attributes. She was gorgeous. Intelligent. Incredibly capable. She put off an air of aloofness that no man who liked a challenge could resist. She had legs a mile long and a voice that could make a strong man weak.
But she didn’t go on. She pulled into the motel parking lot, followed his directions to his usual space in front of his room, then shut off the engine. He studied her for a moment before opening the door. Instead of getting out, though, he turned back to her. “You think money is all you have to offer a man?”
The blush that crept into her cheeks was becoming familiar. He wondered how many people in Bethlehem besides him had seen it, wondered how many thought she couldn’t possibly be vulnerable enough to blush.
“For a smart woman, you sure have some dumb ideas,” he said as he eased out of the car. He emphasized the point with the closing of the door, crossed the sidewalk to his room, and let himself in.
It took about twice as long as usual to maneuver into a clean T-shirt, then run his fingers through his hair. He didn’t look so hot in the bathroom mirror—about a dozen shades paler than normal, with deep lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Amazing the effect a little thing like a sprained wrist could have on a person. Getting beat up by Peggy Louise’s boyfriend had hurt a hell of a lot worse, and so had some of the whippings his parents had given him as a kid. But those times he’d had Emmaline to take care of him, help him manage, comfort him. Now he was alone.
If he left Bethlehem without meeting Alanna, he very well might stay that way.
Grimly he returned to the car, and they made the remainder of the trip in silence. When Lynda pulled up to the emergency room entrance, he glanced at her. “You can go back to work now. I’ll get a ride from someone.”
“I—I thought …” Breaking off, she nodded. “Sure.”
“You thought what?”
Her nails tapped a delicate rhythm on the steering wheel before she reluctantly answered. “I thought I’d go in and wait with you. But that’s all right. If you’d prefer I didn’t—”
“No,” he interrupted. “I wouldn’t. Go ahead and park while I get checked in.” He slid out, then watched her drive away. It was funny how insecure people could be—or was it sad? He’d spent his share of time in emergency rooms, and they weren’t places he would voluntarily choose to waste three or four hours, especially when he wasn’t the one in pain. Lynda was probably just concerned because the accident had happened on her property.
Or maybe she was just being a decent person.
Footsteps drew his attention away from the parking lot as a young woman in white jeans and a red blouse came out of the hospital, stretched, then looked at him. She gave him a friendly smile before her gaze dropped to his hand. “There are better ways to spend such a beautiful day than getting yourself sent to the emergency room. I’m Dr. Matthews. I’m in charge of this joint this afternoon. What’ve you got?”
“I thought I would see if I could fly, and took a header off the roof.”
She checked his hand, then lifted the edge of his shirt for a look at the cut. “Eww. Lucky for you, I majored in Home Economics so I’d have something to fall back on if the doctor gig fell through. People everywhere will admire the absolutely perfect scar I’m going to give you. Come on in. We’ve got six rooms, no waiting.”
She escorted him to the admissions desk, then excused herself and headed back to the treatment area. Ben was just getting comfortable in the chair when he heard a distant voice ask, “Can I help you, ma’am?” Turning, he saw Lynda with a blue-haired volunteer just inside the door.
She glanced around, saw him, and gestured in his direction. “Thanks, but I’m with him.”
He settled in his chair again. It was just a meaningless phrase. She wasn’t really with him, not in the important ways a woman could be with a man. But for the moment she was there. For the moment she was with him.
And there was nothing in the world meaningless about that.
Lynda had never actually met Nola Matthews before, though she’d heard about her. She had a reputation as a very good doctor, she was the object of countless middle and high school athletes’ fantasies, and she did a thorough, if time consuming, job of patching up sprained wrists and scratches, particularly a “scratch” that, according to the nurse, required sixteen stitches to close.
Wincing inwardly, Lynda got to her feet as Dr. Matthews escorted Ben to the waiting area. He looked pretty ragged, an appearance enhanced by the splint that circled his thumb and extended halfway up his forearm, as well as the bandage that covered the gash below his elbow.
“If you have any problems,” the doctor was saying as they joined her, “call the hospital— You know, sometimes I forget this is Bethlehem.
I’m in the phone book. Remember, no lifting, no hammering, and no roof-climbing until the stitches are out and you don’t have any pain at all in your wrist. And if you get curious again, take my word for it. Superman, Peter Pan, E.T.—it’s all special effects.” She shifted her attention to Lynda. “Ms. Barone. I’m Nola Matthews.”
“Lynda Barone. It’s nice to meet you.” She was surprised by the strength of Nola’s handshake. Physically, the doctor was everything she’d always wanted to be—petite, curvy, blue-eyed, fair-haired, short. And strong, capable, and talented, too. Lynda didn’t know whether to admire her or envy her. Feeling decidedly Amazonian—in her heels, she towered a good foot taller than Nola—she opted to go with envy.
“Ben, take better care of yourself. Lynda.” With a brisk nod, Nola left them alone.
She and Ben were halfway to the car before she thought of anything to say. “Are you all right?”
“Sure. I’ve had plenty of sprains and broken bones before. Haven’t you?”
“No.”
“Not even as a kid? Climbing trees? Riding your bike?” When she shook her head, he mimicked the action. “You’ve lived a deprived life, Miz Lynda. I bet when you weren’t being a perfect student and perfect daughter, you spent your free time playing with Barbie dolls, taking dance lessons, and being prissy.”
“I’ve never played with a Barbie in my life. I did take dance lessons because my mother insisted, but I hated them because I have no sense of rhythm, and how could I be prissy when I looked like the mutated girl from the Planet of the Giants?”
He grinned at her over the roof of the car. “You have a sense of humor. If I had bet on that, I would’ve lost.”
“Who’s joking?” she asked dryly before sliding behind the wheel.
“So topping six feet wasn’t on your list of girlish dreams. And since it happened anyway, you wear those heels as a way of making the best of it. You know—when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
Getting Lucky Page 13
