The shop’s doorbell jingled.
Beverly mopped at her eyes, put on a smile and turned to see Tamara Hodges stroll through the door. She blinked. “Oh, my God, Tamara.” Her eyes then fell to the small but noticeable bulge of her belly. “You look…wonderful,” she announced with amazement and then embraced her for a quick hug.
“You’re sweet,” Tamara gushed, pulling out of Beverly’s arms and glancing around. “What a lovely shop. It’s hip and beautiful—so totally you.”
“Now who’s being sweet?” Beverly winked. “So Kyra told me a couple of weeks ago that you needed an engagement dress?”
Tamara blushed. “Yes. Can you believe it? I’m about to be Mrs. Micah Ross.”
“Oooh.” Once again, Clarence hip-bumped his way into the small circle. “You’re the one marrying that gorgeous music mogul?”
Smiling, Tamara blinked at Beverly’s overzealous friend. “I take it you’ve heard of him.”
“Who hasn’t it? Giirrll, let me see the ring!” He didn’t wait for her to do it on her own. Instead, he grabbed her hand and then faked a heart attack when he saw it. “Chile, is that a ring or a small planet?”
Delighted with his theatrics, Tamara laughed. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I’d say.” He glanced over at Beverly. “’Tis the season for brothers to be passing out diamond rings.”
“What?” Tamara asked, confused.
“Don’t mind him.” Beverly moved around Clarence and gently directed Tamara away. “Why don’t you just tell me what kind of dress you had in mind…?”
Lucius was angry.
Despite this, he put on a brave face so his daughter could enjoy the Christmas holidays. The last three days were particularly hard with Ruby constantly asking when Beverly was coming back over—which was remarkable since she hardly mentioned her own mother.
Balancing work, home and the approaching holiday had Lucius feeling like he was burning the candle at both ends. However, at night he relished the exhaustion. It was the only thing to help him sleep through the night. Yet, it was the first few minutes upon waking that really got to him. He missed the mornings when he’d awakened curled like a spoon against Beverly’s curvy bottle shape. If he concentrated, he could still recall the coconut scent in her hair.
Lucius’s heart ached while he waited for his alarm clock to tell him to get out of bed. Until then, he easily pulled up Beverly’s angelic face from memory and recounted everything he loved about it. At exactly 5:30 a.m., he flung out an arm and shut off the alarm’s loud and annoying buzz. However, he didn’t climb out of bed. Instead he remained nestled in his white cotton sheets, staring up at the ceiling.
Lucius huffed, rolled over onto his side and stared at the clock. Its loud ticking sounded as if it was hooked up into an amplifier. In no time his heart and the muscles along his temples thumped in precise harmony.
Maybe he should just stay in bed today.
“Daddy! Daddy!” Ruby bolted into his room, hopped up onto the bed and started shaking his shoulders. “Daddy, it’s time to get up.”
He groaned. Why did he have the child that sprang out of bed in the mornings? He rolled over and couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of her hair sticking up all over the place. “I’m getting up, sweetheart.” He reached out and mussed her hair up even more. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“Waffles!”
He rolled his eyes because her answer came as no surprise. “All righty,” he said, peeling back the top sheet and climbing out of bed. “Waffles it is!”
In the kitchen, Lucius endured another long line of hard-hitting questions about Beverly’s whereabouts and whether he thought that she was mad at them.
“Maybe you should just call her and apologize,” Ruby said.
“What makes you think that I did something wrong?”
This time his little girl made eyes at him as though he’d asked a dumb question. “C’mon, Daddy. You’re a boy.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what the heck that meant, but Lucius feared she would actually have an answer. “Let’s just say it’s a little more complicated than that, sweetie.”
The toaster popped up their waffles and Lucius quickly placed them on their plates and grabbed a bottle of syrup.
“Daddy, can we go shopping tomorrow?” Ruby asked, cutting into her food. “I want to buy Beverly a Christmas present.”
Once again Lucius weighed whether he should go ahead and tell her that Beverly was likely never coming around again, but when he looked into her eager hazel eyes, he just couldn’t get himself to say the words. “We’ll see, sweetie. We’ll see.”
Beverly played with her cereal while allowing the house’s silence to cloak her. She had long ago lost count of how many times she’d looked at her finger and recalled how that beautiful ring Lucius gave her had sparkled on her hand. Then, like now, tears had rushed to her eyes and her heart ached for something she’d long told herself that she didn’t want.
Yet after three days that fear was being replaced by another. The fear of living the rest of her life in this house…alone.
She pushed her bowl away and marched out of her kitchen to go get dressed. As she shuffled up the stairs, a familiar icy cold lifted an army of goose bumps along her arms and caused her hackles to rise. At the top of the stairs, Beverly’s gaze immediately went to that closed door at the end of the hallway.
I really should get ready for work, she told herself, but her feet were already carrying her toward the forbidden door. The knob was cold, as usual, but today, she opened the door anyway. From the moment she saw the blue walls, her vision blurred and tears snaked from her eyes.
The room hadn’t changed in five years. Her gaze shifted from the Spider-Man sheets on the twin-size bed to the mass of action figures crammed in a clear plastic tub next to the window. That familiar sense of injustice bubbled up inside of her. She walked over to the bed and eased down onto the edge, but it wasn’t long before she was blinded by the seemingly endless stream of tears of a mother who’d lost her child.
Chapter 20
With it being Christmas Eve, Lucius planned only to put in a couple of hours at work. There was another major litigation case coming around the bend and he was already worried about how he was going to juggle it all given his new responsibilities at home. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” he muttered under his breath.
However, his butt had hardly hit his chair a full minute before Maggie was buzzing in over the speakerphone. “Mr. Gray, I have Mitch Paulson here to see you.”
He frowned at the phone and then punched in a few keystrokes on his computer.
“He doesn’t have an appointment,” she said, answering his unspoken question.
Annoyed but knowing how valuable the boisterous businessman was to his company, Lucius instructed Maggie to send him on in.
Paulson strolled through the door; his bulky six-six frame shrank the room around him. It was just eight o’clock in the morning and the large cowboy was already puffing on a thick cigar and looking like he was ready for his morning brandy. “I knew that you’d be in the office today,” he said, cocking his hand like a gun and firing an invisible shot.
“Just for a couple of hours,” Lucius assured him and then gestured to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Paulson chuckled and folded into the chair with a slight grunt.
“Now what can I do you for?” Lucius asked, returning to his own chair.
“Well, I want to sue the government,” the Texan announced.
“Again?” Lucius asked with a wry smile.
“Well, they’re always pissing me off,” he said simply.
Lucius chuckled. “Well, what did the government do this time?”
“I’m suing for their abuse of eminent domain,” Paulson huffed.
Braiding his fingers together, he listened patiently to his lawsuit-addicted client. His case this time sounded no mo
re convincing than the legion of others that Kendall, Hendrix and Gray, LLC had worked on for the brash Texan. For the most part, they were willing to kill as many trees as Paulson wanted as long as Paulson was willing to write checks.
“Well, I’ll certainly jump right on it,” Lucius assured Paulson when he finished his long spiel. He stood and offered the man his hand. “I should have some preliminary paperwork for you to review by next week.”
Paulson winked. “I knew I could count on you.” He accepted Lucius’s handshake. “By the way, whatever happened with you and that hot tamale at the bar a couple of months ago?”
Lucius stiffened as his hand fell away, but he quickly recovered and tried to shrug off the question. “Aww. Well. You know. You win some, you lose some.”
“Is that right?” Paulson’s thick salt-and-pepper brows crashed together as his gaze seemed to look at Lucius as if he was made of glass. “Hmmm. When I saw you two at Ruth’s Chris Steak House a few nights ago, I thought you’d struck a love connection—judging by the way you were looking at her.” His statement shaved a few inches off Lucius’s plastic smile.
Instead of remaining evasive, Lucius came clean. “I thought so, too.”
“She dumped you?”
“I guess you can say that,” Lucius answered, despite being uncomfortable by the line of questioning.
“Aww. Damn. That’s too bad.” Paulson chomped on his cigar. “I was sort of hoping that at least one of us could get a second chance at something a little more meaningful than…” He glanced around the room. “Than the spoils of success. You know my motto—A Career Is Great, But a Woman Is Better.”
“I remember you saying something like that.”
Paulson continued to read him. “It was the hours—”
“No. No.” Lucius shook his head, amazed that he wanted to talk about this. “Believe it or not, my job had nothing to do with it. I guess we should have just remained two ships passing in the middle of the night.”
“I hear what you’re saying but you sound like a man barely held together with tape. Do you love this girl?”
Lucius hesitated. “I thought I did.”
Paulson cocked his head and waited a little longer for the truth. “I do. Madly. Deeply.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?”
Lucius dropped back into his chair and exhaled a long, frustrated sigh. “Because our love apparently is a one-way street.”
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure. I call myself being romantic by sliding an engagement ring on her finger while she was sleeping, thinking I’d wake to smiles and kisses. Instead I woke to an empty bed—except for the ring and a note.”
Paulson grimaced. “Ouch.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“What’d the note say?”
Lucius shrugged. “Sorry.”
“I mean you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“No. I mean that’s what the note said. ‘Sorry.’”
“A woman of few words.”
Lucius nodded and then reflected over the events from the past several months. “Maybe I rushed her. I know she still has a few scars left from her first marriage. The whole time, she tried to keep me at arm’s length, but I thought I was breaking down her defenses. In fact, I would have staked my life on it.”
“Maybe you did.” Paulson removed the cigar from his mouth. “What did she say when you talked to her?”
Lucius pulled out of his reverie. “I haven’t seen her since.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Lucius looked up. Shrugged.
“I thought you said you loved this girl? You’re going to just go down without a fight?”
Frowning, Lucius shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What do you mean?”
Paulson started laughing. “C’mon. You’re a man of the world. Surely you know anything worth having is worth fighting for. You love the woman, you fight for her. Assure her that you’re nothing like the creep that broke her heart. You keep at it until you convince her—that or until she issues a restraining order—whichever comes first.”
“What are you, Dr. Phil now?”
“He’s not the only Texan that knows how to dole out common sense.”
Lucius laughed.
“Okay. All jokes aside, son. If you really want her, you’re going to have to fight for her.”
Hoops was crowded with last-minute Christmas shoppers. Lucius took a deep breath to try to calm his nerves, but there was nothing he could do about the large lump bobbing in the center of his throat. After talking to Paulson, he’d felt like a complete idiot for not realizing what he needed to do sooner. Of course, Beverly was still gun-shy about walking down the aisle again. How many times had he seen that fear up close and personal, especially at Hollington’s class reunion?
Looking back, he knew that his proposal was all wrong. He needed to look Beverly in the eye and assure her that he was nothing like David Clark. He needed to address her fears one by one and then make it clear that he was willing to wait for as long as she wanted him. Instead, he had allowed his pride to prevent him from seeing what was perfectly obvious.
“Excuse me,” he repeated to one woman after another as he threaded his way toward the front cash register. Behind the counter there was only one face he recognized. “Um, Leslie, right?”
The young lady’s eyes rounded wide with surprise. “Lucius…I mean, Mr. Gray. You finally came.”
He frowned. “Were you expecting me?”
“Sort of.” She quickly scooped a cell phone out her pants pocket.
Lucius frowned. “Um, is Beverly here?”
Leslie held up a slender finger and punched in a few numbers. “Clarence, he’s here.” Pause. “Okay.” She disconnected the call. “He’s on his way over.”
“Clarence?” Why on earth would she think he wanted to speak to him? “Is Beverly here?” he asked again.
“No. Sorry. She never made it in this morning.”
He frowned, wondering whether there was a problem. He turned to leave, but was surprised when he ran smack into Clarence. How in the hell did he get here so fast?
“Good. I caught you,” Clarence said, panting. “It certainly took you long enough to show up.”
“Is there a problem?”
“The only problem I see is that my best friend is trying to throw away her best chance for happiness.” He folded his arms. “You do intend to try and make her happy, don’t you?”
“If she’ll let me.”
Clarence eyeballed him a little longer and then finally said, “Come with me.”
Lucius frowned, but followed the strutting man to the back of the store. At the small employee break table, Clarence told him to take a seat. Curious, he did what he was told and then waited.
“Beverly is at home,” Clarence started.
Lucius jumped to his feet.
“But before you go flying over there I think I need to arm you with a little information.”
Now Clarence had his undivided attention. He sat back down and leaned back in the small metal chair and crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”
It rarely snowed in Atlanta and to have that rare phenomenon occur on Christmas Eve had to be something like a billion-to-one odds. Still, it gave Lucius the feeling that he was driving through a magical snow globe. When he pulled into the driveway leading toward Beverly’s house, he was once again hit by how lonely and sad the house appeared—and now he knew why.
He parked the car and climbed out of the vehicle. For a few seconds he stood outside just staring at the house. The cold and sadness permeated his bones and chilled his soul. Finally, he strolled up to the door, rang the doorbell and waited. Around him, the snow thickened, transforming the place to look like a whimsical painting.
After a few minutes, it was clear that Beverly wasn’t coming to the door. He turned toward a large potted plant, tilted it over and retrieved the key that Clarence told
him Beverly kept there for emergencies.
Lucius slipped the key into the lock and then slowly entered the house. “Beverly?” he called out, closing the door behind him.
The house roared with silence. He started to check downstairs, but something told him that she was more likely to be upstairs. “Beverly, sweetheart?” he called again as he ascended.
It wasn’t until he reached the top stair that he heard the soft whimpers. His eyes immediately zoomed to the cracked door at the end of the hallway. On autopilot, he moved toward the heart-wrenching sobs, trying to prepare himself for what he might find on the other side. Placing his hand on the door, he gently pushed it open farther.
Beverly sat hunched over on the small twin-size bed, holding a large picture frame and rocking back and forth. It took a second, but she stopped and slowly lifted her tear-filled eyes. “It’s not that I don’t love you,” she said in a quivering voice as if they were picking up on an unfinished conversation. “I do. Lord knows I do despite my trying to fight it. But…”
Lucius walked over to the bed while she struggled to collect herself. He knelt down in front of her and reached for the picture she held in her arms. “May I see him?”
Beverly released the frame and then watched Lucius’s face when he looked down at Gregory William Clark.
“He was a handsome boy. How old was he in this picture?”
“Five,” she said with a nostalgic smile. “It was taken maybe three months before he was diagnosed with cancer. He had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. We spent a full year fighting that disease and then…it was just over. His little body couldn’t take it.” She feverishly wiped at her tears. “At first, I was so glad that he no longer had to endure all of that pain and suffering. But then I started missing all those smiles and hugs that he was always trying to give out.”
Lucius stared at the handsome boy that looked more like his mother than his father and his heart broke for what the world had lost.
“For a year, I lived in Egleston Children Hospital, reading him stories, mopping his fevered brow. David…” Beverly sniffed and then shook her head. “Let’s just say our marriage was on life support after Gregory passed away. David seemed to think I could just snap my fingers and be over it—apparently, it worked for him.” She shrugged. “Two years later he had an affair and then we got a divorce.” She sighed. “It was all a pathetic tragedy—one I vowed that I would never repeat.”
Tender to His Touch Page 16
