Nobody's Angel

by Sarah Hegger

  Brooke’s face had gone a bit pasty looking.

  Lucy could see the hurt no amount of bling could hide. It stared out of Brooke’s face at her accusingly. The past was not a kind place for the other woman. “But even before Jason, I treated you very badly. I said and did things that were unkind and hurtful,” Lucy said softly, not wanting to leave new wounds on top of old scars. This was not the purpose of her visit today, at all.

  “You used to call me pudding,” Brooke said in a dull, flat voice that hid more pain than Lucy cared to dwell on.

  “I remember that, too,” she said. “Brooke, I am here to tell you I realize how badly I hurt you and I am truly sorry for the pain I caused you. When I drank, I only focused on myself to the detriment of others. It is not an excuse for my behavior, but it is an explanation and one you deserve. My drinking was an illness that seeped into every area of my consciousness and caused me to behave in ways I am not proud of.”

  Brooke had gone completely still, but Lucy forged forward. “It has taken all this time to realize how much I injured you and I ask your forgiveness. You are under no obligation to give it, but I want you to know I am deeply and sincerely sorry for any hurt I caused you and if there is any way you can think of that I can make it up to you, you need only ask.”

  Lucy sat back in her chair and waited. Her heart pounded loudly in the stretched silence.

  “Well.” Brooke sat back suddenly. “Well,” she said again. “You always drank too much.” Brooke recovered some of her composure and her face lost the sickly pallor.

  “Yes, I know.” Brooke had not even seen her drinking at its worst. “I have never had any control when it came to alcohol, which is why I am where I am now.”

  “Hmm?” Brooke frowned again and worked at her bottom lip with her teeth as if she were weighing something carefully. “You have stopped drinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Forever?”

  “That’s how it works.” Lucy nodded.

  “And now you come back to Willow Park and say you’re sorry. Sorry for all the things you have done and the people must forgive you. Just like that.”

  Lucy’s mouth twisted ruefully. “I can’t change the past, Brooke. I can only take ownership for what I did, beg your forgiveness, make it up if I can, and move on.”

  Brooke continued to sit there and stare at Lucy. “You are sorry?” Brooke drew the words out thoughtfully. “This is what you came here to say?” Her voice was not quite steady and her body was as tense as a drawn bowstring.

  “I realize it probably seems inadequate when all is said and done,” Lucy said, shrugging helplessly. “So, if there is anything I can do to prove my sincerity, I would happily do so.”

  Brooke gave a short bark of laughter and patted her hair self-consciously. Her hands were not quite steady. “You know what you can do for me, Lucy Flint?” She paused and turned to face Lucy.

  Hot, angry tears glittered in her pale eyes and her jaw worked spasmodically as if she were reaching desperately for control. “You can give me back my beautiful party. The one I spent nearly a year planning and you ruined. You took it from me without a thought. Can you do that for me?”

  “Brooke …” The blood drained from Lucy’s face.

  “You can give me back my boyfriend, the love of my life. You can give me back Jason.” Brooke lurched forward suddenly until her face was mere inches away.

  Lucy shrank back reflexively.

  Brooke made no effort to conceal her anger and her bitterness. “Do you know how they laughed at me? They pitied me. They all looked at me and felt sorry for me. I crawled, Lucy Flint. I crawled through this town like a joke.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  Brooke was not listening to her. “I want you to crawl like I did. I want you to feel my shame. That’s what you can do for me, Lucy Flint.”

  Lucy got unsteadily to her feet. Frantically, she searched for the right words, but her mind was blank. She tried to think what Mads would say, but she couldn’t.

  Brooke had risen to her feet as well.

  “I can’t go back and change things,” Lucy stuttered, her heart racing. “I can only do things differently in the future.”

  “Yes, I heard. You can only say you’re sorry and beg for forgiveness.” Brooke cut her off again. “You haven’t changed.” Brooke stalked toward her, her voice low and menacing. “Nothing about you has changed. You come here, today, speaking about your regrets, but I saw you, Lucy, and I know that it’s all more lies.”

  The hair on the back of Lucy’s neck rose.

  “I saw you sneaking out of Richard’s house this morning.”

  Lucy went cold and then hot.

  “You are doing what you always did, taking everybody else’s man. He is married, Lucy, married to Ashley, but you never let that stop you. Never.” Brooke made a slashing motion with her hand and Lucy stepped back.

  “Forgive you?” Brooke’s voice rose to a shriek. “I don’t forgive you, Lucy Flint, not now and not ever. I wish on you all the pain and humiliation you caused me. I wish every scornful word you said to me and every single thing you did to hurt me back on you. Do you understand me? Do you hear me, Lucy Flint?”

  Lucy had to get out of here. Brooke’s malice poisoned the air until it became difficult to breathe. “I think I should go.” Her feet carried her quickly to the door. Her mind registered only the need to escape.

  Brooke had seen her this morning, which meant that the entire Willow Park community would know by the end of the day. Ashley would know, if she didn’t already.

  “Yes, you should go.” Brooke scrambled after her. “You should go. You should get out of my house.”

  Her tirade gathered momentum as she followed Lucy out of the living room. “And you should get out of Illinois completely. Go back to Seattle. Leave here. We don’t want you here. Not me, not Ashley, and not Richard, nor any of the others that you crapped on.”

  Somehow Lucy made it out the door. She was almost running as she reached the sidewalk. Beneath her hastily pulled-on boots, her feet slid and slipped on the ice, but she didn’t slow down. Her heart jumped in her throat. She thought she might be sick.

  Brooke’s hatred was a living thing pursuing her down the street.

  She pulled out her cell with shaking hands and hit speed dial. It hurt more than she could have imagined. It hurt and it shamed her. She must have said something coherent, because the next thing she heard was Mads, firm and gentle.

  “You have to breathe, Lucy, breathe.”

  She dragged air into her lungs obediently and somehow managed to push it out again. She told the story haltingly, not quite believing it, even as she recited the details.

  “Okay, Lucy Locket,” Mads spoke again, soothing her with that dark, velvet voice. “There are always one or two like that, but you have to let it go, Lucy Locket. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Lucy whispered into the phone.

  “You breathe in and you breathe out and you let it go. She is not able to forgive you. It’s sad and regrettable, but it’s her choice and the reasons she can’t are hers to own. Got that?”

  “Yes,” Lucy lied unconvincingly.

  “You will.” Mads chuckled softly. “You did the right thing, Lucy. Now let it go.”

  “Just like that?” Lucy gave a harsh bark of laughter.

  “No,” Mads returned quickly. “There’s quite a bit more to it than that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “See there.” Carmen nudged his arm and Richard’s signature scrawled across the entire bottom half of the prescription he was writing. “Look, that’s the one. The one I was telling out about.”

  Richard did not want to look, but he did anyway. A light silver Mercedes pulled up and parked in a slot right outside the windows to his waiting room. A man got out.

  Richard studied him covertly while pretending to rewrite the prescription.

  He had a tall, suave thing going on in his beautifully cut dress coat. Rich
ard was willing to bet the coat came from London or New York. The man looked at the traffic and then crossed the street.

  “He’s from out West.” Carmen gave him a look of great significance.

  “Carmen,” Richard said, going for a repressive tone. “I would imagine a lot of people are from out West.” He shouldn’t have bothered. Carmen was impervious to his frosty dignity.

  “Yes, but they don’t all ask for directions to the Flint house.” Carmen raised her thin eyebrows up to her hairline. “I heard she had a boyfriend over there in Seattle. An older man with money.”

  “She told me she was done with him.” Richard hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

  As one, the cluster of people waiting for him turned and looked at the stranger.

  “But he’s here.” Carmen snaked her head back and forth like a mongoose taunting a cobra. “And that means he isn’t done with her.”

  A murmur of agreement shot through the waiting room.

  Richard—and his patients—watched as the man used the ATM and then picked his way carefully through the ice back to this side of the street. Even his snow boots looked expensive. They didn’t even look like snow boots, for the love of God.

  “He’s going next door to the florist,” Carmen reported and there was an excited twitter through the assembly.

  Richard kept his attention on the patient chart in front of him.

  A short while later, Carmen gasped. “He’s got flowers,” she hissed at the top of his head. “Roses.”

  A spattering of conversation broke out.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Richard watched as the man deactivated the alarm and opened the door. What kind of poser rented a car like that? Carmen said he was older. He looked it. There was a definite tinge of gray in his hair. And Lucy hated roses. She said they were old-lady flowers. At least, that’s what she used to say.

  “What do you think he’s doing here?” Carmen looked up at him expectantly.

  “I have no idea.” Richard closed the file with a smart snap and handed it to her.

  Carmen glared at him. “But you’re going to find out, right?”

  “Find out what?” Richard felt like an insect with a pin stuck through the middle of it.

  “What he’s doing here!” Carmen yelled at him, as if he were the most obtuse being on the planet.

  “No, I’m not,” Richard yelled right back.

  A collective gasp from their audience broke their deadlock.

  Carmen snatched the file from his hands and stomped over to her computer. She mentioned something very uncomplimentary about his parentage as she stalked away.

  Richard cast one more surreptitious glance out the window. The Mercedes disappeared over the railway tracks. Lucy lived on that side of the tracks.

  And he was sure she still didn’t like old-lady flowers.

  A slither of fear snaked up his spine and Richard took a slow and careful breath.

  “Ashley?” She was the last woman he’d expected to see this evening and, quite possibly, the most unwelcome. Soon to be ex-wives should be banned from visiting on days like these. There ought to be a law about it. He’d been behaving like a dickhead all day. Actually, since he had seen the man in the Mercedes. He wanted to call Lucy, but the bigger part of him was chicken shit. So, he stayed later at the office and pretended he was not hiding out.

  “I see Carmen was not exaggerating.” Ashley sashayed into his office and took a seat on the other side of the desk. She looked good. No, in fact, she looked great. She’d looked that way ever since she’d left him. It was not a welcome thought.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Ashley cocked her head on one side and studied him. “Carmen says you have been like a bear all day. I think she might be right.”

  “Ashley”—he used his most repressive tone—“it’s been a long day. I don’t want to fight. I want to go home and put my feet up.”

  “I don’t want to fight either,” she sniffed while Richard grew wary, “but I did want to talk to you.”

  “And you had to do this here?” He indicated his office with an irate wave of his hand. In truth, it wasn’t the venue, so much as the implacable look on Ashley’s face. It was the sort of look that warned him Ashley had an agenda and was willing to pursue it relentlessly. He didn’t want to go twelve rounds with her. He wanted …

  The things he wanted were so twisted in his head that he dared not unravel them for fear of what it all meant.

  “You are never at home,” Ashley said reasonably. “At least I knew I could catch you here and keep you here long enough to have a conversation.”

  “I have patients to see.” He launched a last ditch attempt at escape.

  “No, you don’t.” Ashley settled herself into a chair. “I am the last one. Even Carmen has gone home. She called me before she left.”

  Busted.

  Ashley sat and looked at him.

  Richard waited her out.

  Patience was not Ashley’s strong suit and she would get to why she was here. She barely lasted two minutes before she made a low noise of irritation in the back of her throat. “Are you going to tell me about it?”

  “What?” Richard watched her carefully.

  “Are you going to tell me about you and Lucy?” Ashley’s mouth twisted spitefully.

  Shock held Richard immobile for a few life-saving moments. He shouldn’t have been surprised. You couldn’t do anything in Willow Park without somebody finding out. But, who would have told Ashley? Certainly not Lucy or his mother or Josh. They might fight, but they were still brothers.

  “You haven’t said anything, Richard.” Ashley raised one brow in an imperious arch. “Either you’re wondering whether or not to lie, or you’re wondering how I found out? Don’t strain yourself,” she snapped. “Brooke saw Lucy creeping out of our house.”

  There was his answer and Richard sat back in his chair.

  “How could you?” Ashley’s voice vibrated with anger. “How could you sleep with her, again? How could you humiliate me like that?”

  Richard was dimly aware he should be trying to talk his way out of it, or explain. There was not much he could say, however. He had, for sure, not slept with Lucy to spite Ashley. In fact, Ashley had not even entered into his thought processes where Lucy was concerned. Ashley certainly would not want to hear that.

  Which left the question as to why he had allowed himself to fall back under Lucy’s spell.

  He almost laughed out loud. Allowed himself? That was a good one. His resistance had been token, at best.

  Ashley was right. He had never gotten over Lucy. Perhaps if she’d come back into town as the same hell-raising terror she had been, he might have been able to walk away. But Lucy had changed. She had grown into the woman he had sensed in her all along. The same woman his dad had always seen, lurking beneath the surface of all that anger and rebellion. The woman was twice as heady and compelling as the girl had been. He’d not stood a chance.

  Ashley saw none of this, because she was still at war with the Lucy who left town nine years ago. As she glared at him from across his desk, the thing that struck him the most forcibly was that it wasn’t his infidelity that bothered Ashley. It would be a bit rich, having been separated for over a year. No, what was eating Ashley was the fact that it was Lucy he had been unfaithful with.

  “I don’t think I am the only one who never got over Lucy Flint,” he suggested mildly.

  Ashley flinched as if he’d struck her. She recovered quickly. Her eyes went like pitch and her mouth contorted into a snarl. Vitriol spewed out of her in a vicious diatribe that seemed to be endless.

  Richard stopped listening to the words and watched Ashley’s face instead. He had always known Lucy was a hot spot, but until this moment, he had underestimated how hot the flame burned.

  Ashley took a pause for breath and Richard cut in quickly. “Is this why you came here today, Ashley?”

  This scene was beneath both of them.

  H
er breathing grew ragged as she battled her formidable temper back under control. It took a moment and her color was still high. “No,” she managed, her jaw tight. “I want you to sign the papers, Richard, so that I can file them.” There was the slightest hesitation and then her voice grew brittle with determination. “Or I am going to have to get the lawyers involved in making it happen?”

  “We discussed that. We both agreed it wasn’t necessary.” Richard tamped down on his surge of irritation. He didn’t like being threatened.

  “That was before one of us made it necessary.” Her eyes narrowed. “It’s been over a year and in the circumstances, I think it’s fucking stupid to pretend this is still a marriage.” She straightened in her chair and lifted her chin. “If I end up going to a lawyer, you can be sure I will drag your friend Lucy into this as well.”

  There was a heavy silence in his office. Richard heard the thud of his dead marriage hit the desk. It should have ripped him apart, but instead he felt numb, numb and relieved, as if someone had taken the trouble off his hands.

  At some stage in the last year, the will to fight had dissipated. He’d been running on fumes and habit and now, this thing he’d been digging in his heels about was over. He was flogging the proverbial dead horse. And he was tired of it. It had taken Lucy, blasting her way back into his life, to bring into focus the half-life he’d been living.

  Ashley got to her feet, straightening her fire-engine-red pencil skirt over her full hips. She picked up her purse. “It’s all right to be scared, Richard. It’s not all right to let that fear rule your life.”

  She had to get in her one more shot of psychobabble. She was right.

  She walked away, her hips swaying as she went. Out of his life, it would seem.

  Richard studied the faded print of the human anatomy on the wall. Everything around him was changing so fast. He seemed to be constantly running around trying to catch it and hold on tight. His mother was stretching her wings in alarming directions; Ashley was determined to toss away the training wheels, aka him and Lucy. His brain stuttered to a halt and his sense memory zoomed into the gap.