Nobody's Angel (22 page)

“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. Richard 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.”

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.

Her 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.

Lucy, cinnamon and Issey Miyake, jade eyes and soft, pouty lips. Lucy with the endless legs and the smart mouth. Lucy and her huge heart with her arms held wide to embrace all life had to offer. Lucy, of the silken skin and sweet, sultry sighs.

She scared him shitless. He was also really tired of being scared. He reached for the phone.

Donna answered on the second or third ring.

“
Maman?
If you still want to go and see your father, I thought I might come with you.” He listened to her speak. “Why?” They always had to ask why. “Because it’s Canada and I don’t want you going there on your own.”

Her response elicited the first smile he’d felt crack his face today.
“Au revoir, je t’aime aussi.”

When the universe, fate or whatever, decided to kick your ass, it took aim and kept kicking. There was no avoiding the fact she’d traveled miles to end up where she started. Lucy looked at the silent phone in her hand. The center had called looking for her mother and then ended up speaking to her instead.

Lynne had never sent in the forms for Carl. She had never given them the doctor’s recommendation. They had held a place for as long as they could, but places were at a premium and there were other people out there who needed care. The center had tried, several times, to get ahold of her mother, but Lynne never returned any of their calls.

“We’re sorry, but we have had to give the place to another family,” the center director told her.

Lucy assured the woman she understood. She carefully replaced the phone on its cradle. She was angry, but not entirely surprised. Some part of her had always suspected this is how it would end. If that weren’t enough, all the signs were there. Mads had seen it, Richard had seen it. Hell. Even she’d seen it, but she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge what was staring her in the face. She wanted to rescue Lynne. Who knew what Lynne wanted? Perhaps Lynne was as clueless as the rest of them?

She’d barely seen her mother since that last get-together in the kitchen. Lynne was avoiding her. Either making herself scarce or hiding, in plain sight, behind an endless supply of domestic detritus.

Lucy glared at the phone again and then got wearily to her feet. Frustration curdled in her stomach as she stood there for a moment more.

All of this, all the anguish and the soul searching, all of it felt like it was all for nothing right now. She was feeling sorry for herself, but by her reckoning, that scene with Brooke had earned her the right for a little wallow. So, yes, she was feeling sorry for herself and, no, she was not going to do anything about it for the moment. Later, she might decide to show up and man up, but not right now.

She blew out a large breath and went to find Lynne.

Lynne was in the basement. The place smelled faintly of the beer Carl used to brew years ago and of dust and damp. It was her least favorite place and Lynne spent hours down here, doing the laundry. A coat of paint wouldn’t have killed anyone.

“Mom?”

“In here,” Lynne chirped cheerfully. The walls were covered in vinyl wainscoting that was clinging on from the seventies. It kept company with mold-colored linoleum on the floor. On second thought, a coat of paint wouldn’t have made any difference.

Lynne hauled sheets out of her ancient washer and stuffed them into an even older dryer. The things must still be coal powered.

“I spoke to Mrs. Rogers from the home.”

Lynne stiffened immediately, but did not look up from what she was doing. “Oh?”

“She said she has been trying to get ahold of you.”

“Hounding me is more like it.” Lynne slammed the dryer lid down with a metallic clunk. “The woman has been calling nonstop. Don’t you think she’d have gotten the hint by now?”

“Mom, she needed to talk to you, because she had a place for Dad.”

Lynne’s lips compressed and she bent to load more laundry into the machine.

“Mom?”

Lynne started shoving shirts into the machine. It was not like her mother not to carefully check labels.

“Mom?”

“What?” Lynne straightened suddenly and glared at her. “What do you want me to say to you? You are as bad as that woman on the phone. Always pushing and pushing to get me to do what you want me to do.”

“Mom, I thought this was what
you
wanted.”

“You thought, Lucy, you thought and you went ahead and dragged me off to see the doctor and started talking about selling the house and making me throw out stuff. You thought, Lucy, and then you charged straight in, without even asking.” Lynne measured detergent into the dispenser.

A surge of anger speared through Lucy and she ground her teeth together to stop from blurting out hurtful, ugly words. “You’re right, Mom.” It cost her a molar to get that past her clenched teeth. “You never asked me to help sell the house or to find somewhere for Dad.”

Lynne gave a vicious twist to the dials.

“But all my life you’ve needed me to stand between you and Dad.”

“That is not true. I have never asked you to do anything of the sort.” Lynne turned to her with wide eyes. Shock glimmered in their depths. But, there, right at the back, the tiniest flash of guilt. It disappeared as quickly as it had come and Lynne crossed her arms over her chest. “You can’t blame this on me. This is what you do. You go rushing into everything impetuously without thinking about what anyone else wants or needs. It’s the way you are. It’s the way you always were and you can come back here talking about change, but I am not sure you even know the meaning of that word.”

Shit,
that hurt. “I have changed.” Lucy dug her nails into her palms. “Whether you believe that or not, it’s
my
truth.” The anger simmered and spat near the surface and she took a deep breath, counted to ten, and then again backward. Serenity danced tantalizingly outside of her grasp as she stood and looked at her mother.

Lynne with her face set in bitter lines of disappointment. The years etched across her skin like a living journal.

“If you don’t want to put Dad in a home, that’s fine. If you want to live in this house for the rest of your life, that’s fine too.” Lucy met Lynne’s glance head-on. “But you chose this, Mom. And, just like me, you’re going to have to live with the consequences of the choices you make.”

“Why are you talking to me like this?” Tears filled her mother’s eyes.

Lucy’s heart gave a sharp twist. She didn’t want to hurt her mother. That was not what any of this was about. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said, finding her voice. “Mrs. Rogers only called to say the place has been filled.”

Lynne fiddled with dryer dials and Lucy made her way back upstairs.