Lucifer's Lover (20 page)

She motioned to Luke to take the rocker that sat next to the doors.

He crossed the room but didn’t take the chair. “I need to talk to you,” he said. His eyes! They were that masking, all-over black and they seemed to be almost sunken. Dark rings of tiredness circled them. This was not the light-hearted, gentle man who had held her at the project home.

Uneasiness touched her. “I’m listening.”

Edward picked up his glass. “I’ve got to sweep out the workshop,” he murmured, heading for the kitchen.

She looked back at Luke, expectantly. And shivered.

Luke stripped off his coat with swift movements and dropped it over her shoulders. His scent drifted up to her nose and she breathed deeply. It brought back a quick kaleidoscope of images, the strongest ones of them making love.

Luke was drawing her back into the room, seating her on the sofa by the fire, away from the chill seeping through the three inch opening between the doors.

He took a deep breath and cast a glance at the fire that was almost resentful.

Abruptly, it occurred to her that he didn’t know how to begin whatever it was he wanted to say. The realization was tinged with surprise and her uneasiness deepened.

“What is it you hate about Christmas?” she asked. It was a starting place.

“Who says I hate Christmas?” He seemed almost surprised—and grateful—for the distraction her question gave him. She could see his chest relax as he exhaled. A sigh?

“You said it. At the hotel, in the lobby—when they were burning pine. You said ‘Goddam Christmas’ before you rushed outside. Or something like that.”

He stood for a long moment, silent. Would he answer the question this time? Lindsay held her breath, hoping.

“It’s because of Stella,” he said and blew his breath out in another gusty sigh.

“Who’s Stella?”

“My stepmother. For a while, anyway.”

When he didn’t rush to explain, she deliberately let the silence grow.

Finally, he scrubbed his hand through his hair, ruffling the thick dark locks out of their slick, professional perfection. “After my mother died—”

“She died?”

“Yeah. Not long after the divorce from my no-good, drunken bum father. Birth complications, they tell me.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,” she said at last.

Luke shrugged. “It was a long time ago,” he said, dismissively.

“What happened to you, after your mother died?” She already knew his father had essentially refused to acknowledge Luke’s existence.

“I learned how to camp.” The bitter expression on his face was terrible.

“Camp?” She remembered something. “You mean…all those sofas you told me about?”

“Sofas, beds, bunks, pallets, sometimes a sleeping bag on the floor. Uncles, aunts, cousins, great-aunts, second cousins. You name it.”

With dawning realization, she murmured wonderingly, “All your mad relative stories…”

He gave a grimace. “It was an unusual childhood. I learned to hate Christmas.” He glanced at the tree beside him.

Now that he was talking, telling her things, Lindsay was able to connect errant facts, comments, innuendoes that had puzzled her in the past. “
Family
,” she breathed. “You didn’t have a family. No wonder you don’t like Christmas.” The idea of spending Christmas alone appalled her. She had never had to do that in her life. Even with just her and her father and a few relatives dotted about the state, they always got together and Christmas was a noisy, busy affair.

“
Didn’t
like Christmas,” he amended. “I’ve got used to it now.”

She gave him what she hoped was a withering look of disbelief and he smiled a little.

“So, how does your stepmother figure in all this? How did you get to know her if your father didn’t want anything to do with you?”

“Stella was good for him. She sobered him up. He was besotted with her and it was easy to see why when you met her. She was this bottomless, calm pool of empathy and understanding. God knows what she saw in my father. Potential, perhaps. But she married him and he cleaned up. Enough to remember he had a son and that it might be nice to get to know him.” Luke’s lip curled sardonically. “Three months, it lasted. And I was still sleeping on the sofa.” He shrugged. “But I got one
magical
Christmas out of it.”

He sank onto the sofa beside her. “I think I loved Stella from the moment she crouched down beside me, lifted up my chin and told me I had—” He stopped and glanced at her, sideways, as if he was measuring her tolerance for what came next. “She said she could see I was a wonderfully clever boy and had huge potential and if I didn’t mind, could she call me Luke, as it was her favorite name in the whole world.”

“Nobody called you Luke before then?”

He shook his head. “It was always Lucifer—and it was meant.” He grimaced. “I was a holy terror as a kid. I lived up to my name.”

“You haven’t exactly improved with maturity, either,” Lindsay teased, pushing him with her shoulder. “And your magical Christmas?”

His gaze became unfocused. He was remembering. “It was the most amazing day of my life. My father was sober and remembered to turn up. He even gave me a Christmas present.” He delved into his trouser pocket and pulled out his keys. He separated them and showed Lindsay a very old, two inch long Swiss Army knife attached to the ring. The distinctive red plastic covering was gouged and yellowed with age and the grime from years of handling.

“That’s what he gave you?”

“I wanted to throw it away when he left again but I just couldn’t. I don’t know why.” He put the keys away. “He gave me a present and managed to stay relatively sober all day. Stella…” He cleared his throat suddenly. “Stella cut a cart load of real green stuff which she used to decorate the living room. That dingy room looked like heaven—there were candles everywhere and even a fire roaring in the grate. She had a table with a sheet for a tablecloth. She pulled it up to the fire and we ate Christmas dinner there. The smell of the decorations and the wood on the fire…if I ever smell them now, I get dizzy.”

He looked at her like she might laugh.

“It was pine, wasn’t it?” she said softly. “That’s why you can’t stand the smell now.”

“I know—it’s all very Freudian and sometimes I feel like Pavlov’s dogs. I hate being jerked around by something in my brain that I can’t even touch but it doesn’t seem to matter what I think. If I get a whiff of that smell, I have to get out of the room or throw up”

“You’re doing okay now,” she pointed out.

He sought her hand and squeezed. “This is helping,” he said quietly. “Telling you.”

She knew then that no one else had ever heard the story before.

“What happened after that Christmas? What happened to Stella?”

“My father chucked it in. Sobriety, that is. Even Stella’s patience ran out. They were divorced pretty soon after that. I went back to camping.”

“You never saw her again?”

“Not until I was an adult.” His voice was bleak. “My father told me it was my fault she had run away and for years I believed him.”

“Oh, Luke, no…” The words weren’t there. So she squeezed his hand instead.

“Well, all the other relatives had given up on me, sooner or later. I figured it was the same with Stella. And…I don’t know…it became a lot easier to not make friends after that. Not reach out.” Again, that long sideways look at her, to measure her up. “I wasn’t just a brat, Lynds. I was a full-out rebel. Somehow, I just managed to stay out of jail and avoided becoming a ward of the state by the skin of my teeth. Mostly it was because I’d figured out how to make people laugh by then. Being funny was my life saver.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever noticed, people who make you laugh instantly feel safe, warm, acceptable to you? You let them in a lot quicker than anyone else.”

She frowned. “Yes, I see what you mean, I think.”

“When you have to make a new set of friends every six months, instant acceptance is as valuable as gold.”

“Oh…” It was all starting to make terrible, appalling sense to her. Luke’s superficial, easy charm, the constant one-liners, the comedian with the sharp, observant gaze and the obsidian eyes that gave away nothing.

“Making people laugh has another advantage too,” she said. “As long as people are busy laughing, they can’t learn anything important about you. You hold people away from you Luke, just like I do. Only you use jokes and I…well, I just intimidate them with my intellect, mostly.”

Abruptly, she heard an echo of her mother’s voice.
Don’t blind them with science, sweetheart
.

She mentally shrugged.
Too late, Mom.

Luke’s face sagged a little, his eyes widening. “My god…” he said, his voice low. After a moment, he gave another small, weak smile. “We’re a hell of a pair, aren’t we?”

“We are indeed,” she whispered, her heart suddenly beating hard. “Stay there.”

She hurried through to her sitting room and picked up the small wrapped package on the table there and took it back. She held it out to Luke, who was standing again, waiting for her. “Merry Christmas, Luke.”

He looked a little stunned. “You went shopping this afternoon,” he muttered, almost to himself.

“Yes, how did you know? Oh, Timothy.” She put her hands behind her back, suddenly nervous. “I hope…you don’t mind, do you? That I bought you a present?”

He fingered the gilt bow with a gentle touch, like it was a precious piece of china. “No. No, not at all.” He lifted his gaze to her face and smiled but there was a peculiar furrow in his brow, almost like he was in pain.

He made no move to open it.

“It’s okay—you don’t have to open it now,” she hurried to assure him, just in case he was in a dilemma about it. An idea occurred to her and she acted on it instantly, before she could change her mind.

“In fact,” she told him, plucking the package out of his hands, “it’s probably better to leave it right here.” She walked over to the tree and placed it beneath. “Then it’ll be there for you, Christmas Day.”

“Christmas Day?”

“I’m inviting you to join us for Christmas, Luke.” She hesitated. “Or do you have other plans? I know it’s very late notice.”

He turned away from her, with a low curse.

“What?” All her courage was trickling away at high speed. “Luke, what is it? Am I forcing you into something you’d rather not have to deal with?”

She could see his profile and the grimace that contorted his face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s nothing you’ve done!” he said, whirling back to face her. “I came here to tell you something…and this is just making it harder still.”

“Tell me what?” Alarm trickled through her. No, it wasn’t simple alarm. It was fear.

I don’t want to see you anymore. I don’t like you. It was all a game. I had another side bet with the guys and now I’ve got you into the sack, the bet’s over, so sayonara, sweetheart.

All of it and more—all the little treacherous whispers her paranoia had produced over the last couple of days—it all filtered through her mind in the small moment she stared at him, feeling that fear.

She knew where the fear came from.

Luke must have seen and recognized her fear, for he stepped closer to her and took her face in his hands. “No, no, Lynds, don’t look at me like that,” he begged. “This is hard enough.”

“Are you here to tell me we’re through?” she asked, barely able to voice the words. She was trembling. He must be able to feel it.

His thumb caressed her cheek. “Hell, no,” he whispered. “I’m not exactly sure what we are, Lynds but we’re not through. Do you know what you’ve done to my life so far?”

So great was her relief that she could only shake her head a little. Words had deserted her.

His hands dropped and he ran one of them through his hair. “It’s like having a tornado rip through your house. You start off hating the tornado and what it has done to your life, the wreckage it leaves behind. But while you’re standing there surveying the wreckage there’s a wild, pure exhilaration in you. That comes from having survived it. That’s before the new excitement kicks in—when you realize that you can start to build your life again, that this time you can build something better, that the tornado has given you a second chance to get it right.”

He sat on the sofa suddenly, as if all his energy had run out on him. “That’s a really bad analogy.” He shrugged.

“I’m the tornado?” she whispered.

“Yeah, well…” Again, the quick nervous push of his fingers through his hair. Then he sighed. “I don’t know if I could ever explain it to you, Lynds. You used to irritate the hell out of me—when you weren’t making me furious instead. Life hasn’t been easy while you’re around. Interesting, yes. Easy, what a joke.” He closed his eyes for a moment.

“For someone who can barely talk about his feelings, you’re surprising me, Pierse,” she said, deliberately using a light tone, despite her heart beating hard enough to hurt.

“That’s because I’m procrastinating,” he said bluntly, opening his eyes. “I’m putting this off. Even talking about this stuff is more attractive.”