The Ring on Her Finger (19 page)

His expression when he looked at her this time held not a hint of what he might be feeling. Not that Lucy really needed a physical example of that, having heard what he just said.

“So,” he added dispassionately, “did your mother make you wear shirts to tony private schools you didn’t attend?”

Lucy hesitated for a moment before shaking her head. “No. We didn’t shop in thrift stores. But she never noticed when I was uncomfortable and embarrassed. Or else she didn’t care.”

He studied her in silence, then nodded. “Funny how mothers can be that way sometimes.”

“Yeah. Funny.”

So maybe she and Max didn’t come from such different worlds after all. She’d never stolen cars or been evicted, and she hadn’t grown up in poverty the way he had. But, in a way, she’d never known her father, either, because he hadn’t been around. Her mother, like his, had taken a powder of sorts early in Lucy’s life. And there were other kinds of poverty besides lousy living conditions. Too, like Max, Lucy had never been much of a student. Had she had the opportunity, she would have dropped out of school in a heartbeat. As for being homeless, well, home was a relative term, a word that stood for a place of warmth and welcome and family intimacy. In that sense, at least, she had known what it was like to be homeless, too.

“Life sucks sometimes, doesn’t it?” Max said.

She nodded. “Yeah. It does. Sometimes.”

“But it’s no crime, Lucy,” he told her with much conviction. “It is no crime to come from the kind of place where we come from.”

She squeezed her eyes shut tight, wishing she could tell him the truth. And not just one truth, either, but lots of them.

If there was one thing Max couldn’t abide in a person, it was stupidity. So why was he being so damned stupid? The last thing he’d intended to do tonight was tell Lucy anything about his background. Oh, no, wait. That wasn’t the last thing he’d intended to do tonight. The last thing he’d intended to do tonight—or any night—was come to her front door and knock. In fact, he promised himself the day Lucy arrived that he would never, ever, knock on her door, and that he would never, ever, have a personal conversation with her. So he’d actually done two things tonight that he swore he wouldn’t do, something that made him really stupid. And Max really couldn’t abide really stupid people.

But how was he supposed to help himself? He’d known she was spying on him from her window, and he’d known she was staring at him through the peephole. He’d felt her gaze on him as strongly as he would have felt her hand on his shoulder. Then again, it wasn’t like she was the only one doing that. He’d been spying on her every chance he got for the last two weeks, too.

As much as he tried to deny it, Max felt like he and Lucy were connected on some weird, cosmic wavelength that defied explanation, and that they’d been plugged in that way from the moment their gazes collided the day of her arrival. No matter where they were on the estate, or what they were doing, every time they bumped into each other, there was an instantaneous click of some altered sort of consciousness, where everything in the universe just seemed to fall into place. Except that there was sex somewhere in the equation, too—hot, naked, sweaty sex. He just hadn’t figured out where that part fit yet. Which was why he’d made the decision not to knock on her front door or have a personal conversation with her.

But it wasn’t like Lucy wasn’t at least partly to blame. When he knocked at her front door tonight, she answered it, didn’t she? She could have just ignored him, but noooooo. And she was wearing her pajamas when she answered the door, too. Granted, they were pajamas that any sane man would find off-putting, but Max, in his already agitated—for five years—state found them to be unbelievably, uh...on-putting. Then again, a man who’d gone without sex for as long as he had would be turned on by a woman dressed in waders with a duck sitting on her head.

In spite of the lame rationalization, Max knew he had no one but himself to blame for his predicament. He was the one who asked if he could come inside Lucy’s apartment and watch movies with her. As if he deserved to be in a room with her, doing something enjoyable. She just made him feel so good about being here. He hadn’t been able to help himself when he started spewing out more information about his past than he’d spewed in years. And spewing it all over a nice girl like her, who didn’t deserve to be sullied by it. The past was something Max didn’t want anyone to step in. Yet here he was, dancing all over the vomit of his life without a second thought. Worse, he was bringing Lucy along for the ride.

What was it about her that was chipping away at the walls he’d spent five years fortifying? How could she be eroding them with such effortlessness when he’d been so sure he erected his prison with absolute invincibility? She must be a lot stronger than she looked.

Still, as distasteful as his spewing had been, it had given him an opening to ask about her own past. He liked how much the two of them had in common. He’d already known they shared a few interests, but learning that her roots were planted in the same kind of crappy soil his were, and finding out she was as reluctant to talk about her childhood as he was, Max was strangely comforted. He felt a bond with her now that hadn’t been there before, one that went deeper than a simple sexual attraction. He liked Lucy even more because of it. Way more than he should.

After she withdrew the popcorn from the microwave, she topped off her wine, and Max palmed his beer and followed her back into the living room. They took their seats at two opposite ends of the sofa again, then Lucy reached for the remote control and switched off the TV.

The gesture surprised him. “You don’t want to watch it?” he asked.

“I didn’t think you wanted to watch it.”

“But if you want to...”

“I’ve seen it. We could watch one of the other movies you brought.”

“You’ve probably seen all of them, too.”

“Yeah, I have,” she conceded with a grin.

“So then...maybe we should...do something else.”

When he realized what he’d suggested, Max immediately regretted it, because he’d suggested it in a way that was way too suggestive. What the hell was he thinking, being suggestive with Lucy? Well, he wasn’t thinking, obviously. Or else he was thinking too much. Thinking about things he had no business thinking about, let alone suggesting suggestively. Judging by her expression, though, Lucy seemed to be thinking about those things, too.

Uh-oh...

“Uh, I mean...” he quickly backpedaled. “I mean we could, um... We could, ah... Um... Talk,” he finally said. And immediately cursed himself. He had no more business talking to Lucy than he did, well...than he did doing that other thing he’d been thinking about doing with her.

Before he could backtrack and suggest a different something else—Like what, Einstein? Yahtzee?—Lucy jumped on the less suggestive suggestion.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

There was no way to get around it, since Max was the one who’d made the suggestion in the first place. But if they were going to talk—dammit—they’d at least talk about her.

“If you grew up the way I did,” he said before she could get another word in, “then I guess Roanoke isn’t a place you’re all that keen to get back to.”

He stuffed his hand into the popcorn bowl, then remembered he and Lucy each had their own now. Well, hell. That was going to take all the fun out of the evening. Not that he’d been thinking it fun to constantly find his fingers twined with hers and experience again how soft she was and then recall how lousy it was that he couldn’t take advantage of that softness and do what came naturally. That was actually more like torture. But it was a damned enjoyable torture, and he hadn’t had many of those. Most of his tortures over the past five years had been awful. Like bad, warm beer. And not allowing himself to own a car. Oh, sure, it was okay for him to drive Justin’s cars, but that was the whole point. He was driving nice cars that belonged to someone else—which really was torture—and he never went over the speed limit—another intolerable punishment.

Then he remembered how he’d driven over the speed limit the night he picked up Lucy at school. And, damn, had it felt good. All of it. Driving a fast car, driving it faster than he was supposed to, and having Lucy in the seat beside him. For the first time in five years, Max had remembered just how pleasurable life could be. It had been all he could do to rein himself in that night, all he could do to remind himself he wasn’t supposed to enjoy anything, not even his tortures. He didn’t deserve to enjoy anything. Not after what he’d done.

Still, after five years of self-inflicted tortures, it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing to allow himself to enjoy just one, would it? That was only fair. It would still be a torture.

“No, it’s not,” Lucy said.

It took Max a minute to realize she was talking about her reluctance to return to Roanoke, and not the fairness or enjoyment of his tortures. So she didn’t think it was unfair for him to want to enjoy one. Or something like that.

“I’m not especially anxious to go home,” she added, sounding a little surprised by the admission.

“Not even to reunite yourself with that upright, forthright, do-right guy you’re engaged to?”

“Well, I...” Nervously, she thumbed the ugly ring on her finger. “Well...I guess I’d just as soon he and I started our lives together someplace different, that’s all.”

Sounded reasonable to Max. Maybe Lucy could be on the East Coast and her fiancé could be on the West Coast That might work.

“You know, every time you talk about the guy you’re gonna marry, you sound like you don’t want to talk about him.”

She tugged more nervously on the ring, her gaze flying to everything in the room except Max. Another indication there was more to her engagement than she was letting on. Or could it be that there was less to her engagement than she was letting on? Hmm...

“I do?” she asked.

He nodded, remarking how those two little words formed a question instead of a statement, the way they traditionally did when spoken together. It was a good sign. Then Max reminded himself he didn’t need any good signs where Lucy was concerned. What he needed were bad reminders. Reminders of how he shouldn’t be with her, because she deserved better, and he deserved nothing.

“Yeah, you do,” he said, nudging those reminders aside before they could take up too much room in his brain. Man, it was getting crowded in there. He was getting tired of having all those reminders rattling around. He needed a break, even if only for a little while. “And I can’t help wondering why you wouldn’t want to talk about a man you’re planning to spend the rest of your life with.”

“I, ah...” she began again. “I just don’t, um... I mean... Really... It’s just that I don’t... I can’t...”

By now, she was twisting and pulling so hard on the ring, Max feared she was going to take off her finger. Telling himself he only wanted to help—Oh, sure you do, Max—he scooted across the sofa and covered her hands with his, tugging her tangled fingers apart to halt their worrying. But pulling her hands away from each other, he pulled her arms away from each other, too. And pulling her arms away from each other, he left the rest of her wide open to his gaze. Seeing her like that, all he could do was drink in the sight with the thirst of a man who was too long parched for a lifesaving libation.

As he considered Lucy in her funny pajamas, with her soft brown hair and softer blue eyes, time seemed to grind to a halt. Suddenly, there was no past in his memory, only this present in his mind. No future to think about, only the here and now to feel. So here, now, Max let himself feel. Let himself dream. Let himself go. And here, now, he wanted Lucy. Wanted her more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

In that moment, she was so clear to him, so vividly detailed, so very beautiful. He almost thought he was gazing at a painting, so otherworldly was she in that moment. But paintings didn’t have eyes that went wide with wanting, the way Lucy’s did. They didn’t have cheeks stained pink by their desire. They didn’t have pulses that leapt beneath their wrists or breasts that rose and fell with their rapid respiration. And paintings for sure didn’t have mouths that parted on quick gasps, mouths that begged a man to move closer and claim them.

Without thinking about what he was doing—because somewhere at the back of his brain he knew if he thought about it, he wouldn’t do it—Max did move closer to Lucy. Closer to her and her eyes and breasts and mouth. He circled more possessively the wrists he already held and wondered what it would be like to possess the rest of her, too. And then he was possessing her, at least part of her, because, still not thinking, he covered her mouth with his. And then he was kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, and remembering how long it had been since he’d kissed a woman, and how his memories of kisses didn’t do justice to this one, because this one was...

Oh, sweet Jesus...

This one was exquisite. Intoxicating. Narcotic. As Max claimed Lucy’s soft, warm, sweet—Oh, God, she was sweet—mouth with his, he felt like a man possessed. The moment he felt her softness, sensed her warmth, tasted her sweetness, he lost a part of himself forever. But what a way to go...

For long moments, he only kissed her, holding her arms out to her sides, reveling in the dance of her pulse beneath the pads of his thumbs. Her breathing went wild with every new caress of his mouth against hers, mirroring his own. She opened to him eagerly, and he drove his tongue inside her, savoring every hot, damp inch of her he could reach. She responded in kind, tangling her tongue with his, tasting him as deeply as he had her.

Unable to help himself, he released one of her wrists, drawing his fingers up along her bare arm, over her sleeve, her shoulder, her collar, finally curling his hand gently around her nape. He drove his fingers into her silky hair, loving the way it tripped over his hand. Then he moved his hand lower, down the slender column of her throat, skimming his fingertips along the elegant divot at its base before moving lower still, to the top button of her pajama shirt.