Trying to Score (12 page)

Fallon placed the phone back on the receiver before shaking her head and getting back to work. It seemed that only a minute passed before her office door opened and Rob leaned against it.

“Where the hell were you? Lucas called!” Fallon complained before a man appeared with a bouquet of red roses in his hand. Fallon stood, her mouth hanging open as man after man came in with a bouquet in hand.

“You have a delivery,” Rob stated as her office slowly filled with dozens of red roses.

“You think?” she asked as the guys left, leaving every surface in her office covered with bouquets of the beautiful bright red roses. Fallon noticed a card in the middle of the bouquet that sat in the middle of her desk and picked up quickly, tearing it open.

Fallon,

I want what we had back,

Love, Lucas

“Wow. No reason beating around the bush, huh Lucas?” Fallon said as she reread the note. Someone had written it for him, probably Levi or maybe even Rob, because Levi would never put hearts around Lucas’ name. Fallon shook her head, dropping the note on her desk.

What the hell was she gonna do with him?

The next day, it wasn’t roses that filled Fallon’s office but white tulips. Lucas sent so many that some had to go out into the waiting room. He also sent a little tree that held all her favorite shades of Chanel's Rouge Double Intensity lip gloss. She didn’t understand his game, how did he remember her favorite lip gloss, or even her favorite flower? It had been seven years! Really?!

The gifts had set Fallon on edge, but the note about sent her over it.

The meaning of tulips is generally perfect love, but the white tulip means forgiveness.

Forgive me Fallon, please.

Love, Lucas

Forgive him?

After everything he did! He wanted her to forgive him, seriously? Was he freaking crazy? And what did he mean by perfect love? Why did he have to put that on there! Was he trying to drive her straight into a mental institution? Fallon reread the note a hundred times before she finally decided that either she was crazy or he was.

How does someone go seven years without seeing a person and after one night of seeing them decide they want the person back! What the hell did Fallon do to cause him to want her back to the point of expensive flowers and lip gloss? Her behavior shouldn’t have been rewarded with amazing gifts, it should have made him want nothing to do with her!

What the hell was going on!?

Fallon sat with her hand in her hair totally dumbfounded as she flicked a tube of lip gloss with her finger. The door open and Audrey stepped in, looking too cute for words in her bright purple sweater dress and thigh high purple boots. Audrey glanced around the room before raising an eyebrow at Fallon.

“He sent all this? Oooh, lip gloss,” Audrey gushed as she came to the desk, looking at all the shades that hung from different branches. Fallon swore Audrey had ADD or something. The girl couldn’t focus for shit.

“Oh my gosh, you want the gifts!” Audrey accused as she pointed her finger at Fallon, “If you didn’t, you would tell him to leave you alone!”

“Whatever! I don’t want none of it!” Fallon yelled back. She looked around the room, looking for the piece of paper that held Lucas’ number. When she found it she dialed the number quickly as Audrey watched her.

“Oh my beautiful sister dear, all I see is a very confused woman that not only likes the gifts but still likes the guy that sent them to her.”

Before Fallon could say anything, Audrey was out the door with nothing but a wave. Fallon looked down at her desk, scared out of her mind as the tears welled up in her eyes.

Because Audrey was probably right.

*****************************************

Lucas smiled like a Cheshire cat as the line went dead after Fallon hung up on him. He was getting to her, and it had only been two days.

Damn he was good.

“What’s that smile about?”

Lucas looked up as his mom laid a big plate of food in front of him. She smiled down at him and he smiled back before saying, “I’m just looking forward to something.”

Molly smile stayed in place as she sat across from him. Her bright blue eyes locked on his as she said, “About?”

Lucas smiled as he looked across the table that held the woman that he loved more than life. Molly hadn’t changed at all over the years. She was a little heavier, and wrinkles lined her eyes but to Lucas she was still the most beautiful woman on earth. Her brown hair fell bone straight along her shoulders with only a piece pulled up in a barrette. Her smile was still as bright as the sun, as Lucas’ dad, James, would always say. Lucas couldn’t have felt more loved then he did when he was under her gaze.

“I never thought you were. Fallon was your person, just like your father was mine. When you lose your person, you walk through life like a zombie, and sometimes you feel like, like…” Molly paused, a small smile on her face. “Basically if I didn’t have you, I don’t know what I would do. So I understand that you want Fallon back, and I wish you all the luck in the world on your endeavor to get her, because if I had the chance to have my James back, I wouldn’t stop until I succeeded.”

Lucas and Molly shared a long, sad look before looking back down at their food. There wasn’t a day that passed where Lucas didn’t think of James Brooks. He was the man that taught Lucas to play hockey, he picked Lucas’ number out, he did everything in his power to give Lucas everything to succeed in the hockey world. When Lucas’ condition came into play, James did everything to get the best help for him, even if it didn’t help or broke his parent’s bank. James didn’t care, he just wanted Lucas to feel normal.

James died the day before Lucas’ 18th birthday. Lucas would never forget the feeling when he saw his father fall at the end of their driveway, or how he screamed when James wouldn’t wake up. Lucas held his father’s body until his mother found them and pulled Lucas away.

Lucas looked down at his finger, seeing the fingers that at the time had been bloody and bruised from where he tried to get to his father while his mother held him back. Lucas was in such a state of hysteria that he had dug his nails into the cement, popping off two of his nails as he tried to get back to his father.

James was only 42 when he had the massive heart attack, and instead of getting the help he needed, Lucas turned to alcohol. Lots of it. He was drunk through the first year of college and pretty much through his first couple years of the NHL. He sobered up some for the two years he was with Fallon, but that was only when he was with her. When he was on the road, he was drunk because he couldn’t handle being alone. Even with Levi there, Lucas still felt alone.

“You’re father once got a fortune cookie that said ‘Love is like war, easy to start and hard to stop’. He looked at me, and laughed before saying, ‘Isn’t that the damn truth?’” Molly laughed before looking up at Lucas, “She’ll take you back honey, once she sees that you’ve changed. She will.”

Lucas smiled over at his mom, his rock. Lucas loved the little stories his mom would share about his father, they would always fill him with the love he missed from his father being alive. Most of all he loved Molly like a son should and would do anything for her. He believed anything she said, because he knew she loved him so much, but for some reason he was pretty sure it was gonna take more than Fallon finding out that he had changed for her to take him back.

Lucas should have known when he walked into Rocky Top Wine’s main office that he was going to have a problem. Fallon’s poor ‘boyfriend’ almost jumped out of his skin at the sight of Lucas before rushing to shut Fallon’s door. Lucas found that odd because when he had called earlier, Rob had said Fallon was out on lunch and wouldn’t be back until two, and it was only one.

Lucas stood in front of Rob’s desk that was surrounded by the flowers he had bought Fallon, begging Rob to do him a favor. As he looked around the office he wanted to laugh out loud. If she didn’t want the gifts, why were they still on display?

Because she wanted them.

“Okay now Rob, how much do I need to pay you to get you to do this for me?” Lucas asked, pulling his wallet out. Rob’s eyes became the size of quarters as he looked up at Lucas from his desk.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brooks, but I cannot let you in Ms. Parker’s office. She’ll flip on me!”

“Fine, I’ll give you the post-it notes I have for her and you put them all over her office,” Lucas said, pulling the pack of post it notes out of his pocket. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

“Okay, 500 bucks and if she fires you, I promise I’ll hire you. I’ll pay you double too, but that’s only if she fires you,” Lucas added because he swore he saw dollar signs in Rob’s eyes.

“Fine, but I need that in writing!”

“Sounds good to me. Type it up and I’ll sign it.”

After an hour of negotiation, because for some reason Rob really thought Fallon would fire him, and explaining what Lucas wanted Rob to do, Lucas finally walked to his truck with a satisfied grin on his face.

If his plan didn’t work, he didn’t know what would.

****************************************************

“Elli, he had no teeth,” Fallon said as she looked at the picture of the man that had volunteered for the Assassin/Rocky Top Wine campaign. Martin Sidorov was a nice-looking man, but he didn’t have any teeth! And he said he refused to wear his dentures!

The horror!

“Sidorov is the only guy who volunteered that you would even consider taking, Fal. What am I supposed to do? Make a guy do it? I can’t do that,” Elli said, causing Fallon to look up.