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Cassie halted as Lucas reached a black F-150 with a lift and aggressively treaded mud tires, and set our suitcases and duffel bags in the bed one by one. She eyed the truck with a skeptical grin. “You sure? You’ve got the look down pretty pat.”
He glared at her. “It ain’t a fashion statement. The truck, I mean. I live and work off road and in the woods. The lift and the tires are necessary. The drawl is from livin’ in Oklahoma for forty years. And the look…well, that’s new.”
I nudged Cassie’s shoulder. “Don’t be antagonistic, please. He’s doing us a favor. We’d never have gotten all our luggage and both of us home in one car, or in one trip, otherwise.”
She rolled her eyes again, but said nothing.
Lucas lowered the tailgate and climbed up into the bed in a single lithe movement that was lighter and easier than his size and bulk should have allowed, securing our baggage into the truck bed with a few bungee cords, and then he hopped down and closed the gate. He unlocked the doors with a key fob, and rounded the hood to open the front passenger door.
Cassie took the rear driver’s side seat without a word, so I climbed up through the door Lucas was holding open for me.
“Nice truck,” I said, examining the clean, fresh-smelling interior.
Lucas started the motor, and glanced at me. “Thanks. It ain’t fancy, but it’s mine and I like it. It gets the job done.”
“What job?” I asked. “You’re not working at the hardware store anymore?”
He grinned, shaking his head. “No ma’am.”
“So, what do you do now?”
“Me and Ram have a business, now. He’s been running hunts and hikes and the like for a while now, usually deep in the bush. He was doing it sort of unofficially, by word of mouth recommendation only, but now we got a real deal business, with a website and everything. He’s still doing the long-term, deep bush trips, and I do the local ones. I guide hikes for the kind of tourists who want a more challenging experience than the usual day trip, but don’t have the time or resources to plan anything more involved. I also do a hike from downtown Ketchikan into the forest, off-trail to a staging area we’ve built, where we can canoe through the forest a ways, and then hike back. It’s a nice little trip that takes most of a full day.”
I blinked at him. “For real?”
He nodded. “Yeah. For real.” He glanced at me. “Why? That seem impossible to you or somethin’?”
I shook my head. “No, I just…when we first met, I had to convince you to go on a short day hike with me. “
He nodded. “I started going on day hikes with Ram after you left, and I sorta got back into who I used to be, to a degree. I told you some of how I grew up—hiking wasn’t a once in a while thing for fun, it was part of how I lived my life. Hunting, fishing, canoeing, all that—I was doing all that as soon as I could walk, lift a pole or a paddle or a rifle. Once I started, it was pretty easy to relearn the old skills, you know?” He paused, shrugging. “Not totally there, yet. Still got some work to do, but I’m making progress.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. “Lucas, you’ve done more than just make progress. You’re…I don’t want to say a totally different person, but close.”
He glanced at Cassie in the rearview mirror—I’d almost forgotten she was back there, I realized guiltily—and then at me. “Maybe once you’re settled, you and me can meet up for coffee, or lunch.”
I realized what he was getting at—he wanted to talk in private.
I resisted the urge to run my hand over his shoulder, over his thick bicep, over his forearm to his hand—resisted the urge to hold his hand. “I think I could fit you into my schedule.”
His grin was playful. “Well that there is mighty kinda’ya, sweet thing,” he said, pulling his natural drawl into a caricature. “I surely do appreciate it.”
He winked at Cassie in the rearview mirror, eliciting a sound from my daughter which resembled the snarl of a trapped wildcat.
He just chuckled. “Yikes. Don’t piss off that one, huh?”
I cackled. “Oh my, Lucas. If you think Cassie has a temper, you should meet my daughter Lexie. She’ll scalp you, skin you, and castrate you faster than you can blink, and she can do it with nothing more than a few words.” I laughed, imagining her meeting a man like Lucas. “In your case, she might try to literally scalp you, skin you, and castrate you.”
“Well, warn me if she comes to town. I’ll hide in the woods till she leaves.”
Cassie’s laugh was unexpected. “Oh dear god, if Lexie were to ever meet you, Lucas, I would sell tickets. That would be quite a show.”
Lucas nodded, musing. “If you sell tickets, I’ll go in with you fifty-fifty, and turn up the charm a notch or two just to really piss her off.”
Cassie frowned, but it was meant to hide a grin she couldn’t quite help. “This is your idea of charm, is it?”
Lucas winked at her again. “Darlin’, you ain’t seen charm yet.”
“Call me darlin’ again, and see what happens,” Cassie snapped.
“Sure thing, sweet pea.”
This got Lucas another snarl from Cassie, which just made Lucas chuckle.
I frowned at Lucas. “Don’t antagonize her, Lucas. Please? She’s been through enough.”
Lucas sighed. “I’m just teasin’, Liv. I don’t mean nothin’ by it.”
“I know that, Lucas, but—”
“Mom,” Cassie cut in. “I can handle it myself. I broke my leg, I didn’t have a nervous breakdown. I’m fine.”
“You’re in an emotionally vulnerable state right now, Cassandra, and you don’t need to be—”
“Mom,” she hissed. “Stop.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’m sorry.”
The rest of the ride home was tense, more specifically between Cassie and me. Lucas seemed oblivious to it, humming under his breath as he drove, taking us to my condo.
Cassie’s questioning glance as he pulled up to my building asked why he knew where I lived, if we were just friends, and my answering look told her to keep her mouth shut about it and mind her own business—my daughters and I have developed a rather complex set of looks over the years, so we can have entire conversations without a single verbal word being exchanged.
As we pulled into a visitor spot near the door, Cassie eyed the four-story building nervously. “Which floor do you live on, Mom?”
“Third,” I answered. “But there’s an elevator.”
Cassie suppressed a sigh. “I never take an elevator unless it’s more than five floors up. Haven’t for years. I hate elevators.”
I winced. “You may have to make some concessions for the time being, honey.”
She nodded. “I know. But…” she huffed. “I’ll be fine.”
Lucas waited until she slid out of the back seat and headed for the front door, watching the limp in her step. “Stubborn one, ain’t she?”
“All of my girls are violently allergic to dependence on anyone for anything. Even Torie, my most laid-back child, started working at fourteen, bought her first car the day she turned sixteen, moved out at eighteen, and refuses to ask for help unless she’s literally starving. I visited her once and her apartment, which she shares with four other girls, contained nothing but a package of hot dogs, two boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and a six pack of beer. Oh, and ketchup.” I sighed. “They had plenty of money for pot, though.”
“I mean, priorities, right?” Lucas said, his voice wry.
I groaned, watching Cassie standing on the steps up to the door, spinning in a slow circle, taking in the view—which even from here was magnificent. “I’m worried about her, Lucas. She’s independent to a fault. I don’t know how this is going to work.”
“One day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time,” Lucas said, as if reciting something he’d told himself a million times. “That’s how I got sober, how I got into shape, and how I’m repairing my relationships with my boys.”
I eyed him, full of
curiosity. “I have a million questions for you.”
He grinned. “Well, I’m hoping we’ll have time to answer them all, Liv.” He opened his door and hung his foot out, but paused to look at me. “For now, though, that girl needs you. She may not be able to say so, but it’s written in every line of her body and every word she says. She needs her mama.”
“I know she does.”
“You just call me when you’ve got a few minutes. I don’t aim to get in the way of your time with Cassie.”
I frowned. “I don’t have your number..”
He opened the console armrest and pulled out a new iPhone. “I’m even learnin’ to send text messages. My boys find it funny, for some damn reason. My big old sausage thumbs don’t like to hit the right keys and I spell shit wrong, seein’ as my education is spotty at best.”
He unlocked the phone, laboriously hunted through the apps until he found the contacts, and eventually figured out how to add a new contact…watching him mistype three times in the process of entering my name, which was only three letters, was funnier than it had any right to be, and I had to suppress laughter as I watched him struggle.
He huffed. “Okay, now what’s your number?”
I reached for the device. “Want me to just type it in?”
He kept it out of reach, snorting. “Nope. I gotta learn.” He glanced at me, amused. “Roman says watching me try to use this thing is the most frustrating experience in the world.”
I laughed. “It’s...something.” I told him my phone number, and again, watching him type the ten digits was comically frustrating, as he had to back up and retype at least a dozen times. Finally he had my number in correctly, and he sent me a message:
This heer is lucas.
I bit my lip. “Got it.”
He eyed me. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
He flushed, ducked his head. “Look, I told you I don’t spell too good. Liam and I quit school when we was, like, nine. Or if you want to know the truth, my dad quit takin’ us. Closest school was almost an hour drive from our homestead, and he just didn’t have the time, so Gramps took over our learnin’, but he could barely read, write or add himself.”
“Lucas, you know I could—”
He shook his head. “Liv, if you’re about to suggest you could teach me to read and write…well, just don’t. What I know works fine for me.”
I nodded, sighing. “Okay.”
He grinned at me. “It bugs you, don’t it?”
I laughed, shrugging. “I just want to help.”
He gestured at Cassie. “Right now, she needs your help more than I do.”
I reached across the console and wrapped my arms around his neck, inhaling his scent once more. “I’ll call you, okay?”
His hand slid up my back to curl around the back of my neck, and I felt his nose against my cheek, his breath on my jaw; all I’d have to do is twist my head ever so slightly and his lips would brush against mine—
I yanked away from him, my heart hammering in my chest. I dragged my fingers through my hair, clearing my throat.
“It’s good to see you, Lucas. You look amazing. You should be proud of yourself.”
He nodded, rubbing his thumb across his lips. “I actually am pretty proud of myself.”
I swallowed hard. “Would it sound condescending if I said I was proud of you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I know what you mean, and…it means a lot to me, comin’ from you.”
“MOM!” Cassie bellowed.
I sighed. “I have to go.”
Lucas slid out of the truck, heading for the bed of his truck. “I’ll bring your luggage up.”
“You don’t have to.”
He grinned. “Don’t you know I been dyin’ to see the inside of your condo?”
I laughed. “It’s not that exciting.”
“Maybe I’m easily excited.”
I giggled. “I think it’s best I don’t follow that line of conversation.”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me—silly but suggestive—as he set our luggage on the ground. “Scared of impropriety, are you?”
“I’m not scared of it, Lucas, I’m just…proper.”
He snorted. “Over-fucking-rated.” He settled the duffel bags crossed over his chest, tucked a suitcase under each arm and one suitcase in each hand, and headed for the door. “You need to loosen up a little, Liv. Life is too fuckin’ short to be proper all the damn time.”
I couldn’t get his words out of my mind as I opened the door for him, called the elevator, and led the way to my condo. He waited until I opened the door and followed me in, setting the luggage on the floor just inside the door, and then taking a long look around at the open concept floor plan.
Cassie limped slowly inside, taking it in as well. “Nice place, Mom.”
Lucas nodded his agreement. “Funny—it’s pretty much what I would have imagined your place looking like. ’Course, I don’t have the imagination to see exactly this, but it just fits you, I guess.” He gave my place one last look around, waved at Cassie, and then paused next to me, brushing his cheek against mine in a ghosting tease of a not-quite cheek-kiss. “See you,” he whispered.
I leaned against him for the briefest instant, and then pulled back. “Bye.”
He was gone, then, leaving a lingering breath of woodsy male scent in his wake.
Cassie perched on the edge of my couch and smirked at me. “A friend, indeed.”
I pointed an index finger at her. “Not a word, Cassandra.”
In typical Cassie fashion, she ignored me. “You don’t have to talk to me about it if you don’t want to, but I say go for it. He’s huge and crude and vulgar and uneducated, but he’s clearly smitten with you.”
“He is not smitten,” I muttered.
Cassie shook her head at me, snorting gently. “Mom, he’s bananas for you. If you don’t see that, you’re being willfully blind to the obvious.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Cass, please.”
She lifted her bad leg and extended it across the ottoman that matched the couch. “Mom, you please.”
I stared at her. “I have no idea what you mean.”
She closed her eyes tiredly, spoke without opening them. “You’re as goo-goo for him as he is for you. Why you’re pretending to be oblivious, I don’t know, but it’s not like you. You were the one who taught the five of us to face facts head-on.”
I had no response to that, so I set about unpacking my things, and then Cassie’s, while she fell asleep on my couch.
Goo-goo?
Was I goo-goo for Lucas?
Was he bananas for me?
Was I pretending to be oblivious?
Too many questions, not enough answers.
Maybe it truly was time to face facts head-on.
13
Lucas
I lay awake at two in the morning, unable to sleep. Liv had been home for two days already and I hadn’t heard from her. I didn’t want to bug her—not with her daughter newly arrived and trying to recalibrate her entire life, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was so near, yet she might as well have been on the moon.
I missed her, and the brief reunion on the way home from the airport hadn’t been anywhere near enough for me. I needed more. Needed to smell her, see her, feel her. God, I’d thought I had my feelings for her kinda locked down, but from the first moment I laid eyes on her at the ferry dock, I’d known I was in trouble.
It wasn’t that she looked any different, because she didn’t. She smelled the same, spoke the same—she was just Liv, as she’d been since we first met in the hardware store. I was different, though, and her being gone while I’d been working my ass off to revamp my life and myself meant I saw her in a whole new way.
Or maybe the absence really had made my heart grow fonder. I’d always kind of thought that saying was a bunch of bullshit, but maybe it wasn’t after all. I’d missed her more than I cared to admit, and I found myself
wondering if she’d missed me as much—if her feelings toward me had changed or grown at all.
Unless I was misinterpreting her body language cues, it sure did seem like she’d missed me, and that she’d liked seeing me again—and this new and improved me—had helped her feelings along.
But was there a future between us?
Could there be?
Did I want there to be? That one, at least, was easy to answer: yes, I did. I deeply wanted to know what life could be like with Olivia Goode in it day in, and day out. To know her inside and out. To feel her affection, physically and emotionally and mentally.
When she smiled at me, I felt like I could fly. When she’d told me she was proud of me, I had been on top of the world. That moment where it had seemed as if she’d been resisting the urge to kiss me, I could have wrestled a bear, could have shouted with joy.
If I were to have the privilege of kissing her, I would never, ever, take it for granted. I would never take her for granted.
My phone rang, a jarring, shocking digital warbling sound—Roman had told me I could change the ringer, but I couldn’t figure out how.
I stared at the screen for a moment, shocked breathless—liv, it read.
I clumsily swept my finger across the screen to answer it before it stopped ringing, as if the fact of her calling me would somehow vanish. “Hello?” I murmured.
“Did I wake you up?” Her voice was quiet, nearly inaudible.
“Nope. I was awake.” I must have been delirious with lack of sleep—it was the only way to explain my next words. “Just laying here trying to convince myself I shouldn’t call you.”
“Why would you convince yourself of that, Lucas?”
“It’s two in the morning, and your daughter is with you.”
There was a long hesitation on the other end. “I haven’t been able to sleep since I’ve been back.”
“Jet lag?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s part of it—France is several hours ahead of here.” Another pause. “But that’s not the only reason I haven’t been able to sleep.”