“Good traffic at the carnival?”
“Yes,” she said. “I left Mrs. Battle there. It looks like fun. Aren’t you working?”
“I’m on call both nights.”
He gave Duke one last pat and got to his feet. The dog rolled on his side and closed his eyes again. Lucas washed his hands, took down plates, and got silverware from the drawer.
“You want to finish off this wine?”
“Please,” she said.
He poured her a glass and set his beer bottle on the table.
It felt so natural, so right to sit down with Lucas to a meal after a long day.
“How was work?” she asked.
“I took Gunther’s wife’s ring back to him,” he said.
“He must have been so happy to get it back,” she said.
“He was. He kept saying thank-you, saying how much it meant to him to have it back. It can’t be worth more than a couple hundred dollars. There’s almost no gold left in the shank, and the diamonds are too small to be chips. You’d think I’d given him a Kardashian’s engagement ring.”
“That makes me happy,” she said quietly. “When is his granddaughter’s sweet sixteen?”
“Next month. You?”
She lifted an eyebrow before she realized he was asking about her day. “Wrapping things up, mostly, which was harder to do than I thought.”
He gave her a sharp look.
“Twenty people must have stopped by the library to say good-bye and thank me. It was . . .” Her voice trailed off. To cover her emotions, she swallowed the last of her pork chop. “It was very nice.”
“Freddie will be glad to get you home.”
“I’ll be glad to see her.”
“There’s so much energy in Chicago,” he added. “You can see Nate again.”
She flicked him a glance through her lashes. “Unless he’s planning to relocate Martin Industries to Mumbai or London, I don’t think I’ll see much of him this year.”
“That’s where you’re headed?”
“The day after the Senator’s party. I’ll be lucky to get my boxes out of the car before I have to leave. Freddie’s speaking at a global human-trafficking initiative in Mumbai next week. Then it’s on to London for the first round of wedding planning.”
He set his silverware neatly on his plate and pushed it aside. “You’ll forget all about us in no time,” he said easily.
“I won’t,” she whispered. “I won’t forget. Mrs. Battle’s going to send me pictures from the carnival, and I’m not giving up on Cody. There’s no law that says if he doesn’t go to art school at eighteen, he can’t ever go. Maybe when the little kids get a bit older . . . or he can do something long distance. I’m not giving up. I’m not walking away from him. He has family responsibilities now, but he won’t always.”
Lucas just looked at her. “He’ll come around.”
“He thinks I’m abandoning him.”
“He’s seventeen. Everything is drama at that age.”
“I’m not. I’m not abandoning him,” she said firmly. Her eyes stung. “I’m not. I did what I could. It’s a good start. Someone else can carry it through.”
The legs of Lucas’s chair scraped against the subflooring. “Come here,” he said gently.
She stepped over Duke on her way to Lucas’s lap. The dog peered up at her, then seemed to think Lucas had things under control because he slumped back to the floor with a grunt. Lucas stroked her hair and let her cry herself out.
“I never meant to hurt him,” she said finally. “Or Mrs. Battle.”
He was quiet for a long time, his hand curved around her shoulder, one finger stroking at her nape. “No one ever does,” he said finally.
? ? ?
AS THE SUN set, they cleaned up the kitchen, which meant throwing away take-out containers and disposable cutlery. Then Alana reached for Lucas’s hand and drew him down the hallway. In the dim light of her bedroom, she stripped off his shirt, then his jeans, and pressed her mouth to all the parts of him she wanted to remember. His forehead, so she would remember the way it wrinkled when he smiled. His eyelids, so she would remember the way he looked at her under his lashes when he thought she wasn’t looking. His cheekbones, so she’d remember the angles of his face.
His mouth. So she would remember his rare smiles, the way he whispered to her.
His shoulders and collarbone and chest, so she would remember how strong he was. His abdomen, so she would remember the first six-pack she ever saw on a live man. His hip bone and his shaft, jutting hard and heavy from his pelvis, so she would remember the way making love really felt. She pressed her mouth to his thighs and his knees and his insteps. When he glided inside her, moving slowly so it would last and last, she closed her eyes and committed his back to her tactile memory. The way his shoulder blades jutted, his spine between the thick muscles on either side. The nape of his neck, so vulnerable and strong all at once.