Crush (13 page)

“Aye,” Garrison said.
“
‘E’s got himself papers in applied chemistry. ‘E’s a bloody brain. ‘E just doesn’t got a full servin’ ‘a common sense.”

* * *

“It’s been a hard tour, but I shouldn’t be this worn out,” Lucas said. He set his motorcycle helmet on the small circle of Miranda’s dining room table. His heavy black boots clomped noisily over her bare hardwood floors as he joined her in the confined space of her kitchen. “Perhaps I’m getting too old for all this travel.”

“You’re not old. Mick Jagger was still putting on a good show into his fifties.” Miranda’s voice came from deep within her refrigerator. She was starving, and all she’d done was sit on a stool in the darkened wings of the Arena stage, unlike Lucas, who’d spent over three hours on full throttle. She wanted to feed him, and she was embarrassed that she had little more than condiments and leftovers to serve.

“Jagger hasn’t toured in decades,” Lucas said. “He’s a national treasure that must be preserved. In fact, for the past twenty years he’s been kept under glass in a museum basement in London. An animatronic replica is sent out when the band tours.”

“That would explain his dancing.” Miranda withdrew from the fridge clutching a small bowl of day-old rice, a grilled chicken breast, half a Vidalia onion, a green net bag holding a few grape tomatoes and a tiny tin of sliced black olives. She set the items on the countertop next to the stove. “I could order in Chinese. There’s a place near here that stays open until three on the weekends, or I could throw something together. I think.”

“Bernard said you didn’t cook,” Lucas smiled.

“Chopping and re-heating is not cooking.”

“What can I do to help?”

The kitchen seemed to shrink with him in there with her, and she was keenly aware of his every move. He reached around her for a paring knife, and she felt the warmth of his body. She turned to grab something from the fridge, and she caught a whiff of his freshly showered scent. He worked beside her, chopping garlic gloves, and Miranda was alarmed by her comfort with him.

He leaned in close to her to scrape his garlic into a skillet where Miranda had started the rice dancing in hot vegetable oil with a dash of
dendi
, the bright orange oil extracted from the African palm of northern Brazil.

“My
Avó
Marie Estrella used
dendi
the way Italian cooks use olive oil,” Miranda told Lucas, who had begun slicing the chicken breast into long strips. “She was a very good cook. That gene bypassed me and went to my sister, Calista. I got my other grandmother’s cooking ability. Grandma Ilene’s food was just awful. She thought she was the best cook in the world, though.”

Lucas laughed lightly. “I think every family has one of those. For me, it’s my Aunt Kerry. Every year at Christmas she makes rum cakes for everyone. My dad’s still using his as a doorstop.”

“My Grandma Ilene made macaroni and cheese for a potluck dinner my softball team in high school was having to raise money for new uniforms,” Miranda started while she sautéed her garlic and rice. “She used to cook pasta the way normal people cook rice, you know, until all the water is absorbed. She put the gloopy, watery macaroni in a baking dish with about six bricks of Velveeta and cream cheese, baked it for twenty minutes, threw some crushed saltines on top, and then presented it at the potluck. She was so mad because everyone thought it was a dip.”

“Well, it seems her heart was in the right place,” Lucas said, laughing along with Miranda as she added his chicken strips to the skillet. The tomatoes, sliced onion and black olives followed, and once satisfied that everything had warmed through, Miranda scraped the contents of the skillet into a big glass bowl. With the steaming bowl propped in the crook of one arm, she grabbed two forks from her cutlery drawer and led Lucas into her living room.

“I’m sorry,” she said when he took a fork and sat on the sofa. “Do you want a plate?”

“This is fine. I’d do it like this myself, if I were at home.”

Miranda sat on the floor on the opposite side of her low cocktail table. “If you were at home, your chef would’ve had a seven-course meal waiting for you. My place is much more humble.”

“It’s charming.” Lucas liked the simplicity of Miranda’s apartment. Since it was the third floor of a deconsecrated church, it had fascinating architectural details: wide, deep windows, exposed brick walls and polished bird’s eye maple floors. The lower level was an open atrium sparsely furnished with light-colored, natural woods and upholsteries, and the upper level was accessed by a set of wide, bare maple stairs. Lucas assumed that her bedroom was somewhere atop them.

Miranda took a bite of the rice. It wasn’t her best, but it would do. “Your guitarist doesn’t like me.”

“It’s not you.” Lucas ate heartily. This was truly the best meal he’d ever had, and it was only leftovers. “It’s any woman. Most of them couldn’t survive Feast’s baptism by sarcasm.”

Most?
Miranda wondered how many there had been.

“Feast was particularly virulent with you because he feels especially threatened. We’ve been together from the beginning. It’s always been hard for him when someone comes between us.”

Miranda blanched as she set down her fork. “I’m the Other Woman?”

“You’re
the
woman. Feast knew that I’d fall in love someday, and that I’d belong to someone else.”

“You say things that make me doubt my sanity.” Miranda went to the kitchen for something to drink.

“He’ll adjust, in time,” Lucas called after her.

“I didn’t mean Feast. I meant that word. You use it so easily.”

“Which word?” Lucas asked.

“Love.”

“On the contrary, Miranda, I use it only when I mean it. I don’t even use the word in my songs.”

Miranda returned with two bottles of beer. She gave one to Lucas.

“I’ve got another Corona in there, too,” she said, holding up the beer she’d chosen for herself. “I’ve got some
cachaça
and a couple of limes. I could make a couple of
caipirinhas
, if you’re more in the mood for a cocktail. If you like
mojitos
, you’ll love
caipirinhas
.”

“As much as I like
cachaça
, this Guinness suits me perfectly, you wonderful girl,” he chuckled, saluting her with the dark brown bottle.

“Bernie loves Guinness.” Miranda resumed her seat at the cocktail table.

“The man has excellent taste,” Lucas proclaimed. “And now who’s guilty of the liberal use of the word ‘love?
’
”

“I used it in this case because Bernie genuinely loves Guinness. He says it tastes like soy sauce, but he loves it because it’s Irish, and he’s very proud of his heritage. But you write love songs. How can you say that you don’t use the word love?”

“Love is a feeling that can be conveyed far more effectively using other words.” He moved the rice bowl and their beers aside, and leaned closer to Miranda, overwhelming her with his proximity. “For example, I died of old age every day I spent waiting to see you again. I lost my heart the first time I looked into your eyes, and I lost my soul the first time you kissed me.”

“Are those lyrics from a song?” she asked softly, his gaze making it impossible for her to move or even look elsewhere. “Because if they are, they’re really cheesy.”

He leaned over the table until his mouth was an inch from hers. “Those are lyrics from my heart, inspired by you.” His words had turned her to honey and when his lips met hers, his touch set that honey boiling. Her desire for him mounted within her with the force of a geyser.

In a show of monumental restraint, Lucas didn’t strike the bowl and the beers onto the floor and spread her over the cocktail table. He’d been hungry after the show, yes, but he could have done without food. He could have done without air. All he wanted was Miranda. Every time he had looked offstage, he’d seen her there in the wings, and at no point had she taken out her book. He’d sung some of his favorite songs not to the thousands of fans who had paid to see him, but to the one woman who was the answer to his unspoken prayers.

As she rose on her knees to deepen the kiss between them, he knew that he had to end it before it got out of his control.

“I should have asked before I did that.” He licked his lower lip, tasting her sweetness on it. “I guess I’m not the gentleman I thought I was.”

She took a deep breath, and her billowy shirt seemed to flutter against the rapid beat of her heart. “I’m sure you’ve got a great room at the Ritz-Carlton or the Harborfront Regency, but you’re welcome to stay here tonight. It’s no castle, but it’s cozy. And I have a really big bed.”

He threw back his head and laughed out loud. “How can I resist an invitation like that?”

She sat back on her heels. “I’m no seductress, Lucas. I’m twenty-nine in two days and I’ve had exactly three lovers in my life.”

“Only three? Did you grow up in a convent?”

“I was a late bloomer.” She grabbed the rice bowl and took it into the kitchen.

“How late?”

“Not until the night of my college graduation.” She returned to the living room, this time sharing the sofa with him. “I was twenty-one years old. My best friend Tracey and I decided that we were tired of being virgins, so—”

“Tracey?” Lucas interrupted with a titillated twitch of an eyebrow.

“Tracey is a he, not a she,” Miranda clarified. “He was a computer information systems major with this big, crazy Afro and the nicest smile. He had this really attractive self-conscious quality. He was a high school nerd who blossomed in college, but never realized that he’d blossomed. On graduation night, we just did it. We got some books—”

“How studious.” Lucas sat to face her.

“
The Joy of Sex
,
Kama Sutra
…you know. We spent the night at his place.”

“Was it satisfactory?”

“Some parts of it were better than others.” She lowered her face to study her thumbnail.

“It didn’t end well with this man?”

She shook her head. “He was more serious about me than I was about him. I went into the whole thing as a reconnaissance mission. It was a learning experience, and I never pretended otherwise.”

“Did you care for him?”

“Of course. He was my best friend for four years. He showed me how to computerize my football betting pools, and I taught him how to fill out a baseball scorecard. We couldn’t have done what we did if we hadn’t respected and cared for each other. I just didn’t love him the way he loved me.”

Lucas stretched an arm invitingly over the back of the sofa. Miranda moved into it and allowed him to hug her to his chest. “I’ll wager you’ve broken a number of hearts over the years,” he sighed into her hair.

“Look who’s talking. Women probably hug their pillows in bed at night, pretending that the pillows are you. How much fan mail do you get?”

He gently combed his fingers through her hair. “The last figure I recall hearing is a half-million pieces annually. It wasn’t always like that, even after my first American single hit number one. I was something of a late bloomer myself. I had a man’s voice at thirteen, but physically, I was a skinny bobolink until I turned seventeen. In the course of a year I went from eleven and a half stone, five-foot-ten to six-foot-four, fifteen and a half stone of solid muscle. Women began taking notice of me in ways they hadn’t before.”

Using her reporter’s tact, Miranda asked, “How many lovers have you had?”

“It’s unseemly for a man to talk about his sex life.”

“So it was always just sex?”

“And it was always safe. My father was a musician, so he drummed into me from the beginning how important it was to keep the cannon capped until I was ready to bring children into the world.”

“You want children someday?” She looked up at him, and Lucas lost his heart all over again.

“Absolutely. You?”

“I never thought about it.” She laid her hand flat over his lower abdomen. He almost groaned as his cannon strained against his blue jeans. “Kiki Langlois seemed pretty set on getting you to the altar.”

“Don’t tell me you actually believe those tabloid reports, Miranda.”

“This one came firsthand, from the Bernie’s mouth. He saw you with her at a party after the Grammy awards. He said that she was stuck to you like a spray-on tan.”

“Kiki and I met on the set of one of my videos,” Lucas said. “Our relationship lasted as long as the three days of filming.”

“Rock stars and supermodels.” Miranda sat up off of him and swung her feet to the floor. “They’re like chocolate and peanut butter. Kiki Langlois isn’t just a regular supermodel, Lucas. She’s an
American Swimsuit Magazine
supermodel. I see her face and her skinny arms and knobby knees on every magazine—including
The Great Outdoorsman
and
Fitness For Seniors
—every time I go to 7-Eleven for Slim Jims after a game.”

“What are Slim Jims?”

“Don’t change the subject. What are you doing here with me when you can have your pick of the Kiki Langloises of the world?”

He sat up, bracketing her between his legs. “Because I want you. I want a one-of-a-kind, exotic Miranda Penney, not a run-of-the-mill Kiki Langlois.”

“I guess I am a nice change from the long-legged, plucked, waxed and exfoliated beauties you’re accustomed to.”

“Miranda, you’re beginning to exhaust my patience.” He took her by her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Hear well what I’m about to say to you, love. When I pulled you from that crush, and you opened your eyes and looked at me, I thought you were the most exquisite creature God ever dared set before me. In your eyes I saw the inspiration for every love song I’ve ever sung.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but the words stalled in her throat. No matter how much she wanted to believe he was just feeding her a line, she couldn’t, not while he was holding her gaze and giving her an unobstructed view of the contents of his heart.

“I’m more of a Looney Tune than a love song,” she said. “Who knew your idea of beautiful is a mouth that looks like a fist.”