Crush (15 page)

“Oh honey, I’m so happy for you!”

Miranda smiled into the back of her hand. “I’m happy for me, too.”

“Does he want to see us again?”

“He’s taking me to dinner tomorrow night, for my birthday.”

“What about tonight?”

“He wants to spend some down time with his band. Garrison Coe brought his whole family to Boston, and Lucas promised the kids that he’d take them to The Rainforest Café for dinner. I think things might get ugly between him and his lead guitarist.”

“Lucas has carried Len Feast for the past twenty years, and the guy knows it,” Bernie said. “He’s been working on a solo album called
Feast or Famine
for the past three years. He talks about it in every interview, but no one has ever heard any of it. It’s the modern rock equivalent to the Loch Ness Monster.”

“He could always take up professional wrestling if the solo act doesn’t work out,” Miranda said. “We got into a scuffle last night.”

“Roughneck. Did you scratch his eyes out?”

“No. Lucas separated us. I thought he was gonna knock Feast’s lights out.”

“Way to go, Yoko! Break up the most popular rock duo since Lennon and McCartney.”

Miranda’s happy mood diminished a bit. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bernie. Last night was just one night. It’s not a lifetime.”
Although it was certainly life changing
, she allowed.

“You’re completely deluded. You had a better view of him at the concert than I did and I was in the front row. He stared backstage practically the whole time. The venue was sold out, but Lucas Fletcher played for
you
. And you’re fooling yourself if you think you haven’t fallen for him, too.”

Miranda sat up and rested her bare back against her headboard. She brought her knees to her chest. “I enjoy his company. That’s all.”

“Have it your way,” Bernie said. “I won’t press. Why don’t you shower and dress and meet me at Mama Brown’s? I wanna hear more about Lucas’s gold-medal winning tube sock.”

* * *

“I’m surprised to find you alone,” Lucas said, accepting the Foster’s Lager Feast offered him as they seated themselves in the living room of his hotel suite. “I expected to find you me-deep in conversation, surrounded by Isabella and her entourage of flight attendants.”

Feast, not amused, turned his beer in his hands. “Let’s get this out and over with, Fletch.”

“Right.” Lucas’s brow wrinkled in concern. He and Feast had worked through plenty of disagreements over the years, and most of them had been far more difficult and distressing than what had happened the night before.

Feast slumped deeper into the suede sofa. His baggy cargo pants blended in with the taupe color of the sofa. “You called this meeting. You start.” Before Lucas could speak, Feast erupted with, “You behave as though you’re in love with that reporter woman.”

Lucas sat back in a deep, buttery-soft suede recliner. He tapped a finger on his fat beer can. “Perhaps I am.”

Feast sat forward, his pale eyes beseeching. “How would you even know, Fletch? There’ve been so many women through the years, some a damn sight more interested in you than your Boston brawler seems to be.”

“I’ve never felt for any other woman what I feel for Miranda. Feast, I was in hell while we were in Asia. I have two weeks with her before we have to go to Australia, and I’m already dreading having to say goodbye to her again.”

Feast stubbornly shook his head. “I just don’t see it, mate.”

“You don’t have to,” Lucas said simply. “Perhaps our paths are diverging. Maybe we want different things from life now.”

“You’ve gone insane, Fletch. And over a bird!”

“Don’t you ever feel the urge to settle down? To plant roots?”

A shrill laugh escaped Feast. “You want to marry that skinny woman and fill your castle with the pitter-patter of little brown Fletches, don’t you?”

“Would that be so bad?” Lucas said through a slow grin.

Feast covered his face with his hands. “No.” His hands dropped into his lap. Lucas noticed how tired he looked. “In all fairness, I’ve fancied being an uncle. Are you sure you’re willing to pack it all in for Miranda Penney?”

“I’ve never been more sure about anything. Without Miranda, none of this means anything to me any more, and it all means nothing compared to her.”

Feast held his tongue. Lucas thought he was working on an obnoxious response. “I guess it’s time the boys in the band grew up. Myself included.”

Lucas chuckled and took a swig of his beer. “That’ll be the day.”

“It’s coming sooner than you think,” Feast laughed somberly. He stared at the beer grasped in his hand just long enough to concern Lucas.

“Len, what’s wrong?” Lucas suddenly realized that something else had been behind his tangle with Miranda.

“Izzy’s pregnant.”

“Shut up,” Lucas said, adopting one of Miranda’s expressions of shocked disbelief. He joined Feast on the sofa.

“It’s mine.”

“Who else’s would it be? You two have been glued at the hip—and every place else, apparently—since Rome. What do you plan to do?”

“Are you daft? I’m gonna marry her, if she’ll have me.”

Lucas laughed softly. “Look at us. Last night, we were the carefree loverboys of Karmic Echo, the very poster children of rock and roll and hedonistic excess. This morning, we’re ready to trade it all in for nappies and minivans.”

“Better to burn out than fade away,” Feast said, offering his beer can in salute.

“Better to make little brown babies and live forever,” Lucas said wistfully as his Foster’s clunked dully against Feast’s.

Chapter 7

Miranda sat on her big bed staring at a black dress. Her right hand picked at a cluster of hives on her neck. Her left hand clutched her cordless phone to her ear. She listened to the incessant ringing on the other end of the line, willing her sister to come to the phone. No one combined sex appeal and sophistication as well as Calista, and Miranda desperately needed her sister’s help in deciding what to wear to dinner with Lucas. The more times the phone rang, the higher Miranda’s anxiety climbed and the bigger her hives became.

“Hello?” came the voice of her salvation. With a grunt of relief, Miranda balled up Grandma Tillie’s shroud and pitched it into the closet.

“Callie, I need something to wear tonight.” Miranda frantically paced the room. “Lucas is taking me out.”

After a short beat of silence, Calista hollered, “You had sex with Lucas Fletcher!”

Miranda snatched the phone from her ear and stopped pacing. “I didn’t say that.”

“That’s the only reason you want to look sexy for your birthday dinner.”

“How did you know it was a birthday dinner?”

“Don’t you read your own newspaper?”

Miranda’s hands went cold. “Only the sports section. Why?”

“No reason,” Calista said quickly. “About tonight, your fairy godbrother already gave me a call. We put our heads together and came up with something we think you can live with. Bernie will bring everything by.”

“Should I be worried?”

“You’re already worried,” Calista said. “Have you broken out in hives yet?”

“No.” Miranda stopped scratching a hive.

“So are you and Lucas official?”

Miranda stood at her stained glass window. She peered through a gold section of an angel’s wing. Elongated cars and squatty people moved along the street and sidewalks below. She didn’t care for the distorted perspective. She had always put more trust in what she could see clearly.

“Miranda, are you and Lucas a couple now?” Calista asked.

“He’s here for two weeks.” Miranda turned away from the window. “I don’t know what will happen after that.”

“What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t know, Callie.” Miranda started scratching again. “I just want to get through tonight.”

“Think of it as an adventure…a safari, where the prey has all the weapons of destruction.”

“
Ó Deus
, Callie, what have you and Bernie done?”

“Let’s just say that tonight, Lucas will get a present, too.”

* * *

Miranda felt naked even though she was fully clothed. The “little black dress” Bernie had brought for her whispered against her skin as she studied her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to her bedroom door. The straight neckline of the sleeveless silk dress rested against her collarbones. The straight skirt flared just a little at the hem, which grazed her legs at mid-thigh. The back of the dress, or absence of it, compensated for the modesty of the front. Miranda twisted to see the smooth expanse of her back, which was bared from her nape to just below her waist. She had styled her hair in a simple, sleek ponytail secured with an elasticized band the same dark hue as her hair.

Her second and last pair of sheer black hose—she had put her thumb through the delicate silk of the first pair—highlighted the elegant, sinuous lines of her legs. She spun carefully in her four-inch black heels. She bent over to adjust the suede strap circling her left ankle, and she wondered how she would make it through the night without tripping. When she stood and looked at her reflection anew, she actually liked the total picture. She hoped the man waiting for her downstairs would like it, too.

Miranda was extra cautious as she picked her way down the open staircase. She paused at the bottom step, hoping that her ensemble met with approval. She grew increasingly nervous as she waited for her guest to say something. Anything.

“Well?” She shifted her hip as she hooked a finger under the back of the skirt to adjust her silk G-string.

“Oh for Heaven’s sake, Miranda!” Bernie chastised. “We’re going for Halle Berry meets Victoria’s Secret, not Moms Mabley at a Fanny-Picking Picnic. Promise me you won’t do that in front of Sir Lucas.”

“I can’t help it,” she pleaded. “My ass has been chewing on this thing since I put it on.”

“Get used to it.” Bernie took her hand and helped her to the sofa. “You can’t wear your tidy white boy-cut panties because they’ll ruin the line of the dress.”

Miranda wriggled in her seat.

“You can always go au naturel,” Bernie suggested.

“I’ll get used to the butt floss,” Miranda decided.

“You really look stunning, doll.”

“Thanks, Bernie.”

“Good choice in going natural with the makeup. I can barely tell that you have any on.”

“I don’t.”

Bernie touched her cheek then examined his fingertip. “My, my. You’re a natural beauty.”

“Shut up,” Miranda said, a blush tinting her face.

“The whole city knows what I’ve been trying to tell you all along,” Bernie said. “My friends at the Herald-Star switchboard told me that they’ve gotten hundreds of calls about your photos.”

“What photos?”

Bernie’s eyes widened in disbelief. “You haven’t seen it?”

“Seen what?”

He went to the dining table, where he’d placed his jacket and his tote bag, and retrieved a
Herald-Star
. Miranda, almost tripping over her right foot, went to him and took it. She set it on the table and flipped the pages, looking for
Psst!

“It’s a nice spread,” Bernie offered, hoping to diffuse the anger he saw blooming on Miranda’s face. “It’s nothing bad.”

Miranda stopped at the middle of the paper. She covered her mouth with her hands when she saw herself in a big, half-page black-and-white photograph. She was standing on the top of the fire escape, right outside her living room window. A corner of her giant cotton bed sheet was wrapped around her, covering her from her bosom to mid-thigh. The bulk of the sheet formed a train that remained in her living room. Her hair was a wild, kittenish tumble about her head and bare shoulders as she smiled and waved down at Lucas, who looked up at her from the street level.

Beneath the large photo was a series of jumbo wallet-sized pictures forming a perfect storyboard of their Sunday afternoon good-bye. The first photo showed Lucas climbing out of her living room window and onto the fire escape, with Miranda close behind. The second photo illustrated the wonder of the telephoto lens. It had captured Lucas’s hand on Miranda’s face and wisps of her hair tickling about his head as they had warmed the December afternoon with a steamy goodbye kiss. The third photo depicted Lucas going down the fire escape, and the fourth showed him running back for another kiss, which was depicted in the fifth photo. The next two photos showed Lucas going back down the fire escape and leaping over the railing to drop to the street. In the last shot, Lucas roared away on his Harley in the foreground while Miranda stood at the top of the fire escape looking after him in the background.

“
Psst!
trackers caught Welsh Romeo Lucas Fletcher leaving the oh-so-chic South End crash pad of our very own junior varsity Juliette, Miranda Penney,” read the accompanying article. “A little Bernie—er,
birdie
—told us that the love bug has bitten Sir Lucas. (And so did our leggy Juliette, according to noise reports from her downstairs neighbor and building manager!) Stay tuned for Act II, when Sir Lucas helps our lucky Penney celebrate her big 2-9!”

“I’m never going to live this down,” Miranda said. “I can’t ever show my face in the newsroom again.”

“I’m just wondering, honey,” Bernie said, “but why didn’t Lucas use the front door?”

Miranda chuckled dryly. “I didn’t want any of my neighbors to see him.”

* * *

The first car picked up Miranda at home. The driver, who was built like a New England Patriots linebacker, carefully whisked Miranda through a sea of people, half of whom cheered her when she left her building while the other half—mostly female—heartily booed her. Karmic Echo T-shirts were waved at her and cameras blinded her with their flashes, but not before she caught a glimpse of the blood-red lettering on a piece of black poster board: Back Off Lucas Is Mine!

The driver handled her with the utmost care while bulldozing his way through the unruly crowd. When he helped her into the Rolls Royce, Miranda was disappointed to see that she was the only passenger.

“Mr. Fletcher has arranged to meet you elsewhere this evening,” the driver told her once he had taken the wheel. “He sends his regrets regarding the roundabout way of meeting you. I’m afraid paparazzi have been dogging him relentlessly.”

Miranda turned in her seat to look out of the rear window as the Rolls pulled away. The crowd in front of her building had settled, but showed no signs of dispersing.
They’re going to wait for me
, she thought.
This is serious crazy
.

Her thoughts scattered wildly in every direction as the limo eased through surprisingly light Boston traffic. It was past rush hour on a Tuesday night, which accounted for the ease of movement. It also made it easier for the Rolls to be followed, although Miranda didn’t realize that they were being tailed until she noticed that they had driven past Trinity Church three times.

“Are you lost?” she asked the driver.

“No, miss,” he responded, glancing at her in the rear view mirror. “We have company.”

Miranda turned again and saw two cars vying for positions behind the Rolls. Photographers hung out of the front passenger windows of each. They couldn’t shoot her through the tinted windows, but she nonetheless shrank deeper into the backseat. “I’m not Lady Di, for crying out loud,” she muttered. “Why are they chasing me?”

The driver thought she was talking to him. “You’re a very beautiful woman who’s caught the eye of a very famous man. The press assumes ownership of stories like that.”

Great,
Miranda thought dismally.
I’ve got Joe Philosophy for a driver when I need Mario Andretti.
“Are we there yet?” she asked.

“Almost.”

Two minutes later, they pulled in front of Guiglio’s Trattoria on Newbury Street. The vans that had been pursuing them skidded to a stop as the driver was helping Miranda from the car. He quickly hustled her into the restaurant, where a nattily dressed maitre d’ took her arm. “Good luck, Miss Penney,” the Rolls driver said. He smiled, tipped his hat, and backed away from her.

The maitre d’ briskly walked Miranda through the restaurant, giving her no time to appreciate the luxe décor or the famous faces dining at candlelit tables. Guiglio’s was one of Boston’s ritziest restaurants, and this was Miranda’s first time in it. She had no genuine interest in dining there, but she would have liked seeing what all the fuss over the place was about.

“Forgive me for being so brusque,” her escort said. “But it won’t be long before the vultures see through our ruse. Your driver is waiting for you.”

“But…I thought…” She gave up trying to figure out what was going on. She kept stride with the maitre d’. He took her to the rear of the restaurant, through the bustling kitchen, and out to the alley in back of the building. A Mercedes and its driver awaited her.

“Thank you,” the driver said to the maitre d’ as Miranda was literally handed over to him. She was quickly deposited into the back seat of the Mercedes, and the driver took off with a start.

“How many more times am I going to have to switch cars before I get to see Lucas?” Miranda asked. The car pulled out of the alley, and she saw the photo vans idling outside Guiglio’s. The paparazzi, some of them with lenses as long as their arms, had their cameras trained on the interior of the restaurant.

“One more stop, ma’am,” the driver said. “Mr. Fletcher—”

“I know,” Miranda interrupted wearily. “He sends his apologies.”

* * *

Lucas entered the bar on a rush of cold air. The place was crowded, with most of the male patrons gathered at the far end of the long bar. The men were in business suits, for the most part, but they hooted and whistled as though they were watching a Red Sox game in their own living rooms. Lucas scanned the room for Miranda. When he didn’t see her, he bellied up to the bar and ordered a club soda.

“Quiet guys, here’s the next question,” said one of the men at the end of the bar. “This lady beat the boys in the Yonkers Trot and the World Trotting Derby and went on to be named Horse of the Year in 1995.”

“I’ve never heard of any of these nags,” one of the men complained as he read the multiple-choice answers. “Who the hell knows this stuff?”

“CR Kay Suzie,” came a soft, female voice that brought a smile to Lucas’s face. He took his drink and moved to stand on the fringe of the gathering at the end of the bar. Miranda was in the middle of a dense sea of corporate manhood. She sat on her coat, which had been laid over one of the high bar stools. In front of her was a large computer monitor with
All-Star Sports Trivia
in bright blue letters across the top of the screen. Miranda touched the
Enter
button on the screen, and a second later, the men erupted in cheers when
Correct!
flashed on the screen.

“Unbelievable!” exclaimed a man near Lucas. “She’s a friggin’ savant or something.”

“Definitely something,” Lucas agreed with a proud smile. He moved deeper into the crowd and saw six drinks of various heights and colors standing next to the computer monitor. Judging by the way none of the men claimed them and how the ice melted in them, Lucas rightly assumed that the drinks had been purchased for Miranda.

“I’ve never seen anyone play five games on one quarter,” the bartender said, approaching Miranda. “If you get this next round of five questions right, the next round for the bar is on the house.”

“Are you sure?” Miranda asked calmly. “There are a lot of thirsty guys here.” One of them laughed as he placed his hand on Miranda’s bare back. She turned and gave him a shove that would have landed him on his backside if two other men hadn’t caught him up. Lucas inwardly cheered.