Crush (18 page)

“You mean
you
have something?” She nervously pulled the flaps of the shirt closer about her body.

He looked up at her and he couldn’t blame her for the worry he saw in her eyes. “No, love. Well, yes, but not in the way you must be thinking.”

Her ardor reduced from a roiling boil to a simmer, she sat on the bed and leaned over to unfasten the velvety straps circling her ankles. Her shoes gone, she peeled off her stockings. The sight only reminded Lucas of the cold ache between his legs. Her oversized shirt gaped open as she crawled over to him and straddled him, keeping the turgid flesh between them in plain sight. “What’s the matter?”

His fingertips traced her spine as he met her confused gaze. “I’ve never forgotten to put on a condom before. Never.”

Strangely humbled by his admission, she took the condoms from his hand and tore one of them open. She carefully dressed him, further stimulating him in the bargain. “All better?”

“Not yet.” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, his mouth drawing hers into a dance their bodies would soon emulate.

Eager to pick up where they had left off, Miranda raised herself on her knees. Lucas captured her left nipple in his mouth and hungrily drank from it as his fingers pulled aside the wet satin gliding against his hardness. Miranda steered him inside her, a moan of unabashed delight oozing from her throat as she lowered herself upon him. Without breaking contact with her, Lucas lay on his back. Miranda reached back and gripped his thighs, her body undulating upon him and clenching around him.

“Look at me,” he begged between gritted teeth. “Miranda, love, please…look at me.”

Her hair fell in a shining curtain as she bowed her face, but she didn’t meet his eyes. Her gaze fell upon his lips and his chin, and the space between his eyes, but she wouldn’t lock her eyes with his. When he brought his thumbs to the slick valley crowning the place where they joined, and he used them to massage her into a wild, mewling creature of passion, she shut her eyes tightly and surrendered her body to his loving.

Passion stole Lucas’s fight for her soul as his body shuddered beneath her. His spine curved and his climax burst from him, leaving his skin humming and his ears ringing. Miranda folded herself upon him, kissing his lips, his earlobes and his throat as waves of sweet sensation churned through her. He smoothed her hair and returned her delicate kisses, all the while wondering how she could share all but her eyes with him.

Chapter 8

Miranda woke up tangled in Lucas’s sheets. The bed was otherwise empty, but she heard voices—one familiar, one foreign—in the living room.

“Her name is Tabitha,” the stranger’s voice said. “That’s T-A-B-I-T-H-A.”

“Like the daughter on
Bewitched
,” she heard Lucas say.

“Yeah, man, that’s right!” the stranger crowed. “You know that show? I love that show! Boy, it sure must take a long time for American shows to make it over to England.”

Miranda smothered a laugh in her hand, and wrapped the sheet around her as she left the bed to go to the bathroom. When she came out, the stranger was thanking Lucas for an autograph. Although she was eager to get her hands on the coffee she smelled, she lingered in the bedroom, waiting for the coast to clear.

One of the bedroom walls was made of one-way glass. Miranda stood before it and stretched, staring down at the congestion on Boston’s busy downtown streets. The city was so much prettier and peaceful from twenty-five stories up. Miranda wished that she could wake up to such a view every morning, instead of the garbage cans and the brick sides of neighboring buildings.

She left the window and drifted to the gigantic console housing the television. She figured she’d watch
SportsCenter
while Lucas tried to politely extract himself from a conversation about the merits of Prince versus Stevie Wonder. Miranda forgot about
SportsCenter
when she opened the console and saw a photograph propped in the space between the television and the inside of the console.

She had picked it up and looked at it before it occurred to her that it was none of her business. Her stomach dropped. The glossy 8x10 pictured her on the top of her fire escape. She was dressed much as she was now, in a bed sheet, with her hair a sleep-tousled tumble about her face and shoulders. In the photo, she smiled and waved down at Lucas. Now, as she gripped the photo in her hand and stormed out of the bedroom, vinegar began to brew in her veins.

Lucas, having successfully gotten rid of the latest star-struck room service waiter, was pouring coffee into two cups when Miranda stomped up behind him. “Where did you get this?” she demanded, whapping his bare back with the photo she wielded. “Did your people call Meg and arrange for photographers to be outside my window when you left the other day?”

Lucas calmly turned and took the photo from her. “The hotel provides complimentary daily papers,” he began. “Coe’s daughter saw the fire escape photos of us, and she brought them to my attention. I liked this one, so my manager called the photographer at the
Herald-Star
and asked him for a print of it.” He set his hands on her shoulders, close to her neck. “That’s all, Miranda. I wanted a picture of you, and you have to admit, those photos of you are beautiful.”

Miranda’s wrath vanished, to be replaced by a brilliant flash of embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she started. “I’m so sorry I reacted that way, Lucas. I just…I don’t like being in the paper and I thought…it’s stupid. Forget it. Forgive me. Please?”

Lucas handed her a cup of steaming coffee. Miranda held it in both hands and allowed Lucas to seat her at the table, where a lavish breakfast had been spread out for them.

“You thought I tipped off the press, to gain publicity,” Lucas supposed as he sat in the chair opposite her.

Miranda stared into her coffee, too ashamed to admit that his guess was exactly what she’d thought.

“Is that what Jordan Duquette used to do?”

She lifted her eyes. “He always denied it, but there was no other way the
Herald-Star
could have found us at some of the places we went to. Sometimes the photographers would beat us to the location.”

“I would never use you to sell records, Miranda.”

“How do you know about Jordan? Bernie?”

Lucas gripped the knees of his white cotton pajama pants. He thought carefully about his next words before he spoke them. “Bernard certainly gave us a full dossier on you. But prior to our meeting in Conwy, my publicist did an Internet search and a background check on you.”

He braced himself for her reaction. The morning sunlight illuminated the annoyance and frustration that took turns shaping her features, but she said nothing.

“Please, don’t be insulted,” he said. He set his elbows on the table and balanced his chin upon his thumbs. “I wanted to know more about you, of course, but I also had to consider the well-being of the residents of Conwy. I couldn’t very well invite you to my home if you turned out to be a serial killer out on parole.”

“I still might become a homicidal maniac.” She nodded toward the
Herald-Star
that had come tucked under their breakfast tray. “I know where I’d start.”

He reached around a carafe of pomegranate juice and a platter of Belgian waffles to take one of her hands. “Background searches are a necessary part of my personal relationships. I’ve had death threats from everyone from radical religious groups, irate husbands whose wives played a particular Karmic Echo song too much, and women convinced that they’re my secret lover or long-lost wife or daughter.”

“How can you really trust anyone?”

He held her gaze, and yet again the beauty of her clear, bright eyes threatened to overwhelm him. “I’ve found that a look in the eyes tells quite a bit about a person’s true character.”

Miranda agreed. Lucas’s deep, ink-blue gaze held nothing back. She wallowed in its warmth. Even if she refused to believe the honesty and love she saw in them, she couldn’t deny their existence.

“You may as well know that I plan to hire a bodyguard for you,” he said.

“I don’t need a bodyguard. Are you serious?”

“That room service waiter last night could have gone for my throat with a steak knife because of his wife’s interest in me just as easily as he’d asked for an autograph,” Lucas explained. “We can’t be too careful, particularly given the e-mails I’ve received in the past two days.”

“What did they say?”

“The basic ‘I hate you and want you dead for being with Miranda Penney instead of me’ sort of missives from the deluded and jealous segment of Karmic Echo’s fan base,” Lucas said. “It will pass.”

“I guess most of your fans would rather see you with a nice blonde with blue eyes,” Miranda supposed.

“My true fans want only for me to be happy,” Lucas assured her. “I can do without the ones who think I shouldn’t be with a black woman.”

She picked at a slice of cantaloupe on her plate. “I’ve gotten e-mails, too,” she confessed quietly. “At work. My
Herald-Star
e-mail address runs at the bottom of all my stories, so readers can write me to tell me how wrong I am about a team or an athlete. Since I came back from Wales, I’ve gotten hundreds of e-mails, most of them from your fans. Some of them think I’ve stolen you away from them, others think you’re too good for me, others think that you’ll get sick of me and move on soon.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that it’s hard to think with you sitting there, looking like a Greek god come to life.”

“I leave for Australia in eleven days,” he began. “I’ll be there until the end of the month, and I would love it if you joined me there for Christmas. But before we go one minute further, I need to know something, Miranda.” Holding her hand over the small table, he stood and urged her to his side of it. He sat her on his right knee and locked his arms around her. “I don’t want this to end.”

“What to end?”

“This.” He kissed her bare upper arm. “I want to know that I can go on the road and that it will always lead back to you. Or that you can come to me. I want to make a serious go of this. Do you?”

She opened her mouth to scream that she wanted nothing more than a serious go, but she caught herself. He would be in Boston for eleven more days. If they were as good as the past two days had been, then she could easily contemplate something more permanent. The logical part of her liked that plan, but the wounded, irrational part of her dealt reason upon reason to get out while she had only pleasant memories.

Jordan had never made her feel the way Lucas did. Lucas made her feel as though he were the luckiest man alive, all because she was with him. Just sitting on his lap stirred hot and reaching sensations that made her willing to agree to anything. Lucas, quite simply, was an easy man to love.

And there lay the problem.

“I have a job, Lucas,” she said, glad that her hair hid her face from him. “I start a ten-day work week tonight. I’m on high school wrestling. I don’t think I’ll have much time to spend with you before you leave for Australia. Maybe…maybe it would just be best if we…”

He brushed her hair from her face. “If we what?”

The words sat in her head, waiting to be spoken, but she couldn’t make her mouth say them. Lucas stole them, and they sounded even worse from him than she imagined they would have tasted in her own mouth. “If we didn’t see each other again?”

“No!” She almost screamed, twisting to face him directly. “No,” she repeated calmly. “I don’t know what I want. I wasn’t expecting you to bring this up.”

“I suppose I should have left well enough alone, then.”

She cupped his face with her right hand. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to me while you’re here, that’s all.”

“Is that what you think you are to me? An obligation?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I don’t know what I mean about any of this.”

“Have you ever dated anyone like me before?” he asked.

“You’re my first musician,” she answered, deliberately misunderstanding him.

“That’s not what I meant. Have you ever dated anyone outside your race?”

“Of course. My job makes it easy. Sports is like an international dating pool.”

“So my race isn’t an obstacle to you?”

“No. I hope mine isn’t the only reason you’re attracted to me. Interracial pairings seem to be fashionable among the rich and famous these days. I’m just a regular person, Lucas. I don’t want to be some sort of accessory.”

“Don’t be scared, Miranda.” His understanding, strength and warmth as he returned her embrace helped ease her niggling doubts and distrust. “Perhaps I’ve made a wrong assumption or two about us,” he said into her hair.

“You haven’t.” She drew away and touched his lips with a fingertip. “You’re right. Bernie and Calista were right, too. I’m scared out of my head about what’s happening between us, Lucas. I felt something, too, on the night of the crush. When I opened my eyes and saw you, I was sure that I’d died and was looking into the face of one of God’s highest angels.” She caressed the side of his face, seeing him as she had at their first meeting. “I didn’t feel pain, or hear the noise of the crowd. I didn’t even remember how I’d gotten there. I just wanted to spend the rest of time right there, in your arms, looking into your eyes.”

“We belong together, Miranda,” he said before catching her mouth in a kiss that made them forget about breakfast, crazed fans and what the next eleven days would hold. The present was all that mattered, and how quickly they could bare themselves physically as they had emotionally. Lucas made love to her right there on the plush, triple-padded carpeting, this time verbally proclaiming his love for her as eloquently as he had shown her through touch. While Miranda wouldn’t say the words aloud, her kisses, caresses and responses left no doubt in Lucas’s mind that she shared his feelings.

“Can we make this work?” he asked her soon after their interlude. He had drawn a crystal dish of sliced tropical fruit to the floor, and he fed her chilled slices of sweet blood oranges there on the carpet.

“I suppose so,” Miranda said, unsure if the decision had been made by her head, her heart or her hormones, or all three acting in concert against her better judgment.

* * *

Lucas opened the door to the Walker S. Hill Athletic Building, and then followed Miranda inside. He took a deep breath, and chuckled as he exhaled. “All school gymnasiums smell the same,” he said. “Like feet and floor polish.”

“If I could bottle it, I’d wear it as cologne,” Miranda said. “I’d call it Eau de Past Glory. Some of my best high school memories took place on the basketball courts.”

“My road crew likes a good pick-up game of basketball,” Lucas said. He glanced at the trophy cases and championship banners lining the walls of the lobby as he followed Miranda deeper into the building. “I’ve got a pretty fair jump shot, for a bloke who grew up on football—sorry, soccer—and rugby.”

Miranda gave him an indulgent smile. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Lucas stopped her. He took her by her waist and pulled her against him. “Are you challenging me to a game of one on one?”

She stared at his sensuous mouth as she said, “Is that really how you want to spend your last night in Boston?”

“Absolutely.”

Miranda lifted her face to taste the word on his lips. She stopped and abruptly drew away from him when a scream began to echo through the otherwise empty corridor.

“Oh my God, it’s Lucas Fletcher!”

The scream could have been adolescent or adult, male or female—Miranda couldn’t tell. Regardless, it triggered a rush of bodies through the double doors leading to the gym floor. Miranda let the wave of people carry her away from Lucas, and she watched as a familiar scene once more repeated itself before her.

Until tonight, she had gone on her stories, unnoticed and unrecognized until she had to gather post-match quotes. She had written and filed her stories via e-mail from Lucas’s penthouse or her apartment—when she and Lucas could sneak past his fans.

Being in public with Lucas was a lot different than being in public with Jordan, Miranda had realized in the past week and a half. Sports fans recognized Jordan, and all but the most overexcited baseball fanatics had typically kept a respectful distance, happy with just a nod and a whisper in Jordan’s direction, or a quick handshake and a compliment on his latest game performance.

Everyone recognized Lucas. Even the fifty-year-old wrestling coaches had shamelessly crowded around him, clamoring for autographs the moment Lucas entered the gymnasium. The grandfatherly J.D. Campbell, Haverford High’s varsity coach, had asked for an autograph supposedly for his wife…Jerome David.