Crush (28 page)

“You have to go?” Miranda sat up straighter. A flash of lightening revealed the anguish she’d mistaken for hardness in his face. Misery dulled the brilliance of his deep blue eyes. She clearly saw that she had no right to expect him to stay. But she needed him to.

“I think it’s best that I leave, love,” he said.

“Are you okay?” She knew the question was pitiful, but it was the only thing she could think of to get him to stay a while longer.

“The days pass.” He stared at the floor. “I’m kept so busy, I scarcely have time to think of anything past who I’m talking to or what I’m doing in that moment. But I have to sleep at some point, and that is when I am plagued by you.” He raised his head and pinned her with his gaze. “I see your face. I feel your breath on my neck and your legs against mine and I hear the chime of your laugh, and damn if I’m awake just enough to know that it’s all just a dream. That none of it is real any more.”

The words of her attackers echoed in her head, sickening her with their truth. “I saw the news this afternoon and heard the statement you gave,” Miranda said, referring to comments Lucas issued just before he boarded his private jet.

“I’m appalled and disgusted by what happened to Miranda Penney,” Lucas had said, the wind whipping through his hair as he addressed the reporters on the tarmac of LaGuardia Airport. “If this is the caliber of fans Karmic Echo attracts, then clearly we’re doing something wrong.”

She’d watched him board the plane, but she hadn’t known that he was bound for Boston. And just as easily, his plane would soon carry him away again.

“The doctor said it was an anxiety attack to throw off the media,” she said. She flicked on the light above her headboard.

The tragic beauty of her somber gaze worried Lucas. He went to her side, stopping just short of taking her hand. “Miranda…what aren’t you telling me?”

“The heart palpitations and the blood pressure had a hormonal cause.” Her jittery hands clenched into fists. She clamped her jaw shut to keep her teeth from chattering. The Emergency Room doctor had given her the diagnosis in a calm, matter-of-fact way that contrasted directly with the impact his revelation would have on her life—once the shock wore off and she herself came around to believing it.

“Did the doctors find something wrong?” Lucas finally took her hand.

“Yes.” She thrust her fingers through his. “No…well…”

“Money is no issue.” He settled his free hand on the right side of her face, his touch conveying his deep worry, concern and unflagging support. “We’ll find the best physicians in the world. Tell me. What did they find?”

“A baby.”

Three syllables, two words and one hell of a surprise were like a battering ram against Lucas’s chest. He literally staggered back a step. Miranda reached for him, sure that he was actually about to faint. He held onto her hands, reeling from her quiet admission.

“A…”
BABY!
he finished in his head. He clapped his arms around her, startling her with his easy acceptance of what she still didn’t quite believe herself. She had been late in January, and even then her period had been exceptionally light. She had skipped February entirely, but had chalked it up to the unbelievable stress she had been enduring. She’d called her gynecologist and had scheduled an appointment. But with pregnancy tests being standard for women of childbearing age treated in the Metro Medical Center ER, the news had come to her unexpectedly.

“I came here for a broken foot!” she had hollered upon being told that she was pregnant. “What would you people have told me if I’d broken the whole freakin’ leg?”

Lucas—laid back, calm and constant Lucas—practically sang with giddy delight. “I suppose we should have run out for extra caps after all during our stay at Barnsley Gardens,” he chuckled. “It’s a good thing you became a writer, love, because your math is appalling. Miranda, this is wonderful,” he murmured in her ear as he embraced her.

“I didn’t know how I was going to tell you,” she whispered.

He roughly kissed the side of her head. “A baby,” he repeated happily. “For months now I’ve been watching Isabella grow rounder, and I’ve been so jealous of Feast that my eyes should be toxic green by now.” He drew away and framed her face in his hands. “Are you okay with this?”

“I’m scared out of my head,” she admitted. “I never even babysat when I was young. I’m not sure I even like kids. I thought I’d be an aunt before I became a mother.” She winced. “
Meu Deus,
I’m going to be someone’s
mother
.”

Lucas laughed. “We’ll hire as many nannies as you require to handle the nappies and the spills. You’ll be a fantastic mum, Miranda. Can’t you just see us domesticated, strolling through Conwy with a baby in a pram?”

“Lucas,” she said hesitantly. “This baby changes a lot of things, but I still don’t want to get married. It won’t change that.”

Just as easily as she had given him the greatest joy in his life, she had followed it with a reprisal of the agonizing blow she had delivered after Valentine’s Day.

“You can’t seriously be considering raising our child alone,” Lucas said.

“We can work something out. I wouldn’t keep your baby away from you, Lucas. We have seven months to think about it.”

He backed away from her, shaking his head. “No matter what issues you have, love, you can’t make our child a victim of them. I want my baby to know that I’m her father, and that I love her mother.”

“I can’t talk about this right now, Lucas,” she said, her voice quivery. “The doctor says I’ve been pregnant for twelve weeks, but in my mind, it’s only been four hours.” She placed her hands over her abdomen. “I still can’t believe it.”

“Believe this, Miranda.” He covered one of her hands with his, his warmth seeping into her. “Believe that I would never do to this child what your parents did to you. You take your time and properly digest this situation. When you’re ready, I’ll be waiting for you.” He leaned over and kissed her abdomen. “And you, too,” he said softly. Without another word or even a look at her, he left the room.

Miranda watched the door a moment longer before she turned off the light and returned her gaze to the window. She hugged her middle, trying to acclimate herself to the life growing within her. The sky cried tears Miranda didn’t dare show. She didn’t deserve the release, not when her pain was of her own making.

* * *

Miranda stared through the thick panel of glass. The room was quieter than she had expected it to be, although she really hadn’t known what to expect. Two nurses, both wearing colorful smocks printed with teddy bears dressed as doctors, moved within the room. They recorded information on charts and gave a touch or a caress here and there. The nurses made it look so easy, and when one of them noticed Miranda and looked up, Miranda was struck by her expression. At two
a.m.
, the nurse wore the beatific smile of a sculpted Madonna.

No sane person was ever that happy about his or her job, so Miranda attributed the outward manifestation of the nurse’s inner peace to her charges…the twelve babies swaddled in pink or blue blankets in the clear bassinets lined up in the room.

“May I help you?” the nurse asked, stepping past the security gate and into the corridor.

Miranda would have made a run for it, if not for her cumbersome cast and the crutches she still couldn’t use with any real proficiency. “No, uh, I’m just looking,” she said. “I mean, I was looking at the babies.” Realizing how insane she sounded, she attempted to clarify. “I’m not shopping or anything, I was just…”

“I know,” the nurse said with a knowing smile. She joined Miranda at the glass and looked in at the babies. “There’s something about them. They’re so little and perfect. This bunch is quiet,” she chuckled. “These are the kinds of babies that seduce the unsuspecting into wanting babies of their own.”

“Uh huh,” Miranda said absently. She frowned, trying to see what the nurse was seeing. Where the nurse saw tiny perfection, Miranda saw still lumps of pink and blue cotton weave that looked like giant jelly beans.

“We get lots of visitors here at the nursery,” the nurse said. “Doctors who need some sort of emotional relief after difficult surgeries, women who come in for infertility treatments. I think our most frequent visitors are patients who are afraid of babies, for one reason or another.”

Miranda looked at the nurse and didn’t like the way she was studying her. Miranda leaned a little more forward on her crutches, making sure that her body left no impression against the front of her thin hospital gown. “I’m not afraid of babies,” Miranda said. “I don’t usually pay any attention to them at all. Even out in the wild I barely notice them.”

“The ‘wild’?” the nurse giggled.

“Out on the street in strollers and things,” Miranda said. “I don’t have any friends or siblings that have babies. I wanted to see what one looked like. In real life.”

“I can help you with that,” the nurse said. She went back into the nursery. She exchanged a word with the other nurse before she went to one of the bassinets near the window, and turned it so that Miranda could look through the clear sides.

As she had when faced with dangerous, carnivorous animals at the zoo when she was young, Miranda cautiously approached the glass. She knew the baby couldn’t get at her any more than the tigers and polar bears could have, but she treaded carefully anyway.

The newborn was sleeping.
Baby Girl Enyard
, read the card on the side of her bassinet. The baby wore a pink knit cap that matched her blanket. Only her face and one of her hands were visible. Her face looked like a fist to Miranda’s inexperienced eye, but the baby’s hand captivated her.

It was so unbelievably small and chubby. The baby splayed her fingers, as though the movement of the air currents in the room had startled her. Miranda marveled at the tiniest fingers she had ever seen, and the way they curled into a tight fist the baby awkwardly worked into her mouth. The longer she stared at the baby, the less she looked like a fist. Her café-au-lait skin looked so soft, and Miranda began to breathe deeply, as if she could smell the child through the bulletproof safety glass. The baby winced, and Miranda’s fingertips instinctively went to the glass, as if she could comfort the child. The nurse scooped the baby up and cradled her, swaying gently from side to side. Envy pierced Miranda, shocking her with its intensity.

She passed a hand over her middle. A very pleasant, very unexpected sensation of joy traveled through her, warming her from head to toe.
This is what our love made,
Miranda thought, gazing at the cherub in the nurse’s arms. She closed her eyes and her knees weakened in remembrance of the moments she had spent with Lucas, the moments that culminated in the making of a baby. She inhaled a shuddery breath and could almost smell the sage and peppermint soap he favored. She licked her lower lip and could nearly taste the salty warmth of his skin in the throes of their lovemaking, in the very second when he exploded within her to create a new life.

Lucas had touched the very parts of herself she had struggled to keep from him…the parts that could never survive a betrayal. And now there would be a baby as beautiful and angelic as the one she now gazed upon.

She caught the nurse’s eyes and mouthed, “Thank you,” before steadying herself on her crutches and hobbling her way to the elevators.

“Okay,” she sighed, once the elevator doors had closed and the car began to slowly drop her down three stories. “I like babies.”

She returned to her room and shrugged off her robe, laying it over the foot of her bed. She hopped onto the bed and leaned the crutches within easy reach. After tucking herself in as best she could, she lay in the dark, thinking of the baby three floors above her and the one growing beneath her heart. As she drifted to sleep, the face of the baby in her thoughts began to change. Her skin was cinnamon, rather than café au lait. She was just as lovely and tiny, but her eyes were open, and they were as deep and blue as her father’s. And when she cried, she sounded as though she were singing.

When a nurse came in fifteen minutes later to check on her, Miranda was smiling in her sleep.

Chapter 12

After fifteen months, the Karmic Velocity Tour was ending where it had begun—at an outdoor concert in Conwy, Wales. The band had taken the stage in the late afternoon with the intention of giving the sea of music fans an experience they would never forget. Lucas had compiled a playlist that would take them well into three hours, but by sundown, he was wondering if he’d last past the first forty minutes.

Whether it was the loyalty of his fans, his skill as an entertainer, or a combination of the two, Lucas didn’t know how he’d managed to last as long as he had. His hands and fingers knew what to do with his guitar, and his voice knew the words that accompanied the music that he had written…but his mind and heart were not on the stage at Conwy.

They were an ocean away, in Boston.

He had spoken to Miranda several times in the month since he’d last seen her. Their conversations were fine as long as they talked about the weather, the band, how much she was beginning to hate the
Herald-Star
, and Meg’s latest falsehoods. Then he would mention the baby, and their communication became awkward and stilted.

He knew that she would rather contract rabies than get married, and he didn’t press her. But the issue was always there between them, just under the surface. He’d taken it as a good sign that she had agreed to his help. She had allowed him to hire a security team for her. She had been thankful for the
ob/gyn
he had hired to make house calls, to protect her privacy for as long as possible before it became obvious that she was pregnant. He had also arranged for a private service to deliver her groceries and prenatal medications. His lawyers had handled the restraining orders for the anti-fans, each of whom had agreed to stay at least 600 yards from Miranda, her domicile, her workplace and her vehicle in exchange for her not pressing assault and harassment charges against them.

He did all the things a concerned husband would have done, save for the one simple thing he truly longed for: to be with her.

Even though she refused to marry him, he had wanted to be there the first time she heard the baby’s heartbeat, and the first time she felt the actual stirring of the life within her. He wanted to fall asleep at night with her in his arms, and to awaken each day knowing he was one day closer to meeting the person they had made.

Lucas stood center stage in Conwy, his bass slung over his shoulder, his sweat-streaked face turned up to the rising moon. It was a full moon and it seemed to glow dark orange against the cobalt skin of the early evening sky. A blood Welsh moon it was called, because of its deep, striking color. It was the very same moon he had once shared with Miranda.

Just as it controlled the earth’s tides, the blood Welsh moon seemed to govern the course of Lucas’s blood, making it fill his heart with all the frustration and despair he had endured in the past two months. He closed his eyes and gripped the microphone stand in his right hand, touching his forehead to his fist. Feast raised a hand to the rest of the band, signaling them to stop playing their cues for the next song. The crowd quieted significantly. There wasn’t a man, woman or child among them who didn’t know the basic details of Lucas’s recent heartbreak.

Lucas stared at the crowd. The bobbing heads and waving arms mesmerized him, the tide of humanity shouting its praise and encouragement. Thousands of people adoring him only made him long for the one woman whose adoration he craved. His playing hand fell from his bass as his eyes slowly closed. As if he didn’t feel badly enough, his mind fed him crippling memories. He imagined the fresh, tropical scent of Miranda’s bath gel as it had risen around them in clouds of steam in the shower in Washington, D.C. He felt the rapid drumming of her heart as her bare torso adhered to his. He remembered her shivery embrace as she’d hugged his head to hers, and her soft, sweet panting as she regained her breath following their intimate exchange.

Lucas couldn’t shake the memory, so he gave in to it. He let his mind go and his body followed. He began picking out notes on his bass, and the simple, hypnotic chords silenced the curious audience. Feast picked up the melody, adding his own improvisation to it. The audience roared back to life when Garrison broke in wildly with drums.

The wail of Feast’s guitar gave voice to Lucas’s pain; the driving beat of Garrison’s drums imitated the rhythm of an angry heart struggling to live without its lost love. Beneath it all was Lucas’s plaintive, longing melody, a virtuoso’s plea to the woman who walked away with his heart.

The band fed off Lucas’s pain, treating their fans to a wholly original composition unlike anything the band had ever played. The crowd raucously shouted its appreciation. Every woman within earshot of the song heard Lucas’s heartbreak in every note. At the end of the song, as the last note lingered and died, the sound of weeping almost equaled that of shrieking applause.

* * *

Lucas stood on the curtain wall surrounding Conwy. High above the shore, he had a perfect view of the calm sea and the spot where he and Miranda had enjoyed the blood Welsh moon. Their rock, back from its round-trip voyage to New England, had been put back—give or take a foot—in the home it had known for millennia. The rock reminded him alternately of the best and worst moments of his life, and it had become a touchstone. It had been the start and end of everything with Miranda, and Lucas stared at it as he tried to work out a way to get her back.

He was buried in thought, and a full twenty minutes had passed before he noticed that his father had joined him.

“Let her go, son.”

Lucas turned to face his father. Vaughan Fletcher knew when to hold back and let a thing run its course, and when to lance a wound before infection set in and killed the patient. When his father spoke, Lucas realized that the lance was particularly sharp. “I can’t, Da,” Lucas said. He crossed his arms and set them on the top of the wall. He leaned on them and let the cool, sea-scented air sift through his hair.

“You’re not yourself, boy,” Mr. Fletcher said. “Your mum and I are starting to worry, and your band mates must think you’ve lost your cabbage altogether after what you did onstage tonight…although I hope someone recorded it. It was bloody brilliant. It had something extra.”

“Miranda’s samba artists are rubbing off on me,” Lucas sighed. “Once those rhythms get under your skin, they stay there.”

“You were great in L.A., Luke, at the music awards,” Mr. Fletcher continued. “R&B suits you, son.”

Lucas only nodded.

“Yes, you can’t beat the old stuff.” Mr. Fletcher uttered a gruff, appreciative sigh. “It gets to the point and comes from the soul. Do you think she heard you?”

“I know she did,” Lucas said. He’d felt her. Across the miles and through millions of viewers, he’d felt her. “I’m just wondering if she actually listened.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, but why do you want her so much when she clearly doesn’t want you?”

Mr. Fletcher’s tender inquiry wasn’t meant to inflict pain, but Lucas winced nonetheless. “I want her because she wants me, Da. That’s the only thing she wants. She doesn’t care about my money or fame or my name, or this bloody castle. All she wants is
me
.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Lucas turned his head toward his father, and he stared into eyes that were exactly like his own. “When you were still playing, and you were away from mum for weeks at a time, did you ever fancy another woman?”

Mr. Fletcher inhaled, then expelled a long, thoughtful breath through his nose. “So it’s the hazards of the job that trouble your Miranda?”

“Something like that,” Lucas said.

“A beautiful woman can catch your eye, same as a sudden glimpse of a perfect sunset. She can stir your blood, same as a shot of good Scotch. But a woman can’t touch your heart once you’ve given it to the woman you love. No matter how far the music took me from your mum, she was always right here.” Mr. Fletcher patted his heart. “There was no temptation for me on the road, son. No other woman ever looked as good to me as your mum. Even now, the woman’s got me heart set right in her pretty palm. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Just as Miranda dreaded patterning her parents, Lucas feared that he wouldn’t get the chance to pattern his. He watched the ocean, how it moved constantly, how even the slightest breeze could change its surface. He would jump into it and swim all the way to Boston if that would prove his worth and fidelity to Miranda once and for all.

“Does she love you, Luke?”

“Aye,” he said earnestly, lapsing into his father’s pattern of speech. He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting of her absence. The fact of her love had branded him the last time they had been together in her big bed. Even now, the memory of her whispered confession of love was like sunlight upon his skin. “I know she loves me, Da. And she knows it, too.”

“Perhaps then, with time, she’ll come ‘round to seeing things your way.” Mr. Fletcher clapped his big hand on his son’s shoulder. “In the meantime, you can set to work producing Feast’s album and finishing your next. In time—”

“I don’t have time, Da.” Lucas kept his eyes on the moon-brushed sea. “I only have about four and a half months left.”

Mr. Fletcher’s brow wrinkled in curiosity. “What happens in four and a half months?”

Lucas grinned. His father smiled in response since it had been so long since he last saw his son smile. “You become a grandfather,” Lucas said.

* * *

Miranda hurried through the Newsroom, wobbling on her crutches. She paused to brush newspaper ink from the front of her oversized sweatshirt as she went. Security had called up from the lobby to tell her that she had a visitor, “some rock star,” and she didn’t want to present herself with smudges of black on her clothes. Her heart beat so hard and fast that it hurt as she raced for the lobby. From the top of the stairs leading from the second floor to the front lobby, she could see her visitor. Her heart twisted painfully.

Len Feast, dressed in a black leather overcoat and black jeans, started up the stairs before the security guard could finish writing out his visitor’s badge. “This won’t take long,” Feast called down to the guard, who was pursuing him.

“It’s okay,” Miranda said to the guard. “He’s…” She was too shocked to think of what Feast was. He wasn’t a friend. So what was he doing at the
Herald-Star
?

“Good afternoon, Miss Penney,” Feast said with a bright smile, once he’d reached the top of the stairs. As if he knew the layout of the place, he took Miranda by the elbow and escorted her to the tall, wide window just beyond the stairwell. He sat her, then sat beside her.

“Do you have cable television?” Feast asked. He laced his fingers together in his lap. To Miranda, he looked like the mad scientist he might have become if he hadn’t loved music more than chemistry.

“You didn’t come all the way from Wales just to ask me that,” Miranda said warily.

“If you had cable television,” Feast continued, the mad gleam still in his eyes, “you might have seen our closing concert in Conwy last week. You might have seen my best friend,” he leaned closer to her, to whisper, “and your baby’s father, have a complete breakdown in front of twenty-thousand Welsh fans and half the television viewing audience in the Western world.”

“H-How did you…” Miranda faltered. “Did Lucas tell you about the…?” She couldn’t, wouldn’t, would never say the actual word within the walls of the
Herald-Star
.

“I’ve got eyes, Miss Penney,” he said, casting their blue light toward her abdomen. “Your Big ‘n Tall boy tops don’t fool me.”

Miranda paled. She had always worn oversized clothing, so her wardrobe hadn’t changed as her body had. Only recently had she come to the point where she had to use a ponytail holder looped through the opening of her jeans to fasten them. Her lower belly was definitely more convex than concave, but even Bernie hadn’t been able to tell that she was pregnant.

“I’m kidding,” Feast said, setting his hand on her wrist. “Lucas told me, of course. And it isn’t obvious. Honestly. Well, it is, actually, but only to the practiced eye.”

“How so?” Miranda asked.

“Your hair.” Feast’s tone softened as his eyes moved over her. “And your skin. Dare I even say that I actually see the makings of a bosom there within your sweatshirt?”

Miranda scowled at his last observation. In the past several weeks her hair had seemed thicker and more lustrous, so much so that Bernie had accused her of actually having it treated at a salon. Her skin had become dewier and seemed to glow. And her breasts had a fuller, peppier appearance that she couldn’t help but like. Too many times she had wished that Lucas could see them.

But seeing him made it too hard to keep not seeing him, so at her request, they kept in touch by phone and e-mail.

“How is Isabella?” Miranda asked.

A wide smile brightened Feast’s face. “Wonderful. Demanding. Irritable. And the size of a classic VW Bug. She looks like a manatee.”

“I’m sure she looks beautiful.”

“There are times when she’s sleeping, and I look at her, and I can’t believe that she’s
my
wife. That she’s carrying
my
baby, a little Feast to turn loose upon the world. I thought making music was the greatest thing I could do with my life, but it’s not. Every time I look at my wife, I see what matters to me. What’s important.”

Feast’s impassioned message wasn’t lost on Miranda. “I can’t be with him anymore.”

“That sounds like fear more than anything else, Miss Penney. What did Lucas do to you that you can’t forgive?”

Miranda appreciated Feast’s lowered tone, but her own voice rose as she said, “He made me fall in love with him.”

Feast chuckled. “Is that all? He loves you, too. How is that a problem?”

She gave him the line she kept telling herself over and over. “His lifestyle is not conducive to monogamous relationships.”

Feast harrumphed and turned to face the window. “Neither is yours. You run around with male reporters chasing male athletes in their physical prime. A bird like you probably shakes the lads off by the dozens every day.”