Forever Fall (7 page)

“No problem.”

She smiled, and his heart skipped a beat. Before he could stop himself or think about the consequences, he leaned forward, his gaze centered on her delectable lips. He blinked, cleared his throat, and then quickly pulled back. Without another word or glance at Mandy, he exited the car.

Mandy sat in her car, in front of Luc Michaels’ house for a full five minutes before she could think coherently enough to drive away.

Tentatively, she touched her mouth with her fingertips. Her other hand lay over her chest, trying to still her pounding heart. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She’d just sat here like a big dummy and nearly let Lucas Michaels kiss her.

Was she nuts?

Have you lost what’s left of your mind?

Luc leaned against the inside of his front door. Sweat beaded his brow. He’d actually been going to kiss her. Worse yet, if he’d read her right, she would have let him.

He dropped his briefcase and suit jacket on the hall table and headed into the living room to the small corner bar. Without hesitation, he poured himself two fingers of good Scotch and drank it down in one gulp. Coughing at the burning sensation that seared his throat membranes, he sat the empty glass down and threw himself on the sofa.

He’d barely had time to start gathering his thoughts when the phone rang. Sighing, he picked up the receiver.

“Hello.”

“Michaels? Harry Tanner. I just picked up your car. Before I start anything, I wanted to let you know that it’s not just a dead battery like you thought.” Tanner’s curt voice betrayed that he was still upset with his son’s principal.

Luc leaned his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes in preparation for the bad news. “What is it?”

“It’s your alternator. Seeing as how this is an older model, I don’t have one in stock. I’ll have to send to Charleston for a new one.”

Luc wondered if this was punishment for butting into Tanner’s son’s business, or if the problem was legitimate. Either way, he had no choice. Tanner was the only garage mechanic in town.

“How long will it take to fix it?”

“Well
 . . .
with the time to get the part over here, I’d say you better plan on being without a car for at least four or five days.”

Great. Just long enough for him to have to beg a ride out to Catherine’s lake house to begin the test. And, since Catherine would be picking up her granddaughter, and no one else knew about this test run except the board of education, which he was not ready to interact with on any level yet, that meant begging a ride from Mandy. He rubbed his hands over his eyes.

“Take as long as you need,” he finally said, then hung up the phone.

He picked up the remote and clicked on the TV, hoping to catch the last of the first game of the World Series. But even as the TV screen came alive with the game, his concentration wasn’t on baseball. Instead, an image of Mandy walking across the restaurant dining room flooded his mind.

Luc sighed and leaned his head against the sofa back. Maybe, between now and then, he’d be able to get his libido under control.

Maybe.

The following morning, when the phone rang, Mandy had just zipped up her suitcase and dragged it into the living room and set it beside another one of equal size. On top of the larger one sat the box that held the baby simulator.

Impatient at the delay, she grabbed the receiver and barked into the phone. “Hello.”

A pause, then, “Mandy, it’s Luc. My car’s not going to be ready for a few days. Would it be too much trouble for you to swing by my house and pick me up on your way to the lake house?”

Her heart skipped a beat. Did she want to say yes and be trapped in the close confines of a car with him again? She hesitated, then took a deep breath and mentally shrugged. In a couple of hours she would be with Luc for fourteen days, so what harm could a bit more time do at this point? “Sure. No trouble at all. I was just getting ready to leave. I can be there in about twenty minutes.”

“Thanks. See you in a few.” The phone went dead.

Twenty minutes later
Mandy parked in front of Luc’s house. He was waiting on the front porch with a medium size suitcase beside him and a travel mug in his hand. She watched him hurry down the path to her car and wondered how men seemed able to survive with fewer clothes than women for the same period of time.

She pushed a button on the dash to pop the trunk and waited while he threw his luggage in beside hers. Then he climbed into the passenger seat. The aroma of his aftershave wafted to her on the breeze the open door admitted. She took a deep breath, then immediately realized that hadn’t been one of her smarter moves. She quickly hit the button to roll down her window.

He settled into the seat and turned to her. “I appreciate this. It seems that one of the drawbacks of owning an older car is that replacement parts have to be ordered.”

Mandy frowned. “I thought you said it was just a dead battery.”

He laughed. “I also said I had little to no knowledge of what goes on under my car’s hood. I was wrong about the battery. Seems the alternator quit and has to be special ordered. I should have wheels again in a few days.”

Mandy nodded as if she knew what an alternator was and pulled away from the curb. As they headed toward Lake Hope, the silence in the car grew deafening. “So, are you ready for our grand adventure?”

Luc shifted his position in the seat. “Not really.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I’ve never been a father, and I didn’t have the greatest role model to call on for points of reference.” He realized he’d just opened the door to a subject he’d rather not get into. To prevent questions, he turned the conversation on her. “What about you?”

For a long time she remained fixated on the road. She and Luc had been cast in the role of parents to a teenage mother, Catherine’s granddaughter, and a mechanical baby, and Mandy suddenly realized she was no better equipped for it than Luc. “Like you, I’ve never played this part before, and I don’t have any reference points either.” She glanced at him, then back to the road. “Guess we’ll have to play it by ear.”

The conversation came to an abrupt halt. Neither of them, it seemed, was willing to elaborate.

When Mandy had driven
around the lake after having lunch with Catherine and Luc, she hadn’t been able to see Catherine’s summer house for the thick stand of trees blocking her view. So, as she pulled into the driveway that wound around to the front of the house, her breath caught in her throat. Without even glimpsing the inside, she felt certain that the entire pitiful shack she’d grown up in would easily fit into just one of the rooms.

Having come from the small coal town with the contradictory name of Pleasantville, a lot smaller and much poorer than Carson, she’d never seen anything this imposing or this elegant. She supposed her hometown had once been a
pleasant
village, until the mine closed, leaving those who hadn’t fled to live in rundown houses that screamed of the poverty inside.

Catherine Daniels’ towering two-story, stone house nestled in the grove of white oaks and maple trees like a behemoth hiding from the world. Looking more like a castle with a turret on one side and an octagonal set of upper story bay windows on the other, it spoke of old world charm and elegance. A wrap-around porch dotted with white wicker rockers and supported by white columns with stone bases, gave anyone who wished to sit there a panoramic view of Lake Hope. Mandy wondered absently how many hours Catherine must have sat there thinking about the daughter she’d lost.

The lawn, arrayed with brilliant fall flower gardens, was dotted with the first colorful fallen leaves of the season and stretched to the lake’s edge where a pier protruded out into the water like a long boney finger.

Mandy sighed with pleasure. Spending time here, no matter how brief, was definitely not going to be a hardship.

“Impressive.” Luc’s voice pulled Mandy from her perusal of what would be their home for the next fourteen days.

“To say the least,” she muttered, still gazing wide-eyed at the house.

Just then, the front door opened, and Catherine Daniels stepped out on the porch and beckoned for them to join her. Beside her stood a jeans and T-shirt clad young girl with an excited, expectant smile curving her lips and ash blond hair pulled back in a ponytail that reached well past her shoulders.

Mandy stepped through
the large, oak doors into a foyer that stopped her cold in her tracks. The only thing more breathtaking than the outside of the house was the inside. From where she stood, she could see two huge rooms, both filled with what looked like antique furniture and chandeliers hanging from the high ceilings and dripping with diamond-cut crystals

“Let’s go into the family room, and I’ll make the introductions there.” Catherine led the group down a long hall toward the back of the sprawling house.

Mandy couldn’t believe this was a summer house and had to wonder what Catherine’s year-round residence looked like. While Mandy continued to take in her surroundings, she, Luc and the young girl followed Catherine down the hall.

When they arrived at the family room, Mandy was again taken aback. While the rest of the rooms boasted antique, Victorian style furniture, this room looked as if it had fallen from the pages of this month’s
Better Homes and Gardens
. While large, the room was furnished in a very laid-back style with a huge fieldstone fireplace as its focal point. Beside the fireplace, recessed in a bookcase holding books and what appeared to be a combination DVD and satellite TV box, was a jumbo, flat-screen TV. Surrounding the fireplace, a grouping of occasional tables, overstuffed sofas and chairs formed a cozy conversation area and provided the perfect place for a family to gather in informal comfort at the end of a day. In a far corner, in front of a wall of French doors, a pool table took up most of that end of the floor.

Catherine motioned them to the sitting area. “I had this room redecorated strictly with creature comfort and family in mind,” she said, taking a seat in a large chair with a footstool. “I never liked the straight back Victorian sofas and chairs my mother favored.”

Mandy and Luc took seats on the sofa facing Catherine, and the young girl plopped cross-legged on the ottoman at her grandmother’s feet.

“This young lady,” Catherine motioned to the girl, “is my granddaughter, Shannon Cameron. Shannon lives in Carson, but attends a private school in Charleston. She’ll be the teenager taking part in this experiment. Her mother and father have given their written consent.” She removed a sheet of paper from the table to her right and handed it to Mandy. “Shannon, this is Lucas Michaels and Amantha James. I’m sure they won’t object to you calling them Luc and Mandy.” She looked to Mandy for affirmation. Receiving a nod, Catherine went on. “While they’re here with you, you will afford them the same respect you would your parents.”

The girl nodded, lowered her feet to the floor and leaned toward Mandy. “May I see the baby now?”

“It’s in the car—”

“I’ll get it.” Luc jumped to his feet. Before Mandy could reply, he was out of the room. Moments later, they heard the front door close.

While Shannon glanced expectantly at the door, and they waited for Luc to come back, Catherine told Mandy that she had filled the pantry and fridge with provisions and had the electric, water and phone turned on. All the time, Shannon, who appeared to be ready to jump out of her skin, continued to monitor the empty doorway. Mandy could tell by the excited expression on the girl’s face that she was really looking forward to getting started. Having seen the effect of the baby simulator on young girls initially, and then after a few days of baby-care confinement, she felt certain that the excitement would soon wane.

If all went as she expected, the school board and Lucas Michaels were in for a big eye-opener.

Thankful to be out
of that room, Luc stepped onto the wide porch and drew in a long breath of the lake air. Slowly, the tightness that had gathered in his chest eased away.

Sitting there with those three women had brought back stifling memories of scenes from his childhood. His mother’s twice-weekly “teas” were nothing more than her way of holding court and lording it over the wives of officers who served under Luc’s father.

It had been bad enough that she’d insisted five-year-old Luc be present, washed, combed and wearing his Sunday best. Added to that was her insistence that he sit quietly, hands folded in his lap for what seemed to him like days, while she alternately fussed over him like some well-deserved trophy and soaked up the phony compliments from her so-called friends, and then totally ignored him.

Sometimes the officers’ wives brought their kids, and Luc was excused to play with them. But he was careful not to make friends, because he’d learned at an earlier age that—as his father always told him—nothing is forever, and if he didn’t get too fond of anyone, then it hurt less when they had to move again.

Shaking off the memories, Luc went to get the box containing
robo
baby from the car. Seeing the luggage, he decided to bring that in as well to afford himself a little extra time to pull himself together.

Sufficiently back in control of himself, Luc returned to the Daniels’ family room almost fifteen minutes later carrying a long box. The room went silent. All eyes locked on the box. It seemed to double in weight. He shifted it slightly, wondering if it held the end of his life in Carson.

“I brought in the luggage, too. It’s in the hall.” He handed the box to Mandy.

Shannon jumped to her feet, nearly knocking Luc over in her haste, and came to stand beside Mandy. Mandy placed the box on the floor at her feet and then opened the flaps to reveal an anatomically correct, very real looking, naked baby boy.

“It’s a boy, Gram!” Shannon reached into the box, carefully lifted the baby, and cradled it lovingly in her arms. “I was so hoping it would be a boy. I’m gonna name him Joey. Isn’t he adorable?” She carried the baby to her grandmother and leaned down to show her.

“Yes, dear, adorable.” Catherine smiled at her granddaughter, but Luc could read the apprehension in the woman’s face.

Luc chanced a glance at Mandy, doing nothing to suppress the broad, self-satisfied smile on his face. His blatant confidence was met with a silent challenge from Mandy, which he had no trouble reading.

Enjoy it now, Luc. Things will change.

We’ll see,
he mouthed, still smiling.

She smiled back at him. His pulse rate jumped a notch. For a moment, he couldn’t focus on anything around him.
He took a deep breath and quickly dragged his gaze from her and centered it on the young girl.

“I’m going to go dress him in the clothes I brought with me.” Shannon turned to leave.

Mandy stopped her. “Before you can interact with him, I have to explain to you how this works.”

Shannon retook her seat on the ottoman and held Joey in the crook of her arm, casting loving glances at him from time to time. Mandy extracted a small laptop from the box and what looked like a hospital bracelet with a small key attached.

“I need to put this on you.” Shannon held out her arm, and Mandy attached the bracelet to the girl’s wrist. “I’ve preprogrammed the baby, the laptop and the bracelet to interact. It will transmit to the laptop what kind of care you give Joey by picking up the wireless signal from the monitor in the baby’s back and recording it. Only you can tend to him. That means if he wakes up in the middle of the night, you must get up and do whatever is necessary to stop his crying. Understand?”

Shannon nodded.

“The key can be inserted in his back to stop the crying, but will not necessarily stop it immediately or without the care he’s in need of. It’s up to you to figure out what he needs just as any mother would have to do with an infant.”

Shannon stood. “Is that all? May I go dress him now?”

Luc wasn’t sure Shannon had absorbed anything Mandy had said, but she smiled. “Yes, that’s all. If you have any questions, let me know.”

Shannon hurried from the room, Joey still cradled in her arms. The tattoo of her footsteps on the stairs echoed down the hall and into the family room.

Catherine stood and walked to the fireplace, then turned toward them, her expression clearly troubled. “She looks terribly excited about all this.”

“She certainly does,” Luc added. He’d come into this with serious reservations about his success, but Shannon’s reaction to the baby had given him the boost of confidence he needed. “Don’t you agree?” he asked Mandy.

Mandy ignored him. “It’s the first day. She’ll soon find out that having an infant around isn’t like playing dolls. As the labor-intense days and sleepless nights wear on, the enthusiasm should wane.”