The Great Escape (22 page)

She forgot her discomfort about smoking in front of the first daughter and reached for another cigarette. “Around the same time, Myra’s lawyer contacted me and told me she’d died and left her cottage to me along with her grandson. I’d only seen Toby a few times years ago when Myra came to visit me. Yet here I am. Mistress of my domain.” She looked around at the farm stand and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Have you ever heard anything more pathetic? I was raised with all the advantages except a backbone.” She pushed the cigarette back in its pack without lighting up. “I can imagine what you’re thinking after everything you’ve accomplished in your life.”

“Running away on my wedding day?”

“Especially that.” She grew almost dreamy-eyed. “How did you have the guts?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it guts.”

“I would.” Just then a car stopped. Bree tucked the cigarette pack in her pocket. “Thanks for trusting me. I won’t sell you out.”

Lucy hoped she’d keep her word.

O
N THE WAY HOME
, L
UCY
realized she’d forgotten her honey, but without the prospect of warm bread to slather it on, she didn’t turn around. A pile of broken-down bunk beds, old mattresses, and the ugly vinyl curtains from the dorm sat at the end of the drive, waiting to be hauled away. The delivery truck was gone, and as she entered the house she heard something heavy being dragged across the floor overhead. Too much to hope it was Panda’s dead body.

She cut through the kitchen to go outside and noticed that the old refrigerator was gone. In its place stood a high-tech stainless steel side-by-side. Her unsatisfactory breakfast had left her hungry, so she opened the doors.

And discovered all her stuff was gone. Her peanut butter and jelly, her deli ham and perfectly aged Swiss cheese. No black cherry yogurt, salad dressing, or sweet pickles. None of the leftovers she’d counted on for lunch. Even Panda’s marmalade had disappeared.

The freezer section was equally awful. Instead of Hot Pockets and the frozen waffles that were her weekend treat, she saw rows of prepackaged diet meals. She pulled open the vegetable bins. Where were her carrots? Her blueberries? The fresh bunch of romaine lettuce she’d bought just yesterday? Frozen waffles were one thing, but they’d taken her lettuce?

She stormed upstairs.

Chapter Twelve

T
HE RUBBERY SMELL OF A
gym hit her even before she paused in the doorway. The dorm had been transformed since last night. Shiny new exercise equipment sat on pristine black rubber mats, the bare floor had been swept clean, and sunlight spilled through the open windows. Panda was wrestling with one of the bent window screens, the twist of his body tugging up his T-shirt and exposing a rock-hard abdomen. What she could see of his shirt was mercifully free of smutty messages, and the fact that she found this vaguely disappointing she blamed on Viper.

Temple grunted away on an elliptical machine, sweat dripping from her temples, wet tendrils of dark hair sticking to her neck. Lucy took in the scene of workout horror. “My food seems to be missing from the refrigerator.”

Temple hunched her shoulder and wiped her forehead on her sleeve. “Panda, take care of this.”

“Happy to.” He secured the screen and followed Lucy out of the room so quickly she knew he’d been looking for an excuse to escape. Before she could open her mouth to launch what she intended to be an un-Lucy-like tirade, he grabbed her elbow and steered her along the hall. “We have to talk downstairs. Loud voices upset Temple. Unless they’re coming from her.”

“I heard that,” Temple shouted from inside.

“I know,” Panda shouted in return.

Lucy headed for the stairs.

I
T WAS PROBABLY
P
ANDA’S IMAGINATION
, but he could swear he saw dust bombs exploding from beneath the soles of Lucy’s ridiculous combat boots as she stomped down the worn beige stairway carpet. A carpet he suspected she wanted him to get rid of. Which he damned well wasn’t going to do.

She hit the bottom step. A purplish painted chest used to sit there, but it had gone missing, right along with the antler coatrack and that black shelving thing that was now on the porch holding some plants he hadn’t bought and didn’t want.

Why the hell hadn’t she taken off like she was supposed to? Because she’d latched onto this place. That was the thing about people who’d been raised with money. Their sense of entitlement made them believe they could have whatever they wanted, even when it didn’t belong to them. Like this house. But as much as he wanted to cast Lucy as spoiled, he knew it wasn’t true. She was rock-bottom decent, even if she was screwed up right now.

As she tromped toward the kitchen, her small butt twitched in a pair of weird-looking black shorts that weren’t nearly baggy enough. He wanted her in oversize clothes like those Temple was wearing. Clothes that covered up everything he didn’t want to think about. Instead she wore those black shorts and an ugly gray top with these black leather ties on her shoulders.

As soon as she reached the kitchen, she whirled on him, making the ties twitch. “You had no right to get rid of my food!”

“You had no right to get rid of my furniture, and you shouldn’t be eating that crap.” His mood grew darker as he once again noted the clean counters, now missing, among other things, the ceramic pig dressed like a French waiter.

“Blueberries and lettuce aren’t crap,” she said.

“They weren’t organic.”

“You threw them out because they weren’t organic?”

She was really pissed. Good. As long as he kept her pissed at him, she wouldn’t try to suck him into one of those cozy little chats he used to pretend to hate. He splayed his hand on the counter. Her hair was so black it looked dead, the ratty purple dreadlocks were ridiculous, and her heavily mascaraed eyelashes looked like caterpillars had expired on them. A silver ring pierced one eyebrow; another pierced her nostril. He hoped like hell they were both fakes. And smearing that delicate mouth with ugly brown lipstick was a crime against humanity. But the tattoos bothered him most. That long, slender neck had no business being strangled by a fire-breathing dragon, and the thorns on her upper arm were an abomination, although a few of the blood drops had mercifully flaked off.

“Do you really want to pollute your body with pesticides and chemical fertilizers?” he said.

“Yes!” She jabbed a finger toward the pantry door. “And hand over that key.”

“Not going to happen. She’d bully you into giving it to her.”

“I can stand up to Temple Renshaw.”

He could be a world-class prick when he wanted to, like right now, with his ceramic pig missing and those leather ties twitching on top of her bare shoulders. “You couldn’t even stand up to Ted Beaudine. And he’s the nicest guy in the world, right?”

She was a babe in the woods when it came to dealing with pricks. Her chin shot up, her small jaw jutted, but beneath her bluster, he saw the guilt she still couldn’t shake off. “What do you mean, I couldn’t stand up to him?”

This was exactly the kind of personal conversation he’d told himself he wouldn’t have with her, but he didn’t feel like backing off. “Your aversion to getting married didn’t just hit you on your wedding day. You knew it wasn’t right long before that, but you didn’t have the guts to tell him.”

“I didn’t know it wasn’t right!” she exclaimed.

“Whatever gets you up in the morning.”

“Not eggs and bacon, that’s for sure.”

He gave her his badass sneer, but it wasn’t as effective as usual because he couldn’t take his eyes off those little leather ties. Just one tug …

“I want my food back,” she said.

“It’s in the trash.” He pretended to inspect a broken drawer handle, then eased away from the counter. “I’ll open the pantry whenever you want. Just don’t eat any of your crap around Temple.”

“My crap? You’re the one who thinks Frosted Flakes are antioxidants!”

She had that right. He jerked his head toward the refrigerator. “Help yourself to whatever’s there. We’ll be getting deliveries twice a week. The fruits and vegetables are coming later today.”

“I don’t want her lousy organic food. I want my own.”

He understood the feeling.

Overhead, the treadmill began to run. He told himself not to ask, but … “You don’t happen to have any of your bread stashed away someplace, do you?”

“A fresh loaf of cinnamon raisin where you can’t find it,” she retorted. “Eat your heart out. Oh, wait. You can’t. It’s not organic.”

She stomped outside and slammed the door behind her.

S
HE
’
D LIED ABOUT THE BREAD
. She also hadn’t slammed a door since she was fourteen. Both felt really good.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t brought her yellow pad with her, and she’d promised herself she’d write for real today. She wasn’t going back in through the kitchen, so she cut around behind the house and mounted the three steps that led to the deck outside her bedroom. She’d left the sliding doors open to catch the breeze. The screen caught in the track. She gave it an extra nudge and stepped inside.

Panda was already there.

“I want my bedroom back,” he said as he walked out of her closet, carrying a pair of sneakers that she happened to know were a size twelve.

“I rented this house for the summer,” she retorted. “That makes you the interloper, and I’m not leaving.”

He crossed to the dresser. “This is my room. You can sleep upstairs.”

And lose her private exit? No way. “I’m staying right here.”

He tugged open the drawer that used to contain his underwear, but now held hers. He reached inside and pulled out a midnight-black thong.

“Your things are in the bottom drawer,” she said quickly.

He ran his thumb over the silky crotch. As his eyes caught hers, she was hit with another of those jolts of sexual electricity that proved exactly how disconnected a woman’s body could be from her brain.

“Here’s the part I don’t get.” His big fist swallowed the thong. “Knowing the way you feel about me, why are you still here?”

“My attachment to your house overrides my complete indifference to you,” she said with remarkable steadiness.

“My house, not yours,” he retorted, his eyes on her right shoulder—she had no idea why. “And if you make one more change to it, you’re out, regardless of what Temple says.”

Letting him have the last word would have been the mature thing to do, but he was still holding her thong, and she didn’t feel like being mature. “Are you offering her your
complete
line of services?”

Once again, his eyes drifted to her shoulders. “What do you think?”

She didn’t know what she thought, so she shot across the room and snatched back her thong. “I think Temple’s the kind of woman who’s not easily conned.”

“Then you have your answer.”

Which told her exactly nothing.

“That’s what I thought.” She stuffed her thong back in the drawer, retrieved her writing supplies, and left the same way she’d come in.

My mother is a
— S
o
many things to choose from.

My mother is a notoriously hard worker.

Or maybe …

My mother believes in hard work.

Lucy clicked her pen.

The United States was built on hard work.

She tried to find a more comfortable position.

And so was my mother.

Lucy crumpled the paper. Her attempts at writing were going even worse than her encounter with Panda, but this time she had an empty stomach to blame it on. She abandoned her yellow pad and rode into town, where she gorged on two chili dogs and a large order of fries at Dogs ’N’ Malts, the most food she’d eaten in months, but who knew when she’d get a chance to eat again?

When she returned to the house, she found Temple in the almost empty living room watching television, a couple of DVDs of
Fat Island
on the floor by her bare feet. The brown and gold loveseat where she sat was one of the few pieces of furniture left, since Lucy had transferred the better pieces to the sunroom as replacements for what she’d thrown out.

Temple grabbed the remote and paused the television on an image of herself. “I’m just taking a fifteen-minute break.” She acted as if Lucy had caught her munching a chocolate bar. “I’ve been working out for three hours.”

The chili dogs rumbled unpleasantly in Lucy’s overstuffed stomach. “You don’t have to explain to me.”

“I’m not explaining. I’m—” Looking exhausted, she slumped back into the loveseat. “I don’t know. Maybe I am.” She pointed toward the frozen image of herself on screen. “See that body,” she said with such self-loathing that Lucy cringed. “I threw it away.” She hit the play button and captured her sleek screen image in the middle of a furious diatribe directed at a sweet-faced, sweat-drenched, middle-aged woman who was fighting tears.