Easy (27 page)

He thought for a
moment, and I knew he was weighing what to tell me, staring at me from under
his bushy brows. It was hard to imagine that this soft-spoken, doughy man had
once been a member of Special Forces. Hard to imagine he’d been the one to
discover one of his closest friends, savagely murdered.

He cleared his
throat, and I didn’t move. “I became good friends with Raymond Maxfield in grad
school. We were both PhD-track, but while I planned to go the more typical
teaching and researching route, Ray was bound for a more lucrative, non-academic
career.

“We attended a small
gathering at the home of one of our professors, whose daughter was an
undergrad, living at home. She was stunning—all dark hair and dark eyes—so when
she passed through on her way to the kitchen, Ray got up with an excuse to get
ice, and I followed. He was my best friend, but I wasn’t letting him call dibs
on a girl like that. It was every man for himself.” He chuckled softly.

“Five minutes
later, I was feeling damned sure of my chances. He’d asked her major, and when she’d
answered, ‘Art,’ Ray had blurted out, ‘Your father is Dr. Lucas—one of the
foremost minds in modern economics—and you’re studying
art?
What the
hell are you gonna do with a degree in
art?
’”

He smiled, his
eyes unfocused, remembering. “She drew herself up to all five foot two, eyes
flashing, and said, ‘I’m going to make the world more beautiful. What are you going
to do? Make money? I’m
so
impressed.’ She whirled around and left the
kitchen. For days, Ray was
furious
that he hadn’t formulated a single
retort while she was standing there.

“A week later, I ran
into her in the coffee shop. She asked if I was as anti-art as my friend. I’m
no dummy, so I exclaimed, ‘No way—I know how essential art is in the expression
of the human condition!’ So she invited me to an exhibit she was having, and
told me I could bring Ray. I immediately regretted telling him at all, because
he was determined to impart those clever comebacks he’d been formulating since the
night they met.

“The gallery was
squeezed between a liquor store and a furniture rental place. As we walked to
the door, Ray made a remark about the ‘more beautiful world’ she wasn’t making,
and I wanted to kick myself again for bringing him.

“Rose walked up wearing
a gauzy dress, her hair twisted up—very art student. With her was a smartly
dressed blonde—Ray’s usual type—who she introduced as her best friend, and also
a finance major. Ray barely noticed the other girl. ‘Where’s your stuff?’ he
asked Rose. His question seemed to take the bite out of her. She was fidgety as
she led us to the wall showcasing her paintings—watercolors. We all waited,
tense, for Ray to pronounce judgment.

“He examined each
piece without comment, and then he looked down at her, and said, ‘They’re
beautiful. I don’t think you should ever do anything that isn’t this.’ She
graduated three months later, and he had a ring on her finger that night. Once he
finished his doctorate, they got married, and he started his career with a
vengeance, as he’d always planned to do.

“Oddly enough, I
ended up with the pretty finance major, and we married not long after they did.
The four of us stayed close friends. Landon is like an older cousin to our
three.”

Dr. Heller stopped
and took a deep, sad breath, and my uneasiness returned.

“Ray was working
for the FDIC. Lots of travel. I was teaching at Georgetown; we lived maybe
twenty minutes from each other. When he couldn’t get in touch with them that
night, Cindy and I drove over to check. We found Rose in her room, with Smith’s
body, and Landon in his room.” Dr. Heller swallowed and I couldn’t breathe. “He
was so hoarse from screaming he couldn’t speak, and his wrists were zip-tied to
the bed post. He’d dragged that bed until it ran into other furniture and
couldn’t go any further. His wrists were lacerated, trying to get loose from
those ties to get to his mother. There was dried blood on his arms and the
corner of the bed. That’s where the scars came from. He’d been like that
fifteen, sixteen hours.”

My stomach heaved
and tears streamed down my face, but Dr. Heller’s voice was flat. I sensed he
was holding himself apart from the memory as much as he could. I felt cruel for
making him relive such a horrible night.

“Rose was the
emotional heart of the three of them. Ray adored her, and losing her that way,
when he wasn’t there to protect her… He shut down. He’d made tremendous strides
in his career, but he quit it all. Moved the two of them to his dad’s place on
the coast, went back to the fishing boat he’d been so determined to never have
any part of when he left home at eighteen. His father died a couple of years
later, left him everything.

“Landon shut down
in a different way. Cindy and I tried to tell Ray that he shouldn’t be uprooted
from everything he knew, that he surely needed therapy, but Ray was out of his
mind with grief. He couldn’t stand to be in that house or that city.”

He looked up at me
then, pulling a tissue box from a desk drawer when he took in my face. “I think
you need to get the rest from Landon—I mean, Lucas. He changed his name to his
middle name—his mother’s maiden name—when he came here for college. Trying to
reinvent himself, I guess. An eighteen-year habit is hard to break, and he hasn’t
called me on it enough in the past three years.” He peered at me and exhaled. “I
wish I’d never seen you leaving his apartment. As far as I’m concerned, any
student/tutor restrictions are over. Just… so you know.”

I dabbed a tissue
under my eyes and thanked him.

University
restrictions were the least of my worries.

Chapter 22

“You’re a good cook.” I grabbed the
empty glasses and followed Lucas to the sink. He rinsed the bowls of pesto
remains and turned to take the glasses from me.

“Pasta’s easy—the
college-version gold standard for impressing a date with your mad culinary
skills.”

“So this
is
a date?” Before he could do an about-face, I added, “And you made the pesto
from scratch—I watched you. That was impressive all on its own. Besides, you’ve
never lived in a dorm, where the pasta choices are usually Chef Boyardee from a
can, or two-for-a-dollar ramen noodles. The occasional Lean Cuisine. Trust me,
your skills are positively epicurean.”

He laughed, treating
me to the full smile I craved. “Oh, really
?
”

I returned the
smile, but it felt counterfeit—as though someone else had shaped my mouth into a
happier contour than I was capable of feeling. “Really.”

Every minute, I battled
a mounting dread over what I’d learned on the Internet the previous night, and from
Dr. Heller hours before. Lucas had been through such hell, and shared it with
no one, as far as I knew. He’d said there were things I didn’t know about him
that he might never be able to reveal, and instead of respecting those secrets,
I’d unearthed them. I wanted to be the one he let in, but my prying could
easily be turned into an excuse to shut me out.

“I guess it would wreck
my standing as a top chef if I told you I made brownies from a box for
dessert.” His expression was stern.

“Are you kidding?”
I rolled my eyes. “I
love
brownies from a box. How’d you know?”

He was trying to
maintain a severe demeanor and failing. “You’re full of contradictions, Ms.
Wallace.”

I looked up at him
and arched a brow. “I’m a girl. That’s part of the job description, Mr.
Maxfield.”

He dried his hands
on a dishtowel and tossed it on the counter, pulling me closer. “I’m very aware
of the fact that you’re a girl.” His fingers threaded through mine and he restrained
both of my hands behind me, gently, pressing them into my lower back. My breathing
quickened along with my heart rate as we stared at each other.

“How would you get
out of this hold, Jacqueline?” His arms surrounded me and my body bowed into
his.

“I wouldn’t want
to,” I whispered. “I don’t want to.”

“But if you did
want to. How would you?”

I closed my eyes
and visualized. “I would knee you in the groin. I would stomp on your instep.”
I opened my eyes and calculated our relative heights. “You’re too tall for me
to head-butt, I think. Unless I jump up like they taught us to do in soccer
camp.”

One corner of his
mouth turned up. “Good.” He leaned down, our lips inches apart. “And if I
kissed you, and you didn’t want me to?”

I wanted him to so
badly my head swam. “I—I would bite you.”

“Oh, God,” he
breathed, his eyes closing. “Why does that sound so
good
?”

I leaned in and
up, as close as I could get, but his lips were still out of reach, and my arms—trapped
behind me—couldn’t stretch to pull him down. “Kiss me and find out.”

His lips were warm.
He kissed me carefully, nibbling and sucking my lower lip. Drawing the tip of
my tongue along the inner edge of his mouth, I swept it over the the slim ring,
lightly, and he groaned and pulled me in so tight I could barely breathe. My
hands were suddenly freed and he grasped my hips, lifting me onto the counter
so that our angles were reversed.

Thrusting my
fingers into his hair, I pressed my tongue into his mouth, cautiously, tracing
over the hard palate just behind his teeth while wrapping my arms and legs
around him. He sucked my tongue into his mouth and I gasped. I’d never kissed
anyone like that; I’d never been kissed like that. One hand at the back of my
neck, directing me, the other balancing me on the edge of the counter, he
coaxed me to do it again and when I did, he caressed my tongue with his own,
grazing his teeth over the surface, biting it softly as I withdrew.

“Holy crap,” I moaned
before he drove his tongue into my mouth, finally, and I tightened my grip on
him everywhere, wanting to cry from how right it felt.

Plucking me from
the counter, he strode into his room and we fell onto his bed, my legs still
locked around him. Braced over me, he kissed me deeply, stroking the interior
of my mouth until I was writhing under him. He pulled me up and removed my
sweater and I unbuttoned his shirt. Leaving it hanging open, he started to
unzip my jeans, stopping to scan my face.

“Yes.” There was
no hesitation in my voice.

He pulled the
zipper down slowly, watching me; I felt the pressure of it as I lay still,
panting softly, staring up at him. One hand on my thigh and the other stilled
at the base of the zipper, he murmured, “I haven’t tried this with anyone…
significant
in a long time. It’s never worked before.”

I tried to rein in
the disbelief all too evident in my tone. “You haven’t had sex before?”

He closed his eyes
and sighed, his hands moving to grip my bare waist. “I have. But not with
anyone I cared about or… knew. One-time things. That’s all.” He raised his eyes
to mine.

“That’s all—ever?”

He smiled sadly, his
fingers running just inside the perimeter of my loosened waistband. “It’s not
like there’ve been tons of them. There were more before, in high school, than
there have been the past three years.”

I didn’t know how
to reply to that. I couldn’t focus on anything but the feel of his index
fingers hooking into the belt loops at the side of my jeans.

“Lucas? I said
yes, and I meant it. I want
this
—as long as you have protection, I mean.
I want this, with you. So this is okay.” I was babbling, worried that it would
end as it had six days before. I exhaled a breath and spoke just above a
whisper. “Please don’t ask me to say stop.”

 Staring down at
me, he pulled and I lifted my hips. My jeans slid down my legs and he tossed
them aside, shrugged out of his shirt and removed his jeans. “I want it to be
better than okay. You deserve better than okay.” After grabbing a condom from a
box in the nightstand and tossing the small square on the bed, he settled
between my legs. I was shivering like I had no experience whatsoever. “You’re
shaking, Jacqueline. Do you want to—”

“
No
.” I put
my trembling fingers over his mouth. “I’m just a little cold.”
And a whole lot
nervous
.

He pushed the
covers down beneath me and dragged them back up, over us. His weight pressing
into me, he kissed me thoroughly before staring into my eyes, his fingers drifting
over my face. “Better?”

I took a deep
breath, my fears dissolving with his touch, the anticipation climbing faster
than it had minutes ago in the kitchen. “Yes.”

As his thumb
caressed my temple, his fingertips teased into my hair. His eyes were so pale
this close that I could see every fragmented facet. “You know you can say it.” His
voice notched lower, softer. “But I’m not asking you to, this time.”

“Good,” I
answered,  lifting my head to capture his mouth, my hands kneading up and over
the hard muscles of his back before trailing my nails down the center from his
shoulder blades to his hips.

His earlier
hesitation gone, he removed the last scraps of fabric we were wearing, fixed
the condom in place, kissed me fiercely and rocked into me.

Had this been
Kennedy, it would have been over in a few minutes.

My last coherent
thought, as Lucas took his time kissing and touching every part of me he could
reach and my body arched into his, was
oh… so this is what all the fuss is
about.

***

We lay facing each other, snuggled
under the covers, shoulders peeking out. I watched his gaze drift over my face,
stopping on each feature as if he was memorizing it: ear, jaw, mouth… chin,
throat, curve of shoulder.

He came back to my
eyes then, lifting his hand and tracing over the individual attributes while
watching my response. When his fingers trailed over my lips, they edged the border
before rubbing across the lower one, and I swallowed and concentrated on
breathing. His eyes fell there and he stared for a long moment before cupping
the back of my neck, moving closer and kissing me so softly I hardly felt it, until
the thin connection caught and ricocheted through me, shooting to my toes like
a current.