The Ring on Her Finger (18 page)

Lucy’s mouth went dry and, without thinking, she lifted the entire bottle of wine to her mouth for a healthy swig. Max must have detected the motion, because he swung around and caught her, mid-swig.

He grinned. “Good wine?”

She lowered the bottle with much care and dabbed her mouth daintily with the back of her hand. She didn’t want to think about what the folks at In the Kitchen with Bitsy and Friends would have to say about that. “Yeah. Good.”

By now the Jets were in full dance mode, cavorting through the schoolyard and across the television screen. As she always did when she watched this movie, she marveled at how clean the New York ghettos and street gangs were in the sixties. Those were the days. She gestured toward the sofa, silently inviting Max to take a seat. When he did, he squinched his body waaaaaaay over on the far side, as if he wanted to keep as much distance between himself and Lucy as possible. Which was fine with her. The farther away from her he sat, the less likely she was to be shocked senseless by the electric current that seemed to arc between them whenever they were together. She set the bowl of popcorn in the center of the couch, then took her own seat, waaaaaaay over on her own side.

Everything should be just fine now.

Except, of course, it wasn’t.

Every time Lucy reached into the popcorn bowl, Max’s hand was there, too. In an effort to be polite—or maybe because they were both terrified of touching each other—whenever their hands made contact, they immediately withdrew, usually with enough force to send popcorn flying everywhere. Which, in turn, necessitated picking up the spilled popcorn. Which, in turn, necessitated touching things. Things like furniture, sure, but also things like body parts. Body parts that were much better left untouched.

It was during just such an episode of this touch-don’t-touch body part thing that Lucy decided it might be better to pop a second batch of popcorn and divide it equally into two bowls. And also to put on a robe. Or a beekeeper suit—whatever it took to cover her. And then sit in a chair on the opposite side of the room. And then erect a brick wall between the two of them. And then move to Abu Dhabi.

But popcorn first.

What she didn’t count on, however, was that Max would follow her into the kitchen. But that was exactly what he did, ostensibly to grab himself another warm, bad beer—eeewww—his third—eeewww—which he then opened, Then he began to drink his bad warm beer—eeewww. Without leaving the kitchen. He watched Lucy as she extracted another package of popcorn from the cabinet and unwrapped it. Without leaving the kitchen.

“Need, any help with that?” he asked.

“No, I’m fine. Go ahead. I think ‘America’ is coming up. It’s a pretty kickass song, if memory serves.”

“That’s okay. I’ll stay in here. There aren’t any switchblades in that number.” He lifted the beer to his mouth for a lengthy swallow, then grimaced after completing it.

In a word, Lucy translated to herself, Eeewww. Clearly he didn’t like warm, bad beer. So why did he drink it?

“In fact,” he continued, “I don’t mind if I miss the rest of the movie, even the switchblades. It’s been a long time since I saw it. I keep forgetting that, as good a movie as it is, I don’t really like it.”

“Why not?”

“It hits a little too close to home.”

Lucy set the timer on the microwave and turned to face him. “What? You used to sing and dance on urban rooftops when you were a teenager?”

She asked the question in an effort to lighten what seemed to be a dark mood coming over him, but Max didn’t seem to notice. “No, no singing and dancing,” he said as he leaned back against the counter. “But there were a lot of urban rooftops.” He sighed heavily and enjoyed—though that probably wasn’t the best word to use—another swallow of beer. “Lots of ugly, decaying, urban rooftops,” he added distastefully. Though she was pretty sure the distastefulness this time wasn’t due to the beer. “Lots of ugly, decaying urban buildings. And ugly, decaying urban streets. And ugly, decaying urban people.”

Finally, Lucy was getting the insight into the man that she had been craving. Funny, though, how she was suddenly reluctant to hear more. In spite of that, she asked, “What else was there?”

He snapped his gaze to hers at the question, clearly surprised, as if he hadn’t realized he was speaking aloud. He studied her in silence for a moment, seeming to give careful thought to something. Then he looked as if he came to a reluctant conclusion. “There were a lot of stolen cars,” he said softly. “There was a lot of joyriding. And there were a couple of stays in juvenile detention centers.”

Although he’d certainly given her the impression of being a dangerous man, Lucy hadn’t thought he was dangerous enough to be incarcerated. Even as a teenager. Her own youthful world of private school and cotillions couldn’t have been further removed from his.

“So, is, ah...is that where you learned about cars?” she asked, hoping her surprise didn’t show.

When he grinned this time—sarcastically, humorlessly—she knew he’d gauged her reaction perfectly. “Don’t worry, Lucy. It was a long time ago. A lifetime ago. Hell, two lifetimes ago,” he added cryptically. “I never did time for any violent crimes—only theft. And never as an adult. But, no, that’s not where I learned about cars. Cars I’ve known since...” He expelled a restless sound. “Hell. Cars I’ve known for as long as I can remember. They just always sorta felt like they were a part of me, you know? It’s why I kept stealing them, I guess. I refined my skills working for a guy in the neighborhood who owned a garage and knew I had a way with cars. More than just jacking them off the streets, I mean.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Detroit. Motor City, appropriately enough.”

“Why is that appropriate? Because of your car background?”

He lifted one shoulder and let it drop in what she supposed was meant to be a shrug. “Among other things.”

“What other things?”

Max glared at her, but there was something in his expression that kept it from being menacing. “Christ, why am I telling you all this?”

Lucy offered him a halfhearted smile. “Maybe because you want to?”

“Or maybe because I should have stopped at two beers. I never want to tell anyone this stuff.”

“You’ve only had two and a half beers. You can’t be that far gone.”

His gaze turned hot and steely. His voice was equally hot and steely when he asked, “Oh, yeah?”

Somehow, she knew they weren’t talking about beer. All she was able to manage by way of a response was a barely squeaked, “Uh-huh?”

“Fine. Then turnabout’s fair play,” he told her, the hot steeliness ebbing some. Not a lot. But some. Sort of. “If I tell you about me, then you have to tell me about you.”

That actually wouldn’t exactly be fair play, since he’d be telling her intimate details about his past, and she’d be lying to him about her own. Or maybe she could get around that. She could speak truthfully about herself without giving him specific details. Probably.

“So I know you’re from Roanoke, Virginia,” he began again, saving her from having to lie about that—since, hey, she’d already lied about it. “But just how did you grow up? Something tells me you didn’t do any time in juvie.”

She smiled at the thought of Lucinda Mirabella Hollander of Newport, Rhode Island, breaking the law. What a laugh. Even if she’d wanted to break the law—or at least the rules—on more than one occasion, she never would have had the nerve, or the confidence, to do it.

“No, I never did any time in juvie,” she said. Honestly, too, by God. “My parents set pretty stringent rules for us, and they made it clear we weren’t allowed to even bend them. Or else.”

“So where do you fall in the lineup of the French children?”

“My brother and sister are both older than me,” she said. Honestly.

“The baby of the family.” Max grinned again. “Why am I not surprised?”

“And you’re an only,” she said, remembering what he had told her before.

“Yep, it was just me.”

“Parents?” she asked.

His expression hardened some. “It was just me.”

Lucy winced inwardly at having obviously brought up another unpleasant memory. “I’m sorry. How old were you when you lost them?”

He expelled another one of those errant sounds of restlessness. “My dad I never knew. I don’t think my mom knew him all that well, either, to be honest with you. And my mom took a powder when I was sixteen.”

Mom took a powder
, Lucy repeated to herself. Such an indelicate, irreverent way to put a parent’s passing. He must still hurt from the loss if he were still trying to distance himself from it by trivializing it.

“How did she die?” she asked gently.

Max gazed at her blankly. “She didn’t die. At least, I guess she’s still around. Somewhere. She took a powder,” he repeated. “She left, Lucy. I came home one night to discover we’d been evicted, but my mom hadn’t bothered to tell me that when I left for school that morning. Not that I went to school that morning, since I spent most of my time dodging it, but when I came home that night, she was gone, and so was all our stuff.” He took another matter-of-fact swig of his beer before adding, “That’s when I quit school and started full-time at the garage. Had to eat. Had to have a roof over my head. I had a cot in the third bay as part of the arrangement.”

He ended his account there, but Lucy scarcely noticed because she was too busy gaping at him in disbelief. She simply could not understand how a woman could abandon her sixteen-year-old son. Nor could she believe Max would speak with such indifference about it. She knew there were neglected children in the world. But until now, she’d never been faced with the evidence of such a thing.

“She abandoned you?” she asked softly, incredulously. “Just took off and didn’t tell you where she was going?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it abandonment,” Max said with a remarkable lack of concern.

“What would you call it?”

He shrugged. “I was sixteen. She knew I could take care of myself.”

“Yeah, and you ended up in a juvenile detention center. I wouldn’t exactly call that taking care of yourself. You needed her, Max, and she let you down. I’d call that abandonment.”

“Hey, I ended up doing just fine,” he said defensively, even though she couldn’t imagine why he would want to defend a woman who had deserted him. Then again, maybe it wasn’t his mother he was defending.

There were too many questions swirling around in her head for her to be able to latch on to just one. So she said nothing, only battled the urge to pull him into her arms and hug him for a very long time. Not because of her attraction to him. Just to show him that she cared about what happened to him. Because he obviously hadn’t had much of that in his life.

“So then, judging by your reaction,” he said when she remained silent, “I guess your folks stuck around while you were growing up. They were just like Ward and June Cleaver, I bet.”

This time Lucy was the one to expel a derisive sound. “Oh, they were around,” she said. “They still are. But I’d hardly call them Ward and June Cleaver.” For one thing, her mother wouldn’t have been caught dead vacuuming in pearls. Francesca Hollander wouldn’t have been caught dead vacuuming, period. And her father preferred illegally smuggled—and extremely expensive—Cuban cigars to a pipe.

“What?” Max asked, feigning shock. “You didn’t grow up middle class in Middle America, with a father in middle management and a mother having a midlife crisis? They weren’t both grappling for middle ground and railing against middle-of-the-road middle age when you went off to middle school?”

Lucy shook her head, but couldn’t help chuckling. “Not exactly,” she said. In fact, her father was a hedge fund manager and her mother was a hedge fund manager’s wife. Oh, there’d been the middle age and midlife crisis stuff, but not in the ways Max interpreted them. Her father had faced his midlife crisis by spending six figures on a sports car. Her mother had faced hers by spending the same amount on cosmetic surgery. Nothing else in Lucy’s background was mid- or middle- anything. All of the Hollanders were firmly perched in the upper upper class and on the ultra-right wing. All except Lucy. She’d never really quite landed anywhere.

“No middle class, huh?” Max asked.

She shook her head again, but said nothing.

“Well, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, coming from a working-class background,” he said, obviously misinterpreting.

“It wasn’t working-class, either,” Lucy told him. Truthfully, too, though, honestly, she felt miserable about that, because she knew he would misinterpret in the wrong direction, thereby saving her from having to lie again. Well, to lie actively, anyway. Lies of omission, she supposed, were still lies.

“Gotcha,” he said. “Well, speaking as a survivor of the lower class myself, it’s no sin coming from poverty, either.” He eyed her a bit warily. “Unless you’re going to tell me that it went the other way, and that your dad is Bill Gates and your mom is Liz Taylor and you grew up in a big country estate with dozens of servants to do your bidding. Maybe you even got to wear a white lace dress for your...your...your whattayacallit...?”

“Debut?” she supplied helpfully, miserably.

“That’s it. Maybe you wore white lace for your debut, and whizzed through some tony private school with straight As, and your parents both doted on you on account of you were their Little Miss Perfect who could do no wrong.”

Lucy shook her head again, dropping her gaze to the floor so Max wouldn’t see the truth in her expression. “No, I won’t be telling you that,” she said quietly. Honestly. Because that wasn’t true, either. None of it was. Not even the white lace dress. “In some ways,” she said, just now realizing it was true, “my life was a lot like yours.”

When she glanced up, it was to find Max eyeing her in that thoughtful way again, as if he didn’t quite buy her assertion, in spite of her assurances. “We had to buy all our clothes at thrift stores,” he said. “Somehow, I don’t see you shopping at thrift stores. I always had to wear T-shirts from places I never visited or sports I never played or schools I never attended. My mom got me one once from this tony private school that cost a fortune. She got a real kick out of dressing me in that. Thought it was hysterical. I pretty much hated it myself. Not that that made any difference.”