Fallling for the Prodigal Son (20 page)

She had let him kiss her. He couldn't suppress a smile at the memory.

He raised his fist to knock on her door. Last night, he'd been so jealous of Douglas, down there on the grass dancing with Lucy while he, Sterling, was stuck by himself up in the bleachers. Just watching. He'd always prided himself on not being the jealous type. If a woman was more interested in another man than in Sterling—not that that happened very often—he just walked away and found another woman. There was always another woman.

Except when there wasn't.

He rapped on Lucy's door. Then waited.

The curtains in one of the front windows fluttered, then a minute later the door opened. Slowly at first, just far enough for him to get a glimpse of her wary face, and then Lucy opened it the whole way.

"Hi," she said. Her expression was cautious, guarded. Not even a hint of a smile on her face.

"Hi," he replied. He had planned what he was going to say but now, facing her, the words were nowhere to be found.
I'm like an idiot teenager who doesn't know how to talk to a girl.

Lucy waited.

"May I come in?" He looked down at his clothes. "I'm dry this time."

Ah, that got half a smile out of her.
She stepped back into the house and Sterling followed. He let himself appreciate her fine figure before she turned around. She was wearing a pair of slim cropped cotton pants, strappy leather sandals and that peach-colored linen blouse she'd been wearing in Muir Woods.

"Is there something you need to talk to me about?" she asked as she turned around to face him.

She was dressed perfectly for what he had in mind. He found the words.

"I'm here for the field trip you're taking me on."

Lucy looked confused. "Come again?"

"You're taking me on a field trip."

"I am? I must have missed that memo. I'm not on the all-staff email loop anymore, you know."

"This is personal business."

"I'm unemployed. I can't afford the gas."

"I'm paying. But I need you to show me where it is."

Lucy stood there, hip cocked out, considering him. His body warmed under her stare. She was not a woman who suffered fools gladly and Sterling knew he was probably right smack in the middle of making a fool of himself. But he was here. He was inside her house. There was no turning back now.

"So where is it I'm taking you?"

"Virginia. Your childhood home."

Lucy was speechless. Her beautiful brown eyes opened a little wider, in surprise.

"You said I don't understand the social ills that the camp children come from. So show me. Make me understand."

"It's a seven hour drive." She glanced at the watch on her wrist. "It's noon already."

"If we leave now, we'll be there by early evening. Is there a motel in town we can stay at? And then tomorrow, you show me around."

Lucy looked skeptical. He could see the gears s
pinning furiously in her head.

"Unless you have other plans for today. Like a date tonight?" he added.

Lucy shook her head. "I haven't had a date in months."

"So you're free."

"I guess I am."

After seven hours of Lucy telling Sterling to turn here, take the next exit, go south, go west, he finally turned the BMW onto Main Street. Lucy looked nervously out the window. She was trying to see everything through Sterling's eyes. Half of the storefronts they passed were dark and empty.
It looks like a photograph from the Depression,
Lucy thought. Growing up here, she hadn't realized just how poor the town was. It was going away to St. Caroline for two weeks that opened her eyes, showed her that not everyone lived this way, from hand to mouth. On Main Street, men in jeans and blue workpants loitered around the town's only remaining barbershop and the Wet Whistle bar.

Was she crazy? Take Sterling to Lost Cave? Spend the whole weekend with him?

Yes. Yes, she was.

She looked over at Sterling, driving. He was quiet, taking in everything they passed. She was embarrassed by the shabbiness of it all. Outside the town, in the mountains, it was gorgeous. But Lost Cave had seen better days. Sterling reached over and squeezed her hand. It was the first time they had touched all day. They had barely spoken, either, during the entire long drive. Lucy wasn't sure what was a safe topic of conversation. Every time they were together, somebody ended up blowing their top. Even when they stopped for dinner, they talked mostly about the food, politics, current events. Nothing personal.

"So how does it feel to be home?" Sterling asked, as he braked the car to a stop at a red light.

Lucy looked out the window. Home. What did that mean anyway? Lost Cave had been her home, once. Then Washington, DC when she was married. For the past five years, it had been St. Caroline. Who knew where home would be next?

"This is my hometown," Lucy replied. "But it's not my home anymore."

"You don't feel any sort of connection to it still?"

"Well, sort of. But it's like the connection you have with an ex-boyfriend. You used to know them really well, but now they're not a part of your life. So there's both an intimacy and a distance at the same time."

Sterling seemed to consider this as he drove. "I'm not sure I ever felt that St. Caroline was my home. My family has been such a fixture there. It's like we belong to the town."

"It's a nice place to call home."

"Lots of people think so. And I can see that, objectively. I just don't feel it."

"Well, you haven't really lived there as an adult," Lucy pointed out. "Maybe you need to try and see it from a new angle. Open your heart to it."

How do you open your heart to a town, Sterling mused. He had enough trouble opening his to people.

They spent the evening driving up and down the hills around Lost Cave, Lucy pointing out significant locations from her childhood. The best swimming hole. The woods where the kids always party after the senior prom. The field where the summer fireman's carnival was held, the highlight of the summer as far as kids were concerned. Lucy showed him her high school, the fields in need of mowing. The old stone church where she was baptized. The abandoned sewing factory, where her mother had worked for awhile, now just a brown brick building pockmarked with broken windows.

When they pulled into the Rt. 1 Motel, the sun was setting. The motel was an old, two-story building with individual entrances on the outside. A covered balcony ran along the second floor.

"I'll see if there's a vacancy. Be right back." He got out of the car and stretched his legs, tight and tense from the long drive. He scanned the flat parking lot. Considering the number of cars there, he wasn't worried about there not being rooms available.

In the office, he rang the bell and a bleary-eyed young man emerged slowly from a back room.

"Help you." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Do you have two rooms?"

The boy looked at him like there were horns growing out of Sterling's head.

"Do you want adjacent rooms?" the boy asked.

"No. But close together. I'm traveling with my sister." Adjacent rooms. No, that would not be a good idea, Sterling thought. Too close, too easy, too tempting. He wanted Lucy far enough away so that he'd have to get dressed to walk outside to her room. Even then, he wasn't sure that was going to be enough of an obstacle.

Sterling returned from the motel office and held out a key to Lucy.

"Your room is number sixteen, two doors down from mine."

A look of disappointment flitted across her face. She dropped her gaze quickly to hide it.
Oh Lucy, you have no idea how badly I want to be in your room tonight.
He could snatch that key back out of her fingers and she would let him. He knew that. He could make love to her tonight. He could easily make that happen. They had physical chemistry, he knew that too. What he didn't know was whether they had anything else. And it was the "anything else" that he was starting to want.

He had wanted to see Lucy's hometown for himself so that she would be less able to throw that rich kid-poor kid meme in his face. He wanted to knock that chip off her shoulder. But there was more to it than that. He wanted to just spend time with her, away from the Inn, away from the camp, away from the mess he'd made by impulsively firing her. He wanted her company for awhile and when she had marched up those bleachers last night, it occurred to him that maybe she wanted his, too.

Sterling walked her to her room.
Last chance. You could go in there with her.
No. If he went into Lucy's room, they wouldn't come back out. They would end up spending the entire weekend holed up in the Rt. 1 Motel. Not that that wouldn't be pleasurable, but it wasn't why he had driven seven hours to get here.

He leaned down and dropped a chaste kiss, practically an air kiss, on her cheek. She unlocked the door and went inside. It was going to be a long night.

Chapter 22

Lucy ordered coffee and a bowl of oatmeal at Edith's Diner. Edith was long gone and the diner had gone through several owners since her, but no one had changed the name of the place. Even if they had, everyone in town would continue to call it "Edith's Diner." That's just what it was.

She watched Sterling dig into a huge western omelet and home fries. If there was one good thing Lucy could say about Lost Cave, it was that you could get a good breakfast there. And get it cheap.

Sterling was wearing shorts and a tee shirt. Even in that kind of an outfit, he radiated raw sexuality. To Lucy, anyway. His hair was damp from the shower, and curling a little around his ears. Looking at him made her want to, well, get a room and drag him back up to it, cavewoman-style.

"How did you sleep?" she asked instead.

Sterling grimaced. "I've slept in better beds, I suppose."

"It's not the Ritz Carlton," Lucy said with a wary smile.

"So how about you? Sleep well?"

"No. Can't say I did." But that wasn't because of the mattress, Lucy thought. She'd spent half the night lying awake, wishing she were in Sterling's room instead. She finally fell asleep sometime around three o'clock and she had the dark circles under her eyes to prove it.

The separate rooms had disappointed her; she'd been surprised at just how disappointed. When he kissed her the other night at the concert, she had thought, maybe ...

She pushed the idea out of her head. He had just been proving to her that no one was paying attention to two individuals sitting in the back row while there was a Grammy award winning singer onstage. They were here today because he had wanted to see Lost Cave and if that could perhaps push him a few inches further toward changing his mind about the camp, then Lucy was willing to swallow her disappointment.
I mean, honestly? Me and Sterling Matthew. Who's kidding whom here?

She turned her head to look out the plate glass window next to their booth. Outside, a middle-aged couple carried plastic bags of groceries down Main Street. An elderly gentleman with a cane was walking a small, scruffy dog. Other than that, the street was deserted. In St. Caroline right now, the church bells would be ringing. The restaurants and cafes would be wiping down their sidewalk tables in preparation for the after
church brunch crowd. Shop owners would be getting ready for another afternoon of tourists.

"So what do you think so far?" she asked, biting her lip nervously, not looking away from the window.

"I think it's remarkable that you are the woman you are today."

Lucy's head snapped back to the table and her dining companion. Her mouth opened to speak.
Slow down.
She sipped her cooling coffee, and waited for her knee-jerk reaction to sink back down into her stomach. She wasn't going to say it. She wouldn't mar the day by bringing up the camp and the role it had played in getting her out of Lost Cave. She had to be subtler than that, and trust that Sterling would see things for himself.