“Nope.” Bryce glanced at him and smiled. “But Paulie’s not my usual type.”
“What is your usual type?”
“Slutty and beautiful. The fling type.”
Lucas laughed. Colleen had said something like that, too. “Maybe it’s time to try something else, then. Have some faith in yourself, Bryce. You can be good at something other than video games and dog adoptions, you know.” He squeezed his cousin on the shoulder, and Bryce smiled.
“Yeah. You’re right, dude. Thanks for the pep talk.”
“It’s what I’m here for. Now go sit with your father.”
Joe woke up as his son sat next to him, and he put his arm around Bryce’s shoulders. Bryce kissed his father’s head, and the two sat in the breeze, the sun making the water quiver in the shimmering light.
Lucas turned his head, sensing that this was the goodbye Joe so wanted with his son.
He would’ve given a lot to have been able to say goodbye to his own father this way...or any way. To have felt his father’s arm around him once more, to have held his hand when he finally slipped away, instead of knowing he died alone on a cold cement floor in the prison basement in a state he’d never seen except through bars.
He would’ve given anything to have been able to just have seen his father’s face once more.
But at least Bryce would have that. And if Lucas couldn’t have been there for his father, he was here for Joe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ONCE AGAIN, COLLEEN was indulging in a little Clorox therapy, this time in the ladies’ room of O’Rourke’s.
Things hadn’t been right between her and Lucas since two weeks ago, when Ellen the Perfect had swept into town in all her pregnant radiance.
They weren’t fighting. It was more like there was a tremor in the Force.
Because a judge had apparently been a member of the same secret society at Yale as Frank Forbes, Joe Campbell was now quietly divorced. Lucas had thanked her for the idea...but still, it couldn’t have been done without perfect Ellen. Not that Colleen was insecure or jealous (cough). No, Ellen was completely nice and classy and engaged and preggers, and why the hell did she bother Colleen so much, anyway? Ellen was back in Chicago now, as were Lucas’s sister and nieces. They’d come into the bar to say hello and stayed for dinner, and Colleen had had to go into the office and cry for a second—the girls were so big! Once upon a time, she and Lucas had babysat Mercedes and the infant twins. She’d never even met the fourth one.
Didi had gone off to visit a friend in Boca and would stay for the duration. It had only cost Lucas about four grand, he’d told her, and it was money very well spent. Joe could now die in peace.
The loo was now spotless. With a sigh, Colleen returned to the bustle. But all through the evening, she obsessed. Worried, fretted, mulled and, ironically, tried not to think about Lucas.
Their time together was drawing to a close. They were still sleeping together, but it was almost too much—the intensity, the meaning, the poignance. Soon, one of these times would be their last. Or not. Or they’d try a long-distance thing.
But without saying the actual words, Lucas had made it clear: Manningsport was not his home. Chicago was. Manningsport was where he had lived for a short time and no more. A place that meant nothing to him, and everything to her.
She wasn’t going to leave.
Not that he had asked, mind you.
At the end of her shift, she called the nursing home to check on her grandfather.
“Hey, Coll,” said Joanie. “He’s a little restless right now.”
“I’ll pop over, then,” Colleen said.
A half hour later, she was sitting at Gramp’s bedside, holding his hand, talking about her day, the specials Connor had whipped up, how she’d taken Savannah for a swim in Keuka and how cold and clear the water had been. “I remember how you told me about you and Gran, taking a row in the moonlight on your honeymoon,” she said. “You said she looked like an angel, and you could hear a whip-poor-will calling.” Gramp didn’t respond, but she hoped he could picture it, those long-ago days with the love of his life.
But then, she ran out of things to say. Rufus, whom she’d brought in for company, was lying on the floor, twitching in sleep. Aside from his sighs (it sounded like a pretty good dream), the place was quiet.
Gramp made a whimpering sound, and Colleen kissed his hand. Rufus’s tail thumped the floor as if to reassure the old man. “I’m still here, Gramp. Don’t worry.”
Connor came to visit about once a week, more than anyone else except Colleen herself. The other O’Rourke cousins felt—perhaps legitimately—that their visits did nothing more than confuse Gramp, because the staff did report he’d be agitated afterward.
Dad never came. Once, Colleen had brought Savannah, but Gail and Dad had both had fits over it...exposing their innocent flower to the ravages of time, etc., etc. So it was just Colleen. She sometimes thought that if she could, she’d move in to Rushing Creek because she and Gramp had always had a special bond.
Her grandfather pulled his hand away and rubbed his forehead, his classic move when he was agitated.
“So I’m in love again, Gramp,” she said, more so he could hear her voice than anything else. Well. Except it was good to say out loud. “Same guy as last time. Dumb, huh? No live and learn here. He’ll be leaving pretty soon. We try not to talk about it. I think he wants me to live in Chicago, and I want him to stay here, and neither one of us is going to get our way.”
No answer.
She adjusted her grandfather’s blanket. “You’re right. Live life for the moment. Eat dessert first. I brought you some cookies, by the way. Peanut butter. Your favorite.”
“Hey.”
She jumped. Lucas stood in the doorway. Hopefully, he hadn’t heard her. “Hi. What are you doing here so late?”
“I’m on my way out, actually.” He paused. “They just admitted Joe to Hospice. He took a turn for the worse this afternoon.”
“Oh, Lucas. I’m so sorry.”
“He’s sleeping now. Pretty doped up. He had a bad coughing fit and brought up some blood, so he discontinued dialysis and...” He ran a hand through his hair. “It won’t be long.”
“I’ll look in on him.”
He gave a ghost of a smile. “He always liked you.” Another pause. “How’s your grandfather?” he asked.
“The same as ever.”
Lucas went over and took Gramp’s hand. “Hi, Mr. O’Rourke,” he said. “It’s Lucas Campbell. Good to see you again, sir.”
“Liar,” Colleen said, though her eyes were full.
Gramp turned away and closed his eyes. Pulled his hand free and rolled onto his side. “He’ll sleep for a while now,” she said. “That’s my cue to leave.”
She roused her dog, and she and Lucas walked down the silent hallway.
“Is that your bike?” Lucas asked.
“Yep.”
“Can I drive you home?”
“I have a headlight and stuff. A reflective vest.” It was a mile to her house, and Rufus could use the run (though he was even now flopping down on the floor once again). And at this hour, she’d be there almost as fast as she would if she took Lucas up on his offer.
“What I meant was,” he said, his voice scraping her with sweet, dark yearning, “can I drive you to the opera house, and will you stay over, Colleen, in my bed, and let me make love to you?”
He wasn’t smiling, which made it all the more devastating.
“Okay,” she whispered, and he kissed her then, a gentle, long, tender kiss, and it was all she could do not to cry because she knew the clock had almost run out.
A FEW NIGHTS LATER, Lucas stood outside O’Rourke’s, hoping to grab a quick dinner and a glimpse of Colleen before returning to Rushing Creek to sit with Joe, who was winding down. Mostly, his uncle slept, but if he was awake, he liked the company...and Bryce had been avoiding him, which Lucas just couldn’t understand.
What the future held for him and Colleen, he didn’t know.
She was trying to be her normal self, cheerful and flirty and wry, but there was something in her eyes that didn’t bode well, and when he asked her about it the other night, she just put on a smile and kissed him, and no amount of coaxing could get her to open up.
That was a problem because he needed to get back to Chicago, finish the Cambria building and leave Forbes Properties behind for good. Not Mr. and Mrs. Forbes, not Ellen, not completely. But he didn’t want to be attached to them in any way other than the occasional visit. He’d been a part of their family once, and he knew that Frank especially would want to keep up with the dinners, the sails on Lake Michigan. They’d invite him for the holidays, same as always, but things were changing. He didn’t belong there anymore.
Steph and the girls had a different relationship with Frank and Grace (and Ellen, for that matter; the two women had become best friends, however unlikely a pairing—Steph the single mom with her tattoos and piercings, Ellen with her WASPy good looks and quiet money). But an ex-husband, an ex-son-in-law...no.
Ellen would be married soon. There’d be another son-in-law, and two babies, and while Lucas knew he’d failed Ellen on some deep, emotional level despite his best efforts, and he couldn’t resent the divorce in any way, there was still a feeling that he was once again on the outside looking in.
Time to do his own thing, with the woman he’d fallen for in one glance. Time to set things right.
But her idea of right and his were very different, and it was becoming apparent just how big a problem this was going to be.
He went inside, and she looked up right away as she made a martini, expertly pouring the vodka, adding a squeeze of lime. A quick smile, the same kind she gave him lately whenever she’d been quiet too long, flashed across her lips. “Hello, Spaniard,” she said as he sat down. “What can I get you?”
He didn’t answer right away, and a faint blush crept into her cheeks. “Whatever the house special is, and a beer.”
“I’m the house special,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Then I’ll have you,” he said.
“I want the house special, then, too,” said the guy sitting one stool down.
“She’s taken,” Lucas said, not looking away from Colleen.
“Cajun crab cake sandwich with Hungarian cucumber salad, coming up,” she said. “And, Greg, I appreciate the sentiment.” She pulled two glasses from the overhead rack and filled them both with beer. “Since you didn’t specify, Spaniard, I gave you what he’s having. The Ithaca Flower Power IPA.”
She went into the kitchen, stopping to admire a baby. Probably one of the Colleens or Colins named for her.
“You guys together?” the guy, Greg, asked.
Lucas gave him a slow look. “Yes.”
He pursed his lips. “Well, good luck. Hope you don’t catch anything.”
Lucas was dragging him across the floor by his shirt before he was even aware that he’d moved. The noise of the bar barely wavered, though Tom Barlow, back from his honeymoon, did hold the door.
“Jesus, man!” Greg yelped. “What the hell are you doing?”
Lucas let him fall on the sidewalk, and Greg scrabbled up, his hands in front of him. “Just calm down, okay? Christ. I figured I’d give you a warning. She’s slept with half the guys in this town. Myself included.”
“Don’t come back here.”
“Who’s gonna stop me?” he asked.
Lucas took a step closer, and the little ass**le hesitated, then turned and fled.
He went back inside, his heart thudding. “Well done, mate,” Tom said. “Whatever it was he did, I’m sure he deserved that.” Lucas nodded, then went back to the bar and drained his beer.
