Lisa Kleypas - Rainshadow Road

Lucy held up a staying hand and tried to think over a rush of anger. A fight was brewing, and she knew she couldn’t handle it. The stress of simply being near Alice had been enough to set off a headache that wrapped around her forehead. “Let’s not go there. Let’s try to figure out how we go on from here.”

“What is there to figure out? I’m getting married. We’re all moving on. So should you.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Lucy said. “This isn’t soap opera land, where people conveniently forget the past and everything magically turns out okay.” As she saw Alice stiffen, Lucy remembered too late that she’d lost her job writing for What the Heart Knows. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I didn’t mean to remind you of that.”

“Right,” Alice said sourly.

They were both quiet for a moment. “Are you looking for a new job?” Lucy dared to ask.

“That’s my business. You don’t have to worry about it.”

“I’m not worried, I just…” Lucy let out a frustrated breath. “A conversation with you is a minefield.”

“Not everything is my fault. I can’t help it if Kevin wanted me more than he wanted you. He was going to leave you anyway. What was I supposed to do? I just wanted to be happy.”

Did Alice truly not understand the pitfalls of trying to be happy at someone else’s expense? And did she have any goals beyond that? Ironically, Alice had never looked less content than she did now. The problem with chasing after happiness was that it wasn’t a destination you could reach. It was something that happened along the way. And what Alice was doing now—grabbing at every available pleasure, throwing aside every scruple so she could do whatever she wanted … that was practically a guarantee that she would end up miserable.

But all Lucy said was, “I want you to be happy too.”

Alice made a little snorting sound of disbelief. Which Lucy didn’t blame her for, since she knew that Alice didn’t understand what she’d meant.

The mantel clock measured out a generous half minute before Alice spoke. “I’m going to invite you to the wedding. It’s up to you whether or not you want to come. If you want a relationship with me, that’s up to you too. I’d like for things to go back to normal. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you, but none of it’s my fault and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life paying for it.”

This, Lucy realized, was what her sister had come to say.

Alice stood. “I have to go now. By the way, Mom and Dad want to meet Sam. They want to take you out to dinner tomorrow night, or have something brought in.”

“Oh, great,” Lucy said wearily. “Sam will love that.” Leaning her head back against the sofa, she asked, “Do you want him to show you out? I’ll call for him.”

“Don’t bother,” Alice said, her heels clacking loudly on the wood floor.

Lucy was still and silent for a few minutes. Gradually she became aware that Sam was standing beside her, his face unreadable.

“How much did you hear?” she asked dully.

“Enough to know that she’s a narcissistic bitch.”

“She’s miserable,” Lucy muttered.

“She got what she wanted.”

“She always does. But it never makes her happy.” Sighing, Lucy rubbed the sore back of her neck. “My parents are coming tomorrow.”

“I heard.”

“You don’t have to go to dinner with us. They can pick me up and take me somewhere, and you can finally have some privacy.”

“I’ll go with you. I want to.”

“That’s more than I can say. I’m pretty sure they’re going to pressure me into making up with Alice, and they’ll want me to attend the wedding. If I do go, it’ll be awful. If I don’t, I’ll look like the jealous, bitter older sister. As usual, there’s no winning in my family. Except for Alice. She gets to win.”

“Not forever,” Sam said. “And not if winning means marrying Pearson. It’s a match made in hell.”

“I agree.” Lucy leaned her head against the back of the sofa, contemplating Sam. A bittersweet smile curved her lips. “I need to get back to my glasswork. It’s the only thing that will help me to stop thinking about Alice and Kevin and my parents.”

“What can I do?” Sam asked quietly.

Lucy found herself looking up into his blue-green eyes and thinking that in the neatly organized inventory of all her plans and hopes, Sam Nolan didn’t fit at all. He was a complication she hadn’t counted on.

But despite Sam’s self-admitted flaws, he was an honest, caring man. God knew she’d had too few of those in her life. The problem was that forever did not apply to a relationship with a man like Sam. He’d been nothing but clear about that.

Instead of focusing on what she couldn’t have with him … maybe she should try to discover what was possible. She’d never had a relationship based on friendship and pleasure without the entanglement of emotions. Could she do that? What would she gain from it?

A chance to feel alive, and let go. A chance to have some pure, unadulterated fun before she went on with the next part of her life.

Making the decision, Lucy looked at him resolutely. He had asked what he could do for her, and she had the answer.

“Have sex with me,” she said.

Sam stared at her for so long, and with such a flabbergasted expression, that Lucy began to feel somewhat indignant.

“You look like you just swallowed one of Renfield’s heartworm pills,” she said.

Tearing his gaze away, Sam raked a hand through his hair, leaving some of the dark brown locks standing on end. He began to pace around the room, each step infused with agitation. “Today’s not a good day to joke about that stuff.”

“Dog medication?”

“Sex.” He said the word as if it was a profanity.

“I wasn’t joking.”

“We can’t have sex.”

“Why not?”

“You know the reasons.”

“Those reasons don’t apply now,” Lucy said earnestly. “Because I’ve thought about it, and … please stop moving around. Will you sit next to me?”

Warily Sam approached and sat on the coffee table, facing her. Bracing his forearms on his spread knees, he gave her a level stare.

“I know your rules,” Lucy said. “No commitment. No jealousy. No future. The only things we exchange are body fluids, not feelings.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Those are the rules. And I’m not doing any of that with you.”

Lucy frowned. “You told me not long ago that if I wanted to have revenge sex, you would do it with me.”

“I had no intention of going through with it. You’re not the kind of woman who can do friends-with-benefits.”

“I am, too.”

“You’re so not, Lucy.” Sam stood and began to pace again. “At the beginning you’ll say you’re fine with casual sex. But that won’t last for long.”

“What if I promise not to get serious?”

“You will anyway.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because my kind of relationship only works when both people are equally shallow. I’m great at shallow. But you would throw the whole thing off balance.”

“Sam. I’ve had bad luck with relationships. Believe me, there is no man on earth I couldn’t live without, including you. But this morning when we were upstairs together … it was the best feeling I’ve had in a long time. And if I’m willing to try things your way, I don’t see why you should have a problem with it.”

Sam had stopped in the middle of the room. He stared at her with baffled annoyance, having clearly run out of arguments.

“No,” he eventually said.

Her brows lifted. “Is that a definitive no, or an I’m-thinking-about-it no?”

“It’s a no-way-in-hell no.”

“But you’ll still have dinner with my parents and me tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I can do that.”

Lucy shook her head, dumbfounded. “You’ll have dinner with me and my parents, but you won’t have sex with me?”

“I have to eat,” he said.

* * *

“There’s a simple rule for managing stairs on crutches,” Sam said later in the day, staying close behind Lucy as she approached the front steps of the house. “Up with the good, down with the bad. When you’re going up, always lead with the healthy leg. When you’re going down, lead with the bad leg and the crutches.”

They had just returned from the doctor’s office, where Lucy had been fitted with an Aircast brace. Having never needed to use crutches before, Lucy was discovering they were much more difficult than she had assumed.

“Try not to put any weight on your right leg,” Sam said, watching Lucy’s wobbly progress along the path. “Just swing it through and take a hop with your left.”

“How do you know so much about it?” Lucy asked, puffing with effort.

“I fractured an ankle when I was sixteen. Sports injury.”

“Football?”

“Bird-watching.”

Lucy chuckled. “Bird-watching is not a sport.”

“I was twenty feet up a Douglas fir, trying to get a view of a marbled murrelet. An endangered species that nests in old-growth forests. Naturally I was climbing without rigging. I caught sight of the murrelet chick and got so excited I slipped and fell, hitting just about every branch on the way down.”

“Poor thing,” Lucy said. “But I bet you thought it was worth it.”

“Of course it was.” He watched as she hopped forward on the crutches. “I’ll carry you the rest of the way. You can practice later.”

“No, I can do the stairs. It’s a relief to be moving around again. This means I can go to my studio tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow or the next day,” Sam said. “Don’t push too hard, or you’ll reinjure that leg.”

Lucy’s smile turned quizzical. His mood was difficult to interpret. Ever since her proposition, he’d been back to treating her with the impersonal friendliness of the first two days at Rainshadow Road. But it wasn’t precisely the same. At certain moments she had caught him glancing at her in a way that was both preoccupied and intimate, and she knew somehow that he was thinking about what had happened—or almost happened—between them that morning. And he was thinking about her claim that she would be fine with a no-strings affair. She knew that even though he hadn’t believed her, he wanted to.