He’d taught his son to respond the same way to them, and for a long time Lucas had. Hell, most days he still did. But the fact of the matter was, he had more respect for his mom and sisters than his dad had. Or at least, he wanted to. He wanted to expect more from them than endless parties and other carefree social gatherings. Wanted to see them be more than hostesses at fancy parties and ornaments on their husbands’ or boyfriends’ arms.
Too bad his wishes didn’t have much power in the grand scheme of things.
“Are you paying attention to anything I’m saying?” his mother squawked. He’d gotten so caught up in his own thoughts that he’d failed to make appropriate listening noises.
“Of course I am, Mom. I’m just tired, like I told you.”
“I know, sweetheart.’ She reached over and squeezed his hand. “You work so hard.”
A knee-jerk part of him wanted to comment that everything looked like hard work when you weren’t used to doing any. But he bit the words back. It was obvious that she was trying, so the least he could do was try to meet her halfway.
“What have you been up to?” he asked. “A new benefit?”
“Actually, yes. We’re raising money for the children’s hospital. Do you know how little federal funding they get? It’s scandalous.”
“They’re a private hospital, Mom. So, yeah, no federal funding.”
“Well, I think it’s appalling, so I’ve organized a few friends and we’re going to raise so much money for them they won’t know what hit them.” She smiled at Lucas. “You’ll come, won’t you?”
He smiled gently at her. This was the woman he remembered from his childhood. Flighty, yes, but with a heart of gold. She’d never been able to see something wrong and not try to fix it. Admittedly, her answer was almost always to throw money at it, but hey, in a lot of cases, money worked. And he could think of a lot worse things for her to be spending time on than raising money to help sick children.
“Yes,” he told her. “And you won’t even have to hunt me down and threaten me. I promise I’ll go.”
She gave him a disbelieving look. “We’ll see about that. But it’s going to be so much fun. We’re going with a Brazilian Carnival theme, since it’s going to be in February. A little different than the tired old Mardi Gras theme, but still seasonally appropriate. In fact…”
She was off and running, and he just let her go off on yet another tangent. It was easier, much easier, than trying to rein her in.
When the server came in with the first course of melon soup, he asked, “Where are Jenn and Lisa? Aren’t they coming?”
His mom waved an airy hand. “I thought this would be so much better if it was just the two of us. I see them all the time, but I just don’t get to see enough of you.”
“I was here for dinner four nights ago.”
“Yes, and you let your sisters do all the talking. This time, I wanted to be able to pin you down on a few things.”
“What’s there to pin me down on?” he wondered. “I’m an open book.”
“Oh, of course you are,” his mom said with a laugh. “Just like your dad was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have someone I want you to meet.”
He paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Tell me it’s not a woman.”
Just the thought struck terror into his heart—his mother had the worst taste in women for him and the last thing he wanted to do was find out that she had set him up on another miserable date. Especially when Kara was missing. She was all he could think about and the idea of making small talk with some stranger seemed impossible when he was nearly insane with worry. It had been all he could do to sit here for the past fifteen minutes and not pull his phone out.
In fact, now might be a perfect time to check.... Nope, still nothing.
“Lucas.” His mother glared at the phone and he slipped it back into his pocket. “Sadly, I know better than to set you up. The last time cured me of it.”
Well, thank God. It made sitting through the date from hell with the Atlanta senator’s daughter worth it if he never had to go on another blind date. Almost.
“No,” his mother reiterated. “I want you to meet Jean-Claude.”
The bite of soup he’d just taken turned bitter in his mouth. “Jean-Claude?”
“Yes! He’s the most wonderful man. I met him at a party a few weeks ago and we’ve been spending all our free time together. Which isn’t as much as I’d like since he’s pursuing his acting career. But still, it’s enough.”
Alarm bells of every shape and size were ringing in his head now, so loudly that for a second he couldn’t think around them. Jean-Claude? An actor? Met at a party?
“How old is this guy, Mom?” He said the first thing that came to mind, but he could tell from the way she flinched that he had hit a sore spot. And when she didn’t immediately answer, fear crawled down his spine. “Jesus, Mom, tell me he’s legal.”
“Of course he’s legal!” she snapped. “He’s older than you are, Lucas.”
“By how much?”
She looked away.
“By how much?” he repeated.
“By three years,” she told him.
He threw his napkin down on the table as he felt his head explode. “He’s thirty-eight, Mom? Are you serious?”
“He’s a very mature thirty-eight.”
“I’m a mature thirty-eight.”
“You’re thirty-five.”
He gritted his teeth. “That’s the point I’m trying to make. I’m mature for thirty-eight. This guy is playing at being an actor and living off a woman more than twenty years older than he is. How is that mature?”
“I didn’t bring you here to argue with me about Jean-Claude. I just wanted to tell you about him so you weren’t surprised when he comes to dinner with us on Sunday.”
“He’s coming to dinner with us?”
“Of course. He’s part of my life now.”
“How is that possible? By your own admission you met him a few weeks ago.”
“Yes, well, when it’s right, it’s right.”
“And it’s right with this guy?” he asked incredulously.
“It is. After all, some of us don’t have seventeen years to wait around for the perfect opportunity to speak our minds.”
“Seventeen years? What’s that supposed to mean?”
His mother smiled serenely at him. “You’re a mature thirty-eight. You figure it out.”
Lucas ran a hand over his face and tried to keep his temper in check. “I don’t have time for games, Mom.”
She reached over and patted his cheek. “Then it’s a good thing I’m not playing, isn’t it?” She paused. “Eat your soup. The rest of lunch will be here any second.”
He ground his teeth together. “I don’t care about the stupid soup.”
“That’s a shame. I had Betty make it just for you. I know how you love cold soups in the summer.”
He felt like he’d fallen into an episode of The Twilight Zone, one where the aliens were inordinately concerned with melon soup. “Who is this guy, Mom? What do you know about him?”
“I know everything I need to.”
Somehow, Lucas doubted that. But he didn’t have it in him to argue anymore. Not about this. His mother was going to do whatever it was she wanted to do, and she wasn’t going to listen to anything he had to say on the matter.
He pushed the bowl away
. “Is the rest of lunch ready?” The sooner he ate, the sooner he could escape.
“Of course.” She motioned to the server, who came in with the main course—a salade Niçoise that Lucas had absolutely no interest in eating.
Still, he went through the motions, at least until his mother said, “I have a small favor to ask of you.”
His checkbook started burning a hole in his pocket even as his heart sank. “How much?”
“Well, you see, yesterday was Jean-Claude’s birthday and I wanted to get him something really special. The only problem is I’m having a teensy cash flow problem.”
“How much?” he asked again, trying to determine just how deeply this Jean-Claude had sunk his claws into his mother’s pocketbook.
“We found this absolutely gorgeous watch. A Devon Works Tread 1. It’s beautiful. So sleek and impressive looking, not clunky at all like some watches are. Anyway, I love it and though he protested at first, in the end he caved and told me I could buy it for him if I insisted. Which, of course, I did.”
She paused, drew in a deep, shaky breath and Lucas braced himself for what was coming next.
“But when I went to pay for it, my credit card wouldn’t work. I just don’t understand. You said you’d paid them all off last month. There should have been plenty of room on my American Express. And when that didn’t work, I tried my other two cards but they wouldn’t go through, either.” She paused dramatically. “I think it must be credit card fraud, don’t you? My information must have been stolen. The girl at the store told me to report it right away. So that’s why I wanted to talk to you about it. So you could report it.”
As she rambled, he tried to find a way to break the news to her. He thought about explaining the whole income-debt ratio thing again. Thought about telling her that money didn’t actually grow on trees. And then, finally, decided to hell with it. She was a grown-up. She could take it.
“It wasn’t identity theft, Mom.”
“Oh, I think you’re wrong. Jean-Claude says that computer hackers can get their hands on any information they want these days. They must have gotten my credit card numbers and bought a bunch of stuff for themselves.” She paused. “I’m so upset. They completely ruined Jean-Claude’s birthday. I was going to take him out for a nice dinner but I was too upset. I just don’t know what to do about—”
She was off and rambling again, and he decided to let her, figuring it would make her calmer later. In the meantime, he checked his messages one more time. Still nothing from Kara. Damn it.
“How much was the watch?” he asked as soon as he could get a word in edgewise.
She finally stopped talking and he could see her formulating excuses in her head. “I don’t know why the cost is important. It was to be a gift.”
He gritted his teeth. “Well, to begin with, it will help me determine whether you’re really suffering from identity theft. How about that?”
“Oh. Well, all right, then.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “It was—” she mumbled.
His eyes narrowed. It must have been more expensive than he thought if she couldn’t even bring herself to say the words out loud to him. Damn Jean-Claude, damn his mother’s flighty irresponsibility and damn his father for encouraging it in both his mother and his sisters. And double damn the universe for taking his father at fifty-seven and leaving Lucas squarely in charge of the female members of his household for pretty much his entire adult life.
“How much, Mother?” He knew he sounded impatient, but he had grown tired of the cat-and-mouse games years ago. Right now he just wanted to know if there really was a problem he needed to fix or if his mother had simply lost her marbles.
So much for a nice mother-son bonding lunch.
“Don’t get huffy with me, Lucas. You know I can’t stand it when you talk to me like that.” Her voice trembled a little. “It makes me nervous and—”
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be short with you. It’s just that I have things I need to do. And this Jean-Claude guy doesn’t sound all that impressive to me, if you want the truth.”
“Oh, but he is. And he’s so smart and nice. You’re going to love him.”
Somehow he doubted that. Something about despising boy toys who preyed on older women who could take care of them.
Closing his eyes, he braced himself as he asked, “The watch, Mom. How much did it cost?”
“Okay, fine! It was fifteen thousand dollars, but before you get angry—”
“Fifteen thousand—”
“It’s a beautiful watch. And it looks so good on Jean-Claude. He’ll remember this birthday forever.”
His head exploded into a migraine of epic proportions and for a moment, Lucas indulged his latest fantasy of beating the shit out of Jean-Claude. That would definitely make it a birthday that the gold-digging, scum-sucking bastard would remember.
Gritting his teeth, praying for a patience that had run out months, years before, he ground out, “Mom, you can’t spend fifteen thousand dollars on a watch for a guy you barely know.”
Frosty silence met his words. Followed by, “Well, Lucas, I don’t think it’s any of your business how I spend my money.”
“How you spend my money, don’t you mean, Mother?” The words slipped out, but once they were out there, he didn’t regret them. It was past time that she faced the truth. That they both did. “You’ve already gone through almost all the savings Dad left for you. You have enough for day-to-day living, sure, but I’ve been paying your credit card bills out of my trust fund for years now.” A trust fund that he would much rather have given over to the clinic when he’d first started it up. But he’d known even then that he would need it to take care of his mother. Which was insane when he considered how well-off his father had left her.
“That is not true.”
“Really? Because it feels true when the money comes out of my account every month.” He ran a hand through his hair in agitation. “I’m co-signer on all of your credit cards, Mom, and after the debacle last month, I asked them to lower your limits to something that wouldn’t bankrupt me in a couple of years.”
She gasped. “You had no right! How am I supposed to go back to Jean-Claude and tell him I can’t buy that watch for him? He has his heart set on it—”
“I thought you had to convince him.”
“Oh, I did,” she backtracked. “Of course I did. I’m just saying that now that I insisted he have it, it’s humiliating to have to go back on my word. Surely even you can see that.”
What he could see was that his mother was afraid of losing her boy toy when she couldn’t keep him in the style to which he’d like to become accustomed. Which was perfectly fine with Lucas. More than fine, actually. He’d had no problem with his mother dating after his father’s death, had put up with her parade of aging Lotharios for years now, but he couldn’t stand to see her being taken advantage of.
“I’m sorry, Mom, but I’m not going to have this argument with you. I did what I had to do.”
“You know, if you’d just get a real job, making real money like your father, none of this would be an issue,” she reiterated
“I have a real job. And trust me, no matter how much money I make, this would still be an issue. Because in no world would it be okay with me for my mother to throw away my trust fund on a wannabe Gallic prostitute with delusions of grandeur.” Throwing down his napkin, he stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have someplace I need to be.”
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CHAPTER TEN
THE RED-GOLD OF AN ERITREAN dawn was just breaking over the sky the next morning when Kara slowly straightened from where she’d been crouched over the trash can. She wiped her mouth and reached for the omnipresent bottle of water she’d learned to keep close. After rinsing her mouth out, she sank slowly onto the ground, resting her head on her knees as she tried to breathe through the nausea that was still twisting her stomach into knots.
She’d come down with dengue hemorrhagic fever a few weeks ago, and while she’d managed to survive—just barely—she’d been left with this absolutely ridiculous nausea. It swept in four or five times a day, churning up her gut until she puked, and then leveling her for a good fifteen minutes afterward as she prayed for it to pass. It was just one of the lovely side effects of the damn virus and it was getting old fast. Especially since it had kept Julian from putting her back on the “fit list” until this morning.
This morning’s bout seemed to be lasting longer than usual, but she told herself to hang in there, that it had to pass soon—if for no other reason than she had way too much to accomplish. Other members of her team were beginning to notice that the dengue fever hadn’t gone away as it should have and she knew it was only a matter of time before one of them confronted her on it. Or worse, told her boss about it. They’d let her stay after she recovered only because all the blood work had come back fine on her liver, kidneys and heart. But if it got out that she couldn’t shake the nausea, she’d be on a transport plane bound for the U.S. faster than she could blink. The CDC had very specific rules about things like this. The rules were for a reason, she knew, but she just wasn’t ready to leave yet.
Not because her time in Eritrea had been such a blast—it had probably been her most difficult field experience ever. And that was saying something. But she’d also made real progress, they’d made real progress, and the idea of going home before the epidemic was completely under control was anathema to her—especially since the CDC was actually letting her stay to finish this one out. Dengue fever or not, this was the disease of her career and she wanted to see it through.