I held Luke in my lap all during the formal dinner, once getting up to walk around with him, another time taking him upstairs to change his diaper, despite my sister’s protest that she could do it. “Let me,” I told her, laughing as Luke grasped the strand of pearls I was wearing and attempted to cram some of them into his mouth. “I don’t mind at all, and I want to spend every possible second with him.”
“Be careful,” Tara warned, giving me the diaper bag. “He rolls over now. He’ll roll right off the bed.”
“Do you?” I asked Luke, enchanted. “Can you roll? You’ll have to do it so I can see, sweet baby.”
He gurgled in agreement, gnawing on the pearls.
When Luke was freshly diapered, I took him toward the stairs, heading back down to dinner. I paused as I saw Jack and Tara ascending to the top of the flight, both of them absorbed in conversation. Jack glanced at me and smiled faintly, but his eyes were alert, and intent, and it seemed there was something he wanted to tell me. And Tara looked guarded.
What in the world could they have been talking about?
“Hey,” I said, forcing a smile. “Were you afraid I’d lost my touch?”
“Not at all,” Jack replied easily. “You’ve changed enough diapers, I didn’t think you’d forget so soon.” He came to me and brushed a warm kiss on my cheek. “Darlin’, why don’t you let me take Luke for a few minutes? He and I got some catching up to do.”
I was reluctant to let the baby go. “Maybe a little later?”
Jack looked directly into my eyes, his face right above mine. “Talk to your sister,” he murmured. “And tell her yes.”
“Tell her yes about what?”
But he didn’t answer. He pried the baby away from me, laid him against his shoulder, and patted his diapered bottom. Luke conformed to him bonelessly, content in Jack’s secure grip.
“This won’t take long,” Tara told me, looking uncertain and almost bashful. “At least, I don’t think it will. Is there somewhere quiet we can talk?”
I led her to a little upstairs sitting area, and we settled into soft leather-upholstered chairs. “Is it about Mom?” I asked in concern.
“Lord, no.” Tara raised her eyes heavenward. “Mom’s fine. She doesn’t know about me and Noah, of course. All she knows is that I’ve got a rich boyfriend. She’s telling everyone that I’m secretly dating one of the Astros.”
“How are things with Noah?” I hesitated, uncertain if I should use his name.
“Wonderful,” she said without hesitation. “I’ve never been so happy. He’s real good to me, Ella.”
“I’m glad.”
“I have a house,” Tara continued, “and jewelry, and a car . . . and he loves me, he says it all the time. I hope he can keep his promises to me . . . I believe he wants to. But even if he can’t, this has been the best time of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s just . . . I’ve been thinking about things lately . . .”
“You’re going to leave him?” I asked hopefully.
A wry smile curved her lacquered lips. “No, Ella. I’m going to be spending more time with him. He’s started traveling a lot . . . he’ll be going across the country to present programs in big stadiums, and he’ll also be touring in Canada and England. His wife is staying here with the kids. I’ll be going as part of his entourage. And I’ll be with him every night.”
I was speechless for a moment. “You want to do that?”
Tara nodded. “I’d like to see some of the world, learn new things. I never had the chance to do anything like this before. And I want to be with Noah and help him any way I can.”
“Tara, do you really think—”
“I’m not asking for permission,” she said. “And I don’t want your opinion, Ella. I’m making my own decisions, and I have the right to do that. After growing up with Mom, you know how important it is to get to decide things for yourself.”
That quieted me as nothing else could have. Yes, it was her right to make her own decisions, even her own mistakes. “Are you telling me goodbye?” I asked huskily.
She smiled and shook her head. “Not yet. It’ll take a few months to arrange. The reason I’m telling you now is . . .” Her smile faded. “God. It’s not easy to say what I really feel, instead of what I think I should feel. But the truth is, I’ve been taking care of Luke, spending a lot of time with him, and it’s still like it was in the beginning. He doesn’t feel like mine. He never will. I don’t want children, Ella. I don’t want to be a mother . . . I don’t want to relive our childhood.”
“But it’s not like that,” I said urgently, taking her long, slim hands in mine. “Luke has nothing to do with that old life.”
“That’s how you feel,” she said gently. “It’s not how I feel.”
“What does Noah say?”
Tara looked down at our entwined hands. “He doesn’t want Luke. He’s already got children. And having a baby around makes it hard for us to be together.”
“Luke’ll get older. You’ll change your mind.”
“No, Ella. I understand what I’m doing.” She gave me a long, bittersweet glance. “Just because a woman can have children, it doesn’t make her a mother. You and I know that, don’t we?”
My eyes and nose stung. I swallowed against the tightness of my throat. “Yeah,” I whispered.
“So what I’m asking, Ella, is if you’d like to take Luke for good. Jack said he thought you might. It’s the best thing for Luke, if you’re willing.”
The world seemed to stop. I was caught up in a suspended moment of wonder and fearful longing, thinking maybe I hadn’t heard right. She couldn’t really have offered me something so precious. “If I’m willing,” I repeated thickly, fighting to control my voice. “How do I know you won’t want him back someday?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, or the baby. I know what Luke means to you. I see it on your face whenever you look at him. But we’ll make it a legal adoption. We’ll have all the papers drawn up. I’ll sign everything, and so will Noah, as long as his part of it’s kept private. Luke is yours if you want him, Ella.”
I nodded, covering my mouth to hold in a sob. “I do,” I managed to say between sharp breaths. “I do. Yes.”
“Don’t, you’ll ruin your makeup,” Tara said, using her finger to swab a pooling tear beneath my eye.
I reached for her, and hugged her fiercely, heedless of makeup and hairstyles and outfits. “Thank you,” I choked.
“When do you want to take him? Some time after you get back from the honeymoon?”
“I want him now,” I said, and burst into tears, unable to hold them back any longer.
Tara let out a startled laugh. “The night before your wedding?”
I nodded emphatically.
“I can’t think of worse timing,” Tara said. “But it’s fine with me, as long as Jack agrees.” She fished in the diaper bag and found a dry burp cloth, and handed it to me.
As I blotted my eyes, I was aware of someone approaching. I looked up and saw Jack coming back with Luke. His gaze read every detail of my face as if it were a familiar and beloved landscape. He saw everything. A smile crept into the corners of his mouth, and he whispered something in the baby’s miniature ear.
“She wants him right now,” Tara told him. “Even though I told her we can wait ’til after the wedding.”
Jack came to me and lowered Luke into my waiting arms. His long fingers slid beneath my chin, tilting my face upward, thumb gently brushing away a lingering streak of dampness on my cheek. He smiled down at me.
“I don’t think Ella wants to waste time,” he murmured. “Do you, sweetheart?”
“No,” I agreed in a whisper, the world around me shimmering through a hot ebullient glaze, the sound of his voice and my own ragged heartbeat mingling like music.
EPILOGUE
JACK PICKS ME UP AT THE AIRPORT AFTER MY conference in Colorado, where I attended some workshops, pitched ideas to magazine editors, and sold a freelance pi
ece tentatively titled, “Six Strategies for Finding and Keeping Happiness.” It was a good conference, but I’m more than ready to go home.
After nearly a year of marriage, these four days have been the longest separation Jack and I have ever gone through. I have called him frequently, told him about the people I’ve met, the things I’ve learned, my ideas for future articles and columns. In turn, Jack has told me about the dinner he had with Hardy and Haven, and that Carrington just got her braces on, and Joe’s checkup went well. Every night, Jack gives me a detailed account of Luke’s day, and I am hungry for every bit of news.
My breath catches as I see my husband waiting for me at baggage claim. He is handsome and sinfully sexy, the kind of man who attracts female gazes without trying, but he is oblivious to everything except me. As he sees me walking toward him, he reaches me in three strides, and his warm mouth crushes mine. His body is hard and sheltering. And although I don’t regret having gone to the conference, I realize I haven’t felt this good since I left him.
“How is Luke?” is the first thing I ask, and Jack entertains me with a story of how he was spoon-feeding applesauce to the baby, and how Luke took a handful and smeared it into his own hair.
We collect my luggage, and Jack drives me back to our apartment at 1800 Main. We can’t seem to stop talking, even though we’ve talked every day we’ve been apart. I keep my hand on Jack’s arm the whole way, and I notice that his bicep feels huge. When I ask him if he’s been working out harder than usual, he says it was the only way to deal with his pent-up sexual frustration. He says I’m going to be busy for a while, making it up to him, which I say is just fine.
I stand on my toes and kiss him during the entire elevator ride, and he kisses me back until I can hardly breathe.
“Ella,” he murmurs, holding my flushed face in his hands, “four days without you, and it felt like four months. All I could think was, how did I make it for so long before I met you?”
“You went out with a lot of placeholders,” I tell him.
A grin crosses his face before he kisses me again. “I didn’t know what I was missing.”
While Jack carries my suitcases, I hurry down the hallway to our apartment, my heart beating in anticipation. I ring the bell, and the nanny opens the door just as Jack catches up with me.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Travis,” she exclaims.
“Thank you. It’s good to be back. Where is Luke?”
“In the nursery. We were playing with his trains. He’s been a good boy while you were gone.”
Dropping my purse beside the door, tossing my suit jacket onto the sofa, I go to the doorway of the nursery. The room is painted in pale shades of blue and green, one wall a mural of cars and trucks with cheerful faces, and a rug printed with roads and train tracks.
My son is sitting up by himself, gripping a wooden train engine in his hands, trying to spin the wheels with his fingers.
“Luke,” I said softly, not wanting to startle him. “Mommy’s home. I’m here. Oh, I missed you, sweet boy.”
Luke looks at me with round blue eyes and drops the truck, his small hands remaining suspended in midair. A wide grin spreads across his face, revealing one pearly tooth. He lifts his arms to me.
“Mama,” he says.
I thrill to the word. And I go to him.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
SMOOTH TALKING STRANGER. Copyright © 2009 by Lisa Kleypas. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kleypas, Lisa.
Smooth talking stranger / Lisa Kleypas. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-7129-4
1. Millionaires—Texas—Fiction. 2. Abandoned children—Fiction.
3. Birth fathers—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.L456S66 2009
813'.54—dc22
2008050528
First Edition: April 2009
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Chapter One
When Lucy Marinn was seven years old, three things happened: her little sister Alice got sick, she was assigned her first science fair project, and she found out that magic existed. More specifically, that she had the power to create magic. And for the rest of her life, Lucy would be aware that the distance between ordinary and extraordinary was only a step, a breath, a heartbeat away.
But this was not the kind of knowledge that made one bold and daring. At least not in Lucy’s case. It made her cautious. Secretive. Because the revelation of a magical ability, particularly one that you had no control over, meant that you were different. And even a child of seven understood that you didn’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of the dividing line between different and normal. You wanted to belong. The problem was, no matter how well you kept your secret, the very fact of having one was enough to separate you from everyone else.
She was never certain why the magic came when it did, what succession of events had led to its first appearance, but she thought it had all started on the morning when Alice had woken with a stiff neck, a fever and a bright red rash. As soon as Lucy’s mother saw Alice, she shouted for her father to call the doctor.
Frightened by the turmoil in the house, Lucy sat on a kitchen chair in her nightgown, her heart pounding as she watched her father slam down the telephone receiver with such haste that it bounced off its plastic cradle.
“Find your shoes, Lucy. Hurry.” Her father’s voice, always so calm, had splintered on the last word. His face was skull-white.
“What’s happening?”
“Your mother and I are taking Alice to the hospital.”
“Am I going too?”
“You’re going to spend the day with Mrs. Geiszler.”
At the mention of their neighbor, who always shouted when Lucy rode her bike across her front lawn, she protested, “I don’t want to. She’s scary.”
“Not now, Lucy.” He had given her a look that had caused the words to dry up in Lucy’s throat.
They had gone to the car, and her mother had climbed into the back seat, holding Alice as if she were an infant. The sounds Alice had made were so startling that Lucy put her hands over her ears. She shrunk herself into as little space as possible, the humid vinyl seat covers sticking to her legs. After her parents dropped her off at Mrs. Geiszler’s house, they drove away in such a hurry that the tires of the minivan bruised the driveway with black marks.
Mrs. Geiszler’s face was creased like a shutter door as she told Lucy not to touch anything. The house was filled with antiques. The agreeable mustiness of old books and the lemon tang of furniture polish hung in the air. It was as quiet as church, no sounds of television in the background, no music, no voices or telephone ringing.
Sitting very still on the brocade sofa, Lucy stared at a tea set that had been carefully arranged on the coffee table. The tea set was made of a wondrous kind of glass Lucy had never seen before. Every cup and saucer glowed with a multicolored luminescence, the glass adorned with thickly painted gold swirls and flowers. Mesmerized by the way the colors seemed to change at different angles, Lucy knelt on the floor, tilting her head from one side to the other.
Mrs. Geiszler stood in the doorway, giving a small laugh that sounded like the crackle of ice c
ubes when you poured water over them. “That is art glass,” she said. “Made in Czechoslovakia. It’s been in my family for a hundred years.”
“How did they put the rainbows in it?” Lucy asked in a hushed voice.
“They dissolve metal and color into melted glass.”
Lucy was astonished by the revelation. “How do you melt glass?”
But Mrs. Geiszler was tired of talking. “Children ask too many questions,” she said, and went back to the kitchen.
Soon Lucy had learned the word for what was wrong with her five-year-old sister. Meningitis. It meant that Alice would come back very weak and tired, and Lucy must be a good girl and help take care of her, and not make messes. It also meant that Lucy must not argue with Alice or upset her in any way. “Not now,” was the phrase Lucy’s parents told her most often.
The long, quiet summer had been a grim departure from the usual routine of play dates and camps and ramshackle lemonade stands. Alice’s illness had turned her into the center of mass around which the rest of the family moved in anxious orbits, like unstable planets. In the weeks after her return from the hospital, piles of new toys and books accumulated in her room. She was allowed to run around the table at mealtimes, and she was never required to say “please” or “thank you.” Alice was never satisfied with eating the biggest piece of cake or staying up later than other children. There was no such thing as too much for a girl who already had too much.
The Marinns lived in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, originally populated by Scandinavians who had worked in salmon fishing and canning industries. Although the proportion of Scandinavians had diminished as Ballard had grown and developed, there were still abundant signs of the neighborhood’s heritage. Lucy’s mother cooked with recipes that had been passed down from her Scandinavian ancestors … gravlax, cold-cured salmon flavored with salt, sugar and dill … pork roast rolled with gingered prunes in the center … or krumkake, cardamom cookies rolled into perfect cones on the handles of wooden spoons. Lucy loved to help her mother in the kitchen, especially because Alice wasn’t interested in cooking and never intruded.