Put Me Back Together(55)

Looking back at the wrinkled sheets on the mattress, I realized we’d been lying right next to the pile of junk from my purse. Lucas reached forward and pulled his envelope out of the pile. “Didn’t you open this yet?” he asked.

“I didn’t have the chance,” I admitted, my curiosity piqued now. I tried to grab it out of his hands, but he held it out of my reach.

Mariella knocked on the door again.

“Better not keep Mom waiting,” Lucas warned, and we both went down the hall to answer the door.

Mariella was all smiles and thanks as we gathered Ethan’s toys and she carried him back to her apartment. Before she closed her door she gave me a big-eyed look that told me I’d better spill tomorrow, and I shrugged my shoulders at her like I had no idea what she meant.

When I came back to my own apartment, Lucas was clearing the dirty dishes off the coffee table, which was basically the hottest thing I’d ever seen a man do with dishes.

Then he walked over to the door and my heart gave a dispirited thud as I realized he was leaving.

“Why didn’t you wear a jacket?” I asked. “It’s freezing out.”

Lucas shrugged. “I guess I forgot it,” he said. “The minute I heard your voice I ran out the door.” He patted his jeans pockets. “I don’t even have my wallet on me.”

I tried not to show how much his words warmed my heart.

“So tomorrow,” he said.

“Tomorrow?” I replied.

“Date night,” he explained. “Say you’ll go with me and I’ll let you have this.” He held up the envelope.

“You already gave it to me; now you’re using it as blackmail?” I protested.

“Wow, I’ve never heard a girl call a date with me blackmail before,” Lucas mused as I tried in vain to snatch at the envelope.


Finally I gave up. “All right, Lucas,” I said. “I will go out with you, just once.”

“Just once with a chance of more?” he asked, lowering the envelope.

“A very small chance,” I said wickedly, grabbing it out of his hands. “And no guarantees!”

Lucas smiled the big smile all guys reserve for the moment when they know they’ve won. He leaned in and whispered in my ear, “You know how I love a challenge, Hero.”

Then he kissed me, pressing me backwards until I was against the door, his tongue probing my mouth with delicious intensity. He kissed me until I felt thoroughly kissed, until I felt breathless. He kissed the breath right out of me.

I followed him out to the stairs and watched him cross the lobby and go out the door before I opened the envelope.

It was a sketch, a view of what I assumed had to be his apartment window. He’d drawn the bare trees and the building across the street. There was a shaggy dog framed in one window looking totally forlorn. Beneath the drawing he’d written, “Without You.”

I hugged the sketch to my chest, a grin spreading across my lips as I followed the hallway back to my door. I’d dreaded this day for so long. It stunned me to realize how differently it had turned out than how I’d feared it would.

Or maybe no differently at all.

My door had drifted partly shut, and I noticed a paper tacked to the outside of it, a paper that hadn’t been there when Ethan and I had come in five hours earlier.

My eyes ran over the two words as my body broke out in a cold sweat.

FOUND YOU





14





Em: Is it happening now?

Me: We’re in the car going to the restaurant.

Em: Don’t put out on the first date. He’ll never buy the cow if he can motorboat your boobs for free.

Me: Omg, stop now.

Em: Make sure you show him that bra, though, it’s my best one!

Me: I’m turning my phone OFF now.

Em: No glove, no love!



“What’s so funny?” Lucas asked, giving me a quizzical look as he stopped at a red light.

I quickly hid my phone in my purse before more of Em’s X-rated texts could come through. “Just sister stuff,” I answered.

“You’re not telling her to call you in an hour with an emergency so you can get out of this date, are you?” Lucas said suspiciously. “Because you gotta give a guy a chance.”

“No, I told her to save her gaping head wound for the two-hour mark,” I replied. “The whole point is to get a free meal out of you first, obviously.”

“That’s my girl,” Lucas said with a grin.

My girl. I recalled how on the night of Oleg’s party those same words had filled me with rage. Now I felt my chest fill with anticipation and bubbly excitement. I was surprised at how little nervousness I was feeling, actually. Though Lucas might not know it, this was my first date—ever. I should have been white-knuckling it, but instead I felt giddy. Lucas, on the other hand, seemed pretty cool on the outside, but I had the feeling he was a little apprehensive about tonight.

When we first got into the car, he’d accidentally put it into reverse instead of drive, and he kept turning on the windshield wipers by mistake, even though it wasn’t raining. He blamed in on the fact that it wasn’t his car—and thank God, because this one was worse than the last one. One door was a different colour than the rest of the car, and my seat was stuck in a leaned-back position—but I remembered what Brit had said that night at The Limo; that it was my presence that made Lucas lose his cool.