RUSH (City Lights, #3)(12)

And still I didn’t move. I listened to New York City wake up outside the walls of this house, from inside my prison of black. The city was right outside the door and yet it seemed so far away. Another world. A world of color and light and yellow cabs and red brick, and I was trapped in this well of darkness, only able to remember, but never know it again. I choked down a scream, and then slept, diving into oblivion.

I prayed I wouldn’t have that horrible nightmare again.

I hoped against hope that I would.





Chapter Five


Charlotte

Monday morning was April 1st, and I thought that was apt. It felt like someone was playing a joke on me. Maxine was out sick and Annabelle, here to watch her nephew work his first real shift, put me on the register. I’d be tipped only on to-go orders—always a shitty prospect—and I was still short on rent.

I worked through the shift with a heavy stone of dread, knowing I’d have to go home and face Emily, tell her she’d have to cover for me, and then I’d spend the next three shifts—not four, having lost one to Harris—making it up.

Around noon, a kind-looking gentleman with neat white hair, and wearing an expensive navy blue suit with a pale yellow ascot, bypassed the hostess stand and approached me.

“I’m here to pick up an order for Mr. Lake?” he said in a smooth, French-sounding accent that I recognized from over the phone when he placed the order.

“Oh,” I took up the plastic bag of takeout and set it on the counter. “This is for um…Mr. Lake?”

The man smiled kindly. “It is. And you must be new to not have recognized the order. He’s a bit of a regular customer, I’m afraid.”

“Uh, yes, he is. But I’m not new. I just never take his orders and usually some younger guy comes and gets them.” My cheeks burned. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry. I just meant, you um…you don’t look like an assistant.”

The man’s smile widened. “That I am not, although necessity demands it today.” He pulled out his wallet meaningfully.

“Oh, right.” I rang up the order. “$32.29, please.”

The older man—I guessed he was in his late sixties—handed me a credit card and I stole a glance at the card before I swiped it on the machine: a Platinum Amex. The name said Lucien Caron.

“I actually delivered last week’s order after the other guy quit,” I told him. “Mr. Lake was pretty young too.”

“Oh?” The man named Lucien raised his eyebrows. “You met Noah?”

So the prick had a name. Noah. A nice name, anyway.

“Not exactly,” I said. “I only heard his voice. He let me in to drop off the food and then requested I leave the house. Immediately.”

Lucien pursed his lips. “I’m afraid Noah suffers a deplorable lack of manners. I apologize on his behalf if he was overly rude, which I must assume he was.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. I was a little surprised at first, but we all have our bad days, right?” Like today. Or the rest of this week or month…

“Charlotte?” Annabelle sidled up to me—a plump woman in blue silk and a cloud of perfume. She offered Lucien a tight smile as she tugged me back from the register a step. “Did you give that homeless man outside a cup of soup?” She nodded her puffy helmet of sprayed hair toward the front windows where a man in a dirty coat was eating out of a small to-go container, spilling corn chowder into his straggly beard.

“I did,” I told her, conscious that Lucien was listening discreetly. “But I paid for it. I always do.”

“You always…? This happens frequently?” Annabelle bristled and flashed Lucien an even tighter, more plastic smile. “Finish this gentleman’s transaction and then meet me in the back office, if you please?”

I nodded faintly. “Uh, sure.”

Annabelle moved away and I felt my neck redden as I went back to the register.

“No good deed goes unpunished, does it?” Lucien smiled gently. He turned toward the window where the homeless man was finishing his soup. “And sometimes, all it takes is a kind word or gesture to make a bad day a bit more bearable, oui?”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said, mustering a small smile. “Here you go.”

I passed him the receipt, which he signed with a beautiful looping signature and a twenty percent tip.

“What is your name, mademoiselle?”

“Charlotte. Charlotte Conroy.”

“And I am Lucien Caron.” He bowed smartly. “What time are you finished with your work today, if I might enquire?”

I blinked. A come on? Impossible; he was too nice, too refined to stoop to picking up girls forty years younger than he was. Still, I couldn’t imagine why on earth he was asking me that.

“I’m off at two o’clock.” I glanced at the back office where Annabelle was waiting for me. “If I don’t get fired first, that is.”

Lucien smiled and took the to-go bag. “If I may, I’d like to return at that time and perhaps have a coffee? Here, if you’d like.”

“Uh…sure?”

He gave me another short nod of his head. “At two then, Miss Conroy.”

“Yeah, see you then,” I said, wondering what it was I just agreed to.