to bother with the condom. She wanted all that heat bursting into her.
Fortunately, however, they were just getting started.
They had time. Plenty of it. Because, judging by the wind battering the building, and the dark snow swirling around the windows, they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Then
New York, December 24, 2005
THOUGH ROSS HAD wanted Lucy to call the police right after Jude had slithered out, he had sensed her desperation to get out of her apartment. She didn’t just want to leave, she needed to. He suspected the place suddenly felt tainted to her, and had to wonder how long it would take before she ever felt safe there again.
That definitely wouldn’t happen until he got her locks changed. And no way in hell was she staying there alone until then.
So, after she’d thrown a few things in a bag, they’d headed for his place. After a short walk to his truck, and a long drive out of the city, they arrived in Brooklyn. Every mile put the ugly scene further into the past, and Ross was finally able to begin clearing his mind of the mental images of what might have happened had he not shown up when he did.
The very idea made him sick. And violence surged up within him when he so much as thought Jude’s name.
But now it was time to think about something else. Making sure she was okay and felt safe, for one. Wondering what the hell had happened with his life in the past twelve hours for another.
Nah, he’d think about that tomorrow.
“Here we are,” he said when he pulled up outside the tiny rental house where he lived. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was a place of his own—a place nobody had helped him get. He didn’t love the location, but he loved not feeling like he owed anything to anybody. Especially his father.
“I can’t tell you how much I…”
“Forget it,” he said, waving off her thank you. Probably her twentieth since they’d left her place.
Reaching into the tiny back compartment of the truck, he grabbed her small suitcase and her camera bag, then got out, going around to open her door. She didn’t wait, hopping out before he had made it around the bumper. “What a cute house!”
He raised a brow. “Seriously?”
“Sure. You have a yard and everything. I can’t tell you how much I miss backyard barbecues in the summer.”
“The last tenant left a grill. Maybe I’ll cook up some burgers tomorrow.”
She laughed. “In the snow?”
“You call this snow? Yeesh. Until you’ve experienced a lake effects winter, you don’t know the meaning of snow.”
“I have,” she told him. “I grew up in Chicago.”
Shocked, he almost tripped. “Seriously?” The woman he had begun to suspect was the girl of his dreams had grown up in the same city, and he’d never even been aware of her? That seemed wrong on some cosmic level.
“Uh huh. And even the thought of that windy winter reminds me why I’ll never go back.”
His heart twisted a little at that admission, but he pushed aside the disappointment. “Yeah, I can’t say I’m missing it right now, either.”
“Do you think you’ll ever go back?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Actually he didn’t just think it, he knew it. One of these days, he was going to have to return and face up to his responsibilities. His father wasn’t getting any younger, or any healthier, and not one of his sisters showed any interest in construction.
Ross, on the other hand, genuinely loved it. He’d had a toy tool set as a kid, had built his first birdhouse at four. By the time he was ten, he had constructed a four-story Barbie house for his kid sister. He just had a real affinity for building things, and had never wanted to do anything else. Some even called it a gift.
Going away to college, then to grad school, and learning drafting and architecture had just made him better at his craft. More than that, he truly wanted to run the company one day, as his grandfather and now his father always said he would.
He just didn’t want to be forced to work there under his father’s watchful eye now. Having spent every summer and school holiday building things for Elite Construction, and knowing he’d end up doing that for much of his life, he just wanted some time to himself. To be free, to go somewhere new, to be totally on his own. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
Well, it was according to his father.
“Ross?”
Realizing he’d fallen into a morose silence, he shook his head, hard. “Hold on a sec,” he told her, going to the back of his covered truck to retrieve the robotic dinosaur and the bags of presents he’d been supposed to mail today. He’d told Lucy about them on the way home, and she’d promised to help him package them up tonight, then find a UPS store tomorrow.
Once inside, he flipped on the lights, and zoned-in on the thermostat. No, this wasn’t a Chicago winter, but it was still pretty damn cold. Plus the house was old and drafty.
He jacked up the heat, then turned back to Lucy, who looked a lot less shell-shocked than she had when they’d left the city. He didn’t try to hide his relief, glad for that strong, resilient streak he’d sensed in her from the moment they’d met.
Right now, she acted as though she didn’t have a care in the world. In fact, she was wandering around, comfortable enough to be nosy and check out the house. “Oh, my God, is that really a lava lamp?”
“Like the grill, also left by a former tenant. As was the couch and the ugly kitchen table.”
Lucky for him. After laying out cash for a security deposit, plus first and last month’s rent, he hadn’t had much money for furnishings.
Kinda funny, really, how he was living now. He’d been raised in a house with ten bedrooms on twenty acres. His sisters had each had a horse in the stable, and he’d had his choice of car when he’d turned sixteen. He hadn’t necessarily been born with a solid silver spoon in his mouth, but it would have to be called silver-plated.
And now he lived in a drafty, tiny old house with hand-me-down furniture and an old analog TV that got only one station, and that only if there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He drove a five-year-old truck whose payments were still enough to make him wince once a month. Ate boxed mac-and-cheese and Ramen noodles, the way a lot of the scholarship kids in college had.
Most shocking of all? He liked it.
You do this and you’re on your own, totally cut off! Don’t expect a penny from me!
His father’s angry voice echoed in his head. But so did an answering whisper:
