to see you have tenacity. That’s what the job needs. I’ll be glad to recommend you. Meet Lucas in the baggage claim area by the carousel.”
Doreen didn’t turn around and kept her hand on the door.
“I’ll wait five minutes for your glowing written recommendation, and then I’ll go to Key West and take care of this for you.” Doreen finally turned around.
The fact that Emma was impressed showed in her quirked lip. “You’ve been doing your homework. Very good.”
Doreen’s heart broke for Lucas. “I had a good teacher. I’ll need your credit card to make the reservations.”
“It’s already on your desk.”
Chapter 3
Doreen held her stomach as it pitched during the bumpy landing. The bagel and cream cheese she’d eaten before takeoff now felt like a Michelin tire in her stomach.
Nerves were getting the best of her. She didn’t like being the bearer of bad news or flying in rainstorms.
But a much larger problem loomed as voluminous as the clouds that suffocated the Florida sky. She hadn’t broken up with a man since college, almost ten years ago. She’d been really cocky last night with Emma, but in the soggy light of day, she’d stared into her mirror and saw her unlined, amber-colored eyes, and the chicken in them was real.
How was she going to tell Lucas, a man she secretly crushed on, that his relationship with Emma was over? Oh, and it was nice building this house with you long distance. Goodbye.
This morning when she’d gotten up, she’d still been angry at Emma, and even now the anger simmered within her. She wanted to cry, but all she could do was squeeze out a throat-burning burp. Doreen pushed her fingers into a steeple formation around her forehead while she stared at the floor.
What were the appropriate words to end another’s engagement?
I’m sorry, but Emma doesn’t love you anymore.
Emma sent me to break up with you.
Emma’s an idiot.
Oh, and by the way, I have a crush on you.
All of it was just wrong.
The plane bounced as it landed and taxied to the gate, and her stomach gurgled loud enough for the lady across the aisle to glance at her sympathetically. She watched the rain slant against the window, then unbuckled her seat belt and stood with the rest of the passengers.
She retrieved her computer from the overhead compartment and silently waved goodbye to her luxurious accommodations in first class. If Emma wasn’t going to clean up her own mess, she was at least going to pay for a first-class garbage cleaner.
Lucas watched Doreen in the two-piece black suit circle the baggage carousel, knowing she wasn’t his fiancée, but had been dispatched by her. New York women wore black as if it were prescribed by a physician exclusively for them.
She was tall with a face like Vanessa Williams, except her color was a few shades deeper, reminding him of honey. She had an amazing body, curvy in places women were meant to be; soft and slim in all the right places, too. Her hair reminded him of summers in the Keys, with the way it hung down and breezed airily over her shoulder as she searched the airport. She looked down and saw the unmoving baggage carousel; her hand slid up to her neck and she stepped back, resting her weight on her left foot, hand on her hip.
He was disappointed because his engagement was over, but he couldn’t help but feel he’d been granted a reprieve. One thing he did not understand: why didn’t the loss seem greater?
Still he watched Doreen. Her collar was open, and she caressed her neck as she perused the baggage claim area and consulted her watch. Men noticed her, but she was oblivious to them, her actions indicating her schedule was tight. She kept reading a card she took out and reinserted into her pocket repeatedly. Was she practicing what she was going to say to him on behalf of Emma? Apparently this wasn’t a game to her.
Finally the last of his heart broke with a clap of thunder.
Doreen’s back bowed and he stepped out of the shadows.
He was no longer engaged, and he needed to let his ex-fiancée’s assistant know that he knew.
Lucas put his hands in his jeans pockets as he walked up behind Doreen, who was digging for her phone. “You don’t have to call me. I’m here.”
Doreen turned around, her mouth kissable and open. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “She’s not coming, Lucas. I’m—I’m here to break up with you for her. I’m so sorry.”
The baggage carousel surged behind her and she turned to watch. Lucas wasn’t one for mystical or symbolic signs, but his mother would have said that meant to move on. Why wasn’t he surprised?
He shook his head. This was so Emma. They were so wrong in what they’d done to themselves and, more important, to Doreen. Who exactly did they think they were? Hollywood celebrities?
He touched Doreen’s arm and she looked at his hand, then his eyes.
“We haven’t officially met, but I feel like I know you already. Lucas McCoy. Terrible way to meet, but it is what it is.”
“You do know me, Lucas,” she said, touching his hand. “I’m so sorry.” She then did an unexpected thing: she hugged him.
Instinct made him hug her back, but the man in him enjoyed the feel of a woman who genuinely wanted to comfort him. He caught his breath and let his mind race back over the last months to all the signs he should have paid attention to. All the questions he should have asked. The additional trips to New York he should have taken. He needed to officially end things with Emma.
Doreen stepped back.
“There,” she said, looking embarrassed. “At least I feel a bit better. I’m still sorry, though.”
“Don’t apologize unless this was your idea.”
Her smile was quick. “It definitely wasn’t.”
“Emma and I should have had a conversation on the phone and saved a whole lot of money.”
“Sometimes those conversations are the hardest ones to have, Lucas. I guess that’s why she couldn’t come. I’m not making excuses for her. I’m suggesting that she just couldn’t say the words.”
Doreen shrugged and turned to look at the luggage. Her hair was gorgeous as it swung well past her shoulders, cut into a shagged V, ending between her shoulder blades. The cut didn’t make sense to him, but it looked good.
“You expecting a bag?” he asked.
“I am.”
“So you’re the bearer of bad news? This in your job description?”
Pain seemed to shoot up her right cheek and end in her forehead. All of the muscles moved and she stopped them with her fingers, and he was sorry he asked.
“Yes,
