articles, this Krista Marlow person intrigued him.
Probably more than he wanted her to.
“SO.” LUCY FORKED UP a pineapple chunk from her yellow curry shrimp and tasted it gingerly. “What’s next for you workwise?”
“Oh, let’s see…” Krista glanced up as a thirty-something man in a business suit walked past and took a seat in the booth behind her. Unfortunately she didn’t get much of a look, but he gave the impression of being attractive.
She turned her attention back to Lucy’s question, digging into her pad thai noodles, wondering when she could safely change the subject to Link and the need, in her opinion, for him to be extracted from Lucy’s life. “Travel, actually. I’m doing a story about affordable off-the-beaten-track romantic getaways for couples wanting to escape holiday pressures. Maybe you and Link…”
Lucy was already shaking her head. “He’d say it sounded remote and chilly.”
Krista shrugged, thinking she could say the same about Link lately. “People shouldn’t have to suffer through all this holiday stress. Christmas should be about love—family love, romantic love, religious love. Love and traditions, like our family’s, caroling and candelabra lighting and making Christmas Eve dinner together. Anything but buy, buy, buy and then buy more and, while you’re at it, buy again…”
She stopped when Lucy’s eyes glazed over. Okay, so she preached her version of the gospel too often. “Anyway, I leave tomorrow for Maine. A place called Pine Tree Inn, way past Skowhegan.”
“Which is…?”
“On the road to nowhere. That’s the point. Get this—forty-five dollars a night.”
“And all the moose you can eat?”
Krista laughed and fluttered her eyelashes. “It sounds sooo romantic, no?”
“Alone?”
“Yeah, there is that.” She sighed. Unfortunately alone was more familiar to her than involved. “I’ve decided to think of it as research for my next fling.”
“The word is re-la-tion-ship.” Lucy enunciated as if she was teaching a two-year-old something new. “Can you say that?”
“Ree-lay-shin…something.” She shrugged helplessly. “I got the ‘lay’ part.”
Lucy rolled her eyes, barely suppressing a smile. “Ha. Ha.”
Krista grinned. She enjoyed playing the role of the great sexual predator. They both knew better, and it made Lucy smile, which Krista desperately wanted her to do more often. “And so, Ms. Lucy, speaking of ree-lay-mumble-mumbles…”
“Oh no.”
“Come on, you knew I was going to ask. What’s up with Lincoln?”
Lucy’s beautiful face shut down and Krista wanted to put down her fork, reach across the table and shake some sense into her could-have-been-a-model, should-be-a-star sister. Fact one: Lucy was miserable with Link. Fact two: Lucy was miserable with Link. And it’s…fact three! He’s outta there! The relationship is retired!
“Things are bad. I don’t know what to do.”
“Get out?”
Her eyes grew defensive. “Krista…”
“Lucy…”
Lucy sighed and chewed a tiny bite of shrimp as if it was enough for a whole meal.
“I know, I know.” Krista waved her sister off. “You hate me saying that. But it seems obvious to me that—”
“Of course it seems obvious to you.” She gestured with her shrimp-impaled fork. “Everything seems obvious to you. The fact is, I love this man.”
“And…?” Krista looked at her blankly. “To quote Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it? He makes you unhappy. You aren’t enjoying your day job, your performing career is stalled, you look tired and defeated…. Hello? What’s wrong with this picture?”
“You don’t understand.”
Krista leaned forward on her elbows. “Try me.”
“He is The One.”
“The one what? The one guy you’ve ever dated seriously?”
“The One. The love of my life.”
Krista let out a growl of exasperation. “Lucy, the issue is not whether you love him or not. The issue is that you’re not good for each other anymore.”
“We are.” She tightened her lips, looking exactly as stubborn and scared as she had at ten when Krista had talked her out of a ladder-climbing dare she’d accepted from a neighbor kid. “We’ve just lost our way right now.”
“Can I be totally brutally honest here?”
Lucy’s expression turned incredulous. “Like you’re ever not?”
“Point taken.” She lifted her hands in surrender. “You’re clinging to the past, to this ideal of Link that no longer exists, to this dream of marrying him and having babies and—”
“It’s not a dream.” Lucy’s voice broke. “I am going to marry him and I am—”
“When?”
“When he’s—when we’re ready.” She folded her arms across her chest and sank against the back of the booth.
“Think you’ll get a ring at Christmas this year?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re hoping?”
Lucy gave a small sad shrug. “It’s all I want.”
“Jeez, Lucy.” Krista stared miserably at her sister. Didn’t she hear what she sounded like? Was the person being stifled by a crappy relationship always the last to know? Or at least to admit it? “I’m watching the Titanic head for the iceberg here. You marry this guy, your shot at a lifeboat is gone. You think a ceremony is going to fix your problems?”
“No.” Lucy lifted her chin and met Krista’s eye defiantly. “But what we have is forever.”
“That’s a line from some sappy movie on the Lifetime Channel.” She forced herself to lower and gentle her voice. “This is reality we’re dealing with here. Or trying to.”
“You don’t understand. You’ve never been in love.”
“I—” She snapped her mouth shut. Kaboom. There it was. The horrible, tremendous truth. Lust, oh yes, infatuation, sure, sometimes pretty strong. But love? Nope. Emphatically not. When her relationships ended, she was over it in a week, sometimes two. And she wasn’t quite sure why.
She took a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. I haven’t been. Not for real.”
