Maybe this was fate’s way of telling him just what his brothers had. Let it go.
“I was sorry to hear it when your dad died,” he said quietly, offering the olive branch that they both needed.
“Thanks.” Dave met his gaze and nodded. “I appreciate that. And I know that this doesn’t mean we’re friends again or anything.”
“Not yet,” Lucas admitted, though he was willing to scratch Dave off his active enemies list.
“What I came here to say isn’t going to help that any, either,” Dave told him. “You shouldn’t have used my sister, Lucas. You had problems with me, I get that. But you and I both know you went after her to stick it to me.”
“Rose isn’t up for discussion,” Lucas said shortly. He was willing to forgive Dave for the stealing and the betrayal. But he wasn’t going to stand here and talk about the woman he’d slept with to her brother.
Which struck him as odd, since telling Dave about sleeping with Rose had been the whole point of this exercise.
“The hell she’s not,” Dave countered, leaning both hands on Lucas’s desk. “She’s not like the women you usually hook up with.”
“What do you know about that? I haven’t even spoken to you in two years.”
“Some things don’t change.”
Lucas gritted his teeth to keep from saying something he’d regret. Instead, he just stared into Dave’s eyes, not giving an inch.
“Or do they?” Dave asked, a half smile on his face. “She got to you, didn’t she? You thought you’d use Rose and walk away without a backward glance, but it wasn’t as easy as you thought it would be, was it?”
He was right, damn it. About all of it. Lucas hadn’t been able to slice Rose out of his mind or his soul. She was in there, deep, whether he wanted it or not. But he wasn’t going to tell Dave that. “Stop now. I’m not talking about her with you.”
“Fine, then just listen.” Dave pushed off the desk. “Don’t mess with her head, Lucas. If you’re really finished then stay the hell away from her. Because if you hurt her again…you and I are going to go a few rounds.”
With that, Dave walked out of his office. Alone, Lucas stared blindly at the closed door. He didn’t like taking orders. Never had. But he couldn’t blame Dave for this one.
Lucas didn’t know what to feel anymore. For two years, he’d been carrying around what felt like a boulder, and now it was gone. A simple, five-minute conversation with Dave Clancy and he had a truce of sorts with his former friend.
All it had cost him was Rose.
Bull, his mind corrected instantly. Rose had never been his and so he couldn’t have lost her. But even as he thought that, an image of her face as she stared him down that last night at her house loomed in his mind, taunting him. Even when her eyes had been spitting fire at him, he’d wanted her. Even now, he wanted her, he admitted.
Which meant exactly nothing, he assured himself.
Rose had been a temporary thing. Sure, she was still in his mind and his body was still fantasizing about her. But that was only because she was new. In a few weeks, he’d be over her. And as long as she wasn’t pregnant, they’d never have to see each other.
She had been a means to an end and that end had now been completed. Story over.
Absently, he rubbed one hand over his chest, trying to soothe the heavy feeling centered there. But it didn’t help. Nothing helped.
“All right, enough,” he muttered and stalked to the closet to grab the battered, brown leather jacket hanging inside. He shrugged it on, threw his office door open and walked out. “I’m leaving, Evelyn.”
“Wow, and before seven, too,” she said, but Lucas just kept walking.
There were far too many clever women in his life.
Eleven
It had finally stopped raining. Rose was cold. And wet. What she wanted to do was be home, curled up on her couch with a cup of hot tea in her hands and a mindless program on TV shattering the silence.
But she was determined to stay put until Lucas finally showed up at his house. For what had to be the tenth time, Rose checked her wristwatch again. A little after six. Why was he late?
When they had their cooking lessons together he was always here before now. Irritation gave way to worry.
Her gaze fixed on the rain-slicked surface of Ocean Boulevard and the cars flying past, fan-tails of water flying out behind them. Californians were notorious for forgetting how to drive on rainy streets from one year to the next. There were always more accidents during a storm.
Sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on Lucas’s porch, she gripped her hands together in her lap and tried not to imagine his car as a twisted hunk of metal.
“Okay, don’t be crazy,” she murmured. “He’s fine. He’s just not home. Probably on a date or something. With some rich, gorgeous…”
Nope, don’t go there, either, she told herself firmly.
She shouldn’t care. Rose knew that. Lucas had lied to her, used her and then tossed her aside as soon as he was finished. She couldn’t really blame him for seducing her, since she was pretty much in on that as well. But for the rest…she patted her shoulder bag, where his check was tucked away, and that alone stiffened her spine. “Who’re you?”
A deep voice splintered her thoughts and she looked up to see a bald, burly man with a full red beard standing in the middle of the lawn. He looked big, angry and, if she wasn’t mistaken, very drunk. His eyes were narrowed on her. He was soaking wet and swaying on his feet.
A trickle of fear spilled down her spine.
Carefully, she reached into her purse and pulled her phone out.
“Where’s Lucas?” the man demanded, taking a halting step toward her.
She couldn’t tell him Lucas wasn’t there. She didn’t want the man to know she was alone. And she was alone. A quick glance next door to the Robertsons’ didn’t make her feel better. The big house was dark and there were no cars out front. And because the rain had only just stopped, no one was out walking their dog or enjoying the ocean view.
She really was alone in the dark with a man who didn’t look very stable. If she called 911, she couldn’t report a crime…he hadn’t done anything. But if she didn’t call and he did do something threatening, how stupid would she feel?
“Um, Lucas is in the backyard,” she blurted.
“Fine,” the man said and took another slow step, as if lifting each of his feet was taking every ounce of his strength. His words slurred as he vowed, “I’ll jus’ go she him.”