Hot Buttered Yum (26 page)

Roni appeared at
his elbow. “What did you say to make Mrs. Rylander leave?”

He shook his
head. “I’m not sure.” But he knew.

He’d let her see
what she wanted to know. He wasn’t playing with Roni. He was in it for the long
haul.

Grabbing her hand,
he nodded his head toward the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

She looked at
him and he could just about swear it was love he saw shining back. “Exactly
what I was going to suggest.”

The pop and hiss of the flames in Roni’s
backyard fire pit sounded in the quiet night as she and Lucas sat side by side.
They each held a stick over the open flames. They’d left the Two-Step, stopped
at the grocery store for hot dogs and the makings for s’mores, and had come
back to her house for dinner.

Now they sat
quietly, each working on their own food.

“Not much of a
date, huh?” Lucas asked. He looked perturbed as he shoved yet another hot dog
on one of the three-foot-long roasting forks she’d dug out of her pantry. The
house had come with the pit and the forks, but until tonight, she’d never used the
forks. “We should have just gone to the hotel restaurant,” Lucas continued to
grumble. He seemed to be in a foul mood. “It would have been quieter there than
the bar. And I could have bought you a nice dinner.”

“This is
actually quite lovely,” she said. She took in the quarter moon rising up out of
the ocean, and the stars twinkling brightly above. The fire in front of them
was not only sufficient to cook their dinner, but it was just enough to take
the chill off the air. And the ocean could be heard rolling in the distance. “It’s
very romantic.”

He grunted.

Roni rotated her
stick to cook the other side of her hot dog, and peeked over at Lucas, who now had
two sticks, each loaded with two dogs. She shook her head. The man—with all those
muscles—ate more than anybody she’d ever seen.

“What’s
bothering you?” she asked.

He shot her a frustrated
look. “We haven’t gotten to do anything remotely resembling a date since we
met. I wanted to show you a good time.”

He was such a doll.
She smiled and reached over to squeeze his forearm. “Being with you
is
a good time.”

“You know what I
mean.” His mouth slashed down on one side. “You got all dressed up and everything.”

She looked down
at her paisley-print babydoll dress and the sweater she’d pulled on over it
before they’d come outside. “Sweetheart,” she said drolly, “this isn’t dressed
up.” She held her legs out in front of her, her feet together, and twisted them
back and forth, admiring the detail on her cowboy boots. This pair had been
purchased in Nashville the last time she’d played at the Ryman. “This is fun
and casual.” She lowered her feet and half-turned in her foldout chair so she
was facing him. “And I’m having the best time. Do you know how long it’s been
since I’ve had a hot dog? Much less, one cooked over an open flame.”

He growled and
she laughed. She went back to focusing on her dog. “You never did say what Mrs.
Rylander said to you at the Two-Step.”

He’d been
suspiciously silent about his conversation with her neighbor. If his lack of
words now were anything to go by, he intended to remain silent, as well. She
sighed.

“Fine,” she
said. “Then tell me what you told Gracie about me.”

“Huh?” He looked
up from the fire. He seemed a million miles away.

“You talked
about me to Gracie. She called me your ‘special friend.’”

He laughed at
her words and she felt her insides doing the gooey thing it did every time he made
that sound. She lifted off her chair and scooted it closer to him until their
arms brushed.

“I did tell her
you’re my special friend.” He shot her a naughty grin and slid his hand along
her bare thigh. His fingers slipped under the hem of her dress and inched to
the inside of her leg. Her breathing grew shallow. “My mother told her you were
the kind of friend I wanted to invite over for a play date,” he told her.

His face relaxed
and his smile became as lethal as his ripped abs. It made her want to crawl into
his lap and wiggle down real low.

“So you do want
me to meet her?” she asked. Turned on or not, they had things to discuss. Sex would
have to wait. “Because I’d like to,” she finished softly.

His fingers
stilled and his face turned somber. His eyes were black in the dark night. He
nodded. “I would like that very much. She’ll fall in love with you.”

“I think I might
fall in love with her too,” she whispered.

A gleam flared
in Lucas’s eyes and he closed the distance and set his mouth to hers. He took
his time as he kissed her, seeming to explore and taste every spot he
encountered. As if he hadn’t been there and done that before.

When he
finished, she couldn’t speak. He cared for her. A lot.

That had come
through loud and clear.

“I told her I
was your girlfriend,” she confessed.

Surprise
registered on his face, followed by an all-male kind of grin. The kind that made it hard to keep her clothes on.  “That must be the secret she wouldn’t tell me,”
he said.

“I suspect so.”
Roni laughed. “She caught me off guard when she asked me if I was.” Roni shrugged.
“I didn’t know what to say so I just said yes. I hope that was okay.”

He leaned into
her again, but this time, before kissing her, he whispered hotly against her
lips, “That was the perfect thing to say.”

Then his mouth
was on hers and his touch burned through her body. She wanted to get closer to
him. She wanted his hands on her. She’d missed him last night.

Screw talking.

“Do you want to—”

Her words were
cut off by a sizzle and a pop, and they both turned their faces to the fire to
see that her hotdog had drooped too low into the fire. The end had burned black
and had broken from the fork. It now lay in the flames. She groaned. “I never
was any good at this.”

“I’ve got you
covered.” Lucas pressed a kiss to her temple before he pulled away. He removed his
forks from the pit and put his perfectly cooked dogs in buns. He then put three
of them on his plate, and passed the forth one over to her.

“Thanks.” She
took the food, but she didn’t take a bite of it. Suddenly, she wasn’t in the
mood to eat. It wasn’t just Gracie she needed to talk to him about. She wanted
to tell Lucas about Zoe. She wanted him to understand how much she’d loved the
girl. And how she was a bit terrified at letting herself love Gracie the same
way.

She picked at
the bread of her bun while Lucas got busy adding relish and mustard to his. He
held up the mustard bottle in her direction but she shook her head. She had no
idea how to start, so she settled on starting years past.

“I loved my
dad,” she said.

The tone got Lucas’s
attention. With a hot dog at his mouth, he paused and cut his eyes over to hers.
Then he set his food down without taking a bite and turned to her. He reached
out a hand and she put hers in it.

“But he wasn’t
the easiest man to get close to,” she finished. Then she glanced away from his
probing gaze. She focused on the dark ocean off in the distance. “He was all
about his career. And my career. He wanted me to be
even better than he was.”

“You are.”

She made a face.
“I’m not looking for platitudes. And no, I am not as good as he was. But I’m
close.” She grinned sheepishly. Her ego was still alive and kicking, apparently.
“And if I hadn’t quit …”

Lucas remained
silent as she sat there and thought through her life. She appreciated his
understanding that she didn’t need him to fill every empty space with words.
She just needed time to work through her feelings. And the facts were, if she
hadn’t quit, she would have surpassed her dad by now. He would have been proud.

And some days,
not doing that really bugged her.

“What I told you
before about traveling with him was accurate. It was the best time of my life.”
She rubbed her thumb back and forth against his palm. “But I was lonely,” she
added. “As far back as I can remember, I always felt like I was alone in the
world. Mom and Danny would make it to a few shows, but not many. She didn’t
want to take Danny out of school. And Dad …”

She shook her
head and then rested it on Lucas’s shoulder and stared into the fire.

“He was always
all about the piano. If we weren’t practicing, we were talking about it.
Strategizing where I needed to improve, and how to get me into the big halls.
He loved me. He truly wanted the best for me.” She paused and breathed in the warmth
from the flames in front of them. It filled her lungs, comforting her on her
inside, and made her want Lucas’s arms wrapped around her on the outside. “But
he never really fit me into his life,” she added. “It was the piano, or
nothing. And little girls need more than that.”

She tilted her face
up to Lucas’s and waited until he looked at her.

“Girls need
love,” she continued. “They need hugs. And they need cheers, even when they
have an off day. They need shoulders to cry on.” She glanced back out at the
dark night and her heart squeezed when he slipped his arm around her. That was
one of the things she loved most about Lucas. She knew he was the kind of dad
that a little girl needed. “Dad didn’t have time for shoulders and tears,” she
said. “Or even special dinners on my birthday.”

“Sounds like you
needed your mom,” Lucas whispered into her hair.

She nodded. “I
did. I missed her all the time. But it was our life. She had to be home for
Danny, and I had to be with Dad to be what I wanted to be. I got used to it.”
She paused again, then took another deep breath and pushed through. “And then Dad
died when I was eighteen. Whether he was perfect or not, I was crushed. I’d
idolized him. And then I
was
truly
alone.”

Lucas pressed his
cheek against the top of her head and held her tight to his side. “Did your mom
come for the funeral?”

She shook her
head. “They’d been divorced for ten years. Danny came. But he was in the middle
of finals and was working to get into med school. He had to finish out the week
first. So I played a couple more shows by myself, the venues giving refunds if
patrons weren’t happy with getting only me, and by the time Danny got there, I
had all the arrangements made. We buried him, and I was back out on the road
the next day.”

Lucas
straightened and peered down at her. “You didn’t take any time off?”

“I didn’t need
it. Plus, I had commitments. You don’t veer from the schedule if you want to be
the best.”

He studied her
until she began to fidget in her seat. She stood and walked to the other side
of the fire so that she was at the ridge that rolled down to the beach. The
moon was higher and bright enough now so that the sand glowed in the night.

“Roni.” Lucas
followed her. She crossed her arms over her chest and gripped her elbows on
either side. “Did you ever get to take time off and deal with the loss of your
dad?” he asked.

She glanced at
him. “I told you. I was fine. That was the way we handled things.”

It had been the
way she’d watched her dad handle his divorce years before, and it had been the
way she’d handled Zoe years after. She saw that now. And she recognized that maybe
that hadn’t been the healthiest of ways to deal with grief. But it was what
she’d known. It had helped her survive.

“Years later I
met Charles and for the first time, I didn’t feel quite as alone.” She laughed
drily as she peeked up at Lucas. “And the funny thing is, for the two years
that we dated, we were in different cities probably seventy-five percent of
that time.” She lifted a shoulder. “But it was comfortable. He played the
violin and he was just as driven as me. He got me. I thought we had something.”

“What happened?”

She stared at
him and he went blurry through the tears welling up in her eyes.

“Oh, babe.” He
wrapped both arms around her and pulled her in close. “Do I need to go kick his
ass?”

She shook her
head against his chest and laughed lightly. “No. I didn’t even really love
him,” she whispered. “But I fell in love. With a seven-year-old girl who had no
one. She needed me. And I needed her.”

Roni tilted her
head back and stared up at Lucas. He wiped the tears from her face. “She was
sick. I wanted to adopt her, but Charles said no. It was him or her.” She
hiccupped out a laugh. “Guess which one I chose?”

“I’m hoping it
was the girl.” His deep voice held a ton of emotion and Roni slipped her arms inside
his jacket and around his waist. She rested her cheek against the steady beat
of his heart. She nodded.

“Her name was
Zoe. I knew she didn’t have too many years to live, and she deserved to have
someone love her until she died.” Tears streamed down Roni’s face now, soaking
Lucas’s shirt. “I didn’t want to be like Dad. I wanted to believe I could put a
child first. So I made the decision to cut back. I could teach in the city, or
I could record CDs. I wouldn’t have to leave her. I planned to finish out my
tour and then I was going to be Zoe’s mother for as long as I had her.”

She swallowed
against the pain, and weight pressed down in the middle of her chest. She was
so mad at herself for not being there for Zoe.

“I wasn’t
scheduled to be back in New York until a couple days before Christmas. But I
didn’t want to wait that long. So on my day off, I hopped a flight home. I went
straight to the hospital to tell Zoe that she was going to be mine. She would have
a home. And a mother. And someone to love her forever.”

She stopped
talking. Her voice had tightened and cracked. She couldn’t go on.

Burying her face
in Lucas’s chest, she held him tight and great wracking sobs shook her entire body.
She couldn’t hold them off. Lucas stroked her back through it all. He kissed
the top of her head. And he held her tight.

Several minutes
later, the tears began to ebb and Roni got her voice back under control. “I
failed her, Lucas.” The words croaked out. “I got to the hospital and she had
already died. I’d been out on the road. Just like my dad. My career was more
important.” Her breath hitched. “And the child that I loved died alone.”

The sobs began again,
and she finished with, “I should have done better.”