Sex and Key Lime Pie (15 page)

****

Luc stared at the massive mansion. The structure had two stories, with four tall gables that could be seen from miles away. The silhouette had been like a shadow haunting him for years. He’d read somewhere that laborers worked for three years to build the house. In one hour it would become a pile of rubble. He had waited for this day since he first heard the house was for sale. Twelve acres with a magnificent ocean view, the property was worth ten times more than the house.

Salvage crews had worked all week to remove the custom doors, windows and kitchen appliances with any value. Too late he realized he should have asked Cheyanne if she wanted to keep anything. She knew he’d bought the house, but they never spoke of it.

He thought about the last twelve hours. He had spent the night alone on a sofa, one foot too short for his frame. That morning a furry little creature, searching for a feast in his rumpled hair, wakened him. Breakfast was a bowl of Cheerios served by an eight-year-old. Fresh strawberries would have topped the cereal if the monkey hadn’t stolen them from the kitchen counter. Although to Sam’s credit, he volunteered to wake his mother to cook them breakfast.

So why did he enjoy himself more than he had in many years? He knew why. That was exactly the life he had envisioned when he went to find Cheyanne in Boston. He knew he’d have to grovel after what he’d said to her, but he never expected to find she had married and left the country.

With a shake of the head, he tried to banish the thoughts. What had Cheyanne said about personal responsibility? He’d done it to himself.

A loud whistle brought him back to the mission at hand. The warning let the crew and onlookers know the machine operator was about to begin. From the first swing of the wrecking ball to the last, each strike slammed through his body. Dust swirled in the air like a desert sandstorm. For nearly an hour, the demolition team worked toward one end. When the last wall came to the ground, applause broke out among the crowd. For Luc, after months of anticipation, the reality seemed anti-climatic.

The turnout for the demolition surprised him. This was personal. He would have preferred to keep it that way instead of turning it into a spectator sport. Unfortunately, the local paper printed the time and date of what they considered a newsworthy event. The melodramatic article, titled The End of an Era, garnered two full pages and a “no comment” from him.

“Can you believe this mob?” Luc asked his cousin. “It’s morbid.”

“I expected it.” Miguel looked over the horizon. “Well, maybe not everyone.”

“What are you talking about?”

Miguel nodded toward the hill. Cheyanne and Rita sat below the shade of a tree. From a distance, he couldn’t see their expressions, but he doubted they were elated.

“Shit. I thought she was working today.” This was not directed at her, but could he convince her?

As he navigated the incline, Cheyanne came to her feet and offered a helping hand to her mother. He tried to pick up the pace but it had been a hell of a lot easier to make the trek to the road above when he had been twenty-five. He caught up to the two women just as Rita reached for her car door.

“Lucien.” She tipped her head. “This must be a real proud day for you.”

“Mother.” Cheyanne’s voice held a gentle but firm warning.

Luc rolled his shoulders to relieve the tension. “It’s all right. She’s entitled to her opinion.”

“Not according to my daughter. I think she would be most displeased if I expressed my opinion.” She got into her car. “But you should speak up, Cheyanne.”

“Okay Mom. See you next week.” Only after the Cadillac pulled away did Cheyanne seem to relax. He could only imagine what had just passed between mother and daughter. They might have accepted an uneasy reconciliation, but something stood between them. A safe bet would be him.

“If I had known you were coming, I would have saved you a front row seat.”

She toyed with a loose thread on her shirt, avoiding his gaze. “I prefer the cheap seats. Besides, I doubt anyone among the cheering masses would have welcomed me.”

Luc cupped his hand along the side of her face and brushed a kiss over her mouth. “I didn’t want a public event.”

“I’m sure you didn’t.” She rested her head on his shoulder, rather than look at him, he suspected. She smelled sweet, a combination of lemon and vanilla that he had come to associate with her.

“So why did you come?”

“I needed closure.”

So did he, but he hadn’t gotten it. He had hoped that bringing down the house would give him that release. “Is that why you’re here today, or why you’re back in the cove?”

“Both.” She took two deep, calming breaths and pulled back from him. She had perfected the art of shutting down. “I have to go.”

Did her quest for closure include him? “Why don’t you let me take you to breakfast?”

“I have to get the kids from your sister’s house and take them to camp. And then I have work.”

Before she could put more space between them, he took hold of her hand. “Am I going to see you later?”

“Unless you plan to blow off your niece’s opening day game I would say yes.” Her enigmatic smile gave nothing away. He hated not knowing where he stood with her, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

****

Cheyanne parked the car and jogged toward the bleachers. Isabella sat on the bottom row looking annoyed. What had happened? As she got closer, she noticed Sue Ann, running on at the mouth to Isabella but focusing her attention on Luc. A stab of jealousy shot through her. Cheyanne wasn’t surprised by the woman’s presence, but her feelings of jealousy were a shock.

As secretary for the soccer league, Sue Ann showed up for every game but she had an ulterior motive: she scouted other clubs, checking out potential competition for her nephew’s team. Last year there was none. This year, Miguel picked up two players new to the league, and last year’s championship team worried about holding onto their trophy. The rivalry would not be played out until later in the season, but almost everyone involved in the soccer program would be here for the opening game.

She climbed the bleachers behind Isabella and took the second row seat as if she didn’t notice the other woman’s presence. Without a word, Cheyanne began to massage the tension from Isabella’s neck and shoulders.

“Oh, God, that’s good.”

Tony sat next to his wife. “Her cakes are better than sex. Her back rubs sound as good as sex. If I didn’t see her at work everyday, I’d be worried.”

Sue Ann turned and leveled a cold stare. “You’re working?”

Cheyanne shrugged indifferently. “I told you there was a world of opportunity for a girl with ambition.”

Sue Ann’s eyes bulged and her face contorted. “Well, I guess you owe them after screwing them out of their inheritance.” The venom in her voice shocked half the bleacher crowd into silence.

Cheyanne didn’t miss a beat. She just nodded in agreement. “You would know. You are the expert on screwing.”

“Bravo, Cheyanne,” someone called out through the otherwise hushed gathering.

Muffled laughter carried through the congregation. Several wives in the stands actually applauded. Sue Ann, now redder than her over-applied rouge, turned and stormed off.

A loud referee whistle called the teams to the sidelines. Five minutes until game time. The adrenalin level among the kids was palpable. Obviously, the adults weren’t much better.

Alicia and Sam sprinted toward them with one of Miguel’s many nephews bringing up the rear.

Alicia grabbed her mother’s sleeve. “Mom. Aunt Cheyanne, tell Ricky. Isn’t Sam my cousin?”

Cheyanne sat ramrod straight. Had Isabelle and Alicia guessed the truth? Her stomach clenched into a tight knot. With Luc and Miguel standing directly behind the children and half the population of Mystic Cove listening to the exchange, this was not the moment Cheyanne wished to come clean.

“In a way,” she said. The only way that mattered.

“Uncle Luc’s father was your stepfather, right?”

The entire town knew that to be true, but she still squirmed in her seat. She tried to decipher Luc’s unreadable expression. He gave nothing away. She paused, leaving him time to correct his niece, but he remained silent. “Well, yes, that’s right.”

“That makes Sam my step-cousin. And only mean people use the word step to make another person feel left out. Family is family. Isn’t that what you always say, Uncle Miguel.”

“That’s right, sweetheart.” Miguel, as one of nine siblings, had his share of in-laws and step relatives. They all held equal status whether related by marriage, adoption or blood. Sam, who thought he had no family, gazed at her with such hope.

“You are absolutely right, Alicia. Sam is your cousin.” For the first time since her arrival she had spoken the complete, unabridged truth. And her son looked like he just got the biggest gift of his life.

“Then he’s my cousin, too?” Ricky asked.

“Of course,” Alicia said. “We’re all cousins, except the old ones. They’re aunts and uncles.”

“Old ones?” Cheyanne repeated. Who would have thought she’d be washed up at twenty-eight?

“You guys better get back to the bench before this old one smacks you silly.”

Elisabeth joined them as the children made a fast escape. “Did I miss anything?”

“Only a lesson in genealogy,” Isabelle joked.

“I was afraid I missed some of the game. It was supposed to start at six thirty.”

Isabelle patted Lizzy’s hand. “It starts at seven, but if we’d told you that, you would have arrived at eight.”

“I am not that bad,” she complained. Both her friends shot her a dubious glance. She rolled her eyes and they all giggled. “Okay, maybe I am.”

Their revelry ended with the arrival of Luc at their little corner of the bleachers. “I want to talk to you.”

From the look on his face, she could only imagine what he wanted. She wouldn’t say he looked angry, but he didn’t appear to be pleased. He offered her a hand from the second level stair.

With one minute to kick off, his timing, as usual, was brilliant. As he led her to the back of the metal stands. Ten years after Harlan’s death and they still gave the town something to talk about. He gently pushed her against a support beam, cupping his hand over her waist to keep her pinned.

“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Sam,” she said.

“Why?”

“Isn’t that why you wanted to speak to me?” “Not really.”

She chewed on her bottom lip. “You’re not going to lose it every time he calls you Uncle Luc?”

“Was anything Alicia said untrue?”

“No.”

He slid his hand down her back and cupped her backside, pulling her flush against him. His tongue flicked her mouth. “As long as you don’t start thinking of me as your brother.”

She hadn’t thought of him as a brother since she’d emerged from puberty with raging hormones that caused her to feel damp and tingly around him. Of course, she was flat-chested and had a mouth full of silver at the time. Not his idea of a sexual fantasy.

“So what’s this about?”

Those gorgeous dimples and the accompanying sexy smile had her heart doing somersaults. “Maybe I wanted to have you alone.”

“Just you, me and five hundred spectators?”

He rested his forehead against hers. “Tony said Sue Ann laid into you. If it was about me, I’m sorry.”

Two apologies in two days. He’d used up his lifetime allotment of male sensitivity. “You’re such a man! Not everything is about you,” she joked.

“What happened?”

“She was a bitch to me, I was a bitch right back. Not my proudest moment. She upset Izzy more than me.”

His hand tightened on her waist. How she would love to soothe that tension from his body, inch by inch, kiss by kiss, until she gave him a new and infinitely more pleasurable type of tension.

The roar of the crowd behind them reminded her that this was neither the time, nor the place.

“We better go back now. Both Sam and Alicia will be mad if we miss their first game.”

He grunted and reluctantly turned her loose. “Will we ever be alone again?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be alone on Saturday night. Izzy is taking Sam overnight because I have to go to Boston early Sunday morning.”

“God, I love my sister. She takes care of me.” “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Not everything is about you.”

“It is when it comes to you.”

She admired his unwavering arrogance. Mostly because she knew it was an act, part of the shield he had developed while growing up in the shadow of his father. Before sentiment and nostalgia had her falling into his arms again, she maneuvered around him and returned to the bleachers. The knowing looks she received from her friends made her wish she had stayed with Luc. If she was going to be accused, she wanted to be guilty.

She slipped back into her seat just in time to see her son shoot the ball into the corner of the goal. Her hands went to her mouth. Sam had banned her from screaming like the other maniac parents at his games, but her heart raced with jubilation and pride.