EMERSON
Figuratively, I’d had to put out a million and one fires tonight before the first guest had even arrived.
Fortunately for me, there’d only been one actual fire, when one of the caterers had left a stack of paper napkins too close to an open flame. But thanks to a fast-thinking server and a fire extinguisher, the crisis had been quickly averted. Easy peasy.
For now, at least, I had a second to breathe. To stand back and admire all the hard work Aster and I had put into this gala over the past couple weeks. I snagged a pastry from a tray being toted around by one of the girls in the starched black dress shirts Aster had insisted on because they were simple, elegant, and virtually stain-proof. I had to give her props, there was more to her than met the eye.
I winked at the girl whose job it was to pass out the cheese appetizers. “Y’all are doing great.” Then I quizzed her, “Can you tell me what this is?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s a divine goat cheese cheesecake topped with a seasonal compote. Very elegant,” she emphasized.
I cringed. “Can you try again? Without making that face?”
“What face?”
I screwed up my own to mirror her own—a look similar to when Drew had stuffed his sweaty gym sock in my face. “This one.”
“Was I doing that?” she asked. “Well, not my fault. You try carryin’ a tray of these stinky things around. I told that bossy lady these things were gonna make me puke.”
I glanced around until I spotted another one of the servers, and I waved him over. I held the tray of goat cheese appetizers out to him. “James, do these smell gross to you?”
James took a big whiff and shook his head. “Smell fine to me.”
“Shayna, are you willing to trade trays and pass out . . .” I eyed James’s appetizers. “James, what do you have?”
James nodded, looking as proud as if he’d prepared the food himself. “Smoked pulled pork sliders topped with homemade slaw.” He presented his tray to give us a good look.
“Can you live with that?” I asked Shayna.
Her brown eyes lit up. “Now, those I can get behind.”
After the trade was made, and both servers were up to speed on what they were serving, I popped the goat cheese cheesecake appetizer in my mouth. It was the first thing I’d eaten since breakfast. Shayna was crazy, this thing wasn’t stinky at all. I was pretty sure my mouth just came.
“Nice job back there,” a man’s voice broke through my moment of ecstasy.
“Thanks,” I answered, around the mouthful of cheesy bliss.
He flashed me a million-dollar smile—exactly the kind of smile I was looking for tonight—before answering. “Great party, isn’t it?”
I took a second to look at the man beside me. Older, but not in a geriatric way—not balding or paunchy. He had laugh lines around his lively dark eyes, but nothing I’d chalk up to wrinkles, per se. And instead of being gray, he had threads of silver peppered throughout his lush hair. He stood a head taller than me and was still trim beneath his custom-fitted tuxedo. He even smelled good. Women his age would either hate or adore him, because even though he was past his prime, so to speak, his sex appeal was tangible.
“I sure as hell hope so.” It felt good to confess to this total stranger. “I want this to be the best fundraiser anyone has ever thrown.” It was a lofty goal, impossible probably. But for Lucas, I wanted to kill it tonight.
The man studied me, probably to see if I was joking or not. And when he realized I was serious, he laughed, and even his laugh was sexy as fuck. “I can see why my son likes you. You’re a real firecracker, aren’t you?”
His . . . son?
I looked again, this time noting his features in a way I hadn’t before. His not-quite brown, not-quite blond hair. His laughing eyes. His broad shoulders. “You’re . . . Lucas’s . . . dad,” I stated.
Damn. I hoped that wasn’t the appeal I noticed. I hoped I didn’t have a thing for Lucas . . . and his dad.
He held out his hand to me, and when I shook it, he introduced himself. “Charles Harper.” His grip was warm, his hands strong. “My son has told me a lot about you.”
I hated the burst of joy that hearing Lucas had talked about me caused. I wasn’t even sure I could say we were even friends anymore. Was it terrible to pry for more information? Probably. Was I above it? Not a chance. “I think you might be exaggerating. Lucas and I are neighbors.”
He held my stare. “I think you underestimate the way my son feels about you, young lady. My son and I talk at least once a week, and the last couple of times we’ve spoken, you’re just about all he’s talked about. That says something.” He finally released my hand. “Lucas has always been a very private person. He has a hard time . . . expressing his feelings. My fault, really. His mother . . . she has a strong personality.” He didn’t have to tell me. I’d met her. Strong personality was an understatement. “When the boys were young, I let her have too much influence over the way they were raised.” I remembered Lucas saying his mother and father had disagreed over the boys’ upbringing. “He’s trying though. You’ve helped a lot.”
I didn’t know how to break it to his dad that Lucas and I were only ever going to be a summer fling, as much as either of us might have wished it could have been more. But his Lucas-like voice saved me from having to say anything at all.
“Ah, speaking of my lovely bride . . .” His smoldering gaze fixated on the doorway. Lady MacBitch was there, looking as regal and reserved as ever, in an ice-blue gown that molded to her slender frame. “I’d better go say hello. Please excuse me.”
As he strolled through the crowd, making his way toward her. I caught her eye and smiled, trying to be friendly. There was a spark of recognition in her eyes, but nothing more. After everything we’d accomplished here, all I got was that she could pick me out in a crowd. Nice.
“I see you met Charles Harper,” Aster said, sidling up beside me and handing me a glass of champagne. She followed my gaze. “Hard to imagine he and Liz were ever one of the most passionate couples in Beverly Hills. He’s still in love with her, I think.”
Now she was bullshitting me. It wasn’t just hard to believe, it was downright impossible to imagine that woman could love anyone besides herself.
But I watched as Lucas’s father bent to kiss Lady MacBitch’s—Liz’s—cheek. And unlike when I’d smiled at her, I swore I saw her paralyzed lips move.
Fascinated, I kept watching them. They chatted . . . or rather, he talked and she listened. But that was the thing, she stayed. She didn’t dismiss him, or walk away. She actually seemed to be listening . . . to him. When he held out his elbow to her, she glared at it, but she took it nonetheless.
Surely I was witnessing a miracle.
I lifted my champagne to my lips, deciding if this was the rapture, I wanted one last sip of booze.
“I still can’t believe we did it,” I told Aster while we had a minute to ourselves.
“You did it,” she said. She raised her own glass in a silent cheers.
“Stop,” I said, feeling weirdly embarrassed by her compliment. “I couldn’t have pulled it off without you. You and Lucas did the hard part. I had it easy. I just found the venue, the caterers, the auction items, and the waitstaff.”
She gave me a look that told me what she thought of my “easy” part.
“You two put together the guest list, handled the invitations, and found us the hottest DJ on the planet.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her, trying to deflect some of the attention she’d thrown my way. “Plus, you look amazing, if I didn’t say so already. If I were a dude, I’d be all over that.” She had on a vivid red dress, with gorgeous gold beading. A little prim for my taste, with the mandarin collar and the bow at her trim waist, but it was a far cry from her typical white linen.
She looked me up and down, taking in my much bolder choice of an emerald green V-neck. “Right back at you.”
“If you don’t stop, people will start to think we’re friends.” I elbowed her. “You don’t think it’s too slutty?”
“I never said that,” she answered as she took a sip from her flute.
I grinned, glad we hadn’t turned all mushy on each other just because we’d pulled off the coup of the century. “There’s my girl. I knew you were still in there.”
She gazed out at the growing crowd. Already, people were lining up at the silent auction tables and placing their bids. Bitsy had scored us some amazing items. There was autographed sports memorabilia and all-expense trips to the Super Bowl, the US Open, Wimbledon, and the Kentucky Derby. There were one-of-a-kind packages for lessons with golf pros and baseball legends. And that didn’t include the yachting vacations, tickets to the American Music Awards, backstage passes to concerts, and movie studio tours given by A-list celebs that Aster and Lucas had managed to score.
We were gonna make a mint.
“Don’t look now, but I think someone’s looking for you,” Aster said, nudging me to get my attention.
Lucas was watching me the way a tiger surveys its prey. But instead of feeling trapped, heat flooded me. I felt a rush of moisture between my legs. Damn, if this kept up, I’d probably end up going commando by the end of the night.
“I’ll go check on Raph.” Aster’s voice was softer now. “Make sure he has everything he needs.”
Raph was fine and we both knew it, especially since that’s where she’d just gotten back from. But I nodded dumbly. “Good idea.”
When Lucas started moving toward me, that hunter look on his face turned to something closer to admiration.
“This . . . ,” he said when he reached me. “This is . . . breathtaking.” But he wasn’t looking at any of it. He was looking at me.
Still, my chest felt as if a freight train had been lifted from it. I’d done all this for him and I was hungry for his approval.
“You haven’t even seen the best part yet.”
“There’s more?”
“So much more,” I beamed. I led him toward the back, where all the doors had been opened and people milled in the courtyard beyond.
This was my Christmas morning, leading Lucas outside. I was a gooey mixture of nervous and excited, hoping it was enough . . . that it wasn’t too much.
That I hadn’t messed it all up.
“Holy shit,” he said in a whisper.
I was bouncing on my toes. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he breathed. He turned to me and took my hands, nodding. “I can’t believe you did this. Em . . . you have no idea.”
I sucked my lips. “Okay, don’t you dare cry. I mean it. Don’t you dare . . .”
“Okay, so . . . no,” he maintained. “I definitely wasn’t going to cry. But, Christ, you turned this into my brother’s favorite place in the whole world.”
That had been the whole point. “I did, didn’t I?”
I saw it the way Lucas was seeing it, for the first time—the food truck alley I’d recreated, right here in the courtyard of the community rec center. The same food truck alley Lucas had told me his brother used to take him to. I even had Black Magic Donuts, and we’d given their truck the prized spot in our makeshift lot.
We’d added a few special touches to make it more festive than a parking lot—picnic tables draped in colorful fabrics, and paper lanterns strewn from truck to truck to truck. But the air out here smelled exactly the way it had the night Lucas had taken me to eat—aromatic, decadent, and delicious.
The guests looked ridiculous as they meandered from truck to truck in their evening wear, while the older kids we’d recruited from the rec center worked as our catering staff for the night. Their trays were loaded with appetizers and finger foods, things like the goat cheese cheesecakes and the pork sliders.
Raph’s music set the backdrop as it played over the speakers we’d wired outside.
“So?” Lucas asked playfully. We were side by side, and just being this close to him was doing a number on my senses. His dad might’ve smelled good, but Lucas made me want to put him on the menu. “Any other surprises up your sleeve?”
“Absolutely.” I ran my tongue over my lips, telling myself this really wasn’t the time to be letting my fiery lady parts call the shots. I needed to keep my shit together. “For starters, your dad said you’ve been talking about me.”
Lucas’s eyes shot from my mouth to my eyes. “My dad’s here? Already?”
I nodded. “Uh, yeah. Not that big of a deal. He’s with your mother right now.”
“Em, why would you invite her? After everything she did to ruin what we were doing?”
I let out a deep sigh. Clearly he needed a lesson in forgiveness. Something I’d spent the last few days working on myself. “Well, for starters, she didn’t ruin anything, did she?” I said, gazing out at the party. “And no matter your differences, I don’t need to remind you that Adam was her son. It’s only right she be here.”
Lucas shook his head at me. “You’re amazing. You know that?”
“Oh, I know. It’s about time you figured it out too.”
He reached out and hooked his pinkie with mine. “About that. I was hoping I’d get a chance to talk to you. Alone.”
My stomach fluttered. Being this close to Lucas made me hyperaware of everything. The feel of his finger linked around mine. The sensation of my heartbeat, beating in time with the music, heavy and hard. My throat dry. So damned dry.
I should say something.
Yes. I should tell him that, yes, I thought we should talk too. Once and for all, we should get everything out in the open.
“Ms. McLean?” Shayna ran up and grabbed my arm. I let go of Lucas. Or he let go of me. Shayna was gnawing her lower lip and squeezing her hands into fists nervously. “You’re needed at the DJ booth. Like, right now.”
“Sorry,” I told Lucas. “Take a rain check?”
“Where have you been?” Aster’s complaint made it sound like I’d been ignoring her cries for help, when the fact was I’d come running the second my presence was requested. “I tried everything on the instruction sheet, but we can’t get the slideshow to start.”
That was the big emergency? Seriously?
I took the sheet of instructions Lauren had left us. “So easy even a monkey can do it,” Lauren had claimed. So I punched the buttons on the computer, exactly the way she’d laid them out for us.
“Dammit,” I cursed. If only I was a monkey. “Have you seen Lauren?” I asked Raphael, who’d been taking a break while we started the slide show.
People were taking their seats at the tables and curious gazes were starting to look toward the blank screen. Sweat prickled my armpits. I felt like the captain of the Titanic.
Raph raised one eyebrow provocatively. “No. But do I want to see her?”
Gross. He was clearly the kind of guy who was accustomed to having tail handed to him on a silver platter. “Jesus. Can you stay focused for a second? You sound like one of my brothers.”
“Speaking of . . .” Aster perked up. “Is Seth coming?”
Crap. Now I had two horny assistants.
“God, yes. Seth’ll be here. Keep it in your pants, sister.”
Her cheeks flushed brighter than the Crimson Tide—Seth’s alma mater. “It’s always in my pants, as you so delicately put it.”
Raphael grinned lasciviously. “Can’t say the same, I’m afraid.”
“No shit. I guessed as much.” I eyeballed him warily.
I spotted Lauren in the crowd and subtly waved her down. Subtly, as in an airport ground crew would’ve been impressed by my flagging skills.
She was breathless by the time she reached me. “Oh my God, what’s wrong?”
“9-1-1. We can’t make heads or tails of your gobbledygook computer mumbo jumbo. We need you to fix this mess. Stat!” I shoved the instruction sheet at her and stepped away from the computer.
She narrowed her eyes at me like I was suddenly the enemy, punched two buttons in all of two seconds, and voilà! Slide show time.
The thing about the slideshow was that even though I’d watched this thing a hundred times already, I still wasn’t immune to its impact. Lauren had rounded up some of the top students from her computer classes at the rec center to put it together. To say it was intense was like calling Hurricane Katrina a light gust. These were some of the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful stories of love, loss, and triumph of the human spirit.
They brought cystic fibrosis to life up there on that screen. I mean, sure, it was an incurable disease, but the treatment options today were better than they’d ever been before. Some people who’d been diagnosed were living longer, and better, lives thanks to medical advances.
Then again . . . some were not.
And we did our best to incorporate all those stories into our reels. We wanted all these donors here tonight to understand what these families were up against. What they lived with on a yearly, monthly, daily, and hourly basis.
How their lives, even after their loved ones were gone, would never, ever be the same.
People like Lucas . . . and his parents.
There were stories of adults who’d already lost their battle, children who were struggling daily . . . even babies in the hospital with tubes in their noses.
I looked around the room when the first pictures of Adam started to appear. Many of these people had known Adam or his family, and I could see the tissue boxes being passed around, as everyone remained frozen, watching.
My own vision was blurred, as I had to blink like crazy just to clear it. Me, who’d seen this already, a million times.
I saw her then, leaning against Charles’s shoulder, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. Maybe Liz Harper had a heart beneath that bitter exterior after all. Maybe she’d just been too damaged by the loss of her beautiful son—a man who’d looked entirely too much like Lucas for my liking.
Our eyes locked, and I felt self-conscious for catching her in such a private moment. Then she lifted her head and gave me the smallest nod. I couldn’t tell if it was approval or just, finally, acknowledgement, but it was enough, at least for now.
Beside me, Raphael put his arm over my shoulder. “He was one of my best friends.” His voice was thick and raw. “Thank you for doing this.”