Vampires and Sexy Romance (5 page)

Lucy hated throwing up.  Her mind always screamed for someone to help her, to call an ambulance, for she was always certain she was going to die.  But for the first time ever those thoughts didn’t even occur to her.

I’m eighteen. 
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and reached with her sore arm, and through the pain pressed down on the toilet’s handle and flushed. 
I can handle throwing up all by myself.

Lucy was tempted to just lie down on the cool linoleum and curl up in a little ball, maybe curl up around the bottom of the toilet, just in case she had to puke again.  But it was Sunday, and she wasn’t off on Sundays.  That meant she would have to go back to McDonalds, back to her disgrace.  The thought was almost more than she could bear.

Maybe I’ll just call off? 
She pulled herself to her feet holding on to the nearby sink. 
I don’t think they’ll really be expecting me...hell, I don’t even think I’m in shape to even get on the bus...

Her mind lost the thread of what she was thinking.  She was peering into the ancient oval mirror bolted to the wall over the sink.  Even with fuzzy patches, and more than a few streaks where the silver backing had peeled over time, she had a perfectly clear view of herself in that mirror.  And that view wasn’t good.

She took a deep, shuddering breath as she tried to comprehend that the girl in the mirror was her.

The girl looking back at her didn’t resemble her in the least.  Never mind the tacky blue polo shirt plastered to her, sticky and cold with special sauce.  This girl had some major problems.  Her hair was a greasy, tangled mess.  The ends fried at least an inch, her lustrous mane of mahogany hair now a mousy, faded-out brown, caused by sun damage and no central air, unfiltered tap water and supermarket hair product. 

Her skin was pale and sallow, and not only were her eyes bloodshot, but they had ugly dark circles under them.  And there on her chin, puffy and red, with a volcanic looking white head, pulsed her very first zit.  She’d been going to a dermatologist since she was twelve; she’d thought she would always be immune.

As she pried her gaze from that horrid pimple, she gapped as she realized she wasn’t just five pounds overweight.  No.  She was at least ten pounds—which was absurd, especially after she’d just barfed up half her bodyweight.  Yet, as she turned and gazed at herself in the mirror, she couldn’t deny it.  Her flat belly was gone.  Her perfect, perky—
real
—breasts had lost their perk, and were actually starting to sag.  She turned and looked to her rear end.  The ass she used to put a finger to and make a sizzle sound through her teeth about, just drooped—large enough that her cheap black slacks seemed on the verge of splitting.

Whatever little strength she had left drained out the bottom of her feet.  She leaned against the sink, her arms holding her up, but just barely, and tried to breathe.  But every time she looked into the mirror she just couldn’t take in any breath.  Her eyes started to burn again, and tears welled up in them.

This isn’t me... 
She gripped the edge of the sink. 
This can’t be me...

Despair flowed cold and dark through her veins.  It was almost welcome, that cold.  At least it was making her feel numb, where as the sight of herself in the mirror was making her nauseous, and the burning in her head down through her arm was enough to make her scream.  She wanted that cold despair to wash over her, make her pass out, make her vanish from sight, from the world.

This can’t be me...

Then who is it? 
whispered a mean little voice in her head. 
Who’s this disgusting, pathetic creature staring back at you from the mirror? 

The voice cackled with cruel delight. 
I thought you’ve never met a mirror that didn’t like you?  This one, it’s safe to say, hates your guts!

She something flared in her head.  Not the wicked ache and pain, nor the dizziness from before.  No, this was different.  This was hot and sharp, and wonderfully familiar.  This was her getting pissed. 

That heat bloomed with utter annoyance, and a red slash of anger, as it traveled down through her body to her chest, and then radiated through her cold, aching limbs, replacing the chill of despair in its wake.

She looked down at her hands, the chipped, uneven nails, the gnarled cuticles, the grit and gunk embedded underneath.  Lucy clenched her teeth as she balled up her hands into fists, and then beat them down hard on the sink counter, staring with utter hatred at the personal-grooming-impaired girl in the mirror.

That’s.  Not.  Me.

The mean little voice in her head started to say something, but Lucy clamped her mind down on it. 

Get out of my head, you stupid, fat, ugly cow!

Lucy pulled off the band that held her hair back in a ponytail.  Then gently she pulled the special sauce gooped polo shirt off over her head, and holding it out in front of her for a moment of contemplation, she pressed her foot down on the pedal of the small, lidded trashcan and tossed the thing in, letting the metal lid drop with an emancipating clang. 

She kicked off the Dr Schooll’s and then stripped off the black slacks, and her under-things.  She crawled into the shower and let the hot water cascade over her sore, tired body.  It felt better than good.  Lucy couldn’t remember the last time she’d just stood under the rejuvenating hot spray of a shower, with no time constraint.  Usually someone was knocking on the door, telling her to hurry up.  Or she was dashing around, trying to make her bus, so she could get to work on time.

But as she stood under that water now, a thought started materializing in her mind, like mist turning to a blazing neon sign—a huge, blinking Times Square sized sign.  Lucy could practically hear the low, deep buzz that sign emitted every time it crackled to life.

And it read: I QUIT!

I quit...

The thought just echoed in her mind, the thought turning from a mere whisper to the chant of a Super Bowl stadium crowd.

“I quit,” The words passed her lips, and then her eyes snapped open with surprise.  “I quit!”  Those words seemed to shimmer like silver, and then sparkle and shine like a really good, really expensive diamond.  The kind she’d hinted about to her father for a graduation present.  In her mind, Lucy could see that diamond hanging on a sleek platinum chain, twinkling like a star against her skin.  Not her skin now, but the radiant, creamy flesh she used to have.

And the diamond’s fiery gleam pulsed with the two words that throbbed in her head. 

I quit...I quit...I quit...

The weight that had been on her shoulders for the last six months, the pressure that had almost snuffed her out completely only a few hours ago, lifted like...like magic.  Lucy breathed in the sweet, warm air of the shower.  She raised her hot-water-soothed arms up in the air as she took another, and then another deep, wondrous breath.  Lucy screamed—screamed long and loud, a joyous, powerful scream.  And then she felt the corner of her mouth catch in an unfamiliar twinge.

She was smiling.

She was also thinking.  Thinking very hard and very fast.  She turned and grabbed the shampoo bottle from the rack and started lathering her hair in earnest.  The faster she thought, the easier those thoughts seemed to weave together, thoughts latching onto other thoughts, memories of seemingly incidental snippets of information entwining with her long abandoned hopes and dreams. 

If she wanted her old life back, then she’d have to take it back herself.  

All of this spun itself into a plan.  And the plan, if she did say so herself, was pretty damn good.  

LUCY’S HAIR
was still wet, and though she was dressed in a cheap T-shirt and a pair of sweats, she felt like a million bucks.  She’d washed and scrubbed herself until not a trace of McDonalds—or its special sauce—was on her.  Also the hot water finally ran cold.

She’d gone into her mother’s room and riffled through her drawers until she found what she was looking for: a business card.

Gram was at church, but she’d left her presents neatly stacked on the kitchen table, right next to her birthday cake.  A spotless glass dome sat atop the pedestal holding the cake. 

A piece of paper had her grandmother’s handwriting on it.

Lucybean,

Called you off from work today. 

Rest!

Love, Gram

Cool…I can
QUIT
tomorrow.

She was suddenly starved.  Her stomach growled as memories of her grandmother’s divine cake floated through her mind.  So she fetched a plate, a knife and a fork, then hacked herself off a very large piece of cake.  Even the next day the thing smelled like heaven, and as she took a bite it tasted just as good...no, better than it had the night before.  Now it tasted like freedom.  Now it tasted like having her old life back, and getting back her dreams.

Having money again.  Regaining her dimmed yet still abundant beauty.  And going to a good university, and from there having the life she’d always envisioned for herself.  To own her own multimillion dollar cosmetics line.  Maybe even branch out to movies, music and TV.  She, Lucy Hart, would be queen of her own, huge, fabulous world.

The image of her in a gorgeous Dior gown, on the arm of some handsome A-List Movie-stud, gliding across the red carpet of the Grammy’s, the Oscars, and fashion week in Paris, glowed and sparkled in her head.

It’s going to be...spectacular. 
She licked the last of the miraculous lemon cream icing from the thymes of her fork.           

But do I know what I’m doing? 

She glanced down at the business card she’d filched from her mother’s room.  Frank C Luvici.  “The C stands for Crook,” her fathered used to say about his lawyer. 

Lucy remembered that when he’d come to the house, he always wore expensive though tacky suits, and smelled of Brut cologne.  His hair was always slicked straight back, and when he smiled at her it always seemed he was undressing her with his eyes.

He had really rancid breath too.

He was scum.  And she hadn’t seen him since her father’s sentencing hearing.  He’d gotten her father a cushy stint in a minimal security prison—practically a holiday resort with armed guards.  So scum or not, he had to be good.  And a good attorney, especially a dirty, greasy weasel like Luvici, would’ve not only gotten a sweetheart of a deal for his client, but he would’ve hidden some of his client’s assets, so he would at least get paid while his client rotted in jail.

Lucy had watched a
Law & Order
or two, and since her father had been a high class lawyer, the five hundred dollars an hour kind, she’d picked up a thing or two just being around him.

She grasped the business card in her hand and flicked it around with her fingers, noting the “Home Phone” scrawled on the back. 
Sure, if Daddy—
She cringed just thinking the word. 
If Daddy has any money at all hidden—for like when he gets out and starts his new life without us!—then his snake of a lawyer would know what rock—or Cayman Island, or Swiss bank account—it  would be hidden under.   

“But why would he help me?”  Lucy mumbled as she sifted through everything she could remember about one Frank C Luvici.  A dirty piece-of-crap lawyer like that...well, any lawyer, crooked or respectable, will only help you for three reasons.  If you can pay, if it’ll make great PR for him (which equals more clients and billable hours), or...

Lucy pinned the card down to her grandmother’s weathered kitchen table with her index finger, digging her uneven, dull nail into the C as her mind snapped on the little nugget of memory she was looking for.

They only help for money, good press...or blackmail. 
Lucy smiled as her plan formed in her head. 

She wouldn’t be calling him at home.  No.  She remembered her father used to say that Luvici was so greedy he went into the office even on Sundays.  That, and he liked to bang his weekend secretary—the one his wife had never seen—after putting in his billable hours, and before trekking out to the golf course for a quick nine holes.

Lucy knew something very interesting about Frank C Luvici.  A couple very interesting “something’s.”

Leverage over your opponent can be as easy as the element of surprise,
her father had told her often, and Lucy had used that strategy against upstart wannabees, teachers that were trying to take her down a peg—which never worked out well for them—and against embittered ex-boyfriends.  So Lucy knew it worked, and she’d already practiced it in a real life setting.         

He’d also said, 
Always have a back-up plan for negotiations.  A nice, fat killer of a second surprise.

Lucy tapped her finger against the business card until there was a notch under that stupid C.

She knew what her first piece of leverage would be.  And she knew the stooping your secretary thing would make a pretty good plan B.  But this was a Lawyer.  He breathed, ate and slept slippery, weasely moves.  She needed something that would knock him flat.  Something that would put him in the way of not only legal detriment, but bodily harm.

Something candy-apple red shimmered in her mind, a memory that she’d all but forgotten about.  And she smiled as she ran up stairs to get dressed.  She’d have to get moving if she was going to get the jump on her prey.

~*~

Gabriel was on edge.  Delia didn’t understand what was taking so long finding a suitable fake fiancée.  Uncle Dante was being aloof about Cousin Francis’s progress on said subject.  And his mother was sniffing around him like a freaking bloodhound.  He was staying later at the office to steer clear of her.

All this was making him start to feel like a caged animal.  Or at the very least, like one being hunted, hunted slowly by a predator that knew it didn’t need to hurry, that its prey would be all the more appetizing after a long chase.

And what was worse, Dante wasn’t answering his calls, which was a first.  Dante was punctual, never absent, and always at his beck and call.  So why was he suddenly not returning his phone calls?  It had only been a few hours, yet his imagination had started running hard and fast.  He imagined his mother chaining Dante to the wall of her kitchen, and torturing him with a red hot poker.

The thought alone made him want to claw his eyes out, yet there it was.  Only a few hours out of touch and he was already contemplating the worst.  He breathed in harshly, and then tried to push all thoughts out of his head.  He needed to center himself.  Being undone by his fear would help nothing.  He needed to stay calm and together.  There would be a perfectly simple, banal explanation for his uncle’s absence.

When Dante pushed through Gabriel’s office door, looking not only tired but rumpled, Gabriel jumped to his feet and went to the older man.  “What’s happened?”

“You’re mother,” Dante said, pulling out a linen handkerchief and blotting the beads of sweat on his brow.  Gabriel had never seen his uncle sweat before, not even on the few occasions where he joined the family for the hunt.

“Shit!  What did she do to you?  Does she know?”

Dante gracefully lowered himself into the chair in front of Gabriel’s desk, but the sudden jerk of his head to face Gabriel was the only thing that seemed startled about Dante.

“What are you talking about?  She knows absolutely nothing of our dealings.”  His tone was cold, and Gabriel got the distinct impression that he was affronted by the mere idea he’d been rolled by anyone, let alone Gabriel’s mother.  “She had me held captive in her kitchen—” Gabriel shook his head, trying not to picture his uncle chained to the wall again.  “She’s really lost it when it comes to your father’s retirement.”

“Retirement?”  Gabriel felt his body relax as the tension melted from his muscles. 

“Yes, Vivian thinks your father is still spending far too much time at the company, and she wants to know why?”

“Why?”

“With a Masters in finance from Columbia and another in business, I’d hoped you’d have better questions to ask me.”  Dante sounded pissy.

“Oh, I just…”

“She wants to know, is the time he’s spending here warranted, or just superfluous?  If he’s needed, then what are we—as in you and I—doing wrong?  And if he’s not needed, then is it simply habit or over protective behavior, or is he hiding something more covert and lecherous, or…”  The look on Dante’s face was lugubrious.

“There’s a possibility worse than Father having an affair?”

Dante nodded.  “She’s afraid he’s tired of her.”

“What?”  Gabriel jumped back out of the chair he’d finally just sat in.  “She thinks he’s tired of her?”

“She thinks he’s using the company as a way to avoid her.  She’s as human as the rest of us.  She has her own inner demons.”

Gabriel had never considered his mother to be insecure in the least.  She’d always been as strong as…well, she was a force onto herself.  It never seemed to faze her that her husband spent laborious hours at work.  And she was never weeping, or even moping around the house, waiting for him to come home.  She was always busy with the country club, or arranging her family’s futures.  She didn’t even seem ruffled when either of her sons had gone off to college for four years or more.

And now she was being anxious about her marriage?

“What gives?”

Dante raised his eye brows.  “What gives is that she obviously had plans for when your father retired, and those plans have fallen far short of what she’d expected.”  Which made sense.  Vivian Enoch had planned everything out for the family so well, that she even planned on giving his brother Micah a few years to sow his wild oats before he fell in line.

“How bad is it?”

Dante finally looked flustered.  “My phone rang too many times while I was with her.  She fed it down the trash compactor.”

That alone made him wince.  His mother was stern and unflappable.  To do something so out of character meant she was at the end of her rope.  And the thought of that made Gabriel cringe.

“We have to get your father to spend more time with her,” Dante said.  “Before she has a meltdown.”   

“You really think Mom would lose it?”

Dante’s expression was stone cold serious.  “I think we don’t want to find out.”

Gabriel gulped, but then a smile spread across his face.  “At least, with her paranoid about Dad’s free time, she won’t be scrutinizing me and my love life so much.”

“No.”  Dante shook his head.  “She’s still brow beating me about this secret paramour of yours.”

Gabriel flopped down into the chair behind his desk again, deflated.  “Call Francis and light a fire under him.”

~*~

Lucy used her mother’s flat iron to tame her still fly-away tresses.  She even used her mother’s make up.  Cheap stuff from Wal-Mart, of course, but since she hadn’t bothered buying her own, she had to make do.  She burgled her mother’s room again, this time taking a faux silk blouse that her mother wore to waitress in.  It was hoe-ish and almost too big in the bust, but Lucy tucked it into the vintage Calvin Klein’s, and finished the look off with the rip-off Jimmy Choo’s heels. 

She looked in the bathroom mirror to check her makeup, and decided she didn’t look bad at all. 
It’s a start. 
But she didn’t check out her ass. 
Hopefully, I’ll still be hot enough to throw that perv Luvic off balance.

She grabbed her driver’s license and the two hundred and fifty dollars she’d managed to save from working at McDonalds, and stuck it in the front pocket of her jeans.  Walking to the bus stop seemed much easier.  She naturally walked better in heels, and for the first time since they’d moved to the sleepy, crappy little town of Four Corners, she felt like her old self again.  Not the dowdy, plain Jane that tried to stay faded into the scenery. 

No.

She walked down the street with her old swagger, her posture perfect, her bright hazel eyes meeting the eye of everyone she passed by.  Her smile grew with every step, becoming luminous and beautiful.  She noticed every man—young, old or downright ancient—smiled with puppy-dog interest.  She could feel their stares as they turned to watch her walk away.

Good, I’ve still got it. 
Always best to go into battle with your weapons sharp.

Lucy stood leaning against the bus stop sign, going over in her head what she’d say to the scum bag lawyer.  A bus stopped in front of her, its breaks whined from wear.  The door opened with a creek and Shirley peering down at her from the driver’s seat.  She smiled but there was no recognition in her expression.

“You gettin’ on, sweet thing?  I’ve got a schedule...”  Shirley’s eyes widened as Lucy stepped up the stairs and fed a dollar fifty in quarters to the toll machine.