Читать книгу Sensual Winds - Carmen Green - Страница 9

Lucas could have kicked himself before he fully pushed the disconnect button.

“Doreen? Doreen?” Why had he involved Doreen in his and Emma’s relationship problems? It wasn’t her fault that he was a failure at having—or not having—a fiancée.

Before he made another mistake, he tried to think things through. In the past he’d been quick to think the worst of women when they didn’t call, or if they called too much; if they didn’t stay, or if they wanted to stay. If they drank, or if they didn’t drink.

During the past five years, he’d just about driven himself crazy wondering what women wanted from men. And then he started listening to his DJ friend Terrence. As crazy as he had been in the past with his off-the-wall ideas about relationships, the brother now made sense, and Lucas tuned in to his radio show whenever he had the chance.

According to Terrence, women wanted good men who treated them like they were worth something. But a man had to be selective, too. He had to choose carefully, because there were some crazy ladies out there.

Lucas thought about how he’d found Emma in New York. His company had won the contract to renovate three floors of the office building she worked in. He’d seen her for a couple weeks going to her boss’s office for a meeting, and then one day he approached her. They’d dated happily for months, and then he accepted another renovation project in Key West, his mother’s hometown.

Emma had assured him dating long distance wouldn’t be a problem, as long as they were committed. She’d been all for it for the first two years, but in these last eight months, their relationship had all but evaporated like some of the local lakes.

He’d ignored the signs, and his fading love for her, hoping she’d come around and still want to move to Key West like she’d promised, so they could be together and rekindle their true feelings for each other. This weekend was the test. If she came, he’d told himself, they’d live happily ever after.

If she didn’t show up, they’d go their separate ways.

The next day, Lucas hammered nails into the roof.

Terrence was right. When a woman didn’t call you back, somebody else was probably occupying her mind and her time.

Lucas descended from the roof to check on his foreman, Mo, who was installing granite flooring in the foyer and lower bathroom. He stayed outside on the porch, his hands on the white siding as he leaned into the house. Only Mo and Rog were allowed to enter through the front door while the granite was being installed. The materials were too expensive and delicate.

Mo looked up and followed a carefully laid path of crisscrossed boards that never touched the foyer floor.

Lucas grasped his foreman’s hand and pulled him out of the house. “How’s it coming?”

They leaned in like spies. “Good,” Mo replied. “This needs to dry for four more hours, and then we’ll come back and redo any areas that show unevenness. Everything is cut to perfection, even the corners. Looks easy, doesn’t it?”

Mo was a big Mexican man who’d been born in America. He knew how to build a house better than anyone Lucas had ever met. More than that, he knew great craftsmanship.

Lucas nodded. “It does, but will it be ready in time?”

As they talked, Rog never stopped working. The Italian craftsman had been in the country for six months, working with an outfit that had suddenly gone out of business, stranding him. He’d been doing day labor when Mo had snapped him up. His work was flawless.

Lucas tipped back his baseball cap and scratched his head. “Tomorrow is the magic hour. Will this be ready?”

Mo consulted Rog. They discussed everything in Italian, one of the three languages Mo spoke. Lucas knew only about two hundred words of Spanish, so he was lost.

He looked toward heaven. He needed for everything to be perfect. His relationship with Emma had been far from it. In fact, lately they’d had no relationship at all, and he was concerned that after all this effort for her to like everything in the house, he’d be the one to call their wedding off.

Mo told him what he wanted to hear. “We’ll be ready, if I pick up his wife and two daughters from the airport.” He looked like he’d bitten into a bad apple.

Lucas extended his hand to Rog, laughing at Mo. “Excellent.”

Rog shook his hand and then kissed Lucas on both cheeks. Mo hurried down the stairs before he was the recipient of Rog’s affection.

“Ciao.” Rog rushed back to work as Lucas wiped his face off with his sleeve, Mo laughing from the sidewalk.

“He drives me crazy when he does that,” Mo told him. “I try to stay away from him. He cries a lot, too.”

“And you don’t? Every time Armella and the kids leave, you’re a waterspout.”

“Hey! Don’t say that too loud. The men won’t respect me,” Mo said, looking around to see if anyone had heard Lucas.

They checked on the progress of the workers whose job it was to clean up the property after Hurricane Ana. It had come through as a Category One a couple days ago and rumbled out to sea, but in a freak turn of events, it seemed to reverse direction and was once again taking aim on south Florida. The I-10 had been reopened this morning and traffic had resumed, but the storm would be back wreaking havoc once again in a couple days.

In fact, dark clouds already clung to the horizon.

As if he read his mind, Mo said, “This storm smells like trouble.”

“Don’t be a pessimist.” Lucas waited a few seconds. “Emma’s coming tomorrow.”

“Is that why you look like you got caught with your hand in the candy jar? The airport opened up?”

“I did something, but not that bad, and yes, the airport is open. All those people need to be recycled.” Lucas tried to laugh. He felt anxious knowing Emma was coming, yet she still hadn’t called. Doreen hadn’t called back, either. He guessed she’d given up and gone home. He would have, and let him and Emma deal with their own problems.

The workers tossed onto the ground plywood that had been used during the last storms. Much of it had disintegrated from too much water.

“Lucas, how honest can I be with you?” Mo said, his Spanish accent sounding musical. He was about to share some wisdom.

Lucas eyed his friend. “You want to get paid today?”

“Okay,” Mo said, “straight up. You haven’t seen her in a long time. Eight months. The house isn’t finished and you’re not a raving lunatic. You would think you’d want everything to be perfect. Do you care?”

Caught off guard, Lucas considered his question. “Yeah. You saw me pressing Rog.”

“Our talk was a little more extensive. I promised him a few things for the family. It’ll cost you about a hundred dollars. You have to pick them up while I run to the airport. I’ll make a list.”

Lucas snorted good-naturedly. “The bastard.”

Both men chuckled.

“All I’m saying is when you first got here from New York, I had to institute a ‘no cell phone’ rule on the job.”

Lucas smiled.

“You stepped off the roof eave backwards, fell half a story and separated your shoulder. You fell through the floor at the Wilcox mall refurbishment, requiring an ambulance and fifteen stitches. I don’t know how a nail was shot through your index finger, but that was a lot of paperwork and a hospital visit.”

“That shouldn’t count,” Lucas argued halfheartedly. “That extern from the technical school shot me from across the room.”

“But if you hadn’t been on the phone with Emma you’d have seen him playing with the nail gun. Since you and Emma have cooled it,” Mo went on, “we’ve had no accidents.”

Lucas couldn’t argue with the truth. “You’re very observant,” he finally said.

“That’s why you pay me the big bucks.” Mo wiped his hair back and put his cap back in place, shielding the skin around his eyes that looked like it was made from cracked glass.

They walked to the back of the property, finding nails in the grass and pitching them into buckets along the walkway.

Mo’s daughter had stepped on a nail last year on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Since then, the men cleaned up after themselves.

Lucas and Mo leaned against the back fence, admiring the gray house with the pink accent shutters.

“I gave Emma an ultimatum: be on the plane tomorrow or it’s over.”

Mo looked as if he’d tasted something sour. “You’re not too bright today, huh?”

“First you say I don’t care, and now I’m not smart?”

They gathered up the old shutters the workers had taken down and loaded them into the back of the pickup.

“Lucas, you can’t issue an ultimatum to a woman and expect her to give you food and sex.”

“I didn’t give it to her. I told Doreen.”

“Her assistant? You just officially crossed over into wimp territory.”

“Emma hasn’t returned my calls.”

“Dude, do I have to explain what that means in women’s language?”

“No.”

Mo just shook his head as Lucas picked up the street sign he’d knocked down and dragged it inside the gate to deal with later.

Once they were done for the day, Lucas went inside and dialed Emma’s number. All he got was a message that her voice mail was full.

Everything that had and hadn’t transpired between them over the last eight months came flooding back. The promises that she’d come down to Key West, his disappointment when she hadn’t. His messages asking her to call him, her failure to phone back. The cancelled trips, Emma’s emotional distance and his nonchalance about it, their missed phone calls, their tendency to mainly communicate via voice mail.

Before he could hang up he was transferred to Doreen’s voice mail. “This is Doreen Gamble. I’m away from my desk, but if it’s important you can page me at 5546, or leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you right away.”

He had no doubt that she’d call him back.

Her voice was as warm and welcoming as her smile and he’d taken advantage of her. Lucas’s first inclination was to page her, but he didn’t. He needed to settle things with Emma. The beep sounded in his ear, and he took a breath to speak, though he didn’t know what to say.

“You deserve better than this,” he said, and hung up before “I’m sorry” could come out.

He’d have to do it when he was thinking clearly. Maybe tomorrow. Just not today.

Doreen waited patiently for Emma to finish her conversation with the president of Regents Cable. For having been promoted only a month ago, she was confident and personable with the head honcho.

“Yes, Jeffrey, I’ll be glad to attend the network meeting with you next month. I’m honored you chose me.” She nodded her head as if he could see her and smiled brightly, giving Doreen the thumbs-up, her new symbolic gesture of success. Doreen just hoped she didn’t do that at the Black Greek convention. They’d skewer her.

Emma had made it. She’d moved on up, as the old saying went.

Shaquemma Rowena Johnson had been born and bred in Brooklyn, had attended State University of New York at Buffalo, and had graduated with a degree in communications. She’d worked her way up through the ranks of three networks and two cable companies.

In seventeen years since college graduation she’d shed her heavy accent, thick eyebrows and overbearing attitude, and had polished, injected and dieted away all other unseemly features.

She’d studied women of power, and now she was the one wearing the expensive suit, carrying the top-of-the-line Louis Vuitton briefcase, having power lunches. She was now legally Emma Jones, a woman to be reckoned with.

Emma hung up her phone, caressing the black receiver with her fingertip.

Without looking up at Doreen she said, “I need you to go to Key West and end my engagement to Lucas.”

Doreen blinked at her. “What?”

“Break up with Lucas and I’ll give you five extra days of vacation.”

“He’s expecting you to be there tomorrow.” All the respect Doreen had for Emma was sucked up by Greta’s vacuum cleaner as she moved by the executive’s outer door.

Emma glanced at her iPhone and pouted for a fraction of a second. “I’m not going to Florida. You already knew that. I’m heading to the Poconos. Do this for me, and you can write your own ticket. Do you understand what that means, Doreen? This is how business is done.” She folded her hands and finally looked up. “Within reason, what would you like that I can do for you?”

It was August, and suddenly Doreen felt like she was being treated to an early Christmas she didn’t deserve. Though her heart raced at the idea of meeting Lucas face-to-face, she couldn’t under these circumstances. “Lucas loves you, Emma.”

Her lips popped out again. “No, he doesn’t. He loves what he thinks we have, but it’s not true. Lucas wants that more than anything. I’m too selfish for him. The last eight months have taught me a lot about myself. Besides, Lucas changed the rules. When I met him he was living up here and was a successful architect and builder, but after his job he moved back, and I understood. His business was growing by leaps and bounds there, but New York still has a lot to offer. His heart is in Florida with his mother and his friends, but mine isn’t.

“Over time I thought I’d change my mind, but I haven’t. It’s too bad because he’s a good man. But at my level, I can get one of any race, any age.” She shrugged as if that was all there was to getting a man.

“Ten days vacation,” Emma then offered, the heartfelt, melancholy woman of seconds ago gone. “Do you feel better?”

Doreen hated to admit that she did. “Marginally.”

Doreen decided not to make this easy. Emma would be gone soon, and extra vacation days under a new manager could easily be reversed. No, she wanted more.

“Emma, months ago you said you’d recommend me for the new position of director of special events. I’d like to move forward with that now.”

“Mmm.” Emma twisted her hands and her lips. “I’m not so sure you’d get it going from being my assistant. Dream a little smaller.”

Doreen’s skin began to crawl. How dare she all but promise her the job, and now try to weasel out of it? And who’d told Shaquemma Rowena Johnson to dream small?

Doreen got up and headed for the door. “Good night, Emma.”

At Emma’s slow clap, Doreen turned. Their office was across from the Broadway theatres, but the theatrics in the office were overplayed. “I’m glad to see you have tenacity. That’s what the job needs. I’ll be glad to recommend you. Meet Lucas in the baggage claim area by the carousel.”

Doreen didn’t turn around and kept her hand on the door.

“I’ll wait five minutes for your glowing written recommendation, and then I’ll go to Key West and take care of this for you.” Doreen finally turned around.

The fact that Emma was impressed showed in her quirked lip. “You’ve been doing your homework. Very good.”

Doreen’s heart broke for Lucas. “I had a good teacher. I’ll need your credit card to make the reservations.”

“It’s already on your desk.”