Sara’s mouth was bone-dry and the room was suddenly far too hot. “I think I need a drink,” she said and turned away from both of them, pushing away through the crowd.
Lucas caught up to her halfway across the room, his hand closing around her arm. She pulled it free with a jerk.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” Sara said. “Didn’t think your mother was going to have an issue with you dating a lowly helicopter pilot?” She shook her head, trying to ignore the sting in her eyes. She’d been looking forward to tonight, to dancing with Lucas in her beautiful dress.
Music and moonlight and romance.
The perfect fairy tale.
Only now reality was rearing its ugly head, and she felt like a child caught playing dress-up. One who’d been told the wrong theme to the party, at that, and turned up dressed as a clown when everyone else was wearing space suits.
The outsider.
“I need some air,” she said and turned away from him.
But he didn’t just let her go. Instead he took her hand and led her up the staircase, out of the claustrophobic crowd, and then into the nearest elevator.
It surged upward silently. Neither of them spoke. The elevator stopped and the doors opened.
“Where are we?”
“Roof garden,” Lucas said. “We hired it for the afterparty. There shouldn’t be anybody up here.”
Sara stepped out, shivering as the breeze hit her. Lucas slid his tux jacket off and slipped it over her shoulders. Then took her hand and led her across to the far side of the garden. The space was lit with a million tiny white lights winking through the lush foliage of the trees and bushes dotted throughout the space.
The quiet was nearly deafening after the noise of the ballroom, the sounds of the city traffic faint beneath them. Sara stared down at the lights of Manhattan, the sparkling arc of it, the patch of sparser darkness that marked the swath of Central Park. It looked different than it did from her helo, but familiar just the same.
“Better?” Lucas asked.
She nodded, not looking at him.
“Sara?”
She looked up. “Yes?”
“You know I don’t care about what my mother thinks, don’t you?”
He kept telling her that. But this was now. The future still had a hell of a lot of
then
to play out. And in the long term, in her experience, family tended to win out. “Maybe you should. Family is important.”
“Not everyone has a family like yours. Mine isn’t close. And I disappointed them a long time ago. That’s what my mother’s attitude is about, not you.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure she’s no fan of mine,” Sara said.
“That makes no difference whatsoever,” Lucas said. “My mother isn’t part of this relationship.”
“She is, though. Family always is.” Sara shivered. “Family is important. Who you are and where you come from is important. And you come from this world.” She made a sweeping gesture at the garden and the rooftop. “I don’t. We don’t fit.”
“The hell we don’t,” Lucas said. He reached for her but she moved back.
“Sex doesn’t last. And it’s not enough. It doesn’t work to hold people together. Been there, tried that.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means heat doesn’t last. And when it goes, we’re too far apart.”
“So you dated some jerk who dumped you when the chemistry wore off and that means you and I can’t make it work?” he said incredulously.
“Close enough. It wouldn’t even matter if your family loved me. There are always going to be people who look at me like your mother did just now. Like I’m the money-grubbing trailer trash after the rich guy. And I can’t do that.”
“I won’t let them,” Lucas said fiercely.
“How are you going to stop them? That’s the way the world works.”
“Not for everyone,” Lucas said. “Not for people who are decent.” His eyes were dark, the blue glinting in the reflection of the fairy lights. He took a deep breath. “It doesn’t have to be like that. It doesn’t have to end badly. You’re not your brother.”
The words hit her like a slap. “What do you mean?”
“Your dad told me about Jamie,” Lucas said. “About what happened. That was shitty. Tragic and shitty. But I’m not a scared nineteen-year-old girl. I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice softened. “Can’t you trust me? What have I done that you can’t trust me?”
He sounded so right. Solid and true. She wanted to believe it. But she didn’t know if she could. “I want to trust you … it’s just…”
“Then how about this, how about we just take this a day at a time for now? I want this to work, Sara. I want to be with you.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “I want you, too.”
“Then let’s just hang on to that, okay? We can make this work, I promise.” He leaned down and kissed her. Softly. Hands cradling her face. His touch was enough to make the doubts fade away. For now.
And because she wasn’t ready to let the doubts win—not just yet—she kissed him back. And tried to ignore the fact that deep in the back of her mind she could hear a clock starting to chime midnight.
* * *
The week that followed was fractured and difficult. The Saints lost their game on Saturday and followed it up with another loss—to the Mets, which only made it worse—on Tuesday.
Lucas was doing his best to pretend that nothing was wrong, but Sara couldn’t shake the feeling of doom. He might not care about his family, but she didn’t know if she could brush off that icy fury in his mother’s eyes so easily. After all, what would happen if she and Lucas kept going? If they got married? Flavia didn’t seem to be the type who would thaw easily. Did she want to spend time with people who thought she wasn’t worthy of their son?
It didn’t sound appealing. A lifetime of cold-war family gatherings and events. Of what she assumed, having met Flavia, would be not-so-subtle insults and dismissal.
But the alternative meant no Lucas.
And that wasn’t a future something she was ready to choose.
The only highlight was Lucas deciding that he could fix her dad’s leg, or at least improve the current situation. Even better, Sean had agreed to another surgery. Which Sara thought was testament to just how painful his leg had gotten, given how much he’d hated being laid up the first time around.
Other than that, she was on edge and stressed.
She tried to tell herself she was just getting tired from the endless travel. But that wasn’t going to change if she stayed with Lucas and the Saints, either. Baseball teams traveled, and so did their owners. If she wanted Lucas, that was part of the package.
By the time they made it back to Manhattan on Wednesday, she was exhausted and chased Lucas off to his apartment to sleep alone. Alex and Mal were going to Florida the next day, when the Saints were playing the Yankees back in Florida. But one of Lucas’s patients had gotten an infection that had to be treated before the surgery could go ahead and he’d slotted her dad’s operation into the resulting gap in his schedule.
She wanted him to sleep the night before he operated on her dad, not spend the night with her. Their nights were full of frantic, hungry, sex, both of them trying to chase their demons away, maybe, with the feel of the other. Hardly restful. She needed a good night’s sleep, too.
But despite the comforting weight of Dougal beside her, filling the space where she was used to Lucas being, it took her a long time to fall asleep.
The next morning Sara was gritty-eyed and nervous. She drove to her parents’ house to pick them up, and their trip from Staten into the city was largely silent. Her mom made a few attempts at chattiness before she gave up and subsided into quiet. Sean stared out the window, and Sara tried to concentrate on the early-morning traffic and getting them there in one piece.
Once Sean was settled in his room, Sara left in search of coffee.
Caffeine would only make her more jittery, but given a choice between jittery and facedown on the floor through lack of sleep, she was going to take jittery.
When she got back to the room, Lucas was with her dad. He looked grim and her dad was looking irritated.
“What’s up?” she asked, hurrying.
“Wonder boy here has to reschedule,” Sean said grumpily.
Her hand tightened abruptly around the takeout cup. “What? Why? Lucas?”
“I’m sorry,” Lucas said. “But something else has come up.”
“But Dad needs his surgery,” Sara said.
“Sara, it’s okay,” Liza said. “We can wait a few more days.”
“No,” Sara said, temper snapping. “Dad’s leg is important.”
“Sara—” Lucas started.
“I want you to fix his leg,” she said, feeling tears pricking in her eyes. Damn it. Her dad was important, not some lesser being to be shunted around just because some rich athlete had stubbed a big toe or something.
“I will fix his leg,” Lucas said. “Just not today.”
“Why not today?”
“Sara.” Lucas came across to her. “Why don’t we go talk about this outside?” He turned back to her dad. “One of the residents will be in to see you and work out the rescheduling. I’m sorry about this, Mr. Charles.”
Sean grunted and Lucas took Sara’s hand and led her out of the room. She shook him off, but he took it again and opened the door to an office a little way down the hallway, shutting it behind them.
“What’s going on? Dad needs that surgery.”
“There was an accident in Vero Beach,” Lucas said. His voice had gone flat. “Some of the guys were fooling around—they were goofing off. Tico climbed up on the roof above the announcer’s box. Sam climbed up after him, to get him to come down. But somehow Sam fell off. He’s fractured his shoulder. His
right
shoulder.”
Sam was right-handed. Fuck. But still Lucas was here, not there. And her dad was here, too.
“They have surgeons in Florida, don’t they?”
“I’m the team surgeon now,” Lucas said. “He’s being airlifted here.”
“So do my dad’s surgery now and then Sam’s when he gets here.”
“I can’t. I wouldn’t be finished in time. And I have to look at the scans the ER sent across, work out my plan of attack.”
“So Sam’s shoulder is more important than my dad’s leg?” Sara asked.
“His shoulder is his livelihood,” Lucas snapped. “He’s just starting out.”
“My dad’s leg is his livelihood,” she retorted. “He needs two good legs to fly. And he’s been waiting for nearly a year.”
“Which means he can wait a little longer.”
“No. What it means is potentially rich baseball star trumps boring old average helicopter pilot,” Sara snarled.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lucas said.
“I’m not being ridiculous. I’m right.”
“It wouldn’t matter who it was if their case was more urgent,” Lucas said. “I’m a surgeon, I have to prioritize.”
“And I’m not high on that list,” Sara said, realizing with a crack of her heart that it was true. For Lucas baseball and his medical practice trumped her. Trumped what they had.
He shook his head. “You’re being unreasonable.”
“Am I? Well, that’s too bad. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the man who’s in my bed every night to want to put me first.”
“Sam’s injury is new,” Lucas snapped. “Every minute makes a difference at this stage. Your dad is stable. A few days won’t make a difference.”
“They make a difference to me,” Sara said.
“I’m sorry, then,” Lucas said. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. I promise I’ll operate on Sean as soon as I can.”
“I’ll find another doctor,” she said.
“Another doctor will cost you about a hundred thousand dollars,” Lucas said. “I didn’t think you had that sort of cash.”
She stared up at him. “So I need you because of the money?”
“No.” His mouth twisted. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what is sounded like. Poor little Sara needs the big rich doctor to save her family. Well, guess what, Lucas. I can save myself. And you can find yourself a new pilot. And a new girl to rescue. I quit.”
His mouth was flat. “Actually I think you quit back in that ballroom. You let my mother scare you off. Funny, I always thought you were brave. That you wouldn’t let other people hold you back.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I just let them make me forget about reality sometimes. But now I remember.” She reached for the door handle. “I have to go. And so do you. Your priorities are waiting.”
“Sara, if you don’t at least pretend to eat I’m going to have to do something drastic,” Liza said three days later.
Sara looked up from the meat loaf she was pushing around her plate. “Sorry, Mom. It’s great. I’m just not that hungry.” But she made herself eat a forkful, which tasted pretty much like nothing, and forced it past the seemingly permanent lump in her throat, washing it down with water.
Across the table, her dad was frowning at her. “Have you heard from—”
“Sean, don’t,” Liza said sharply. “Sara said she didn’t want to talk about Lucas.”
“Sara’s being pigheaded,” Sean muttered, but he subsided without saying anything further. He’d been very quiet since they’d come back from the hospital without him having surgery. He didn’t seem angry, just quiet. Though apparently not quiet enough to keep his opinion about Lucas to himself.
Sara ate another bite then pushed her plate away. “I have to go, Mom. I need an early night.”
Yeah, that was a plan. Go to bed early so she could lie awake staring at the ceiling and replaying the fight with Lucas over and over again for even longer. But it was Monday tomorrow and she would have to go into Charles Air and start working on getting the A-Star fixed. There might be enough money from what she’d earned at the Saints in the last month or so to make a good chunk of down payment on the repairs, even if the insurance company wouldn’t come to the party.
If there it wasn’t enough, then she’d just find another job and save until there was.
And then there was the fun task of finding a new surgeon for her dad. So far every orthopedic surgeon in Manhattan and the whole damned state seemed to be booked up for months. No one could even see her dad for a consult.
So she would start trying out of state if she had to.
She drove home with Dougal and gave him his last walk of the day. He looked almost as dejected as she felt. Every time there were footsteps in the hallway, he went to the door and stood there wagging his tail hopefully, obviously waiting for Lucas.