Impossible Things (22 page)

She looked around her, at the cars rushing by and at the houses with their lit windows with lives going on behind them and gathered her courage. “Would you like to go for a walk with me?”

He hesitated before replying and then asked, “A walk?”

“Yes. Just a walk, nothing more. I want us to walk and to talk. Are you willing?”

“Yes. Do I come pick you up?”

“No. It’s a walk. I’ll meet you at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. Ten minutes?”

He sounded hesitant but he said, “Okay.”

She hung up before she could change her mind.

She got to the pond before he did and sat down on a bench to watch the sunset. Her hands were shaking and it was from more than the cold, she was nervous. Without sex, would they have anything at all in common? Their lives were so vastly different that she didn’t think so, but she had to make sure. She wasn’t going to allow herself to fall for him just because the sex had been so good. She was a modern woman and she was smarter than that. When the sex tampered off in a relationship, you needed something else to sustain the connection.

“Hi.”

She turned and there he was. He was dressed casually, in dark jeans, a t-shirt and a black leather jacket. The scruff on his face wasn’t for fashion, he looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days and there were dark circles under his green eyes.

“Hi,” she said and stood up.

Now that he was there her nerves kicked into high gear and she had to wipe her hands on her jeans.

“You want to walk?” he asked and she nodded and went around the bench towards him.

They walked in silence and soon the park was dark around them. She hadn’t picked the best place to walk she realized and she apologized to him but he shrugged it off. After a few minutes the pathway turned to stone and that section had lights along it. She realized that she would have to be the one to say something since she was the one who had invited him.

‘I wanted us to talk.”

He turned and looked at her, “About?”

She cleared her throat and then said, “About us.”

She gestured at him and then back at herself. “We don’t really know each other. We’ve had sex but I don’t know you. I feel like I’ve had longer conversations with my dentist.”

He smiled at that and her heart flipped in her chest.

“I feel as if I know you,” he said, “But I had the advantage.”

She shook her head at him. “No, you know what my grandmother’s told you about me, wh
at she heard from a private detective, that’s not me. Just like the things that Rodrigo has said about you, don’t tell me who you are.”

He stopped and turned to her. “What’s he said about me?”

She stopped and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter Lucas! That’s what I’m talking about. I want to know you from you, and I want you to know me from me. Wouldn’t you like that as well?”

Their eyes met and she felt the spark that had been there from the first moment that they had laid eyes on each other, but she wanted more than that. She wanted to look into his eyes and know who he was, not just what he was like in bed.

She saw the desire in his eyes and she looked away and started walking again. He soon caught up.

“So how do we do this?” he asked.

“We talk, just like you would on a normal date,” she said.

He laughed, and shocked her when he said, “I don’t date.”

It was her turn to stop and look at him. “What do you mean?”

He smiled. “I haven’t been on a date in eight years. I don’t date. I meet women, and if I like them I go to bed with them and then we go our separate ways.”

“Don’t they mind?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I tell them in the beginning that I’m not looking for anything but sex. I’m completely honest with them.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Now I see why Rodrigo was worried about me.”

Lucas put his hands in his jean pockets and started walking. “I can understand
why he’s worried,” he said. “I don’t have a track record for sticking around, but it still hurts a little that he feels that way.”

She was more curious by what he’d said then upset and she wanted to understand him so she asked, “How many
women have there been and how do you meet them?”

He shrugged again. “I don’t keep track. It’s not a contest and I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t sleep with women to add notches to my bed Lucy. Either I already know them or we meet and I’m attracted to them so we sleep together.”

“Like it was with me.”

He shook his head. ‘No. You were never like that.”

She didn’t say anything to that, instead she asked another question. “Do you take them out to dinner? Get to know them at all?”

He smiled. “No. The majority of women that I sleep with I know socially, and they want the same thing that I want-sex without strings.”

Sex without strings, the same thing that she thought she had with him. Somehow it how drifted into more than that without her even knowing it.

“Why is that all you want from them?”

He rubbed his face and she heard the scratchy sound from his hand rubbing across his stubble. It sent shivers down her spine and she fought not to show him. Such a simple thing shouldn’t make her want to jump him, but it did.

He answered her question with one of his own. “Are we getting to know one another or are you psychoanalyzing me?”

She laughed. “Isn’t it the same thing?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to teach me.”

That made her nipples hard. She would have to teach him, the way that he had taught her in bed. She slapped his arm. “Stop procrastinating already and answer the question,” she said.

He took a few minutes to answer and she was quiet, allowing him time to think.

“When my dad died I felt as if my world was torn apart. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to handle it, but watching what it did to my mom was worse. He was her everything. They were more than husband and wife and lovers, they were friends. Even as a kid I recognized that. When he died it left a hole in her heart that she’s never been able to fill.”

“So you didn’t want to love someone only to lose them and feel that way.”

He shrugged and she recognized in it an unwillingness to talk about himself. Whenever she asked him something that touched too close to the bone he tried to shrug it off, but she wasn’t going to let him.

“So you vowed to never let anyone close after that.”

The lights were brighter than before because they were now on the High Street and as they passed shop windows the lights illuminated his face for a few seconds before they stepped once more into the shadows.

“It wasn’t a set-in-stone vow. I didn’t acknowledge it
even to myself. I just never let anyone get close.”

She stopped walking. She was out of the light, in the shadow between stores
, but he was standing in front of the window of a florist. The soft green light illuminated him. “Why me?”

She saw the vulnerability in his face as he said, “
The little girl in the pictures looked as lonely as I felt as a kid.”

She wanted to pull him to her at that but she resisted the impulse. “Maybe that
really wasn’t why you wanted me. Maybe it was because I wasn’t available. I was in America and you were here. There was very little chance of our ever meeting. Maybe you thought you fell in love because I was safe to love.”

He took a step towards her and one side of his face was
thrown into shadow as he asked, “You don’t think that I know what I feel?”

She grabbed his hand, “I think you’re a lonely man who’s tired of it but you’re too scared to fall in love with someone available.”

“You are available Lucy Jacobs. You’re standing in front of me right now and I can do this-“

H
e leaned down and kissed her. His tongue touched the corner of her mouth and unable to stop herself she opened her mouth for him. He tasted as good as she remembered, and when his arms came out and pulled her to him she went. His hands reached back and cupped her butt, pulling her up on her toes, and angling his mouth.

It was a struggle, but one that she finally won, as she pushed away from him and stepped back. “Don’t do that,” she said. “You have to promise not to touch me again. Otherwise I’ll go home.”

He sighed and she saw his hands start to reach for her but he pulled them back and instead ran them through his hair. It stood on end and she reached up and smoothed it down. ‘No kissing. Okay?”

He nodded and they started walking again.

“I understand that you’re nervous Lucy, that you don’t think you can trust me…tell me what I can do to earn your trust.”

“This,” she said, “This is what you can do. Talk to me, share with me. Let me know who you are.”

He stopped and held out his hand to her. Gingerly, not knowing what he meant to do, she took it and he shook her hand. “Hi, I’m Lucas Antonelli. I’m thirty-three, single, and a Capricorn. My favorite color is blue-the exact blue of your eyes as a matter of fact. I like sex, food and fast cars, in that exact order. I don’t like to do dishes, and I hate making my bed. Life is short so I’d much rather go out and have fun. I was raised a Catholic but haven’t been to church since my dad died. I love my mother and I love Rodrigo like a brother. I’ve always wanted a dog but my mom was allergic and I think about getting one at least four times a month but never do.”

She laughed and he leaned forward and whispered, “And I think you’re laugh is fast becoming my favorite thing in the world.”

She felt herself blush and she pulled back her hand. He was always gorgeous but when he turned on the charm he was lethal.

They started walking again and she asked, “Did you wash those forks like you said you would?”

He laughed. “Yes Ma’am, I did. I always do what I promise. That’s why I’ve never promised anything to the women before you.”

She shook her head. He had to stop saying things like that or she was in danger of forgoing the getting to know him part and jump back into bed with him.

They walked for another hour as he told her about growing up between Italy and London, and then he talked about his dad and his mom. She didn’t interrupt him with questions, she wanted to let him talk and he did. He told her about the first time he had sex, he was fifteen and it was with an older woman.

She laughed at his stories and tried not to cry as he described his life after his dad’s death. She thought she saw the real, unguarded Lucas
, when he told her stories about his dad. She could imagine him as a small boy looking up to the dad that he loved so much.

They walked and talked until her stomach started growling. She stopped in front of a fast food burger joint, an American import, and asked him if he had ever eaten there. She wasn’t surprised when he said no. They went in and ordered and she refused to let him pay. It wasn’t much at all, but for once she wanted to be the one treating him.

They sat in a booth, surrounded by noisy teenagers and neon lights and she told him about her life, from her perspective. He asked her questions about things that the private detective had reported to her grandmother and she found herself queasy with the idea that for so many years she had been watched by a stranger and had never known it.

The one thing they hadn’t talked about was Sam. Lucy knew that she didn’t want to put it off anymore so she blurted out. “I’ve called off the wedding.”

He looked down at the table and picked up his shake to take a sip before asking, “Was it because of me?”

“Partly, but not all of it.”

Still not looking at her he said, “I’m not sorry. I am sorry if I hurt you, or if I caused you pain, but I’m not sorry that you’re not going to marry him. Every time I thought about you marrying him I felt sick.”

He looked up finally and met her eyes. She looked back and knew
that she had to tell him all of it. “You made me realize that I wanted more than he could give me, and I don’t mean money.”

He nodded, and she continued, “Thanks to you, and to my grandmother and Rodrigo I began to see that I was with him because he was safe. I was too afraid to try for what I really wanted.”

“What do you want?”

She smiled. She hadn’t been embarrassed to admit it to Rodrigo but she felt hesitant in telling Lucas. “I want excitement. I want adventure. I want romance and sex and…and foreign men. I want jewels and clothes and champagne at dawn as the sun
comes up over the Nile.”

She realized that she sounded like a little girl, like the little girl she had once been
, as she told him what she wanted in an eager, excited voice. She was excited because she once again let her imagination run wild and dream of impossible things.

They stayed out walking and talking until almost Midnight when he walked her home. She was glad she’d called him, glad that she had decided to get to know him. At the door he asked her if he could kiss her, but she said no. She felt as disappointed as he looked but she had to try and separate her sexual feelings for him from everything else and when he touched her it became impossible.