talk. She’ll blow anything with a zipper, and her behavior last night was the farthest thing from
classy.”
“I don’t like her.”
“Yeah, well, neither do I.”
She smiled. “Really?”
“Really. There’s no way I’ll put up with someone talking to you like that or making you feel like
you aren’t good enough.”
His words made her feel vindicated. A smile split her face, then faltered. “Shit.”
“What?”
“She said something last night, but I can’t remember what. Lucian, she knows about Pearl.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, but she also knows I go by Scout.”
He shook his head. “She won’t tell anyone.”
“Wanna bet? She basically threatened to do exactly that.”
“She threatened you?”
Scout flinched at the lash of his voice. “Yes.”
“Motherfucker,” he hissed. He turned away and paced. “Fucking people! I swear everyone is out for
blood. Evelyn, I promise you’ll never have to deal with that woman again. Son of a bitch.” Clearly
preoccupied with his own take on the previous evening, he ran his hand through his hair and walked
out of the bedroom mumbling. He came back in and said, “Take a shower and get dressed. We’ll talk
more about this after I make a phone call.”
He left her there, wrapped up like Stay-puft, holding her clothes. “Jeez, bossy much?”
After showering and dressing, Scout felt a world better. Her head still throbbed with a dull ache, but
the painkillers were kicking in and the shower helped clear her mind.
It was strange being back in the penthouse. She knew where everything was and there were
remnants of her there. Lucian still had her toothbrush sitting right next to his. Maybe he was being
honest when he said he always expected her to come home.
Padding into the common area, Scout found him sitting on the couch watching some boring broker
thing on CNN. He smiled and held his arm out to her. She went to him and froze. What was she doing?
He frowned. “Come sit with me.”
Her fingers rubbed slowly over her thumbs. It was weird being there and not being there as his
lover. She could so easily fall back into the old swing of things. “I better not.”
“Evelyn—”
“Lucian, I can’t. Please understand that. I just . . . can’t.”
He shut off the television and stood. At the table in the corner he plucked the metal lid off the plate and tossed it aside carelessly, letting it clatter against the other dishes on the table. “Eat your
breakfast.”
He was angry. Well, what did he expect? Last night she hadn’t been thinking clearly. It didn’t
change anything.
She walked to the table and took a seat. He sat across from her, but didn’t touch his food. The
French toast at Patras was her favorite. Raphael, the chef, made homemade cream like nothing she’d
ever tasted. Then there were the strawberries, floating in their own juicy sugar . . .
“I want to know what made you go there last night. You said you wanted to see Nicole. Why?”
She chewed slowly and put down her fork. “Are we really going to talk about this?”
“Why the hell wouldn’t we? You tell me to move on. I can’t, but I do my best to look like I am and
you suddenly show up with some date and crash a party you’d never normally attend.”
“Who says? I could be a huge Rose Bowl fan.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What’s a Rose Bowl, Evelyn?”
She grimaced. “A tournament in gardening?”
“No. It’s a football game played at the beginning of the year. This year’s players were honored last
night for Folsom U.”
“Oh. Well, I felt like being philanthropic.”
“Can we please stop playing games and try for some honesty?”
She pursed her lips. She didn’t want to do honesty. Honesty meant being honest with herself, and
she was doing much better lying to herself lately. Her head still ached and she was tired despite just
waking up, tired of everything.
“Talk to me, Evelyn.”
Several long moments of silence passed and she finally whispered. “I never had anything, but I
thought I had you, and losing you was just too much to bear.”
The confession should have made him grateful. It was headway, but his expression crumbled. “I’m
sorry,” he said in a hoarse voice.
Time passed where neither of them seemed to know what to say next. Finally, Lucian asked. “If we
could go back, would you?”
Impossible. “You can’t take away the past.”
“But I can give you all of my future. I wanted to, but you said no.”
She recalled the night he proposed, how desperate he seemed. It all made sense now. She’d started
the process of moving on. She had a plan. Lucian was a liability to her sanity. She never had someone
get so deep inside of her that she couldn’t think. He did. He touched places she never knew existed.
She stood. “The answer’s still no.”
His jaw locked. He’d shown restraint in the past few days that had boggled her mind. Lucian had
never in his life been told no or that he couldn’t have something, yet she’d told him nothing but no