8. Brooke
8
brOOKE
Damnation, that bike ride really took it out of me.
I work out, thanks to Lucas’s obsessive insistence that everyone at his office hit the gym, but two hours of bike riding is a lot more than I’m used to. My legs feel wobbly, and now we have to walk up Main Street to find Serena.
Freaking stubborn-ass Lucas.
Lucas, who secretly looks out for me far more than I ever knew.
I don’t know how to react to this new knowledge, which is smudging the portrait I’ve painted of him. Angry, ungrateful, impatient, judgmental, views people as objects he can keep or toss aside depending on whether they’re useful to him... and my secret protector? Does not compute.
It reminds me of the rare times I’ve seen him relax a little bit. When we’re not in the office—like some client outing he inevitably drags me along on—and the scowl that’s stamped onto his forehead melts away for a minute and he’s suddenly hauntingly beautiful, like a nineteenth-century poet, and I can’t stop looking at the curve of his upper lip...
“Hey, there, you two!” Brenda, the waitress from Velma’s, has just emerged from a clothing shop, and she waves at us. She’s just about the only person in town who’s not hostile to Lucas-slash-Jasper Whitfield. I don’t think she’s got a mean bone in her body.
With a cheerful smile, she walks over to our bench and takes a seat next to me.
“Did you two have fun on your bike ride?” she asks, nodding at our bikes, which are leaning on the bench.
“Fun is not how I’d describe it,” Lucas says sourly.
“Nice to see you again. Not working today?” I ask Brenda.
“No, I have the day off.” She smiles broadly. “Heaven.”
“Yeah, your boss is kind of a . . .”
“An angry jerk?”
I make a sour face. “That’s putting it nicely.”
She nods, smiling ruefully. “He is. He wasn’t always like this. His wife died in her sleep a couple of years ago—she had some weird undiagnosed heart condition—and then his mother passed away, and he just got more and more bitter, and he takes it out on everyone around him.”
“So why don’t you quit? There are a lot of shops on Main Street.” Probably too many for a town this size, but they all seem to have plenty of business. Green Acres rules are different than normal world rules.
Brenda sighs. “There are, but not a lot of job openings. I get good tips at the restaurant, sometimes. I’m saving up to move. I’d like to open up a custom dress shop. I’m thinking of moving to Richmond.”
So they have Richmond, Virginia, here just like back in the real world. Interesting.
“How would you get there?” Lucas demands.
“Richmond? I’d borrow a friend’s car, I guess.” She gives him a puzzled look. “Why?”
“Could you get us a car?”
I shake my head. He’s stubborn as a mule. He needs to accept that this town isn’t going to let us go until it’s good and ready.
Brenda frowns in thought. “Well, ordinarily yes, but I can’t think of anyone off-hand right now. Maybe in a few weeks. My friend Deborah is taking a round-the-world cruise, Lainey is on her honeymoon, JoBeth is visiting family.”
“What a coincidence,” Lucas says sourly.
“I guess?” She looks puzzled.
“Wouldn’t you miss all of your friends if you moved?” I ask Brenda.
She nods. “I sure would. I mean, I’ve thought of staying here and doing the costume design for the theater, but the theater is probably going to get torn down, and anyway, I just feel like... like nothing’s happening here.” There’s a little bit of a sad look on her face, and I think I might know why.
“Say, who was that police officer at the diner?” I ask. “The one who keeps looking at you?”
She flashes me a startled look. “Officer Hernandez? Miguel? Oh, he’s a friend of my older brother’s. You remember Christopher? I think he was a year ahead of you in high school.”
“Baseball player?” I blurt out, and I’m not sure how I knew that.
“Yes.” She nods and smiles. “Chris is on a minor league team now. He lives in Seattle, but he still comes home to visit sometimes. He and Miguel are still tight.” Her smile turns rueful. “Miguel just thinks I’m an annoying little pest. I always used to tag along after him and my brother when we were kids.”
Aha!
The plot thickens. Literally. My book is vibrating in my purse.
I glance at Lucas. “What?” he says. Of course. He doesn’t understand romance novels like I do. Serena would have lit up like a candle if she were here .
“I’ll explain later,” I tell him. I can’t talk about how Brenda’s character contributes to the book until she leaves, because it’ll make me sound cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
“Oh, there’s my friend Viola. We’re going fabric shopping.” Brenda leaps to her feet. “See you guys at the meeting tonight.” She hurries off towards a young woman who’s waving at Brenda from down the block.
“Does your friend have a car?” Lucas yells after her.
“Give it up.” I stand up and toss my empty cup into the trash.
“Lucas Sheffield is not a quitter. Also, why were you looking at me like something significant happened? What did Brenda say? Anything useful?”
“Maybe. I want to float this idea past Serena first. You’re just going to give me a hard time.”
“Who, me? When have I ever given you a hard time?” Lucas smiles sardonically.
“Every day that ends with a Y.”
“Well, true, but the rest of the time I’m an absolute sweetheart.”
We leave our bicycles parked next to the bench and meander up the street, heading towards the Come On Inn.
“My legs hurt,” I inform him.
“Yes, you’ve mentioned that several times.”
As we walk, several townspeople salute us with a single middle finger. A car drives by us, and the man that Lucas dubbed Homicidal Henry leans out and shouts, “Traitor! Your parents would be ashamed of you,” at me. “Their only dream was that you’d come back home and keep the theater going. And now you’re in bed with the one man who’s going to destroy their dream!”
“Info-dumpy,” I whisper. “Also, not strictly accurate. I’m not in bed with anyone.”
We pause at the McGillicuddy Theater, which has a sign advertising its upcoming play, Romeo and Juliet . “Maybe I will go and check it out tomorrow.”
“You think we’ll still be here tomorrow?” Lucas groans.
“I think we’ll get out of here eventually, if we do what we need to do. But yes, I think we’ll be here tomorrow. I do think it’s going to take a few weeks to work through all the plot points.” Panic twists my insides at the thought, but I stuff it down. We’ll get out of here, we’ll go home, and we’ll find a way to fix everything. There are no other options.
“Everyone back home must be freaking out.” He makes a sour face. “I wonder if my dad is actually worried or just angry.”
That’s a weird thing to wonder about. What parent wouldn’t be worried out of their mind if their kid disappeared?
I wish I knew what the deal was with the two of them. When he gets phone calls from his father, his whole body gets tense and he always asks me to leave the room. A few times I’ve overheard him on the phone, saying “Dad! Your blood pressure!” Things never seem good between them.
As for my parents, I can’t even bear to think about what my mother will be going through once Tara calls her to say I never came home from work on Friday, so I stuff it in the back of my mind and just focus on doing what we can to get out of here.
If I think about it too hard, I’m going to cry, and that won’t help anything.
Damn it, now my eyes are burning. I blink as hard as I can.
The Come On Inn is right up ahead. In daylight, I can admire the lush greenery surrounding the large property that it sits on, the old-growth trees, several of which have swings, and the creek in the back, which leads off to Loon Lake.
As we approach the inn, the door opens and Serena walks out, wearing a leopard print shirtdress with black heels and a stylish black hobo bag slung over her shoulder. She crosses the porch and comes down the steps to meet us .
“I saw you through the window,” she said. “I thought you’d be back sooner, honestly. You must have been biking for hours.”
“Hey, do you know how to say ‘stubborn ass’ in sign language, by any chance?” I shoot Lucas a look of annoyance. “I remember one of your books had a deaf heroine.”
Serena makes a couple of gestures with her hands. “There you go,” she says.
I repeat it, and she nods approvingly. “I can teach you to swear in sign language if you like.”
“Hey, do you know how to say ‘your Christmas bonus is at risk’ in English? Don’t bother with the sign language,” Lucas snarks at me.
Serena smirks. “Thanks for the free dialogue. I’ll jot it down later. Where are your bicycles, by the way?”
Lucas glowers. “Down the street. We’ll get them tomorrow. Or never. What good are they anyway? The hell with them.”
Well, someone’s in a mood.
We stroll over to a bench that sits near a stone fountain where a fish is spitting a stream of water and sit down. “Can I see your book?” Serena asks.
I pull it from my purse and hand it to her. More chapters have filled in. “Coming along nicely,” she nods. “Brenda and the cop. Yep, that tracks.”
I glance at her. “So, I’m guessing that part of our storyline is that we have to help Brenda and the police officer get together?”
“What?” Lucas says indignantly. “Oh, come on!”
“Exactly,” Serena says. “I also feel like the owner of the coffee shop is part of the story. Not sure how, yet, but he’s such a bastard that I feel he needs to be redeemed by the end.”
“Well, he does have a bit of a backstory. So Brenda and Theodore—those are the the B-line stories,” I muse. I glance at Lucas. “You and me are the A-line story. The B-line stories are stories of the supporting cast. We don’t spend as much time on them, but they are stories that help flesh out our own characters, give us more depth, and show what kind of people we are by the way we interact with the people around us.”
“Is that going to mean we’re stuck here for even longer?” Lucas glares at me like it’s my fault that stories are written the way they are.
“No, the plot lines all kind of flow together. Anyway, moving on. What have you got for us? Any more ideas, anything specific to help us?” I ask Serena.
She reaches into her bag and pulls out a folder. She opens it and hands me a sheet of notebook paper. She’s made a list.
“We’ve already taken care of the first few chapters. Right now, you’re in the getting-to-know-each-other section of the book.”
She starts pointing at items on her list.
“You’re going to have to have dinner together somewhere, have a real talk about each other’s lives, and start to see the other person for who they really are.”
“Ugh,” I say automatically. “I mean, I can’t wait.”
“Deeply hurtful,” Lucas scoffs. “And I already know everything about Brooke. We spend twelve hours a day together. So we can skip that section.”
“Twelve hours a day? Workaholic trope,” Serena nods.
“Enough with the tropes! Just tell us how to get out of here.” Lucas’s voice rises the way it always does when he gets frustrated.
“I am trying to tell you in great detail, if you’d just pull your head out of your ass long enough to listen.”
Despite how stressed I’m feeling, I laugh out loud, which earns me a dirty look from Lucas. I’m sorry, but it’s refreshing to see someone—other than me—who doesn’t tiptoe around in fear of Lucas’s wrath.
“And you don’t really know her all the way through. You don’t know her soul. What’s her favorite color?” Serena demands.
“Turquoise,” he says triumphantly.
Wow. My eyes widen in surprise. I did not know he knew that about me.
“Favorite food? No, that’s too easy. I’m sure you see what food she orders at the office, since she’s basically your prisoner there.”
“Hey!” he says indignantly. “Prisoners don’t get paid.”
Serena rolls her eyes. “Sure, sure, whatever helps you sleep at night. What’s her favorite movie?”
Lucas hesitates.
“Any 1950s or 1960s musical,” I say. “But he wouldn’t know because we don’t talk about my personal life, because I don’t have one, because, you know, work. ”
Lucas narrows his eyes at me. “Stop making me sound like such a bastard.”
“If the Italian loafer fits,” I sniff.
“And stop dissing my Italian loafers. They’re very comfortable.” They should be; they’re handmade for him and flown in from a shop in Milan.
“Anyway, so what, I don’t know what movies she likes. I know her dress size and what kind of clothes she likes to wear. I know what she likes to eat and drink. I know she has terrible taste in books.” He narrows his eyes at Serena, whose lip curls in contempt. Cheap shot. “I know how smart and capable she is, how good she is with people, how she’s the perfect counterpoint to me because she humanizes me and our last few deals wouldn’t have gone through without her because I can be a little, well, demanding at times, and some people find it off-putting.”
I take a step backwards, my eyes like saucers.
Do I need Q-tips? Did I hear what I just heard ?
Before we got hit by lightning, Lucas never once gave me a compliment. Not in two years.
He expected me to give 120 percent, I gave 150 percent, and it still never felt like enough.
I never felt like enough.
“That’s a good start. We already know she’s great at her job. Now stop making it about you and what she can do for you,” Serena says to him.
Instead of snapping at her, he nods thoughtfully. “You’re not wrong. I know that she’s got a wicked sense of humor and she’s fearless and loyal. I know she likes to sketch.” He gives me a look. “Don’t think I haven’t seen those caricatures you drew of me.”
The little devil horn guys I sketched on takeout food napkins?
I smile sweetly and pretend to fan myself. “Why, I do declare. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“And I know that she likes mid-century modern décor. I can tell by the knickknacks she has on her desk. And I know she loves her parents.”
“That’s a good start,” Serena concedes.
A good start? It’s amazing. Every word he says is a revelation. I had no idea he noticed so much about me. “What are her hopes and dreams? What does she want to do once she leaves your company?” Serena continues.
“Leaves my company?” Lucas glares at her. “Why would she leave my company?”
Serena gives him an impatient look. “She doesn’t want to spend her whole life in your shadow.”
“Well, she . . . I . . .” he splutters. “It’s a very well-paid shadow.”
“Theater,” I sigh. “I love creating theater backdrops. Anyway, it’s not a big deal. I still paint and sketch at home. Well, I used to when I had the energy. I’m sure I will again.” I’m not sure.
“Anyway, moving on,” Serena says. “So, number one. You need to have a getting-to-know-each-other dinner, where you start seeing each other in a new light.”
She points at the next item on the list. “Number two. You need to go do some project together and then you kiss or make out and then pull apart because you’re both too stubborn to see the obvious—that you’re perfect for each other.”
“Do I get a say in this?” I ask.
“Number three. You each need to keep working towards your external goal, which will change before the end of the story. Lucas is working towards destroying downtown, and Susie is working on saving it.”
“I love how I’m cast in this story. I just can’t get enough of it.” Lucas smiles sardonically at Serena.
“Number four. Sex scene. Sorry, it’s mandatory for a Serena Lovelace book. Don’t worry; it will happen naturally. You’ll need a couple of scenes, at the right moment.”
My face instantly heats up and I know I’m bright red. I look away, staring at anything but Lucas. Well, at least he hasn’t exclaimed out loud in utter disgust, so there’s that.
“Would you consider making this one a clean romance?” I ask hopefully.
“Can’t. It’s not my jam, and this universe knows it. Number five. You pull apart because you’ve both freaked each other out and you’re still not ready. You keep working towards your separate, incompatible goals. Number six, love scene number two. Number seven, big obstacle comes up, and then we have the all-is-lost moment. Hero and heroine separate, and everything falls apart.”
“Fun,” Lucas observes dryly. “Why, for the sake of argument, must this happen?”
Serena gives him an impatient look. “Every story needs conflict. Moving on. Number eight, you overcome the obstacles. Number nine, happy ever after.”
“But we’re really not compatible,” I protest faintly. “I’m fairly sure there’s never been a successful android-human marriage.”
Lucas just shakes his head at me.
She shrugs. “You’re also not really Susie McGillicuddy. It doesn’t matter; just go through the motions.”
I sigh in defeat. “Is there a certain number of chapters we need?”
“No, each story beat takes a few chapters, but it could be between two and four.”
Lucas opens his mouth.
“Don’t say it,” I order him. “Don’t argue; don’t try to use logic. Nothing about this is logical. What it is, is... magic. We follow the rules, we get to go home.”
“Please do,” Serena says in exasperation. “I don’t want to be here either. I have deadlines to meet, a book to write, I’ve got... plants.” Her face falls a little bit as she says that, and I suddenly feel bad for her. She’s a mega-successful author. She’s made so many people happy with her books, she’s achieved success that most authors only dream of.
She should have more waiting for her back home than a begonia.
“See you at the meeting,” she adds, and she gets up and heads back to the inn.
We sit there in awkward silence. Conflict, I can do with my eyes shut and both hands tied behind my back. Lucas and I clash all the time.
The other stuff . . .
“Um. Do we want to address the elephant in the room?” Lucas finally asks.
“If you’re talking about the, uh, graphic elements here...” I gesture at the list. “Okay, the sex scenes... obviously that’s not going to happen. I don’t care what Serena says; this can be a clean romance. We’ll just progress through the story, and we’ll be fine.”
“Sure.” Lucas doesn’t look convinced.
“Anyway...” I heave a sigh. “I guess we’ll head back to the Mcgillicuddys’ house for the next couple of hours. We both need a shower after that bike ride. And then we’ve got a public execution—I mean a town meeting—to go to.”