Lydia Lane. Judith Bowen
who kept an eye on his bike for him when he came to the Y. Sam always dropped him a twenty, which made for expensive parking, but the kid needed the cash. Now he had to get Amber from the community center day camp. On the Harley. In zero-degree weather. Bad planning.
Sam sighed. Candace was right; he could use some organization in his life. A sense of order and what had Lydia Lane called it? Oh, yeah—sanctuary.
THE DAY AFTER the television show, on the way back from finishing the industrialist’s closets, Lydia peered into her mailbox at the entrance of the converted warehouse building that housed her loft. Aha! Letters.
She opened the brass wicket and pulled out three cards, two flyers and a nice fat envelope from Wolverine Productions. Finally!
She ripped open the envelope and scanned the contents. Bull’s-eye—they wanted to rent her loft for six weeks. The contract was enclosed, if she was still interested.
Was she! Her new loft was a big financial worry. And now the van’s horrible engine noises were giving her heart failure, plus it had stalled twice in the last week. It was still at the garage and she’d put off calling to find out what was wrong. She didn’t want to know. Bad news, for sure.
She’d bought the loft on impulse last summer, unable to resist the location or the price, but her finances weren’t really solid enough to take on a big mortgage. Then there were taxes and utilities and various property owners’ expenses she hadn’t really considered. She’d made all her mortgage payments so far—a thrill after so many years of pouring money into the black hole of rent—but she’d overstepped her meager decorating budget this fall and been forced to economize drastically at Christmas.
Right now, with the usual midwinter, post-Christmas slowdown, she couldn’t afford to spend much on the loft or—heaven forbid—major repairs to her vehicle. But neither could she bear to live with no closets, raw cement floors and uncurtained windows. She absolutely had to fix the van, if it was broken. She couldn’t conduct her business without it and she couldn’t afford a new one.
Two weeks before Christmas, a friend in the movie business had mentioned that Lydia’s loft was a perfect location for one of her clients, and last week someone from Wolverine Productions had come around.
Now they were offering big bucks to take over her loft for a month, possibly six weeks. With the money, Lydia could fix up the apartment the way she wanted. It was terribly tempting. Her friend had told her that any improvements the movie people made you could keep if you wanted. Like paint, carpets, drapes. Even furniture. Whatever wasn’t rented, they’d sell you for almost nothing.
Lydia hurried to the elevator. The big drawback all along had been where she’d stay while the movie was being filmed. She’d tested the waters with her mother, but the invitation had been very reluctantly extended. Marcia Lane had a new boyfriend and Lydia knew she wasn’t keen on reminding him that no matter how fun and frisky she was, she was still on the far side of fifty and had a daughter of twenty-eight to prove it.
There was the possibility of using Charlotte’s place while she and her new husband were away on their honeymoon for three weeks, but that wasn’t long enough. She’d have to find a second place if the movie people wanted her loft for the full six weeks. Zoey? Maybe. Now, with the possibility of a longer job coming through for her…
Lydia punched the elevator button again.
Sam Pereira. After all these years.
Somehow she’d known he’d end up married to am airhead. It was justice, really. Lydia stared at the big steel doors as they slowly opened. Her loft was on the third floor. She hadn’t let on to Candace Downing, of course, but Lydia knew very well who Sam T. Pereira was.
And the T standing for trouble? He wasn’t far off.
She’d met Sam Pereira when she was fifteen. Chubby, naive, painfully shy and…well, fifteen. Her brother Steve had already graduated and was working at a menswear store, a job he hated. He’d been scouted for football in high school—as had Sam, Lydia found out later—but Steve’s marks weren’t good enough and the scholarship offer had been rescinded. Instead, he’d lived at home, worked out at Guido’s Gym and dreamed of being scouted by the CFL in a trans-city league game. Mostly, Lydia knew, he wished he had the money for a big, noisy motorcycle like the one Sam Pereira had.
Sam Pereira was hot. Hot, hot, hot. There was just no other word for it. He was tough and handsome. Tall, dark-haired, brown-eyed, with a sexy smile and a body hard as a rock, not that Lydia had ever felt any of it. But she could guess. He wore jeans and sunglasses and black T-shirts with the sleeves torn off. He swaggered, and women loved him. Even her mother giggled and got rosy-cheeked when Sam came to the house with Steve. He was always full of compliments for her hairdo, her taste in clothes and decor.
Like Steve, Sam was an athlete. But instead of playing football after high school, Sam worked in a garage and concentrated on boxing, of all things. Lydia and her friends didn’t know anything about boxing except that it was an icky, stinky, sweaty sport where guys wearing baggy shorts bashed away at each other until one fell down or one was declared a winner. According to Steve, the judges were all on the take. So why did they do it?
Lydia and her group sometimes used to skip school on Fridays and take the streetcar to Guido’s Gym on Fisher Street to watch the matches when Steve or Sam was fighting. They were all in love with Sam Pereira. Exhibition matches were free, and Lydia thought that was because the gym was just glad to get a few spectators. She and her friends would each buy a hot dog and a soft drink and stand on the sidelines and scream and yell like the rest of the crowd, most of them men. If Steve happened to spot them, he’d always make a big fuss, send them home and warn her he’d tell their parents if Lydia came to Guido’s again. It was no place for a girl, he insisted.
Early that spring, goaded by her best friend, Carly Dombrowski, Lydia wrote a note asking Sam if he’d escort her to a Valentine’s school dance, a fund-raiser for the graduation festivities planned in June. Lydia thought it was a good thing. She knew that lots of past graduates of Selkirk High were attending the fund-raiser. Why not Sam Pereira?
She’d written the note—on pink, scented notepaper, she recalled, to her endless embarrassment—because she couldn’t bear to speak to him in person, even though he was a regular at their house. She was too shy, and what if he turned her down? A note was easier. If he didn’t want to go with her, he could write her back. No one needed to know.
The big mistake was giving it to Steve to deliver. Steve, of course, read it. He was furious with Lydia and reamed her out for being sex-crazed. A ludicrous accusation, since she was fifteen and planned to remain a virgin until marriage. He said she was just a baby in ninth grade, way too young for his friend—who had to be all of about nineteen or twenty—and too bold and too dumb and too just-about-everything-else. She’d yelled back that this was just a stupid dance they were talking about; she wasn’t asking Sam Pereira to marry her. She’d screamed and wept and complained to their mother—who’d put her fingers in her ears, Lydia remembered—and then ran to her bedroom, slamming the door so hard it nearly popped off the hinges. She’d cried herself to sleep.
Rather suddenly, Sam had disappeared from her life. Steve told her he’d gotten a job in Montreal, at an athletic club, which, she knew, was guy-talk for another seedy gym. Lydia always wondered if Steve had told Sam about her note. Surely not. What would be the point? At the time, Lydia hadn’t understood the reason for Steve’s behavior.
Later, when rumors about Sam’s escapades in Montreal and elsewhere penetrated their neighborhood, she began to understand. Steve obviously knew his friend a lot better than Lydia did. She’d certainly never heard that Sam had cleaned up his act and gone to law school and become a responsible citizen. What she’d heard was that he was always in and out of trouble—with the law, with women, with ex-girl-friends, with the shadowy figures who frequented the clubs and boxing world. He lived on the edge, no matter where he was.
By the time she graduated herself, Lydia had much more sympathy for her brother’s reaction. No way did Steve Lane want his little sister mixed up with the likes of his best