Resolved To. Carole Buck
guy who says his ideal girl is one who’ll put out, then turn into a sausage pizza? Well, I’m not laughing.”
“So, Mrs. Banks,” Chris murmured, brushing Lucy’s forehead with his lips. His hand skimmed lightly over her hip, triggering an echo of breath-stealing bliss.
Lucy snuggled close, planting a kiss on the ridge of his collarbone as she savored the strength of his encircling arms. She could feel the steady drumbeat of his heart. My husband, she thought proudly. This is my husband.
“So, Mr. Banks,” she returned after a few moments, relishing the words.
“How do you feel?”
A giggle tickled at the back of her throat. She released it, then replied, “Married.”
“Me, too.” Chris chuckled deep in his chest. The sound rumbled against her ear, stirring nerves that had just begun to settle.
“Do you like it?”
He turned his head slightly, a lock of light brown hair falling forward onto his brow. His gaze met hers. “More than I can say.”
They kissed. Slowly. Sweetly.
They kissed again. Still slowly. Still sweetly. But with a lick of heat beneath the sugar.
“Would madame care for a little liquid refreshment?” Chris eventually inquired. His skin was flushed, his voice a note or two lower than it had been the last time he spoke.
Lucy moistened her lips, enjoying the glinting response she saw in the depths of his hazel eyes. “Very much.”
He sat up, seemingly at ease with his nudity. She watched him pluck the champagne bottle from the silver bucket, then strip off the foil and undo the restraining twists of wire. He performed the movements with deft efficiency.
As he reached for the engraved crystal flutes, she levered herself up beside him. She saw one corner of his mobile mouth quirk as she draped the sheet around her. She supposed it was a bit late for modesty, given her wanton, wedded behavior of just a short time before. Still ...
“Chilly?” Chris teased, handing her the glasses.
“Not at the moment.” Her response was demure.
“Well, let me know if the situation changes.”
“And if it does?”
“Then I’ll find a way—” the cork succumbed to the pressure of his thumbs with a soft pop “—to get you warm again.”
Lucy extended the flutes. Forget warm, she thought, her fingers tightening on the fragile crystal stems. She was already feeling hot.
The wine poured out in a frothy stream, bubbles dancing in its pale depths like pinpoint jewels. Ice cubes clinked as Chris set the bottle back in the silver bucket. She gave him one of the glasses she was holding, her fingertips brushing his as they completed the handoff. The brief contact sent an electric tingle arrowing up her arm.
“To us?” he proposed huskily, his eyes steady on hers.
“To us,” she concurred.
They toasted and drank deeply. The sparkling wine danced down Lucy’s throat like liquid sunshine. It was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted.
“I think we should make a resolution,” she announced boldly when she lowered her glass. She’d never known such a sense of completeness.
“A resolution?”
“To live happily ever after.”
Chris smiled in a fashion that made her head start to spin. Her bloodstream seemed to be fizzing. “Together.”
“Abso—” she hiccuped “—lutely.”
Lucia Annette Banks—nee Falco—and Christopher Dodson Banks went their separate ways less than twelve months later.
One
“It’s not right, Lucy,” Tiffany Tarrington Toulouse declared, a combination of frustration and concern muting the usual sparkle in her pale gray eyes. “A lovely girl like you, spending New Year’s Eve alone. You did the same thing last year. And the year before that.”
Lucy Falco suppressed a sigh. She’d never told her colleagues at Gulliver’s Travels that the holiday under discussion had very bittersweet associations for her. Although nearly everyone in the office was vaguely aware that she’d gone through a divorce about a decade ago, she’d avoided offering any concrete details about her marriage or the bustup that had followed.
There were two main reasons for this. Her position as office manager of the Atlanta-based travel agency was one of them. As much as she genuinely liked the men and women she supervised, she felt a managerial responsibility to keep her private life separate from her professional one. That this “responsibility” was at odds with her penchant for getting involved in other people’s personal problems was something of which she was well aware. But there it was.
The second reason she shied away from explaining why her marriage had ended was that she was no longer sure she knew. What she once would have cited as incontrovertible fact—that Chris had been the unmitigated wronger and she the blameless wrongee—now seemed to her to be open to at least some degree of argument.
Which wasn’t to say that she regretted her divorce. She didn’t. Not... really. Given the life she’d built for herself in the wake of it, how could she? The woman she was today was pretty much the one she’d aspired to be before the sweltering summer night Christopher Dodson Banks walked into Falco’s Pizzeria and turned her world upside down.
Would she have become this woman if she’d stayed married? A decade ago, Lucia Annette Falco would have said absolutely not. But lately, she’d begun to wonder.
A decade ago, she also would have maintained that her marriage had been unsalvageable. She’d begun to wonder about the validity of that assessment with increasing frequency in recent times, too.
“There’s always a lot of end-of-the-year business to be taken care of, Tiff,” Lucy said, dropping her gaze and making a show of shuffling through the files on the top of her antique burled-cherry desk. “I have a huge backlog of paperwork to wade through.”
“If there’s so much to be done, why did you give everyone the rest of the week off?” the older woman asked challengingly, fluffing her frothy mane of silvery white curls with an extravagantly beringed hand.
“Because I felt like it.”
This deliberately outrageous explanation stopped Tiffany for a moment. But only a moment. She rose from the tall wingback chair in which she’d been ensconced. “Lucia Annette Falco—”
“I appreciate your concern,” Lucy told her, meaning it. “But not having plans to party hearty on New Year’s Eve doesn’t mean I’m socially deprived. I’m simply not into swilling champagne and kissing strangers at the stroke of midnight.”
Tiffany arched a well-plucked brow and pursed her plum-glossed lips. Then, with a sassiness that belied her sixty-plus years, she retorted, “Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.”
Lucy had to laugh.
Clearly sensing an opening, the older woman reverted to her initial theme. It was a characteristic response. For all her flamboyant fluttering, Tiffany was an expert at manipulating other people for what she considered to be their own good. She was also as tenacious as a lockjawed terrier when she got her teeth into something. It was little wonder that she was one of Gulliver’s Travels’ most successful agents.
“You don’t have to stay out all night,” she coaxed. “But what’d be the harm in dashing home and putting on something extra-pretty, then meeting Hastings and me for a teensy-weensy libation at the Buckhead Ritz?”
“Oh, I’m sure Hastings would just love to have me horn in on your big date,” Lucy riposted. Hastings