Jennifer Greene - Blame It on Chocolate

“Of course not.” Nick easily and immediately put that question to bed, but he thought damn right he had a reason.

She was attracted to him. It was an embarrassment for her—a problem that cropped up the minute he showed up, that other people noticed, that made it hard for her to work with him. He didn’t want her hurt, and didn’t want to put her in any situation where he knew she could be hurt.

But explaining that to his grandfather would only make it more awkward for Lucy—and himself. The answer was simply to stay as far away from her as possible.

“Look, Gramps, put her in charge, if you want. Give her the promotion. But we’ve got a dozen irons in the fire over the next few months. I’ve got to be in Europe part of that time. So let me think on it, see if I can find someone else who can watch over her and the project.”

“Someone besides you.”

“Exactly.”

“We both know this is something that could revolutionize the chocolate industry. We just can’t put it in the hands of a stranger,” Orson said.

“I know. I agree.” It was a worry in itself that Lucy had been the one to come through with the miracle. If Nick had ever believed it could happen, he’d have hired massive, unprecedented security for the project from the get-go. But that was like fretting over spilled milk. “I’ll find the right person.”

“As long as it isn’t you,” Orson repeated again.

“It won’t be me,” Nick expressed with absolute certainty, then glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get rolling. Madris going to drive you to the doctor’s this afternoon?”

“Between you and Madris, someone’s hounding me nonstop. I’m sick of it.”

Nick turned away from the window completely, ready to concentrate completely on Orson now.

She was out of sight.

FOR A MONDAY that started out darn worrisome, it sure turned out fabulous. The instant Lucy got home, she dropped her jacket…on the floor. Peeled off her boots. Then, as an afterthought, chucked the rest of her clothes down to her underpants.

Yes. With the word promotion singing through her head like an aria, she danced through the house, flipping on the tube to the Oxygen channel, then boogie-wooing into the kitchen to pour herself a half glass from her dusty bottle of Gallo, then sipped it, still dancing. She started getting chilled from running around without clothes, but who cared?

Promotion. What a bubble-popping, orgasmic, rainbow-pretty word. Dollar signs paraded in her mind. Big, beautiful dollar signs. Now she’d have money to pay for the white carpeting. Money to upgrade the Civic. Money to pay off her Pottery Barn couch and the purple satin sheets and the museum print of the eagle.

She was gonna be…okay, not rich…but solvent, solvent, solvent.

And more to the point, oh, way, way, way more to the point…she was going to be a major player in the chocolate thing. It was actually going to be her baby. Seeing the advent of chocolate not dependent on rain forests. Developing the most fabulous chocolate products in the known universe. Creating products that no one else had—that no one else had even dreamed of.

Her.

Lucy.

Lucy Fitzhenry.

Was actually going to make history. Chocolate history. So it wasn’t world peace or a cure for cancer, but sheesh. When push came to shove, what was one of the most absolutely critical things in life?

A rhetorical question, of course, as she sashayed over to her private stash by the computer drawer. One truffle before dinner. Oh, yes, all the rules were going by the wayside tonight. If those who called her an obsessive-compulsive fuddy-duddy could only see her now…having chocolate before dinner. With wine. Walking around the house near naked. No looking at the bills. No cleaning. No doing anything constructive.

And they said she’d never manage being wicked. Hah. She was just swallowing the last sip of wine when the doorbell rang.

She froze, then spun around, cracked her toe on a chair leg, winced, and then hobbled into the bedroom, yelling, “Hold on! I’ll be there in a minute!” As fast as she could, she yanked on yoga pants and a sweatshirt, yelling out another promise at the top of her lungs, and then pedaled for the front door.

Because she was wicked—not crazy—she naturally looked through the peephole first. Her jaw dropped even as she hurled the door open. “Dad! What on earth are you…?”

She started to ask what her father was doing here, but since he was standing there with a suitcase, some kind of crisis was self-explanatory. The suitcase itself showed more proof of a crisis. It was one of those old-fashioned cases—hard-shelled like a turtle, gray, the kind that was too heavy to carry but you just couldn’t kill it off; throw it off a cliff and it’d land without a dent. Only this one had three socks clamped in its teeth. One white, two black.

“Dad?” she asked more gently, by that time pulling him into the light by the front door.

“Your mother kicked me out. She told me to get out and stay out.”

There. Her worst nightmare. The reason she’d stayed home so long and never moved away like every other self-respecting, independent adult woman. Only damn. She’d always feared her parents would argue each other to death if she wasn’t there to play referee.

“Come on, give me your coat.” He was just standing there with the suitcase, looking at her like a lost soul. Luther Fitzhenry was a surgeon. Cardiac. One of the most brilliant at Mayo—which was saying something. She’d inherited her slight height and skinniness from him. He couldn’t be over five-six and was built leaner than wire. But his heart was huge, and showed clearly in his gentle facial lines and soft blue eyes.

At the moment, he looked a lot more like a confused, lost puppy than a brilliant surgeon. “She says I’m never home. That I’m always at the hospital. That we’re already strangers so I might as well just leave.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll talk about this in a minute, but first let’s calm down.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go, Lucy. If I could just stay here. For a night or two.”

“For a night or two,” she echoed, trying not to feel panicked at the terrorizing thought that he’d stay longer.

“I won’t be a problem.”

“I know you won’t.”

“I just didn’t know where else to go.”

“Uh-huh.” She led him into the living room. He plunked ked down on her green microfiber sofa—the unpaid-for sofa from Pottery Barn—and looked around bewilderedly.

“I love your mother, Lucy.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“You know I don’t drink.” He leaned forward with his long hands hanging over his knees. “On second thought, I would. Chivas on the rocks.”

“Um, Dad. I can’t afford Chivas. It has to be wine or beer.”

“Oh.” He looked at her hopefully. “If I gave you some money, could you go buy some Chivas? I don’t want to put you to any trouble. It’s probably too much to ask. Never mind.” His thick, light hair was graying a little, and right now standing up in strange spikes. “I don’t need a drink. Just completely forget I asked.”

“Dad.”

“What?”

“I’ll go out, get you the Chivas. Just relax now.”

“I love your mother, Lucy.”

“Yes, you said that. I know.”

“She says I never notice anything she does. That I was a spoiled young man and now I’ve turned into a spoiled old man. That I’m self-centered. That I never see her. I keep trying to figure out what brought this all on—”

“Her birthday?”

“No. It can’t be that. I bought her that Mikado watch she wanted for her birthday—”

“That was last year, Dad.”

“Well, it wasn’t that. It was something else. I think…she may have reupholstered the couch. Or bought a new chair. Something like that. I walked in and she just seemed to get madder and madder—” He looked at her pitifully. “Whatever you do, don’t go out just for me.”