Carole Buck - Resolved To

Chris’s heart was hammering against his ribs. He opened his mouth to speak.

Nothing came out.

After several seconds he closed his mouth. Then he replaced the phone in its cradle. His hands were shaking.

“Damn,” he whispered. “Dammit to hell.”

Chris sat motionless for nearly a minute. Finally he reached for his suit jacket, which he’d taken off earlier and laid beside him on the bed. He extracted a slim leather-bound appointment book and began thumbing through it. He was stalling, and he knew it. There was no need for him to look up the address of the business establishment he had in mind. Like Lucy’s home telephone number, he could recite it by heart.

Gulliver’s Travels. 2511 Peachtree—

Chris slapped the appointment book shut and glanced at his wristwatch. It was a few minutes before five.

Just about closing time, he reflected with a grimace. Maybe even past it, given that this was New Year’s Eve. Chances were, Lucy was long gone from her office. Chances were, she was out of the business mode and into the social groove.

He could imagine her, primping for a night on the town. Although she hadn’t devoted a lot of time to fussing with her appearance while they were together, there had been a couple of occasions during their short marriage when she pulled out all the stops.

Having never lived with a woman, he’d found himself utterly fascinated by Lucy’s grooming rituals. He’d been turned on by them, too, if truth be told. And as for what he’d felt when he got a gander at the finished product...

Chris clenched his hands. Despite his best efforts to block them, his mind’s eye filled with a series of images.

Lucy.

Brushing her long dark hair with slow, sexy strokes, then pinning it up in a style that just begged to be taken down.

Lucy.

Slipping on her lacy lingerie piece by provocative piece, offering a blood-heating preview of what would be waiting after the public partying.

Lucy—

Doing those things and more for another man.

Christopher Dodson Banks cursed under his breath, clamping down on a surge of jealousy he knew he had no right to feel. He’d had his chance, and he’d screwed it up.

He’d fallen head over heels in love with Lucia Annette Falco eleven and a half years ago. But as deeply as he cared for her, he’d lacked the insight—the sensitivity—to fully understand what kind of person she was and how she viewed the world. His failure to comprehend these fundamental truths had led him to commit an act of betrayal that precipitated the end of his marriage.

He checked his watch again. It was now five after five.

Gulliver’s Travels was an inexpensive cab ride away. He knew this because he’d mentioned its address to the hotel’s concierge and inquired about its proximity after he checked in. The concierge had consulted a small directory, then informed him that the location in question fell within something called the “convention zone.”

“It’s a flat fare if you take a taxi from this hotel,” the man had explained. “Quick trip. Very reasonable. You could walk it in, oh, twenty minutes on a nice day. But on a cold night like this...”

“I’m from New York,” Chris had returned. “Anything above zero is balmy to me.”

The concierge had smiled sympathetically. “I understand, sir. Still, we don’t recommend that our guests go out walking by themselves after dark.”

He had Lucy’s agency’s telephone number, Chris reminded himself. He could always call.

And then what?

Another hang-up? Or maybe an impersonal request that Ms. Falco contact Mr. Banks at her earliest possible convenience?

No, he decided. He needed to do this—whatever “this” was going to turn out to be—face-to-face.

He’d take the flat-fare taxi ride to the office where Lucy evidently had earned the professional success he knew she’d grown up dreaming about achieving. If the place was closed for the holiday, so be it. At least he’d know exactly where it was and what it looked like. If it was still open and his ex-wife was there...

He had to see her again.

It was that simple.

And that complicated.

He was poised on the threshold of a new year, a word away from embarking on a new job in a new city. What better time to try to atone for old mistakes?

Lucy hung up the phone with a sigh. Bad enough that she’d had to finesse her colleagues’ questions about her lack of holiday plans. Now her father and brothers—who, unlike her co-workers, were well aware of the reasons for her extremely ambivalent feelings about New Year’s Eve—had taken to haranguing her about the situation, too.

“You don’t have anybody to be with, you should come home,” her father had insisted in a call that came in shortly after she told the rest of the agency’s staff they could leave.

“I could be with somebody if I wanted to, Pop,” she’d countered through gritted teeth, deciding to sidestep the coming-home issue entirely. Although she’d moved to Atlanta more than three years ago, her father refused to acknowledge that she actually lived there. He regarded the town house she’d bought as a temporary address. A sort of residential aberration. “But I don’t.”

“Why not? You still carrying a torch for that ex-husband of yours?”

“No!” It was not an original notion. Her brothers had started hinting at the possibility shortly after she passed the big three-oh with no sign of a serious suitor lurking on the horizon. Several of her uncles and cousins had taken to alluding to it, as well. But this was the first time anyone had had the nerve to broach the subject head-on. “Of course not!”

“Good. Because after what he did to you—”

“Pop, I’m sorry.” She’d suddenly reached the end of her tether. She’d opted for an escape excuse that had proven effective in the past. “I’ve got a call coming in on the agency’s priority line. It’s probably my boss. Or a client with an international emergency. I have to go. Thanks for calling. Happy New Year. I’ll talk with you soon.”

Her eldest brother, Vinnie, had phoned five minutes later.

“Pop says you hung up on him, Lucy.”

“I didn’t hang up on him.” She’d soothed herself with an assurance that this was technically true. Hanging up on someone meant slamming down the receiver without saying goodbye. “There was a phone call I had to take. Urgent agency business.”

“Same kind of urgent agency business that came up the last two times I tried to talk to you?”

“Uh—”

“I hear you been usin‘ the ’I got urgent agency business’ line on Joey and Mikey, too. And some of the uncles. Even when they call you at home.”

Lucy had grimaced, realizing that she was going to have to come up with a new tactic for terminating conversations with her family. “I have a very demanding job. It’s important to me.”

“More important than your family bein’ worried about you?”

“I’ve told you before. There is no—repeat, no, that’s n-o—reason for anyone to be worried about me. I’m doing fine.”

“Right now, maybe. But when I think about the way you looked the night you walked out on that bastard Banks—”

“That was more than ten years ago, Vinnie!”

“So? You think the people who really love you are ever gonna forget the expression on your face? You think they’re ever gonna forget the sound of you cryin’ like you’d never stop?”

Lucy massaged her temples, her brother’s long-distance challenge echoing in her ears. She didn’t expect him to understand. She didn’t expect anybody to understand. How could she, given the tenuousness of her own grasp of what had happened and why?

She’d made a lot of mistakes on the night in question. Turning tail and retreating into the protective custody of her family had been the worst.