Miss Match Page 20

  Marisol considered this, sipping her champagne. Seemingly appeased by her response she moved on. “So Andrew is dating an actor and Samantha is stubbornly single…Lucinda, are you seeing anyone?”

  Samantha took a step toward her mother, her eyes dark with anger. Andrew coughed into his glass almost choking on his drink. Lucinda just stood there, silent, observing the defiant looks being exchanged between her girlfriend and her girlfriend’s mother.

  “Yes.” Lucinda’s tone was clipped but soft. “I am.”

  “Is he a dancer?” Marisol mused, finishing off her drink. “Perhaps he can help Samantha find someone—”

  A low growl rolled out of Samantha’s throat as her grip on the champagne flute got dangerously tighter.

  Lucinda stepped forward, taking the glass before it became a weapon, giving Samantha’s hands a gentle squeeze before she stepped between the women. She eyed Marisol carefully. “No, professionally, she does not dance. But she is an excellent dancer.” She paused before adding, “And as far as Samantha goes, she is plenty qualified to find someone for herself, arguably better than anyone else I know.”

  Marisol listened to her answer, her eyebrow arched slightly. She was clearly perturbed by the assertive response, perhaps also the female pronoun. “Hmph. I like you. You are quiet but steady. Your partner is very lucky to have you.”

  Lucinda replied with a slightly bowed head in acknowledgment. “She’s perfect. I’m the lucky one. And thank you.” She nodded toward Andrew and Marisol’s glasses. “I’ll grab us refills—enjoy the start of the second act. Samantha, would you mind helping me?”

  Samantha grabbed the empty glasses and exited the box as the house lights dimmed again. Once they turned the corner, Lucinda paused, handing Samantha her partially full glass and taking the empties while motioning for her to finish them off. Samantha gave her an appreciative nod, downing the glasses’ contents and letting out a slow sigh. Lucinda waited a moment, looking left and right before pressing a soft kiss to Samantha’s lips. “You don’t really have to come with me. You just looked like you needed some air…and more liquor.”

  Samantha pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes for a moment, breathing out slowly before looking back at Lucinda. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you—”

  Lucinda cut her off with another kiss, this one longer. Samantha leaned into it, easily guided closer by Lucinda. “C’mon, let’s get some bubbly.”

  Lucinda held Samantha’s hand as they walked down the lush red-carpeted stairs, along the marbled halls, and toward the center of the lobby. She guided them through the stands selling liquor, champagne, and snacks to the ballet attendees. A few stands offered T-shirts and other merchandise benefiting the arts; these were Lucinda’s favorite stalls. She dropped off the glasses, ordering four more and paying before Samantha could argue. She squeezed Samantha’s elbow and told her she’d be right back.

  Samantha watched Lucinda slink away and get lost in the crowd as she waited patiently for the bartender to fill the glasses. She resisted the urge to order a shot of Patrón, just to make it through the rest of the evening with her mother. But there had been rare instances in her life when tequila made things better, so she decided against it.

  The bustle of the crowd started to lessen as the orchestra began indicating the start of the second act. Everyone was dressed beautifully, men in designer suits, women in long dresses, little girls and their mothers holding hands and laughing. Samantha couldn’t remember the last time she had been carefree with her mother that way—it must have been a lifetime ago. The sight made her sad, but in a way she wasn’t expecting; she felt terrible because Lucinda never had that with anyone while she was younger. The little blond-haired girl in pigtails getting Twizzlers and a water with her mother at the bar overwhelmed her. How could such a wonderful woman emerge from such a hard life? She thought of how masterfully Lucinda had handled her mother just moments before. She was so confident in the way she described Samantha and the importance that Samantha played in their relationship together. It was moving to be the object of those affections. If she was being honest though, it was a little scary too; being with Lucinda felt so right and raw at the same time. Like she was experiencing things for the first time, every time. Sometimes those feelings overwhelmed her.

  “All set?” A warm breath on her shoulder sent a shiver down Samantha’s spine. Lucinda smiled and picked up two glasses, nodding toward the grand staircase in the direction of their box. “Ready?”

  Samantha followed her up the stairs and through the mirrored halls accented in gold leaf and ornate crystals, letting her mind wander to the thoughts Lucinda had interrupted. As they approached the box, Lucinda slowed, pausing by a tall bar table positioned near the entrance to the platform. She placed the glasses down and turned toward Samantha with a shy smile.

  “I wanted you to know,” she said softly, “that I appreciate you being here with me, you being with me around your mother, as impossible as she makes enjoying anything—you are making my night very enjoyable. And I wanted to thank you for that.”

  Samantha felt like she might cry. Here was this lovely woman, this woman who was strong and confident and patient, thanking her of all people for being with her tonight. This was the kind of thing Lucinda did that overwhelmed her, overwhelmed her with honesty and sincerity. She found herself again and again being surprised by Lucinda, if for no other reason than she seemed too good to be true. “She’s right about you. You are strong.” She cupped Lucinda’s face with her hand and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips. “You are my light.”

  Lucinda smiled into the kiss, deepening it, letting their lips slide across each other’s, enjoying the moment. She pulled Samantha’s hand from her face and pressed a small object into it, closing her fingers around it before bringing Samantha’s closed hand to her lips, kissing her knuckles tenderly.

  Samantha opened her palm to find a small snow globe with a blond prima ballerina inside, dancing in the soft snow falling around her. The base was bright red with a gold banner inscribed Boston Opera House. The bottom had the date and name of the performance in Lucinda’s script with a small heart drawn in the corner.

  Lucinda traced her fingers along Samantha’s open palm and whispered, “The first time to the ballet is supposed to be special. Tonight’s performance is about love lost and found again by a young girl in wartime. It’s our first ballet together. You’re a beautiful young woman, and I would consider time spent with your mother as battle. So it seemed appropriate to remember it.”

  Samantha laughed and kissed her quickly. “Thank you, Luce. For everything.”

  “Let’s get back before they think we ditched ’em.”

  The rest of the show was beautiful and surprisingly moving. Samantha found herself unexpectedly emotional at the final scene when the young girl is reunited with her lost love. At some point in the final moments of the show Samantha found her hand on Lucinda’s thigh, clutching like she needed to be grounded. She must have been holding hard enough to bruise, but Lucinda didn’t even flinch. She just covered Samantha’s hand with her own and soothingly stroked the skin.

  Lucinda introduced them to a few old dance friends by the orchestra pit after the show. She swapped war stories with them about the company and playfully remembered her favorite shows, and shows she would rather forget. Samantha’s favorites included one hilarious performance of The Nutcracker when a pair of tights on the lead male split at the crotch midleap. Andrew found this particularly exciting and was extremely disappointed to have missed the performance, though he vowed to search the Web for it later. As the evening wound down and they exited the theater into the cool night air, they parted ways.

  “Lucinda, thank you again, I had a wonderful evening,” Marisol said. “I hope to see you again sometime.”

  “Of course, I’m glad you liked it. Have a safe trip if I don’t see you before you leave.”

  Andrew kissed Lucinda good-bye and started walking with Marisol
toward the cabstand, leaving Lucinda and Samantha alone. Samantha let herself be wrapped in Lucinda’s arms and held close, hating the fact that she was going home with her mother and not with her girlfriend.

  “Call me later, okay?”

  “Always.” Samantha relaxed further into the hug. She glanced over Lucinda’s shoulder at their companions and saw Andrew pointing out some building in the theater district so she took the chance and planted a firm kiss to Lucinda’s lips, right under the marquee lights.

  “Thank you for tonight and for the snow globe and for having the most kissable lips ever.” She spoke quickly, pressing another kiss to Lucinda’s lips. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Lucinda matched Samantha’s frown as she stepped back and motioned for her to go.

  Samantha trudged toward the waiting cab, ducking through the throngs of people. She glanced back woefully to watch Lucinda head toward the car park to retrieve her car, their night finally coming to a close.

  *

  Lucinda tapped her hands on the leather steering wheel to the beat of the music playing on the speakers. She wasn’t listening to anything in particular—she just liked the background beat when she wanted to think, or drive and think, as was her habit of late. Tonight had been a lot of things: her first night with Samantha at the ballet, her mended fences agreement with Andrew, spending time with a member of Samantha’s family, even if it was under the guise of friendship… It had been a good night. But it had been a hard night too.

  Being around all those memories tonight—the dancers, the ballet company she was so familiar with—it was a challenge. She was blending new with old, and her old came with a lot of pain. She had been fine until they walked into the Opera House. Her anxiety flared and a part of her wanted to turn back into the night. If she was ever going to move forward, she had to open up those painful memories and allow new ones to take their place, or at least take their place beside the old ones. So she swallowed her anxiety, rested a hand on Samantha’s hip to ground herself, and embraced the formation of new memories. That was a hard lesson that she had learned in her youth: when your past comes back to haunt you, you treat it with politeness and respect because it helped you become who you are today. Embrace the good with the bad, because one day there won’t be anything to embrace but pain if you don’t forgive and move on. Resiliency—that’s what the social worker at the orphanage called it after her fourth home in as many years. She was resilient. Maybe that made her strong. Or maybe that just made her hard. Hard and strong were two very different things. She was definitely hardened, but was she more than that? Samantha and her mother seemed to think so.

  She had just finished purchasing Samantha’s snow globe and writing on the bottom when it hit her: maybe this could be more than something casual. Maybe this could work for the long-term, maybe she had found her match. The humor of that was not lost on her, a match with a matchmaker.

  As she sat at the light a few streets from home, her phone buzzed next to her. It was Samantha, texting that she was sad to be without her. The feeling was mutual. Tonight had been good, but hard. The feelings were strong right now. Hard and strong, at war again. The thought amused Lucinda as she pulled up to her house and keyed in, flicking the lights on as she went, scaring the shadows back to their corners. If only it were that easy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Samantha let out a sigh of relief as her mother’s hired car took her back to New York. She considered throwing a bon voyage party at her office with Andrew to celebrate her departure. She had to admit that this visit had been better than most, but she had a feeling that had a lot to do with Andrew and Lucinda. Andrew had made himself unusually available to Madre-sit and kept offering to stop by to help make dinners more tolerable—undoubtedly in an attempt to make up for the Logan-Lucinda debacle. On the days she did work, she had intentionally logged longer days at the office to limit their alone time. Then Lucinda saved everyone’s life when she scrounged up those ballet tickets last night—the perfect end to a less than perfect week: entertainment on a grand scale for her mother and a secret date with her girlfriend. Although it didn’t make up for her sabotaged sex-only weekend with Lucinda, it helped to soften the blow. And that lunch meeting helped too, she remembered with a smile. It helped her twice in fact, maybe three times if you counted that she felt a little fatigued at the show and didn’t have the energy to throttle her mother like she wanted to when she started asking too many damn questions.

  It wasn’t the questions in and of themselves that made Samantha fume, it was the self-righteousness that they were delivered with. Very few people could incite rage in her, but her mother, she had a gift for it. Samantha practically cried when her brother called the night of the ballet to ask if their mother would be home to watch the kids the following day. She would have kissed him if he weren’t such a raging suck-up and all around asshat. He even set up a car service to take her mother back to his McMansion outside the city. Considering how things could have gone, it really wasn’t all that bad. She’d dodged a bullet this week and she knew it.

  As she walked into her office with a little extra spring in her step, she thought about how well her mother and Lucinda had gotten along. Granted, it was probably Lucinda working overtime to accommodate her mother’s natural unpleasantness, but she had been pleasantly surprised that it hadn’t gone up in flames. It was important to her that someone in her life could play well with her family. Maybe she would see them more. Now that would be an epic change. Eric had tolerated her family but never quite embraced them—he had made it easy for her to drift from them. That’s why she found it so unbelievable that her mother and father were disappointed that her relationship had ended. Eric was not the golden boy they had hoped he’d be. Of course, it had been a disappointment to her as well. But if that disappointment led to her finding Lucinda, then maybe it was worth it. Just maybe. She allowed herself a few more moments to daydream about the woman who literally kept her up at night before she settled into her desk and began to work.

  *

  Lucinda frowned as she dialed security and had Amanda send Richard in, encouraging her to take a walk for a few minutes. Lucinda sighed; this wasn’t going to be very fun.

  Richard walked in and adjusted his tie nervously. He had missed two days of work the past week, once not bothering to call in at all, the other not calling until well after ten in the morning.

  “Sit please, Richard.”

  He nodded and obliged, staying perched at the edge of the chair.

  “I’ve gone over your work and your attendance records for the last month. I noticed a small change in the beginning after our first discussion but have seen a steady decline again in the past few weeks.” Lucinda stood and nodded. Two security guards holding an empty box entered the room. “This isn’t working out. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to let you go.”

  “You arrogant bitch,” Richard hissed as he stood. “You don’t know what kind of mistake you’re making. You are coasting by on your looks and you know it. You’ll get yours. Don’t worry.” He punctuated his statement by pointing his finger at her.

  Lucinda’s blood boiled. She squared her shoulders and ran her fingers along the edge of the desk before biting back, “Now, now, Richard. Let’s not make a scene. I’d hate for your flimsy Prince Charming reputation to get flushed with your career aspirations.”

  She looked at Al’s and Franklin’s angry expressions behind him. “Take him to his desk to collect his things and escort him out. Find me when it’s done.”

  Franklin stepped forward, his deep voice echoing in the suddenly quiet room. “Let’s go, Mr. Thomas.” When Richard continued to glare at Lucinda and made no attempt to move, Franklin barked out sharply, “Now.” Richard turned toward the irritated security guard before stalking out of the office and disappearing down the hall.

  Lucinda followed them to the door, grabbing Al’s arm before he could leave. “I want his badge, his laptop, his phone, everything. Make
sure it all gets back to me. Don’t let him touch his computer or his files. Keep it quiet if you can, but if he gets rowdy drag him out and I’ll clean off his desk…into the trash. All right?” She knew he would do as she asked—she was good to them, and they were good to her.

  “Yes, Lucinda.”

  Lucinda closed the door behind them, walked back to her desk, and let out a slow breath. She never quite got used to the feeling of being insulted. It wasn’t that it happened often anymore, but in her youth, it had been a common occurrence. A hard life with a rough start brought a lot of insults her way. She gritted her teeth and rolled her shoulders before sinking into her seat and closing her eyes.

  Al and Franklin returned twenty minutes later with Richard’s work supplies organized in a box they placed in the corner of Lucinda’s office. She would take them home later and skim through them, making sure everything was in order.

  “It’s all set,” Franklin said, his tone much softer this time. “We alerted the building security supervisor to have the other shifts keep an eye out for him. It should be fine.”

  Lucinda smiled and stood to shake their hands. “Thanks, guys.” She paused. “Do you think you could have one of your guys walk Amanda to her car tonight, just to be sure?”

  “Of course,” Al responded. “Do you want someone to walk you to your car as well?”

  “Nah, I’m all set. Let him try something and see how well that goes.” Al and Franklin laughed, saying good-bye and closing the door behind them.

  No, Lucinda wasn’t worried about handling Richard. She was only worried about who would be there to pick up the pieces afterward. She sat back down at her desk and attempted to finish her workday. This evening’s dance class—a mixer with Shelly White—couldn’t come fast enough; she was missing Samantha right now more than ever.

  *

  Samantha spent the entire day at the office. She had appointments, conference calls, Skype meetings, and a luncheon date scheduled for a client that needed chaperoning by some staff. It was a veritable shit show. Andrew was surprisingly perky considering all the running around they had to do. Maybe it was because their magazine article was coming out that afternoon. He had wanted to host a little celebration party later, but she was hosting a meet and greet at Lucinda’s dance studio for Shelly and a few women who were near-perfect matches for her, on paper, so the celebration would have to wait. She had texted Lucinda to check in on her, but none of the texts she sent had been read or replied to. She must be busy if she hadn’t even checked her texts.