“Almost six years. And somehow I get the feeling that he's young for his years. Do you think he'll be okay?”
“He'll be fine. It'll do him good to be out on his own for a while.”
“At least he'll have you to guide him a bit.”
Banner frowned at her. “He doesn't want or need me to guide him. He's a grown man, got a college degree. He can fend for himself.”
Wandering to the refrigerator, she pulled out raw vegetables for a salad. “You had your great-uncle to turn to,” she reminded him. “Tim has you.”
The comparison seemed to startle him. He looked thoughtful as he continued cooking. Knowing he needed time to digest the events of the day, Lucy forced herself to work quietly beside him, leaving the questions and observations for later.
When the meal was on the table a short time later, Lucy went into the living room to call Tim away from the television. “Dinner's ready.”
“Great,” he said, almost bounding from his chair. “I'm starved.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Lucy looked at the empty snack bowls and soda cans scattered around the room. It hadn't been too many hours since they'd lunched on chili dogs and chips, which both Banner and Tim had agreed made for perfect football food. Tim might have declared himself a man, but he still had the appetite of a teenager, she thought with a shake of her head.
Lucy and Tim kept up a lively conversation during the meal, chatting about everything from sports to movies to music to politics. Banner didn't contribute much, but Lucy knew he heard every word they said.
After dinner, Lucy pulled out the bags of supplies she had purchased for their impromptu New Year's Eve party. Tim watched with curiosity, and Banner with signs of trepidation, as she unearthed an assortment of games, sparkling grape juice, plastic wineglasses, noisemakers and party crackers.
“You really get into the spirit of things, don't you?” Tim asked her with a grin.
“That's what some people would call an understatement,” Banner murmured, glancing around his living room as if thinking of the Christmas decorations that had filled nearly every inch of it.
Lucy gave him an exaggerated frown. “At least I didn't ask you to chop anything down for this celebration.”
“I should be grateful for small favors, I suppose.”
She carried the games to the coffee table. “You are, however, required to participate in the festivities. I bought Yahtzee, canasta and Uno. Which one do you want to play first?”
He might have looked more resigned than enthusiastic, but he went along, settling onto the couch while Lucy and Tim arranged themselves on the floor on the other side of the table. They chose to play Yahtzee first, and it wasn't long before Lucy and Tim were noisily cheering their luck or complaining about their lack thereof.
A football game played on the television behind them, the sound muted but still audible. Banner had started another fire, which hissed and popped, filling the room with cheerful noises, cozy warmth, flickering light and a woodsy scent. Lucy was almost blissfully content.
She already felt almost as comfortable with Tim as she was with her cousins. Banner, however, was a different story. While she enjoyed his company, the constant sexual attraction she felt for him made
She felt almost like a schoolgirl with her first overpowering crush. But there was nothing girlish about the depth of her yearning for this man, she mused.
Fingers snapped suddenly in front of her face, bringing her out of her latest romantic reverie.
“Yo, Lucy,” Tim prompted impatiently. “Your roll.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She reached hastily for the dice cup, embarrassed to realize she had been staring hungrily at Banner-long enough for him to be looking back at her with an intensity that made more than her cheeks go hot in reaction.
Dragging her gaze away from him, she glanced at Tim, only to find him grinning at both her and his brother with a knowing look that made her gulp and throw the dice so hard they bounced off the table and onto the floor.
As glad as she was that Banner was embarking on a new relationship with his younger brother, there were times when three was definitely a crowd.
With only a little effort, Banner could recall last New Year's Eve. He and Hulk had watched football, shared a pizza and a beer, and turned in at just after midnight, both expecting the new year to differ little from the one that had preceded it.
This New Year's Eve was definitely different.
He glanced at his coffee table, which was littered with empty hot cocoa mugs, scribbled score sheets and the remains of several junk food binges. On the other side of the room, Lucy and Tim were pouring sparkling grape juice into plastic wineglasses. Midnight was ten minutes away, and Lucy had declared it time to begin the traditional celebrations.
She brought him a glass of grape juice, a yellow plastic horn and a silver-foil-covered party cracker. He looked skeptically at the latter. “What do you want me to do with that?”
“Hold both ends and pull,” she instructed. “You'll find surprises inside.”
Because she was looking at him so hopefully, he let her press the favor into his hands. If he wasn't careful, he was going to find himself following at her heels like a lapdog, he thought with a sigh of mild self-reproach. Still, the brilliance of her smile seemed to amply reward his efforts. Something about Lucy made him care about her happiness more than his own convenience, and that was a new sensation for him. A rather unsettling one, at that.
Pushing his misgivings to the back of his mind, he took hold of the ends of the foil wrapped around a cardboard tube and gave a tug. With a popping sound, the tube opened. He reached inside to pull out a folded purple paper hat, a colorful plastic spinning top and a slip of white paper.
“Read your fortune,” Lucy urged.
“'New pleasures await you,”' he read obediently.
She discreetly patted his bottom. “That sounds promising.”
He nearly swallowed his tongue.
Lucy had already turned to Tim. “Open yours,” she ordered.
“Yes, ma'am,” he said, proving himself as susceptible as Banner to Lucy's bewitchery. His cracker contained a yellow paper hat, a plastic parachute man, and a fortune that read, “Your fate rests in your own hands.”
Tim looked suspiciously at Lucy. “You didn't happen to know what fortune was in here, did you?”
“How could I?” she responded with a laugh. “It was the luck of the draw. But it's true, you know.”
“That's what I've been telling myself for the past few days,” he replied wryly.
“Well?” Banner prodded Lucy, finding himself unexpectedly curious. “What's in yours?”
Smiling at him, she pulled the ends of her cracker, giggled at the resulting pop, then dug out a green paper hat and a bracelet made of pink and green plastic beads strung on elastic thread. She promptly put on the bracelet, then read her fortune aloud. “'Persistence pays off.' Hmm. That's always sort of been my motto. Kind of eerie how fitting these were, isn't it?”
Banner shrugged. “They're always vague enough to fit whoever reads them.”
Ignoring his cynicism, she grabbed her wineglass. “Let's have a toast before the ball drops. Who wants to make one?”
“You go ahead,” Banner said, picking up his own glass. Tim agreed that Lucy should be the one to make the toast.
“Okay.” She gave her words only a moment's thought. “To Tim,” she began, lifting her glass in his direction. “May you find the path that leads you to happiness and fulfillment.”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome. And to Banner,” she went on, turning to him.
He felt the muscles at the base of his neck tense with his uncertainty about what she might say next.
“May you learn to see yourself as the generous, talented and unique person that I see when I look at you,” she
