drastically wrong with her plan. And whatever it was, it had happened literally overnight. Yesterday, when she and Mike had gotten back from town to find Eric and Devon just leaving the bunkhouse and the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife, she’d been certain everything was proceeding nicely, just as she’d intended. Now this morning, the two were barely speaking to one another, Devon drooping around like somebody with a bad case of Holiday Blues, and Eric looking so grim and purposeful, spending all afternoon in the barn…
Inwardly, Lucy shivered. It was Eric who worried her most. The way he was acting reminded her of that summer, the summer he’d graduated from high school, when he’d announced out of the clear blue sky that he wasn’t going to Iowa State in the fall. He’d left not long after that, and they’d barely seen him since.
“I don’t think I can stand it if he leaves again,” Lucy told Mike on the way down to begin the evening chores. “We only just got him back, after so long… And then there’s Emily. I just hate to think of losing her, too.”
“I’m afraid we won’t have much to say about that,” Mike said in the annoying way he had of saying out loud what Lucy already knew and didn’t want to admit. “And the way it looks, I don’t think Eric will, either.”
Lucy sighed. “I wish I could hate Devon for trying to take Emily away from us-” she ignored Mike’s smile at her use of the pronoun “-but you can hardly blame her for wanting to help her parents. She’s a lovely girl, really-pretty and smart, and I think she’s got a good heart, too. Oh, I know she’s ‘city’ to the bone, but I don’t think she’s near as sophisticated as she pretends to be.” She turned her head to look at her husband, and the cold December wind whipped a strand of her hair across her face. She fingered it back behind her ear and anchored it under the edge of her ski cap. “Mike, I know she likes Eric-I’ve seen the way she looks at him when she thinks no one’s watching. And he likes her, too, in spite of everything. I know he does-a mother can tell. It would solve everything if they’d just…”
Mike looked down at her, then away. “What?” she demanded; Lucy knew that look.
He shook his head, grinning. “Nothing.” The smile faded. “Except that it might not be that simple, Luce.”
“Why not?” As far as Lucy was concerned, it certainly should be. That was the whole crux of her plan, actually; when two people were perfect for one another and didn’t know it yet, all they ought to need was a push in the right direction.
Mike’s head was up, his face, so familiar and beautiful to her, golden in the last light of the rapidly sinking sun. “I just think there may be more to Devon than there appears to be. I told you that first day she reminded me of Chris, remember?” He paused to take a deep breath. “Well, she still does. More and more, in fact.”
“Chris…
“Lucy,” Mike said in a warning tone, “that’s not for you to decide. If it’s meant to happen, it will. Don’t you try and manipulate Providence.”
“That sounds like something Gwen would say.”
“Yes, and think how often she was right.”
Lucy tried her best to follow her husband’s advice and stay out of Providence’s way. Since Christmas Eve’s activities were governed pretty much by tradition, that wasn’t as hard as she’d thought it would be.
Potato soup for Christmas Eve supper had been the tradition in Lucy’s family as far back as she could remember, though she couldn’t have said whether it had actually begun then, during her childhood, with her own parents, or whether it went back farther than that. Gwen had said she thought it might have had something to do with the Great Depression, which certainly made sense to Lucy. She thought it a sensible tradition, and saw no reason to change it. The wholesome, everyday meal made a nice change from rich holiday food, and a simple preamble-rather like taking a deep breath-before the huge feast they’d all be consuming tomorrow.
It was Christmas Eve, and everything was just as she had hoped for, longed for. Prayed for. Here they were, she and Mike, sitting down to the traditional supper with their family gathered around-half of it, anyway-with a precious grandbaby dozing in her lap and Eric home at last. And this year’s batch of soup was especially good, if she did say so herself-just the right amount of pepper, perfect balance of potatoes, celery and onions-and the cornbread, Gwen’s special recipe, was delicious, as always. So, why didn’t it feel like a joyous occasion? Why didn’t it feel like Christmas?
How could it, Lucy thought in exasperation, with Eric staring moodily into his soup and not saying a word to anyone, and Devon sitting so still and straight, her face pale as death, composed and beautiful as a statue of some ancient goddess. And yes, Mike was right, now that he’d mentioned it, she did remind Lucy of Chris, sitting right here at this same table that day so many years ago when Earl had brought her to visit for the first time…lovely Chris, with her desperate secrets and buried pain.
“Eric,” Lucy said brightly, determined to lighten
“She’s coming,” Eric said.
“Really? When did you talk to her? Did she say for sure?”
Eric shifted and once again cleared his throat. “I talked to her last night. She said she’d be here.”
“Oh,” Lucy breathed, “I’m so glad.” Then she frowned. “Last night? When? I didn’t hear-”
“It was late. You and Dad were already in bed.”
“Oh. Well, then.” Lucy subsided, but she was definitely losing faith in Providence.
On the one hand there was Eric, whose mood, far from being cheered by the prospect of a visit with his favorite cousin, now seemed blacker than ever. And on the other, well, what in the world had come over Devon? All of a sudden her pale-as-marble cheeks had warmed to a lovely shade of pink, and after not so much as glancing his way all evening long, now she was gazing at Eric with her eyes all aglow like Christmas stars.
Chapter 14
H ow did I get here? Devon wondered as she silently crumbled cornbread into dust and nodded, smiling, at whatever it was Lucy had just said.
How had Devon O’Rourke, up-and-coming L.A. lawyer with a reputation for being both hard-headed and cold- hearted, wound up in a farmhouse in Iowa, eating potato soup on Christmas Eve with the family of her adversary? Who was he, anyway, this man who had invaded her being like an alien life force and now acted as though she didn’t exist?
It was her own fault that she’d walked into this mess unarmed and unprepared. She’d been so certain she had Eric Lanagan pegged, catalogued and pigeon-holed, only to find time and time again that she didn’t know him at all. What did she know about him now, other than the fact that he was eons older than his chronological age-probably what New Agers would call an “old soul”? The fact that he was both kind and ruthless, a man of character and deep principles-even if those principles didn’t always coincide with the law?
Those things alone would make him one of the most formidable opponents she’d ever faced. But what made her go cold and her stomach knot was the full and clear knowledge that she didn’t want him to be her adversary.
A wave of longing surged through her, like the roar of a powerful wind, and she clamped down on it with all the strength of her formidable will.
Impossible, she told herself with the harshness of hard-headed, cold-hearted reality. Even if the phone call she’d overheard last night hadn’t been to a lover after all.
Christmas Eve supper was finally over. It had seemed interminable to Eric, torn as he was between the anguish of knowing it would be the last one he’d ever enjoy here in his childhood home, and the desire to soak in and relish every moment, every detail, to imprint them forever in his memory. Torn, too, between an awareness of Devon that was a constant hum deep within him-a prickling just under his skin, and the knowledge that after tomorrow he’d never see her again.
