Miracle On 5th Avenue (From Manhattan with Love 3)

Was it because she made it easy to talk? Or was it because there was a new intimacy between them? Evidence of that intimacy was visible in the faint reddening of the skin on her neck and the tumbled strands of her hair. And then there was the invisible. The connection, the closeness that hadn’t been there before. It had cracked open something that had been sealed inside him for three years.

“She told me she was leaving. We had an argument. I told her I loved her, and her response was to tell me she was having an affair. At first I didn’t believe it—” He broke off, unsure how to describe the magnitude of his confusion. “I thought I knew her so well. I’d known her since she was five years old. We lost touch for a while when we went to college. I stayed on the East Coast, she went West. I wanted the adventure of the big city. I suppose you would have called it my bad boy phase. We met up again by chance at a reunion and this time she was interested. Turned out she liked my bad boy side. We were together when I sold my first book. We celebrated by getting blind drunk and having sex on—” He glanced at her. “Never mind.”

She took his hand. “You don’t have to edit what you say, Lucas.”

“We renewed our friendship and it was as if we’d never been apart. Marriage seemed like a logical step to me. She was reluctant. She didn’t see why we should change what worked, but I persuaded her. I never even questioned whether it was the right thing for her.”

“But you knew her really well.”

“I thought I did. Her parents separated when she was young, and it was a bitter, acrimonious divorce. It left her with a deep-seated belief that marriage couldn’t last. I didn’t know it at the time, but the moment I put that ring on her finger, I signed the death warrant to our marriage. It was over before it had begun.”

“But you never suspected she was having an affair?”

“No. She didn’t love him, she told me that.” He lifted the glass and drank, trying to block out the memory of that last conversation. “She did it because she thought it would drive me away. She wanted to ‘set me free.’ She told me she’d done me a favor. She thought by making me hate her, I’d find it easier to move on. It was her ‘gift’ to me.”

“Oh, Lucas—”

“I’m not sure what would have happened if she hadn’t slipped on the ice that night. Maybe she was hoping I’d make a grand gesture and win her back to prove my love. Or maybe she really did mean to leave. What happened would have been tough to fix. She said a lot of things she shouldn’t have said, and so did I. I was angry. So damned angry—” And the guilt gnawed at his insides like acid.

“Of course you were.”

“She tried to make it as bad as possible, to stop me loving her, but it didn’t work that way. After she died, the feelings were almost intolerable because I had no way of talking to her and getting to the truth. I truly believe she did love me, but she was too scared to trust it. It was as if she was so afraid of how she’d handle the ending, she wanted to just get it done and control it herself. But I still loved her. I’m not sure if that makes me crazy, delusional—” He put the glass down, saying, “possibly both.”

“Loyal.” Eva’s voice was quiet. “I think it probably makes you loyal. Love isn’t something that you can switch on and off. At least, it shouldn’t be.”

“I wanted to.” It was something he’d never admitted to anyone before. “When you’re wrong about someone, you go over it in your head. You think back to everything you ever did together, you examine everything that person ever said and you try to work out if anything at all was real. You unpick it, like a sweater, stitch by stitch, until it all falls apart and all you have in your hands is a pile of wool. Loose ends. And you have no idea how to put it together in a way that makes sense. Do you have any idea how it feels to think you know someone, really know someone, and then realize you don’t know them at all? All those facts, those moments that you thought of as intimacy, suddenly blur and you don’t know if you were ever really close or if you imagined it all. If you can’t trust the person in life who is supposed to be closest to you, who can you trust?”

“You should be able to trust the person closest to you. That isn’t asking too much.” She moved closer to him, instinctively offering comfort.

Her thigh brushed against his and then she took his hand and cupped it in between hers.

“I thought,” she said slowly, “that it was your work that made you so suspicious of people. I thought it was because you spend your days delving into the darker side of human nature. I never thought the reason stemmed from your own experience. I never suspected it was personal. I hate the thought that you’ve been carrying that all by yourself.”

“I didn’t want her memory to be all about gossip. I had her family to think about. Her parents and her sister were devastated. There was nothing to be gained by telling them the truth.”

“But how did you keep it a secret? What about the guy she—”

“He was married. He never would have left his wife for her. That’s probably why she chose him. She didn’t want the commitment, just the adventure. Or maybe she really did just use him as a tool to destroy what we had. I’ll never know. He was only too happy to keep it quiet because the truth would have put his marriage at risk.” He heard her soft sound of sympathy and felt a flash of guilt. “I’ve destroyed your shiny view of love.”

“No. I know love can be flawed, and messy. I know all those things.”

“And you still want it?”

“Of course. Because in the end, love is the only thing that matters.” She made it sound simple, and he’d only ever found it to be complicated and painful.

“I disagree. There have been so many days since she died when I wished I’d never met her.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “I couldn’t handle that she’d hid so much from me. I was as deluded as you were when you looked at those photos. A picture can be faked, but I was living with her and I thought what we had was real. If you can’t trust a person you’ve known for more than twenty-five years, who can you trust?”

“It’s no wonder you’ve steered clear of relationships ever since.”

“Fortunately people make allowances for grief. I focused on my work. My output tripled and the stories I was writing were darker and deeper. My sales numbers rocketed. Critics said my writing had reached a whole new level. Sallyanne would have said it was her last gift to me. Ironic, don’t you think? I’m a global bestseller because my wife screwed me up so badly.” He picked up the glass and drained it, the whiskey scalding his throat. “So that’s love, Eva. That’s how it looks. You should go back to bed and I should write.”

“Write? It’s

four in the morning.”

“I won’t sleep. But you should. You’re bad enough in the mornings without having hardly any sleep.” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, wondering what would have happened if he’d met her at a different time of his life. He dismissed the question because the answer was that there hadn’t been a single time in his life when he would have been the right man for a woman like her.

“Will you come with me?”