Lucifer's Lover (6 page)

She glanced over at Otto Berenger again and cast her mind back to the last time she had seen him, two years ago. She could feel her cheeks burning with just the memory of it.

“You’re dying to tell me about it,” Luke said.

She shook her head. “Never.”

“You’re busting a gut to tell
someone
and I’m right here. You’re just about burning up on the spot. Look, you’ve melted all the snow around your feet.”

Lindsay had actually started to drop her chin to look down at her feet before she realized Luke was teasing. She lifted her chin and stared at him with what she hoped was a steely, don’t-mess-with-me stare but he was already laughing silently. At her defiant look, his laughter doubled and his whole body began to shake.

Lindsay looked away but her glance fell instead on the hated Otto. “Damn but I’d like to skewer that man…” she muttered and spun away.

Which brought her back to face Luke again.

He had himself back under control again. He dropped his chin and looked at her over the top of the sunglasses. The dark eyes impaled her. “Tell me,” he coaxed. “You know I won’t tell anyone else.”

“No, I don’t know that.”

“I give you my word. Is that enough?”

“Why should I tell you? You’ll just use it to harass me for the next however-long-you’re-in-town.”

“When you offer so many other juicy tidbits I can use? You underestimate your basic ammunition rating, Lynds.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Lindsay?”

“Lynds. Makes me sound like a ten year old.”

“Compared to me, you are,” Luke said and his voice was flat, sincere.

“The worldly, wise and weary wanderer?” She shook her head.

“One that has learned how to keep his mouth shut when he needs to. So tell me about Otto. Just looking at the guy is cranking you up.”

She shook her head again.

“Lindsay.”

There was something in his voice that made her look at him.

He hooked a finger over the frame of his glasses and slid them off. “Did you know that the longest I ever slept in the same bed as a kid was about five months? Hell, most of the beds I slept in were sofas. I got to see and hear a lot of family gossip sleeping in all those parlors. And every new parlor I moved onto, I got the third degree. They all wanted to know about each other’s lives. Some family…” He rolled his eyes. “I learned real early into the game that the only way to guarantee the
next
sofa was to keep my mouth shut while I was using the current one. They didn’t mind hearing all about cousin Ernie but they squealed like pigs if word got around about them.”

“And the moral of the tale is you know how to keep your mouth shut.” She said it dryly.

“No, the moral of the tale is, I know how to keep my mouth shut no matter how badly I’m busting to tell someone about it. No matter how juicy it is. Believe me, I know how to keep my mouth shut if I need to.”

Despite the improbability of a childhood spent on the move like that, Lindsay felt a degree of reassurance. She sighed. “If I
ever
hear another word from you about this…”

“Not another word. Promise.”

She pulled at one of her aching, frozen ears awkwardly. “Otto over there is a gynecologist and a couple of years ago I was his patient.”

“Well, so far, nothing terribly exciting.”

“Except the guy is a chauvinist with absolutely no empathy for his patients at all!” she declared.

“The plot thickens.” Despite his jovial tone, his eyes were serious, his expression one of deep interest.

She could feel her cheek burning deeply. “I…ah…had an examination.”

Luke’s brow lifted a little.

“A pap smear…” She could feel her toes trying to curl up in embarrassment already. Could she actually speak the rest of it out loud? Thank goodness Luke’s expression didn’t show even a hint of amusement.

“I’m acquainted with the process,” Luke said gravely. “Not on a personal level, of course.”

Lindsay nodded, too awkward even to smile.

“Well, he’s arrogant…has absolutely no idea what it’s like to lie in surgical stirrups and…open yourself up to probing hands and…instruments.” She took a breath.

Luke tipped his head to one side, his eyes narrowing. “What happened?”

She pushed it out all in one breath, “Well, he walked in, didn’t even say hello, just whipped a speculum out of the sterilizing liquid it was lying in and just…pushed it in.”

“The liquid hurt you?” Luke asked.

“The speculum was
cold
, dammit! It felt like he’d been keeping it in the deep freeze for a month.” She took another deep, calming breath and looked at her toes.

“And that’s why you’re sending visual daggers in his direction?”

Lindsay couldn’t swear to it but it sounded suspiciously like Luke was manfully holding back laughter. She didn’t dare look.

“I’m sending him visual daggers because he sued me,” she told him.

“Sued
you
? Damn, I wish I hadn’t promised not to discuss this. It’s too good. Why on earth would a gynecologist want to sue you? You’re the…um…injured party.”

“Something happened to his eye,” Lindsay muttered.

“What? Lynds, you’re going to have to stop mumbling.”

“I said, something happened to his eye.”

“What happened?”

She forced herself to look him in the face. “Well, the speculum was cold, like I said. And it was a shock. I’m sure you could understand how shocking it might be.”

“Absolutely.”

“So when it touched me…well, it was just instinctive.”

She saw Luke’s jaw ripple, as if he was clenching it. Against laughter? “You didn’t…?” he began, then pursed his lips.

She grimaced and nodded. “Yes. I hit him.”

He looked away, then and rubbed his mouth furiously, the corners of his lips puckered suspiciously.

Lindsay sighed. “It’s okay. You can laugh,” she told him.

He shook his head, looking back at her. “No, it’s okay.” But his lips were twitching. “Did you settle out of court?”

“I think his lawyer managed to convince him how petty the whole thing was. Especially when I filed a countersuit for assault.”

He really did laugh then—throwing his head back for a great shout that had everyone turning to look.

“Shhh!” she demanded.

He shook his head but his laughter softened. He took a deep breath, recovering, while she stared out at the untouched snow on the west side of the chalet. She could see Otto’s red cap in the corner of her eye, which didn’t help her composure at all. He was still standing at the railing, oblivious to the fact that they were discussing him. Did he even know it was the woman he had been at legal loggerheads with only two years ago?

“Still want to skewer him, Lindsay?”

She looked back. “No.”

“Honestly?”

She smiled a little. “No.”

“’Cos it seems to me that a cold shock in return for a cold shock is fair and fitting.”

“What do you mean?”

Luke reached out and turned her by the shoulders so that she was facing the big double doors that led into the café. His hand came up by her shoulder, pointing to the roof.

The snow had come in just perfectly this season. There had been a week of steady, soft falls, then the temperature had dropped and two to three feet of cold white crisp blanket lay over everything. The chalet roof was built in the Alpine style—sharply pitched to shed snow. But the shingles covering it were older and curling at the corners, enough to hold the snow in place…only the weight of the thick layer was pulling it down the roof.

At the very edge of the eaves over the door was an overhang of snow—it bulged and drooped over the edge of the roof, a three-foot-thick, white mass that looked like it was ready to fall at any moment.

“Just a nudge will do,” Luke whispered, right next to her ear.

She jumped a little. Temptation gripped her and the tension made her heart sing. Did she dare?

“How?” she asked, absolutely sure that Luke had already thought it through and knew exactly how to pull it off.

He pointed to a set of skis and poles that had been laid to rest against the wall nearby them. “Borrow those for a moment. You know how people heft them as they walk—and how they lift them up to change shoulders?”

She nodded. She knew exactly what he meant. She’d been watching people do it all morning as they got off the cable car.

“I’ll have to get him to the door and keep him there for a second.”

“Leave that to me,” Luke told her.

Excitement gripped her. She had never done anything like this in her life. And the thought of Otto getting his just desserts was such a sweet temptation…

“Okay,” she agreed, a little breathlessly. “When? Now?”

“Sure.” Luke stood up. “The other cable car is arriving. Good timing.”

“You sound like you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

He grinned and his eyes danced with merriment. “You could say that,” he agreed. He leaned close to her and in a secretive tone whispered, “I bet you’re nice and warm now.”

Lindsay felt her jaw drop a little and her mouth open. And involuntarily, she felt herself smile. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I am.”

He held up his hands. “No hands. Not even a finger.” He winked, then dropped the obscuring sunglasses back into place and ambled over toward Otto.

Lindsay wasn’t sure what he intended to do, nor did she know exactly what he wanted her to do, either, beyond knocking down the snow at the appropriate moment. Did he just assume she would figure it out for herself?

She grabbed the skis and poles leaning against the siding and hoisted them up onto her shoulder the way she’d seen other people doing it. They were surprisingly light but their length and the four separate pieces made them awkward to handle—especially as the skis themselves were slippery, glossy fiberglass. No wonder people swapped them from shoulder to shoulder all the time and took advantage of every stationary moment to rest them on the ground.

Three or four paces from their intended target, Luke lifted his hand. “Otto,” he said and the rotund man turned toward him. Luke reached his side and began a conversation.

Briefly, Lindsay envied him his ability to talk to anyone and everyone. Her mother had been like that.

But the impending action pushed the thought away, for Luke was luring Otto from his post by the railing, a jovial arm on his shoulder. They were heading for the chalet.

Lindsay measured the distance between them and the chalet and compared her own distance. Then, with her heart leaping about in her chest and excitement pushing at her and making her skittish and panicky, she walked as calmly as she could toward the café doors.

Eight feet…seven…six…

She took a wobbling breath and hoisted the skis up, just as she had seen others doing it.

The skis and the points of the poles punctured the underside of the overhanging wave of snow and as Lindsay felt the bite of resistance, she put her weight into it, dragging the tips through the length of the overhang, effectively slicing it off at the edge of the eaves. At the same time, she tried to make it look like she’d been caught by surprise and had been thrown off balance by the snagged ends of the skis.

The weight of snow dropped down with a heavy, muffled impact…right on the top of Otto’s red cap.

Lindsay gave a cry of surprise and dismay, as she watched a gratifying amount of snow disappear down the neck of his coat.

Otto gave a shriek of shock, exactly like someone who had been doused with an unexpected icy bucket of water. The breathless sound was music to Lindsay’s ears.

He stood in the center of the snow mound that had built around his feet, gasping. Luke stood a couple of feet away, looking thoroughly surprised.

Lindsay put down the skis and poles and spread her hands. “I’m so dreadfully sorry. I have no idea how that happened…”

Otto wasn’t listening to her. His eyes opened wide and he pulled off his gloves with jerky speed and started struggling with the zipper of his coat. He pulled his hat off his head and dumped it on top of his gloves on the decking. The coat followed.

Beneath, Otto wore a pair of overall snow pants, the type that had wide elastic over both shoulders, holding the pants up, yet the pants themselves, although ending high above the waist, were loose and gaping.

Otto pulled the elastic off his shoulders and began groping inside the back of his pants, his face a tight mask of disgust and dismay. He pulled out a handful of fast melting snow, dumped it and went exploring again.

Lindsay licked her lips. The results of her scam were more effective than she had hoped for. Otto was oblivious to her presence, or her babbled explanations. Luke stood aside and Lindsay notice him rub at his lips again. Hiding more laughter?

They were all the focus of a loose group of interested bystanders, who were watching Otto’s strip show with barely concealed amusement.