“Oh” was all she could manage. “What else, Lex?”
“I have a list, don’t you?” he said, his brows drawing together.
“Yes, but this is your show. And we don’t have much more time.”
Lex looked down at his watch. Getting up, he walked to the counter, where he’d dropped his phone. He picked it up and called Nina’s nanny.
“Mrs. Auberly, it’s Lex. Are you able to stay at Dr. Knight’s tonight? Dr. Knight will be home, but it will be late. I figure this way you can get a good night’s sleep. Thank you.”
Walking back to where Lu sat, Lex said, “We don’t need to worry about the time now.”
Lu looked up at him, shook her head, and rolled her eyes.
“I need for you to tell me what happened.” There were so many questions he had for her, but he needed to know it from the beginning. If he understood the sequence of events, maybe some of the answers to the other burning questions would be evident. He knew of one other question that he would absolutely have to ask, but he thought perhaps many would be answered when she told him the story.
“What do you mean?” Lu asked.
Lu wasn’t one for acting, so he took the look of confusion on her face for what it was. Perhaps he did need to be more specific. Leaning forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees, he looked her directly in the blue depths of her eyes. “I got on the plane. Then, what happened?”
34
“I already told you what happened,” Lu said wearily.
“I’m calling bullshit on that story you told me at the funeral, Lu. I’m sure parts of it are true, but I know you too well. You’re not vindictive, and you’d never keep our daughter away from me on your own.”
Lu bristled at his arrogance. They hadn’t spoken in nine years and he was an expert on her and her motivations. “You don’t know shit about me!”
Unfazed, Lex merely smiled. “OK, I don’t know shit about you. But don’t try to pawn that fairy tale of a story off on me.”
Frustrated, Lu drank her wine and tried to figure out what she wanted to say. Having Lex five feet away from her drove her crazy. The smugness of his expression, as if he knew something she didn’t, made her want to smack the smile off of his face.
“Look, I let you get away with the story at the funeral because I was angry and I’d just lost my father. It was easier to accept your story than try to weed through it. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and it doesn’t add up. Come on, Harvard. Spill it.”
This Lex, the one sitting in front of her, cajoling her, this was the one she couldn’t resist. This Lex was the love of her life, the boy she’d fallen in love with when she was six.
“Let’s play a little game. I’ll start a sentence and you finish it.”
“What are you talking about, Lex?” she said, exasperation apparent in her voice and her big blue eyes.
“You know. A little word association. Don’t you psychologists use this stuff? First thing that comes to mind. So if I say, ‘Jo is …,’ you would say?”
“My savior.” Lu sat back, a little surprised that she’d tagged Jo with that moniker.
Lex’s eyebrow crept up, surprise evident on his face. “Interesting. OK, so what do you think. Can we do this?”
Lu shook her head. “Fine,” she conceded, knowing that he was determined to have this conversation.
“We’ll start with my original question. Ready?” At her nod, he continued. “I got on the plane and you …”
“Cried for three weeks.” Lu continued to look down at her glass, which was almost empty.
“Again, interesting. All right. This one’s a little harder. My mother, and I mean Amber, not Jo, wanted …”
“For me to kill our child.” She stopped thinking.
Lex took a deep breath as a surge of anger for Amber pulsed through him. “I was mad at Lex for …”
“Leaving me behind.”
“But I went along with the plan because …”
“I didn’t want you to end up resenting me and our child.” Lu refused to look up. She didn’t think she could take any reflection in his eyes. If she saw pity, sympathy, or confusion, she thought she’d scream. She didn’t know what he needed, but she felt like she owed him an explanation. Her brilliant plan at the funeral seemed to serve him as she’d preserved his relationship with his mother and brother. She didn’t want him to think of her as a sacrificial lamb. Lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t realize that Lex had gotten up and refilled her wineglass. She merely saw the level of wine in her glass increase.