“This is a man who’s put his life on the line for me—for your husband—more times than you want to know. If Sydney could look at Skelly and—”
“I really don’t remember much about the man’s face,” Syd interrupted. “He came flying down the stairs, nearly wiped me out, stopped a few steps down. I’m not even sure he turned all the way around. He apologized, and was gone.”
Lucky leaned forward. “He spoke to you?”
God, he was good-looking. Syd forced away the little flutter she felt in her stomach every time he gazed at her. She really was pathetic. She didn’t like this man. In fact, she was well on her way to disliking him intensely, and yet simply looking into his eyes was enough to make her knees grow weak.
Obviously, it had been way too long since she’d last had sex. Not that her situation was likely to change any time in the near future.
“What did he say?” Lucky asked. “His exact words?”
Syd shrugged, hating to tell him what the man had said, but knowing he wouldn’t let up until she did.
Just do it. She took a deep breath. “He said, ‘Sorry, bud.”’
“Sorry…bud?”
Syd felt her face flush. “Like I said. The light was bad in there. He must’ve thought I was, you know, a man.”
Lucky O’Donlon didn’t say anything aloud, but as he sat back in his seat, the expression on his face spoke volumes. His gaze traveled over her, taking in her unfeminine clothes, her lack of makeup. An understandable mistake for any man to make, he telegraphed with his eyes.
He finally looked over at Lucy. “The fact remains that I can’t possibly work with a reporter following me around.”
“Neither can I,” she countered.
“I’ve worked for years as an investigative reporter,” Syd told them both. “Hasn’t it occurred to either one of you that I might actually be able to help?”
This shouldn’t be too hard.
Lucky was a people person—charming, charismatic, likeable. He knew that about himself. It was one of his strengths.
He could go damn near anywhere and be best friends with damn near anyone within a matter of hours.
And that was what he had to do right here, right now with Sydney Jameson. He had to become her best friend and thus win the power to manipulate her neatly to the sidelines. Come on, Syd, help out your old pal Lucky by staying out of the way.
His soon-to-be-old-pal Syd sat in stony silence beside him in his pickup truck, arms folded tightly across her chest, as he drove her back to her car which was parked in the police-station lot.
Step one. Get a friendly conversation going. Find some common ground. Family. Most people could relate to family.
“So my kid sister’s getting married in a few weeks.” Lucky shot Syd a friendly smile as well, but he would’ve gotten a bigger change of expression from the Lincoln head at Mount Rushmore. “It’s kind of hard to believe. You know, it feels like she just turned twelve. But she’s twenty-two, and in most states that’s old enough for her to do what she wants.”
“In every state it’s old enough,” Syd said. What do you know? She was actually listening. At least partly.
“Yeah,” Lucky said. “I know. That was a joke.”
“Oh,” she said and looked back out the window.
O-kay.
Lucky kept on talking, filling the cab of the truck with friendly noise. “I went into San Diego to see her, intending to tell her no way. I was planning at least to talk her into waiting a year, and you know what she tells me? I bet you can’t guess in a million years.”
“Oh, I bet I can’t either,” Syd said. Her words had a faintly hostile ring, but at least she was talking to him.
“She said, we can’t wait a year.” Lucky laughed. “And I’m thinking murder, right? I’m thinking where’s my gun, I’m going to at the very least scare the hell out of this guy for getting my kid sister pregnant, and then Ellen tells me that if they wait a year, this guy Greg’s sperm will expire.”
He had Syd’s full attention now.
“Apparently, Greg had leukemia as a teenager, years and years ago. And before he started the treatment that would save him but pretty much sterilize him, he made a few deposits in a sperm bank. The technology’s much better now and frozen sperm has a longer, um, shelf life, so to speak, but Ellen’s chances of having a baby with the sperm that Greg banked back when he was fifteen is already dropping.”
Lucy glanced at Syd, and she looked away. Come on, he silently implored her. Play nice. Be friends. I’m a nice guy.
“Ellen really loves this guy,” he continued, “and you should see the way he looks at her. He’s too old for her by about seventeen years, but it’s so damn obvious that he loves her. So how could I do anything but wish them luck and happiness?”
Syd actually graced him with a glance. “How are your parents taking this?”
Lucky shook his head, glad at the perfect opportunity to segue into poor-little-orphaned-me. This always won him sympathy points when talking to a woman. “No parents. Just me and Ellen. Mom had a heart attack years ago. You know, you really don’t hear much about it, but women are at just as much risk for heart disease as men and—” He cut himself off. “Sorry—I’ve kind of turned into a walking public service announcement about the topic. I mean, she was so young, and then she was so gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Syd murmured.
“Thanks. It was roughest on Ellen, though,” he continued. “She was still just a kid. Her dad died when she was really young. We had different fathers and I’m not really sure what happened to mine. I think he might’ve become a Tibetan monk and taken a vow of silence to protest Jefferson Airplane’s breakup.” He flashed her a smile. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. With a name like Lucky, I should have rich parents living in Bel Air. I actually went to Bel Air a few years ago and tried to talk this old couple into adopting me, but no go.”
Syd actually smiled at that one. Bingo. He knew she was hiding a sense of humor in there somewhere.
“Now that you know far too much about me,” he said, “it’s your turn. You’re from New York, right?”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “How did you know that? I don’t have an accent.”
“But you don’t need an accent when you come from New York,” Lucky said with a grin. “The fact that you do everything in hyperspeed gives you away. Those of us from southern California can spot a New Yorker a mile away. It’s a survival instinct. If we can’t learn to ID you, we can’t know to take cover or brace for impact when you make the scene.”
Sydney might’ve actually laughed at that. But he wasn’t sure. Her smile had widened though, and he’d been dead right about it. It was a good one. It lit her up completely, and made her extremely attractive—at least in a small, dark, non-blond-beauty-queen sort of way.
And as Lucky smiled back into Sydney’s eyes, the answer to all his problems became crystal clear.
Boyfriend.
It was highly likely that he could get further faster if he managed to become Sydney Jameson’s boyfriend. Sex could be quite a powerful weapon. And he knew she was attracted to him, despite