Alex swore under his breath and Lucy forced a smile. “Of course, when my mother makes a statement in the press, everyone takes it up and runs with it. She thrives on being controversial. So for a while every blog and gossip site seemed to have it. Someone found a photo of one of my paintings and that went up too.” Along with the thousands of comments Lucy couldn’t keep from reading; so many of them had been in a similar vein as her mother’s editorial, and although her friendshad told her not to pay attention to Internet trolls, it had still hurt. A lot.
“That must have been pretty terrible,” Alex said quietly.
“My boss withdrew the offer of the showing. The bad press was simply too much, he said.” She thought about telling Alex about Thomas, about how he’d said all the media attentionwas “bad for the boys,” and how Lucy had tried the cheapest, oldest trick in the world and threatened to break up with him, just so he’d beg her to stay.
He hadn’t.
But she’d told Alex enough of her sob story. So instead she just shrugged and leaned her head back against the sofa. “Yeah, it all pretty much sucked.” She made a face. “Sorry.”
Alex frowned. “For what?”
“Bella said you don’t let her say that word.”
He smiled then, that lovely little quirk. “You’re not Bella. And in any case, you just heard me swear. I’m a bit of a hypocrite.”
“You’re allowed.”
“Am I?” His smile disappeared then and for a second he looked so sad that Lucy wanted to put her arms him, just for a hug. Okay and yes, maybe to feel that wonderfully hard chest against her one more time. She was only human, after all.
“Solo parenting has got to be really challenging,” she said, willing her gaze to move upwards from his hard chest to his face. Although looking at his face made her think of other ways she wanted to touch him. Her thumb against his lips. Her palm cradling his cheek.
“It is. And I’m doing a crap job of it, to be honest.” He smiled wryly, but his eyes were still dark and bleak.
“You’re doing the best you can, Alex. That’s all anyone can do.”
“And my best is crap.”
“Keep saying that and you might need to put some money in the naughty jar.”
He raised his eyebrows. “The naughty jar?”
“A jar you put money in every time you say a bad word.”
“Did you have one of those growing up?”
“Yes, but funnily enough it was my idea. My mother had no limits on language, or on anything really. She was all about pushing boundaries, indulging whims.” Her own, at least.
“So making a naughty jar was your way of creating limits,” Alex filled in thoughtfully, and Lucy made a face.
“That’s a neat bit of psychoanalysis.”
“True, though?”
She nodded slowly. “Maybe.” She’d certainly wanted the typical, normal childhood, the dog and the picket fence and definitely the dad. Fiona had scorned all those things, and believed Lucy should too.I’m raising you to be a freethinker, Lucy, to be free of the shackles of a patriarchal society that insists you believe the lie that is domestic slavery.
“So did your mother ever put money in the naughty jar?” Alex asked, and Lucy shook her head, her cheeks heating, because a naughty jar suddenly sounded . . . well,naughty. And she was starting to think some definitely naughty thoughts.
The silence lengthened between them, stretching tautly as they stared at each other again.
Another burst of laughter sounded from the television upstairs, and they both jumped, and then laughed nervously. If there had been a moment, and Lucy wasn’t entirely sure there had been, at least outside of her fantasies, it was well and truly broken now.
Alex glanced at his watch and she rose from the sofa, nearly tripping over Charlie, who let out a contented groan.
“It’s getting late, isn’t it?” she said, practically babbling in an effort to sound normal. “Really late. You’ll want to put Poppy to bed. I should leave you to it.”
He rose too, and as he moved, she breathed in the clean scent of soap that lingered on his skin. “Thank you, Lucy,” he said, “for all you did today.”
“It wasn’t really that much.”
