The Thunderbolt - Lori Wilde Page 0,2
Lacy could not speak. How was it possible that the mystery man she’d been spinning elaborate fantasies about for half her life was poised a mere five inches away?
Since she was a young child, the women in her family had promised that one day she would meet her Mr. Right.
“But how will I know?” young Lacy had asked her mother.
“The thunderbolt,” her mother had replied. “It strikes hard and fast. You’ll just know.”
“There’s no mistaking it,” her grandmother Nony had interjected.
“No point even looking around,” Great-Gramma Kahonachek agreed. “If you don’t feel the thunderbolt, then he isn’t the one. If you do, then nothing can stand in the way of true love.”
Growing up in a large extended family, listening to the romantic tales from the old country, Lacy admitted she secretly wished the thunderbolt was real and not a figment of the grandmothers’ active imaginations. They had trained her to associate love with a strong physical and a fated mental jab that couldn’t be mistaken.
The magic had worked for her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother. If the thunderbolt theory was good enough for them, it was good enough for her. They’d all had long, and happy marriages and she wanted in.
Here at last was her thunderbolt in the flesh. With a mere smile, he had knocked her out with a clean one-two punch.
She accepted her emotions at face value. Dr. Sheridan was the man she’d been waiting a lifetime for. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
And yet, she was scared.
Terrified, in fact.
His sudden appearance in her world was a disruption of the status quo, and as much as she had longed to find her true-life partner, now that the time was upon her, she was afraid she would screw up her one chance at happily ever after.
Lacy experienced a breathless edginess, like a panicked swimmer dragged down by the ocean’s hidden undertow. She wasn’t sure what to do next. She couldn’t very well say to him, “Hi, I’m the woman you’re supposed to marry, and I wanna bear your children.”
“What’s your name?” he asked in a James Bond voice that caused a ripple of slick heat to roll down her back.
“My—my name?” she stammered.
“I don’t want to have to shout, ‘Hey, you,’ every time I need a retractor.”
His eyes twinkled mischievously, and his bold stare made her wonder if he had X-ray vision and could see past her outer clothing to her skimpy black lace matching bra-and-panty set beneath.
She had a thing for expensive underwear. Lingerie made her feel feminine, sexy, even when she wore baggy scrubs. She imagined his reaction if he knew what she had on right this very moment and ended up embarrassing herself.
Cheeks burning, Lacy swallowed hard and concentrated on scrubbing her fingers until they throbbed, desperate to sever her gaze from his.
Did he feel it too? This heat? This energy? This inexplicable something?
“Lacy,” she finally whispered, frustrated by her shyness.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.” He tilted his head as if straining to hang on to her every word. “You have such a soft voice.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for.” His smile widened and twin dimples appeared in his cheeks.
She knew it was dumb, but she had a really hard time talking to gorgeous men. Her tongue turned to oatmeal; her hand sprouted extra thumbs, and she stumbled and stuttered.
With the teenage bag boy at the grocery, no problem. Her middle-aged dentist with the bad toupee, no sweat. But give her a handsome, sexy guy, and Lacy morphed into the world’s greatest klutz.
Maybe it was because she was the second of six kids, and she’d sort of gotten lost in the shuffle. She wasn’t the kind to speak up for herself, although she knew she should.
Her friends told her she was too nice. Maybe that was true. Lacy only knew that it was difficult for her to make small talk. She worried about sounding foolish, and she figured it was better to keep her lips zipped and let people wonder than open her mouth and remove all doubt.
So here she was standing next to a mythological god in human form, and she could barely utter a single intelligent word. What good did it do to have found The One when she couldn’t even speak to him?
“Lacy.” She squared her shoulders and forced herself to speak louder, but she was still unable to meet his eyes. “Lacy Calder.”
“Well, Lacy Calder, I’m charmed to make your acquaintance.”
Charmed? Her?
Quickly, she glanced over