Chapter 10
Liz and Cam stayed with Ric for a week. He was still weak and tired from the virus and with Viola gone he didn't have any help. Kristina returned from Ned's house after a few days and they fell into a comfortable pattern. By the time the mother and son returned to her grandmother's house she didn't really want to go.
Audrey watched her granddaughter with mounting worry. Ric Lansing was a mistake that Elizabeth had barely survived, and she could see where things were going. No matter what she said, Elizabeth seemed blind to what was so obvious to everyone else around her. Only Nikolas wasn't making an issue out of it, and as far as Audrey could tell, he felt beholden to the man who was raising his cousins. He was willing to look past Lansing's sins to maintain the connection, damn the consequences to his friend.
For a while, after the virus had passed and Elizabeth returned from nursing her former husband, Audrey allowed herself to relax. Months passed without a hint of romance, or any further deepening of Elizabeth's feelings for the man who drugged, used, and nearly killed her. Even though the pair were closer than they had been since the second divorce, friendship was as far as it went, until the blackout.
Well... as far as Audrey and almost everyone knew anyway.
Truthfully, the slow process of renewing the relationship went on steadily from the first kiss on. Liz spent more and more time with the Lansing family, Ric babysat Cameron more and more often, and they started leaving all of the kids with Mathew's nanny and spending time out alone in Crimson Pointe more and more often.
Then came the blackout. It was a steamy August night that stressed the power grid to its limits and beyond. When the power went out people all over town were set on paths that could, and in some cases would, leave them forever changed.
Lucky Spencer lost all judgment and let himself be seduced by Maxie Jones in an empty office at the PCPD. His sister Lulu tried and failed to win her stepbrother away from his wife, only to wind up having drunken sex in the back of a limo with Diego Alkazar. Jason Morgan let his loneliness get the better of him and got himself, and his best friend, drunk and fell into bed with the one person he really shouldn't have. Elizabeth and Ric made love for the first time since their divorce, and Emily Quartermaine got into a heated battle with her lover, Sonny Corinthos, and showed up at her ex-husband's door, just in time to catch him in a heated embrace with another woman.
It was quite a night, and nobody would see the full impact of it right away. It took a month, and a scandal.