Deserving of Luke

  Thinking of those long-ago arguments had his emotions rising again, though he’d worked all afternoon to control them. Joni had been furious with him when he’d returned to the diner, had accused him of humiliating her in front of the whole town. Then she’d walked out.

  But, honestly, he didn’t know what else he’d been supposed to do. How he should have reacted to the knowledge that he had a kid and that kid’s mother hadn’t so much as bothered to tell him.

  Doubt and a little bit of guilt twisted at the back of his consciousness because he knew that assertion wasn’t strictly true, but he shoved both emotions aside. Ignored them. She’d had ample opportunity over the years to tell him she’d had his child. That’s what he would concentrate on when he spoke to her. That and not losing his temper, which was going to be a hard one, because right now he was one step away from feeling as though his head would explode.

  The only truly coherent thought he had was that Paige had stolen his child. She had left town, pregnant with his baby, and had never bothered to contact him again.

  Had never bothered to tell him that the baby had been born.

  Had never bothered to tell him that he was a father.

  Had never bothered to send him so much as a picture on the kid’s first or second or seventh birthday.

  By the time he pulled up in front of the dilapidated house, he was even more determined to settle things between them. He wanted an explanation, now, and he would get it even if he had to slap cuffs on Paige and drag her into the interrogation room at the station. One way or the other, they were going to figure this out, tonight.

  He bounded up the steps and prepared to knock hard enough to wake the dead.

  “You look loaded for bear.” The words were said in a low, relaxed voice—one he recognized immediately because he’d heard the same tone from Paige innumerable times they’d been together. Her voice was a little deeper now, a little richer, but all the important elements were the same.

  Whirling, he scanned the shadows cast by the single, yellow porch light until he found her, sitting on the swing, a glass of white wine dangling carelessly from one hand and a cell phone from the other.

  Her short blond hair was rumpled and she was dressed in a purple tank top and a pair of ripped and faded jeans that probably cost more than he made in a month. She still smelled like lilacs. Her feet were bare and something about her small, blue-tipped toes calmed him in a way nothing else could have. Maybe because they made him remember what it had been like to be with her all those years ago, what it had been like to love her.

  When they’d been together, she had always painted her toenails some mysterious color that none of the other girls would go near but that somehow drove him absolutely insane nonetheless. He’d been too stupid to realize it hadn’t all been for him, that he wasn’t the only guy in town she’d been showing her polish—and other things—to.

  The red haze threatened to return, and he did what he could to head it off. They would get nothing accomplished if they were yelling at each other, a realization he figured Paige had come to herself some time that afternoon, if her smooth greeting was any indicator. That or the glass of wine in her hand wasn’t her first.

  Sinking onto the swing across from her, he didn’t say anything at first. Simply looked at her. Noted all the changes and all the things that had stayed the same through the years. Suddenly he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Do you want a glass of wine?” Her voice was husky, sweet, and it sent shivers up his spine even as he told himself how stupid he was to respond to her. She’d lied to him, had—

  “No, thanks. I’m driving.”

  “That’s right. You’re a cop now. A law-abiding citizen. I’m having a hard time reconciling the new you with the guy I used to know.”

  “I was always a law-abiding citizen. I only liked to pretend otherwise.”

  “I remember.” She took a sip of her wine.

  “You look good,” he said.

  “L.A. agrees with me. Certainly more than Prospect ever did.”

  Memories stretched between them, hanging on the silence like apples on a tree, ripe for the picking. He chose to ignore them, to walk past as though he wasn’t suddenly starving for a taste of them. Of her.

  “His name’s Luke,” she said quietly, when the silence got to be too much for both of them. “It’s short for Lucas.”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  “I think so. It was my neighbor’s, when I first moved to L.A. He helped me get settled, learn my way around. He even drove me to the hospital and waited while Luke was born. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

  The anger surged, burning so hotly and brightly that he couldn’t think past it. “You could have come to me. You could have told me you were pregnant with our child. Then I would have been the one to be there, to help you.”

  “Is that how you remember it?” she asked offhandedly, as if his answer meant nothing to her.

  “That’s how it would have been. I would have been with you every step of the way—”

  “Is that so? Because the way I remember it is, I told you I was pregnant with your child and you called me a whore—right before you tossed me out of your house.”

  “You were sleeping with my best friend, with half the guys on the football team. How the hell was I supposed to believe the kid you were carrying was mine?”

  “I wasn’t sleeping with half the football team. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone but you. Only you didn’t want to believe that. Any more than you wanted to accept that you’d gotten me pregnant.

  “Accepting responsibility for that act would have meant you couldn’t live the perfect life mapped out for you. The one that mommy and daddy wanted you to live. The one that didn’t include the slutty girl from the wrong side of the river.”

  She was breathing hard by the time she finished, her chest rising and falling with each harsh inhalation. He probably shouldn’t be cheered by that fact, but it made him feel better to know that she wasn’t nearly as calm about this whole thing as she pretended to be.

  He didn’t answer for a minute, instead turning to stare into the inky blackness that surrounded the house. Looking at her brought back too many memories, including ones of how badly he’d treated her nine years before.

  But he wasn’t ready to deal with those memories yet—or the words she had just flung at him. Didn’t know if he’d ever be ready now that he knew she’d kept his child from him. How easy would it have been for her to return after his son was born and force him to see her and their child? No, he wasn’t going to let her turn this around. She could have played things way differently all those years ago.

  “Look,” he said, “I know your past is something you’re ashamed of, but you can’t rewrite history to—”

  She stood. “Get out of here.”

  “What?” he asked, rising slowly so that they were face to face. Or, in this case, face to chest, since he stood about six inches taller than she did.

  “You heard me. If you think you’re going to come here and insult me after all these years, then you’re crazy. I’m not that girl anymore, the one who was so used to being a whipping post that she took insults from everyone—including the guy who was supposed to love her. So, leave. You’re not welcome here.”

  Though he knew there was an important message in her words, he could only handle so much at one time and his brain focused on the fact that she was kicking him out, denying him access to his son.

  “You can’t do this. I have rights when it comes to my son.”

  “You gave up those rights the day you threw me out on my ass and told me never to come back. It was the same day you told me you’d never give my bastard your name and that I should head back to the freak show because you were done slumming.”

  He winced, shocked at how sharp his words had been, at how they still had the power to cut like a knife, even after all these years. “I was angry,” he said stiffly.

  “
Oh, well, whoop-de-do. Let’s stop the presses. Logan Powell was angry. Obviously, that gave you the right to do whatever you wanted. To hurt whomever you wanted.”

  “I think you have that backward. You hurt me. I thought I was in love with you only to find out you were sleeping with a bunch of my buddies. What the hell did you expect me to do?”

  “I expected you to believe me when I told you they were lying to you, trying to get you upset.”

  “Why would they do that?” he demanded. “They knew how I felt about you.”

  “How the hell should I know? They were your friends. What I never understood, not then and not now, is how you could believe them so easily? You said you loved me, yet the second your friends started with their dirty insinuations, you dumped me. Dumped our child like we were nothing.”

  Her words hit home, a little too closely for his comfort. But at the same time, he had a hard time believing that his friends had been lying about her. Some of those guys were his best friends to this day, had stood up with him at his wedding. They knew almost everything about each other. Surely he would know if they were liars. He was a cop, for God’s sake. It was his job to know those kinds of things.

  Still, he was disconcerted enough by the idea that he blurted the first thing that came to his mind. “Why wouldn’t I believe them? It’s not like you were a virgin when we had sex for the first time.”

  She reeled in shock, as if his words had been an actual physical blow to her. And maybe they had been. Her past was not something most women would be proud of. Still, he hadn’t meant to hit her with it so bluntly.

  But when her eyes narrowed, he realized he’d misread the signs. She wasn’t hurt or upset. She was as furious as he was. “Oh. And you were a virgin?” she demanded. “Because I seem to remember you running around with a number of girls before me, all of whom you admitted to sleeping with.”

  “Yeah, but—” He bit off the words before he could dig himself in even deeper, but it was too late.

  “But, what? It’s different for you, because you’re a guy?”

  “I wasn’t going to say that,” he protested, wondering how the hell this whole conversation had been turned around until he was the one on the defensive.

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like your past ever bothered me—”

  “Oh, really? Because I figure it bothered you a hell of a lot if you were so willing to toss me out because of a few whispers from your friends.”

  “It wasn’t just a few whispers.” Completely frustrated, he turned away from her. Walked over to the railing. Some of the overgrown bushes were visible in the dim light from the porch and he wondered vaguely if Penny and Paige had any idea what they were in for as they tried to rehab this house. It really was a disaster.

  “Look, how I once felt about your past is pretty much a moot point, don’t you think?” he asked. “What’s important is Luke and where we go from here.”

  For a second he didn’t think she was going to respond, but finally she sighed and said, “So, where do you see this going?”

  There it was, the question he had been asking himself since he got his first glimpse of Luke that afternoon in Prospector’s. He’d turned it over in his head a million times in the last ten hours, and though he still had a lot of unanswered questions—a lot of concerns and misgivings—there was one thing he was certain of. “I want to be a part of his life.”

  EVEN THOUGH SHE’D PREPARED herself for it, even though she’d known it was coming, the words were still a tremendous blow. How could they not be? Luke had been hers—exclusively hers—almost from the moment she’d known of his existence. The idea that she was now expected to share him with someone else—and not just anyone else, but with the man who had rejected him, rejected her, without listening to her side of the story—grated the way nothing else ever had.

  Her knee-jerk reaction was to snatch up Luke and run as fast and as far away from this god-awful town as she could possibly manage. In L.A. she had friends to support her, a job that paid the bills very nicely, a kickass attorney who wouldn’t let Logan within a hundred yards of Luke. It sounded really tempting.

  Penny would understand. Paige would write a check to pay for the renovations then she and Luke would be free to be on their way. She was actually halfway to the door—halfway to her checkbook—when she stopped herself. After all, she’d run nine years before and what had it gotten her except a trip back to Prospect now and a closet full of old skeletons demanding to be laid to rest? If she ran now, she was afraid she’d never get another chance to reconcile with her sister.

  That was the real reason she had come to Prospect, not this stupid old house, and she’d be damned if she’d let Logan steal her sister from her a second time.

  She thought of Luke’s face earlier, when he’d realized his father was within reach. Thought of Penny’s smile when she realized that Paige was finally ready to put the past behind her, finally ready to reconnect with her after years of feeling guilty for leaving.

  No, this time she wasn’t going anywhere. She’d let Logan Powell run her out of town once before. She’d be damned if she’d let him do it again. Not when her son and her sister were the ones who would suffer from her inability to stick.

  Though the decision was made, for what it was worth, she still couldn’t bring herself to talk to Logan, to acknowledge his right to have anything to do with Luke. In her opinion, he was nothing more than a sperm donor. The fact that she was supposed to share her son with him simply because he had suddenly woken up… It didn’t sit well.

  The seconds stretched endlessly, ebbing and flowing like the ocean she could hear but couldn’t see. The moment wasn’t comfortable, not with everything still left unsaid. But it was real, alive with the fear, the uncertainty, the anger that pulsed between them and she was loath to let it slip away. It had been so long since they’d had anything real that she couldn’t help savoring it, just a little.

  Logan obviously didn’t have any such reticence—one more sign that they weren’t on the same wavelength. He cracked after only a few minutes, his voice deep and gravelly when he asked, “Are you going to say something?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say.” She moved to sit on the swing, pulled her legs up underneath her. Curling up was small protection, but she would take comfort wherever she could get it.

  “Sure you do. You just don’t want to say it.”

  And there he was, the old Logan, the one she used to think she knew better than anyone else on the planet. Direct, honest, a straight shooter with a wicked sense of humor.

  Considering how things had ended between them, that shouldn’t make her smile. But it did. God, she was so much weaker than she’d thought she was. No wonder this trip was turning into an unmitigated disaster.

  “When you say you want to be a part of his life, what are we talking about here? You want to see him a few times when we’re in Prospect or are you looking for something more permanent?”

  “He’s my son, Paige. What do you think?”

  “I think it was way too easy for you to turn your back on him once and there’s nothing to say you won’t do it again. I’m not going to let Luke get close to you, let Luke start to love and depend on you, if you’re going to toss him aside when he’s not a shiny new toy anymore. He deserves better than that and I won’t stand by and let you hurt him.

  “So if you really want to do this thing, if you really want to open this can of worms, you’d better think long and hard about exactly how you expect this to end up. Because until you know, until you’re one hundred percent certain, I’m not letting you anywhere near my son.”

  “You know, this whole mother-of-the-year act is getting old. I mean, it takes a lot of nerve to act like you give a shit about a kid when you lost him in a supermarket your second day in town.”

  The unfairness of the accusation had her defense mechanisms firing before she could think better of it. “Well, at least I knew what n
ame to call him when I was looking for him. Which is more than you could have done.”

  He paled even as his mile-wide shoulders went ramrod stiff. When he spoke, his voice was low, controlled. “And whose fault is that?”

  “Yours, Logan. The fault is yours.”

  He didn’t respond and for long seconds she couldn’t breathe, as if his anger had sucked up all the oxygen around her. The emotions seething between them grew into their own entity.

  “We both know I could get a court order, demanding that you let me see him.” Disgust flickered across his face before he locked it away.

  All of the feelings she’d ever had for him—love, rage, tenderness, hate, friendship, bitterness—combined inside her until she was choking on them. Choking on the minefield of their past and the fact that he still had the ability to hurt her, even after all these years. She didn’t know if she had the energy to negotiate her way around the landmines this time around. Not when so much was at stake.

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Shit, Paige.” He ran a hand over his face, swore again. “Of course I’m not threatening you. But I want to see my son, want to get to know him. Is that so hard for you to believe? You’ve deprived me of eight years of his life. I don’t want to miss any more.”

  “I’ve deprived you. Is that how you see this whole thing? Me depriving you?”

  “You kept my kid a secret.”

  “Bullshit.” She was in his face now, years of pent-up anger spurring her on. “I told you I was pregnant right after I found out. I begged you to help me, to help him. Begged you to believe that I was carrying your child.

  “So don’t you sit here and tell me I kept him a secret. You’re the one who didn’t want him. You’re the one who threw him away. And if you think I’m going to stand by and let you do it again because you threaten me with a custody hearing, then you’re even stupider than I remember.

  “You want to go to court? Fine. Bring it on, because I will be damned before I let an insensitive, egomaniacal monster like you anywhere near my son.”