by Julie Caille
“So what about this new guy?” Luke growled. “Is he another happy boy?”
She ignored the derision in his voice. “Nick is nothing like Kenny. He’s a nice, warm, likable man.” Something in the curl to Luke’s mouth prompted her to add in a tone edged with sharpness, “Is it so hard for you to believe?”
“That you could attract a nice guy? Not at all, Alicia. I think you could—” Biting off whatever he’d been about to say, he scowled and went back to eating his sundae.
Alicia did the same, wishing fervently that they had brought Ronnie along. Though she might have expected otherwise, the tension eased when the child was around. However, Ronnie had spent the day at Sharon’s house while Alicia accompanied Luke to the store. They’d been on their way home when Luke had surprised her with a stop at the ice-cream parlor.
Luke finished first and glanced at his watch. “We’d better hurry. I promised Sharon we’d pick Ronnie up by five.”
Alicia reached for her purse.
“Whoa, I didn’t mean to rush you. Go ahead and finish.”
“I’ve had as much as I can eat. Anyway, I don’t need the calories.” She shook back her hair and carried the remains of their indulgence over to the trash can, recalling how Kenny used to hassle her when she ate a dessert. He’d been the type of person who made cruel remarks about overweight people and had often insinuated that Alicia would join their ranks if she didn’t abstain from the sweets she so enjoyed.
“You don’t need to worry about calories,” Luke remarked as they headed for the door.
“Is that a compliment?” She flipped out the question without thought, then regretted it when she noticed his gaze traveled over her, his gray eyes gleaming like liquid smoke in the afternoon light.
“Yeah, I guess it is.” As they made their way to the car, his fingertips grazed the small of her back. “You’re not as slim as you used to be, but that’s immaterial. You look healthy and you look good. Real good.”
He unlocked and opened the door of the Silverado, and she slid into the passenger seat, too flabbergasted to answer. She hated to admit that she was flattered, especially since the statement had been uttered as matter-of-factly as a weather forecast.
An hour later, she stood at her bedroom window, her eyes narrowed against the golden rays of the sinking sun. Below, Luke and Ronnie romped on the backyard grass in a mock tussle over a Frisbee. Wearing frayed cutoffs and a muscle shirt, his black hair tousled and his face relaxed with pleasure, Luke had never seemed more blatantly masculine and appealing. Over the low hum of the air conditioner, she could hear the rich rumble of his laughter through the glass.
Alicia’s chest tightened at the sight. How many times had she conjured up a scene like this in her daydreams? How many times had she ached for a man who wanted and appreciated children? A fun-loving man who could cut loose and play, not because he wanted to win friends or impress people, but because he was happy and at peace with himself. And how many times had the man in her dreams had Luke’s face?
The irony of the situation nearly choked her. She’d told Luke that Kenny had been unable to share his feelings, yet she might have said the same about Luke. During those long-ago weeks he’d romanced her, he’d never let her beyond a certain point, never said he’d loved her as she had loved him. He’d said he needed her. Wanted to marry her. But he’d never spoken the words she’d needed to hear, never revealed the secrets of his inner self. He’d talked only of his plans for what was to come. Always the future and never the past.
As though he’d had a darker side to hide.
It had seemed like enough when she’d accepted his ring. She’d rationalized the problem, promised herself that as time progressed the rest would follow. She’d been so young, so naive. At barely eighteen, where had she found the courage to break things off? Or had it been courage? Perhaps it had only been cowardice.
She looked down at the man and the boy on the lawn, battling insidious tendrils of self-pity. She felt left out, lonely, like Cinderella gazing into the ashes while her stepsisters left for the ball. Yearning engulfed her, not for compliments or flattery or even sex, but for connection and a family of her own.
And, if the truth were to be acknowledged, for Luke.
“No,” she whispered, touching the glass. “I won’t let you do this to me again, Luke Garrick. I won’t let you put another scar on my soul.”
Determination gripped her. She had to do something. She needed to move, to get her blood flowing, and this time she wasn’t going to wash floors. In a frenzy of movement, she yanked open a drawer and pulled out a pair of jogging shorts and a tank top. She threw them on, her breathing shallow.
Maybe she was suffering from another round of shock from Caroline’s death. Heck, this could even be PMS. Whatever the case, she was going to fight it before it disabled her, before it made her turn tail and run back to Boston, to her world...without Caroline’s child.
She knew the precise moment Luke became aware of her presence in the yard, for his body stilled and his smile died. He sat up, brushing grass from his arms, wariness replacing the animation in his face. His eyes settled on her, and his arm draped around Ronnie’s shoulders in a gesture that seemed almost proprietary.
Alicia approached them, her face set in a careful, cool mask. “What time did you plan to go out?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“Well, if you’re going to be here for a while, I thought I might go jogging.”
His brows rose as he took in her running shoes. “Since when do you jog?”
She lifted her chin. “Since my divorce. The heat has slowed me down, but I need to get back to it before I lose all the progress I’ve made.”
He gave her a ghost of a smile. “Go ahead, I’m not in a hurry. Just be sure you don’t overdo. And drink a lot of water when you get back.” He paused, his expression suggesting he couldn’t quite believe she did anything athletic. “I hope you did some warm-ups.”
“Of course.” Transferring her gaze to Ronnie, Alicia reached down and ruffled her nephew’s hair. “In a while, you and I are going to spend some time together. So you be thinking about what you’d like to do, okay?”
“Okay,” the child agreed without much enthusiasm.
The lush leaves of a nearby magnolia tree rustled as Alicia turned and started across the yard. The sweet scent of honeysuckle drifted on the warm, humid breeze, bringing with it a resurgence of her melancholy.
She glanced back over her shoulder, but neither Luke nor Ronnie appeared to notice. Instead, they were already wrestling again. Laughing. A man and a boy who looked as though they belonged together.
Alicia’s shoulders slumped as she started down the road.
* * *
“Don’t you have somewhere better to hang out on a Saturday night than this place?” Joey grumbled when Luke walked into his hospital room later that evening. “Go on, pull over a chair. This damned place...”
Luke noticed that Joey’s voice had gained strength since the day before, and his bed was in a more upright position. Joey was still plugged into a heart monitor, and various wires and tubes connected him to more machines. The room smelled like all hospital rooms—antiseptic and medicinal, with a whiff of human body mixed in. An open Stephen King novel lay facedown on Joey’s great mound of a stomach. No roommate occupied the other bed in the room.
Luke settled into the chair and propped a foot against the bed rail while Joey listed his grievances over the blare of the TV. Luke had heard them all before, but he was willing to listen to them again if it made Joey happy.
In the first quiet interval, Luke leaned forward and looked his partner in the eye. “Listen, Joey, I want to talk to you about the business before Nora gets here.” Nora was Joey’s wife, and Luke expected her to walk in at any moment.
With a grimace, Joey reached for the remote clipped to the sheet near his hand and lowered the volume of the TV. “Hey, I know I’m a little behind with the books, but don’t
worry about it. As soon as I get back on my feet—”
“It couldn’t wait that long.” Wishing there was a way to avoid the issue, Luke kept the accusation from his voice. “You’ve really been letting things slide and the problems got serious. Anyhow, I wanted to tell you it’s been taken care of, in case you were worried. Alicia straightened everything out.”
“The pretty little aunt from Boston?” Joey looked both surprised and relieved. “How’d you swing that?”
“She used to keep the books for her husband. I asked her to help me out.”
“She know about your problem?” Joey knew better than to say the word dyslexia.
Luke shook his head. “She doesn’t need to know. She’s going to come into the office a couple of times a week from now on while Ronnie’s in school. Until you’re back, of course.”
“It might be awhile,” Joey said glumly. “Nora’s been on my back about retiring, and the doc says it’s a good idea.”
Something cold trailed down Luke’s spine. “So what are you going to do?”
Joey snorted. “I’m comin’ back. I love that place too damn much to let a bad heart keep me away. I’ve been lying in this bed for the past few days, thinking about the early days when we first opened up. You were just a smart-assed kid back then, but I knew you were the partner I needed.” His voice grew low as he reminisced. “Charlie Lucci recommended you. Good old Charlie called me after you fixed his stereo in your parents’ garage. I remember he said, ‘Joey, this is the guy you’re looking for. He’s just a kid, but he’s smart. Real smart. He understands circuits the way you and I understand food.’”
Luke smiled. “I remember the day you called me. You wanted me to go into business with you and you didn’t even want my money. I thought you were a nut case.”
“I know. But you wanted in, I could hear it in your voice. You were smart, though. You checked me out, made me give you a mile-long list of references. I liked that. It showed you had brains. I knew you’d own half the business someday and I was right.”
Luke was silent for a moment, recalling how excited he’d been when he’d first shared the news with Alicia. His excitement had dissipated when he’d observed her horrified reaction. She’d wanted him to say no, to turn down the opportunity of a lifetime just because it would take him a thousand miles away. She’d been wrong to expect it of him, just as he’d been wrong to ask her to give up her college education and go with him. The only right decision had been their broken engagement, though it had taken him years to believe it. Even now, sometimes, he wondered...
Joey’s sigh brought him back to the present. “Hell, Luke, I know I dropped the ball there for a while. I let you down and I apologize. It won’t happen again.” Looking rueful, he poked at the book on his stomach. “I gotta stop bringing these things to work, that’s all. Never knew a guy could get so hooked on stories. I hadn’t read a book since I was in high school, when they fed us a lot of literary crap.”
“And what about your health?” Luke asked evenly. “I don’t want you back if it’s going to kill you.”
“Bookkeeping isn’t going to kill me. Making a few phone calls isn’t going to kill me, either. If another attack is gonna get me, it’ll happen no matter where I am. That’s what I told Nora.”
“That’s right, talk about me while I’m not here,” said a cheerful, feminine voice. A short, dark-haired woman sailed into the room, a vase of flowers in one hand and a sack of paperbacks in the other. Luke jumped up and relieved her of her parcels while she went over to kiss Joey’s cheek.
“Sorry I’m late, hon. The phone rang just as I was on my way out the door.” Still smiling, she greeted Luke and urged him not to leave on her account.
“Ah, let him go, Nora,” Joey razzed. “He wants to get back to A-lee-ci-a.” With a weak grin, the large man kissed the tips of his fingers. “I bet you like having her around the house.”
Luke preserved an unruffled facade. “I’m going to work out,” he said dryly. “It’s been weeks since I had a chance.”
But this only fueled Joey’s teasing. “Going to pump some iron, eh? Any special reason?”
“Oh, leave him alone,” Nora chided. Turning to Luke, she added with a twinkle, “Your visit seems to have worked wonders. This is as feisty as he’s been all week.”
“Feisty?” Luke arched a brow. “I could think of a better word for it. Take care, Joey. So long, Nora.”
Despite the warm glow of this camaraderie, Luke left the hospital with a chill in his gut. His brow furrowed, he climbed into the truck and drove to the fitness center, navigating almost unconsciously as his thoughts drifted. What would he do if Joey did decide to retire? He’d need a new partner, someone he could trust. But who? In order to trust someone, he’d have to know them—and know them well. How many people fit the bill? Not many, and none of them were looking for jobs. Current employees? While all of them were trustworthy, he couldn’t think of any who could do Joey’s job, let alone buy into the business.
But the problem was even worse than that. He’d have to tell whoever took Joey’s place about his dyslexia. The knowledge gnawed at him, gave him a sick feeling in his stomach. After all, he hadn’t even been able to tell Alicia.
Alicia.
Somehow every avenue of thought led to her. She lingered in his mind throughout the next hour as he sweated through various weight-training exercises. He couldn’t get her image out of his head, couldn’t forget how beautiful and sexy she’d looked when she’d returned from jogging—her face all flushed, her blond hair mussed and curling, her skin damp with perspiration. It had been an unexpected turn-on. Even now, it embarrassed him to remember the way his body had reacted. His body had wanted to follow her up to the shower, to join her there, to lift her against the tiled wall and make passionate love to her under the spray. His mind had done so, though his body hadn’t moved.
He told himself he was a fool.
Wiping his neck with a towel, he wondered if it was too soon to go home. He glanced around the large glass-enclosed room filled with exercise equipment until he found a clock. Ten-fifteen. He didn’t know how long Alicia expected him to stay away, but he was tired and he wanted to go home.
Twenty minutes later, he unlocked the front door of his house and stepped inside. The sight of his noble watchdog sprawled on the cool wood floor greeted him. As he dropped his duffel bag, Daffy lifted her head and yawned, as though to suggest he had disturbed her beauty sleep.
“Well, excuse me,” Luke muttered. “What are you going to do if there’s a burglar? Lick his hand?”
Daffy sat up and thumped her tail.
“I know, I know. You knew it was me.” Luke bent down and scratched her ears, listening for sounds that would tell him where Alicia was. He heard nothing. Good. She must have gone to bed.
Anxious to get a drink, he straightened and headed for the kitchen. It almost seemed like the old days, when he could walk through his house knowing it was as empty as his heart. But it wasn’t empty, because a little boy slept upstairs, and the woman who had once possessed his soul was...asleep on his living-room sofa.
Luke froze in the doorway, caught off guard by the unexpected sight. She lay on her side, her hair spilling like spun gold over the blue sofa pillow, her legs curled as if to make room for someone else to sit down. She looked like a princess from a fairy tale—fragile and lovely and utterly, heartstoppingly desirable.
A wet nose nudged his leg, as though Daffy were urging him toward Alicia. Without conscious intent, Luke moved into the room, his footsteps muffled by the thick beige rug.
He went as close as he dared, feasting his eyes on the delicate curve of her cheek, her slightly parted lips, the rise and fall of her beautiful breasts. His thirst was forgotten, replaced by a driving, inexorable hunger.
In all these years, he’d never found anyone else who made him feel like this. Just looking at her made him break into a sweat. He wanted to touch her, to lie down with her, to run his palms over the s
weet satin of her skin. Most of all, he wanted to hear her cry his name as he gave her the ultimate pleasure.
But that could never be. She was divorced from one man, involved with another. Even if she was not, there was always the past. And her career. And his “problem.” As though to reinforce that thought, he noticed a book lying on the coffee table. Tired as he was, he managed to decipher the title: The World of Pooh by A. A. Milne. She and Ronnie must have been reading it.
He picked up the book, got himself a glass of cold water from the kitchen and went upstairs. Behind the closed door of his bedroom, he thumbed through the pages, forcing himself to read a few of the sentences aloud. Frustration filled him as the letters and words jumped around. Half the words looked as if they had been misspelled; he had to stop and stare in an effort to make his brain see them as they really were.
The second time he lost his place, he slammed the book shut. He wanted to hurl it against the wall, rip it to pieces, burn it. Instead, he carried it into Ronnie’s room and placed it on the table next to the child’s bed. His jaw clenched, Luke gazed down at his nephew’s face, illuminated by the soft glow of a Donald Duck night-light.
God, how he loved this kid.
For several seconds, overwhelming defeat weighted him down. Maybe he should let Alicia take the boy back to Boston. After all, what kind of father was he going to make? What kind of dad couldn’t read to his kid? What kind of a role model could he be?
Then, stubbornly, he shoved aside his self-doubt. “No way,” he whispered to the small, sleeping form on the bed. No way am I giving you up.”
* * *
“Maybe we’ll see a woozle,” Alicia teased Ronnie while Luke paid their entrance fee to the Houston Zoological Gardens.
“Aunt Alicia!” Ronnie rolled his eyes. “Woozles aren’t real!”
“How about a heffalump?”
“Aunt Alicia!” This time Ronnie laughed. “Heffalumps aren’t real, either. That’s only in Winnie-the-Pooh.” To Alicia’s amusement, he then proceeded to chant, “Help, help, here comes a heffalump,” as they strolled toward the tropical-bird area.
