Homecoming Ranch

by Julia London

  “I sold it, Luke!” she cried. “I sold that sorry piece of expensive shit!” She suddenly threw her arms around him and did a little quickstep to one side, then the other, hugging him. Luke managed to hang on to his chair. He also managed to catch the scent of her hair. It reminded him of the lilac trees that grew in his mother’s garden.

  Just as suddenly, Madeline let go. “Do you know what this means?” she cried, and punched him in the arm. “It means I’m going to make a huge commission!” She gasped. “Oh my God, I am! And it means people will have to take me seriously! Oh! I almost forgot! I have to call Mr. DiNapoli!” She grabbed up her phone, punching the Call Return button as she walked out of the kitchen, away from Luke, her smile radiant, her eyes brilliant.

  Luke stood up from the bar and turned around to the window. He stared at the deluge of rain, hardly seeing it. He didn’t really hear Madeline in the other room, talking about closing dates.

  He was thinking about lilacs. He really liked lilacs. He had no idea until this moment just how much he liked lilacs.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The rain was falling so hard that if Madeline could have reached her mother, she wouldn’t have been able to hear her. She put her phone aside and turned around—and saw Luke beneath the arched entry into the kitchen and dining area. He was leaning up against it, holding a frozen pizza. He smiled at her. “Hungry?”

  “Starving,” Madeline said gratefully.

  She followed him into the kitchen, watched him turn on his oven, then slide in the pizza. He then reached into his fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. He twisted the top off of one and put it in front of her. “We should toast your great sale,” he said.

  Madeline stared at the bottle as he took the top off the second one.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t drink beer,” he said.

  “Rarely.” She glanced up at him. “Okay, never. I drank it once.”

  “Don’t like the taste?”

  “No, that’s not it. I don’t drink very much. I spent too many years cleaning up after my mom’s drinking.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. “But this is good beer, and your big sale deserves a big toast.”

  He was right. If Trudi were here, she’d be yelling at Madeline to step outside her bubble, pick up the beer and drink. She smiled at the image of Trudi and picked up the beer. How ironic that of all the people in the world who should be here to share this moment with her, it wasn’t Trudi, it was Luke Kendrick.

  “To Blue Eyes Pruett,” Luke said, lifting his bottle aloft, and nodding at her to do the same. “The best realtor in Orlando, Florida.”

  Madeline grinned. “Here, here,” she said, and tapped her bottle to his. She drank hesitantly, but was surprised that the beer went down smoothly. “Hey,” she said. “It’s good.”

  “Of course it’s good,” Luke said. “It’s made right here in Denver with pure mountain water.” He gave her a wry smile and turned back to the stove.

  Ten minutes later, they were sitting side by side at his kitchen bar, eating pepperoni pizza, drinking beer, and chatting. Luke was great company, Madeline had to admit. He was easy to talk to, and seemed genuinely interested in her.

  He asked how she got into real estate.

  “Looking for something,” she said picking at the pepperonis on her second slice. “I wanted to go to college. I had grand dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer. You know, something important,” she said with a laugh. “If I could have figured out how to do it, I would have, but unfortunately, we didn’t have the money for me to go to college.” She bit into her pizza. The lack of money was a sore spot for Madeline. Her grandparents had saved for her college, but they’d made the mistake of leaving her mother in charge of it. It was the story of her life—her mother abused her parents’ trust and their resources time and again, and time and again, her grandparents kept trying to pretend their daughter was a stand-up adult.

  “So you went into real estate.”

  “Yep. I was looking for a profession where I thought I could make a decent living and one that I would like. One summer, my best friend’s parents put their house on the market, and I just happened to be there when their realtor came to talk to them about listing it. I remember thinking she was so pretty, and so professional. But what really impressed me was that she was driving a BMW.” Madeline laughed.

  He smiled. “There are worse reasons to choose an occupation.”

  “What about you? Why did you choose architecture?”

  “Same kind of thing,” he said with a shrug. “I wasn’t good enough at football to go pro after college. And I hated English.” He laughed. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Then my mom got sick, and college became a hit-or-miss kind of thing. I would go one semester, drop out the next. Enroll again. It took me almost six years to finish as it was.” He tossed a crust onto his plate. “If that doesn’t focus you, nothing will. I landed on architecture and didn’t look back. I couldn’t afford to look back. And I’m struggling for time,” he added with a shrug. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to finish the semester because I’ve missed too much. I have to redeem myself next week on a test, or I have to drop the class.”

  “Oh no.” Madeline would be beside herself if she’d paid for a class and couldn’t finish it. She looked at Luke’s hands. They were strong hands, with thick fingers, a scar across the back of one, calloused across the pad of his right hand. He’d built his life with his hands.

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Luke said. “If I have to, I’ll just take it again.”

  “Are you glad you chose architecture?” Madeline asked.

  “Yeah, I am. I discovered that I really liked the math and puzzle of it. You know, putting things together, making different designs work.” He suddenly smiled at her, and—whether it was the beer or the moment, Madeline was dazzled by it. Truly dazzled. Warm and fuzzily dazzled.

  She smiled, too, took another swig of her beer. “I would love to see your houses and designs sometime. Houses are my thing, you know.”

  “I know,” he said watching her. “Ironic, huh?”

  She smiled. “A little.” They sat gazing at each other. Madeline could feel the tension swirling around them again, but then the lights over the bar suddenly flickered. She and Luke looked up at the same moment, and in the next, the power went out.

  “Great,” she said.

  “It happens a lot in the spring. Hold tight,” he said, and got up from the bar, disappearing into the living room. Madeline shivered; the kitchen and dining area were awash in the green, murky light of the storm. All around that little bungalow, the wind howled, and flashes of lightning illuminated the room for a few seconds before the rain swallowed up the light and made the room murky again.

  A moment later, Luke reappeared. He had a flashlight. “Grab the beers, okay?” he said, and held out the light, pointing it on the floor where Madeline was to walk. He led her into the living room, where he had propped two floor pillows against his couch, just before the hearth.

  “Fabulous!” she said. It was warmer before the fire. They could hear the storm raging, could still see the flashes of lightning, but the fire seemed to form a barrier between the storm and them.

  Luke’s legs stretched long in front of him, his arm casually draped across the couch behind her. “So who is Trudi?” he asked. “You’ve mentioned her a few times.”

  “She’s the sister I never had,” Madeline said airily, before she realized what she’d said. She smiled sheepishly. “I mean, until now.”

  “That must be strange, finding out about siblings at this stage of the game.”

  “It’s surreal,” Madeline agreed.

  “What about your mom?” he asked. “She didn’t know about them?”

  Madeline snorted and settled deeper into the cushion. “No.” She felt warm and fluid after two beers, and uncharacteristically trusting. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” she said sagely. “My dad wasn’t the only bad parent in my life. My mo
ther…” She took a breath and let it out, slowly, thinking how best to describe her. “She’s not very responsible. No, wait, let me rephrase that. She’s totally irresponsible,” she said, pointing with her beer bottle for emphasis. “I’ve always had to take care of her.”

  “I gathered,” he said. He put his hand on her leg and squeezed softly. “Sorry.”

  “I’ll break it down for you,” Madeline said, feeling safe. “One, lots of stepfathers and stepfather wannabes. Two, she never held a job more than a couple of months. Three, she squanders everything anyone ever gives her, and four, she’s kind of self-centered.”

  “Wow,” Luke said. “Sounds like you’ve had a tough life.”

  “You have no idea.” Madeline liked this, she thought. She didn’t get any judgmental vibes from Luke. He made it easy to confess the truth about her family. “I had good grandparents,” Madeline said with a shrug, as if that made up for the completely ineffectual mothering she had received. “I bet your parents were Ozzie and Harriet.”

  Luke gave her a rueful smile. “I won’t lie—they were pretty damn good parents. I had a great life at the ranch.”

  “Until now,” she said.

  Luke didn’t say anything at first. He turned his head and looked at her, his expression resigned. “Until now,” he agreed.

  Madeline felt bad for him, truly horrible. But she couldn’t change what had happened to his family. She looked to the window; the rain was still coming down hard, but the wind had begun to die down. Her gaze fell on a picture on a shelf on the wall. She could see Luke and a man who looked a lot like him. Luke had his arm draped around his shoulder. But sitting just to his left was the blonde woman who had come into the Stakeout the first night she’d met him. “Hey,” she said, pointing her beer bottle at the picture. “That’s Julie What’s Her Name.”

  Luke glanced up from the study of his beer label and seemed surprised. “I forgot that was there.” He hopped up, walked across the room, and picked up the picture. He took it down, slid it onto a table inside the entry hall.

  “Why’d you do that?” Madeline asked as Luke settled back onto the floor beside her. “Isn’t she your friend?”

  “More like someone I used to know.”

  Madeline felt as if she’d intruded on something very personal. It seemed obvious to her that Libby was right—he still had feelings for Julie. “She must be more than that if you don’t want to talk about her,” she said, and glanced at Luke from the corner of her eye. She smiled. “I’m just saying.”

  Luke smiled wryly at her attempt to elicit information about Julie from him. “You don’t want to hear about it, trust me. It’s boring.”

  “Yes I do. For one, I’m a good listener. Two, I am basically nosy.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You’re right,” Madeline agreed. “I’m not really a good listener.”

  Luke laughed outright. He tapped his fist against Madeline’s knee as if he were considering it. “It’s old news, Maddie.”

  “Not to me.”

  “Ay yi yi,” he sighed. “I was engaged to her, okay? But then she called it off.”

  “Why?” Madeline asked before she could stop herself. “No, sorry, scratch that. I’m too nosy.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, and tapped his fist against her leg again. “My brother got sick. He has a nerve disease that attacks the muscles.”

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” Madeline said, and pictured something like muscular dystrophy.

  “Yeah, that was heavy, but we were managing to get on with it, and then my mother got sick. I don’t think Julie could handle all the attention my family needed from us.”

  Madeline gaped at him. That seemed so callous to her. “I’m sorry, Luke,” she said softly. “That must have hurt.”

  “Sure it did.” He smiled ruefully. “But it was a while ago, and you know how those things go. You get over them.” He tapped her knee once more. “You know what I mean.”

  “Umm…” She tried to think of something clever to say, but her hesitation led him to cock a brow.

  “Wait—you haven’t suffered a bad breakup?”

  Madeline shook her head.

  “Seriously?”

  “I dated a guy a couple of years ago. He broke up with me.”

  “How long did you date him?” Luke asked curiously.

  “I don’t know exactly—four or five months?”

  He reared back a little as if he didn’t know what to make of her. “I am not talking about puppy love, baby. I’m talking about full-on adult love. You know, men and women, sex, rock and roll—a lot of emotions and things you wish you’d never said, more things you wish you’d said. Crazy love, crazy pain.”

  When he put it like that, heartbreak sounded almost desirable. But the truth was that Madeline hadn’t experienced anything like that. She’d never allowed herself to get close enough for that. She was an expert at keeping a respectable distance from emotions, which was why Trystan broke up with her.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he insisted. “Never?”

  “No,” she said, her face flaming. “Don’t make fun.”

  “I’m not making fun.” He shifted around to face her. “But are you telling me you have never been in love? How old are you, anyway?”

  “God, Luke,” she said, trying to squirm away, but he stopped her with a hand to her leg.

  “How old?”

  “Almost thirty,” she said, feeling slightly apologetic for it. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not so unusual.”

  “Wait,” Luke said, ignoring her argument. “What about the guy?”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy, the guy,” he said, gesturing at her with his hand. “The one you sort of acknowledged at dinner the other night.”

  “Who, Stephen?” she asked.

  “Ha! I knew there was someone. So Stephen, what about him? What’s wrong with him?”

  “There is nothing wrong with him,” Madeline said. “He’s a great guy. It just takes a lot for me to get emotionally invested.”

  “Aha,” Luke said, eyeing her curiously. “I get it. Either this guy is beyond lame, or you’ve got some impossible standards. What does it take?”

  She snorted. “Come on, Luke.” She moved to stand up, but he was too quick. He caught her wrist and held her there.

  “You come on, Maddie. Tell me what it takes for you to become emotionally invested.”

  A million things flitted through her mind. Trust. Belief. Courage. She had never really put actual words to the fears that tumbled around in her. “I don’t know,” she said impatiently, and tried to pull her wrist free of his grasp.

  But Luke tightened his hold. “I think you do know. You can tell me, Maddie. I won’t laugh, I won’t judge. And in a few days, when you go back to Orlando, you can forget you ever said anything.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and lifted her hand to his mouth, kissing her knuckles, his lips warm and soft on her skin. “But it does. I like you, Blue Eyes. And I am curious to know what demons are hiding in that hot body of yours.”

  Madeline’s pulse began to quicken, and she couldn’t help but smile.

  “So what is it that keeps you from putting yourself out there?”

  She didn’t want to acknowledge what had been rattling around in her for so long, shaping her, forming the hard edges of her life.

  Luke’s expression softened; he seemed to get that this had gone from a playful conversation to something more serious for Madeline. He cocked his head to one side, brushed his knuckles against her face, pushing her hair away. “I wasn’t kidding, you know. You can tell me. Whatever you say is safe with me.”

  He said it so casually, as if it were a matter of course for him. As if someone off the street could tell him things and he would keep them safe. His voice, his expression, cloaked Madeline with a sense of security. “I have to know that they aren’t going to leave me,” she sai
d, her voice barely above a whisper. She wanted to tell him that they’d all left, every one of them. Her father, the men who had traipsed through her life with her mother. It was weird—she had wanted them all to leave and for so long and had harbored some stupid hope that maybe her father would come back and rescue her. Eventually, when they all left, and her father never came, the girl in Madeline had convinced the grown woman that it was because she somehow deserved it.

  She opened her mouth to say all those things, but couldn’t find the courage. She closed her mouth. Luke’s expression didn’t change; he traced a finger under her chin. “But how will you know they will never leave you if you don’t put your heart on the line once or twice?”

  “I know, it’s screwed up. Believe me, I know,” she admitted. She’d said too much. She felt a little short of breath. She pulled her hand free of his grip and tried to wave it off. “No big deal,” she said, wanting to erase her confession. She picked up her beer bottle, downing the little bit that was left, and peered into the empty bottle.

  “No?” Luke said, and settled back, away from her, his expression dubious. “It seems to me that it’s had a great effect on you. I mean, you just said you can’t get emotionally invested with this guy.”

  She forced smile. “I just sort of suck at dating, that’s all. Stephen is a great guy. But I don’t have a lot of time for him.” That was all she was willing to admit.

  Luke chuckled.

  “Why is that funny?” she asked, confused.

  “Because you don’t lie very well, Maddie. You know what you need?”

  Madeline sighed dramatically and fell back against the pillows. “Go ahead, take a number. There is always someone waiting in the wings who can’t wait to tell me what I need.”