Luke’s heart pounded in his head with increasing speed.
He swung his feet off the side of the bed and dropped his forehead into the palms of his hands.
Zoe.
“You need to do this, Luke. Last-ditch effort. When you come back, you need a direction. This limbo isn’t working for you.”
“What about getting the car home for Mel?”
“You can drive it when you come back. Now move your ass.” Wyatt looked at his watch. “One hour, fifty-five minutes.”
Luke was buckled in and cruising at twenty-two thousand feet before he had an opportunity to process what he was doing.
What the hell was he going to say to her?
The jingle of keys and the click of her front door unlocking brought Zoe’s attention away from the paper she was reading on her tablet.
Jo tiptoed in, shoes in hand, and closed the door behind her.
Zoe stood and leaned against the door frame of the kitchen with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“Oh . . . the walk of shame never looked so devilish.”
Jo jumped and started laughing before turning her head toward Zoe.
What makeup Jo had worn the night before was all but gone, her hair was a bit disheveled, and the grin on her face spoke volumes.
“That good, huh?” Zoe was almost jealous.
“Holy shit, that man had energy.”
Zoe laughed and turned back toward the dining table she’d been sitting at. “I have coffee.”
“I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She poured the coffee and sat down for the obligatory recap of the night. “Did you get his name?”
Jo nodded . . . then turned said nod into a shake of her head.
They both laughed over the brims of their cups.
Hours later, they stood on the massive porch of a colonial two-story with the Realtor, who was spouting off details of the neighborhood, the schools, the lack of a crime rate.
“There’s no such thing as a lack of crime,” Jo told the real estate agent.
He placated her with a smile.
Zoe watched as Jo tilted her steel-rimmed sunglasses that should have identified her as a cop, but had somehow managed to slip by Anton. “What are the square miles of this crimeless zip code? And what is the population?”
He blinked. “I can get that information if you need it.”
“You do that.”
Zoe stepped forward. “What do you think of the house?”
Jo moved past Anton and back inside the front doors. “Very formal.”
Yeah, Zoe wasn’t sure about all that formality. “It has an amazing kitchen.”
“I don’t think it’s you.”
Zoe sighed. “Onward.”
“You’re back?” Raymond was dressed a little more like a local on Saturday.
“So are you.”
This time Zoe really was drinking Perrier. She tilted the green bottle toward the other side of the bar, where Jo was once again flirting with Mr. No Name.
“Ahh, I see.”
Zoe glanced around. “Still no wife?”
He took a seat beside her and removed his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans. He found what he was searching for and handed her the phone.
A woman in a wheelchair stared back at her. It appeared as if, along with a physical disability, there was something missing in her eyes. “Car accident three years ago.”
Zoe felt sucker punched. “This is your wife?”
Raymond took the phone from her fingers. “Almost lost her.” He scrolled through his phone again, handed it back. This was a picture of the two of them at obviously better times. He was kissing the top of her head, and she was laughing as they stood on the shores of some beach. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” There was loss in his voice. “I recently had to put her in a home. The accident took away her ability to walk and left her brain a mass of scrambled eggs.”
Zoe couldn’t imagine. “How long were you married before the accident?”
“Three years.”
“That’s awful.”
He shrugged. “Her parents told me I should divorce her . . . move on with my life.”
Zoe felt her heart dip. She understood on a practical level why they’d suggest such a thing but couldn’t imagine taking that step.
One look into Raymond’s eyes told her everything. “You still love her.”
He offered a single nod. “Hard to move on with someone new when you’re still in love with someone else.”
She placed a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
Jo slid between the two of them, placed her arm over Zoe’s shoulders. “I’m going to take off.”
She rolled her eyes and pushed Jo away. “Go, you slut.”
“I’ll be back before noon.”
It was good to see her friend smiling.
“Get his name,” Zoe said as Jo walked away.
She was rewarded with Jo’s back and a middle finger flying in the air.
When Zoe stopped watching, her eyes drifted to a set of eyes staring at her.
Air rushed into her lungs and her heart took off.
Raymond placed a hand on her arm. “Are you okay?”
“Luke.”
Raymond twisted in his chair, and Luke turned to walk away.
Zoe jumped to her feet and wove through the dense crowd.
She caught him at the front door. “Luke!”
“This was a mistake.”
“What are you doing here?”
He ran his hands through his thick hair. “I don’t know.”
Someone bumped her as they left the bar.
Zoe moved outside, where the humidity lay thick in the air. She grabbed Luke’s shoulder.
For a minute, they just stared at each other.
She was reminded of the first time he’d kissed her. They’d ditched school and met outside of Grayson’s farm. She knew she was meeting out there for a kiss but had no idea she’d fall in love. He looked just as nervous then as he did now.
For years after she’d left River Bend, she’d imagined him showing up like he had now. She’d dream of him showing up on set, in her kitchen with his too-long hair and sexy grin.
Leaving River Bend had been one of the hardest and smartest things she’d ever done.
Now the part of her she’d left behind was watching her as a thousand memories passed through her. She watched and waited for him to spell out what he was doing in Texas, in her neighborhood, at her bar.
“What are you doing here, Luke?”
“I—I . . . I needed to see you.” He looked back through the open door. “I see you’re with someone.”
Confusion marred her brow. “Raymond?”
Luke forced his attention back to her. “His name is Raymond?”
“Oh, my God, you’re jealous.”
He put his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “I am not.” Luke studied his shoes for several seconds.
“You’re such a bad liar.”
“I keep hearing that.”
“It’s been eleven years, Luke.”
“I know.” He looked at her now as noise from the inside ramped higher and a live band started to play. “I was over it. Then you came back.”
All the pain of that first year apart tore at her heart.
“I had to leave, Luke. You know I couldn’t stay in River Bend.” They’d had this conversation one time before. The night she said good-bye. She’d cried and he had been angry. He told her not to leave one time, then let go of her hand as she pulled away.
“I know that, Zoe.”
“If you know that, then why are you really here?”
A couple burst from the door, arm in arm, laughing.
Luke grabbed her hand and pulled her to the far end of the deck. Once he was happy with their location, he dropped her hand and leaned against the post. “I went to Eugene with Wyatt to hook up.”
She swallowed. She
’d thought as much when Jo had told her about the drive to the airport.
“And?”
“Wyatt pointed out how picky I am.”
She avoided smiling. “You didn’t hook up.”
A short shake of his head had her lifting the edges of her lips.
“Wyatt woke me up with a plane ticket and told me to fly here.”
“And since when do you do what everyone tells you to do? Where is that self-assured, confident guy who makes his own decisions that I spent time with?”
There was alarm in his eyes. “I don’t know. But I want him back, Zoe.”
“You flew here to find him?”
He ran his hands through his hair again. “I did.” Unhappiness filled those two tiny words.
Zoe half sat on the railing and placed both hands at her sides. “How can I help?” Seeing him miserable had never been her goal. Escaping misery, on the other hand . . .
“I need to move on.”
It was her turn to stare at her shoes. “I never meant for you to stay stagnant.”
“I didn’t think I had. Then everyone returned last year for the reunion and . . . I don’t know . . . I never left. Now I feel like I’m in limbo, waiting for something to shift.”
“A lot of kids don’t leave. You never talked about leaving.”
“Neither did you, until you did.”
Yeah, it had taken a bottle of tequila and a hangover to slap her head into the reality of her future if she’d stayed. “Are you saying you want to leave home?”
He stared at her as if her suggestion was a foreign concept.
“I don’t know what I’m saying, Zoe.”
She loved how her name rolled off his tongue.
Noise filtered out of the bar, breaking the spell Luke had placed on her by simply uttering her name. “Where are you staying?”
He glanced around the parking lot. “I rented a car.”
She chuckled. “You really didn’t plan this.”
Luke pulled his shirt away from his chest as if trying to capture a cool breeze with the effect.
“You can stay with me.”
His eyes lit up.
“I have a spare room,” she blurted out. “I doubt Jo will be using it.”
“Jo . . . shit, I completely forgot she was here.”
“She’s not . . . well, she is, but she found a tatted up hottie. Then there is always the couch.”
He laughed. “Good for her.”
“When is your return flight?”
“Monday morning.”
“Stay with me until Monday. You’ll remember all my annoying habits that you don’t miss and be ready to hook up when you fly into Eugene.”
He tried to smile. “You don’t have annoying habits.”
Yeah, she did. “C’mon.” She pushed away from the rail and dusted her hands on her jeans. “Let’s go find a bottle of tequila and remember old times.”
Luke took a deep breath and offered his arm.
Her belly twisted as she looped her hand through and walked the few short steps to their cars.
Luke woke to his tongue tasting like elementary school paste. He preferred not to think about how he knew what paste tasted like.
He cracked an eye open and took stock of where he was.
The plush couch cushioned his back. A large-screen television hung on the wall across the room.
Zoe’s!
He let his head fall back and his eyes close.
Unlike when they were kids, they drank the tequila until tipsy, not until shitfaced. He’d crashed on the couch in case Jo snuck in sometime in the night. He didn’t want to scare a woman trained to take down men twice her size when she didn’t realize he was in her designated sleeping space.
His bladder prompted him to lift his lazy ass off the couch.
When he was finished, the crack in the door leading to Zoe’s room asked him to try out his skills in voyeurism. Powerless to stop himself, his little finger moved the door ever so slightly.
She was sound asleep, her hair disheveled on the pillow, her full lips parted in her sleep.
He’d missed her.
The quiet moments . . . the laughter . . . his ability to say and do just about anything and not scare her away.
She’d left anyway, but not because of him.
In Texas, she had a life she never would have obtained staying in River Bend.
Luke eased the door closed and slowly made his way down the hall.
A gasp stopped the movement of his feet.
“Holy shit.”
Jo held shoes in her hand and shock on her face.
“Shh, she’s sleeping.” He glanced over his shoulder to the closed door.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a rough whisper.
He realized then what it looked like . . . him half dressed, walking away from Zoe’s room.
Luke took two steps and pulled Jo from the hall. “I slept on the couch.” He pointed to the blanket and pillow.
Jo kept staring. “You were in Eugene.”
“There’s more than one plane in the air, Jo.” He didn’t elaborate and turned toward the kitchen. “Coffee?”
“Holy shit,” he heard again, only this time with meaning.
Chapter Five
“A three-story house is a lot of up and down.”
Zoe slid a glance to Jo when Luke voiced his opinion.
They’d left her apartment two houses ago without her having the opportunity to talk to Jo privately.
Anton had taken one glance at Luke, smiled, and made sure he was by his side as they breached the doors of the homes Zoe was considering buying.
Her Realtor’s reaction to Luke’s good looks answered a few questions Zoe had about the man’s sexuality.
“No more or less than Miss Gina’s Bed-and-Breakfast,” Zoe said.
“This is a home, not an inn.”
“Okay . . . it’s a lot of square footage. Are you planning on your mother moving in? Maybe Zanya and Blaze?” Luke asked.
Zoe swallowed hard. The mere image of her mother anywhere near Dallas made her cringe. Would her family think that was an option? Moving to Texas and staying with her?
“Maybe it is a little large.”
Jo nudged her arm. “The houses we looked at yesterday were bigger.”
“I didn’t think about my family.”
“Is your mother elderly?” Anton asked.
“No,” Zoe sighed. “Just needy.”
“Your mom wouldn’t leave Oregon.”
Zoe knew better. Much as she liked to believe that her mom wouldn’t try and interrupt her life, she wouldn’t put it past her. And Zanya wasn’t exactly rolling in money with any real options. She realized how selfish her thoughts sounded in her head.
What a bitch. Maybe she should be looking at larger homes . . . homes to house her family.
“Don’t go there, Zoe,” Jo exclaimed.
“They have so little.”
Luke edged closer. “Life choices, babe. We’ve talked about this for years. Nothing has changed. You enable your mom now . . . your sister, even Zane, and you’ll be taking care of them their entire lives.”
They were right.
“I hate that you both know what I’m thinking before I do.”
Luke and Jo smiled at each other.
“Perhaps something a little smaller would be a better option,” Anton said.
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
They were eating a late lunch at 15 Coins. Zoe knew the head chef, who personally stepped out of the kitchen to greet them and suggest what they should order. The hospitality was a norm in River Bend but unexpected in Dallas. Even among the accents and the smiles, the metropolitan atmosphere stood out above everything else. And with metro anything, smiles and simple greetings were about as far as people went.
“It feels a little fancy for shorts and a T-shirt.”
“Look around, Jo. There aren’t a lot of dressed up people in here.”
Jo and Luke glanced around the busy restaurant and agreed with a “huh” and a nod.
“I can’t believe the size of everything we looked at today,” Jo said. “It’s like everyone here wants a huge electric bill to combat all this heat.”
“It’s Texas. People like their space here. Closets the size of New York apartments are the norm. I’ll find something that suits me. Just need to keep looking.”
“You’re going to need a big closet for all those shoes you have stacked up in the spare bedroom.”
Zoe had the good sense to be slightly embarrassed by her collection. “It’s part of my on-screen wardrobe.”
Luke grunted. “I’ve seen you cook. You don’t use your feet.”
The thought made her cringe.
Jo laughed.
Zoe felt a tap on her shoulder and looked up. “Felix.”
“I thought it was you. Nobody wears jean shorts with a silk blouse quite like you.”
Zoe accepted her director’s hug and glanced behind him. “Are you with someone?”
Felix puffed out his lower lip. “Alfonzo ditched me for a pedicure.”
She smiled. “Pedicures are important.”
Felix winked and looked at Jo and Luke. “Let me guess, out of town friends.”
Zoe pointed to Jo. “Felix, my fashion consultant, my friend . . . and occasionally he tells me what to do on set. This is Jo.”
Recognition flashed in his eyes as he stuck his hand out. “The posse?”
“I use Sheriff, but posse works.”
“My goodness you are beautiful. A little glowing around the eyes.”
It was fun to see Jo blush. She wasn’t used to compliments.
Felix turned his gaze toward Luke. “Oh, let me guess . . .” He tapped a finger on his chin and then glanced at Zoe. “Is this him?”
She knew she’d talked about her friends back home, but didn’t think she’d revealed any secrets to Felix over the years.
“This is your Luke . . . right?”
Luke had opened his eyes wide and wore a smirk.
“I wouldn’t say he’s mine.”
Luke extended his hand. “A pleasure.”
It was Felix’s turn to blush. “Too bad you don’t play for my team. The good ones are always straight.”
Luke, the brat, pulled out the lone empty chair. “Join us. I’d love to hear what Zoe has been saying about us.”
Staying For Good (A Most Likely To Novel Book 2) Page 5
