Thus forever missing his chance with the woman whom he knew was irrefutably the love of his life.
Of course, the same old Luke wouldn’t have cared, because he had been seeking other things, like power and thrills. He hadn’t been looking for love in his life.
Just as Brenna wasn’t looking for love in hers. Not from a man, anyway. She was having a baby to love and to love her. Which was fine, but she needed more and so did the baby.
They both needed him—the new improved Luke Minteer—the man who had been redeemed by love.
He would do anything he had to do in order to become a part of their lives, Luke vowed. And he wouldn’t settle for some vague peripheral role; he wanted nothing less than a vital, dynamic position with Brenna and Baby.
“Begin at the beginning” was his brother Matt’s mantra, when faced with a seemingly insurmountable political hurdle.
Well, the first step was getting Brenna to realize that they belonged together—which might not prove as easy as he wished.
But it was not an insurmountable hurdle. No such thing existed for the Minteers. They inevitably prevailed. And fortunately, he’d retained just enough tenacity, including a bit of underhandedness, from the same old Luke to achieve his goal.
Brenna was in that trancelike state she achieved when deeply immersed in creating the world where her paper dolls came to life. Everything in her own life faded deep into the background of her mind as she concentrated on the drawing paper in front of her.
Ideas came easily, and her fingers deftly sketched and measured and colored as characters appeared, accompanied by their individual histories and characteristics, their wardrobes and possessions.
She completed the little boy Simon and moved into the next decade, the twenties, drawing Peggy, a child with bobbed hair and dresses with dropped waistlines similar to the flappers of that era.
She’d already thought ahead to the thirties. There definitely would have to be another little girl, one with Shirley Temple curls and short, frilly dresses to define that decade.
Each little paper-doll girl, Peggy and the Shirley look-alike, would have a doll with matching dresses. There should be pets, too, but what animal? She’d drawn so many cats and dogs over the years; it would be fun to do something else.
Would her editor think a parrot or a monkey was too exotic for a child in the twenties or thirties to own?
The doorbell rang several times before the sound registered with Brenna. She frowned at the intrusion. It always took her a moment or two to totally return to her life away from her books.
The first thing she noticed was the clock on the wall. It was just after five.
And then everything came back to her in a rush. Luke, his insistence on picking her up for dinner at—hadn’t he said six o’clock?
Her heartbeat accelerated to warp speed, and Brenna tried to mock herself into staying cool and calm. After all, she wasn’t a dizzy teenager eagerly waiting for her first boyfriend to pick her up for their big date! Why must she feel like one?
In spite of her resolve, Brenna stopped in the bathroom and checked herself in the mirror. Her hair needed brushing, and she brushed it. Her cheeks were already flushed, which eliminated any need for more color. Her eyes were bright, too bright. Brenna wondered how she could make them stop glowing.
And before she could stop herself, she applied a light coat of pink lipstick.
Reminding herself that it wasn’t safe for the baby if she dashed down the stairs, that falling was a possible risk, Brenna forced herself to walk down the staircase slowly and carefully, holding on to the handrail.
The doorbell rang again, and she opened the door, expecting to see Luke.
She planned to tell him that she hadn’t consented to this dinner date, plus he was almost an hour early for it. Drop-in visitors were unacceptable, a detriment to her work schedule. She hated being unexpectedly interrupted. Furthermore…
Brenna stared at the three women standing on her small porch. There was an older woman, probably sixty-something, and two younger ones, perhaps in their late twenties or very early thirties, all bundled in heavy coats.
They stared back at her.
“Sweet saints in heaven, it’s true,” the older woman murmured, her eyes sweeping over Brenna’s very pregnant figure.
Brenna, suddenly self-conscious, straightened her long, pale-pink maternity sweater, tugging it farther over her maternity jeans.
“Of course it’s true, Mom!” exclaimed one of the younger women, the tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed one who looked a lot like Luke. “As soon as Lisa told me, I knew it had to be true. Why would Cassie make up something like that?”
Brenna’s eyes darted to the older woman with the same blue eyes and fair skin as her daughter. Her dark hair was heavily streaked with gray.
“I don’t think we’ve met.” Brenna managed to get the words out and was once again inordinately grateful to the nuns, who had stressed good manners so long and so often they’d become truly ingrained.
She extended her hand, which, to her consternation, was shaking. “I’m Brenna Morgan.”
“Anne Marie Minteer,” said the dark-haired young woman, clasping her hand. “Taylor,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “This is my mother, Rosemary Minteer, and my sister-in-law Lisa. She’s married to my brother John.”
“Annie and I went to high school together,” Lisa, a petite blonde, put in helpfully. “And my son, David, goes to preschool with your little neighbor Abigail Walsh. Her mom, Cassie, and I have become good friends this year. David and Abby like to play together.”
Lisa seemed to run out of steam at that point and lapsed into silence.
“I’ve heard Cassie mention David,” Brenna said politely, still mystified as to why the three were here. “Abby’s mentioned him, too, I believe. The Walshes live right next door,” she added, and pointed to their house, right next door.
Just in case the trio had come to the wrong place by mistake.
But the three women made no attempt to leave. Instead, Rosemary Minteer moved toward Brenna and attempted to put her arms around her.
“Brenna, you poor dear sweet girl.”
Reflexively Brenna backed away in alarm. “What…what do you want?”
“You don’t have to pretend with us, honey.” Rosemary’s blue eyes were filled with sadness and sympathy. “There is no need for you to stay silent any longer.”
“Cassie told me today when we picked up the kids at preschool. I called John and Anne Marie and a few others right away,” Lisa said earnestly.
“Please don’t think that we blame you, Brenna,” exclaimed Anne Marie. “None of us do, honest! We want you to know we’re all firmly on your side in this.”
“Everybody knows, my dear, so there is no reason for any more secrecy,” chimed in Rosemary. “Why, I’d just hung up the phone from talking to Anne Marie when my sister-in-law Eileen called me. Her Patrick said he simply couldn’t stay silent any longer, he said he didn’t feel right keeping such a secret from the family. So he told his parents, and of course they called us right away.”
“And Matt called Mom from D.C. a little while ago,” Anne Marie said, glancing from Brenna to her mother. “He got the word straight from Harrisburg. The gossip isn’t all over the district yet, though it soon will be, of course. But when you and Luke get—”
“Luke,” Brenna repeated.
It was the only name among all those mentioned—aside from Cassie and Abigail Walsh—that held any relevance for her. She was still baffled about what her uninvited guests were talking about.
What did “everybody” know?
For one grim moment Brenna thought of her past, of her mother and the trial and that terrifying night with the monster who had set it all in motion. If everybody knew all about that, she couldn’t remain in town.
Been there, done that! Starring as the object in a sordid round of gossip was something she did not care to repeat, and she would not subject her child to it, n
ot even as an infant.
But logic quickly prevailed, and Brenna discarded that premise.
They’d cited Cassie Walsh as a source, and Cassie knew nothing about her past. And was the Patrick who’d been mentioned Luke’s cousin, the young police officer? Patrick Minteer knew nothing about her, either, except that she had been in Luke’s SUV and they’d had an argument….
Brenna tilted her head, assessing the two taller women with their piercing blue-eyed stares.
“Are you Luke’s mother and sister?” Brenna surmised. Lisa’s identity as an in-law, married to John Minteer, had already been confirmed.
“Goodness, didn’t we explain who we are?” Rosemary shook her head. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s just that this news was so unexpected, so out of the blue, that I guess we’re not quite back to ourselves yet. Yes, I am Luke’s mother, and Anne Marie is his younger sister. We’re delighted to meet you, Brenna, but I can’t help but wish we had met under more, well, conventional circumstances.”
“As if Luke has ever been conventional!” Anne Marie rolled her eyes.
A sharp blast of icy wind whirled around them, and Lisa shivered. “Could we come inside?” she asked.
Since Lisa’s teeth were practically chattering, and her lips were purple from the cold, Brenna reluctantly ushered the three women into her house.
She didn’t know what they wanted with her, and she really, really didn’t want to have to entertain them. Still, she refrained from suggesting that they go back to where they’d come from.
Etiquette drills aside, they were Luke’s relatives.
Plus, they didn’t look as if they would be any easier to evict than Luke himself, if determined to stay. Brenna suppressed a sigh.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked, silently mocking herself.
She had slipped effortlessly back into her people-pleasing ways. What next? Asking if they would like her to draw paper dolls of their children? How had Luke described her how-to-win-friends behavior during her schoolgirl years?
Ingratiating. And that description fit her right now, too—the ingratiating Brenna Morgan.
“We’d love some tea,” Rosemary said, and they followed Brenna, single file, into the kitchen.
All three Minteer women exclaimed over everything they passed along the way—the carpeting, the pictures on the walls, the color of the walls. Even the overhead light fixture!
They marveled over her exquisite taste in everything.
Brenna had to smile. It appeared that she wasn’t the only one who was being ingratiating this evening.
She prepared the tea while the three Minteers continued to enthuse over everything in her kitchen, as if Brenna were the most inventive, tasteful decorator since Martha Stewart. Which, of course, she was not.
It would’ve been comical, if she hadn’t sensed the undercurrent of tension in the trio—which actually seemed more like a riptide than a current, Brenna concluded. What was really going on here?
She arranged the mugs of tea and the cream and sugar on a tray to carry to the table for them.
“How handy that you have a tray!” squealed Lisa with abject delight. “And the sugar bowl matches the little cream pitcher. You have such flair, Brenna!”
She had flair because she owned a tray and a matching sugar bowl and creamer? It was just too much. Brenna began to grow exceedingly alarmed. Something was very wrong, and she couldn’t wait another second to find out.
She turned to Luke’s mother with wide, questioning eyes. “Please tell me why you’re here,” she said bluntly, throwing ingratiation to the wind.
“Brenna, it’s time to end the pretense.” Rosemary met her gaze squarely. “We all know…your neighbors the Walshes, the entire Minteer family. We know you’re carrying Luke’s baby.”
“Carrying Luke’s baby?” Brenna echoed incredulously. “How did you come up with that?”
“Cassie told me that she probably wouldn’t admit it,” Lisa said knowingly. “Cassie said Brenna has kept her relationship with Luke so secret that she wasn’t even aware the two of them knew each other, until they were both summoned for jury duty.”
“But we didn’t know each other till then,” Brenna interjected.
Lisa and Anne Marie exchanged glances laden with disbelief.
“Brenna, there’s no further need for this…charade,” Anne Marie said with Luke-ish firmness. “Cassie told Lisa how you asked her questions about Luke your first day of jury duty—to carefully establish that you didn’t know him. She said that looking back on that day now, she realized that you were nervous and clearly trying to hide something.”
Brenna thought back to that day when she’d quizzed Cassie for information about Luke Minteer. She actually had been trying to hide something—her unexpected attraction to Luke. And that really had made her nervous!
But Cassie and the Minteers had drawn the wrong conclusions all the way down the line.
“You’re putting one and one together and getting three!” Brenna protested.
“Exactly.” Rosemary nodded vigorously. “There are three of you. The baby and you and that…that son of mine. Oh, Luke has disgraced the family before, but never, ever to this degree! This time, he’s taken everything we believe in and hold sacred and he has—”
“Blown it off,” supplied Anne Marie.
“Yes,” agreed her mother. “I’m heartsick. For a son of mine to bully a defenseless young woman into silence after making her pregnant—because he doesn’t want to get married—just sickens me.”
“Luke has made his opinions on marriage very clear at every wedding.” Lisa frowned. “He tried to talk John out of marrying me because he said John was too young to lock on the old ball and chain!”
Brenna could almost hear Luke saying it, his dark brows arched, his tone droll. “It does sound like one of his jokes,” she murmured.
“No, he wasn’t joking,” insisted Anne Marie. “Luke tried to talk all of us into waiting to get married. He suggested waiting decades!”
Which only proved to Brenna that he really had been kidding—a suggestion to wait decades to wed was clearly a joke—but this time she declined to say so. The verdict was in, and the Minteer family jury had already pronounced Luke guilty of being anti-marriage.
“Though we don’t like it, we’ve learned to live with Luke’s smart-aleck attitude toward marriage and family,” Rosemary continued darkly, “but for him to blithely disregard the welfare of his own child and its mother is completely unacceptable. Now that we know the truth, we won’t passively stand by and let that happen.”
Rosemary’s voice rose with every word, and her face turned crimson. Brenna knew it wasn’t physically possible for a person’s head to explode, but if it were, at that particular moment, Rosemary Minteer’s head would have detonated right there in her kitchen.
Yet all the furious disapproval was based on a false premise! Brenna hastened to set things straight.
“This isn’t Luke’s fault. Please don’t be mad at him!” Brenna implored.
She thought of how he’d come back to his hometown in disgrace after his D.C. antics, determined to win back his family’s favor, of how hard he’d worked to regain their acceptance, showing up at every family occasion, happy and sad, boring or fun.
Oh, he made jokes about it, but Brenna knew how much his family meant to Luke. To have him branded an outcast again, this time over something that was not even his fault, was too much to bear.
She couldn’t let that happen to him!
“You have no reason to be mad at Luke,” she added more forcefully.
“No reason?” Anne Marie gaped at her. “Brenna, as much as it pains me to say it, because he is my own brother, Luke is a snake! The way he’s treated you is terrible! Carrying on a secret affair and carelessly getting you pregnant! Then not even acknowledging his own baby, telling you to pretend you don’t even know him and letting you handle the—”
“You don’t understand!” Brenna interrupted, feeling
frantic. As much as she valued her privacy, she couldn’t let this falsehood go unchecked.
“You have it all wrong! Luke isn’t the father of my baby! I…I went to a sperm bank. In Philadelphia. That’s where I got pregnant. Luke had nothing to do with it.”
Though she hadn’t wanted to broadcast her child’s origins—and telling the Minteers something seemed akin to announcing it over the airwaves—Brenna felt relief when she admitted the truth. She couldn’t let Luke’s family ostracize him when he was completely innocent of their accusations.
Brenna leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, feeling drained, yet filled with a sense of conviction. She knew she’d done the right thing by sparing Luke another bout of Minteer condemnation.
Total silence followed her announcement. When Brenna raised her head and looked around the table, she saw that the three women watching her didn’t seem at all placated and relieved by the truth.
They looked more enraged than before!
“A sperm bank?” snapped Rosemary. “In Philadelphia? Oh, that sounds exactly like Luke Minteer, all right. Mr. Big Shot Storyteller himself!”
“I can almost hear him saying it,” said Anne Marie, blue eyes flashing. “He’d go, ‘Hey, Brenna, if anybody should find out, say you went to a sperm bank—in Philadelphia because it’s too big and far away for anybody to try to check out facts.’ He thinks we’re dummies!”
“Luke believes he is so clever, but I can see right through him,” added Rosemary, her voice, her face, taut with fury.
“How could Luke be so cruel?” Lisa was distressed.
“Luke isn’t cruel!” cried Brenna. Impulsively she reached over and grasped Rosemary’s wrist. “And you don’t see him at all if you can’t see that he is a kind and loving person who has been patient and understanding and—”
“Are you sure you’re talking about our Luke?” Anne Marie looked nonplussed. “Luke Minteer? Because nobody has ever described him in those terms. And as his family, we know him best.”
“As his family, you don’t know him at all,” Brenna countered fiercely. “Luke is incapable of making up a big lie to shirk responsibility for a child, especially if it were his own.”
Irresistible You Page 15
