Deserving of Luke

by Tracy Wolff

  Again, she couldn’t help wondering how she’d ended up with such an amazing, wonderful kid. Sure, his coloring and athletic abilities came from his rat of a father, but she didn’t have a clue where the rest of him came from. A natural born charmer, he could talk anyone into anything—even her, and she was well-known at work for being about as far from a pushover as someone could get.

  She shuddered to think what would happen when the kid got a little older. She was going to have to invest in a good air horn to keep the girls away.

  “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you help me finish planting this tree and then we’ll both go inside and get cleaned up? We can try to talk Aunt Penny into going into town for dinner. If you eat all your vegetables, I’ll take you for ice cream.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the easy acquiescence. “French fries do not count as a vegetable.”

  “Aw, Mom.”

  “You can aw, Mom me all you want. That’s the deal. Vegetables—preferably green—in exchange for ice cream. Take it or leave it.”

  Luke paused, considering. “Two scoops?’

  “Of vegetables? Absolutely.”

  “Moooooooom. I meant ice cream.”

  “Oh. You did? I thought you were anxious for a full plate of asparagus.”

  He made a gagging noise. “Broccoli in exchange for two scoops of ice cream—strawberry and cookies-and-cream. That’s my final offer.”

  “Your final offer, huh?”

  “Yep. Take it or leave it.”

  She reached out and tweaked his nose. “I guess I’ll take it, then.”

  “Woo-hoo!” he exclaimed, going up on tiptoes to brush a kiss across her cheek. “Thanks, Mom! You’re the best.”

  Paige pretended to buff her nails against her shirt. “I try.”

  “You succeed! Now come on.” He yanked at her. “Let’s get the tree.”

  “We need to finish the hole first. It’s not deep enough for the root ball.”

  “So what?”

  “So what? It won’t do us any good to plant the tree if we don’t make sure it’s going to survive.”

  Luke rolled his eyes. “All right, all right.” He reached for the shovel and began digging enthusiastically, a huge grin on his face.

  When they were finally finished, she herded him to the house for a shower. With an almost nine-year-old’s typical aversion to any water he couldn’t swim in, Luke mumbled and grumbled about that part of their bargain all the way to the house. But once they got inside, he made a beeline—whooping and hollering—for the only working shower in the place.

  “What’s that all about?” Penny asked as she—and her do-it-yourself plumbing manual—came out of the downstairs bathroom.

  Paige shook her head at the sight of her beautiful sister dressed in painter’s overalls, and covered in something she’d rather not know the identity of. Penny—and her stubborn determination to do almost all the work at the inn by herself—was the primary reason they only had one working bathroom at the moment.

  “I promised him we’d all have dinner and ice cream in town, provided it was okay with you.”

  “Are you kidding me? I’m all about ice cream.”

  “And germy pancakes.”

  “Of course— Wait. What kind of pancakes?”

  Paige explained Luke’s take on wheat germ and they both laughed. “I guess I still need to work on that recipe before I serve it to the guests,” Penny said, crossing to the kitchen to wash her hands.

  “I like them.”

  “Yeah, but you like almost anything. You’ve got an industrial-strength stomach.”

  “Hey. My stomach has served me well through the years.”

  “I know. Remember that time we climbed the trees in Old Man Witherspoon’s orchard and gorged on cherries? You were the only one who didn’t get sick.”

  “I do remember. And it was a good thing, since I had to get all of you home.”

  “I thought Mom was going to kill you for letting me get so sick.”

  “Not that that was anything unusual. Mom always wanted to kill me.”

  An awkward silence descended and Paige waited for all the platitudes Penny had voiced through the years. Waited for her sister to defend their mother, as she always had. Waited for her to ask when Paige was planning to stop by to see their parents since she’d been in town nearly a week and hadn’t gone near the house they had both grown up in.

  But Penny didn’t say anything for the longest time, so long that Paige started to head upstairs, figuring Luke was probably done with his shower. She was halfway to the staircase when Penny finally spoke.

  “They were wrong.”

  Shock ricocheted through Paige and for a second she was sure she had heard incorrectly. “What?”

  “To treat you the way they did. They were wrong. Terribly wrong. Mom especially. I never understood why she felt the need to punish you for her mistakes.”

  Pain ripped through Paige, sharp little shards of glass that embedded themselves in her bloodstream, leaving small, bleeding wounds behind wherever they touched. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s a very big deal. The way they treated you was awful. I’m sorry I never stuck up for you. I was afraid of making things worse.”

  “It wasn’t your job to stick up for me. I was capable of doing that myself.” But it would have been nice not to have felt so alone all the time, not to have felt as though it was her against the world. Maybe she wouldn’t have—

  Things were what they were and her past was what it was. Bemoaning it now wasn’t going to change anything. She hadn’t spoken to her mother—or the man who had raised her—since she’d left town, pregnant and alone, all those years ago. “No. It was my job. And I failed at it. I should have opened my mouth.”

  The pain grew sharper, and Paige knew if she didn’t get out of there quickly, she was going to say something she regretted. Penny might not understand what her parents had done to Paige, but she still loved them. Confessing what Paige thought of them wouldn’t help anything.

  “Look, Luke is going to be down any minute. We need to get ready to go to town—”

  It was as if Penny hadn’t heard her. “I didn’t say anything then, but I learned from my mistake. I’m not going to keep my mouth shut again when saying something could change how things play out.”

  The resolve in her sister’s voice stopped Paige in her headlong flight upstairs. “What are you getting at?”

  “I know I said the other night that Logan was a complete asshole—and I’m sticking by that assessment. But, Paige, have you noticed that Luke has made an excuse every day to go into town? Today it’s ice cream. Yesterday it was a wheel for his skateboard. The day before it was a trip to the library to get books.”

  “He’s a little bored. It’s very different here than it is in Los Angeles and—”

  “He’s not bored. He’s looking for a chance to bump into Logan again.”

  Icy shock replaced the pain of a few minutes before. “What?”

  “He knows his dad is in town, knows he works in town, and is doing everything he can to get there to see him. He wants to meet his father.”

  Even as she opened her mouth to deny her sister’s words, Paige couldn’t help wondering if Penny was right. Hadn’t she noticed Luke’s spectacular disinterest in his skateboard after she’d bought him the new wheel—it still sat in the bag in the corner of their room where he’d left it after they’d gotten home yesterday. And hadn’t she wondered why he hadn’t asked for ice cream one of the days they were in town? It wasn’t like Luke to pass up an opportunity to ask for his favorite treat. Unless…

  Unless he’d been planning this whole thing all along.

  Unless he had been making excuses to go into town every day in an effort to run into Logan.

  Unless he really did want to meet his father.

  Idly, she wondered what tomorrow’s excuse was going to be.

  When Luke hadn’t brough
t Logan up after that first day, she’d thought he’d changed his mind. That maybe he hadn’t been all that impressed with his father after seeing him. But now she had to admit that her sister was probably right. She’d been so caught up in her anger, so caught up in her resentment of Logan, that she hadn’t seen it.

  So much for being a good mother. Her son was going through a crisis and she hadn’t even noticed that anything was wrong. A sense of failure invaded her, not for the first time since she became a mother, but for the first time in a while. It had been years since she’d felt this down, this helpless, this wrong.

  The question was what was she going to do about it?

  Logan’s words reverberated in her mind, his mention of court orders. His implication that she was a bad mother. His threats to take Luke from her.

  He couldn’t do that—she wouldn’t let him. She had a really good job in L.A., probably made more money than he did, if it came down to going to court.

  She wasn’t an unfit mother. She’d spent the past eight years making sure that Luke never felt the way she had growing up, that he never believed for a second that he was anything but an incredible gift to her. She might have only been seventeen when she’d gotten pregnant with him, but he hadn’t ruined her life. He’d given her a life.

  Without him, she didn’t know if she would have had the strength to walk away from her parents and their viciousness. She’d left because she knew she couldn’t bring a baby into the same toxic atmosphere that she had grown up in.

  And getting pregnant had given her a whole lot of insight, very quickly, into what Logan really thought of her. She’d been such a fool at seventeen, had convinced herself that the things she’d done to get attention in the past didn’t matter to him. What a joke that had turned out to be.

  Because while she’d been spinning all kinds of romantic daydreams about him, he’d been like all the other guys—using her to scratch an itch. She’d believed that he loved her as much as she loved him only to find out that he didn’t love her, and that he believed all the stupid rumors flying around.

  She was used to that kind of stuff from her parents, but Logan had seemed different. He had held her, whispered his dreams to her, told her that they would be together forever. Finding out it had all been a lie, finding out that he considered her nothing more than trash, had shattered her.

  She’d gotten over it—of course she had. He might have ripped her heart out once, but she’d spent the past nine years repairing it, and building a wall around her heart that he could never breach.

  Which is why she could do this. Why she could call him up and ask him if he wanted to meet them for ice cream. She would pretend that those long-ago nights and promises had happened to someone else.

  If Luke wanted to meet his father, wanted to try to build a relationship with him, then she wasn’t going to stand in his way—even if it ripped her apart. Her son meant everything to her. She’d always thought that she would brave the gates of hell itself for him. So surely she could handle making nice for a few hours with the man who had made his existence possible.

  Right?

  Absolutely, she assured herself as she reached for the small phone book Penny kept in the cabinet beneath the phone. And if she had to superglue a smile on her face before she met him, then so be it. Luke was worth it. He was worth anything.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER, Paige wasn’t so sure. Not about her kid being worth everything because, hey, he totally was. But about letting Logan into his life. When they’d arranged to meet at the ice cream parlor at eight o’clock, Logan had sounded thrilled at the chance to finally meet his son, which was why she’d told Luke over dinner that he would be meeting his father.

  Her son had nearly jumped out of his chair in excitement, had babbled nonstop through the meal about what it would be like to finally know his dad. He’d bombarded her with questions about Logan, questions he’d never asked before but that must have been simmering inside him for quite a while to come out in the well-organized barrage that they had.

  She’d answered what she could, but she hadn’t kept tabs on Logan through the years. She didn’t know how long he’d been back in town, didn’t know what he’d been doing in the years since she’d left. She’d made it a point not to know.

  Penny had stepped in and answered some of the questions—had told him about his dad being a homicide detective in Seattle, about the fact that he’d been married for a while. As Paige had listened to her sister relate her somewhat sketchy knowledge of Logan’s life, she’d been overwhelmed by sadness.

  How awful was it that this man, who had once meant everything to her—who she had made a baby with—had turned into someone she didn’t know anything about? He’d given her a child, which was the most intimate gift one person could give another, and yet they meant nothing to each other. Less than nothing.

  But now, well over an hour later, her sadness had turned to annoyance. She glanced at the clock on her cell phone again, saw that seven minutes had passed since she’d last checked it, which meant that Logan was now twenty-three minutes late. So much for being anxious to finally meet his son.

  Luke had rushed them through the last half of dinner, determined not to be late for his date with his father. The result was that they’d arrived about ten minutes early, which meant that she had had to sit here for over thirty minutes, watching as her son jumped every time the door opened.

  Watching as his beautiful face lit with hope every time the bell jangled.

  Watching as his shoulders slumped a little more with each person who hadn’t been his father.

  To be fair, Logan had called right around eight o’clock, to tell them he was running late—the life of a police officer, he’d said with what sounded like a grimace. She appreciated the call, appreciated that Logan had agreed to meet them on such short notice. But watching her son’s painful excitement was hard to bear.

  Even as she told herself that Logan would be here, that he’d called, a part of her was stressed at the idea of him standing up their son. Maybe she should have more faith in him, but it wasn’t as though he’d dropped everything to be here with Luke. Plus, it wasn’t as though she didn’t know Logan’s modus operandi, didn’t know that he couldn’t be depended on. Couldn’t be trusted.

  Tonight was a perfect example. She always dropped everything when Luke was involved. Logan, who had claimed to be so fascinated with his son, couldn’t even make it to an ice cream parlor on time—with two hours’ notice. It didn’t bode well for the father-son future. And while part of her was excited that Logan might only be a small part of her son’s life for a little while, the mother in her wanted to kick her own ass for agreeing to this to begin with.

  If Luke got hurt, she was going to plow her fist into Logan’s face and to hell with getting arrested for assaulting an officer. It would be worth it, especially since she’d wanted to do it for nine long years.

  “I say we give him seven more minutes and then get the hell out of this place,” Penny whispered. “If Luke jumps one more time, I swear I’m going to cry.”

  Paige knew exactly how she felt. Watching her son wipe his sweaty palms on his jeans, watching him smile anxiously, was killing her. Logan had better show up—she didn’t think either of them could go through this again.

  “He’ll be here, Mom.” Luke’s voice was low and small, but had the same underlying determination he had faced life with for all eight years of his existence. “I’m sure of it.”

  She wanted to ask how he was so sure, but knew that that would only make him more nervous, so she kept her mouth shut. Instead she started preparing a speech about why his father might not have been able to make it—police officers are important people, emergencies, et cetera. She prayed she wouldn’t have to use it.

  The bell attached to the door jangled yet again and Paige felt her entire body grow tense. Though she wasn’t looking in that direction, somehow she knew that this time it was Logan—even before she
saw her son’s face. There was something about him, something about being in the same room with him, that seemed to suck up all of the air around her.

  “Mom! He’s coming over here!” Luke practically jumped up and down in his chair. “What should I say?”

  “You could start with hello.”

  The look he threw her told her how totally lame he found the answer, but she didn’t have a better one. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say to Logan either.

  But whatever it was, she’d better think of it quickly. Because the look on his face said he wasn’t leaving here without some answers, one way or the other.

  And wasn’t that just typical? What had she learned nine years ago, growing up in this hellhole of a town? That no good deed goes unpunished? It looked like tonight that expression was going to fit to a T.

  With an inward sigh, she put her game face on. And wondered when things were going to get a little easier. She was so tired of fighting the entire world.

  LOGAN’S HEART WAS BEATING way too fast as he crossed the small ice cream parlor. How sad was it that, even in Seattle, he could go into tense situations without breaking a sweat, but facing Luke—and Paige—had him so freaked out he could barely form a coherent thought.

  He’d tried to be on time—had done everything he could to get here before eight o’clock. But at 7:15, a domestic violence call had come through and with Riley, his deputy on duty, tied up on a robbery case across town, he’d had no choice but to take it himself.

  Wasn’t it typical? Not much happened in Prospect in the months and weeks before the tourists showed up en masse. Yet it didn’t escape his notice that the past week had been loaded with unexpected complaints and situations that had required police intervention. It was as if the town itself was conspiring to keep him away from Paige. And from his son.

  But that didn’t matter now. Nothing did but making a good first impression on his son, though he didn’t have the foggiest idea how to do that.

  In the end, Paige broke the ice for them. “Hi, Logan. How are you?”