A Crazy Kind of Love

by Maureen Child

  “But at least I had him,” Bree added. “Some people live their whole lives never knowing what it is to really love. To feel it, as I did, bone deep inside me. To hold it in my heart, my soul. To be so filled with the light of it that no matter how dark things may get, the shadows will never reach me.”

  Mike’s throat closed and her heart pounded in an achingly slow rhythm that seemed to echo over and over inside her. She felt the same way about Lucas. The difference was, for however briefly, Bree had known her love was returned.

  And everything in Mike longed to feel that herself. To know that Lucas loved her as she did him. She didn’t want him to want her just for the baby—the miracle of the child they’d created. She wanted the soul stirring, down to the bone love that Bree had found with Justin.

  She’d never thought to find this chance at the Fairy Tale. And now that it was here, she wanted it all.

  Bree spoke again and Mike focused on her. How could she not, as Bree stared intently into her eyes as if wanting to share the secrets of the universe.

  And maybe she was.

  “Justin gave me that kind of love. And I to him.” Bree lifted her chin and tossed her windblown hair back from a face that was etched in sorrow, but proudly defiant at the same time. “Nothing,” she said, “not even death, can take that from me. I’ve no regrets save one—that Justin will never know his child.”

  She dropped one hand to her still flat abdomen and Mike could have sworn she felt the tiny child inside her stir in solidarity.

  “Love is all there is, Mike,” Bree said softly. “ ’Tis the only thing that lasts . . . forever.”

  Mike moved up beside her and the two women stared across the lake, as if trying to look into eternity.

  “Tell me again why Sam isn’t helping us finish this roof?” Mike demanded four days later.

  Jo slammed her hammer against a roofing nail, driving it through the shingle with one neat stroke. “She’s over at Mrs. Giuliani’s painting the living room. The money fairy stopped by a couple weeks ago. Left enough money for the old lady to fix her house up before her son comes to visit.”

  “Busy fairy,” Mike mused.

  “Not lately,” Jo said between hammer blows. “Been a couple weeks now since the fairy left anything. People are starting to worry she’s stopped.”

  “She?”

  “Or he.” Jo shrugged. “Whoever.”

  Mike couldn’t really care less about the money fairy’s identity at the moment. She had other, bigger things on her mind. She stopped working, dangled her hammer from one hand, and looked at her sister. A full ten seconds passed before Jo felt her staring and glared back.

  “What?”

  “It’s been four days.”

  “Since . . .”

  “Since the funeral, Jo. God. Keep up.”

  Her sister scowled and shook her head. “Have I mentioned lately that you’re crazy?”

  “Four days and I haven’t heard from him.”

  “Lucas?”

  “No, Brad Pitt,” Mike said snidely. “I’m just devastated.”

  “Hey, who wouldn’t be?”

  “Damn it, Jo, I’m worried about him. He’s all alone at his place now that Bree’s gone back to Ireland.”

  “So go see him.”

  “I can’t.”

  Jo gave a dramatic sigh. “If you make me hit myself in the head with a hammer, I’m gonna be so pissed.”

  Mike blew out a breath and looked out over Chandler from her perch on Stevie’s nearly completed roof. Even early on a weekday morning, things were hopping. Life went on, she knew that.

  She just didn’t know if Lucas knew that.

  Sunlight poured down on them from a brilliantly blue winter sky with white clouds scuttling across its surface. From the street below came the muted hum of traffic and disjointed snatches of conversations. The cold ocean wind raced across the rooftops and Mike shivered.

  “Well, how long should I wait?” she mumbled.

  “For what?”

  “God,” Mike muttered and briefly considered pitching Jo off the roof. But then she’d have to finish the job herself and she was already tired. Little Horatio was really sucking her energy. “Don’t you listen to me at all?”

  Jo snorted. “Hard not to listen. You talk all the damn time.”

  “Damn it, Jo, this is serious.” Mike turned and plopped onto her butt, as at home on a roof as she would have been in her living room. Actually, more so, since her living room was now in Stevie’s old apartment and that place still didn’t feel like home. “I don’t know the etiquette on this.”

  “Etiquette?” Jo laughed and sat down herself. “Since when are you concerned with etiquette?”

  “Since now, basically.” Mike studied the hammer she held and twisted it in her hands so that the sunlight caught the old metal and glinted into her eyes. “I mean, Lucas just lost his brother. How long am I supposed to wait before telling him I love him?”

  “You are so asking the wrong person,” Jo admitted, then added, “And why are you suddenly doubting yourself? You’ve always had enough self-confidence for three healthy people.”

  “I’m not doubting me,” she snapped, irritated that Jo just wasn’t getting what had her so twisted up inside. “I’m doubting what to do.”

  “Don’t know why,” Jo said. “If you want him, go get him, like you have every other thing you’ve ever wanted. Hunt him down like a dog and drag him home.”

  Mike shook her head and kept her gaze locked on the glinting sunlight. “This is different. It’s fragile, sort of. He just lost his twin brother. I mean, how’m I supposed to say, ‘Wake up, time to live again’? How can I tell him that I care without scaring him off?”

  “Okay.” Jo sighed. “I get that you love him. Why not just say so?”

  Glancing at her sister, Mike took a long moment before answering. She’d been thinking about this a lot over the last several days. She’d considered her options from every direction and still hadn’t come up with a plan. Which was damn frustrating for a woman who always knew what to do and when to do it.

  “It’s not enough to hunt him down and drag him home,” she finally said. “I want him to love me. You know?”

  Jo nodded. “Yeah. I can see that.”

  “No one’s ever been there for Lucas. I want him to know I will be. He’s lost everyone he’s ever loved. His parents, a fiancée—who was an idiot, in my opinion—and now Justin. How do I convince him he won’t lose me? How do I make him believe that I want him—not just because we made little Sophia together—”

  “Sophia?”

  Mike ignored the interruption. “—but because I love him more than I ever thought I’d love anybody.” She looked at Jo. “How do I do that?”

  Blowing out a breath, her older sister hooked her hammer to the worn leather belt she wore around her waist and jerked her thumb at the ladder, peeking over the roof’s edge. “Okay, we need a coffee break.”

  “What? That’s not what I need. I need help here.” Mike stuck her own hammer into a belt loop. “Sisterly help. Understanding. Sympathy, damn it.”

  “I’ll give you sympathy, you annoying little shit. I’ll give you coffee. As to the rest, I just don’t know.” Jo stopped and stared at her. “When it comes to love, I know zip. And frankly,” she added with a knowing look at Mike, “judging by what it’s doing to you, I don’t want to know. From the outside, love looks like it sucks the big one.”

  “You’re wrong,” Mike said, her voice going low and dreamy, despite the frustration swarming inside her. “It’s great.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m convinced.”

  “It’s just . . . confusing.”

  “Not just coffee, then. Coffee and a muffin. Good for clearing away confusion,” Jo said, stalking toward the ladder, leaning back with the slope of the roof.

  Mike laughed shortly. “Since when is a muffin brain food?”

  Jo looked back at her and shrugged. “Since we need it to be. Come on, Mike
. Coffee and sympathy, on me.”

  It wasn’t a solution, Mike told herself as she moved to follow her older sister. But it was the best offer she’d had all morning.

  Lucas wandered through his empty house and idly wondered if it had always been this big—or if it just felt bigger now that he was alone?

  His running shoes made almost no sound on the tiles as he walked from the great room, headed for the back deck. He pushed the sliding door open and, instantly, a rush of icy wind raced past him, as if it had been sitting on the deck, waiting for a chance to get inside the house.

  The trees were at their most colorful—brilliant splashes of orange, yellow, and deep crimson. On the lake, the ducks he’d come to think of as belonging here made slow, lazy circles on the water.

  Lucas glanced at the Adirondack chair where his brother had spent so many hours and his heart ached. Ached for all they’d lost. All they’d missed.

  Ached for Justin himself—for the life he wouldn’t lead, for the love he wouldn’t have, for the child he wouldn’t know.

  But along with the pain came something else. A kind of admiration he hadn’t really expected. Closing his hands over the iron railing at the edge of the deck, Lucas focused blindly on those damn ducks and recognized a simple truth.

  Being given a death sentence hadn’t stopped Justin from finding love, creating life, sucking every last drop of joy out of every minute left to him. He’d lived—and died—the way he wanted to.

  And he’d left with no regrets.

  How many people could say that?

  In dying, Justin had shown Lucas how to live.

  Tipping his head back, Lucas stared up at the windblown sky overhead and spoke softly. “Not sure if I’m looking in the right direction . . .” He paused to smile at a joke that Justin could have appreciated. “But I want you to know that I’ll miss you. And I’ll look after your child. Make sure Bree and the baby are safe.”

  From deep inside the house, the sound of the doorbell rang out and Lucas scowled as he glanced over his shoulder at the interruption. A second later, though, the scowl disappeared.

  Life.

  A stupid doorbell was a reminder that life went on—in spite of everything. When it rang again, he forgot about philosophy and stalked back through the house to answer the summons.

  He yanked open the door in time to see a van, with the words DONOVAN IRON WORKS stenciled on the side, pulling out of his driveway. A large, flat cardboard box had been left on his porch and Lucas bent to pick it up.

  Carrying the heavy package into the living room, he set it down on the apothecary table and pulled up the cardboard flaps. Inside was a fireplace screen. Black, curving iron was backed with gleaming black metal net and on the front of the screen: “A parrot.”

  Lucas laughed out loud, snatched up the screen and carried it to the fireplace. Setting it in front of the now cold hearth, he stepped back, stared at the stupid parrot, and felt the last of the pain drain away.

  Still laughing, he shouted, “God, I love that woman.”

  In the Leaf and Bean, the late-morning crowd was mostly regulars. A few tourists were sprinkled in to keep things interesting, but in the winter months, Stevie’s was a place for people in Chandler to gather and gossip.

  Mike and Jo had a corner table all to themselves and they’d each already plowed through two blueberry muffins and two lattes. She wasn’t any closer to an answer, but she felt better somehow just stuffing herself, with her sister for company.

  When the front door flew open and Lucas charged inside, Mike almost spewed a mouthful of latte right into Jo’s face.

  His gaze darted around the inside of the shop until he found Mike. Then, keeping that gaze fixed on her, he stalked across the crowded floor, weaving in and out of the tables and chairs, ignoring the stunned faces of the people watching him.

  Mike kept her gaze locked on his. She’d never seen Rocket Man so charged up. Worry sneaked up her spine, but was quickly swallowed by an instinctive surge of defiance. If he had a problem with her, then she was ready to take him on.

  He stopped at their table and nodded at her sister. “Jo. Good to see you.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “you look real happy about it.”

  He ignored that and focused on Mike. She was all he could see. All he’d wanted to see for months. How stupid of him to not have admitted it sooner. How stupid of him to waste even a moment of what they could have together. “Had to see you,” he finally said. “Figured you’d be in your apartment. But here works.”

  “What’s going on, Lucas?” This was so not how she’d imagined seeing him again.

  She’d pictured him sitting alone in his house, miserable, lonely. Hell, she’d counted on him being miserable and lonely without her. She’d thought that when she finally went to see him, he’d be so glad to find her on his doorstep that he’d sweep her into his arms, kiss her senseless, and beg her to marry him.

  Okay, so it was a sappy dream.

  No one had to know she’d indulged in it, did they?

  “You bought me a parrot,” Lucas blurted.

  “A parrot?” Jo echoed, looking from Lucas to Mike and back again.

  “On the fire screen,” he said, still ignoring Jo. “It came today. There’s a parrot on it.”

  “Oh, crap,” Mike muttered and stood up. The screen she’d ordered from Donovan’s. She hadn’t even thought about it in weeks. Had planned to cancel it after he’d gotten so pissy about the parrot drawer pulls. “Sorry about that, I forgot to cancel the order and—”

  “You bought me a parrot,” he repeated, and reached for her, grabbing her shoulders with both hands and hanging on.

  “Yeah,” she said softly, as if reassuring a crazy person, which she was pretty sure he was. “That’s been established, and like I said, I’m so—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he interrupted. “I like it. It’s hideous and tacky and nothing like what I wanted—and it’s perfect.”

  “Huh?” Brilliant, Mike, brilliant.

  Someone in the store snorted out a burst of laughter and someone else hushed them. The Leaf and Bean went as still and quiet as it had ever been and Mike felt dozens of pairs of eyes focused on them.

  Didn’t matter a damn.

  All she saw was Lucas.

  “The parrot thing—that’s just you, Mike,” he said, laughing, shaking his head in wonder. “You shaking up my house, my world, my life. That’s why the parrot is perfect. It’s so you. And you’re perfect.”

  “God, don’t tell her that,” Jo muttered.

  “For me,” Lucas qualified quickly. “You’re perfect for me. And I’m perfect for you.”

  “Lucas . . .”

  He kept talking, faster now, as though she was going to argue with him. “We could stay apart, Mike. Be alone. You and I, we’ve done alone a long time. And we were good at it. It’s not enough, though, Mike. Not for me, not for you. And together, we’re great.”

  Mike swallowed hard and focused solely on the emotions churning across the surface of his eyes. But they changed so quickly, she couldn’t identify them. She’d have felt a lot better if she’d known what was in his mind.

  “I can’t live without that,” he said quietly, lowering his voice so that only she could hear him now. “Can’t live without you.”

  “Lucas . . .” Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them back frantically, not wanting to miss a moment of this.

  “I need you, Mike. I love you.” He pulled her closer, until she had to tip her head back to keep their gazes locked. “Without you, nothing is right. The house is empty, I’m empty.”

  “Lucas, I love you, I just—”

  “I want to marry you, Mike. I want you to drive me nuts every day and I want to hold you every night. I want us to build a life together. I need you in my life, Mike. Without you, there’s nothing.”

  “Oh God . . .”

  “I want you. I want our baby.” He bent, brushed a kiss onto her forehead, then straightened up a
nd grinned at her. “I want surprises.”

  Everything in her went warm and liquid. Her knees wobbled and she was grateful for the tight hold he had on her. This was all she’d ever wanted. Someone to love her for her.

  “Rocket Man,” she whispered, reaching up to cup his face between her palms. “I do love you.”

  He grinned. “Thank God.”

  “And yes, I’ll marry you.”

  Behind them, someone applauded.

  Jo muttered, “Hallelujah. Now we can get some work done.”

  Lucas laughed.

  “And I promise plenty of surprises,” she said, going up on her toes to link her arms behind his neck.

  Wrapping his arms around her, he lifted her off her feet and laughed even louder. “Bring ’em on, Michaela. I’m a changed man. With you beside me, I can take anything you can dish out.”

  “Oh yeah?” she challenged, laughing with him as the crowd got to their feet to cheer. “Here’s one for you . . . how do you feel about twins?”

  Lucas’s eyes went wide, he staggered slightly, then found his balance again, just by looking into Mike’s shining, laughter-filled eyes.

  “Twins?” he managed to croak.

  “Surprise!”

  Don’t miss:

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