“Sure is.”
“What’s her name?”
His question was so innocent and wide-eyed that while Beth didn’t like to share the name too early—when people might weigh in with their opinions—she didn’t see the harm in telling this curious kid.
“Her name is Riley,” Beth said. It felt nice to say it aloud.
“There’s a girl in my class named Riley,” Luke said. “She’s okay, as far as girls go. She has long hair.”
That was likely a high compliment at this age, and Beth smiled as she threaded a needle.
“So what are your two lines?” she asked.
“I sing about how the weather is cold and the young men are bold and the blessings are twofold,” he said.
“That’s a mouthful,” she said.
“I sing it with Tracy Porter. Well, I sing my two lines by myself, but Tracy is singing the rest of the song, so...”
“Is she related to Lisa Porter?” Beth asked. Lisa had always been musical, and she’d even put out a CD a couple of years ago. She was as close to a professional musician as North Fork had.
“I think that’s her mom,” Luke said. “Anyway, Tracy knows how to sing.”
“I’m sure you can sing, too,” Beth said.
“I dunno.”
“They gave you two lines, Luke,” Beth said. “They don’t give two lines to just anyone.”
“They kind of do,” Luke replied with a grimace, and Beth smothered a smile. “My dad says to just imagine everyone in their underwear, but I think that would just make me feel embarrassed, because if someone’s in their underwear, a bully probably pulled down their pants. And that’s just not nice.”
“Hmm.” Beth nodded slowly. “That’s a good point, Luke. Your dad was in this pageant one year. So he knows what he’s talking about, though.”
Beth had talked him into doing a small adult role. He never did fully forgive her for that.
“He never told me that!” Luke fixed her with a look of interest. “What part did he get?”
“I think he was Shepherd Number Five, or something like that.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “He didn’t get a line.”
“No line?” Luke frowned. “Like nothing?”
“Nothing.” Beth gave him a significant look. “Just goes to show you that not everyone gets two lines.”
“Were you in this pageant?” Luke asked.
“Oh, yeah. Every year when I was a kid.”
“Did you get lines?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Well, most of the time. I was a good memorizer.”
The only reason Danny had taken the part that year was because they needed a responsible adult with a motorcycle license to drive a motorcycle across the stage. Their pageants didn’t lean toward the traditional. Danny had taken the part as a favor to Beth, who was helping direct that year. She’d never seen the rugged Danny look more out of his element than on the stage. A little like someone who’d been pantsed by a bully.
“I’m a good memorizer, too,” Luke said, then he paused as if putting it all together in his head. “Were you my dad’s friend?”
There it was—the question she should have sidestepped. She hadn’t been able to be this boy’s stepmother, but she didn’t want him to know that. That would be like a personal rejection of the kid.
“I was his friend.” That was the simplest way of putting it, at least. “We were very good friends. In fact, you look a lot like him.”
“I know.” Obviously, Luke had heard that a lot, and it was strange to look at this pint-size version of Danny Brockwood. This was the child she’d been so afraid of five years ago, and while he seemed much less intimidating now, she still knew that she’d made the right choice. Wig fitting and stepmothering were two very different roles, and she’d seen the way Danny looked at his son that night. Danny had stared at his sleeping boy with a look of awe and heartbreaking love. She’d seen it clear as day—if she married Danny, she’d be stepping into Linda’s role as outsider in the family. She’d never be this child’s real mom, but Danny would be his real dad...
“What’s your name?” Luke asked.
“Beth.”
“I’m Luke.” He held out his hand to shake, and she took his small hand in hers. She already knew his name, but he seemed to like the formal introduction.
“It’s a pleasure, old man.”
“All mine, old lady,” he quipped, and Beth laughed, then turned back to her stitching. Luke was sweet and likable, and she found her earlier anxiety at the very thought of him start to evaporate. He was just a kid...and it had been five years since she’d called off the wedding. Maybe that was enough time for all of them to move on.
She finished the inside of the wig and tried it on Luke’s head once more. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it was significantly better. “What do you think?”
“It won’t go in my eyes now,” Luke said. “Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said. “Go make us proud.”
Luke started off, adjusting the wig as he went, then he turned back.
“Not even one line?” he asked.
“Not one. He drove a motorcycle, though,” she said. “Ask him about that!”
Luke grinned. “Okay, ’bye.”
As Luke disappeared into the milling actors and volunteers, Beth watched him go with a strange feeling in her heart. He was a sweet boy, and Danny was obviously doing a good job raising him. Would it have been so bad to be Luke Brockwood’s stepmom?
But a sweet kid didn’t change facts, and parenting was far more complicated than anyone could see on the outside. Everyone in town thought that Linda was a great stepmom. She might not have been overly affectionate, but she’d kept two teens in line, kept them well dressed and polite. Beth and Michael had gone with Rick and Linda to church, and they’d probably looked like a successfully blended family. Except they weren’t.
And seeing Danny’s son reminded Beth of Linda and her constant attempts to inject herself into Rick’s relationship with his daughter. Linda was jealous of their connection, and in this moment, watching Luke disappear into a crowd of kids, she could understand a little of what Linda must have felt in raising a heartbroken girl who needed love but didn’t want it from her. Being a stepparent meant doing all the work of raising a child but not having the same kind of connection that everyone else shared. That would be hard, Beth thought—at least it seemed that way to her. She’d had a couple of friends with stepfathers growing up, but she’d been the only one with a stepmom.
“My sleeve is torn,” a small voice said, and Beth looked up to see a little girl in what was probably a townsperson dress. Beth smiled and beckoned her over.
“Let’s see what we can do.”
* * *
DAN PARKED HIS truck along Main Street and turned off the engine. Luke’s rehearsal would be over soon. He was proud of his son. Luke was getting more independent, and he had taken some real pride in his part in the pageant. He’d been singing his lines over and over again.
Two whole lines. Dan might be prouder than Luke was, truth be told, and he couldn’t wait to sit in the folding chairs and hear Luke’s two lines. This was a big deal for a dad.
Dan smiled to himself and hopped out of the truck. The first Christmas that Luke spent in North Fork, he’d been the biggest baby Jesus ever at the age of three. In the years that followed, he’d been cast as Joyful Child Number Six or something like that—just a kid on the stage pretending to play in the snow, sweating in his snowsuit. And this year he got his very first solo lines. He’d been practicing for weeks, and Dan probably knew them better than he did at this point.
Dan had never been terribly interested in the pageant before he’d gotten custody of his son, but having Luke in his home had changed things. He watched ot
her families more closely, trying to figure out what they were doing right. How else was he supposed to figure out child-rearing? And one thing he remembered from Beth’s family was that they always participated in that pageant.
Luke hadn’t been first choice for baby Jesus, but when the Nelson baby had come down with croup, they’d needed someone to fill in, and at that time there were no other babies—at least no other babies with mothers willing to have them carried around by a thirteen-year-old Mary onstage. So Luke, in a blue pull-up diaper and wrapped in a white bedsheet, had been cast. Mary had staggered under the weight of him.
Dan got out of his truck and headed down the street, shrugging his coat higher up his neck. The nights were getting colder now that December was here, and his cheeks stung from the biting breeze. The sun had slipped below the horizon, leaving the velvet darkness, softened by streetlights and a full moon.
He was more shaken than he liked to admit by Beth’s return to North Fork. He’d just found his groove—or at least that’s how it felt. He had a solid business plan, a new retail space, and he was finally becoming the man he’d wanted to be all these years—a business owner, a success. Except Luke was starting to struggle with his mother’s abandonment, and Dan didn’t need any distractions. Which meant Beth’s return was terribly timed. He needed peace and quiet—not the emotional upheaval that naturally came along with Beth Thomas.
Dan trotted up the front steps of town hall. The sound of voices and discordant music filtered out into the night. He pulled open the door and stepped into a wall of warmth and noise. He followed the sound of the piano toward the auditorium, stepping aside as a group of little girls in angel outfits came tripping out and beelined for the ladies’ room in a flurry of giggles and chatter.
He stopped in the auditorium and looked around, searching for Luke. It took him a couple of minutes, but then he spotted him on the far side of the room, his arms held out at his sides as if he was being measured. Maybe they were adding to the costumes.
“Hi, Abby,” Dan said, and the shorter woman smiled in return as she passed. She was dressed in an angel costume, too, the white material making her dark skin glow in contrast.
“I’ve got to check on the girls,” she said. “Sorry to run.”
“Yeah, yeah—”
Abby hurried past, and Dan headed over to his son. Luke dropped his arms and shifted to the side, exposing the person doing the measuring, and Dan’s heart skipped a beat. She saw him at the same moment, and color bloomed in her cheeks. She was seated on a chair, a measuring tape in hand, and she raised one hand in a wave. Luke turned then, and when Dan came up, his son said, “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi,” Dan said, and he put a hand on his son’s shoulder. He was feeling a surge of protectiveness that he couldn’t quite explain.
“This is Beth,” Luke said. “Wait—you know her, right? She said you were friends.”
“Yeah—” Dan looked up to catch Beth’s blue eyes meet his for a fleeting second. “Beth and I were good friends.”
“She said you drove a motorcycle on the stage!” Luke said, his face lighting up. “Is that true?”
Dan rolled his eyes in Beth’s direction. “Thanks for that, Beth.”
“My pleasure.” A smile curled her lips.
That had been the one and only time that he’d participated in the pageant, and he’d ended up revving that motorcycle right off the stage and onto a table of poinsettias. That had also been the year he’d asked Beth to marry him. She’d been so pure and untarnished, and he’d been determined to give her the world, if he could. He’d saved his money for months to buy the ring, and at the time it had seemed impressive—the band of gold, a small diamond. Now, looking back, it hadn’t been much.
“How’d rehearsal go?” Dan asked.
“Good.” Luke nodded. “I’m getting a vest to go with my outfit. So I’ll look really elderly.”
“Yeah?” Dan chuckled. “And Beth is going to do that?”
He arched an eyebrow in her direction. Last he knew, she couldn’t sew.
“I’m only taking measurements,” Beth said. “Mrs. Connolly will do the heavy lifting.”
She met his gaze, and he felt his expression soften. He broke off eye contact and cleared his throat. Luke was looking at him with that too-sharp gaze he sometimes had—the look that said he understood more than Dan wanted him to.
“We should probably get going,” Dan said. “Go find your coat and stuff, Luke.”
“Okay.” Luke shot Beth a grin. “See you later, old lady.”
Dan choked. “Luke!”
“After a while, old-timer,” she said with a wink.
Luke headed off to find his stuff, and Dan grimaced and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve taught him better manners than that.”
It mattered to him that Beth know he’d raised his son right. His attempt to hide his past had driven them apart, but at the very least he wanted her to know that he’d done a good job as a parent. He’d certainly sacrificed enough for it.
“Oh, that’s just a joke,” she said with a shake of her head. “You know...because of his old man costume.”
“Yeah...” He’d picked up on that much, but still—Luke knew better. He’d been drilling it into the kid for a couple of years now not to call adults “old.” It had been an issue in supermarkets and such, and he’d battled with Luke to get him to use his manners. It probably shouldn’t have turned into a power struggle, but it had. So this joke irritated him more than it probably should.
“I’d rather he didn’t call adults old,” Dan said.
“It was only a joke,” she said.
“Beth, I’m his dad—” His tone was sterner than he’d been aiming for, and he heaved a sigh. A moment ago he’d been feeling protective of her, and now he wanted to tell her to back off. But there was no way to soften that one, so he bit it back.
“Oh.” She sobered. “Okay. I will keep that in mind.”
Had he offended her? Probably. He was no good with these emotionally charged situations. He never had been. “And I’d rather he not know about our history, if it’s all the same to you.”
Color tinged Beth’s cheeks again, but this time her blue eyes flashed fire. “And you think I’m telling him about that?”
“The motorcycle thing—”
“It was cute.” Her tone sounded more irritated, though. “I was telling him you’d been in a play, too. Forgive me for telling your son anything about you at all.”
“It wasn’t cute. It was embarrassing,” he retorted. “And that Christmas doesn’t exactly hold fond memories for me.”
She blinked, and he could tell he’d surprised her. She swallowed, then nodded quickly. Shoot. He’d hurt her. That had been the Christmas that he’d proposed... Was he supposed to think back on those naive days fondly, or something?
“Beth—”
“No, you’ve made yourself clear.” Her eyes misted, and she blinked. “I apologize. I hadn’t thought ahead. I thought I was telling him something that would help him connect with you.”
“I haven’t told him anything about that time,” Dan said. Like about the woman who wouldn’t marry him when she found out Luke was part of the package. “Anything.”
“Got it.” She rose to her feet and ran a hand down her belly. “The horrible memories and all that. But you know what? I can remember the happy times. It wasn’t all misery and heartbreak just because we didn’t last, Dan.”
He lowered his voice. “I don’t tell him about it because we broke up because of him.”
Beth dropped her gaze, and her golden curls swung just enough to hide her expression from his view. He had to explain it all now—there was no going back from this.
“It would crush him, Beth.” His voice trembled, and he tried to keep his volume down. “He’s already been re
jected by his mother, and if he found out that you and I broke up because he came... He’s my son. You didn’t want to be a part of us then, so I call the shots now.”
Beth raised her gaze to meet his, and color drained from her face. “He’s yours. That was clear from the beginning.”
“Yeah...” He stopped. Luke was his son. That was a biological fact, but he heard the resentment in her tone. “What are you talking about?”
She opened her mouth to answer, just as Luke came running up, his coat open and his feet clunking against the wooden floor in his winter boots. Beth pressed her lips together and looked away. They couldn’t talk about this in front of Luke. Not that it mattered. He was frustrated. He needed to clear his head.
“We’d better go,” Dan said. “This is a school night.”
“See you later, Luke,” Beth said, but the good humor was gone from her voice, and Luke seemed to notice. He glanced between his father and Beth.
“Okay, ’bye,” Luke said.
Dan turned and walked with his son toward the exit. That could have gone better—he knew that. He hadn’t intended to discuss those things with Beth at all, but he hadn’t expected her to be here, either.
“Luke,” Dan said as they made their way down the hall toward the outside door.
Luke looked up.
“Don’t call people old,” Dan said.
“Okay, Dad.”
There. Luke needed to know whom to listen to, and Dan wasn’t going to share his role with anyone else, especially not the woman who’d opted out. Beth could raise her baby however she liked, but when it came to Luke—
Dan pushed open the door and followed Luke out into the chilly night. Dan might not have always been a great dad, but he’d made up for lost time. He’d earned the right to call the shots with Luke with the hard work of parenting, and Beth, quite frankly, hadn’t.
CHAPTER SIX
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Beth stood in the kitchen next to Granny. Granny was so slender that an apron could just about wrap around her twice, while Beth’s apron draped over the front of her belly and she couldn’t even do it up behind her.
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