Deserving of Luke

She wanted to disagree on general principle, to tell him that there was nothing she wanted to talk to him about. But another look at her son changed her mind. Luke’s fascination with Logan was hard to miss.

Swallowing the bitterness that welled inside of her, she answered. “Yeah. I guess we do.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a few days—”

“A few days isn’t acceptable. I want to talk to you today.”

“Yeah, well, I gave up worrying about what you wanted a long time ago, Logan. I’m not here to see you. I’m here to help my sister. So if you want to talk to me, you’re going to have to work around my schedule.”

“Your schedule? You have my kid and you have the nerve to talk to me about schedules?”

A million responses came to her—none of which were fit for polite company but all of which she wanted to say. “How about tomorrow afternoon?”

“I want to talk to you today.” He ground out the words in a voice so harsh it hurt her ears. And still she wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t give in.

Her son was too important for her to roll over and play dead. And if his father thought differently, then he was in for a rude awakening. She’d never been one for power struggles, but on this front, she was digging in. There was no way he was going to move her.

“I want a lot of things. I always have. But part of growing up is realizing that you can’t always have what you want. Isn’t that what our mothers always used to tell us?”

For a second she thought Logan was going to lose the stranglehold he had on control and she regretted taunting him. Not because she was afraid of him—the Logan she knew would never hurt her physically and she’d kick his ass if he tried—but because Luke was watching. He didn’t know what they were saying, which probably only made the tension between them look scarier.

Sure enough, his door cracked open a little. “Mommy. Are you okay?”

He never called her Mommy anymore, and she saw the second his words registered on Logan, the second the sheriff realized his son was afraid of what he would do to his mother. She watched as he forcibly made himself relax.

“I’m fine, sweetie. I’ll be ready to go in a second.”

“What time tomorrow afternoon?” Logan demanded.

She knew it cost him a lot to ask her that, to give in without a fight simply because it would be easier for Luke. And she gave Logan credit for it, though it was hard. She’d spent so long loving him and wishing he’d call, so long hating him because he hadn’t, that it was almost impossible to give him even the slightest benefit of the doubt now. Especially when he was still as arrogant and gorgeous and out of line as he’d always been.

But she would. For her son’s sake, she would give Logan a chance and pray to God that she wasn’t making a mistake. “Why don’t you come by Penny’s house tonight, after ten? Luke usually goes to sleep around nine-thirty. We can talk then.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you at ten.”

“Okay.”

There was nothing left to say, and yet neither one of them made a move to leave. Instead they stood there looking at each other, the past yawning like a chasm between them, until Luke’s door opened one more time.

“Mom?”

“I’m coming, Luke. We’re done here.”

Logan nodded, and left without another word. As she watched him walk away, Paige prayed again that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life. That she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of Luke’s life.

CHAPTER THREE

“HOW WAS TOWN?” PENNY ASKED as Luke and Paige lugged their grocery bags into the house almost an hour later.

“Pretty damn awful.” Paige blew a stray hair out of her face. “I swear, I don’t know how you can stand to live here. Nothing changes.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know.” Penny relieved her of a few of the bags.

“Easy for you to say. They don’t look at you like you should come with a warning label—and a decontamination chamber—attached. I don’t understand why you want to—” She broke off, refusing to ruin her time with Penny by bringing up an argument that dated to when they were kids. If they were going to fix everything that needed fixing—Penny’s seaside house, her self-esteem after her boyfriend dumped her with this monstrosity, their sibling relationship, which hadn’t been the same since Paige had left town nine years before—she needed to tread carefully.

“I stay here because this is home to me. I like it here,” Penny blithely answered the unfinished question. “I know Prospect wasn’t good for you, know you’ve done amazing things since you left. But this is the only place I’ve ever wanted to live. When I moved away, I missed it.”

Paige’s nod was stilted, but she was saved from responding when Luke found the treasure he’d been searching through the bags for. “Look, Aunt Penny. Mom bought me a totally cool comic book. Do you want to see it?”

“Of course I do. Maybe you could read it to me while I put these groceries away.” She reached into a bag and pulled out a jar of pickles.

“And we ran into my dad in town. He was dressed in a policeman’s uniform and he seemed really mad at Mom.”

The jar of pickles slipped from her sister’s hand and shattered as it hit the kitchen’s hardwood floor.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Paige said, tongue firmly in cheek. “I’ll put the groceries away.”

“You saw Logan and that’s all you have to say?”

Shooting a warning look from her sister to her son, Paige nodded. “It’s not quite as eloquent as dropping a jar of pickles, I know, but I do what I can.”

“Right. Of course.” Penny sounded as though she was being strangled, but she didn’t say anything else as she started cleaning up the mess.

“Do you know my dad, Aunt Penny?”

She succumbed to a major coughing fit. When she finally recovered, she said, “Um, I guess. A little bit. Why?”

“Because I don’t think I like him. He was mean to Mom. On the way home, she said it was because he was surprised to see me, but I don’t know. So I thought, if you knew him, you could tell me if you thought he was as bad as he seemed today.” Luke said the last words in a rush, his breath running out from trying to say everything in one fell swoop. She could see the hope shining in his eyes, along with the fear and prayed that Penny could as well.

Tenderness for her son welled up inside Paige all over again, even as she felt torn apart by the fact that she was going to have to see Logan in a few hours. Luke was so sweet and he wanted this so badly, that she wanted to want it, too. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t—not when giving him his father meant allowing Logan in her life again.

He’d done so much damage the first time around it had taken her years to stop reeling.

“I don’t think your dad is awful, Luke,” Penny finally said after an awkward silence. “I’m sure he wasn’t trying to be mean to your mom. He was probably shocked to see you. He didn’t know you were coming.”

“He says he didn’t know about me at all.”

Penny’s eyes darkened to forest green. “Well, then, he must have been confused.”

“That’s what Mom says.”

“You should listen to your mother. She knows a lot more than your father does.”

“Penny!” Paige frowned at her sister.

“Well, you do. Men are—”