by Julia London
“Well, let’s see.” He obliged her, describing a couple of houses he’d designed and was building. He was enthusiastic as he spoke, but not boastful. He laughed at some of the mistakes he’d made, admitted to trying some new design ideas and not being sure they would appeal. His eyes lit when he spoke, the shine of pride that Madeline found very appealing.
He talked until the food arrived. Madeline was a little embarrassed to see that the buffalo steak she had so cavalierly ordered was the size of a small dinner plate, and the baked potato, loaded with everything in the kitchen, was only slightly smaller.
“Hungry?” Luke asked with a smile, and accepted the small piece of fish with rice and steamed vegetables the waiter handed him.
So that was how he kept so trim. Madeline picked up a knife and fork. “I’ve never had buffalo.”
“Not my favorite,” he said as he forked some salad. “All right, we’ve talked about me—now tell me about you.”
“Me?” She paused in the sawing of the buffalo to think. The steak felt like boot leather under her dull knife. “Well,” she said, “I am trying to get into high-end properties. So I took a listing for the biggest, ugliest house I have ever seen.”
“On purpose?”
“Not really. Well, sort of.” She giggled at herself. “I view it as a challenge, a test of my realtor abilities.” She drank more wine. “Some might argue it was more of a test of my intelligence.”
Luke laughed. “So tell me about this house.”
Madeline found herself telling Luke about the monstrosity of architecture that was that house, filled with marble and Greek statues and perhaps the ugliest gold spackling on the walls in the history of housing. She told him it was overpriced in a down market and had sat on the listings for a full year with no movement. She told him how her peers had called her crazy to take it on—out loud and often—but that she was determined. She’d staged open houses, had suffered through tourists and neighbors who had wanted to gawk at the overdone interior design. She’d advertised it on every Internet site she could find, taking calls as far away as Kazakhstan.
“So? Have you had any nibbles?” he asked, seeming genuinely interested.
“Loads! But not at the asking price of three point five million.” She thought about her client, Mr. DiNapoli. He’d been suspicious of her, had questioned her credentials and her youth. She, in turn, had prepared a PowerPoint presentation to convince him that she was the woman for the job.
“My biggest problem is the owner,” she said. “He did some of the more colorful work on the house himself, and he is adamant that it not be undervalued.” She laughed and sawed at her steak again.
“Know the type well. I designed a house for a guy who thought he was an architect, too. Only the things he wanted to do had no basis in sound engineering. Trying to convince him of that was a second job.” He took a bite of fish, eyeing her thoughtfully. “Sounds like you have a good life in Orlando. But not a lot of time for fun.”
“Fun!” She said it as if she’d never heard the word before, she realized, but Madeline did not generally think about fun.
Luke looked up with surprise again. “You know—letting your hair down.”
The mention of letting her hair down made Madeline strangely uncomfortable. “I know.” She looked at her steak. “May I have the pepper, please?”
Luke picked up the pepper and handed it to her, but when Madeline reached for it, he didn’t let go. “Fun, Maddie. Every girl needs a little fun.”
“I know,” she said, and tugged on the pepper, but he refused to relinquish it. “I have fun.”
“Like what?”
“Like… I have to spell out all the ways I have fun?”
“You have to tell me at least one.”
Madeline didn’t really have fun. She had precisely the life she’d designed, built, and inhabited. It was carefully structured, no cracks, no possibility for failure. Nevertheless, his comment made her feel a little strange. Maybe it was because Trudi was always telling her she really didn’t have much of a life outside of checking in on her mother and working. Or maybe because Madeline recognized that it was true. But that’s the way she liked things: no complications. Nothing to go wrong. Nothing to uproot or lose.
She gave one last mighty tug, wrenching the pepper free from his grip. “Okay. I coach soccer.”
Luke’s eyes rounded. “Okay. Now we’re talking. That’s impressive—”
“No, no, it’s not impressive. I coach little girls—most of them are only five years old. I volunteer and I run up and down the sidelines and yell at them to go the other way.”
Luke blinked. His gaze wandered over her again. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? What’s your record?”
Madeline grinned. “O and four,” she said. “I’m not kidding, we have some serious challenges in the direction department.”
Luke’s laugh was soft and low. “I love it,” he said, and polished off his fish. “Is it just you in Orlando?” he asked casually.
“You’re nosy.”
“It’s called making conversation. You ride into my town on a donut wheel, and I want to know more. My guess is that you’ve got someone there since you won’t say.”
Madeline smiled at him, took another sip of wine. She was beginning to feel woozy. “My mom is there.”
“Cheater,” he said with a grin. “That’s not what I meant, but okay. What about a dad?” he asked. “I mean, other than Grant, obviously.”
Dad, Dad, Dad… Everyone had one but her. “Nope,” she said, and looked at her steak. Her willingness to fight the good fight against the buffalo was beginning to evaporate. She picked up the fork and knife and sent to work again. “A stepfather here and there. But they never stuck around too long.” She continued her attack another moment then sighed, resigned. She put down her utensils and glanced up—right into Luke’s gray eyes. “And I never knew Grant,” she blurted. That peculiar heat of shame instantly crawled up her nape following her admission. She always felt it when she admitted to someone that her father never bothered to know her.
To his credit, Luke did not look particularly shocked or appalled. “Well, I’d say that was his great loss.”
Madeline didn’t know what to say to that; she could only hold Luke’s gaze. She could see his sympathy, and for a moment, it felt as if the world were sinking away from them. Madeline did not like to talk about her life; it made her feel uncomfortably exposed. Her experience was that people tended to make judgments about others when they met, privately assessing by whatever criteria they carried around with them. But in that moment, Madeline had a strange need to speak, to say the things that she had carried for so long and so deep, and Luke—Luke looked like someone she could talk to. “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup,” she said softly. “I never laid eyes on him. I mean, not since I was like two or something, and I think that was only one time. I never had a card or a phone call from him. He could have been anyone. He could have been the president, and I would be the last to know.”
Luke said nothing at first, just looked across the table at her with something swimming around in his eyes.
Well, if that hadn’t effectively ruined an otherwise pleasant conversation—
Luke reached across the table and put his hand on top of hers. “I’m sorry, Maddie. You didn’t deserve that.”
Madeline was taken aback by his empathy. It was impossible to explain the wild range of emotions her absent father had brought up in her this last week. All her life, really. The emptiness, the hopelessness, the never-ending girlish hope that he would come and save her from her life, and the crushing disappointment when he never did. All of that welled in her now, and Madeline glanced blindly at her plate.
Luke’s hand slid away from hers. “Buffalo is always tougher than beef,” he said. When Madeline looked up, he gestured to her plate. “Buffalo is tougher than beef. And honestly, this place?” He glanced around and shook his head. “I’d stick to something a little
simpler, if you know what I mean.”
“Good advice,” she said, grateful that he had changed the subject. She sipped liberally from her wine and eyed the bread on the table, her belly not satisfied with the few bites of steak she’d managed to chop off.
“I like you, Maddie. Maybe we got off on the wrong foot at the ranch, so let’s start over. This is what I’ve learned about you,” he said, and held up his hand. “You’ve got some guy in the wings,” he said, folding over a finger.
“I didn’t say that,” she protested.
“I know,” he said, with a wink. “You’re an only child. Until today, that is. You take on ugly houses and losing soccer teams.”
“That about sums it up,” she said laughingly. “Okay. Is it just you here in Pine River?”
“Wow,” Luke said, settling back in his chair. “You just jump right in with both feet, don’t you?”
“You did!” she exclaimed.
“That was different,” he said laughingly. “No significant other. I have a dad and a brother. My mom died a couple of years ago. What else?”
What else? Things she would never ask. Such as where he’d gone to school, what he did in his spare time, how many women had he slept with…
“Aren’t you going back to Denver?” she asked.
His smile seemed to dim a little. “It’s not that easy for me.”
“Why not? You have a job, too. You have the houses you’ve started, your partnership—”
“I also have a father who has no place to live.”
Madeline gasped. “What? No one said anything about anyone being homeless.”
“I don’t mean that,” he said with a wave of his hand. “He’s rented a little house here in town. What I mean is that this has all been pretty tough on my dad and my brother, and they can’t live in that little house forever.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Don’t feel bad, she cautioned herself. They taught you that in negotiation school first thing—take the emotion out of it. “I’m really sorry that all of this has happened to your dad.”
“Thank you. You know my great grandfather bought that place? He came here from Tennessee and raised a family there. Then my grandfather took over and raised his family, and then my dad, and now there is my brother and me to carry on the family legacy. My mother died there.”
Yep. Madeline felt sorry for Luke. She could see how much the ranch meant to him, how much it hurt him now. How lovely, she thought, to have a home to feel that way about.
“My father made a stupid boneheaded mistake, there is no denying it,” he sighed. “I’ll be honest, Maddie—I am hoping you can see why it’s so important to us to correct that mistake.”
Madeline nodded. “I do understand. It must be very difficult for you.”
“More than I can actually convey,” he said. He leaned forward, his gaze locking on hers, his voice soft. “And I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that it’s even harder because you… well, you get it, right?”
Madeline’s belly did a queer little flip. “Get what?”
“Well, like you said, you didn’t know Grant. You didn’t know about this ranch. It makes it a little harder since it’s been in my family for generations.”
It clicked then. Things started to make sense to Madeline. She got it—she got why he’d sat down. Why he’d pretended to be interested in her, allowing her to believe that he wasn’t one of those guys, that he was genuine. And the whole time, he’d been setting her up, just as she’d initially suspected. Oh yeah, she got it. He thought that since Madeline didn’t know her father, didn’t know about this ranch, hadn’t done anything to warrant the inheritance, then therefore she didn’t deserve it. While he, on the other hand, had suffered his father’s horrible lapse of judgment and did deserve it.
He must have sensed that she was not onboard because he quickly said, “Listen, I don’t mean that like it sounds—”
“You don’t?”
“Look, I’m not exactly practiced at this sort of thing, okay? I just think we ought to be able to work this out.”
“You and me,” she said flatly.
Luke sighed. He pushed his hand through a thick head of hair. “Madeline, you are obviously the most reasonable of the three. Emma is—I honestly don’t know what the deal is with her. Libby isn’t thinking straight with this family reunion thing. But you seem to get it. And you don’t want the ranch.”
“Oh, I get it,” she said coolly. “You think that your father did something really dumb, but he deserves a second chance. And you must think I am really dumb and that you can be nice to me, and feign interest in me, and I will just eat out of your palm. Well guess what, Luke? I think that because my father abandoned me, because he lived his whole life without knowing if I was okay or not and basically left me to the world to sink or swim, that I deserve everything he had.”
She was aware, of course, that she had never thought that until this very minute, but that was beside the point.
“That is not what I was saying—”
“Luke, hi!”
A woman with honey blond hair had suddenly appeared, startling both Madeline and Luke. She had a baby on her hip, a little girl with beautiful blond curls and a car clutched tightly in her hand. Luke, Madeline noticed, looked shocked. He came awkwardly to his feet, his gaze flicking to Madeline and back to the woman.
“Hi, Julie. I didn’t see you.”
Madeline stood up, fumbling with her purse.
“I’m sorry, I’ve interrupted,” the woman said apologetically. “I just thought you might want to meet Violet, Luke.”
Madeline found her wallet easily in her bag, thanks to her superior skills of organization, and quickly pulled out two twenty-dollar bills. She tossed the bills on to the table.
“Madeline, wait—Julie, this is Madeline Pruett. She’s here from Orlando. And this is Julie Daugherty. She and I go way back—”
“Lovely to meet you,” Madeline said, and smiled as pleasantly as she could. “Thanks for the company, Luke.”
“Don’t go,” he said quickly.
“Please!” Julie agreed. “Don’t let me run you off.”
“Not at all. I was just getting ready to leave. I’ve had as much buffalo as I can saw off and I have a horrible headache,” Madeline said, and smiled at the baby to avoid looking at Luke.
“Oh dear,” Julie said.
“Pleasure to meet you. Good night.” Madeline had to pass Luke to get out, brushing against his hard shell of a body that only served to make her angrier. He put his hand on her arm as she passed, but Madeline walked briskly on, proud of herself for making a bold exit.
But she was fuming, her heart pumping, and she couldn’t resist a small pause at the entrance of the restaurant to look back. Luke and the woman were still at the table, only Luke was now holding the little girl. And a gorgeous smile illuminated his entire stupid face.
ELEVEN
Luke’s grip of the steering wheel was white-knuckle tight as he drove back to Elm Street. He was furious with himself—he’d handled that business with Madeline with about as much finesse as a toddler handling a fluffy white cat.
He had some very mixed emotions about that woman. On the one hand, there was something very alluring about her. All day long, she’d come across as the only truly reasonable one among them. She asked smart questions, was reserved and thoughtful. And she was cute, goddammit. So damn pretty with big blue eyes and dark shaggy bangs. She was a Maddie, definitely. Not a Madeline. If the situation were different, if it had been any other time, any other place on earth, he would be very interested in pursuing her.
But the situation was not different, and on the other hand, Luke thought she would be the toughest of the three in trying to negotiate some sort of deal on the ranch.
What difference did it make? He’d messed it all up. He had no intention of bringing up the ranch when he saw her in the Stakeout. He really had believed she looked as if she could use some company. He had enjoyed the mea
l, really enjoyed it. She was funny, sawing away at a steak big enough to feed a family of four. He’d found her charmingly quirky with her ugly houses and little-girl soccer teams. Then he’d gone and tried to make some sort of point, and bam, just like that, he’d messed up any goodwill.
But how was he supposed to know that Grant Tyler had been such a dick of a dad? He might have been able to smooth over his gross mishandling of a delicate situation, but then Julie had shown up with her baby.
Luke had always known that Julie would make some beautiful babies. He’d been so rattled by Julie’s sudden appearance with that little girl and the way things had ended with Maddie that he hadn’t been able to think what to say when Julie had invited him to dinner later this week.
He’d said okay.
Idiot.
What he found curious was that Julie was at the Stakeout without Brandon. It seemed to him like a lot of work to get a baby out the door and to a restaurant with the only happening bar scene in town. But when he’d asked Julie about her husband, she’d blushed and said he hadn’t been around much lately. Work, she said. Luke really didn’t know Brandon but in passing, but he knew this—if he, Luke, had that wife and that kid, he’d be around all the damn time.
Luke was lost in thought when he turned onto Elm Street, but then, his heart suddenly plummeted: a fire truck and an ambulance were in front of the little house, their flashing lights illuminating the night. A fear clutched at his throat, the fleeting thought that this was it, Leo’s time had come. He sped up, flying up the gravel drive. He leapt onto the porch as two firemen came out, their bags on their backs, pulling off their latex gloves. “What happened?” he shouted, but didn’t wait for their answer. He all but tore the screen door off to get inside.
Two paramedics were crammed into the tiny living room, shielding his view. “Leo!” Luke shouted, louder than he intended, but his heart was racing, his breath suddenly restricted.