Deserving of Luke

by Tracy Wolff

  “Look, Paige, you weren’t some faceless blonde to me. I…” He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to her. The kiss from the day before hung between them, along with all of the baggage from their past.

  She waited for Luke to scramble into the backseat and put on his seat belt before she climbed in. “I mean it, Logan. It’s no big deal. I guess I’m overly sensitive.” She shook her head. “I had a great time tonight. Luke and I both did, so let’s not let something stupid ruin our good moods.”

  He nodded slowly, not sure if she meant what she was saying but glad to be let off the hook so easily. “I had a really good time, too.”

  “I figured that out. Although how you could have when you had to go on all those crazy rides, I’ll never know.”

  “I considered it my initiation to fatherhood. I missed all the sleepless nights and dirty diapers, so this was the least I could do.”

  She didn’t respond, and he didn’t know what else to say, so he kept his mouth shut through the rest of the drive. They’d spent the first week sniping at each other, and now that that seemed to be gone, there was nothing to say. More accurately there was too much to say, but he didn’t know where to begin.

  When he pulled up in front of Penny’s house, he half expected Paige to grab Luke and make a run for the door. Instead, she stuck around for a minute, even after a sleepy Luke headed inside.

  “Would you like to come in for a little while?” she asked, almost shyly.

  His arousal from the day before came back with a vengeance, making him so hard so fast that Logan wasn’t sure he would be able to walk. But after more than a week of being relegated to the car or the front porch, he wasn’t about to pass up a chance to see how Paige and Logan were living this summer.

  As he climbed out of the truck, he told himself his curiosity stemmed from making sure his son had a healthy, happy home. But even he found that difficult to believe it, especially since his erection was pressed so hard against his fly that he feared he’d have permanent zipper tracks.

  He wasn’t going inside Penny’s house because of his son. He was doing it because he wanted Paige Matthews more now than he ever had at eighteen.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “CAN I GET YOU SOMETHING to drink?” Paige asked, as she let Logan in. “The place is a mess because of the construction, but we have lemonade, soda. I think Penny’s also got some white wine in the fridge.”

  He glanced around. “Where is your sister?”

  “She’s spending a few days in Portland, hunting for some furniture to fill in the guest rooms we’re almost finished with.”

  “You’ve already got some of the rooms finished?” he asked. “I’m impressed. You’re a fast worker.”

  “I’ve been designing sets for years—changing them up with one or two days’ notice if the director decides he needs to go another direction. Quick decorating is something of an art form for me.”

  “I guess so.”

  He didn’t say anything else and she felt butterflies beating in her stomach as she struggled for something to say. Why had she asked him in? She didn’t have the first idea of what to do with him now that he was standing in the foyer of her sister’s house.

  Thankfully, Luke chose that moment to make an appearance at the top of the stairs. “Mom, my dog looks great sitting on my dresser. I’m going to leave him there all sum—” His voice cut off as he realized his father was standing next to her. “Dad! You came in.”

  “I did.” Logan grinned at his son, an easy curving of his lips that somehow made her stomach even more nervous. What was happening to her? To them? She’d been content hating him.

  He was looking at her differently, had been ever since he’d picked them up that afternoon. And now she was doing the same—thinking of how handsome he looked in his faded jeans and black T-shirt, instead of how much she resented the way he’d tossed her out of his life.

  It needed to stop. She needed to stop it. Whatever she was thinking, whatever crazy emotions were zinging their way through her, had to stop. Logan was the father of her child, nothing more. She wouldn’t let him be more, couldn’t let him be more after everything that had happened between them.

  Was he attractive? Absolutely—but he always had been. Attraction hadn’t stopped him from tossing her out on her ear and it hadn’t helped her in that first year away from Prospect when everything was so difficult, including finding a job that paid enough to put a leaky roof over her head and pay for prenatal doctor visits.

  The thought of those long, lean months—years, really—had her moving toward the stairs at a near-run. She needed to put some distance between them, needed to get away from Logan for a few minutes, so that when she looked at him she didn’t see the warmth in his eyes. She could only afford to see the ice-cold rage that had been directed at her all those years before. Anything else was emotional suicide. And she’d already been there, done that and had the T-shirt. It hadn’t been a pretty ride.

  “It’s late, Luke. You need to take a quick shower and get all the dirt and sugar from the carnival off you and then go to bed.”

  “But, Moooooooom—”

  “No, but, Mom tonight,” she answered firmly. “If you take a quick shower, we can read a chapter from your book before bed.”

  “A whole chapter?” he asked, delighted.

  “A whole chapter,” she agreed, heading up the stairs. Maybe Logan would get bored and take off before she was done.

  “Can Dad read it to me?”

  Paige paused on one of the steps, tried to cover the shocked hurt the request generated. But she must have done a lousy job of it because both guys started backpedaling.

  “It’s only because he’s never seen my room, Mom. And he’s never read a book to me. I thought it would be fun, just this one time.”

  “That’s okay,” Logan said, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to mess with anyone’s routine. I’ll head out now and see you the day after tomorrow for the baseball game, okay, Luke?”

  He headed for the door and her son’s face fell. His chest rose and fell rapidly and his expression told her Luke was trying hard not to cry. It made her feel petty. She’d come this far for her son—what was one more step toward the dark side if it made him happy?

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, her voice sharp and stilted. She knew she sounded ridiculous, but there was nothing she could do about it. The fact that she was saying the words would have to be good enough for Logan.

  “You can stay. I mean, if you want to. If you’ve got somewhere to go, I’m sure Luke and I would understand. But if you don’t and you want to stay and read him a book, that would be fine with me. I mean—” She let out a huge sigh, forced herself to stop babbling. “Stay, Logan. It’s fine.”

  He didn’t answer for a few seconds, choosing instead to focus on her face. She tried to school her features into the appearance of neutrality, but must not have succeeded, because from the way he studied her, as though he found something interesting to stare at.

  “All right,” he finally agreed before heading up the stairs. “What book are we reading?” he asked, as Luke cheered.

  “It’s supercool. It’s about this kid who went to basketball camp but everything goes wrong. His suitcase gets lost, and then he gets put on the worst team by mistake—or at least, he thinks it’s a mistake. I’m not sure what else happens—we haven’t gotten that far.”

  “We’ll have to find out tonight. So, do you like basketball?”

  “I love it. When I grow up, I want to be a basketball player.” He paused, looked Logan over appraisingly. “I have to admit I was kind of hoping you’d be a little taller. Six-two is good, but not if you want to play pro ball.”

  Paige turned a laugh into a cough, but it was difficult—particularly considering the fact that Logan’s eyes were brimming with amusement when he looked at her. Their child really was one of a kind.

  “What position do you play?”

  “I’m tall for my age, so I play center
.”

  “Oh, yeah? Are you any good at it?”

  “Yeah, I’m really good. Not, like, Shaq good or anything, but still I can hold my own.”

  This time Paige did laugh, and Logan joined in as he ruffled Luke’s curls. “You’ve got a great attitude, kid. That will take you far in life.”

  “That’s what Mom says. In fact—”

  Paige fired his pajamas at him, hit him square in the chest. “Mom says shower. Now. Or no book.”

  “Aw, Mom.” He gave her his best puppy-dog eyes and for a second, she wanted to cave. Especially since as long as he was around, she had a buffer between her and Logan.

  At the same time, she knew her son, could see the tiredness on his face. If she didn’t get him showered and into bed in the next few minutes, he would turn into a total bear. And much as she would like to see how well Logan coped with him when he got like that, she didn’t want to put Luke through the discomfort.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ve already got the water running, so it should be nice and warm for you. You take the fastest shower on record—as long as everything that needs washing gets washed—and I won’t hassle you about the not so vital stuff, like your hair. At least for tonight. Deal?”

  “Deal!” Luke cried as he zipped into the bathroom, already pulling his shirt over his head.

  Logan shook his head as he watched him go. “He’s certainly a whirlwind, isn’t he?” he asked when the bathroom door closed with a resounding thud.

  “He keeps me on my toes.”

  “I have a feeling he’d keep my entire department on their toes.”

  “Well, he does have a lot of his mother in him.”

  As soon as the words slipped out, she wanted to call them back. She’d meant them as a joke, a way to diffuse some of the tension she was feeling, but Logan wasn’t laughing. Instead, his eyes turned the deep silver of the moonlit waves she could hear crashing in the background, a surefire sign that he was taking her comment a lot more seriously than she had meant it.

  Sure enough, he shoved a hand through his hair—a gesture she remembered from the bad old days as a sign of his agitation—and crossed the room until he was standing right next to her. “I wasn’t saying that, Paige.”

  “I know you weren’t,” she answered with a smile. “I wasn’t trying to snipe at you. I had a rough childhood. I got in trouble. I’ve never said otherwise.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t nearly as tough as most people thought you were, either.”

  “What about you?”

  He raised an eyebrow? “What about me?”

  “How tough did you think I was?”

  The bathroom door flew open before he could answer, and Luke bounded out, dressed in his favorite superhero pajamas. “Book time! Book time!”

  The look on Logan’s face said he’d been saved by the bell, but Paige couldn’t help being a little disappointed. Despite everything that had happened between them, despite all the ways he had hurt her in the past, she had desperately wanted an answer to that one question.

  PAIGE’S QUESTION CIRCLED in his head, bouncing around his brain long after she’d gone downstairs. Even as he read chapter six of The Adventures of a Wanna-Be Basketball Player to Luke, his mind was filled with thoughts about that long-ago fight between them.

  He’d been an idiot to cut her out of his life so harshly. A moron to hold on to his hurt so tightly that it had blinded him to anything and everything else, including the pain he was inflicting on Paige.

  He’d cost Luke years when they could have been together. But what if he’d cost himself more? What if he’d cost himself a chance to be happy with Paige? Who knows if they would have made it—seventeen was way too young to be thinking about forever—but he’d never even given them a shot. God, the hubris of youth really was unbelievable.

  Distracted, he didn’t do a very good job of reading aloud, but Luke was too tired to complain. He was asleep within four pages, his little face quiet and serene for the first time since Logan had met him.

  He knew he should leave, knew he should tuck his son into bed then head downstairs, make some excuse to Paige. But he didn’t do it. He couldn’t. Tonight, there was nowhere else he would rather be than right here, with his son and with Paige. He wanted to hear her laugh again, to see her eyes sparkle with her special brand of infectious joy. It had been missing from his life for a long time, and it wasn’t until recently that he’d even known that he’d missed it.

  Which only made him a bigger idiot.

  He wasn’t sure how long he sat on the edge of the bed, watching Luke sleep. Counting the smattering of freckles across his nose. Cataloguing each small scar on his arms and hands, wondering what daredevil stunts his son had performed to get them.

  He couldn’t believe how beautiful Luke was—not only on the outside, but on the inside as well. The idea of letting him go at the end of the summer, of seeing him once a month or so after Luke and Paige returned to L.A., made him sick.

  He wanted much more time than that. There were still so many things he wanted to show him. They hadn’t been fishing yet or played baseball, hadn’t hiked through the state parks in the area or built a model airplane. Two months wasn’t enough time. But he doubted two years would be, either. Not after having missed so much.

  His phone buzzed and he reluctantly pulled it out of his pocket, afraid that it would be work pulling him away from the best night he could remember having in a long time. But a quick glance at the screen showed him a text from his father.

  Your mom wants you to have dinner with us tomorrow. I am not supposed to take no for an answer. Rudolfo’s at 7 p.m.

  Logan really had been banned from the house. He shook his head, wondering if he should be annoyed or amused. Rudolfo’s was his mother’s fallback meeting place and if he should screw up there, God only knew where he’d end up. Probably at the burger joint on the wrong side of town. Not that he was so sure that was a bad deal. He much preferred hamburgers to the food his mother prepared.

  He wanted to say he couldn’t believe the way she was behaving, but the fact of the matter was, he could. His mother was not known for her acceptance—at least not with anyone but his father. It was bad enough that he’d messed around with Paige when he was in high school. The fact that his illegitimate child had made a sudden appearance in town, thrusting his family into the limelight of unsavory gossip? That was not to be tolerated.

  In this moment, sitting beside his sleeping son, coming off the high of his day, temporarily at peace with Paige, Logan wondered how much influence his mother had had on his intolerance nine years ago. An uncomfortable place to linger when he’d resented his mother’s attitudes and considered himself a better person for being more accepting. Yet the evidence was overwhelming. There had been no acceptance or understanding or even listening as he’d belittled Paige that day.

  And why not? It wasn’t like the kid couldn’t have been his—back then he had made love to Paige every chance he got. But by the time she told him about being pregnant, he’d been so opposed to believing she might be carrying his kid that he’d kicked her out of his life even though she swore that the baby was his.

  Why had he done it? Because a friend of his had said that Paige had come on to him? Because a couple of football buddies had told him she’d slept with them as well? Even if she had, that hadn’t negated his own culpability. Clearly.

  Had he really believed his friends back then, or had he used their stories as an excuse to break up with a girl he cared about, a girl he loved, because his family and friends thought she was unsuitable for him. Oh, the guys she’d been with before him hadn’t minded sleeping with Paige, but none of them had actually had a relationship with her—a fact that had been glaringly obvious once.

  He’d told himself her past didn’t matter, told her that he understood—and he’d been sure that he had. But he’d been lying to himself. Maybe he had chosen to believe his friends because it was easier than dealing with the truth. That his football d
reams, his career dreams, were over if he’d gotten a girl pregnant. He really hoped that hadn’t been the case, because just the suggestion of it made him feel like the biggest asshole who had ever walked the earth. And more like his mother, who was selfish and all about appearances, than he’d thought possible.

  It was a terrible feeling, especially as he thought of everything his kid had had to do without because his father had been too much of a jerk to even consider his mother’s point of view.

  There was a gentle knock on Luke’s door, and he turned to see Paige, a questioning look on his face. “Is everything okay in here?”

  “Yeah.” He focused on the wall behind her head, embarrassed to face her after his realizations. “I was just looking at him.”

  She smiled. “I do that a lot. He’s pretty amazing, huh?”

  “He’s incredible. I can’t believe how much I already love him. I wish—” Paige wasn’t the best one to voice his regrets to. She’d been the one who had been hurt most by the fallout between them, after all.

  But she wasn’t going to let it go. “What do you wish?”

  “What was he like as a baby? As a toddler? Was he easy, or did he drive you nuts?”

  Paige didn’t answer right away, and at first he felt as though he’d overstepped his bounds. He’d tried to take things slow, to let things unfold naturally, but he was starved for information about his son. About Paige and their life in Los Angeles.

  “Never mind. Look, I’ll—”

  “Do you want to see some of his baby pictures? I’ve got some saved on my laptop. Not many, but enough to give you an idea of what he was like.”

  “I—” It took a moment before he could force any words around the knot that seemed to have taken up residence in his throat. “I would really like that.”

  She nodded, then headed downstairs. After brushing a kiss on the top of Luke’s head, Logan followed, feeling as though his entire world had narrowed to this house and the two people in it.