Teresa Hill

by Luke’s Wish

  “I’m not disagreeing with you, Doc. I’m not trying to make this any harder than it already is.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. Do you think I’m going to push you into doing something you don’t want to do? No matter how I might want it, even if I know it’s not smart at all?”

  “I don’t know what you’re going to do. I just know that one of us needs to be smart and strong and careful, and I’m not sure I can be that person anymore, and you’re…just about perfect.”

  “Perfectly wrong, Doc.” He grinned when he said it. “Remember that. You said I was all wrong for you.”

  “You are.” She touched him—and then took a much-needed breath. “Perfectly wrong, and still…perfect.”

  “I think you should kiss me good-morning,” he said.

  She frowned at him.

  “Sorry.” He shrugged in mock innocence and with a hint of a smile. “I’ve been strong and smart and careful for just about as long as I can. It’s my turn to be reckless. I get to touch you now.”

  “Please don’t,” she said, both her hands coming up between them, landing squarely on his chest. She could push him away if she had to, if she had her hands between them and if she found the will.

  “One kiss, Samantha. Do you know how long it’s been since I kissed you?”

  “A long time.”

  “Sixty-two days,” he groaned. “Sixty-two?”

  “Yes. Want to know how many hours? Because I can tell you.”

  “Just one kiss?” she asked.

  He laughed then. Joe had the most amazing laugh. His mouth came down to hers slowly. Her heart was thundering before he ever touched his lips to hers. And then…she was letting Joe Morgan kiss her.

  “Joe,” she protested after a moment.

  “What can I do, Samantha? I see you, and I want to touch you. I touch you, and I want to kiss you.”

  “I…I don’t know what to say.”

  “Can you really stay away?” he whispered. “Can you really forget? Can you walk away from something that might be exactly what you need? What you’re supposed to have in your life? Have you thought about that?”

  She frowned, feeling so vulnerable. “It’s like that for you, too?”

  He nodded. “Right away. From the first time I saw you, I just liked you so much. It felt so good to be with you. I felt happy for the first time in a long time and hopeful and that little zing of magic. Like anything was possible, any long list of wonderful things.”

  She thought she might cry. “Me, too. That’s it. That’s exactly it.”

  “We’re going to have to do something about that, Doc. We can’t ignore something like that.”

  “But we can’t ignore everything else, either. That I’m a mess, Joe. A mess. I’m scared and mixed up and sad and hurt—all those things. And we’re just the same, you and me and your kids. Have you thought about that? All of us scared and lonely and needing each other.”

  “I know. You think it makes us absolutely wrong for each other, and I think it makes us right. Think about it. We know what it feels like to be hurt. We know about being careless in the choices we’ve made, and we want to be careful and smart now. We don’t want to hurt each other.”

  “No.” He’d turned everything around, and he was confusing her terribly.

  “Just think about it,” he said. “Open yourself up to the possibilities. Stop looking at all the reasons to stay away and think about what we might find together. Think about how good it could be for all of us.”

  “I can’t afford to do that.”

  “You won’t let yourself do that,” he insisted. “Just try. Tell me you’ll do that much.”

  “Okay. I’ll think about it.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Will you stay and have breakfast with us?”

  She shouldn’t. But she wanted to.

  He moved closer, had her thinking he was going to kiss her again.

  “Okay.” She threw up her hands, stopping just short of touching him, him stopping just short of touching her. “You take one step back and I’ll stay.”

  They were a festive group that morning. Joe made French toast. Samantha put Dani’s hair in a French braid, which she loved, and even Luke, poor sad Luke, looked happy. They ate and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

  Samantha found herself still there at noon and reluctant to leave. The kids were outside playing in the backyard when she said to Joe for the third time, “I really have to go. I have to do something about my house.”

  “Yes, you do. You have to fire Abe. There’s no excuse for the way he left that roof. He’d done a half-assed job of patching it, and things are only going to get worse the more work he does for you.”

  “Okay. I’ll get rid of him.”

  “I can get the work done for you, Samantha. I’ll see that it’s done right. Let me do that much, at least,” he said. “We won’t have to see each other, if you don’t want that. I’ll be there during the day while you’re working, and I’ll be here with the kids while you’re home. Think about it. How much have you seen of Abe?”

  “Not much,” she said.

  Joe nodded. He’d made his point. She really didn’t have to see that much of him, just because he was working on her house.

  “Just the roof?” she asked. “And then we’ll see how it goes.”

  “Okay.”

  “I…I knew I shouldn’t have hired him. I did. I just…I had to move on. Can you understand that? I’ve spent the last year feeling so bad and just drifting along, and when I thought I wasn’t going to see you again, not ever, I looked at the other parts of my life and decided I just had to do something. I had to put it back together again, and the house…it’s the way I grew up, in a house a lot like that one. It’s the kind of place I’ve always wanted to live, and I thought if I could put just part of that in place in my life, maybe the rest of it would come, too, in time. Can you understand that?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I do. But running away from me isn’t the answer, Samantha.”

  “Running away could keep me safe,” she said. “I step back and when my head clears and I can think, that’s what I see. Running away and staying away keeps me safe.”

  “No, it keeps you all alone, and I don’t think that’s what you want or need. I just figured it out myself. I thought the same thing you did—that I just wanted to be safe, and I had to make sure the kids were safe. But that’s the price for playing it safe here—being alone. I don’t know if I’m willing to pay that price. Are you?”

  “I don’t know.” She felt tears gather in her eyes. “And I can’t think when I’m this close to you. When you kiss me and make me want all these things. Joe, you make me want so much.”

  “Me, too. I want just as much.”

  She sighed, thinking it only got worse. No matter what she did, things only got worse. She stepped back and said, “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He leaned down and kissed her lightly, and the kids came and hugged and kissed her, too.

  “Are you gonna come back soon for another sleep-over?” Dani asked hopefully.

  Sleep-over? Samantha could just imagine how that would sound if Dani went around telling everyone she’d slept over. “I don’t know, sweetie.”

  “And you can do my hair again? And teach Daddy to do it?”

  “We do need to give your father a lesson,” Samantha said, thinking that maybe they could take this slowly. Very, very slowly. Maybe if she just let herself have a little bit of him and his kids, and they were all so careful. Maybe none of them would get hurt. “What if you all come to my house next weekend? I can fix dinner for you and we’ll give Daddy a lesson in French braids.”

  Dani beamed. So did Luke. Joe looked as if he was going to grab her and kiss her any minute.

  “I have to go,” she said, practically running away. This time, she was running. This time, she still had the strength.

  It didn’
t take long for Dani’s sleep-over talk to reach Joe’s motherin-law. She picked the kids up from school one afternoon a week and did homework with them and fed them dinner, a night when Joe always worked late to catch up on all he’d let go the other days when he rushed to school to get them before late-stay closed.

  On Tuesday when he picked them up from his in-laws’ house, Katherine Graham was waiting for him, the kids outside and out-of-the-way so they could talk privately.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” she began.

  “Dani mentioned the sleep-over?” Joe guessed.

  Katherine nodded. “Really, Joe. Having a woman spend the night when the children are there? A woman you barely know? I assume you barely know her, because I can’t believe you’ve been seeing her for any length of time. Otherwise I would have heard about it. You know how well developed the gossip system in this town is.”

  “I know, and it’s not what you think,” he said. He’d love for it to be what she thought, but it wasn’t. “Samantha just moved into an old house on Dogwood Lane. Abe Wilson was supposed to be fixing it up for her, and he left her with water coming through her ceiling last Saturday night when we had the thunderstorm come through. She came over to stay with the kids while I got a tarp over her roof, and she fell asleep before I could get back. She slept with the kids, Katherine, not me.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Dani just made it sound like—”

  “I know. I’ve been trying to get her to stop throwing that word around—sleep-over. But she was excited. She likes Samantha, and she…she needs a mother, Katherine.”

  “Of course, she does. I just…I hate this, Joe. I hate what my daughter did to you all and that my granddaughter is so desperate for a woman in her life that she’d latch on to the first one that comes along.”

  “Samantha’s a wonderful woman.”

  “I hope so. And I hope you’ll be careful.”

  “We will.”

  “They’ve been through so much,” Katherine said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry. You’ve done such a wonderful job with them, and I guess it’s inevitable that you’d find someone else someday.”

  “Katherine, we’re just getting to know each other.”

  “Of course, you just…you look happy for the first time in so long. Just saying her name, you look happy. And the kids seem happy, too. I thought… I assumed it was more serious than it is.”

  He didn’t want to think about how serious it was becoming to him already, how right it felt. She was right. He was lonely. Samantha was the first woman he’d even looked at twice since Elena left, and it wasn’t that he hadn’t had opportunities. He just hadn’t been interested. Until now.

  So was that because he was simply ready to move on? Was it because he was lonely? Or was it because of who Samantha was? Because she was the right person for him and his kids?

  “I like her,” he said. “I really like her. But she’s been through a lot herself, and we’re both gun-shy.”

  “Good,” Katherine said.

  Now, if only they could stick to that plan, Joe thought.

  Samantha’s week dragged by so slowly she could hardly stand it. She glared at the calendar, wondering how five days could possibly last this long. They were coming on Friday evening, and she was going to make spaghetti—Luke’s favorite—and chocolate cake—Dani’s favorite. And she wanted everything to be perfect.

  Of course, her house was a mess. Abe was furious at her and giving her a hard time about canceling their contract, and Joe’s crew had been here every day, but she could tell this was going to be a long messy process. But this is what it took to put her house in order, to end up with what she wanted.

  She thought about that—a long messy process. A bit scary. One where it was hard, sometimes, to see how it could possibly turn out right in the end, when things were so unsettled now, everything out of place and feeling awkward and making her uneasy. She didn’t like messes. She always wanted life to be neat and tidy, everything in its place.

  But life wasn’t like that. Hers certainly hadn’t been, and it scared her when things got so out of synch.

  For the first time she thought that maybe it had to be like this now—messy and complicated and a bit scary. Maybe that was the way it worked sometimes, to get everything in place the way it should be.

  Maybe she just had to learn to work through the scary times, to keep her eyes on what waited for her at the end. A place where she could feel safe and happy and secure. A place with Joe and his kids.

  She wasn’t thinking about the house now. She was thinking about her personal life. Maybe this was simply the way things were, the way things were meant to be.

  She rushed around the kitchen Friday evening, finding bright-blue dishes and cups with clouds on them she thought Dani would think were pretty and putting out a few toys she’d brought home from her office, where she kept a supply for the kids to play with. She was ready long before they arrived, spent an entire twenty minutes sitting in the kitchen gazing out into the backyard, thinking it was ridiculous for a thirty-year-old woman to be so excited about cooking one dinner for one man and his two children.

  But she was.

  They came at her in a rush fifteen minutes later, the children running up the walkway and jumping into her arms. Dani gave her a sweet-little-girl kiss on the cheek and Luke squeezed her so tight. She didn’t want to let him go.

  “We’re here!” Dani announced, sheer joy on her face.

  “I know. I’m glad.”

  “Is your ceiling still dripping?” Dani asked, ready to go find it.

  “No. Your daddy fixed it.”

  “Daddy fixes everything,” Dani said, completely confident that he could.

  Samantha stood up and watched him moving more slowly down the walkway, admiring the smile on his lips. “Yes, it seems he does.”

  “Does what?” Joe said, giving her a quick kiss on the mouth while the children went rushing through her house.

  “She said you fix things, and I was agreeing that you seem to make everything all better.”

  His grin broadened. “Happy to see us, Doc?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s been a long five days.”

  She nodded. “Want to know how many hours? I’ve been keeping track.”

  He laughed and pulled her into his arms. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  “Daddy, there’s a tree house in the backyard!” Luke said, spinning to a halt five feet away and staring up at them in each other’s arms. “Whatcha doin’?”

  “Telling Samantha hello,” Joe said, kissing her on the tip of her nose. “You said hello, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Joe’s hands fell to his side and Samantha stepped back. “Luke gave me a hug and Dani gave me a kiss.”

  Luke frowned at that. Dani came charging into the room and announced, “There’s a tree house in the backyard!”

  “We know,” Luke said, impatient as a big brother tended to be with a little sister.

  “Can we play in it?”

  “I think that’s up to your father,” Samantha said. “I don’t know how long it’s been there or if it’s safe.”

  “We have time before dinner?” Joe asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. Let’s check it out,” Joe said, taking Luke and Dani with him into the backyard.

  They had a great time. They ate and laughed and played, and they were so sweet. It felt so right, being with them. She found herself wishing her father was still alive, because he’d always understood magic. She wanted to ask him how he’d known when he met her mother that it was real, that it was right. What little spark of magic he’d felt that let him have no more doubts and not be so afraid. Or was she the only one who was so afraid, so cautious, so worried about taking the wrong step and it leading to disaster?

  There must be some way people just know, a way to sidestep all these games and insecurities and worries.


  She tested her heart, asked herself what was inside it. Pure joy at the moment. They were coming to fill up her house and to fill up her life, at least for this night.

  She considered the night a complete success, and she was already asking herself when, if they were going to take this slowly, she could let herself see them again and when she could see Joe alone. She wanted to have Joe to herself, too.

  It wasn’t until they’d all climbed into the car and Luke ran back for the jacket he’d forgotten that she started to worry.

  “You really like my daddy?” he said quite seriously.

  “I like you all,” Samantha said.

  “But you were kissin’ him an’ stuff.”

  “Yes. Do you not want me to do that, Luke?”

  “I dunno. I just…” He kicked at a stone on the sidewalk in front of her house. “Are you gonna get tired of us and go away, too?”

  “Oh, Luke.”

  “’Cause my mommy went away. She got tired of us and went away.”

  “Luke, I don’t know why she went away. I think that’s something you should talk about with your father, and as for me and your father, and you and your sister, I don’t know what’s going to happen. We barely know each other.”

  “I know you,” he insisted.

  “Yes. That’s not what I meant. We haven’t spent that much time together. We’re just friends, and—”

  “Are you gonna move in with us and live with us now?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s… Why would you think that?”

  “My friend Jimmy from down the street? He’s got a new daddy. His daddy left, and now he has a new one. I didn’t know you could just get another one, and so I wondered. That’s all.”

  “Sometimes when parents separate, one of them or both of them will find someone else and get married, and kids get a new mother or a new father. Sometimes both.”

  “If you do, you’d better not leave us,” he said. “’Cause my sister was really upset. She just cried and cried and cried, and I didn’t think we’d ever get her to stop.”

  “Just your sister?” Samantha asked gently.

  “Well, Daddy wasn’t really happy, either. He yelled sometimes, and I think sometimes he cried, too, but you shouldn’t tell anybody that. I don’t think dads are supposed to do that, but he was really sad, and he said everybody gets sad sometimes and sometimes they cry.”