Teresa Hill

by Luke’s Wish

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  “And later, when we’re all ready, we’ll bring the kids into it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I know I’m going to miss you tomorrow. I wish I could see you, but—”

  “Luke needs you now.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll find something to say to him, Joe. You’ll find the right thing. I know you will,” she said. “I know you won’t let them down.”

  “I won’t let you down, either, Samantha. I want you to understand that. From this point on, we’re in this together. You and me and whatever comes along. We’ll handle it. No running away anymore. No pushing each other away. No giving up.”

  “No. Not anymore.”

  She stayed with him for a while longer, her head against his shoulder, just holding him, and it was wonderful to have that. Then she drove home and climbed into her empty bed and dreamed of him. Joe, who was everything good and strong and patient and kind and so very determined.

  And she found herself thinking about magic—about love and hope and sheer magic. She thought of her father and mother again and how happy they’d been together. She knew how they met—on a windy late-summer day at the beach. But she wondered now what it had felt like, how he’d known she was the one.

  Did he see it right away? Take one look at her and know? Was it something in his head? Or something in his heart that told him? And she tried to think of how it had been with Richard, though she thought she knew.

  She met him around the time her father became ill, when she was scared and shaken and worried about losing him. Richard had reminded her of her father, although it had all been on the surface. Not appearance, but that surface image people showed to the world. She’d believed that all those qualities she loved so much in her father she’d found in Richard, and it had been sheer illusion.

  Richard, in the end, had turned out to be shallow and selfish and impatient with the world, a bit childish, as well. He’d somehow gotten the idea that everything revolved around him, his happiness, his needs. And she saw now that when he was dissatisfied with his life, he assumed he could fix all that dissatisfaction by finding someone new. It was much easier than working through his own problems.

  And she just hadn’t seen it. She’d been in love with his daughters by then.

  But she was a different woman now. An older, smarter, more careful woman. She wasn’t going to make the same mistakes again. She’d found a much-different man, a simply wonderful man, and she was afraid she was already in love with him. Completely, helplessly in love. She’d probably lost her heart already to his children, too.

  But that didn’t mean she was headed for disaster. She had Joe now. Joe who she trusted, who had so much good inside of him.

  It would all be different this time. She wasn’t going to get her heart broken this time.

  Joe awoke groggily from the sweetest of dreams to find sunshine, bright enough to have him wincing, coming through the blinds of his bedroom window. Dani was sitting on his chest and grinning.

  “Daddy’s lazybones this morning!” she announced.

  Lazybones was the last one out of bed in the morning, and it was a title Joe seldom won.

  “Good morning,” he said, rolling her off him and genuinely happy to be alive this morning. When he had her tucked in beside him, tickling her mercilessly for a moment, he asked, “I’m the last one in bed?”

  “Yes,” she shrieked. “You!”

  “What about Luke?”

  “He’s hiding! In his closet!”

  “Really?” That didn’t sound good.

  “Yes, and he won’t come out. So I came to find you.”

  “Well, you found me.”

  “Are we gonna see the fairy today?”

  “No. Not today. And she has a name— Samantha.”

  “S’mantha,” Dani said, only mangling it a bit.

  “Close enough,” Joe said.

  “Do you think she likes us?”

  “Yes,” he said, wondering if Dani had gotten any ideas in her head that needed to be dealt with.

  “I like her, too,” she said.

  “Good.”

  “An’ I need juice.”

  “I think you have a cup of juice in the refrigerator waiting for you, one from last night. Why don’t you get it while I find Luke?”

  “Okay,” she said, turning to go.

  “Hey? What about me? What do I get this morning?”

  She grinned again and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I wuv you, Daddy.”

  “I love you, too, baby girl.”

  He would eat bullets for her. Leap tall buildings. Swim the widest ocean, and one grin like that one, one little peck on the cheek, made him think anything he had to do to take care of her and protect her, he would.

  He had her and Luke, and now he had Samantha. He could do anything.

  Joe went off to search closets until he found his son.

  Luke was hiding under a blanket in his closet, with a flashlight in one hand and the jelly jar in the other. He had eight teeth. He’d lost one, and he’d gotten one from his friend Jimmy last week, but that was all. Stories were going around at school about him hurting Jenny. Everybody knew he was after baby teeth, and they were getting harder to find. All the teachers knew, too, he thought. They were watching him all the time.

  He didn’t know if he’d get any more teeth, except his own and maybe those of his best friend, Alex, and that just wouldn’t be enough. It would never be enough.

  He was trying to decide what to do when he heard footsteps outside the door, and then the closet door opened.

  “Luke?” his father said.

  “Yes?”

  His father lifted the blanket and peered inside. “Can I come in?”

  “Okay,” Luke said, resigned to talking to his father.

  His father climbed into the closet and sat down with his back against the side wall and got under the blanket. Luke liked it when it was just him and his father under the blanket. He pretended they were off in a cave far, far away, just the two of them.

  Sometimes now, he couldn’t get enough of his father. He wanted to be with him all the time.

  He edged closer now, until their knees were touching, and then he leaned closer still, until he was resting against his father’s side, his father’s arm around him, his head on his father’s shoulder.

  “Better this morning?” his father asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Luke, I’m sorry about yesterday.”

  “About what?” Luke thought it was all his fault. He’d gotten everything all wrong. He just hadn’t understood. There was so much about grown-ups he didn’t understand.

  “About you being upset. I’m sorry.”

  Luke shrugged, then sighed, then pressed his face against his father’s shirt. He was afraid he was going to cry again.

  “I know you’re still all mixed-up about your mother leaving, and I’m sorry. I know you don’t understand why it happened and I know it feels lousy.”

  “Do you think she’s ever coming back?”

  “I don’t know,” his father said. “I honestly don’t know. If I did, I’d tell you. I promise. But I do know that we’re gonna be okay. We are doing okay, just the three of us, aren’t we?”

  “I guess,” Luke said. It was starting to feel normal—being just the three of them.

  “And whatever happens in the future, whether your mother comes back or it’s just the three of us or we have someone else—someone like Samantha—whatever happens, we’re going to be okay. I’ll be here, and I’ll always take care of you. You and I and Dani will always have each other, all right?”

  “I guess so. Is Samantha mad at me?”

  “No,” his father said. “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. She thinks you’re great. But I don’t want you to worry about her. I don’t want you to worry about anything at all. You let me do the worrying, okay? I want you to think about what you want to do today.
Anything at all. You and I and Dani, we’ll do it.”

  “Really?” Luke asked.

  “Anything?”

  “Ice cream?” he suggested.

  “Sure.”

  “The zoo?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “And we can go see the snakes?”

  “Sure.”

  “Dani won’t like it,” Luke reminded him.

  “I’ll carry her through the reptile house and she can cover her eyes.”

  “She’s such a baby,” Luke said. “Snakes are cool.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.” Luke felt a little better. He liked the snakes. And the monkeys. They made so much noise. He liked being with his father, and sometimes he even liked his sister, and really, it was okay with just the three of them.

  “All right,” his father said. “We’d better get out of here. The snakes are waiting.”

  Chapter Nine

  He phoned Samantha that afternoon while he was sitting on a bench at the park watching Dani swinging on the swing, and Luke making a mess of himself in the sandbox.

  “Hi,” he said, something in him easing when he heard her voice.

  “Hi. How’s Luke?”

  “Filthy and laughing and raising hell in the sandbox at Grant Park.”

  “Oh. Good. He’s not upset?”

  “Not at the moment. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I…I miss you.”

  Joe grinned. “I miss you, too, and I’ve been thinking about when I’m going to get to see you. I don’t get a lot of time without Luke and Dani.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t suppose I could interest you in a quick lunch on Monday? At this messy old house I’m working on, the one on Dogwood Lane?”

  “A mess, is it?” she asked.

  “Afraid so. It won’t be the most elegant lunch you’ve ever had.”

  “I’ve always found elegance vastly overrated.”

  “Sounds like a woman after my own heart.”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a little something like your heart,” she said.

  She was singing in the office on Monday. Singing! And according to her staff, she absolutely glowed. She wasn’t talking about it, but they guessed right away it was Joe, and all she could do was blush.

  “I’m taking an early lunch,” she told Dixie at twenty minutes to twelve. She’d rushed her last two appointments and felt a bit guilty about that, but everyone was fine. Everyone’s teeth were fine, and she never played hookie from the office. She figured she was entitled every now and then.

  “Have fun,” Dixie said, as if Samantha was heading off on a two-week Hawaiian vacation.

  “I’m just going home for lunch,” she claimed. It was technically true.

  “Nobody’s as happy as you about going home for lunch. Unless there’s a little romance involved!”

  “Dixie!” Samantha couldn’t do anything but stand there with her face flaming.

  “Go on,” Dixie urged. “Have fun.”

  She intended to. She rushed home, nearly drove right through a stop sign she was so excited and distracted. Joe’s truck was out front, along with three others. She hadn’t thought about that—having an audience. Too bad. Would she ever get the man to herself?

  She headed for the front door when one of the workmen stopped her and said, “You the lady dentist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Joe’s waiting for you around back.”

  “Thanks,” she said, heading for the backyard. He was nowhere to be found.

  “Up here, Doc,” he called.

  She followed the sound of his voice, behind her and…up? Then spotted his face amidst the branches, in the tree house.

  “Come on up,” he said.

  She tugged off her shoes and climbed the makeshift ladder, laughing as she went, emerging on a platform that was maybe five feet by seven perched on the branches of an oak tree. Joe took her into his arms the minute she stepped free of the ladder and kissed her soundly.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.”

  “What do you think?”

  She looked around, spying a picnic basket and a blanket by her feet. “Not bad.”

  “I didn’t want to share you with the rest of them. This was the most privacy I could find on short notice,” he said. “Tomorrow I thought I’d offer to buy them lunch if they all go somewhere else to eat it.”

  “We’re going to do this tomorrow?”

  “We’re going to do this every day we can manage it,” he said, still kissing her. “Have you ever made out in a tree house?”

  “No.” She laughed. “Have you?”

  “No. But I’m willing to try it.”

  “I think I’d try anything with you,” she admitted. Even risking her heart again. Even giving it away. She felt gloriously free and happy and hopeful for the first time in so long. She’d forgotten anything could feel this good, forgotten there were still things this good in the world.

  He lifted his head and kissed her once, then again, then just looked at her. With a slow sweet smile that made her dizzy, he said, “I was thinking you should marry me.”

  Samantha backed up six inches and blinked, all the breath leaving her body. “Joe—”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  He looked faintly apologetic but dead serious. Samantha made a faint pained sound.

  “And I know all the reasons why that’s crazy. I know ’em all. You don’t even have to say them. I still think that’s what you should do.”

  “Y-you said we’d take it slow. This is your idea of taking it slow?”

  “I said we’d take it slow in front of the kids. Not with us. You and I haven’t ever taken anything slow between us.”

  “It’s only been—”

  “I know,” he said. “I do. And I’m perfectly willing to carry on a clandestine romance for as long as you want—as long as we think it’s necessary for everybody. We can wait to tell people. For you to wear the ring on your finger. We can wait to actually take the vows. But between the two of us…I know what I want. I hope you do, too.”

  Samantha closed her eyes and felt the wetness of tears flooding her eyes.

  “Ever been proposed to in a tree house before?” he said softly.

  “No.” Richard was the only one who’d ever proposed to her, and he’d done it in typical Richard fashion—in the best restaurant in town with champagne and soft music and not nearly the heartfelt emotion she sensed in Joe’s proposal.

  “I guess I could have waited, could have worked on my presentation a bit…”

  “No.” She wasn’t grading him on his presentation skills but on the emotion behind the words and the utter sincerity. “You make me dizzy,” she complained.

  “But that’s a good thing, right?”

  “Dizzy,” she said breathlessly. “It’s like the whole world is spinning and I might fall down any minute—”

  “I won’t let you fall, Doc.”

  “No. I know you won’t. I think you’re a wonderful man,” she assured him.

  “But I did forget one, very important part.” He kissed her once again, softly. “I’m in love with you. In a way…I didn’t even know, Samantha. I’ve only said that twice in my life, and I didn’t even know what I was talking about the first time. I’m a different man now. A better one, I hope.”

  “I think you’re a wonderful man,” she reassured him.

  “But you think it’s too soon.”

  “I think you make my head spin, and that makes it hard to think. But I miss you every second I’m away from you. And I have all these visions in my head of you and me together. You and me and Dani and Luke and babies. I’d like to have babies.”

  He grinned. “We could have babies.”

  Samantha started to cry then at the outrageousness of the whole situation and at how much she felt at the moment and how much she was falling in love with him.

  “I’d never make Luke or Dani feel
slighted in any way because someone else gave birth to them.”

  “I know that, Doc. I never doubted it for a minute. But you missed out on a whole lot with them, a lot of good days, days when they were so little they’d let you sit and hold them forever, just looking at them and smelling them and knowing they’re absolute miracles. That two people and love can make something like that is an absolute miracle. I don’t want you to miss that.”

  “I’d like to be there from the very beginning, at least once,” she said.

  “You will. You’re going to make beautiful babies. We’ll make beautiful ones together.”

  “This is crazy,” she said.

  “I know. Marry me.”

  Still, she hesitated.

  “It’s just you and me, remember,” he said. “Just between us.”

  “I want to. I know I shouldn’t. Not yet. But I want to.”

  “Then we’ll do it,” he said. “Whenever you’re ready. You and the kids.”

  “I love you, Joe.”

  And then he kissed her, and she didn’t have to think anymore.

  Luke came home that day disgusted with the whole world. Danny Greene, a kid in third grade, had lost a tooth, and Luke hadn’t been able to talk Danny out of it. Not for quarters or cookies or any of his favorite rocks. Not for anything.

  He was afraid it was all over for him and his plan to collect a hundred teeth.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Dani asked, as she came in and bounced onto his bed.

  “Nothin’,” he said.

  “I got a loose tooth,” she announced, sticking her finger in her mouth and appearing to wiggle one a bit.

  But Luke wasn’t the least bit excited. His sister was only four, and four-year-olds didn’t lose teeth unless they knocked them out by accident. That was what happened to one of their neighbors. He fell out of a swing one day and when he got up, there was blood everywhere and one of his teeth was gone. They almost didn’t find it.

  Luke wasn’t desperate enough to try to get teeth out of a four-year-old, and his sister had been claiming for a whole year that she was losing a tooth any day now, and it never happened.