by Shirley Jump
“But not written in stone.” He took a step closer. “Come on, Peyton, live a little. Let the munchkin live a little. She’s been eyeing that splash pad like it’s Santa’s summer home.”
He could see the hesitation in her eyes, the war between what she was tempted to do and what she had planned to do. Madelyne stood at Peyton’s side, her body quivering a little with anticipation. Then a shadow dropped over Peyton’s features and she shook her head. “We’ve already gotten off track enough for one day. It’s time for lunch.”
Madelyne sent one last longing glance over her shoulder, then ducked into the faux tiki hut restaurant with Peyton. Luke followed behind, quelling the urge to argue with Peyton. She was, after all, the kid’s de facto mother and had way more experience at this parenting thing than he did. Maybe she was right, and maybe a schedule mattered more than a few minutes splashing in the sun.
And getting off track. In more ways than one.
* * *
Peyton tucked the blankets around Maddy, then smoothed the hair on her forehead. The day was winding to a close, after the morning at the zoo with Luke, a trip to a playground after they’d left the zoo, then a spaghetti dinner at the diner. Before Luke left, Peyton had given him the DNA test swab she’d picked up at the drugstore after leaving his house. She’d taken a swab from Maddy, too, telling her niece it was a game of sorts. Then she’d sealed up the already stamped envelope and slipped it into a mailbox. Even though Maddy looked every bit Luke’s daughter, the best course was the prudent one, and that meant sending in the test and covering all the bases.
Luke had gone to work after they’d finished at the zoo, and Peyton told herself she was glad. Still, a hole had lingered after he was gone, as if the circle was incomplete without him. Crazy thoughts. Peyton was just fine on her own with Maddy, just fine. “Did you have fun today, monkey?”
Maddy nodded, her eyes half closing. “I liked the zebras. And the elephants. And the hippos. They were really big.”
“They were.” Peyton smiled. “How about we go to the children’s museum tomorrow?”
“Is Luke gonna go? He’s really fun, Auntie P. He likes to be an elephant, like me. And he makes funny faces when he eats his chicken nuggets.”
And he makes my heart sing when he kisses me. Peyton brushed off that thought. Kissing Luke was not on her agenda, not now, not ever. He was a mistake she didn’t need to make in order to learn her lesson. Hadn’t Susannah told Peyton over and over again that Luke was no good, that he was a man who wanted a conquest, not a relationship?
Yeah, being around Luke was a bad idea, all around. Somehow she’d find a way to let him spend time with Maddy—and keep Peyton far from stupid decisions. Like kissing him again.
“I thought maybe just you and me should go. Girl time. Then we can go back to the playground, and you can play on the jungle gym while I get a little work done.” Peyton gave her a grin. “How’s that sound?”
“Okay.” But Maddy’s voice was heavy, and her gaze shifted away.
“You really like Luke?”
“Uh-huh. He’s silly.” Maddy clutched her teddy bear, a worn cream-colored stuffed animal she’d dubbed Bo a long time ago. At the end of the day, after she was done with all the Barbies and baby dolls, it was Bo she reached for, Bo she tucked under her arm and nestled beneath her chin.
The silly bear had been with Maddy for as long as Peyton could remember. It was the first thing Peyton had bought when she found out her sister was pregnant, the first gift she brought to the hospital when she visited a newborn Maddy and the first thing she had packed when they’d made the trip to Stone Gap. Maddy plucked at the fur on top of Bo’s head, giving him a short, spiky Mohawk, something she did when she was nervous or scared.
“Do you like Luke, Auntie P?” Maddy asked.
“Of course I do. I’ve known him a long time.”
“Is he your friend? Cuz he’s my friend.”
“Yes, I’d call him a friend.” Nothing more than that, of course. Anything more would be silly.
Except friends didn’t kiss the way they had kissed. And friends didn’t have the kind of late-night thoughts about each other that she had been having about Luke. “Definitely friend,” Peyton clarified, mostly for herself.
“Then how come he can’t go wif us?”
How come he couldn’t go? The question lingered in Peyton’s mind as she finished tucking Maddy in and settling her down for the night. Peyton sat beside her niece, as she had every night for the past month, with Maddy’s hand clasping her aunt’s, seeking security, comfort. A few minutes later, Maddy nodded off, curled in a tight ball with Bo pressed to her chest.
There was a soft knock at the door. Peyton hurried to answer it, before the sound woke Maddy. Peyton peeked through the peephole, one hand on the doorknob. She’d expected to see housekeeping or a traveler at the wrong door.
What she saw instead was a pair of tempting blue eyes and a lopsided smile that caused a hitch in her breath. She drew in a fortifying breath, then pulled open the door, ridiculously regretful that she’d changed into sweats and washed off her makeup. “Luke, what are you doing here?” Peyton whispered.
“I wanted to see you and Maddy.”
“It’s eight-thirty. She’s already asleep.”
“That early?”
“She’s four, Luke, not fourteen.” She chuckled. “I bet even you went to bed that early when you were little. Unless there were parties in your nursery, of course.”
He took a step closer and cocked his head. “Why do you insist on thinking the worst of me?”
“I don’t think the worst of you.” Okay, so maybe she had. But only because he had a past that spelled out what the future could hold. What was that old adage? History is the best predictor of the future? He’d broken countless hearts and been as fickle as a summer wind.
Amusement lit his blue eyes. “Then what do you think of me?”
She gripped the door handle tighter. She didn’t want to answer that question, because the only answer she had was it’s complicated, as if standing here in the doorway with Luke Barlow was some kind of Facebook status. “Listen, Maddy’s sleeping and I was about to turn in...”
“At eight-thirty? Even you stay up later than that, don’t you?” His grin softened the tease in his words. “Come on, let’s sit and talk for a little while. We can sit out on the balcony and look for Orion.”
Just like that, Peyton was fourteen again and sitting on the bank of the lake with a seventeen-year-old Luke late at night. Susannah had drunk too much and fallen asleep on a blanket beside them. Peyton had heard her mother calling for her, but she’d ignored her curfew, because all she’d wanted—all she’d ever wanted since the day she’d met him—was five more minutes with Luke. He’d sat beside her and pointed out the stars, weaving hypnotic tales of ancient Greek gods and goddesses with each constellation he’d named. Of all her summer memories, that one stayed high and bright in her mind, like the North Star.
“I have a couple of mini wine bottles in the room fridge,” she found herself saying, words overriding common sense and her weak resolve. “If you want something to drink.”
“Are they pink and fruity?”
She laughed. “Definitely.”
“That’s my favorite kind.” He stepped through the open door and into her room.
Peyton stepped aside, turning to lead Luke to the balcony, but he had stopped, just a few feet inside the small space. His gaze shifted to the bed, to Maddy still tucked against her bear, her hair splayed in a wild curly halo around her head. She’d kicked her feet free of the blanket, and her sparkly pink toenails caught the soft light from the bedside lamp. “She looks like...an angel.”
Peyton heard the soft wonder in Luke’s voice, the same wonder that had filled her a million times in the days since Maddy had been born. “She is an angel, though you might need to remind me of that when she’s seventeen and sneaking out at night to see some boy.”
“She really is mine, isn’t she?”
It was a rhetorical question, the kind that people asked when they couldn’t believe their good fortune. The truth was settling into Luke, Peyton could see, filling in the cracks of shock and doubt. “I mean, I know we’re waiting on the test results and everything, but I feel it, here.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “She’s mine. And that’s pretty amazing.”
Peyton stood beside him in the dim light of the hotel room, both of them caught in the spell of one little girl. Maybe Peyton was biased, but she’d always thought Maddy had a way about her, something special, that drew people in and made them fall in love with her winsome smile and big, curious blue eyes.
“I still remember the day she was born. It was like...magic. Susannah, me, the doctor and nurse were in this bland, gray hospital room, had been for hours, while Susannah was in labor. Then, all of a sudden, there was another human being in the room, a perfect, beautiful, crying human, and just like that—” She snapped her fingers. “I fell in love.”
“I wish I’d been there,” he said softly.
“You should have been.” The words held no harsh edges, no recrimination. The past was in the past, Peyton realized, and she couldn’t change or undo any of it. Susannah should have told him, and he should have come. He had the right, as Maddy’s father, to be there for every first, from the first breath to the first step.
Though, if Luke had been present at Maddy’s birth, maybe he would have insisted on moving Susannah and Maddy back to Stone Gap, and Peyton would never have had the years she’d had with her niece.
There was only today. Luke might not be there tomorrow or two weeks down the road, but he was now, wanting to know more about Maddy, wanting to be more involved, and that was a good thing. “Come on, let’s go outside, so we don’t wake her up.”
Peyton grabbed the two bottles of wine and a couple of clean glasses from the minibar, and she and Luke settled into the cheap white plastic chairs that filled the small space on the hotel room’s balcony. It was a tiny square, no more than two feet by three feet, but it had a view of the woods and, far in the distance, the lake where she had spent many a summer day. Ironic, Peyton thought, that more than ten years later, she and Luke were again sitting under a night sky with the lake in the distance.
The night was quiet, the distant sounds of traffic a low whisper. Night birds called out to each other from time to time, and a soft breeze rippled over the balcony, bringing with it the sweet scents of clematis and osmanthus.
“Cheers,” Peyton said, tapping her glass against Luke’s.
“To old friends,” he clinked her glass, saying, “and new beginnings.”
Old friends. Was that what they were? Was that what she wanted them to be? After that kiss today, she wasn’t so sure. It had been the kind of kiss that lingered, hung on the edge of her every thought. It was still there now, unspoken but part of the conversation, of the fabric woven between her and Luke. It could never be erased, never be undone, and at some point, she was going to have to think about what it had meant and how it had shifted everything between them.
Luke propped his feet on the balcony rail and raised his gaze to the twinkling sky. “Do you remember how to find Orion?”
With that one question, she was fourteen again, sitting in the dark shadows along the lake while the water lapped against the shore. A younger, more wiry Luke sat beside her, sharing the small space on her towel. In the dark, she hadn’t been the nerdy kid sister with glasses and a book under her arm. In the dark, she could be anyone, and for those couple of hours, she’d pretended she was Luke’s girlfriend. He’d leaned back on his elbows and smiled at her, and asked her if she knew how to find Orion. She could have been an astronomy major and she still would have said no, just to have him reach past her into the sky and tell her the story of the eternal hunter.
“Show me again,” she said now.
He leaned over as he had years ago, his shoulder close enough to brush hers. In the dark, the spicy notes of his cologne settled into the space between them, luring her closer, urging her to touch him, to press her face against his neck. Her muscles tensed, and she curled her palm around the hard plastic arm of the chair instead of caving to the desire rushing through her veins.
Luke pointed up at the sky. “Look to the west. See those three stars close together?”
She breathed. In, out, catching that spicy scent again, pretending to be looking at the stars and not the five o’clock shadow that roughened his jaw. “Yes.”
“Those form Orion’s belt. There, those two to the north are his shoulders and the two to the south,” Luke lowered his hand, continuing, “are his feet.”
She remembered all of this from that night by the lake, but she didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to undo the threads that bound the past to this moment. “And who was Orion? I’ve forgotten.”
“The legend says he was the son of the great and mighty god Poseidon. He was able to walk on water, and he was the greatest hunter of the day. But he fell in love with one of the seven sisters in the Pleiades and Zeus, angry at Orion for falling in love, plucked him from the earth and placed him in the sky, where he is perpetually hunting for the love that he lost.”
She smiled up at the constellation, a smattering of stars wrapped in mythical legends that had been passed down for centuries. “How do you know so much about one particular constellation?”
“I never told you this story?”
She shook her head.
Luke leaned back in the chair, and the little extra distance sent a shiver of disappointment through Peyton. “My father was in the army when he first married my mom. They were newlyweds when he was stationed overseas, and she was pregnant with Mac, so she stayed stateside. They were miserable without each other, and because they were on opposite sides of the world, they had a hard time making phone calls work. So they decided that they would each go out at night and look for Orion, knowing that the other one would be looking at that same constellation a few hours later. My father said he chose Orion because the woman of his heart was just out of reach, like the Pleiades sister for Orion, and he could hardly wait for the day when he would cross the world and be with her again.”
“That is so romantic,” Peyton said. “I never knew your dad was like that.”
“He’s a big old softy, but don’t tell him I told you. He says he’d have to turn in his man card if anyone found out he cries at sad movies and stares up at the stars when he’s missing the woman he loves.”
Peyton looked up at the steady constellations caught in an eternal quest for true love. “How wonderful it must be to be loved like that,” she said softly. “Across oceans and time and stars.”
“It is kind of wonderful,” he said. “Makes my parents cool, in a way. They’re still as much in love today as they were the day they got married.” Luke’s voice was tinged with affection for his parents—and maybe a little envy.
The same emotions rippled in Peyton. She’d known Della and Bobby for years and always thought they were a wonderful example of what marriage—and family—could be. Luke had no idea how lucky he had been to grow up in a house like that, one with warmth and love, built on a solid, constant foundation. Her own had never been solid, with a mother who battled alcoholism and traded boyfriends as often as she traded her hair color. No weekly Sunday dinners, no Christmas traditions, just a sort of cobbled-together existence. “That kind of lifetime love is such a rare thing.”
“Very, very rare. Though Jack seems to have found that with Meri. They’re getting married in a few weeks.”
“Jack and Meri Prescott? They got back together?” She remembered the beauty queen who had dated Luke’s younger brother. They’d made a nice couple back in high school, though Peyton had been in a different group of friends and hadn’t really known either of them very well.
“Yup. And now they’re always mooning over each other, just like my parents.” Luke grinned.
“You almost sound envious.”
“Me?” He scoffed. “Nah.”
“You don’t want to find someone to love like that? Someone who would love you back the way Orion loved that woman?”
“There’s a reason loves like those are immortalized in the stars, Peyton. They’re few and far between.” He took a long sip of wine, then set his glass on the concrete floor. “What about you?”
She clasped her hands around her glass, the condensation cooling her palms. “What about me?”
“Are you holding out for a man who will hunt the skies for eternity, just for the chance to be with you?”
She let out a chuff. Years ago, she might have dreamed of that kind of thing, but then she’d grown up and realized fairy tales rarely came true. “Come on, that doesn’t happen. I mean, your dad and mom, and Jack and Meri, got lucky, but like you said, that’s the exception, not the rule. I’m focused on raising Maddy and as for the rest...” She shrugged.
“What happened to the girl who used to read love stories and dream about knights in shining armor?”
“I grew up,” Peyton said. “Got a job, a mortgage and, now, a child. I don’t have time for fantasies about white horses and sunsets.”
“Sounds like we’re the same that way.”
“Realists unite.” She raised her glass and tipped it in his direction.
“Is that what we are?” he asked. “United?”
United. Together. It was a strange thought, coming years after she had dreamed of that very thing. Truth was, they were united, but for something that had nothing to do with romance. “For now. With Madelyne.”
“A temporary alliance.”
She nodded, maybe a little too vigorously. “Alliance. That’s the perfect word.”
“None of that silly romantic notion stuff.” He waved at the sky, as if Orion himself would agree.
He’d echoed her thoughts. That kiss had been an aberration, a mistake they both regretted. No worries about Luke taking this any further, or wanting more from her than she was willing to give. “Exactly.”
Which meant she should stop looking up at the sky and picturing herself back beside him, on the banks of the lake, ever hopeful that this time, this moment, he would notice her and realize he had been dating the wrong sister. None of that silly romantic stuff meant focusing solely on Madelyne, and nothing else.