“I’m just a stranger passing through town,” she reminded him lightly. “You don’t have to clear your schedule with me.”
He got plates from the cupboard, retrieved cutlery from the drawer. “I know. But I didn’t even think about the fact that you were stranded here without a vehicle—”
“There wasn’t anywhere I needed to go,” she interjected gently.
He started to unpack the bag of food, still not looking at her. “I got spring rolls, chicken fried rice, orange beef—”
Julie deliberately stepped in front of him, so that he had no choice but to look at her. And when he did, the stark pain evident in his blue-green eyes hit her like a fist.
She took the foil container from his hands and set it aside. “Why don’t you leave the food for a minute and tell me what happened?”
“It’s not a story with a happy ending,” he warned her.
“I kind of figured that.”
He blew out a breath. “It was Mrs. Boychuk who called about her seven-year-old boxer.” One side of his mouth kicked up in a half smile. “Sweet’ums.
“Even as a pup, the dog was built like a tank and with the proverbial face that only a mother could love, but to Mrs. Boychuk, he was Sweet’ums. Six months ago, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma—bone cancer.”
“What kind of treatment do you offer for that?”
“We don’t have the ability to offer any treatment locally,” he admitted. “So Mrs. Boychuk took him to a clinic in Syracuse for radiotherapy. The treatment seemed to be successful, at least initially, but a couple of months ago we found that the cancer had spread to his lungs.”
And she could tell by the flat tone of his voice that there was nothing to be done at that point.
“She lost her husband to cancer three years ago—she didn’t want to lose her companion, too. She refused to believe the diagnosis. But over the past couple of days, Sweet’ums really began to struggle with his breathing and yesterday he stopped showing any interest in food.”
“She called you to put him down,” Julie realized, her eyes filling with tears.
He nodded.
She swallowed around the lump in her throat. She wanted to say or do something to help ease his pain, but she felt completely helpless. He obviously cared about his animal patients and losing this one was tearing him up inside.
And although Julie didn’t know Mrs. Boychuk or Sweet’ums, she felt as if she knew Lukas, and it hurt her to see him hurting. In the end, she went with her instincts, lifting her arms to wrap around his neck and holding him tight.
For a brief second, he went completely and utterly still, and she wondered if she’d overstepped the boundaries of their fledgling friendship. Then his arms came around her, too, and he hugged her tight. She felt a shudder run through him, an almost-physical release of the grief he was holding inside, and then the tension seemed to seep from his muscles.
After a long moment, he finally eased away.
“Are you okay now?” she asked gently.
“No,” he admitted. “But I’m doing much better. Thanks.”
And he impulsively touched his lips to hers.
She felt the jolt of the fleeting contact all the way down to her toes. And when he took a quick step back, she knew that he’d felt it, too.
She cleared her throat, focused her gaze on the takeout containers on the counter. “Orange beef?”
He nodded. “Are you hungry?”
“Always,” she said, and forced a smile.
What she didn’t admit was that she was suddenly craving something other than Chinese food. Because that teasing brush of his lips had triggered a hunger for more of Lukas Garrett’s kisses.
Chapter Eight
Luke was at the clinic before eight o’clock Monday morning. Not surprisingly, Karen’s vehicle was already in the parking lot. He hung his coat on a hook in the staff room/kitchenette, then traded his boots for shoes before heading out to the front to retrieve the files for his morning appointments.
When he opened the door to reception, he heard Karen lift the top off the jar of doggy treats that she kept on her desk. She frowned when he came around the corner and there was no dancing puppy at his feet.
“Where’s Einstein?”
“He decided to stay at home today,” Luke told her.
“He decided?”
“Yeah.” He shook his head, still baffled by the animal’s unusual behavior. “He seems to have assigned himself as the baby’s protector and doesn’t like to be too far away from him.”
Her brows lifted. “Baby?”
“Sorry—I guess a lot of things happened on the weekend that you don’t know about.”
“I saw Sweet’ums’s file on top of the stack this morning,” she said, her voice quiet, her eyes filled with compassion.
He just nodded.
“But since that doesn’t explain Einstein staying home with a baby, maybe you should fill me in.”
He did—briefly summarizing the details of discovering Julie’s car in the ditch and inviting the laboring mother into his house to help deliver her baby.
“That was Friday?” Karen asked.
He nodded.
“And this woman and her baby are still at your place?”
“Her car’s at Bruce’s shop,” he pointed out. “What was I supposed to do—call a cab to take them to a bed-and-breakfast?”
“It sounds like you did more than enough,” she told him. “I would have thought she might have called her baby’s father to come and pick them up.”
“I don’t think he’s in the picture,” Lukas admitted.
Karen’s brows rose again. “You don’t think?”
“She hasn’t volunteered very much information about her personal life.”
“And that isn’t waving an enormous red flag in your mind?”
Of course it was. Julie’s reluctance to talk about Caden’s father did give him cause for concern. But he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. He wanted to believe that she had legitimate reasons for the secrecy. And he hadn’t demanded answers or explanations because he wanted her to trust him enough to tell him those reasons of her own volition.
If he thought about it, he might wonder why he wanted her to open up to him, why it mattered so much to him. He’d only known her for three days. He barely knew her at all. But there was something about her that made him want to know her a whole lot better.
Part of that was the immediate and undeniable physical attraction he felt toward her. An attraction that hadn’t dimmed when he’d realized she was pregnant nor even through the experience of childbirth. But he’d managed to downplay it—to convince himself that it didn’t need to be a factor.
Of course, that was before he’d kissed her. Not that it had been much of a kiss. In fact, he would have argued that the brief contact barely met the most conservative definition of a kiss, except that he’d felt the impact of it in every cell of his body.
And if that wasn’t reason enough to be wary, Karen had pointed out another: there was too much about Julie that he didn’t know. He wasn’t sure what to think about the fact that she’d never told her parents about her pregnancy. If she’d hidden the existence of her baby from them, had she also hidden it from her baby’s father? This disconcerting possibility inevitably made him think about Jack, who hadn’t learned about his daughter’s existence until Ava was twelve years old.
And the effortless way that Caden had completely taken hold of Luke’s heart made him remember that Matt had raised another man’s son as his own for three years—until the child’s biological father came back into the picture. Which wasn’t something he should be worrying about after only three days with Julie and her son, except that after only three days, he already knew that he would miss them when they were gone.
He pushed those concerns aside when Megan Richmond came through the front door with her eighteen-month-old chocolate Lab. He loved his job and the familiar routines of his work. Not that the work
was ever routine, but there were certain patterns and rhythms to his days at the clinic. The needs of the pets and the concerns of their owners were always his primary focus, but several times throughout the day on Monday, he found his attention drifting. He called home three times, just to see if Julie and Caden were doing okay, to ensure that Einstein wasn’t being a bother, to inquire if there was anything they needed.
And when the last patient was gone from the clinic at the end of the day, he was the first one to head out, even before Drew—the animal tech—had finished wiping down the exam rooms.
He could smell the rich, savory scents of basil and garlic as soon as he walked through the door. Einstein came running when he tossed his keys on the counter, reassuring Lukas that the pup still did know who was his master, even if he’d chosen a mistress for today.
Then Luke looked up and saw Julie standing at the stove, and he felt an instinctive hum through his veins.
He was a decent cook. He didn’t live on fast food the way some of his single friends did, but he did eat a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches in the winter and hamburgers in the summer—usually because, by the time he got home at the end of the day, he didn’t have the energy or the imagination to make anything else. It was a pleasant change to walk in the door and have a meal waiting. And an even more pleasant change to find a beautiful woman in his kitchen.
“I didn’t know what your after-work routine was and I didn’t want to overcook the pasta, so I haven’t put it in yet,” she said.
“My after-work routine is to look in the fridge, then look in the freezer, then open a bottle of beer while I try to figure out what I want to eat.”
She went to the fridge and retrieved a bottle of beer, twisted off the cap and handed it to him. “Tonight you’re having chicken parmigiana and spaghetti with green salad and garlic bread. It will be on the table in fifteen minutes.”
He grinned. “You just fulfilled a fantasy I never even knew I harbored.”
“Do I want to know?” she asked cautiously.
“A sexy woman offering me a home-cooked meal at the end of a long day.” He tipped the bottle to his lips, drank deeply.
She laughed at that as she used her thumb and finger to measure the pasta, then dropped it into the pot of boiling water. “If you think I’m sexy, you need to seriously reevaluate your standards.”
As he swallowed another mouthful of beer, he realized that she wasn’t being coy or fishing for compliments—she honestly believed what she was saying. “You really don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
“How incredibly attractive you are.”
“I had a baby three days ago,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, I think I remember hearing something about that,” he said dryly, and turned his attention to the infant securely strapped in the carrier on top of the table, where Julie could keep an eye on him—and vice versa.
“How was the little guy today?” he asked, tweaking Caden’s toes through the velour sleeper. The baby kicked his legs instinctively in response to the touch, making Luke smile.
“Hungry. Sleepy. The usual.” She lifted the lid of another pot, stirred the sauce that was simmering.
“Did you manage to get any rest?”
“A little.” She stirred the pasta. “What did your day entail?”
“Along with the usual checkups and vaccinations, there was a calico with a mild respiratory infection, a diabetic Doberman, a Saint Bernard with a urinary tract obstruction and a ten-month old kitten whose owner was convinced she had a tumor in her belly.”
She held her breath. “Not a tumor?”
“Not a tumor,” he confirmed. “Pregnant.”
Her lips curved. “So a better day than yesterday?”
“A much better day,” he agreed.
“I’m glad.”
“I also talked to Bruce Conacher today. He didn’t have a number for you, so he called me.”
“Is my car fixed?” she asked hopefully.
Luke shook his head. “Unfortunately, it’s going to be out of commission for at least a few more days.”
“Why?”
“You snapped the right front drive axle and Bruce has to wait on delivery from an out-of-town supplier. He was apologetic, but he doesn’t do a lot of work on imports so he didn’t have the part in stock or easy access to one.”
She sighed. “Are you willing to put up with us for a few more days?”
“I told you, you can stay as long as you want,” he reminded her. “And the few more days will only make your car drivable. If you want the damaged bumper and fender repaired, it will be a little bit longer than that.”
“I guess, since my car’s already at his shop, Bruce might as well fix everything that needs to be fixed.”
“I’ll let him know,” Luke said. “And I promise—you’ll be pleased with the results. He does good work.”
She nodded. “Okay. Now wash up so we can eat.”
He fed the animals first, then scrubbed his hands at the sink while she served up the meal. His brows drew together as he looked at the plate she set in front of him.
“You don’t like Italian food?”
“What?”
“You’re frowning,” she noted.
“I love Italian food,” he assured her. “But when you asked if pasta was okay for dinner, I thought you’d cook some spaghetti and top it with canned sauce.”
“This is canned sauce,” she admitted. “You didn’t have all the ingredients to make fresh, but I doctored it up a little bit.”
“It doesn’t look anything like what comes out of the can.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was intended as one,” he assured her. “I really didn’t expect anything like this. You didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”
“It wasn’t any trouble. I like to cook.”
“Well, that’s convenient because I like to eat.”
“Then dig in.”
So he did, and his taste buds nearly wept with joy. “This is really good.”
“You didn’t believe me when I said I could cook, did you?”
Truthfully, the luxury car, the diamonds at her ears and designer labels on her clothes had made him suspect that she was more accustomed to having someone cook for her than vice versa. “I didn’t think you could cook like this,” he admitted.
She smiled, choosing to be pleased by his obvious enjoyment of the meal rather than insulted by his skepticism. “Carla, my parents’ housekeeper, was originally from Tuscany—although she would be the first to renounce this meal as American Italian and not real Italian.”
The revelation about the housekeeper confirmed his suspicion about her privileged upbringing. And yet, she seemed perfectly at ease in his humble home, more than capable of looking after herself—and perfectly content to do so. “What is real Italian?”
“Simple recipes with quality seasonal ingredients,” she said, then shrugged. “But I’ve always been partial to a good red sauce.”
“This is definitely that,” he agreed. After a few more bites, he couldn’t resist asking, “What else did Carla teach you to make?”
“You’ll have to wait until dinner tomorrow to find out.”
* * *
The next night Julie made stuffed pork chops with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans. The night after that was broccoli and beef stir-fry with wild rice. On Thursday, it was chicken in a cream sauce with new potatoes and baby carrots.
“Did you want any more chicken?” she asked, when he set his knife and fork down on his empty plate.
“No, thanks.” He rubbed a hand over his flat belly. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“You have to have room for dessert,” she told him. “Caden napped a little bit longer than usual today, so I had time to make apple crisp.”
“One of my favorites,” he told her.
“And you’ve got French vanilla ice cream in the freezer to go with it.”
“We never had dessert on a weeknight.”
“Never?”
“Well, maybe a slice of birthday cake, if it happened to be someone’s birthday.”
“When is your birthday?”
“June twenty-second.”
“I guess I won’t be making a birthday cake anytime soon,” she noted.
“When’s yours?”
“March fifth.”
“How old are you going to be?”
“That was a smooth segue,” she told him. “If not exactly subtle.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been trying to guesstimate, but I can’t figure out if you’re older than you look or younger than you seem.”
“I’ll be twenty-four on my next birthday,” she admitted.
Which meant that she was only twenty-three now, eleven years younger than him. But so what? There were no age taboos with respect to friendship. And he really felt as if he and Julie were becoming friends. Or they would be if he could continue to ignore the way his pulse pounded and his blood hummed whenever he was near her.
“Apple crisp?” she prompted.
“Why not?”
She cut a generous square of the still-warm dessert and topped it with a scoop of ice cream.
“I am feeling seriously spoiled,” he confessed, lifting his spoon toward his mouth. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as well as I’ve eaten this past week.”
“If you want to continue eating, you’re going to have to make a trip to the grocery store,” she said. “Since I’m going to be here for a while, I could make a list of some things that will help with the menu planning.”
“Why don’t you make that list and we can go out tonight?”
She seemed startled by the suggestion. “Tonight?”
“Sure. I figured, since you haven’t been out of the house since you got here, you might enjoy a quick outing.”
Her face lit up as if he’d given her a precious gift. “I would love to go out.”
* * *
Julie had been so excited about the opportunity to get out of the house for a little while that she hadn’t thought about the repercussions of going out with Lukas. What was intended to be a quick trip to the store ended up being an hour-long parade up and down the aisles as the local vet seemed to be acquainted with everyone in town—and everyone was curious about the unknown woman and baby who were in his company.
A Very Special Delivery Page 10