by Rachel Lee
“Luke, don’t,” she said. Until she spoke, she hadn’t realized she’d already decided. “I don’t believe her, not about you. But she made me think, made me wonder, about me.”
“Don’t let her do that,” he said, and it warmed her that he sounded as disturbed by the possibility of her taking his mother’s word about herself as he had been for himself.
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said honestly. “Jim was right. I don’t even know who you are now. But I do know what I don’t believe. You’re not what she says you are.”
He let out a long, audible sigh and sank down on the chair opposite her desk, as if his legs would no longer hold him. Elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“I’m sorry, Amelia,” he said.
She’d never heard a more heartfelt apology. But she had to ask, “For what, exactly?”
“Being an idiot?” he suggested ruefully.
“I see.”
She didn’t, but she wasn’t sure what he was referring to and thought it best to just let him get it out. And after a moment he lowered his hands, lifted his head and looked at her. He seemed to be trying to decide what to say, and finally she simply suggested the truth.
“The truth?” he said with a wry chuckle. “The truth is, when I got here, when I realized everybody in this place figured I’d spent the last eight years in jail, or worse, I…got mad. I figured to hell with them, if that’s what they want to think, let them. And I didn’t do anything to try and change their minds. In fact, I kind of…I…”
“Played to their expectations?”
“Exactly. I fed them. Said things that only made them believe it even more.” He grimaced. “I got defensive and decided to let them believe the worst, told myself I didn’t give a damn what anybody in this town thought of me.” His mouth tightened then. “That was before I got to know you.”
She considered that. “But you still didn’t tell me the truth. Whatever that is.”
“By the time I…wanted to, I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. Sometimes it seemed like you believed all the gossip, that you were just…dealing with me because of David. And…you never asked.”
“First I was too worried about David to think about it much. Then, when I realized how bad it was here for you, I was afraid you’d think I thought what everyone else did. That I asked just to find out if it was all true.”
“Or afraid you’d find out it was?”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “I can’t deny it’s not easy swimming upstream in this town.”
His mouth twitched. “Interesting you should choose that figure of speech.”
She blinked. “What?”
He let out a compressed breath. “You sure you’re up for a long story?”
“The Closed sign is still up.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said wryly. For a long moment he didn’t go on. Then, with an awkward laugh, he said, “I’ve never really told anybody all this. I’m not sure where to start.”
“I’ve already got a pretty good idea of what your life was like here.”
He grimaced. “Yeah. Well.” He sighed audibly. “First things first, I guess.” He looked up then, met her gaze and held it steadily as he admitted, “I did a lot of the stuff they accused me of. But there was a lot I was accused of I didn’t do. I did my share of smoking, drinking and reckless driving. I trashed more than Mrs. Clancy’s garden. And every once in a while I’d rip something off.”
Amelia wrapped her arms around herself, as if his words could hurt her, even though she already had guessed as much. The words came rapidly, as if he wanted to get them all out before he ran out of nerve. His confession was clearly painful, but it was equally clear he was going to be honest even if it hurt.
“Most people around here wouldn’t believe it, but I did have a line, Amelia. I never intentionally hurt anyone. Except maybe myself. But finally I realized that if I was ever going to find my way, I had to get out of here.”
“So when you left…you were eighteen?”
“Barely. I stuck around long enough to graduate high school, more for David’s dad than anything. He was a good guy.” A shadow flickered across his expression, but he kept going. “I left the next day. I wanted to be gone before she threw me out, like she kept saying she was going to do.”
Irritation stirred in Amelia, not at Luke, but at herself, irritation that for even a moment she’d let Jackie Hiller sway her. With an effort she stayed silent.
“I’d like to say I turned my life around the minute I walked out of her house,” Luke said, his tone rueful, “but it didn’t quite happen that way. I headed for L.A., figuring a big city was going to solve all my problems. I tried, but I kept…backsliding.” He gave her a sideways look, as if wondering how she was taking this all in. “I spent a couple of months locked up. It seemed like trouble was all I was good at.”
“All you had practice at,” she murmured, and he gave her a flicker of a smile. This wasn’t coming easily for him, and she knew he hadn’t lied when he’d said he’d never told anybody all of it before.
But he was telling her. She relaxed her defensive posture and sat up a little straighter. “What happened?” she asked softly, letting the warmth she was feeling creep into her voice.
“I got into some serious trouble. Not like here. I got tied in with some guys who were into…selective car procurement.”
“What?”
“You pick your car, they go out and get it for you.”
Understanding dawned. “Oh. And never mind that it happens to already belong to someone else?”
He nodded. “Anyway, when I realized what they were up to, I tried to back out. But I knew too much and they…convinced me to stay quiet.”
“Convinced?”
“They beat the crap out of me,” he said, gesturing at the scar she’d noticed the first time she’d seen him. “A local cop found me in an alley. I figured he’d run me, expected the worst, but…”
“But?” she prompted, trying not to think how scared he must have been, how much pain he must have suffered.
“Turned out he was one of the good guys,” Luke said softly. “Rob Porter wasn’t in it just to throw people in jail, he wanted to help. He really wanted to help.”
“And he helped you?”
Luke nodded. “I didn’t make it easy on him, either. He took me to the hospital, then took me home with him afterward. He set me up with a counselor, but I bailed after two sessions. He signed me up at the boys’ club, but I was so much older—in more ways than one—than most of the kids, I didn’t last there, either. I don’t know why he didn’t give up.”
“He obviously saw something in you that made it worth it,” she said.
“So he said later. Anyway, he set it up so I could go on a river-rafting campout with some other kids who were all in the system in various stages. I was technically an adult and too old, but he got them to bend the rules.” He grinned suddenly. “I have a feeling Rob does a lot of that.”
She smiled. So he knew all cops weren’t out to get him. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for thinking the Santiago Beach ones were, considering. “What happened?”
“I…fell in love.”
She blinked. “What?”
He sat up straight, gesturing in the general direction of outside, then went on earnestly. “I grew up here, where rivers don’t really exist unless there’s flooding. The trip was up to the Kings River. I’d never seen anything like it. It’s the whole idea of it. The power, the rush, the rapids.”
“And you…fell in love with the Kings River?”
“Not that one. Nothing wrong with it, but—except during spring runoff, that’s when you can get ten foot waves and really intense water action—it’s pretty mild. Kings, the Merced, the American, the Klamath, the Stanislaus, they’re all great rivers, but…it’s the Tuolumne that’s home.”
“Sounds…invigorating.”
&nbs
p; It sounded terrifying, but she wasn’t about to admit that. But he clearly had found something that he loved—she couldn’t miss the glow in his eyes—and if it had straightened him around… She leaned forward herself; his energy was hard to resist.
“It…I know it sounds corny, but it…called to me. There’s nothing like it. The river is…impartial. It doesn’t hate you. If it hurts you, it’s because you made a mistake. It’s…clean, I guess, fighting something that doesn’t have a motive. And if you’re good enough, you can win.”
She wondered if he realized how much he was betraying, how much of his battered soul he was revealing, in his words about the love he’d found. She couldn’t have spoken, even if she had the words.
“Gary Milhouse, the outfitter from up on the Tuolumne who ran the Kings River trip, was a friend of Rob’s,” Luke continued, “and he offered to teach me in exchange for me working on those trips for the city kids. So when the kids left for L.A., I went back with Gary to Whitewater West.”
“Teach you?”
Luke nodded. “We started with class-one water, the easy stuff. I wanted to jump ahead, of course, but he made me take every baby step along the way. Took me three years to get to where I handled class-five to his satisfaction.”
An adrenaline rush, Amelia thought suddenly, can be sparked in many ways. If you don’t live on the edge of trouble anymore, there’s always another way. Like a wild river. Another thought hit her; now she had the answer to the little gold paddle earring.
He paused before going on, and Amelia sensed he was getting to the crux of his tale. “And then?”
“I learned the Tuolumne, and that was it. I was hooked. I’ve been working for him ever since. He sent me to school to learn how to handle big rafts and people, and he paid for it. Then he gave me a job. He knew about my…history but said it didn’t matter. Said Rob vouched for me, and so did the river.”
What a…fanciful way of putting it, Amelia thought. But an unmistakable warmth filled her; while everyone here was convinced Luke was in jail somewhere, he’d in fact been working a steady job for years. And judging by his face, there was more. She waited in encouraging silence.
“And last year…I became a partner.”
Her eyes widened. “A partner? In the business?”
He shrugged. “I’d saved most of what I made. Not a lot of places to spend it up there, and besides, I just wanted to be on the river. Last year Gary wanted to expand, add more equipment, and he needed the cash. He owns his property free and clear and didn’t want to mortgage it, so I offered to just loan it to him. He took it, but insisted that made me a partner.”
He said it as if it were in name only, but Amelia sensed a deep feeling of pride beneath the offhand story. And rightfully so, she thought.
“So…now you help other kids like you were?”
“We do a weeklong trip every month during the summer, before the season ends in August, and one at spring break, for the more experienced kids. We teach them rafting, river safety, rescue skills, camping skills. Gary’s wife, Diane, handles nature tours and interpretation. The trips are always full.”
“You love it, don’t you?”
He nodded. “It’s the only job I can imagine having. I get to do what I love, and I get time to do some solo runs.”
“Why do I get the feeling,” she said wryly, “that your solo runs are a lot wilder than the ones you take other people out on?”
He grinned. “Because you’re very perceptive?”
She laughed. He laughed with her. The pressure she’d been feeling since they’d left his mother’s house slipped away.
“Your partner sounds like quite a guy.”
He gave her a lopsided smile. “Gary likes to use me as his proof that no kid is too far gone.”
Amelia felt a tightness in her chest that brought tears to her eyes. They’d all condemned him, certain he had nothing to offer the world, written him off as a lost cause. And how very, very wrong they all were. His mother most of all.
“He must be proud of you. And of himself, for seeing you weren’t a lost cause.”
“Yeah. I think he is.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Did you ever think of…coming back? Just to show them how wrong they were?”
“The prodigal son bit? Yeah, it occurred to me. But I had a feeling they wouldn’t believe me. And I’d have been right, obviously. In the end, I decided it wasn’t worth it.”
For a moment silence spun out. She might be feeling an easing of pressure, but Luke suddenly looked as if he might be feeling some of his own. He stood up, stepped away from her and walked around her office, as if looking at her posters, but she didn’t think he was really seeing them. She was about to ask him what was wrong when he stopped and turned back to face her, and she saw that he was working up to saying something. And from his expression, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
“Does it make a difference?” he asked finally, from safely near the door.
Not sure exactly what he meant, she lifted a brow. “A difference?”
“I’m not the nefarious, infamous scandal of Santiago Beach anymore. I’m not the guy who made the good girls whisper, the guy they used to use to get back at their parents. I’m just a guy who goes to work most days, gets a paycheck, pays taxes. Boring. Predictable.”
When it dawned on her what he was getting at, her eyes welled up again. Boring? She knew in that moment that Jackie had been utterly, totally wrong.
“Not to me,” she whispered.
He took a step toward her, then stopped. “You’re sure? You don’t think she was right?”
He didn’t have to explain what “she” he meant. She got to her feet, leaving the safety of her chair and desk, and closing the distance he’d put between them. She didn’t stop until she was barely a foot away from him. She had to swallow tightly before she could speak.
“I wasn’t drawn to you for your…bad boy reputation, Luke. I was drawn to you in spite of it.”
She heard him let out a long breath, as if he’d been holding it. He was quiet for a moment, and she wasn’t sure if she’d said the right thing or not. And then, huskily, he asked, “Just how drawn are you?”
She looked up at him, saw the flare of heat in his eyes. “Maybe drawn isn’t the right word,” she said, barely aware her own voice had taken on a husky note, as well.
“What is?”
“Attracted? Captivated? Fascinated?”
She thought she saw him shiver slightly. “Any of those will do. For now.”
Amelia knew they were hovering on the edge of a turning point, that whatever she said now would determine which way they would go. He hadn’t let her make this decision before, when she’d been rattled by their encounter with Snake and his troop and then Jim’s suspicions. But he stood silently, waiting, and she knew he was going to let her make it now.
If she decided yes, she would probably pay for it in very painful coin; there was no way he would stay in this town, and she was settled here, without the daring nature it took to leave. Not to mention that it seemed to her that anyone who liked suicidal runs through raging rapids wasn’t the type to settle down.
But if she said no…
She looked up at him, at the heat glowing in his eyes, at the tightness of his jaw as he waited. She realized with a little shock that while she still got a case of the shivers whenever she was close to him, it wasn’t for at all the same reasons anymore.
Luke McGuire was many things. He was reckless, still a bit wild, and dangerously good-looking. But he was also kind, caring and, to certain extent, noble.
What he wasn’t, was a bad boy.
And if she said no, she would wonder for the rest of her life.
“Those are perfectly good words,” she said, barely managing to get the words out, knowing what would happen next. “But I just thought of another that’s better.”
“What?” His eyes never left her face.
She lifted her hands and placed them
on his chest. “Hungry,” she whispered.
He definitely shivered then. He grabbed her upper arms in a grip that was just short of painful. He took a gulping breath, and his eyes closed. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said.
And she was. It didn’t matter that she’d only known him for a matter of days; it didn’t matter that her parents would have been scandalized; it didn’t matter what price she might pay later. Right now, in this moment, looking up at the man who had moved her as no other in her life ever had, the only person she had to answer to was herself.
And her answer was yes.
It must have shown in her face, because when he opened his eyes again and looked at her, the heat in his eyes flared higher, and a low, guttural sound escaped him.
“No woman,” he said hoarsely, “has ever looked at me like that before.”
She didn’t try for sophistication, or to sound blasé she knew she couldn’t carry it off. “It’s the way I feel,” she said simply.
“I can’t find words for how I feel,” he said, as if explaining. Then he pulled her into his arms and took her mouth, and she knew what he had meant.
She slipped her arms up around his neck, knowing she was going to need his strength; when he kissed her, hers seemed to vanish.
She trembled as he deepened the kiss, tasting, probing, urging. And she responded, kissing him back, wanting more of that hot, exotic male taste of him. And more, and more.
Her hands slid upward, into his hair. It slipped like warm, dark silk over her fingers, and she realized suddenly why one of the things all the uptight gossips said was that he needed a haircut; it was luxuriantly, dangerously sexy.
Luke moved his hands down her back, slowly, caressingly, to her hips. He pulled her against him, and she nearly gasped aloud at the feel of him, of ready male flesh pressing against her. Tentatively she moved, twisting, stroking him with her body, just to see what would happen.
He groaned, a low sound that she felt rumbling up in his chest before she heard it. He jerked slightly, pushing himself harder against her in response.
She wasn’t sure how she ended up backed against her desk, but she was there. And Luke was leaning over her, pressing her backward, his mouth never leaving her, his hands moving over her as if he couldn’t get enough, as if he wanted to touch her everywhere at once. The idea of being the one who made him feel that way thrilled her, and a delicious shudder rippled through her. He seemed to feel it, because he lifted his head, looking at her.