by Susan Fox
Luke made a sound but she didn’t look at him to see if he was sighing or stifling a laugh. Instead, she kept her challenging gaze fixed on her brother’s face.
Aaron turned to Luke. “Friends? Miranda doesn’t have friendships with men.”
“Aaron!” she said angrily.
“It’s true.” He said it without glancing at her. To Luke, he went on. “My sister’s trying to get an education while she’s holding down a job and raising a two-year-old. She’s got enough on her plate. Romance is the last thing she needs right now.”
“Aaron!” She grabbed his arm. “This is none of your business.”
Luke spoke, his voice calmer than either hers or Aaron’s. “I know you care about your sister, but she’s a grown woman. Seems to me, she’s quite capable of deciding what she needs.”
“Thank you for that.” The way he kept his cool and defended her was pretty sexy.
“You don’t know her,” her brother said. “Not if you say that.”
“Ooh!” She tightened her grip, wishing she had long nails to stab through Aaron’s shirt and into his flesh. “Luke’s my guest and my friend. Stop being rude to him and to me.”
He turned to her, grasping her hand and prying it from his arm. “When I started dating Eden, you were damned rude to her. You kept telling her how awful Destiny Island was, trying to get her to dump me and stay in Ottawa.”
Of course he’d bring that up. She screwed up her mouth. “Yeah, okay,” she admitted. “But I was a pathetic bitch.”
Luke snorted and a grin split Aaron’s face. “Your words, little sister. And yeah, you were.”
“Okay, fine. So take the high road and be better than that, big brother. And butt out of my life.”
His grin faded. “You know I’ll never do that. Just like you’ll never butt out of mine.”
It was true. The way they’d grown up, it had felt like the two of them against the world. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him, feeling his bigger, stronger arms close around her shoulders. “You know I didn’t mean that,” she said.
She gave him a squeeze and then stepped away. “But please, Aaron, dial it back. You’ve known Luke since we were teens. You know he’s a good guy.”
His brow knitted. After a moment, he said, “Yeah, he is.” He glanced at Luke and then back to her. “A good guy. A stable, responsible guy. So maybe I do believe you, that you’re just friends. Or maybe you really have grown up.” He walked over to the door and shrugged into his jacket. “I’ll leave you to your pizza.”
“Night, Aaron,” Luke said calmly, as if the whole embarrassing incident hadn’t happened.
When the door closed behind Aaron, she said, “Sorry about the interruption. Let’s go eat that pizza before it’s stone cold. And see if the kids have managed to destroy the kitchen yet.”
* * *
Luke had to smile at the rueful expression on Miranda’s face as she sat down across from him at the freshly wiped kitchen table, saying, “This isn’t how I’d wanted things to go.”
“Hey, we have hot pizza, red wine, and happily occupied kids.” Not to mention, he was sitting across from a beautiful woman, feeling an attraction he’d never expected to feel again in his life. It was his birthday and, no offense to his mom or Forbes—he certainly wasn’t happy that his poor mother had a cold—but this beat having the usual birthday dinner at their place. When Miranda had invited him, he’d thought twice about accepting, wondering if it was safer to stay away from her. He’d decided that wasn’t fair to her, or to him, and now he was glad.
In the twenty minutes since Aaron had left, he and Miranda had cleaned up their respective children as well as the kitchen, got the kids settled in front of the TV watching Ratatouille on DVD, and reheated the pizza. He figured that was twenty well-spent minutes, because now he was alone with Miranda and they could relax and have an adult conversation.
He had a bite of pizza and said, “Di’s tomato sauce really is amazing.”
“I know, right? She said that if I’m on the island this summer, she’ll teach me how to make it.” The enthusiasm faded from her face. “Not that there’s much point, I guess. She says the secret’s in using fresh-picked organic tomatoes, and I won’t be doing any tomato-picking when I move back to Vancouver.”
“You still plan to move back?”
“That’s the whole point of getting the early childhood education certificate. So I can get a decent job in Vancouver.”
“You might be able to get a job at the daycare or preschool here. Hey,” he added with a wink, “if you worked at Sunny Days you’d have the joy of looking after Brandon and Caleb.”
She gave him a smile, but said, “I’m a Vancouver girl.”
No, she wasn’t. Why couldn’t she see that she was turning into an island girl? He was tempted to launch into another sales pitch for Destiny, but figured she wouldn’t welcome having another male try to tell her what to do. So, instead of speaking, he had a sip of wine.
Miranda put second slices of pizza on both their plates. “Earlier, when the boys were messing with the fireplace screen, you mentioned their allowance. Do you really give them an allowance?”
“Uh-huh. And they have piggy banks.”
“What age did you start? I think Ariana’s too young to understand.”
He nodded. “I started when they turned four and I made it one of those ‘now that you’re a big boy’ things. They still don’t fully understand what money’s all about, but I figure they’ll grasp it more quickly when they’re dealing with actual quarters and loonies. My mom and dad started early with me, and so did Candace’s parents. We’re all about learning responsibility in this family.”
“Yeah, that’s important. I mean, being able to manage your own life.”
“Something Aaron doesn’t seem to give you credit for.”
She chuckled ruefully. “Yeah. He’s very big brothery. Don’t get me wrong, I love him to pieces and it means everything to know he’s there for me. But he can be a know-it-all, telling me how to run my life.” She sighed. “The toughest thing for me is that, though I do believe strongly in responsibility and independence, there’ve been times I’ve had to turn to Aaron for help. Like when I came back to the island last summer.”
“That’s what family’s about. I mean, yeah, try to be responsible, but know there’s someone to lean on when you need to.”
“But it’s always gone one way. Me leaning on him.”
She’d said things like that before, and they didn’t fit his view of her, so he said so. “You’ve never come across as a leaner to me. Not now, and not back when you attended Blue Moon High.”
“I worked hard on that tough-girl image,” she said with a rueful smile. “I’d have hated it if anyone saw me as vulnerable.” She rubbed her left forearm where, beneath her long-sleeved gray sweater, she had the dragon tattoo. As far as he’d seen, it was the only remaining outward symbol of her tough teen image. With a sigh, she went on. “But the truth was, I did depend on Aaron. That was rough on my pride.”
Why couldn’t she see that, within family, even among close friends, concepts like dependency and charity shouldn’t exist? “You did things for him, too, I bet.”
She gave a dismissive shrug. “Tiny, inconsequential stuff.”
“Such as?”
A memory reflected on her face, but she blinked as if closing the door on it. Her eyes narrowed and then mischief brightened their blue tones and twitched her lips. “Well . . .”
He leaned forward, loving that sparkle, and curious. “Go on.”
“There was the rat. Not a cute rat like Ratatouille, but a nasty dead rat. Aaron took this girl out—this was back in Vancouver—but he didn’t have money for a fancy date so he took her to Mickey D’s and she told her friends that he was a cheapskate. The bitch. So I snuck the rat into her school backpack. On Friday afternoon. She wasn’t exactly big on doing homework and it took her a couple days to find it.”
“Oh, man.�
� He snorted out a laugh.
She wrinkled her nose. “It was childish, but I was twelve. Aaron couldn’t stop laughing. He thanked me for having his back.” Miranda was so beautiful, her expression caught halfway between impishness and affection.
He wanted to reach over and hold her hand, but feared she wasn’t ready for that. Besides, if he was going to get any more involved, he needed to know that his instincts about her were right. As his mom and Annie had said, he could only be with Miranda if he could trust her. “You’ll always have his back, right?”
“For all the good it’ll do him.”
“Where on earth did you find a dead rat?”
Her jaw tightened. “We didn’t exactly live in a fancy neighborhood.”
Her eyes had turned steely gray, warning him against crossing the invisible line that, for whatever reason, was so important to her. So instead he made a point that she seemed to have missed entirely. “You keep suggesting that he does all the giving in your relationship. But you gave him a niece. Seems to me he adores Ariana.”
The blue resurfaced in her eyes and her grim jaw softened. “Yeah, he does. Totally.”
“He calls her Fairy-ana because she’s so crazy about fairies?”
“Yes. It’s his special nickname, though Eden’s picked it up as well.”
When the twins had been born and he’d realized he’d be raising them alone, he’d been glad they were both boys. He and Candace had known from the ultrasounds that they would be, which wasn’t a surprise because on his dad’s side it had been boys for generations. His wife had said that if after the first three children she’d yet to produce a girl, then they were going to adopt one. He’d agreed, because how could he deny her something like that? But now he was beginning to get it, the appeal of having a sweet-smelling child who built castles for fairies.
“There’s something else I’ve done,” Miranda said slowly. “For me, but kind of also for Aaron. I listened to his advice. I admitted that he was right about what I needed to do to be a better mom.”
Luke smiled ruefully. “When you have kids, pride has to take a back seat. You can’t do it alone. You have to admit you need help, for your kids’ sake.”
She sighed. “It took me way too long to realize that. I thought I was doing okay, looking after Ariana pretty well. But these past few months, since I accepted Aaron’s help and came to Destiny, even though I miss a lot of things about Vancouver, I have to admit that her life—our lives—are better.”
“Don’t sound so dismal about that. See, it was your destiny to come here.”
Her mouth twisted rather than smiled. “It pisses me off that I couldn’t sort things out all by myself.”
She wasn’t abrasive, the way she’d been as a teen, but the woman did have prickles. Secrets, sensitivities, defensiveness, stubbornness, too much pride . . . and the list could go on. She was so unlike Candace, who’d been such easy company. Pursuing a relationship with Miranda would offer its share of challenges, that was for sure.
He wanted to. He was drawn to her in so many ways. Physically, of course, with a craving that got stronger each time he was with her. Let’s face it, he was a young, healthy guy who used to get a lot of great sex, and for four years he hadn’t even been attracted to a woman. Now that he was, his body urged him to get on with it. Or, rather, to get it on.
The healer in him was drawn to her, too. He saw the fragility that lurked beneath her stubborn pride and he wanted to help her feel strong and confident—so she could accept assistance without feeling it was a sign of weakness.
He also wanted to share with her: to hear her tell his sons that he was smart; to help her calm Ariana’s tantrums; to maybe even tell her more about the sorrows he’d suffered throughout his life. But he couldn’t pursue a relationship with Miranda if it wasn’t in his sons’ best interests. What kind of woman was she, this rosebud, behind all the thorns?
Hoping she wouldn’t shut him down, he ventured a question. “Neither your nor Aaron’s father was ever in the picture?”
“No. Mom, well, she had some issues. She was in love with Aaron’s dad, a First Nations guy, which is where Aaron gets that ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ thing. When she got pregnant, he didn’t stick around. As for my father . . .” Miranda had a slice of pizza in her hand and took a tiny nibble.
Luke kept quiet, hoping she’d open up more than she had before.
She put the slice down and picked up her wineglass. Holding it by the stem, she said, “Mom drank too much.” She put the glass down again. “And she did drugs. She became addicted. Got jobs, lost jobs. And so . . .” Her shoulders rose and she rotated them like she was trying to ease out tension.
“I’m way past thinking I owe her any loyalty” she said. “As a kid, I tried to be loyal. To keep her secrets so that teachers and social workers didn’t find out. I was hanging on to some stupid hope that she’d get it together and provide Aaron and me with real love, with a real home.” She rolled her shoulders again. “Sometimes she was nice to us, but mostly she was too fucked up, using drugs and trying to get the money for drugs. She was a crappy mother. We got taken away from her more than once.”
“I’m sorry.”
“On the day she OD’d in an alley in the Downtown Eastside, all my loyalty died with her.”
And her hope, too, he knew.
Her chin came up and her eyes were gray and stormy. “She was a whore, Luke.”
He couldn’t suppress an involuntary shudder at the harsh word, and the harsh reality.
“A prostitute,” she went on. “A sex trade worker. There’s no pretty way of glossing over it. She had boyfriends, thought she was in love with guys, but she also sold her body to get money to support her habit. To lots of men. So she never knew who my father was.”
“God, Miranda.” His mom had been right about Corinne, and it was even worse than he’d imagined. Now no power on earth could have stopped him from reaching for her hand.
To his surprise, she let him take it. “Yeah,” she said. “No kid should grow up that way. But I had Aaron. I don’t know if I’d even have survived but for him. He’s my half sib, but he’s my true brother and he’s been, well, everything to me.”
Luke knew exactly what she meant. From when he first got to know her, Candace had been everything to him. “Aaron feels the same way,” he said. “That’s why he worries so much about you. Especially with him being the older sibling. He protected you then, and he can’t stop.”
Gently, she freed her hand and picked up her glass again. This time, she did sip wine. Then she got up and walked on silent, slipper-clad feet to the living room.
He wondered if this was her way of ending the conversation, but she was back in a minute, saying, “Ariana’s asleep. The boys are engrossed in the movie.”
She sat down across from him again. “Aaron and I did some bad things. You say you want to be my friend, but you don’t know me. It’s only fair that you should know.” Her mouth twisted. “And if you have any common sense, you’ll say a polite good-bye.”
He sure didn’t feel like walking out of her life, but he had the boys to think about. So he said, “What bad things?”
Her glass went down and her chin came up. “Stole. We shoplifted, picked pockets. Mostly to get enough food to eat. But not always. You know when you said earlier that I’d probably done things for Aaron, too?” At his nod, her lashes flicked down, stayed there for a moment, and then came back up. “I stole a computer.”
“What?” That was way more than pinching snack bars when the cupboards were bare.
“For Aaron. He was in sixth grade and starting to really need one, to keep up with schoolwork. Mom didn’t have one, of course. She couldn’t even keep the power bills paid. He used a computer at the library, but it was only available for short periods of time.” She ducked her head and after a moment looked up again. “Or maybe that’s just an excuse, and it was my pride, me wanting to do something for Aaron for once.”
He nodded hi
s understanding, encouraging her to go on.
“Anyhow, one of the johns that Mom brought to this tiny apartment we lived in at the time, he had a briefcase and I saw a laptop in it. Obviously, I couldn’t steal it when he was at the apartment, or he’d know, but I followed him. He stopped to buy a newspaper from a box on the street, and put his briefcase down. Something in the paper caught his attention and he started to read. He was focused on that, and I slipped up and nicked his briefcase.”
Wow. Luke couldn’t imagine doing anything like that. But nor could he imagine living the way Miranda had as a child.
She swallowed. “He wasn’t nice to Mom. And he didn’t pay her hardly anything. So I told myself he deserved it. It wasn’t fair that an asshole like him would have all this nice stuff and Aaron didn’t even have a computer.”
Nothing about her and her brother’s childhood had been fair. “Did you tell Aaron where you got it?”
She shook her head vigorously. “He knew I’d stolen it and said we couldn’t keep it, but I refused to tell him where I got it. I guess he figured it out from the files on it, but in the end he kept it.” Her shoulders rose and fell as she sighed. “I do feel guilty about that computer. More than about the other, smaller stuff. That was more, like, necessity.”
“Social assistance . . .” he murmured.
“Doesn’t exactly work when the person who cashes the check takes the money straight to her dealer,” she said bitterly.
“No, I guess not.” Part of him wanted to reach for her hand again, yet part of him was appalled. He admitted, “I’m having trouble getting my head around all this. It’s so different from the way I grew up.”
“Lucky you,” she muttered.
“Yes.” He’d never considered his childhood to be particularly lucky. Not with his dad getting cancer and dying, and his mom suffering from depression. Not with acquiring a stepfather who monopolized Luke’s mother’s attention, and getting an unwanted stepbrother. But never had he wanted for food, shelter, school supplies, or even the small luxuries of life. “Yes, I was lucky.”
He studied her, sitting back in her chair as if to maintain distance. The half-finished pizza sat on the table between them, growing cold again. “Miranda, the last times we were together, you let slip a few hints about your past. But when I asked questions, you shut down. Tonight you’re opening up to me. Why now?”