“Luke.” I gave him a firm look. “I was with Eric voluntarily. Any pain I went through was just as much my fault as his. Besides, things are different now. I know that he has a child on the way.”
Luke pursed his lips, studying me. “You were still his fiancé, Em. You were with him for eight years. I think that is worth something.”
“If Eric had known about the baby, he would’ve wanted to take care of it financially. He might have been an ass to me a lot of the time, but he would’ve done right by his child.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m thinking of setting up a trust and funneling the money through there.”
“Sounds like you’ve already given this a lot of thought.” Luke plucked the beer from my hand and took a drink. “What do you need from me?”
“I just want your opinion,” I said with a shrug. “You know me and you know my situation. You’re smart and good with money. I trust your opinion.”
“I think I already gave you my opinion. I think you have every right to keep that money. It sounds like you aren’t comfortable doing that because you’re a good person with a big heart. A trust makes the most sense for your situation, but you should obviously talk to a lawyer. I have a good one that I can connect you with.” Luke stood and started collecting our empty plates. “Keep in mind, you’ll probably need to reach out to the child’s mother if you go through with this.”
I nodded. It was the one thing that had kept me from taking any action. “Hey, you can leave those. I’ll get them.”
“You cooked, I’ll clean,” he said.
“Yes, but you shoveled a ton of snow, probably literally,” I reminded him.
“This is a relationship, Em, not a competition.” Luke was already at the sink, rinsing the dishes. I joined him, unable to do anything more than stare at him. When he glanced over and caught me staring, he smiled uncertainly. “Did I do something wrong?”
I shook my head and blinked away a few tears that were pooling in my eyes. “No, Luke, you’ve done everything just right.”
“Then why do you look like I just stepped on your toe?” he teased as he dried his hands on a towel.
“Is it really supposed to be this easy?” I asked.
He flinched. “Is what supposed to be this easy?”
“This.” I waved a hand between us. “Relationships. Love. Is it supposed to be this easy? I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never does.”
“I don’t know, Em. I’ve never loved anyone but you.” He shrugged. “But this is the beginning when it’s supposed to be easy. If this stuff wasn’t easy, I wouldn’t have much hope for our future.”
I didn’t bother saying what I was thinking. Nothing had ever been this easy with Eric. He had always been jealous and controlling, even when we were just teens. I shook that thought away without saying it out loud. “You’re right.” I hooked a finger through his belt loop and pulled him closer. “But I don’t think it feels this way just because our relationship is still new. I think it feels this way because it’s right. I think you and I were always supposed to end up here, Luke. Everything else was just a detour.”
“That was a long detour, Em.” Luke lifted me onto the counter and I wrapped my arms and legs around him. He brushed my hair over my shoulder and started kissing my neck. “Have we really been doing this for less than a day? I feel like you’ve been mine forever.”
“Forever?” I said, curling my fingers into his hair. I sucked in a breath as his fingers slowly unbuttoned my shirt, his lips following the curve of my body. “Forever sounds just fine to me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
When I woke up the next morning, Luke was gone. It was strange to see the bed next to me empty. He had warned me that he would be leaving early, I just hadn’t wanted to believe it. Luke started his workdays at 5:00 sharp and while I was awake shortly after that, I could hardly move. My body was sore and I was still exhausted from only sleeping a few hours total over the last two nights.
I made some coffee and took it out onto the balcony. It was a cold morning, but the snow had finally stopped and the blanket of white spread before me was beautiful. A snowplow had been down the street and Luke had cleared a path down the driveway when he dug his truck out of the snow. I was surprised to see that he had also cleared off my car and made a path for me from the house to the driver’s side door.
I got to work at 8:00 and saw Luke’s truck parked near the Welcome Center. I so badly wanted to go in there and say hi and thank him for being so thoughtful, but we’d agreed the night before not to let our relationship interfere with work. Luke was very aware that it wouldn’t look great for him to start dating a female employee and he didn’t want his staff to make assumptions about why he had hired me.
I didn’t think our personal lives needed to be discussed at work, so I was happy to agree to a separation of the two parts of our lives. I thought I was doing an excellent job, too, until Luke stepped through the door of the shop right after lunch. I had been in the middle of creating the work shifts for the next month, but now I was staring at Luke.
Katie was a few feet away, ringing up a customer. I heard her giggle and I flushed as I hurried to look away. Luke, oblivious to her suspicions, came sauntering over.
“How’s it going, Scott?” he asked with a gorgeous smile.
“Good.” I turned back to the chart in front of me. “There was an issue with the last delivery that I need to run through with you.”
“Alright. I’ve got a little time right now if you’re free.” Luke was standing close enough that I could smell his cologne.
I dropped my pen. “Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.”
I tried to look casual as I headed to the back of the shop and opened the door to the storage room. Luke stopped to chat with a couple of employees before following me inside. When he shut and locked the door behind him, I was surprised.
“Em.” He was standing rigidly. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“Be in the same room as you and act like I’m not dying to kiss you,” he said. “I don’t know how to be this close to you and not touch you.”
I smiled. “Then do it. Touch me.” I took a step toward him. “Kiss me, Luke.”
He took one deep breath and then gave in to the urge, grabbing both of my arms as he backed me against the wall. He kissed me forcefully and kept kissing me as he slid his hand under my shirt. “Your skin is so soft,” he said.
“Keep touching me,” I said as I unbuttoned his jeans.
“Wait.” Luke caught my hand. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?” I asked, staring right into his eyes as I slid my other hand into his pants. “You obviously want to.”
He groaned. “Hell yes. But we’re working, Em.”
“We’re allowed to take a break from work. You are the boss,” I said. “I can make this quick, Mr. Cooper.”
Luke groaned again. Just when I thought he was going to push me away, he turned me around and yanked down my pants. As he was bending me over the same desk we had used during inventory checks, someone knocked hard on the door.
“Shit,” Luke muttered, yanking me upright.
I hurried to pull my pants up and sucked in hasty breaths. Luke was also struggling to compose himself, but he was going to need a couple of minutes to be presentable. I brushed my hair out of my face and opened the door about a foot. Katie was on the other side.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking embarrassed. “There’s, um, someone at the front asking to speak with you. Some woman.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I glanced over my shoulder. “We’re just finishing up in here so I’ll be right there.”
“Sorry,” Katie said again before walking away.
I faced Luke. “How are you?”
“Just swell,” he said with a grimace.
“I’m sorry, babe.” I smiled. “If it helps, I’m feeling the same way inside.”
“I don’t know if it�
��s possible for you to want me as much as I want you, Em.” Luke took a deep breath and then came over to me, giving me a quick hug. “Time to get back to work.”
“Sure thing, boss.” I squeezed his butt before pulling away and opening the door again. “Should I be worried that someone is asking to speak with me? I don’t know anyone in this town.”
“Yeah, that’s a little strange,” Luke agreed. “I’ll come with you.”
“You don’t have to do that, Luke.” I appreciated his offer, but we’d already come way too close to making our relationship public. The more he hung around, the greater the chance that one of us would slip up.
Luke walked me to the front of the store anyway, looking surprisingly relaxed for someone who’d just almost had an employee walk in on him having sex with another employee. He was dutifully refraining from making any kind of contact with me.
“This is her,” Katie told the woman standing near the door.
“Emery Scott?” the woman asked.
I forced a smile. “Yes, that’s me. I’m sorry, do we know each other?”
“In a way.” The woman did not smile. “I was sleeping with your fiancé.”
“Oh shit,” Katie muttered and I heard Luke suck in a sharp breath.
“Either you are Claudia, or Eric was an even bigger ass than I thought,” I said. Then I noticed Claudia’s bulging belly. “Congrats, by the way.”
“So, you do know about me?” Claudia said. “I wasn’t sure.”
I nodded. “I found Eric’s other phone about a month ago. You left quite a few messages.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know he was dead.” She looked at me with cold eyes.
Katie let out a little gasp and Luke put his hand on my lower back. “Maybe you two should move this somewhere private,” he suggested. “Let’s go to my office. Katie, can you cover the shop?”
“Yeah, of course.” She nodded furiously.
I followed Luke outside and Claudia trailed behind. “Be careful,” Luke said. “The ground is a little slick from all the melting snow.”
Those were the only words that any of us spoke until we were in Luke’s office. He stopped me at the door while Claudia went inside. “Do you want me to stay?” he asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
“No, I think that might be a little weird. I’ll be fine.” I touched his hand. “Just maybe don’t go far, okay?”
“Sure.” He gave me a small smile and then shut the door, leaving me along with Claudia.
I hesitated. Claudia had taken a seat in the chair across from Luke’s desk. It felt strange to take the chair behind the desk, so I instead perched on the windowsill.
“What can I do for you, Claudia?” I asked.
This was my first good look at Claudia. I’d been in so much shock back in the shop that I hadn’t paid attention to any details. But now I could see that Claudia was pretty. She had dark hair that was neatly styled into a bob cut hitting right below her chin. She had dark eyes and pouty red lips. She looked nothing like me, but I could see why Eric had been attracted to her.
“Cutting right to the chase. I can appreciate that.” Claudia tucked her hair behind her ear and I noticed that her hand was shaking. “Honestly, I’m not even sure why I’m here. I just felt like I needed to meet you. I’m sure that sounds crazy.”
“A little bit,” I said. “But I kind of wanted to meet you, too, so at least we are both crazy.”
Claudia laughed. “Eric always said I would like you.”
“You knew about me?” My entire body tensed.
“I did.” She grimaced. “I’m not proud of what I did, Emery. There’s nothing I can say that will make it okay. I do want to try to explain, but I will understand if you don’t want to hear my explanation.”
I didn’t want to hear her explanation, but I knew that Claudia was the only one that could answer the questions I’d been repeating in my head for the last month. “How did you meet Eric?” I asked.
“We went to the same college.” She ducked her head. “Eric and I became friends almost right away freshman year, but nothing ever happened between us until right before graduation.”
“What changed?” I asked.
“A few months before graduation, Eric became convinced that you were going to break up with him. He thought you were seeing someone else, some guy you went to school with.” Claudia wasn’t looking at me. “A couple of weeks before graduation, he told me that he knew you had been cheating on him with that guy and that he was going to break up with you. I know that I was stupid to believe him and I never should’ve agreed to do anything until the two of you had definitely broken up, but I had been in love with Eric for almost four years at that point. I wanted to believe him.”
For the next twenty minutes, Claudia told me how Eric had managed to carry on an affair for the next three years. She spent a lot of time explaining her conflicting feelings about being in love with a man who had a fiancé. She said that Eric kept promising that he was going to end things with me and that she had badly wanted to believe him.
“Why do you think he didn’t break things off with me?” I asked her. “We weren’t married. We didn’t have kids. We didn’t even have a joint bank account. There was nothing forcing Eric to stay with me.”
“He felt like he owed you. You paid the bills while he was in law school. He thought that if he ended things with you just as he was graduating, it would look bad. He wanted to work for a few years and take care of you, to pay you back.” Claudia didn’t sound completely convinced. “Eric’s parents put a lot of pressure on him, as I’m sure you know. The one part of his life they always approved of was you.”
“You’re telling me that Eric stayed with me for eight years not because he loved me, but because his parents liked me?” I laughed loudly. “That’s absurd.”
Claudia shook her head. “I didn’t say that he didn’t love you. He loved you very much, but he had a lot of insecurities being with you. He always said that you were so smart that he felt like you thought he was stupid. You also always had a lot of male friends and Eric was jealous. He said that you didn’t need him and that made him feel emasculated.”
“So, he loved me, but he didn’t like me?” I felt even more confused now than I had before we started talking.
“I know this whole thing has to be confusing. I can’t imagine how it felt when you found out I existed.” Claudia stood and put a hand on her lower back as she picked up a pen from Luke’s desk and scribbled down a number. “I’m staying at a bed and breakfast in town for a couple of days. I have family in the area that I’m visiting. Think about what we’ve talked about and if you have more questions, give me a call.”
I held the piece of paper in one hand and opened the door with the other. Unsurprisingly, Luke rushed over before both of us had even left the office. “Can you walk Claudia to her car?” I asked.
“Of course.” Luke gave me a quick, worried look and then did as I asked.
By the time he returned, the shock of seeing Claudia was starting to wear off. My hands began to shake. “I don’t think I can go back to work,” I said.
“No, of course not. I just spoke to Katie and she’s going to take care of the shop for the rest of the day.” Luke handed me my coat. Apparently, he’d thought to grab it while he was talking to Katie. “I’ll drive you home.”
“No.” I shook my head stubbornly, glancing around the room. “That’s not a good idea. I can drive myself.”
Luke was already grabbing his coat from the office. “Joe, I’m taking off for the day. Just call my cell if anything comes up.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Joe didn’t even look up from his work.
I was still uncomfortable leaving work with Luke in the middle of the day, but he wasn’t giving me a choice as he opened the door. “Let’s go, Scott.”
Luke didn’t lead me to his car, however. He headed across the parking lot to one of the resort’s two bars. It was the same one we’d come to my first day in Starlight
. Luke took me to the same table and tossed his coat on one of the chairs.
“Wait here,” he said. “I’ll grab us some drinks.”
Even though I hadn’t been expecting him to take us someplace for drinks, I had to admit it was the right call. Sitting at home the rest of the day was only going to make me more depressed.
“I told Kip to make it extra-strong,” Luke said, sliding what looked to be a glass of whiskey in front of me. He stuck with his usual beer for himself.
“Thanks.” I took a tentative sip and winced as the drink burned my throat.
Luke watched me quietly for a long moment before saying, “We can either talk about it or I can just get you drunk. Your call.”
“Quick summary? I now know all the reasons why I was a terrible girlfriend.” I took a much bigger drink. “Do you want me to spoil it for you, or would you like to just gradually find out over the next eight years?”
“Girlfriend?” Luke teased.
“Hypothetically,” I said, smiling.
Luke’s leg rubbed against mine under the table. “Well, I know it’s still early but if it helps, I think you are a pretty amazing girlfriend.”
“You have to say that because you want to see me naked again,” I said.
“True.” He smiled and leaned forward. “I think I’m still recovering from that almost-moment we had in the storage room.”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it very long keeping our relationship a secret,” I said. “We almost got caught in less than a day.”
“I blame you,” Luke said, his leg rubbing more forcefully against mine. “You have a lot of nerve walking around looking so beautiful. How am I supposed to ignore that smile of yours? Impossible.”
I took another drink before looking around nervously. “Are you sure we should be doing this? Isn’t Kip going to suspect something?”
“Kip?” Luke chuckled. “He’s been a bartender here for thirty years. He’s seen things a lot more scandalous than me buying a drink for a pretty employee.”
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