Трейси Вульф – Deserving of Luke (страница 8)

Penny grinned. “You better take a sweater. It might be June, but it still gets pretty cold when the breeze rolls in from the ocean.” She tossed one toward Paige. “And don’t come back for at least an hour. You need a break before I put you to work painting.”

She left the large, decrepit beach house her sister had gotten stuck with when her fiancé had walked out, and wondered what exactly she was supposed to do for the next little while as she had, for all intents and purposes, been banished from the house. If Penny seemed to think Paige needed a walk, maybe a walk was exactly what she would have. It wasn’t as though she didn’t like the ocean, after all. In Los Angeles they lived only a few blocks from the water and she made a point of taking Luke to the beach at least once a week.

But the water in L.A. was different than the water here. Calmer, warmer. And less laden with memories.

She wasn’t going to let those memories bother her, though, she reminded herself as she descended the short flight of stairs from her sister’s yard to the rocky, isolated beach. She’d promised that to herself when she’d made the decision to come to help Penny get the house ready for guests, had promised herself that she wouldn’t let herself get caught up in the past.

Besides nine years was long enough to change her from the scared, insecure girl who had looked for affection in all the wrong places into a woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it.

The trick was to avoid getting so bogged down in what used to be that she forgot what was.

With that thought foremost in her mind, Paige slipped her shoes off and walked where the water met the sand. Though the dark blue water was cold—nearly frigid, really—she enjoyed the feel of it tickling her toes, licking at her ankles. The sand squished beneath her heels, then between her toes as the water receded, before her prints washed away with each new wave.

For a minute, she wished the past could be washed away as easily.

But, no, that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Because if she hadn’t made the mistakes she had, she wouldn’t have Luke. And without him, she never would have made it after everything that happened here. After Logan had—

She cut the thought off before it could take hold. Damn this town and all the memories it evoked. In L.A. she could go weeks, months even, without thinking about him. But here, on this beach, looking out at the choppy, wind-razed Pacific it was almost impossible to keep thoughts of him at bay. Especially when she looked at Luke, here in Prospect. He looked so much like his father that here, in all of her old haunts, nearly everything he did evoked memories she would rather forget.

No matter how hard things had been, no matter how difficult those first months and years had been after she’d moved to L.A., she wouldn’t change a thing. Not if changing things meant she lost even a little bit of what she’d worked so hard to give Luke.

Stability.

Security.

Unconditional love.

Three things she’d never had growing up with two parents who despised her. Three things she swore her child would never do without.

A large wave rolled onto the beach, soaking her to her knees and spraying up onto her thighs and stomach. Paige laughed, a gasping, sucking kind of sound as she tried to ignore the bone-jarring cold that had invaded at the first brush of the water. Because, though it was freezing, it felt good. Felt wonderful to throw her troubles into the surf and let them roll a little farther out to sea.

It was as she watched the ebb and flow of the waves, savoring the feel of the cold water against her skin, that Paige made a decision.

For the time she was here, for the two months she’d promised her sister she would help with the inn, she would live in the present.

She would forget the past, forget the mistakes she’d made and the hurts she’d both inflicted and received, and focus instead on the good things she had. Luke. Penny. A job she loved waiting for her in L.A. and the chance to use everything she’d learned on that job to make the eyesore her sister had bought into something truly amazing.

And when she was done… When she was done, she would leave Prospect for good. But this time she would do it on her own terms, knowing that she had truly put the ghosts of her past to rest, once and for all.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DRIVE TO PENNY MATTHEWS’S beach house seemed to take forever. Even the call he’d gotten from his mother, demanding to know if the rumors she’d been bombarded with were true—was Paige Matthews back in town, with his son—hadn’t kept the fifteen-minute drive out of town from dragging. It had been a hell of a conversation to have. After the way his mother had hung up, he wasn’t altogether sure he’d ever be allowed in the door of his parents’ house again. At least he’d be in good company. Between Paige, Luke, his father’s ex-lovers and his sister’s children, the number of people who were permitted to cross the threshold dwindled a little more each year.

But when he could scarcely make sense of this situation, how could he possibly explain it in a way that would appease his exacting mother? All he knew was from the moment he’d laid eyes on the boy, from the moment he’d realized that Paige had given birth to his child, every brain cell he possessed had been working on overdrive, struggling to find the right words to say to her.

He’d almost blown it at the diner earlier and he was sorry for that. The last thing he wanted to do was make his son uncomfortable. But the shock of seeing him, of knowing that his child had been alive and growing for eight years… It had been almost impossible to see past it.

At least until Paige had called him on it. She’d always been able to do that, even when they were kids. He’d start on a path he had no business going down and she would rein him in. Until the end, when she’d walked out on him, as if trying to convince him that Luke was his hadn’t been worth her time. Her effort. As if the fact that she was pregnant with his child hadn’t been enough to make her fight for them.

Thinking of those long-ago arguments had his emotions rising again, though he’d worked all afternoon to control them. Joni had been furious with him when he’d returned to the diner, had accused him of humiliating her in front of the whole town. Then she’d walked out.

But, honestly, he didn’t know what else he’d been supposed to do. How he should have reacted to the knowledge that he had a kid and that kid’s mother hadn’t so much as bothered to tell him.

Doubt and a little bit of guilt twisted at the back of his consciousness because he knew that assertion wasn’t strictly true, but he shoved both emotions aside. Ignored them. She’d had ample opportunity over the years to tell him she’d had his child. That’s what he would concentrate on when he spoke to her. That and not losing his temper, which was going to be a hard one, because right now he was one step away from feeling as though his head would explode.

The only truly coherent thought he had was that Paige had stolen his child. She had left town, pregnant with his baby, and had never bothered to contact him again.

Had never bothered to tell him that the baby had been born.

Had never bothered to tell him that he was a father.

Had never bothered to send him so much as a picture on the kid’s first or second or seventh birthday.

By the time he pulled up in front of the dilapidated house, he was even more determined to settle things between them. He wanted an explanation, now, and he would get it even if he had to slap cuffs on Paige and drag her into the interrogation room at the station. One way or the other, they were going to figure this out, tonight.

He bounded up the steps and prepared to knock hard enough to wake the dead.

“You look loaded for bear.” The words were said in a low, relaxed voice—one he recognized immediately because he’d heard the same tone from Paige innumerable times they’d been together. Her voice was a little deeper now, a little richer, but all the important elements were the same.

Whirling, he scanned the shadows cast by the single, yellow porch light until he found her, sitting on the swing, a glass of white wine dangling carelessly from one hand and a cell phone from the other.

Her short blond hair was rumpled and she was dressed in a purple tank top and a pair of ripped and faded jeans that probably cost more than he made in a month. She still smelled like lilacs. Her feet were bare and something about her small, blue-tipped toes calmed him in a way nothing else could have. Maybe because they made him remember what it had been like to be with her all those years ago, what it had been like to love her.

When they’d been together, she had always painted her toenails some mysterious color that none of the other girls would go near but that somehow drove him absolutely insane nonetheless. He’d been too stupid to realize it hadn’t all been for him, that he wasn’t the only guy in town she’d been showing her polish—and other things—to.

The red haze threatened to return, and he did what he could to head it off. They would get nothing accomplished if they were yelling at each other, a realization he figured Paige had come to herself some time that afternoon, if her smooth greeting was any indicator. That or the glass of wine in her hand wasn’t her first.