Logan’s eyes turned electric

Paige felt shimmery shocks of electricity that skated along her nerve endings until she ached. All she wanted was to feel—one more time—what it was like to be held by Logan, kissed by Logan, loved by Logan.

The heat in his own eyes convinced her that Logan was feeling the same way. “Paige.” His voice was so low and rough. “Tell me to go.”

Her heartbeat was a crazy, mixed-up symphony inside her. She knew she should send him away, but her mouth wouldn’t form the words.

He stepped forward until his body was only inches from hers. She could feel the heat coming off him.

Paige gasped as his lips brushed against her own. Her hands slid up his chest, vaguely cataloging the hard muscles there before she slipped them into the shaggy hair at the base of his neck and tried to tug him closer. If this moment was the only one she would have with him, she would grab it with both hands and say to hell with the consequences—at least for the duration of this one, perfect kiss.

Dear Reader,

I think the best romance is a combination of reality and fairy tale. A damsel or prince in distress, a damsel or prince to do the rescuing and a big, ugly dragon that needs slaying. In Deserving of Luke, I have all that and more, although the ugly dragon is not a tangible thing. Instead it is the very painful past the characters share, a past that they must slay together if they have any hope of finding their happily-ever-after.

Paige is a tough cookie who has been on her own—with her child—since she was seventeen years old. She’s not only survived, but flourished, without much help. But she can’t live that way forever, and watching as she learns to rely on Logan has been a wonderful journey—though it is one fraught with anger, perceived betrayal and hurt. It does have friendship, laughter and, eventually, love, though.

Logan, on the other hand, has pretty much had things easy. Seeing him learn to fight for what he wants—and for those who need him—was amazing. He has a long journey to finally be Deserving of Luke, his only son.

Speaking of Luke, I had so much fun creating his character. Some of my readers have noticed that when I create children they are almost all boys, and that is because, in this case, I really do write what I know. With three adorable and exasperating boys of my own to draw from, it’s always easy for me to come up with a quip or an antic or a sweet little story that springs directly from my own life.

I really enjoyed writing Deserving of Luke, and hope you enjoy reading it, as well. Thank you so much for letting me—and my stories—into your hearts and lives. I love to hear from my readers via my website, www.tracywolff.com, or on my blog, www.tracywolff.blogspot.com. I wish each of you a wonderful, joy-filled spring!

Love,

Tracy Wolff

Deserving of Luke
Tracy Wolff

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tracy Wolff collects books, English degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the wonderful world of girls’ lit, reading her first Judy Blume novel. By ten she’d read everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local bookstore, so in desperation her mom started her on romance novels. And from the first page of the first book, Tracy knew she’d found her lifelong love. Deserving of Luke, her sixth novel for Harlequin Superromance, takes place on the gorgeous Oregon coast she loves to visit.

For my boys

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

PANIC SET IN ABOUT FIVE minutes after Paige Matthews realized her son was gone.

At first, she told herself it was no big deal. He was probably two rows over in the toy aisle, checking to see if the selection was up to snuff.

When he wasn’t there, poring over the surprisingly extensive collection of miniature cars, she figured he’d simply wandered over to the ice cream case— Luke was a sucker for strawberry ice cream.

And when he wasn’t there either, when the small kernel of concern that had formed the moment she realized he was not at the end of the aisle as she’d thought he was, started to grow, she still told herself she was overreacting. This mom-and-pop grocery store in the small Oregon town she’d grown up in was a far cry from the huge supermarkets of Los Angeles, where Luke had been born and raised. Even at eight, he knew how to take care of himself, knew not to talk to strangers and to stay in one place if, for some reason, he did get separated from her—though it had never happened before.

So what could possibly happen to him here?

The reassuring thoughts didn’t keep her from walking faster any more than they kept her from remembering her childhood here in Prospect and all the trouble she had managed to get into. While the fact that they weren’t in the big city made her feel a little better, the feeling didn’t last long—especially when she got to the candy aisle and realized Luke hadn’t wandered over there, either. Worse, the store’s display of gummy animals and body parts was completely undisturbed, a sure sign that he had not stopped here at all. And that was so unlike him that concern turned to terror.

“Luke!” she called, racing past the deserted candy section to the front of the store. “Luke, where are you?”

There was no answer and in those moments every terrible thing that could happen to an unaccompanied eight-year-old boy flashed through her mind, small town be damned. Sure, this was Prospect, but Eugene really wasn’t that far away. Salem. Portland. All reasonably sized cities with rising crime rates.

“Luke!” She was running now, from one end of the store to the other, looking down each row that sprouted from the perimeter of the store.

Other shoppers stared at her, whispered, but she didn’t acknowledge them. They’d whispered about her for the first seventeen years of her life—right up until she’d left town, broke and alone, save for the unborn baby she carried. The fact that they started talking about her so readily, even after all this time, came as no surprise. She might have been back for only a day and a half, but she knew how this town worked.

Some things never changed.

This time at least there was something real to talk about. Sure, she was running around like a crazy woman, but if they knew she was looking for her son, maybe someone else would start to look. Maybe someone else would spot him. Finding Luke, making sure he was safe, was the only thing that mattered.

But—surprise, surprise—no one came forward to help.

Where could he be? she wondered again as she frantically combed the aisles for her son’s yellow and purple hoodie. She’d bought him the outrageously expensive jacket for his eighth birthday and he rarely went anywhere without it.

Why, oh, why, had she let Mary Beth Peters distract her? She didn’t even like the woman—never had, even when they were in school together. Mary Beth had been the most popular girl in school and Paige had been…popular in her own right. But certainly not because she was head cheerleader.

Still, when Mary Beth had stopped her, Paige hadn’t wanted to be rude. Hadn’t wanted to cause any more gossip than was absolutely necessary—her sister Penny had to live and work here long after Paige and Luke went home, after all. And she figured alienating the locals was not the best way to reconcile with her sister.

And look what her concern had gotten her. One of these days she was going to remember that trying to keep on the right side of these people’s opinions cost too much.

“Luke!” Paige screamed his name as adrenaline coursed through her ice-cold body. She was approaching the last section of the grocery store and if he wasn’t there— If he wasn’t there, she didn’t know how she was going to hold it together long enough to call the sheriff’s department.

She’d only spoken to Mary Beth for a couple of minutes, long enough to exchange pleasantries and a quick explanation about why she was back after such a long time. How could her son have possibly disappeared in less than one hundred and eighty seconds?

Suddenly she spotted the familiar L.A. Lakers hoodie. “Luke.” This time it wasn’t a scream so much as a long, exhale of relief. Grinding to a halt, she rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. She wasn’t. He was still there. Her son—her beautiful, amazing, mischievous son—was seated in front of the small comic-book display, the iPod he’d gotten yesterday from his aunt Penny playing in his ears as he flipped through the latest superhero comic.

She blinked rapidly to clear her vision of the moisture that flooded her eyes—a shock in and of itself as it had been years since she’d allowed herself the luxury of anything as useless as tears. For so long it had been just Luke and her against the world. If anything ever happened to him she would—

Paige shook her head, unable to think about such a nightmarish occurrence, even in the abstract.

She didn’t go to him right away, didn’t wrap her arms around him and squeeze him the way she wanted to. Doing that before she had herself under control might trigger a public crying jag. A really bad idea here in the middle of Prospect hell.

Luke chose that moment to look up, and his not-quite-little-boy-anymore face lit up at the sight of her. “Hey, Mom! Look, it’s the new one.” He jumped nimbly to his feet, raced toward her. “Can I get it?”

Forcing herself not to grab him, Paige gently pulled one of the earbuds free. “You wander away from me in a public place and you expect me to reward you for it?” she asked in the sternest voice she could muster. It might have worked, too, except for the fact that her voice—like the rest of her—shook.

She saw the knowledge register in Luke’s eyes, followed swiftly by a look of shame. “I’m sorry, Mom. I went to find the gummy eyeballs and then found these instead. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She tried to hang tough, but felt herself cave in the face of his obvious remorse. Taking the comic from Luke, she herded him to where she’d left her cart. She tossed the book on top of the fresh fruits and vegetables and told herself not to sweat it. She wasn’t normally so lenient, but the joy of finding him clouded her judgment. She’d transplanted the kid from everything he knew to this small town next to nowhere. If a comic helped get him through the interminable summer, who was she to argue?

“Don’t ever do it again. I couldn’t find you and ran screaming through the store.”

“Ugh, Mom, that so isn’t the first impression I was hoping to make.” Luke glanced toward a couple of boys who appeared close to his age. Both were staring at them as though they were alien life-forms. She didn’t have the heart to tell Luke it was probably more about the nasty things they’d heard their mothers say about her than her mad dash through the store.

Prospect had a long memory, and no matter how much she’d accomplished in the nine years since she’d left here, she was still that wild Matthews girl from the wrong side of the river. The one whose mother had conceived her while her husband was serving his country overseas, then left her to wear the Scarlet A.

It was a legacy that had proved impossible to live down no matter how hard Paige tried, so in the end, she’d done her best to live up to it. It had been lonely, but infinitely more satisfying than crying herself to sleep every night had been.

At the moment, hearing the echoes of whispers and taunts and boys asking her for things she had been all too eager to give in her search for affection, she wished that she’d never come back. Never let Penny talk her into returning to this one-horse town, even if it was just for a few months.

But then, the wish was nothing new—she’d been repeating variations of it since she and Luke had rolled into town the day before. Before that actually, if she was completely honest with herself. That first pang of regret hit before she’d hung up the phone. Only the awareness that her sister was finally reaching out to her after so many years, that Penny needed her, had kept Paige’s foot on the gas pedal and her car pointed north during the long trip.

“Come on, Luke, let’s go.” She hustled her son to the checkout. “You know you’re not supposed to wander away like that. Anything could happen—especially in a place you don’t know.”

Luke stared at her in disbelief. “Mom, this place has a population of, like, five people. Nothing’s going to happen to me here.”

“More like five thousand people and you don’t know that nothing will happen to you. No one does.” God knew, plenty had happened to her in this sleepy seaside town. More than enough that she had gotten the hell out and never looked back. Until Penny’s desperate call for help—too embarrassed and afraid to ask their parents for it.

That vulnerability, that fear, had been impossible for Paige to ignore. She’d turned her back on Penny once, had all but cut her sister from her life in her bid for survival. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, do that again. And if it cost her a little of her hard-won sanity, oh well.

Something in her voice must have tipped Luke off, because he stopped arguing much more quickly than usual. “I’m really sorry, Mom.”

“I know you are. Just, please, stay with me. You don’t know the town yet.”

“I know. I promise I won’t do it again.” His silver eyes shined with remorse.

“Good. Because next time I won’t be so nice.” She was rubbing his back even as she made the threat, leaning down to press a quick kiss on his rumpled black curls and marveling—not for the first time—at how incredibly blessed she was to have him. Prior to Luke’s arrival, her luck with men had been so abysmal that when she’d found out she was having a boy, she’d actually broken down and sobbed in the ultrasound room.

But that was before she’d had him, before she’d held him. Before she’d known him. From the moment he’d entered the world, Luke had been the most amazing creature. Gorgeous, smart and with a heart full of joy and eyes full of mischief, he made every day an adventure. She wouldn’t trade him for the world—and certainly not for a perfectly coiffed, well-behaved little girl. Any gray hair he gave her would be more than worth it. She was certain of it.

“Thanks for the comic, Mom. It’s really cool.”

Paige emptied her cart onto the conveyer belt as she listened to Luke rattle on about the adventures of his favorite superhero-bad-guy duo. She should have thought to check the book aisle for him first. Would have, had she known the store carried them. When she’d been a kid, the only books old Mr. Marshall had allowed into his store were religious and nature ones. Obviously, some things had changed in Prospect.

But not too many, she acknowledged wryly, hyper-conscious of the not quite whispered comments currently circulating the market.

“Isn’t that Paige Matthews? What’s she doing here?”

“Always knew she was no good. Unwed mother—”

“Losing her child on her first day back—”

“Come to stay with her sister, in that pitiful little B and B—”

“She must be broke and is mooching off Penny—”

“I don’t think she’s broke. Did you see her car? Must be some drug dealer’s girlfriend—”

Paige slammed her purse down on the small check-writing counter, and began bagging the groceries as the clerk—a teenaged girl who didn’t seem to be aware of the barbed chatter—asked if she was new in town. Normally, bagging your own groceries was considered the height of rudeness in Prospect, as it indicated a desire to leave instead of participating in a nice, long chat. But being thought rude was the least of Paige’s problems, so she shoved a head of broccoli into the same bag as a loaf of bread and a chocolate bar and prepared to call it a day.

“We’re here for the summer,” Luke told the girl with his quick, easy grin. “Mom says she’s going to teach me to surf.”

“Oh, yeah?” The girl looked impressed. “I’ve always wanted to learn how to do that myself.”

“Well, maybe my mom can teach you, too. She’s really good at it.”

Paige laughed. “By really good, he means I fall off the board only about half the time.” She put the last bag in the basket. “How much do I owe you?”

“Ninety-seven forty.”

“And she’s taking me for lunch at Prospector’s,” Luke continued. “She says they make the best strawberry shakes in all of Oregon.”

“Maybe in the whole universe,” the girl agreed. “And they’re even better if you have them throw a banana in with the strawberry ice cream.”

“Really?” Luke looked skeptical.

“I swear.”

He turned to Paige. “Can I try one, Mom? Please? I looooove bananas.”

Cursing under her breath because she’d completely forgotten her promise to take her son for lunch, Paige forced a smile, even as she prayed for patience. “You can have whatever kind of shake you want as long as you eat some vegetables with lunch. Sound fair?”

Luke groaned, but agreed, “Sounds fair.”

After signing the credit card slip and handing it to the girl, Paige let Luke push the basket to the car. Watching him carefully maneuver around the other vehicles made her smile, despite the worry that lingered in the corners of her mind. What was she going to do if Luke clued in to what kind of reputation his mother had had when she’d run away from this old-fashioned bastion of bigotry?

And how was she going to explain her reasons for doing what she’d done to him? He was already the only kid in his private-school class who didn’t at least know who his dad was—something he seemed to be taking reasonably well. But she wasn’t sure what old gossip could do to him—and she didn’t want to find out.

One thing was for sure, she vowed as she slid into the driver’s seat. After today, she was going to do her damnedest to keep him away from this place and the people who wanted nothing more than to hurt him, simply because he was hers.

Whoever had said ignorance was bliss definitely knew what he was talking about.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY, the kind that made Logan Powell grateful he’d returned to Prospect after his big-city marriage had failed. Oh, he’d liked Seattle well enough—if you didn’t mind the fact that it rained something like eighty-seven percent of the time. But after Melissa had left him he’d been ready for a change. And the fact that he’d been shot, had nearly bled to death in a drug bust gone bad, hadn’t hurt his desire to return home, either. Prospect was the epitome of a sleepy coastal town and he liked it that way.

After parking his cruiser in the first available spot, Logan stepped into the street. He took a deep breath, held it in his lungs as long as he could before letting it out. In that breath was everything he loved about Prospect—sunshine, salt water and an abundance of greenery.

A glance at his watch told him he had plenty of time before he was supposed to meet his date at Prospector’s, the local sixties diner, so he decided to take the long way around. There might not be much crime in Prospect, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take his job as sheriff seriously. These people depended on him and he wasn’t going to let them down.

Today was a perfect time to weave his way through the tree-lined streets and check on the local businesses. It was a little early in the season for tourists to be descending, so he could enjoy this duty that would soon become a chore. He would still patrol the streets once they were packed with people in shorts and sundresses, haggling for antiques and beach shells, but the camaraderie he experienced now would be swallowed by strangers’ demands.

Completely content with his lot in life, Logan took his time strolling the heavily shaded streets. The sun was shining, a nice breeze wound its way between the buildings and, in the background, the ocean crashed soothingly onto the sand. Yes, it really was a beautiful day.

As he made his way down Sycamore to Main, he whistled a little tune, something happy he remembered from his childhood. Perhaps he’d stop by the clinic to see if Jake was on call tonight. If he wasn’t, maybe his old friend would be up for a few hands of poker. Logan was feeling lucky, and since the bastard had scalped him in their regular first Thursday of the month game, he owed him a chance to recoup his losses.

He’d barely stepped onto Main Street before realizing the streets—and the people walking down them—were abuzz about something. Of course, it didn’t take much to get the residents up in arms.

He wondered if Mr. Walker’s Rottweiler had escaped again, plowing into God-only-knew whom. Or if the Harbinger brothers had gotten into another fight in the middle of Town Square. The last time it had happened they’d nearly killed themselves and he’d been stuck hauling both of them to jail. Before all was said and done he’d ended up with a black eye and his own assault case against the two of them. He’d let the charges drop on the understanding that they kept their differences non-violent in the future. But if they’d been fighting again—

“Morning, Sheriff.” Marge Hutchinson’s brusque voice pulled him from his reverie.

“Morning, Mrs. Hutchinson.” He smiled at the boutique owner who had been slipping him a piece of red licorice behind his mother’s back since he was three years old. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m doing just fine. Gearing up for the tourist rush.”

“Glad to hear it. They should be here before you know it.”

“Another week or two at the most. Bob’s talked me into carrying some fancy soaps and perfumes. You should stop by and check them out,” she said with a wink. “Maybe pick up something for your new girl.”

He laughed. “Maybe I’ll do that.” Today’s lunch was only his second date with Joni—the first had been a cup of coffee a few days ago—but already the town had the two of them paired up. It didn’t annoy him the way it did some. Instead, it amused him. Where else but Prospect would his love life be a public service project?

“Good. I’ll set some of the gardenia products aside. They’ll smell real good on Joni. And you’ll be needing them after she finds out—” She looked away, her crimson painted lips pressed tightly together.

His radar went on red alert. “After she finds out what, Mrs. Hutchinson?”

“I suppose I should just tell you. It’s better than you hearing it from one of those old busybodies down the street.”

He barely bit back a smile. She was one of the busiest bodies in town. Despite her feigned reluctance, she was probably rejoicing in the fact that she’d beaten Ruth Oberly to the punch.

“Well, I was in the grocery store earlier today and you’ll never guess who’s back in town.”

She glanced at him, as if waiting for him to guess despite her words, but he didn’t have a clue. He rarely kept track of the tourists who came and went, even the ones who returned year after year.

Leaning forward, as if she had a particularly juicy secret to impart, Mrs. Hutchinson took her time drawing out the suspense. “I might not have even noticed her, except for the fact that she’d lost her son. Lost her son, can you believe it? On her first day back in town.”

He felt a premonition that he wasn’t going to like whatever came out of her mouth next. “Did they find the boy?” he demanded. “The sheriff’s department hasn’t been notified—”

“Oh, yes, they found him after only a couple of minutes, hiding in the back with the comic books. But not before she made a total spectacle of herself running around screaming for him.” She sniffed. “He didn’t answer. Not that I blame him, I guess. If I had her for a mother, I’d probably be hiding, too. It probably looked like a good place to stay lost, as not many people make it back there.”

Patience wearing thin after her salacious account—it wasn’t like Mrs. Hutchinson to be so malicious and it made him uncomfortable to be a part of it, even if in a peripheral way—Logan asked, “So who is it? Who’s back in town?”

She grinned. “Paige Matthews. And from the amount of food she picked up at the grocery store, she’s planning on staying a while.”

Her words sent him reeling, the way she’d intended them to. She kept talking, telling him more—he was sure—about Paige’s ill-fated trip to the market, but he didn’t hear her. Couldn’t hear her over the buzzing in his ears and the shock that was ricocheting through him.

Paige Matthews was back in town.

Paige was back.

In town.

Paige Matthews was back in town.

The words looped in his mind as he tried to figure out what they meant when strung together in that order.

Trying to get them to make sense.

And more than anything, trying to decide how he felt about them.

Fumbling an excuse he knew didn’t make much sense, he headed up the street in a kind of daze. He knew Mrs. Hutchinson—and plenty of other people—were watching him, but in those first few moments, he couldn’t bring himself to care. Couldn’t bring himself to fake his way through this bombshell.

It had been so long since he’d heard anything about Paige, so long since he’d even allowed himself to think her name.

He didn’t get far before someone else stopped him to report the same news. Again and again, people stepped forward to tell him about Paige, each one adding a new little detail about her—and her son—until he felt as though he’d run the gauntlet.

Had he seen what kind of car she was driving? one person asked.

A ninety-thousand-dollar BMW, someone else imparted. Of course, she’d gotten it illegally. Hadn’t they always known she was going to turn out to be a drug dealer’s girlfriend? He’d tried to put that rumor to rest by mentioning the latest movie she’d been involved with, but he’d known his protests had fallen on deaf ears when the same person asked if he thought Paige was on the run from her drug-dealing boyfriend.

Did he know why she was back?

Logan’s simple morning walk through town had turned into a nightmare. And for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why he cared.

Yes, he and Paige had been an item a million years ago. And, yeah, she’d screwed him over totally and completely. But that didn’t mean he wished her ill, didn’t mean he wanted any of the things the towns-people were speculating about to be true. Any more than it meant he wanted to see her.

Sure, he might be curious about what she’d been up to. And why she had chosen now—when he’d been in Prospect a little over eighteen months and was finally getting comfortable with his new life—to come back to town. But it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he would be asking her any of those questions any time soon.

If they met up, when they met up—this was Prospect after all, and there were only so many places to frequent—he would be polite, courteous. Treat her the way he did any of the other people under his protection. Because that’s what she was to him—all she would ever be to him. Maybe she’d meant something to him in the past, but that was a long time ago. The present and future were a whole different story.

He was the first to admit he’d made a lot of mistakes in his life. But from the time he was a kid, he’d made a point of not making the same mistake twice.

And Paige had been more than a youthful mistake. She’d been a goddamned natural disaster that had ripped apart the very fabric of his life. And it had taken him too long to get over her to ever let her back in again.

Pasting a wide—and hopefully not glazed—smile on his lips, Logan continued toward the diner in as straight a line as he could manage. He didn’t know much about Paige anymore, but he knew he was going to lose it if he had to hear one more ridiculous rumor about her. Or her son.

Then Ruth Oberly stepped into his path and asked if he’d had a chance to see Paige Matthews’s son yet. When he’d told her he hadn’t, she’d looked at him blandly and said that she thought the boy looked just like his father.

Logan’s back went ramrod straight at this new piece of information, and he had to force himself to relax. Normally, he didn’t mind the gossip that was part and parcel of living in a small town—it was relatively harmless, after all—but Paige’s child was still a raw spot for him.

The knowledge came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one. In fact, he was so busy trying to wrap his mind around the implication that one look at the kid had given Ruth a good idea of who his father was, that he nearly missed the diner. Logan had spent a lot of hours trying to convince Paige to tell him the truth about which of his high-school classmates had gotten her pregnant and the thought that he might finally be able to find out, after all these years, had him reeling.

Which was perfectly normal, he assured himself. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have history together. After Paige had left Prospect, he’d spent weeks—months—lying awake wondering about her. Wondering if she was okay. Wondering if the father of her kid was helping her out. Every time one of the guys from Paige’s side of the river had left town, Logan had wondered if he was the one. If he was sneaking off to be with Paige, wherever she was.

Eventually he’d left himself, gone to college, and memories of her had faded to bittersweet regret. Sure, she’d creep up on him sometimes, but he figured that was normal, when all was said and done.

First love was a bitch, after all. Sure, he’d gotten over her, moved on with his life, even gotten married to a woman he’d loved. But that didn’t mean memories of Paige—memories of them—didn’t catch him off guard every once in a while. They’d sneak in when he least expected it—a glimpse of the swings at the park, the teasing scent of lilac in the woods, a stray word about her sister and the crazy house Penny had bought with the hope of turning it into a bed and breakfast—and suddenly he’d be right back there, crazy in love with a girl his parents wouldn’t let in the front door.

But that’s all they were, he assured himself. Just memories. And if hearing about her son was a kick in the ass, the sting would quickly fade. After all, her betrayal had happened a long time and a lot of women ago. He had more important things to worry about these days than ancient history.

And yet, he found himself thinking about her. The idea that Paige was here now, that the answers to all those old questions were suddenly within his reach, had him thinking about things that were better laid to rest.

Frustrated, out-of-sorts, his earlier enjoyment of the day completely gone, Logan pushed open the door to the diner. And got a hell of a start when nearly every face turned toward him, the low buzz of conversation coming to an abrupt halt.

Okay. Never comfortable being the obvious topic of conversation he reminded himself of all the positive reasons to living in a town where he knew well over half the population. There was always someone to talk to, always someone around to lend a hand.

Even with the good points outweighing the bad, it didn’t mean it was always easy. Especially not when people were interested to see what his reaction would be to the knowledge that Paige, and her son, were back in town. Well, they’d learn soon enough it was no big deal. He and Paige were nothing to each other anymore.

Glancing around the diner with a friendly smile, he breathed a small sigh of relief when his gaze landed on Joni. There was nothing like a date with one woman to lay old gossip about another to rest.

Grinning for real this time, he started toward her table. There was nothing wrong with him, a hamburger, a piece of peach pie and some time with Joni wouldn’t fix.

Focused on his target, Logan didn’t see Paige until he was almost on top of her. And when it finally registered on him that the pretty woman at the next table was the grown-up version of his high-school sweetheart, it was too late to do anything but stare.

And stare he did, his mind cataloguing all the differences between this woman and the girl he remembered. Her platinum-blond hair was a lot shorter, cut into a sassy style that suited the woman, but not the vulnerable young girl who’d once confided to him that she liked him because she didn’t have to play a part for him.

Her heart-shaped face was thinner, her cheekbones more prominent, her green eyes darker and more wary than they had ever been. Only her lips were the same—lush and a little lopsided, their raspberry color as tempting as ever.

She was wearing a violet tank top that showed off curves much more lush than he remembered and, though he told himself to move on, to pull out a chair at Joni’s table, he didn’t move. Instead, he stood there, willing Paige to look at him.

At first, he didn’t think she was going to, thought she was going to pretend to be oblivious to his presence. But as he contemplated doing something stupid to get her attention, she met his gaze with her own unflinching stare. For one long, indefinable second, it was as if they were back in high school, when it had been only the two of them no matter how many other people were in the room.

He heard her catch her breath, felt his own hitch in his chest. His hand reached out to her of its own volition and it took every ounce of self-control he had not to trace the familiar dusting of freckles on her cheeks, as if nine years and countless arguments didn’t lay between them.

He started to say something, stopped. Tried again, stopped again. Then the moment was gone, her attention diverted by a young voice asking, “Mom, can I get my milkshake now? I ate all my green beans.”

Her expression appeared stricken before she turned her attention to her son. For a second Logan couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Then he looked toward the boy sitting across from her, his black curls gleaming under the restaurant’s warm, yellow lights, and Logan’s entire world caved in.

He felt his jaw slacken and his eyes widen as a thousand different questions exploded in his head. As he looked over Paige’s son, Logan told himself that it couldn’t be. That he had to be mistaken. That Paige wouldn’t have his child without telling him.

The words circled his brain, a particularly ineffectual mantra. Because even as he was talking to himself, even as he was trying to convince himself that he was wrong, that he was making a huge mistake, he knew he wasn’t. This child—this lively, eight-year-old boy with the silver eyes and small birthmark on his right cheek—was his son and he didn’t even know the kid’s name.

The realization was a blow that nearly brought him to his knees. Shock and sorrow warred within him, followed by the beginnings of a rage so powerful it made him shake.

His child had existed in the world for eight years and he hadn’t known.

His child had grown and laughed, hurt and played, for eight years and he hadn’t known.

His child had—

“Hello, Logan.”

Screw pleasantries. There was only one thing he wanted from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Paige raised one blond eyebrow, smiled serenely, coolly as if the same moments that had just blown Logan’s world to hell and back had barely affected her.

“I did tell you. You chose not to believe me.”

That was it. No explanation, no plea for forgiveness, no acknowledgment of guilt. A few simple words that did nothing to lower his blood pressure, and nothing to set this situation to rights.

“You know that’s a bunch of bull—”

“No milkshake today,” she announced to her son, to their son.

As much as Logan resented her interruption, the still-functioning part of his brain appreciated it. This was not the place—in full view of the curious patrons, of his date…of their son—to give vent to the rage boiling inside him.

“We’ll get one next time,” she continued, speaking to their boy. “We need to get back soon or Aunt Penny’s going to send the cavalry after us.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “There’s no cavalry anymore, Mom. Now the army uses tanks.” He turned to Logan. “Who are you?”

Logan had no idea where to begin to answer that, so he kept quiet. Let Paige field the question.

“He’s just someone I used to know. Back when I was in high school.” She reached for her purse. “And the fact that there’s no cavalry anymore is an even better reason for us to head home. Can you imagine a tank rolling down Main Street?”

“That’d be cool! Do you think it would point its big gun at the diner?”

“I can only hope.” With that cryptic comment, Paige stood, dropped some money on the table then herded her child toward the door.

Damn it, the child was his. Not only hers, his, too. And he had no clue what to call him. “What’s his name?” Logan demanded, loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear. Not that he cared. Worrying about what others thought seemed worse than stupid when he was watching his child walking away from him without a backward glance.

She turned then, and it was the first hint he had she might be experiencing the same anger he was. “None of your damn business.”

Then she was gone, leaving behind a silence so complete that the slamming of the door echoed like a gunshot.

PAIGE COULD BARELY CONTROL the fury as she headed toward her car.

How dare Logan try to embarrass her in public?

How dare he accuse her of not telling him about Luke when she had begged him to believe that she was carrying his child?

How dare he pick this fight in front of Luke?

If she had ever needed more proof of what an abysmal father he would make, she’d gotten it. He hadn’t cared about Luke’s feelings, hadn’t cared about anything but his own righteous outrage. Bastard. The next time he came around—if there was a next time—she would run him off with a baseball bat if she had to, small-town cop or not. No way was that son of a bitch getting anywhere near her son. Not now. Not after all this time. She’d see him in hell first.

“Mom, slow down!”

She’d been so locked in her thoughts she hadn’t noticed Luke scrambling along beside her, his short legs working overtime in an effort to keep up.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.” She stopped abruptly, tapped Luke on the nose. “I forget sometimes that your legs aren’t as long as mine.”

“Why are you so mad? Is it because of that guy?” he asked as they resumed walking, though at a much more sedate rate.

“I’m not angry. I just didn’t realize how late it had gotten. The delivery men are going to be at Aunt Penny’s any minute and I need to be there to tell them where to put the supplies. If I’m not, she’ll end up letting them put the stuff anywhere and it will be a disaster.” She paused, ruffled his hair. “Unless you want to help me haul everything upstairs to all the bedrooms?”

“Yeah, right. You nearly killed me the last time we did that.”

“Exactly.”

They lapsed into silence, but Paige didn’t delude herself into thinking that Luke was going to buy her answer about Logan for long.

Sure enough, as she hit the button to unlock the car doors Luke ambushed her. “Was that man my dad?”

She stared at him, mouth open, as her brain scrambled for an answer. She didn’t want to lie to him, knew if she did it would turn around and bite her in the ass. After all, eventually she’d have to admit to Luke that, yes, Logan was his father.

But how could she do that now? How could she blurt it out in the middle of the street as though it was no big deal? Luke might be advanced for his age, but he was still an eight-year-old boy. How much of what had happened between her and Logan could she expect him to understand?

She closed her eyes, prayed for divine intervention. Nothing. Seemed that truth was her only option. “Yes. That was the man who fathered you.”

Luke nodded, as though he’d been certain of it all along. Knowing him, he probably had been. “Why did he say you never told him about me?”

Because he’s a lying, deceitful, distrustful bastard who wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him over the head. The words were on the tip of her tongue and she had to make a conscious effort to bite them back. Jeez, and she’d thought she was over Logan’s betrayal? Obviously, denial wasn’t only a river in Egypt. It was alive and well in Prospect, Oregon, as well.

She tilted his chin up so that Luke was looking directly into her eyes. She didn’t want there to be a mistake about this, didn’t want him to think for one second that she resented him because of his father’s attitude toward her.

“I’m not sure why he said that. I suppose because things between us weren’t particularly good when we broke up and he didn’t want to believe that you were his.”

“Why not?”

Because he’s a lying, deceitful, distrustful bastard who… “I don’t know, sweetie. I spent a lot of nights staring at the ceiling trying to answer that same question myself. But you know what?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

“That’s what you were going to say. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ And you’re right. It doesn’t. We’ve done great without him so far, so who cares whether he wanted me or not?” He gave her a small smile right before he slipped into the car and closed the door gently behind him.

That action more than anything—more than the too quietly spoken, the too mature words, more than the pain in the smile—convinced her that her son missed having a father far more than she had ever known. Luke, so exuberant and full of life, only closed doors softly when he was badly hurt. Normally she had to remind him at least four or five times a day not to slam the door so hard.

They’d talked about his father through the years—of course they had. She didn’t normally bring him up, but whenever Luke had asked about Logan she’d tried to be as honest as she could, without airing all of the difficulties and arguments they’d had after she had found out she was pregnant.

It had seemed to be enough for Luke, the knowledge that she loved him more than anything or anyone else on earth. She’d done everything in her power to make up for the fact that he didn’t have a father, and she’d always thought she’d done a pretty good job of it. Luke hadn’t even known he was missing a dad until he’d gone to kindergarten and figured out that almost all of his classmates had two parents, even if not all of them lived together.

They’d talked about it then, and numerous times since, but obviously she’d missed something. Sometime between kindergarten and third grade he’d decided she wasn’t enough.

The knowledge hurt, even as she told herself she was being ridiculous. He was a boy—of course he’d missed having a father around. She’d expected that.

What she hadn’t expected was for Luke to try to keep his feelings from her, to try to protect her from his pain when it was her job to protect him.

So how was she going to fix things? She walked around to her side of the car. How was she going to make things better for Luke when he was saddled with such a no-good jerk for a dad?

Part of her wanted to blame the town, wanted to blame Penny and her stupid bed-and-breakfast, for dragging them back here. They’d been doing okay in L.A. Better than okay. They’d been doing great. They had their groove, their routine, and it had worked for them.

Coming here had disrupted all that. It had hit her hard and had obviously had the same kind of effect on Luke, though he hadn’t told her about it. But it had been stupid to think that it would all work out. That her smart, precocious child wouldn’t figure out that in returning to her hometown, she was putting him—for the first time in his life—in close proximity to the man who had fathered him.

What had she thought? That if Logan saw them on the street he wouldn’t make the connection? Or that if he did, he wouldn’t care? After all, he hadn’t tried to contact her once after she’d left town, hadn’t so much as asked Penny where she’d gone. She knew that, because she’d asked her sister about him every time they’d spoken. Penny’s answer had always been the same—Logan acted as if she didn’t exist.

He’d cut her—and their child—out of his life so completely nine years ago that it was hard to imagine that he would suddenly have questions about that child. About her child.

Obviously, she’d been an idiot. Sighing, she opened the car door. It wasn’t the first time she’d been stupid and it wouldn’t be the last. But she was horribly sorry that her son had been caught in the middle of the whole, dirty affair.

She was about to slide into the car when Logan caught up to her.

“You think you can walk away from me like that?” he demanded, his voice low and furious. Despite herself, the tone sent shivers down her spine as it reminded her of all the fights they’d had when they’d been together. And all the making up they’d done when they’d gotten over the anger. “We haven’t settled anything yet.”

It was almost a whisper and her stomach tightened in response. Logan was one of the few people she knew whose voice actually got quieter the angrier he got. If he was yelling or cursing, it was no big deal. But the second his voice became deadly calm, she’d know she was in for it.

The day he’d kicked her out of his life, she’d had to strain to hear him.

This time she wasn’t a stupid seventeen-year-old girl who worshipped the town’s golden boy. This time she was a grown woman who was more than capable of holding her own against him, or anyone. She glanced into the car, caught a glimpse of Luke’s rapt face, and knew that even though she could, she still wasn’t going to take Logan on. Not here and not now, where her son could piece together how angry she was at his father.

“What I think is that now is not the time to deal with this. Luke is watching and the last thing he needs is to see the two of us fighting.”

“What he needs is—”

Paige could tell it was taking every ounce of willpower Logan had not to continue with what he was saying. But he bit it back, bit back all the accusations she could tell he wanted to level at her. She could see them in the darkest depths of his silver eyes, see them in his tense jaw and shoulders, in his fists.

Slowly, very slowly, his hands and jaw relaxed. Then he blew out a long breath and said, “We need to talk.”

She wanted to disagree on general principle, to tell him that there was nothing she wanted to talk to him about. But another look at her son changed her mind. Luke’s fascination with Logan was hard to miss.

Swallowing the bitterness that welled inside of her, she answered. “Yeah. I guess we do.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. In a few days—”

“A few days isn’t acceptable. I want to talk to you today.”

“Yeah, well, I gave up worrying about what you wanted a long time ago, Logan. I’m not here to see you. I’m here to help my sister. So if you want to talk to me, you’re going to have to work around my schedule.”

“Your schedule? You have my kid and you have the nerve to talk to me about schedules?”

A million responses came to her—none of which were fit for polite company but all of which she wanted to say. “How about tomorrow afternoon?”

“I want to talk to you today.” He ground out the words in a voice so harsh it hurt her ears. And still she wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t give in.

Her son was too important for her to roll over and play dead. And if his father thought differently, then he was in for a rude awakening. She’d never been one for power struggles, but on this front, she was digging in. There was no way he was going to move her.

“I want a lot of things. I always have. But part of growing up is realizing that you can’t always have what you want. Isn’t that what our mothers always used to tell us?”

For a second she thought Logan was going to lose the stranglehold he had on control and she regretted taunting him. Not because she was afraid of him—the Logan she knew would never hurt her physically and she’d kick his ass if he tried—but because Luke was watching. He didn’t know what they were saying, which probably only made the tension between them look scarier.

Sure enough, his door cracked open a little. “Mommy. Are you okay?”

He never called her Mommy anymore, and she saw the second his words registered on Logan, the second the sheriff realized his son was afraid of what he would do to his mother. She watched as he forcibly made himself relax.

“I’m fine, sweetie. I’ll be ready to go in a second.”

“What time tomorrow afternoon?” Logan demanded.

She knew it cost him a lot to ask her that, to give in without a fight simply because it would be easier for Luke. And she gave Logan credit for it, though it was hard. She’d spent so long loving him and wishing he’d call, so long hating him because he hadn’t, that it was almost impossible to give him even the slightest benefit of the doubt now. Especially when he was still as arrogant and gorgeous and out of line as he’d always been.

But she would. For her son’s sake, she would give Logan a chance and pray to God that she wasn’t making a mistake. “Why don’t you come by Penny’s house tonight, after ten? Luke usually goes to sleep around nine-thirty. We can talk then.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you at ten.”

“Okay.”

There was nothing left to say, and yet neither one of them made a move to leave. Instead they stood there looking at each other, the past yawning like a chasm between them, until Luke’s door opened one more time.

“Mom?”

“I’m coming, Luke. We’re done here.”

Logan nodded, and left without another word. As she watched him walk away, Paige prayed again that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life. That she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of Luke’s life.

CHAPTER THREE

“HOW WAS TOWN?” PENNY ASKED as Luke and Paige lugged their grocery bags into the house almost an hour later.

“Pretty damn awful.” Paige blew a stray hair out of her face. “I swear, I don’t know how you can stand to live here. Nothing changes.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know.” Penny relieved her of a few of the bags.

“Easy for you to say. They don’t look at you like you should come with a warning label—and a decontamination chamber—attached. I don’t understand why you want to—” She broke off, refusing to ruin her time with Penny by bringing up an argument that dated to when they were kids. If they were going to fix everything that needed fixing—Penny’s seaside house, her self-esteem after her boyfriend dumped her with this monstrosity, their sibling relationship, which hadn’t been the same since Paige had left town nine years before—she needed to tread carefully.

“I stay here because this is home to me. I like it here,” Penny blithely answered the unfinished question. “I know Prospect wasn’t good for you, know you’ve done amazing things since you left. But this is the only place I’ve ever wanted to live. When I moved away, I missed it.”

Paige’s nod was stilted, but she was saved from responding when Luke found the treasure he’d been searching through the bags for. “Look, Aunt Penny. Mom bought me a totally cool comic book. Do you want to see it?”

“Of course I do. Maybe you could read it to me while I put these groceries away.” She reached into a bag and pulled out a jar of pickles.

“And we ran into my dad in town. He was dressed in a policeman’s uniform and he seemed really mad at Mom.”

The jar of pickles slipped from her sister’s hand and shattered as it hit the kitchen’s hardwood floor.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Paige said, tongue firmly in cheek. “I’ll put the groceries away.”

“You saw Logan and that’s all you have to say?”

Shooting a warning look from her sister to her son, Paige nodded. “It’s not quite as eloquent as dropping a jar of pickles, I know, but I do what I can.”

“Right. Of course.” Penny sounded as though she was being strangled, but she didn’t say anything else as she started cleaning up the mess.

“Do you know my dad, Aunt Penny?”

She succumbed to a major coughing fit. When she finally recovered, she said, “Um, I guess. A little bit. Why?”

“Because I don’t think I like him. He was mean to Mom. On the way home, she said it was because he was surprised to see me, but I don’t know. So I thought, if you knew him, you could tell me if you thought he was as bad as he seemed today.” Luke said the last words in a rush, his breath running out from trying to say everything in one fell swoop. She could see the hope shining in his eyes, along with the fear and prayed that Penny could as well.

Tenderness for her son welled up inside Paige all over again, even as she felt torn apart by the fact that she was going to have to see Logan in a few hours. Luke was so sweet and he wanted this so badly, that she wanted to want it, too. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t—not when giving him his father meant allowing Logan in her life again.

He’d done so much damage the first time around it had taken her years to stop reeling.

“I don’t think your dad is awful, Luke,” Penny finally said after an awkward silence. “I’m sure he wasn’t trying to be mean to your mom. He was probably shocked to see you. He didn’t know you were coming.”

“He says he didn’t know about me at all.”

Penny’s eyes darkened to forest green. “Well, then, he must have been confused.”

“That’s what Mom says.”

“You should listen to your mother. She knows a lot more than your father does.”

“Penny!” Paige frowned at her sister.

“Well, you do. Men are—”

“I don’t really think Luke is up for a diatribe against the male species at the moment, sis, but thanks all the same.”

“And yet I’m so clearly in the mood to have one.” But she turned to Luke and forced a smile onto her face. And if more teeth showed than Paige was comfortable with, she figured she couldn’t really complain. Especially not when Penny changed the subject by asking, “What else happened in town today?”

“Nothing much.”

Luke became studiously interested in his comic book and Paige snorted. “If by nothing much you mean I ran through Mandala’s Groceries like a crazy woman, than no, nothing much happened, Penny.”

“Ran through Mandala’s? What happened?”

Paige told her, and though she gave Luke a number of stern looks as she did, she couldn’t help grinning when he interrupted several times to give Penny his point of view.

As he talked, Paige shook her head repeatedly—though she didn’t know if it was with pride or annoyance. Or both. The kid had a future as a politician or an advertising exec. His gift of spin was truly awe-inspiring.

When the two of them had finished telling the story, Penny gave her nephew an admonishing look. “I think you owe your mom a week’s worth of chores without complaint.”

“But—”

Penny raised one dark eyebrow and Luke subsided. They hadn’t been here long enough for him to get used to Penny yet. And with his new iPod burning a hole in his pocket, he jumped every time she told him to. A habit that was not lost on his aunt.

“In fact,” she said, with a wink towards Paige, “why don’t you start by going upstairs and finishing unpacking all of your toys? I hauled a bookshelf in there earlier, so you can spread them out. And I even dug up a TV, so you can move your Wii up there instead of down here.”

“Excellent!” Luke nearly flew out of the room on his way upstairs. “I just got this cool new baseball game I want to try out.”

“Luke! Aren’t you forgetting—”

“Thanks, Aunt Penny.” His voice drifted down the stairs.

Penny laughed. “I don’t know how you keep up with that kid. He’s a natural born charmer.”

“Tell me about it. He’s had every single one of his teachers wrapped around his little finger from the get-go, not to mention all the neighbors. They’re convinced the sun rises and sets on his shoulders.”

“Must make it hard to discipline him.”

“You have no idea. No matter how in the right I am, I always end up looking like the bad guy. It drives me nuts.”

“It always did.”

Paige shot her a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, he’s like his father, Paige. Everything about him—from his looks to the sparkle in his eyes—screams Logan. No wonder the man had a fit when he saw him today.”

Paige didn’t answer until she heard the door to the room she and Luke were sharing firmly shut. Then she turned on her sister. “He doesn’t have any reason to throw a fit. He’s the one who dumped me when I told him I was pregnant. He’s the one who accused me of sleeping with half the football team. I told him Luke was his and he didn’t believe me.”

“A point I think you should bring up to him when you see him again.” Penny paused. “I assume you will be seeing him again?”

“He’s coming here later tonight, after Luke is in bed.”

Her sister cursed. “That was quick.”

“Tell me about it. I really thought I’d have a little more time before I had to deal with this.”

“Me, too.” She paused. “So what are you going to say to him?”

“That he hasn’t been around for the first eight years of Luke’s life and there’s no reason he needs to be around for the next ten years of it. Luke and I are doing fine without him.”

“Yeah? And do you think he’s going to buy that?”

“Of course he’s going to buy it. He couldn’t wait to be rid of the responsibility when I was pregnant.” Her voice cracked on the last word so Paige focused on emptying the bags in an effort to keep herself from freaking out. “No, Penny, I don’t think he’s going to be reasonable about this. You should have seen him in the diner. I thought he was going to blow a gasket.”

“Is that where you guys met up? At Pros pector’s?”

“Naturally. Hasn’t my dirty laundry always been aired in front of half the town?” She proceeded to tell Penny the whole sordid story. Her sister didn’t say anything through most of it, just made sympathetic noises.

When she was done, Penny crossed the kitchen and pulled her into a huge hug. “I’m sorry you’ve got to deal with this guy again, Paige. He’s a total jerk.”

“Tell me about it. Nothing like paying for the mistakes of your youth forever, huh?”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to be young to be stupid,” Penny said with a grimace.

Paige knew better than to express sympathy for Penny’s current male-induced crisis—that was the quickest way to get her to shut down.

With a sigh, Paige rested her head on her sister’s shoulder and said, “What am I going to do?”

“Whatever you want to do.”

“I wish. If that was the case, I wouldn’t let Logan near my kid.”

“Then don’t. You don’t have to explain anything to that man. What he did to you is unforgivable and you don’t owe him a damn thing.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Of course I do. But it’s not him I’m worried about. It’s Luke. And I do owe him the chance to get to know his father, if that’s what he wants.”

“He’s eight. He doesn’t know what he wants. If he knew Logan the way we do, he wouldn’t be so quick to imagine how great his life would be with him.”

“It’s not that simple. Now that Logan knows about him, what am I supposed to do if he decides he wants to see Luke?”

“Tell him to buzz off. He had his chance nine years ago and if he suddenly decides that he regrets the choices he made, well, that’s tough for him. Some mistakes can’t be undone.”

Paige nodded her agreement, but as she put the milk and eggs into the fridge, she couldn’t help wondering if thinking that was unrealistic. Sure, she didn’t think that Logan had any claim to Luke. They’d broken up nine years ago, with Logan telling her he wanted nothing to do with her or her baby. Why should he get to change his mind at this late date?

But as the sounds of Luke’s video game console buzzed overhead, she felt a niggle of doubt. The Logan she’d known had been a cold bastard when it came to getting what he wanted—even at eighteen—but the man she’d met today had seemed downright frigid. If he wanted a part in Luke’s life, she wasn’t sure how she was going to stop him. Especially if he filed for custody here, in this town where everyone hated her. What if he actually succeeded in convincing a judge to take Luke away from her? She’d die. She would just—

Paige slammed a door on her thoughts, refusing to let them freak her out any more than she already was. If there was one thing her twenty-six years had taught her, it was that life would happen the way it was going to happen, no matter how much she worried about it. Besides, she had a lot better things to think about than the arrogant, devious ways of Logan Powell.

Even if she couldn’t remember what any of those things were right now.

“He can’t hurt you, you know,” Penny said. “You won’t let him. I won’t let him. Not ever again.”

Warmth filled Paige. “You know, for a bratty little sister, you’re pretty awesome.”

“For an obnoxious, know-it-all older sister you’re not so bad yourself.” Penny paused, and Paige desperately hoped for a shift in the conversation. But Penny didn’t give it to her. “But seriously, Paige, how are we going to handle this?”

“We? It’s my problem, Penny.”

“The only reason you came back here is because I totally screwed my life up. I’d say that makes it our problem.” She gestured to the paint cans and building supplies that filled up the living room. “I don’t know how I’d get this place together without your help.”

And there it was, the reason Paige had returned to Prospect even though it was the last place on the planet she wanted to be. She’d skipped out of town nine years ago, pregnant and devastated. But she’d left Penny alone with their parents, and though her mom and dad treated her sister a lot better than they’d ever treated her, it still hadn’t been a cakewalk.

But Paige hadn’t cared, hadn’t let herself care. She couldn’t if she wanted to survive. So she’d cut ties with her sister completely. And though Penny had reached out to her a year ago, trying to reestablish those ties, it had been slow going. At least until her fiancé had run away from her and this monstrosity of a house, leaving Penny almost broke and in a hell of a bind.

There had been no way Paige could leave her to muddle through on her own. Not when she was between set decorating jobs. She’d built in two weeks between movies to use as a vacation, but helping her sister was going to be so much more satisfying. And if she’d had to juggle things around and work like mad in order to make that two-week break a two-month break, well, then no one else had to know that.

“Luckily, you won’t have to find out.”

“But—and don’t take this the wrong way as you know I love that you’re here—but maybe you should go back to L.A. Get Luke away from Logan as fast as possible.”

The same idea had occurred to her, oh, about every fifteen seconds since Logan had chased her down the street. “I’m afraid he’d follow me. He seems really determined to see Luke.”

Penny snorted. “Yeah, nine years too late. But even if he follows you, won’t that give you home court advantage. Literally? He’s the sheriff here and one of the town’s golden boys. Wouldn’t it be better to fight this battle in a Los Angeles court?”

“I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

“But if it does?”

“If it does, then yes. L.A. would probably be a better venue for it.”

“Then don’t feel the need to stick around here.”

“Penny—”

“No, I mean it. If it’s best for you and Luke, I want you to go back to California. As soon as possible.”

The thought had appeal. Definite appeal. And yet— “I don’t know if that’s going to work. It might already be too late.”

“How can it be too late? You just saw the man an hour ago.”

Penny was right, Paige knew she was. But the doubts at the base of her spine told her she was already in too deep. That if she ran now, it would destroy any chance she had of dealing with Logan in a mature, low-key manner. “It just is. Trust me.” She reached for a box of cereal. “Where do you want me to put this?”

“In my hand.” Penny all but ripped it away from her and shooed her toward the back door. “Why don’t you get out of here? You’ve had a rough day. I insist you relax for a few minutes while I finish putting this stuff away.”

“I don’t want to go relax. I’m so wound up that I might be able to orbit the planet under my own power.”

“All the more reason to get out of here. A walk on the beach will help you clear your head. Then we can make dinner together, before I challenge you to a virtual tennis match.”

This time Paige’s laugh was real. “We’ve been here less than two days and you’re already as addicted to that Wii as Luke is.”

“That’s because it’s all kinds of awesome. Now go.”

Paige headed out the door, but stopped on the threshold. “You know, Mike was a fool.”

“You won’t get an argument from me. Waiting until I sank all my money into this place to make our dream come true before taking off. He deserves whatever bad karma he gets—and I hope it’s a boatload. But I refuse to spend any more time being miserable over his disappearance. Not when it brought you back to me.”

Unsure of how to deal with the naked emotion in her sister’s eyes—honest, adult communication had never been one of her strong suits—Paige cleared her throat. “Maybe I will go for that walk after all.”

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.

Sinking onto the swing across from her, he didn’t say anything at first. Simply looked at her. Noted all the changes and all the things that had stayed the same through the years. Suddenly he couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” Her voice was husky, sweet, and it sent shivers up his spine even as he told himself how stupid he was to respond to her. She’d lied to him, had—

“No, thanks. I’m driving.”

“That’s right. You’re a cop now. A law-abiding citizen. I’m having a hard time reconciling the new you with the guy I used to know.”

“I was always a law-abiding citizen. I only liked to pretend otherwise.”

“I remember.” She took a sip of her wine.

“You look good,” he said.

“L.A. agrees with me. Certainly more than Prospect ever did.”

Memories stretched between them, hanging on the silence like apples on a tree, ripe for the picking. He chose to ignore them, to walk past as though he wasn’t suddenly starving for a taste of them. Of her.

“His name’s Luke,” she said quietly, when the silence got to be too much for both of them. “It’s short for Lucas.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“I think so. It was my neighbor’s, when I first moved to L.A. He helped me get settled, learn my way around. He even drove me to the hospital and waited while Luke was born. I don’t know what I would have done without him.”

The anger surged, burning so hotly and brightly that he couldn’t think past it. “You could have come to me. You could have told me you were pregnant with our child. Then I would have been the one to be there, to help you.”

“Is that how you remember it?” she asked offhandedly, as if his answer meant nothing to her.

“That’s how it would have been. I would have been with you every step of the way—”

“Is that so? Because the way I remember it is, I told you I was pregnant with your child and you called me a whore—right before you tossed me out of your house.”

“You were sleeping with my best friend, with half the guys on the football team. How the hell was I supposed to believe the kid you were carrying was mine?”

“I wasn’t sleeping with half the football team. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone but you. Only you didn’t want to believe that. Any more than you wanted to accept that you’d gotten me pregnant.

“Accepting responsibility for that act would have meant you couldn’t live the perfect life mapped out for you. The one that mommy and daddy wanted you to live. The one that didn’t include the slutty girl from the wrong side of the river.”

She was breathing hard by the time she finished, her chest rising and falling with each harsh inhalation. He probably shouldn’t be cheered by that fact, but it made him feel better to know that she wasn’t nearly as calm about this whole thing as she pretended to be.

He didn’t answer for a minute, instead turning to stare into the inky blackness that surrounded the house. Looking at her brought back too many memories, including ones of how badly he’d treated her nine years before.

But he wasn’t ready to deal with those memories yet—or the words she had just flung at him. Didn’t know if he’d ever be ready now that he knew she’d kept his child from him. How easy would it have been for her to return after his son was born and force him to see her and their child? No, he wasn’t going to let her turn this around. She could have played things way differently all those years ago.

“Look,” he said, “I know your past is something you’re ashamed of, but you can’t rewrite history to—”

She stood. “Get out of here.”

“What?” he asked, rising slowly so that they were face to face. Or, in this case, face to chest, since he stood about six inches taller than she did.

“You heard me. If you think you’re going to come here and insult me after all these years, then you’re crazy. I’m not that girl anymore, the one who was so used to being a whipping post that she took insults from everyone—including the guy who was supposed to love her. So, leave. You’re not welcome here.”

Though he knew there was an important message in her words, he could only handle so much at one time and his brain focused on the fact that she was kicking him out, denying him access to his son.

“You can’t do this. I have rights when it comes to my son.”

“You gave up those rights the day you threw me out on my ass and told me never to come back. It was the same day you told me you’d never give my bastard your name and that I should head back to the freak show because you were done slumming.”

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