Читать книгу Hometown Honey - Kara Lennox, Kara Lennox - Страница 12

Luke didn’t like bringing up his past. In all the time he’d known Cindy, even when they’d been in love and inseparable, he’d revealed little about his life before arriving in Cottonwood at age fourteen. Whenever she’d prompted him, he’d found a way to avoid giving her any real information.

As far as Cindy knew, Luke’s life had begun at age fourteen when he’d landed with Polly Ferguson, the only foster parent who’d known how to handle him—the only one he’d ever stayed with longer than six months. He considered her his real mother now, and his foster brother, Mike Baskin, was as close as any flesh-and-blood sibling.

So, no, he didn’t like dredging up the more painful memories. But that had seemed the only way to shake Cindy out of her complacency. And it had. She’d agreed to move into his carriage house, though he could tell it had galled her to accept what she saw as charity. But better that than losing her son, even temporarily.

He’d needed to take care of some sheriffing business, but he returned to the marina later that afternoon with a horse trailer. He and Cindy loaded up her meager belongings in about five minutes.

“Adam will need a crib,” she said, breaking a long silence. “Do you think that awful Ed LaRue will let me get the old one from my—from his house?”

“He put all your furniture out in the street,” Luke said. “I drove by your place earlier, just to check on things.”

“I guess I don’t blame him. He was probably madder than a cornered javelina hog to find all that junk I left behind.” She actually grinned at the thought. “I probably should have put it in storage or something,” she admitted. “It was just garage-sale stuff, nothing good, but I might need it.”

“Let’s go see what’s there.” Luke was encouraged to hear Cindy actually thinking ahead more than ten minutes. She’d always been a girl with plans—big plans. To see her in survival mode, refusing to think about tomorrow, much less next month or next year, was painful.

Luke was relieved to see Cindy’s furniture still lined up at the edge of her yard—Ed’s yard—with a big sign stuck to her dining room table that said Free Stuff.

“I don’t see the crib,” Cindy said. “Probably somebody took it already. And my bed isn’t here, either. Damn, what was I thinking?”

“Nobody really expected you to be thinking clearly after what happened to you. It’s okay. I bet Polly has an extra crib. Which of this stuff do you want?”

“All of it,” she said decisively, rolling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “Whatever I can’t use, I’ll sell.”

“That’s the spirit.” It was wonderful to hear that determination in her voice and see a sparkle in her eye. They loaded up a table and chairs, some bookshelves, a sofa, nightstands, a couple of lamps and pictures and a TV cabinet.

“I guess the TV and VCR are gone,” she said wistfully as they pushed and shoved the furniture so it would all fit. “What was I thinking?”

“Stop questioning yourself so much, honey.” The endearment slipped out, and Luke resisted slapping his hand over his mouth. Her eyes flashed at him, but that was all. “Cut yourself some slack, okay? Focus on the future.”

“Yeah, the future,” she murmured.

She was going to have to make some major readjustments in her thinking. Nowhere in her wildest imaginings had she pictured herself broke and without a source of income. She’d always worked—always. And though she’d never been exactly wealthy, she’d never wanted for anything basic, even those years she’d lived in a truck. Of course, she hadn’t had a baby in tow.

“So, do you have any plans?” Luke asked, forcing the question to sound casual.

“I haven’t thought much about it,” she admitted as he closed the tailgate on the trailer. They got back into his Blazer. Adam was snoozing in his car seat in back, and not even the slam of the tailgate had awakened him.

He would be such a great traveling companion, she thought for the umpteenth time. And dammit, she wasn’t giving up on the idea of traveling with him. She just had to figure out how. “I guess I’ll have to get a job.”

“In a restaurant?”

“Maybe, though I can’t think of any place around here that’s looking for help.”

“What else are you qualified to do?”

“Drive. But I can’t see me driving without Jim. And without my own rig…” She stopped there, thinking about Jim’s truck, how he’d fixed it up so fine and painted his own logo on the sides. He’d had dreams of owning his own fleet of trucks. It would have happened, too. He’d have made it happen.

She swallowed back tears. Oh, God, she couldn’t start crying again. When she started, she had a hard time stopping. And she didn’t want Luke to see her weeping. He must already think she was a candidate for a straitjacket.

“Trucking isn’t a safe job for a woman alone, much less with a child,” Luke commented as he pulled his Blazer into the street, the trailer rattling behind them.

“No,” she agreed, grateful he’d eased over the awkward moment. If he’d offered sympathy, she’d have lost it.

“So the restaurant industry is your best bet. But you should be more ambitious. You’ve got management experience now—managing a staff, keeping the books…”

“Who in their right mind would trust me with money?” She sighed. “Anyway, that sort of job would require me to put together a résumé and go through interviews. I’d rather just walk in someplace, put on an apron and wait tables.” She knew she sounded pathetically unambitious.

Luke didn’t say anything else about her future. He was probably frustrated with her attitude, and she couldn’t blame him. She just wasn’t herself.

He pulled in the driveway of his house—a big, old, prairie-style frame home with a front porch that spanned its entire width.

“This house is bigger than I remembered,” she said idly. “I thought you’d have filled it full of kids by now.”

“What woman would have me?” he quipped, but his smile seemed slightly forced. He pulled all the way around to the back, where there was a detached garage—three narrow stalls with a second story above them. “I haven’t been inside the carriage house in a long time. Last time I checked, it was okay, though.”

And what if it isn’t now? Cindy wondered.

They parked and climbed out. Adam was awake now, looking around curiously. Odd that he’d slept through the slamming trailer door, but pulling quietly into a driveway had awakened him. Cindy had long suspected he was extremely sensitive to her moods. Now he sensed her anxiety about her new temporary home.

The baby held his arms toward Cindy. “Ma-ma-ma-ma.”

She grinned. “Luke, did you hear that? He said mama.”

“Is that the first time?” Luke seemed to share her wonder. He came around to her side of the car and peered in at Adam when she opened the back door.

“He’s been vocalizing for a while now, and sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s actually saying something or just babbling.” She unbuckled the various straps on the car seat and extracted Adam. “But that was pretty clear. He was looking at me and reaching for me and saying mama.” She hugged her son. “You’re such a smart boy, aren’t you, Adam.” Those pesky tears returned to her eyes, but these weren’t tears of despair. She was suddenly awash in sentimentality. And there was Luke, standing too close, almost touching, and she felt as if she ought to be resentful toward him due to the simple fact that he wasn’t Jim, he wasn’t Adam’s father, and a boy’s father should be there when he speaks his first words.

But resentment was only a tiny part of what she felt. It was such a bittersweet moment, and mostly she was just glad that she’d been able to share it with someone. She’d borne so much all alone since Jim’s death. Adam had only been two months old. Jim had missed his first steps, his first tooth, the ear infection that had sent her flying to a Tyler hospital in a dead panic. Then her mother’s unexpected death.

No wonder she’d turned to Dex so easily. Finally there had been someone to lean on, someone to confide in and share the burden as well as the joys. She must have been an incredibly easy target.

All at once, she couldn’t keep the tears at bay and she sobbed.

“Cindy?”

She couldn’t bear the concern in Luke’s voice. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to put her arms around him and never let go. But then she’d be doing it again, falling all over the first man to show an interest in her, the first man to act as if he cared.

With Dex, all he’d really cared about was getting into her bed and her bank accounts. She knew Luke didn’t want to steal her money. But what did he want, really? And was she in any position to figure it out?

“I’m s-sorry.” She wiped her eyes, getting the tears under control before they could turn into a full-fledged crying jag. “Sometimes it just h-hits me.”

Thankfully Luke didn’t make a big deal of it. He grabbed a couple of tissues from a travel box he kept in his glove compartment and handed them to her. Then he busied himself with finding the key to the carriage house while she wiped her eyes and blew her nose while juggling Adam from hip to hip.

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s see this apartment.”

She walked up the stairs ahead of him, then stood aside on the landing so she could unlock the door, which led directly into the tiny kitchenette. They both entered, then recoiled from a nasty smell.

“Did something die in here?” Cindy asked, only half kidding.

“It’s been closed up for a long time,” Luke said. “Probably just needs a good cleaning and airing out.”

Cindy didn’t particularly look forward to that. She’d spent the last two days scrubbing down the boat to make it habitable. And it hadn’t smelled nearly this bad.

She moved on into the living room holding Adam tightly. She didn’t dare set him down in this nasty place. Luke, directly behind her, flipped on a light. Three huge, gray creatures jumped and hissed, then scuttled for cover beneath a reprobate sofa.

Cindy screamed and nearly ran over Luke as she tried to get as far away as possible from the critters. Adam started crying.

“Oh, my God,” she said from the relative safety of the kitchen. “What were those things?”

“Possums,” Luke said grimly. “Guess the carriage house wasn’t uninhabited, after all.” He laughed. “Those were some big ones, too. I think we scared them more than they scared us.”

“Speak for yourself. I’ll be waiting outside.”

She couldn’t get down the stairs fast enough. As she waited by the Blazer, calming Adam down, her terror receded. In its place a slow anger started to burn. She had a trailer full of stuff and nowhere to put it. She put Adam down on a small patch of grass. He liked grass, always had. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled slowly across it, stopping every second or so to pat the soft green blades with the palms of his hands, investigating the texture. He pressed his face into it.

Luke came down the stairs a couple of minutes later. “Well, I figured out how the possums got in. There’s a broken window in the bedroom. Also, there’s a pretty bad leak in the roof. That’s going to have to be fixed, and the carpeting pulled out.”

“So, in short, it’s not livable.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“And you’re just figuring this out now?” Whatever warmth she’d felt for him a few minutes earlier had dissipated like a morning fog.

“I guess I should have checked it out before—”

“Yeah, no kidding! The boat might not have been ideal, but at least it didn’t have disgusting creatures nesting in the furniture.” Other than a few spiders, but she’d dislodged them in short order.

“I’ll fix the damned place. You can bunk in my spare bedroom until I get the carriage house fixed up. Shouldn’t be more than a few days.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Luke looked surprised by her outburst.

“You knew all along the carriage house wasn’t livable,” she went on. “You just used that as an excuse to get us under your roof so you could…trap us.”

“Trap you?” he said incredulously.

“You think we’ll get so comfy in your big house that we won’t want to leave. And that will prove you’re right.”

“Right about what?”

“About how children should be raised. All along you’ve thought I was a bad mother for wanting to travel with Adam, take him away from Cottonwood. You’ve wanted to settle down with this white-picket-fence stuff since we were eighteen. Now you’ve got us—no place to go, no choice but to move in with you.”

Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to her. “I’m so stupid. It was you who made the complaint to Social Services, wasn’t it? And how convenient, that you just happened to be there when the social worker came to investigate.”

Luke’s face turned ruddy with anger. He folded his arms, as if to stop himself from throttling her. “How could you think I would do something like that?” he exploded. “And I have no hidden agenda here except to help you keep Adam. I’m sorry about the carriage house. If you don’t want to stay with me, fine. I’ll take you back to the boat and you can sink with it.”

Adam had pushed himself to his feet and was making tracks, heading for a row of bushes. Cindy caught him before he could disappear into the shrubs and never be seen again, gently swiveling him around. He toddled off in the opposite direction, seemingly unaware his path had been diverted.

What was she doing, attacking the only person in any position to help her? Beverly Hicks had been right—her damnable pride would defeat her if she let it.

She put a hand to her forehead. “God, I’m sorry, Luke. All right, I’ll move into your spare bedroom. But only temporarily, until I’m back on my feet.”

“I never intended for it to be a permanent situation.” His brief spate of temper dissipated immediately. “Come on, I’ll show you the room. I converted the attic into a suite. You’ll be on a completely different floor than me.”

The suite wasn’t just nice, it was dollhouse pretty, with shiny oak floors and pale yellow walls with white trim. There was one small bedroom, a larger, central room and a tiny, yellow-tiled bathroom tucked under the eaves.

“This is beautiful,” she said grudgingly. And in a flash, she realized what Luke had been thinking when he’d renovated his attic. He’d intended this area for a child, maybe two. The central room was a playroom. Her heart lurched slightly at the thought of Luke’s hopes for a family still unfulfilled after all these years.

Then she gave herself a mental slap. He was only twenty-eight. He had lots and lots of time to find that settling-down girl he’d always wanted. And it wasn’t as if he had to be alone. With his sexy good looks, he could have women lining up to marry him if he really tried.

She’d spent a lot of years feeling guilty because she hadn’t been the one. She wasn’t going to feel guilty about that anymore. She had enough to worry about.

LUKE HADN’T REALIZED HOW anxious he was about Cindy’s plans until she finally agreed to stay in his spare room. As soon as she said okay, his muscles relaxed and the tightness in his chest eased. They were going to be fine. Cindy and Adam had a safe haven, and there was no way Beverly Hicks would object to Adam’s housing.

He called his brother, Mike, who lived only about ten minutes away, and together they moved Cindy’s furniture into the attic suite while Cindy fed Adam. The pieces that didn’t fit, they stored in the garage.

Cindy didn’t take an active role in the arrangement of her new space. When Mike asked her where the table and chairs should go, she shrugged. “Any place it’ll fit, I guess.” She busied herself with more practical things, such as putting sheets on the twin bed and on the crib, which Polly had brought over.

Polly hadn’t stayed—she had five kids, her current batch of foster children, to fix dinner for. But she’d paused long enough to fuss over Adam and give Cindy a warm hug, drawing the younger woman against her ample bosom and patting her on the back with her large, bony, work-roughened hands.

No one could fail to feel better after a hug from Polly. Luke remembered the first time he’d felt it himself. Fourteen years old, kicked out of his last three foster homes, belligerent and secretly terrified. And there was big, soft Polly, with her unapologetically gray hair and her ever-present apron. She’d smelled like fresh-baked cookies. And though Luke had just cursed at her and told her to get the hell away from him, she’d forcibly wrapped her arms around him and whispered to him, “It’s all going to be different from now on.”

People had told him that before, but he’d never really believed it until Polly said it, her words so confident, no question in her voice or in her mind.

Luke had walked her out to her car. “Thanks, Polly. I knew you’d come through.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” She’d waved away his gratitude. “Luke, are you sure you know what you’re doing? I mean, I’ll always have a soft spot for Cindy. But she broke your heart last time you gave her a chance.”

“I’m not involved with her,” Luke had said quickly. “I’m just helping her out.”

Polly had raised her eyebrows in question. “That so? You don’t have some ulterior motive? Like proving how good a husband and provider you could be?”

“Aw, Polly, come on.” But that was exactly what Cindy had accused him of not two hours earlier.

“Well, just be careful. Call if you need anything. You know I’d be pleased to babysit little Adam anytime.”

Polly had driven off in her old rattletrap station wagon, and Luke had just stood in the driveway, staring down the street at nothing in particular, wondering if Cindy’s and Polly’s suspicions about him weren’t just a little bit true.

He really hadn’t realized how bad a condition the carriage house was in. And he certainly hadn’t been the one to call Social Services and report Cindy as a bad mother—he wasn’t that overtly devious. But maybe there was some part of him that cheered at the idea of Cindy and Adam living under his roof, the surrogate family he’d never had. Maybe in the back of his mind he did believe he could convince Cindy that she’d made a mistake not marrying him in the first place.

It had been a year since Jim’s death. And hadn’t Luke planned to reignite his and Cindy’s passion once that year had passed? Never mind that Marvin Carter had fouled up his plans for a while. That scumbag was gone now. If Luke lost his chance again, if some other opportunistic jerk swooped in and plucked up Cindy now, it wouldn’t be because Luke was sitting on his thumbs.

At the very least, he was obligated to protect her from con men and scam artists while she was in this vulnerable state. And what better way to protect her than to have her living under his roof? What unscrupulous guy would dare approach her while she was living with a deputy sheriff?

All these alien thoughts were a little frightening for Luke, who’d never thought of himself as devious. But the plan that was formulating now was definitely less than aboveboard. All was fair in love and war—right?

LATER THAT EVENING, CINDY was almost out of diapers for Adam. She checked her wallet—three dollars and twenty-eight cents. She had some cloth ones and rubber pants she could use in a pinch, but she’d gotten spoiled by the disposables, which honestly were as good as the TV commercials made them out to be. All at once, she was overwhelmed with unreasonable anger, and she finally knew who to aim it at. Not herself, for being naive. Certainly not Luke, whose only sin was trying to help. And not Jim or her mother, for dying and leaving her alone. The person who deserved her anger was Marvin Carter. Because of him, Adam would probably get diaper rash.