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“Hey, I’m sorry.” Luke rose, too. “I barged right in here, I was so happy to see Thalia again.” But he didn’t offer to leave, just looked expectantly at Thalia.
“I close at six,” Emily said. “If you’ll just hang around, we could have dinner or something. Call your mom. She’ll understand.”
Luke added hopefully, “That sounds good.”
Thalia wasn’t falling into that trap. Let the two of them go to dinner together. “I hate to beg off, but can we do it another night? Mom’s really expecting me.”
Emily pouted. “Oh, all right. But I don’t like it.”
“I’ll call tomorrow.” Thalia squeezed her friend’s hand and turned for the door. “Nice seeing you, Luke.”
“Really? Then you’ll be happy to learn I’m going home with you.”
She stopped so suddenly that he stepped on her heels. “What?”
“I’m going to follow you home in my car.” He looked quite pleased with himself.
She frowned. “I don’t recall inviting you.”
“Like I need an invitation?” he scoffed. “Your mom’s always glad to see me. Besides, her Border collie is under the weather. You can just consider it a house call.”
“Darn it, Luke.” She glared at him. “You’re crowding me.”
“Really?” His amber eyes widened with disbelief. “I’m just doing my job, Thalia. The health of your mom’s dog is important to me. But if you don’t want me following you…”
“I don’t.” Feeling guilty but refusing to yield, she met his gaze.
“Okay, then I’ll meet you there.” He dipped his chin to Emily. “Have a nice evening.” Turning, he walked away whistling.
Thalia stood there, listening to Emily’s giggle and feeling dumb as a rock.
2
SHEPHERD’S PASS HAD GROWN in the years Thalia had been away. Her mother’s home and property used to be at the edge of town, with nothing between it and the mountains. Now it was necessary to drive through an upscale planned community of new homes—Shangri-la, according to the signs—to even get there.
Nice homes, she thought, navigating slowly along curving landscaped streets. Decent-sized lots, too, at least by California standards, where a postage-stamp-sized property was often labeled an “estate.” Where were all these people coming from? Would life in this formerly slow paced community be forever altered?
Speaking of altered—
A car stood at the curb next to her mother’s driveway. Luke leaned out an open window of the red Jeep Cherokee to wave. Surely he didn’t intend to hang around and taunt her while she was home. If he did, she just might have to alter her plans and go back to California early, even if it meant ignoring her mother’s pleas.
She no longer wanted a thing from Luke Dalton, and most definitely not what she’d wanted before. She’d been young and foolish then. Now, she was…well, not old at twenty-seven but certainly seasoned. There was nothing left for him to teach her.
She shivered at the possibility she might be wrong.
Parking her mother’s old pickup truck in the driveway, she climbed out and waited for him to join her. No complications, she reminded herself. She was a serious person with a serious life and a serious plan for leading it. She was not interested in a quick tumble with every good-looking man she met—check that.
She might be interested; what woman in her right mind wouldn’t be? But she wouldn’t act on that interest, no way, no how. She was not a woman who’d consider a cheap affair, no matter how attractive—
Oh, my. Luke gave new meaning to the word attractive. Tall and lean and lithe, he strode toward her, the lowering sun striking blond sparks off his brown hair. When he grinned, even white teeth flashed.
“You waited for me,” he said.
She shook herself free of her imagination. “I didn’t. I—”
I—nothing; she had waited and he hadn’t even had to ask. Spinning around, she led the way up the steps of the big old Victorian house. Flinging open the door, she indicated with a wave that he should enter first.
You’d think a serious person like Thalia would have a serious mother. Instead, she had Lorraine, who now looked up from the free weights she was swinging with abandon, a broad smile of welcome on her crimson lips.
“YOU BROUGHT LUKE HOME with you,” Lorraine exclaimed with pleasure. “That’s wonderful!”
Luke didn’t think Thalia considered it all that wonderful. He looked from mother to daughter, trying to suppress the smile that tugged at his lips. Lorraine must have been a trial to Thalia her entire life, but he’d have given anything to have a mother with hair like Lucille Ball’s and a bawdy humor that made him grin just thinking about it.
At the moment, Lorraine was working with barbells. A black headband held back a tumble of red-gold curls and her ample figure was barely constrained by a black leotard and tights. Her cheeks glowed; she looked healthy and happy.
Thalia kissed her mother’s proffered cheek. “I didn’t bring Luke home, Mother, he brought himself.”
Lorraine put the barbells on the floor. “Regardless of how he got here, I’m glad to see him. I’ve got a cookie jar just stuffed full of those chocolate chip cookies he and John used to gobble up.” She turned toward the kitchen, waving them to follow. “Come along, kids. Mother Lorraine will spoil your suppers for you.”
As she’d been doing as long as Luke could remember. It used to piss his own mother off something awful when he’d pick at his food after a visit to the Myers house. Still would.
Thalia was dragging her feet. “I think I’ll pass on the cookies and go on upstairs,” she said. “It’s awfully close to dinnertime and—”
“Thalia Renee, you get yourself in this kitchen,” Lorraine said without slowing her pace. “This may be your supper, young lady.”
Trying not to grin too broadly, Luke pulled out a chair at the table in the middle of the big old-fashioned kitchen. Thalia and Lorraine couldn’t be more different and yet he liked them both. His mother had told him once that Thalia was more like her father, who had died young. Best buddy John, on the other hand, was a lot like his mother: funny and daring and ready for anything.
Lorraine plunked a dinner plate piled high with cookies on the table and went to get glasses, talking a mile a minute about everything from the weather to the stock market.
When she paused for breath, Luke said, “So what’s new with John?”
“He’s still in Chicago working for that Internet start-up company, still has the same wife and kid, still likes it. He’s going to try to get home while Thalia’s here but it’s iffy with his workload.”
Luke picked up a chocolate-studded round. “I’d sure like to see him one of these days.”
Thalia said, “Me, too. Fortunately, his company sends him to California now and then, so we get together there.”
“You like California, do you?” Luke pulled one of the three tall glasses of milk close enough so he could dunk his cookie. Biting into it, he closed his eyes in ecstasy. Lorraine was probably the best cookie baker in Shepherd’s Pass, with the possible exception of Emily. He couldn’t think of anything else Lorraine could cook worth diddly, but her cookies were first-rate.
He chewed blissfully for a moment, only belatedly realizing Thalia hadn’t answered his question. Opening his eyes, he saw her looking down at the cookie in her hands, her expression closed.
Before he could repeat his query, Lorraine spoke up.
“Of course, she doesn’t like California. What’s to like? All those people, all those cars, all those freeways, all that smog? She’s only living there because she’s stubborn.”
“Oh, Mother.” Thalia put down her cookie. “My life is there. I have an apartment, friends—”
“An ex-husband,” Lorraine informed Luke. “Sometimes I think she’s still carrying the torch for Don.”
“No way.” Thalia’s denial sounded heartfelt. “We tried and now it’s over. We’ve both moved on.”
“Better you should move back—back home to Colorado,” Lorraine said. “Like Luke did.” She swung her attention his way. “You’re glad to be back, right?”
“Of course, but I’m not glad to be living at home.” He grimaced. “Mom was dead set on it, and since Dad had only been gone a few months when I got here…” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but boy, have I lived to regret it. I’m planning to get my own place as soon as I have time to look.”
Thalia’s tight expression relaxed into sympathy. “I was sorry to hear about your dad’s death.”
“Thank you,” he said. “It was quite a shock to all of us, but we’re getting along.” Not that it had been easy. Just digging through his father’s far-flung business interests had been a chore in and of itself. Then there was the shock of realizing just how big the estate was. If money could buy happiness, his mother would be a very happy woman, indeed.
Instead of what she was: miserable.
Lorraine reached for a cookie. “You haven’t seen his mother’s new house, have you,” she said to her daughter.
“No.”
“It’s at the end of this road,” Lorraine said darkly. “It’s a darned mansion, is what it is. Of course, it was the Daltons who sold all that land to the developer for Shangri-la. They tried to buy my measly little five acres, and when I wouldn’t sell, they just built around me like I was a tree stump in the middle of a road.”
Thalia glanced questioningly at Luke, who nodded.
“That’s pretty much how it happened,” he agreed. “But it’s not like your mom’s stubborn or anything, or like they didn’t offer her ten times what this land is worth.”
Lorraine burst out laughing. “Oh, you!” she said affectionately. “Thalia’s on my side no matter what you say.”
“I certainly am,” Thalia agreed.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “so am I. You’ve got a great place here, Mrs. Myers. It’s eccentric, like its owner. I like that in my houses and in my women.” He winked broadly.
Lorraine looked pleased; Thalia merely looked annoyed.
“Really, Luke,” she said, “aren’t you ever serious?”
“Of course. I’m serious now.” And he was. He did like eccentric people, people who did the unexpected and did it with flair. Like Thalia herself on that long-ago day, when she’d done her much-too-young best to seduce him. What he wouldn’t give to have her try that again!
Damn, she needed something to loosen her up. If he didn’t know what she was capable of, he wouldn’t give a second thought to the buttoned-up woman with the disapproving air. Even if she was beautiful. Even if she did occasionally slip and let genuine emotion show on her face.
Ah, hell, maybe he would.
A banging on the front door defused the increasingly taut moment. Lorraine frowned.
“Who the heck could that be?” Rising, she left the room.
Luke waited until she was gone and then said, “You’ve got a heck of a mother there.”
“Don’t I know it.” That could be the first genuine smile he’d seen so far on Thalia’s smooth face.
“Didn’t you ever want to be like her?”
She looked astonished. “Good heavens, no. I love her, but she’s so out of control.”
“And you don’t like that.”
“You know I don’t. I like things neat and tidy.”
“And predictable.”
“That, too.” Her chin lifted. “There’s nothing wrong with predictable.”
“There’s everything wrong with it, Thalia. It’s…it’s limiting.”
“It’s reliable.”
“It’s boring.”
“I could take that personally,” she snapped.
“Everything I’ve said to you is personal,” he agreed. “I—”
Raised voices from the living room intruded. Both of them knew immediately that his mother, Sylvia Dalton, had arrived.
SYLVIA AND LORRAINE MIXED like oil and water, always had and probably always would. Thalia could imagine them as wizened little old ladies—one silver-haired, one orange-haired—sitting side by side in their wheelchairs at some senior citizens home sniping at each other night and day.
Nevertheless, Sylvia had always been nice to Thalia, who jumped up to greet the newcomer. She couldn’t imagine why Luke’s mother was here, but it couldn’t possibly be good.
“Thalia! Darling.” Silvery-blond Sylvia gave Thalia a big hug. Whoever said a woman couldn’t be too blond or too thin or too rich was probably thinking of Sylvia.
“Hello, Mrs. Dalton. It’s good to see you.”
Sylvia straightened and turned. “There you are, Lucas. I saw your car outside and wondered if something was wrong.”
Luke looked as if he considered this a pretty feeble attempt at an explanation. “Nothing’s wrong that I know of.” He looked at Lorraine and daughter. “Anything wrong?”
“Not a thing.” Lorraine glowered. She didn’t look as if she liked having her archenemy invading her turf. The next words seemed dragged out of her. “We’re having cookies and milk if you’d care to join us, Syl.”
Sylvia’s nostrils flared at the casual use of a nickname no one else had uttered in decades. She got revenge by saying, “Don’t mind if I do, Rainy.”
Lorraine rolled her eyes but said nothing, just led the way back to the kitchen. Sylvia fell in behind her while Thalia and Luke exchanged dubious glances before following.
Sylvia sat down and looked at the plate of cookies with disapproval. “I cannot tell you how many of my son’s meals were ruined in this house by cookies and milk,” she announced. “I held you personally responsible, Lorraine.”
“Good reasoning.” Luke picked up another cookie, his third or fourth. “She used to tie me to a kitchen chair and jam cookies down my throat. It was hell.”
Lorraine let out that raucous laughter. “Yes, and everyone can see how it stunted his growth. I think you should call the nutrition police, Sylvia.”
“I would, if I thought it would do any good.”
Luke pushed the plate toward his mother. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, Ma.”
She picked up a cookie, pointedly using her thumb and one exaggerated finger. “I don’t believe I can eat this without something to wash it down.”
