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“He told me you sent him birthday cards.”
Luke nodded. “But I never put an address on them. I knew my mother would throw them away.”
She didn’t react, didn’t look shocked or surprised. He wondered if it was because she already knew his mother’s tricks, or maybe she didn’t find them presumptuous. “He must have guessed from the postmarks,” was all she said.
“That’s how he addressed it, just to me in River Park. If the place was any bigger, I might not have gotten it.”
“Where’s River Park?”
“In the Sierra foothills. Near the gold country.” He studied her for a moment. “How bad is it?”
She didn’t pretend not to understand; he appreciated that, as well. “He’s horribly unhappy over his father’s death. It’s so devastating to lose a parent at that age. And for a father and son who were so close, it must be even worse.”
“I wouldn’t know, I never met mine,” he said casually. “I don’t even know what he looked like. My mother isn’t one for family photos.”
It didn’t really bother him anymore. There had been a time when it had almost made him crazy, but that was long ago. He—
“He looks like you.”
He stared at her. He slowly set his coffee mug down. He shifted in the chair. “What?” he finally said, certain he couldn’t have heard her right.
“Or you look like him, I guess is more accurate.”
“And how the hell,” he said slowly, “would you know that?”
“Your mother told me.”
He’d made a big mistake, a huge mistake. There was no way he would get a reasonable answer about David from someone close enough to his mother that she would even speak of the loathsome Patrick McGuire. He set down his mug and stood up.
Her brows furrowed. Unlike Mrs. Clancy’s, they were delicately formed and arched. “What’s wrong?”
“When you report back to my mother, give her my love,” he said sarcastically.
“Report?” She looked genuinely puzzled. “I barely speak to her. Why would—” She broke off, as if suddenly understanding what he’d meant. She stood up, meeting his gaze steadily. “Luke, I’m not a close friend of your mother’s. I’ve only even spoken to her a couple of times. After I saw you that night, when I didn’t know it was you, I…asked her what you looked like, that’s the only reason she mentioned your father.”
It was you….
He remembered her saying it, and now this explained it. She’d somehow guessed his identity with that glimpse. He wasn’t sure how that made him feel.
“I only spoke to her this time,” she went on, “because I was worried about David.” Her mouth twisted. “She didn’t seem to care.”
“Now that’s the mother I know and love,” he quipped.
She cocked her head sideways as she looked up at him consideringly. “You don’t sound at all bitter.”
“I’m not. Not anymore. I don’t have time.”
“David said you were busy.”
He blinked. “He did?”
“I thought it was just…little brother talk about a big brother he idolizes.”
“Idolizes? He doesn’t even know me anymore.”
“But he’s built you up into an idol of mythic proportions in his mind. You’re his hero, Luke. Especially, I’m afraid, for all the trouble you got into here.”
Luke sank back into the chair. “Damn,” he muttered. That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. Nobody knew better than he how hard it was to get off that path once you’d started.
“He’s taken up with some new friends since his father died. They’re…”
“Troublemakers,” he supplied when she stopped. “Like me?”
“I don’t know exactly what kind of troublemaker you are,” she said, “but I do know that these boys are getting worse. They haven’t physically hurt anybody yet, but it’s only a matter of time. And David’s starting to think like them.”
He didn’t bother to disabuse her of the notion that he was still a troublemaker. He’d vowed to let the people in this town think what they would about him. It was David who mattered now.
“He gets too far down that road, it’ll be hard to stop him.”
“It’s a self-destructive path,” she said. “Who knows where he’d end up.”
Luke propped his elbows on the wooden chair arms, steepled his fingers and looked at her over the top of them. “In jail? Or worse? I believe that’s the assumption. And I should know.”
For a moment he thought she was going to ask him what he should know about, jail or assumptions. But she didn’t, and he figured she’d decided for herself. And although her quiet, reserved expression never wavered, he had little doubt as to what she’d decided, just like everybody else in Santiago Beach.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Do?” How about rattle that restraint of yours? he thought, and blinked in surprise at himself.
“About David.”
He steered his attention back in to the topic at hand. “I don’t know. Talk to him, I guess.”
She looked about to speak, then hesitated. He waited silently, wondering if she would have to be coaxed, or if just setting the lure of silence would be enough.
It was. Finally.
“I…it’s hard to get kids his age to buy ‘Do as I say, not as I do,’” she said, watching him warily.
Think I’m going to jump you for painting me with this town’s brush? he wondered.
And yet, he had to admit it stung a little, that she assumed along with the rest of Santiago Beach that he’d continued to be up to no good since he’d left. He opened his mouth, ready to tell her that he’d changed, that he wasn’t the same reprobate kid he’d been, that he’d made something of his life, that he’d—
The next person he came across, he would just let them think the worst…fulfill their grim expectations. It was probably the nicest thing he could do for them….
His own vow came back to him, made just minutes ago. And he shut his mouth. Let her think what she obviously already did. Why should she be any different?
He leaned back in the chair. Steepled his fingers again. “I’ll take that as evidence you don’t think he should come live with me.”
“Is that really what he wants?”
He shrugged. “It’s what he said in his letter. He hasn’t mentioned it since I got here.”
She studied him for a moment, still giving nothing away. Then she said quietly, “Do you want him to?”
He expelled a long, slow breath and jammed a hand through his hair. That was an answer he didn’t have. “I don’t know. Davie…well, he’s about the only good memory I’ve got from here. I don’t want him to go through the hell I did, but…my life isn’t the best for a kid. Especially a screwed-up one. I’m gone a lot, days at a time.”
If she wondered what he did that called for that, she didn’t ask. “You…could change that. Couldn’t you?”
There was something about the way she was looking at him that prodded him to say flippantly, “Go straight? Perish the thought.” Oddly, for a split second she looked hurt, and he regretted the jibe. “Look, I’m worried about him, but…”
“You don’t want the responsibility?”
She didn’t say it accusingly, merely in the tone of a normal question. Which he supposed it was. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of responsibility.”
“Then why did you bother to come?”
“Not,” he said sourly, “to be reminded at every turn what a total waste my life has been.”
“It can’t be a total waste.” Her voice was unexpectedly gentle, and it seemed to brush away his irritation. “You have a brother who adores you. That’s worth a lot.”
He couldn’t deny that.
He couldn’t deny the odd feeling that having those eyes of hers look at him with softness instead of suspicion gave him, either.
Luke walked out her door at five to ten, and Amelia was glad she had at least a few minutes before she had to open. She was going to need every one of them to recover.
She was exhausted. Just sitting there talking to Luke McGuire, pretending it was a casual conversation between two people with a common concern, had worn her out. It wasn’t her shyness, after years of work she’d overcome that to a great extent. But never in her admittedly sheltered life had she ever talked at length to a man like this one, a man with a reputation, a man with a past.
A man who was worried about his young brother, she corrected herself. A man who was honest enough to admit he wasn’t prepared to take that brother on, yet cared enough to come some distance to find out how bad things really were.
Perhaps she needed to reassess her opinion of him.
Perhaps, she thought wryly as she forced herself to get ready to open, she shouldn’t have developed an opinion of him at all before she’d met him. Although, if she’d waited until she’d first seen him, riding down the street last night, who knew what kind of opinion she would have formed.
Speaking of honesty, if she was going to match his, she had to admit that when she’d been younger and under the watchful eyes of her parents, it had been easy to suppress any of the more turbulent urges she might have had. Such as those brought on by the wilder boys in school. She was finding it much harder now to deny she found bad boy Luke McGuire fascinating and unsettlingly attractive.
But he still frightened her. In a way that was so bone deep she didn’t even know where it came from. It was more than just the warnings her mother had given her, more even than trying to avoid trouble. It was something, she supposed, based in whatever quirk it was that made her an introvert rather than an extrovert.
But whatever it was, it kicked into high gear around Luke.
She tried to stop thinking about it; she didn’t usually dwell on her shortcomings in dealings with men. But this morning she hadn’t even managed to finish writing one check to her distributor, and now it was time to open. She put her pen down to mark the page in the notebook-style checkbook, then walked across the store. She flipped the sign in the front window to Open and went to unlock the front door, only to find that she’d never relocked it after letting Luke in.
Rattled? Not me, she muttered to herself.
She’d barely made it back to the checkout counter when the door announcement sounded. She’d forgotten to change it; it was still Captain Picard, when today was supposed to be Data. She pulled herself together, put on her best helpful smile and turned to greet her customer.
Her smile wobbled.
David’s friends. All five of them.
And one of them had a knife.
Chapter 4
Luke had watched the five boys strut away, recognizing the cocky walk and the smart mouths all too well. Those guys were trouble waiting to happen, and they were going to suck David down with them if things kept on.
The group had come upon them as they were about to sit down at one of the picnic tables in the park by the pier to eat and watch the ocean. By now Luke had a pretty good idea of how much—and in what way—David had talked him up to them. On this second encounter they were still assessing, calculating, silently asking just how tough he really was.
He had their number now, and he had shifted his stance slightly, just enough to signify readiness for anything. He had selected the obvious leader, the one they all watched to set the tone, to make the first move. The one who, Luke noted cautiously, had his right hand buried in the pocket of his baggy cargo pants. Some kind of weapon, Luke was sure, and hoped it wasn’t a gun. He had kept his gaze steady, level, and his face expressionless. And he stared him down. Not in a way that made it a threat the boy would have to respond to or lose face, but in a way that said, “It’s up to you how this goes.”
At last the boy had backed off, although Luke wasn’t sure it was for good, and had led his little troop away.
“Nice guys,” Luke muttered now as they sat down.
“They’re my friends,” David said, jaw tight with a stubbornness Luke recognized; it was like looking at the face in the mirror when he’d been that age.
“What about your old friends?” Luke asked, knowing he had to tread carefully here.
“They’re boring, man. They don’t do anything cool.”
“Mmm.”
Thinking, trying to decide what to say to that, Luke selected a French fry with great care. When he’d offered an early lunch, David had wanted fast food, saying his mother didn’t allow it very often. And he got so tired, David had added, of the stuff the cook fixed.
The cook. And, according to David, live-in help as well. His mother had obviously gotten where she wanted to be. He wondered cynically if Ed Hiller’s life insurance paid for it.
“It’s hard to keep good friends,” he said finally. “But it’s harder to find good new ones, because you just never know about people at first.”
“You still have friends from school?”
Zap. He’d missed the jog in the river on that one.
It’s hard to get kids his age to buy “Do as I say, not as I do….”
Amelia’s words came back to him then, and for the first time he realized what a genuinely untenable position he was in with his brother. How could he tell him what to do when, at the same age, his own life had been such a mess?
“No,” he admitted. “But most them weren’t real friends. I mean, they were buddies, guys you hang with, do stuff with, but…that doesn’t necessarily make them friends. Not real ones, good ones.”
David frowned. “What’s the diff?”
At least he was listening, Luke thought. Now if only he could think of what to say. “Friends help you out. They don’t try and make trouble for you, or suck you into any. They don’t rag on you if you don’t want to do something.”
David was watching him, his expression changing, a hint of disappointment coming into his eyes. “You sound like Mom, always lecturing me.”
Luke sucked in a quick breath; that was not a comparison he relished. His mouth twisted. “Whew. Nice shot.”
“I was waiting for ‘Friends don’t let friends drive drunk,’” David quoted.
