Deserving of Luke by Tracy Wolff Read Free Book Online Page A

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
    T HE DRIVE TO P ENNY M ATTHEWS’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 beenworking 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