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

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 backof 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.
    â€œYou look loaded for bear.” The words were said ina 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 nothingaccomplished 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