couldn’t imagine pushing a confession to this suave, confident man past her lips. Luke and she were strangers to each other, even more awkward than total strangers because neither of them wanted to accidentally refer to their past affair. She doubted he’d forgotten her naive crush on him and her willing surrender. Likely, he was being the gentleman by pretending to forget that it had ever happened.
It never happened, Pepper told herself. Toby and Josh were wonderful gifts from heaven.
But no. Her boys were wonderful gifts from the man seated next to her. She clenched her fingers on the steering wheel. “Here you are,” she said, “home again at long last.” She stopped the car outside the front door of the McGarrett farmhouse. Luke had become more and more quiet with every passing mile, and she could feel his dread of the meeting between him and his father. Mr. McGarrett had never been easy on him, therefore laying the groundwork for conflict, to Pepper’s mind, of a son who rebelled in all the requisite bad-boy methods.
“Thanks,” Luke said, opening the van door reluctantly.
She softened for a second, knowing he wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Her fondest wish would be for her sons to never dread talking to their father…when they got to know him.
Prickles ran over her scalp. Duke and Zach had never had any reason to expect anything other than respect and love from their dad, as had she. “Good luck,” she murmured.
Luke looked at her. “Yeah. Thanks.”
She nodded, their gazes meeting. He hesitated, perhaps recognizing sympathy in her expression, so she broke eye contact and looked at her hands.
“I hope I see you again,” Luke said softly. “I have a feeling you turned out to be a very remarkable woman.”
She didn’t look up. She couldn’t. So he closed the door and walked away. She heard his footsteps crunching up the gravel drive, and sneaked a peek. Toby and Josh walked like their father, she realized, with that same loose, arm-swinging gait of busy alertness. While the walk was cute on her boys, it was darn sexy on a grown man, giving Pepper a flash that one day, her boys were going to turn out much like their father in the girl-magnet department.
They were thirteen, not so much younger than when she and Luke—
Not letting herself think about it, Pepper backed up the van and drove off.
LUKE WALKED INSIDE his boyhood home with reluctance. The front door was open, so he didn’t need the key his father kept under the cracked flowerpot. Luke had checked to make sure it was still there, knowing that nothing would have changed despite time’s certain march.
The house smelled musty, closed up, like library stacks in an unventilated basement. It was a world away from the open ocean and thrilling waters of Greece. Setting down his small bag, he headed to the den, where he knew his father would be on a Sunday evening.
His dad was parked in front of a blaring TV with a cereal bowl perched on a TV dinner tray. Luke swallowed hard, looking at the round top of a nearly bald head, all that was visible from behind the green recliner. “Dad.”
His father got to his feet, finally realizing someone was in the house with him. “Luke. You’re back.”
They stared at each other for a tense ten seconds before the older man finally stretched out his hand. “Good to see you.”
Luke nodded. “You, too.” He shook the offered hand with trepidation.
“Nice of you to come home to see your old man,” his father began, and Luke stiffened.
“You sent for me,” he said. “I assumed it was important.”
“My letter?” His father shook his head. “I didn’t send for you. I merely suggested you might want to take over the family business.”
“It’s your business, Dad,” Luke said, not wanting to jump immediately into a conflict. “Thanks, though. Residential real estate isn’t my cup of tea.”
By the looks of his father’s home, it wasn’t his cup of tea, either. There was a lot of work needing to be done, both inside and out.
Stepping back, his father accidentally bumped the TV table. When he reached to steady it, the cereal bowl went crashing to the floor, and Luke realized that he hadn’t been called home for business matters at all.
His father appeared quite feeble. A flash of despair and recognition washed over Luke as the truth hit him. His dad couldn’t take care of himself as well as he used to, and most certainly could no longer care for a large acreage. My footloose traveling days are over. Luke saw himself locked into the finality of caretaking for a man who’d never loved him or been proud of him.
He swore to himself on the spot that if he ever had children, they were going to know he loved them every day of their lives. Every single damn day.
Chapter Five
“There’s probably a proverb in the Bible somewhere about people who meddle,” Helen said worriedly as the four of them sat around a table at the Tulips Saloon. “We may all go to Hades for our part in this.”
They hadn’t seen or heard anything of Luke since his return. That was not a good sign, Helen thought, but worse was that they hadn’t seen Pepper or the boys. Neither had Duke or Zach graced the saloon with their presence.
“It does seem that we would have heard something from someone,” Pansy said, and Hiram and Bug nodded. “Remember when we promised ourselves a long time ago, before Zach and Jessie got married, that sometimes we overhelped and made things worse? So we quit the busybody business?”
“Yes,” Hiram said, “but then we sort of got roped back into it by Zach. He seemed needier than his brother somehow.”
“Fibbers,” Helen said impatiently. “We couldn’t bear to be left out. And now we may have meddled one time, too many. Someone get the Bible and see if we’re going to hell for it.”
Pansy giggled. “Too late now. I say we get out a cookbook, instead.”
Hiram and Bug sat up with enthusiasm. “You girls bake and us boys’ll play cards and lick the bowls.”
“How can I pass up that deal?” Helen said. “It’s better than waiting to hear something when we probably won’t.” She pulled out her special recipe box. “I’ve got a humdinger to try on you two unworthy guinea pigs. Red velvet cake like you’ve never tasted.”
“Mmm,” Hiram said. “You just go ahead and bake off those nerves you’re having. Bug and me’ll be happy to try your experiments.”
Pansy sniffed. “Useless.”
The door swung open with more force than usual, and Toby and Josh dashed in, followed by a more sedate Pepper.
“Now, boys,” Helen began, in her most grandmotherly voice, “we try to handle that door with care. It was handmade for us specially. We don’t throw it open like regular saloon doors.” She hugged the boys to her.
“Yes, Ms. Helen,” they said, awkwardly trying to squirm out of her embrace.
Pepper
