a social worker and counseled her at the shelter in L.A.”
In fact, Carrie had been her first project. No, that’s not true. Luke had been her first project.
At one time, and for the past twelve years, she’d thought she’d failed with him. But maybe not. It’s possible that he’d taken to heart some of the things she’d told him.
“It’s a good profession for you to pursue,” he said. “You always did have a thing for strays and underdogs.”
She supposed that was a result of growing up in the home of a minister and his wife. But Luke’s turnaround hadn’t been as easy to see coming.
“What about you?” she asked. “What made you decide to go to medical school?”
It wasn’t a tough question, but Luke wasn’t sure how honest he wanted to be.
Her brother’s death had been influential—but in a negative way. After Kami died, Leilani and her family blamed him. And when she returned to Hawaii for the funeral, she never came back to San Diego, never contacted him. Never answered his calls.
The guilt and grief threatened to destroy him, so he’d easily fallen back into his old lifestyle to escape. Only the drinking, carousing and fighting became worse than ever before.
Did he want Leilani to know all of that?
Did he want her to realize she and her family had been right about him all along?
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “One night, I met a police detective named Harry Logan. The guy has a real knack with hard-ass kids and saw something promising in me. He took me under his wing, encouraged me to go back to school, then helped me get a job at a hospital. Medicine fascinated me, and I decided to become a doctor.”
“Harry must be a special guy.”
“He is. And there are quite a few young men in and around the San Diego area who consider him the father they never had.”
Luke was one of them.
His real dad had been an alcoholic college professor and had run off with a graduate student when Luke was just a kid. And his mom had never been able to recover from the emotional blow. At least not while he’d been in his formative years and could have used a functional parent in his corner.
He’d loved his mom—and the fact that he’d failed her when she’d needed him most would haunt him for the rest of his days. But when he was a kid, she seemed to think she was the only one who’d been abandoned and was hurting, so he’d found it easier to avoid going home.
By the time he’d become a teenager, they had moved to a run-down apartment in the inner city—not far from where Leilani’s aunt lived. And with no one to encourage him or keep him in line, he began hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Luke might have been a natural-born rebel, but he suspected that having a half-decent father probably would have kept him from getting into too much trouble.
When he met Leilani, she was a college-bound senior who’d recently moved in with her aunt. And his hormones had done what the teachers hadn’t been able to—got him to knuckle down and study.
Had Kami not died, Luke might have become a doctor anyway—because of Leilani’s influence. She’d believed in him and had made him want to be the kind of guy she could respect.
“Having a father to look up to is important for a boy,” she said now, obviously thinking about the baby her friend was carrying.
Leilani had always been compassionate, always concerned with the feelings of others. And Luke could see the grief and worry etched on her face.
He reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. “You can’t get personally involved like this. It’ll drag you under if you let it.”
Luke’s touch sent a shiver of heat up Leilani’s arm, and she nearly bolted. But before she could pull away or argue about her decision to get involved with Carrie or anyone else who reached out to her, Luke’s name blasted over the intercom.
“Dr. Wynter, dial zero-five-six. Dr. Wynter, dial zero-five-six.”
“Excuse me.” He stood, then picked up his tray. “I need to take that.”
Leilani watched him go, watched the way he swaggered out of the cafeteria with confidence and pride.
Just seeing him again had resurrected memories of what they’d once had and lost. What he’d thrown away by being negligent and acting carelessly.
When Kami died, she’d written Luke off as a delinquent, a lost soul. She now realized she’d been wrong. He’d managed to make something out of himself and earn a medical degree to boot. She ought to be happy for him, she supposed. And in a way, she was.
But that opened a whole new can of worms—night crawlers and squirmy critters sure to complicate her life and that of her son.
Seeing him again was a complication in itself, she supposed. A reminder of the secret she’d kept.
Danny had Leilani’s tan complexion, her dark hair. But he had his father’s eye color, a pretty emerald green. The shape, too. But more than that, he had Luke’s mannerisms—the charming smile, the single dimple in his cheek when he cracked a joke.
As she finished her tea and picked at the melon in her fruit cup, a group of nurses entered the cafeteria. After snagging their breakfast from the buffet, they chose a table not far from hers.
She ignored them until Luke’s name was mentioned.
“Guess who managed to get a date with Dr. Wynter last week,” a pudgy blonde said.
“Who?” the group chimed in harmony.
“Tori Claypool.”
“From the blood bank? How’d she do that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. But apparently we’re not the only ones eager to find out why he was nicknamed Hot Lips.”
“You’d better be careful,” the blonde said. “You wouldn’t want to slip and call him that to his face. He doesn’t seem to have a sense of humor when he’s on duty, and I think Marge-the-Sarge is the only one who can get away with teasing him without making him angry.”
“It’s too bad he works nights and so many weekends,” a redhead added. “That’s so limiting to a relationship.”
“If you’re talking about concerts and evening activities,” the blonde said, “I’d be happy to spend a quiet afternoon at his place and show him the true meaning of a cheap date.”
Obviously, Dr. Luke Wynter was not only the resident E.R. doctor, but the resident heartthrob as well.
When Leilani had been in high school and had been dating Luke, she’d heard similar conversations in the girls’ locker room. She could understand why it would bother her then. But for some reason, she found a pang of jealousy even more unsettling now.
She tried to shrug
