Lucas stopped before them, Wolf turned his head and fell into a long, curious inspection of the new face.
“Can I hold him?”
Demi couldn’t explain why she was so overprotective of Wolf, other than having a madman frame her and police on her tail for murder. She saw no harm in letting him hold Wolf, not in the middle of a snowstorm. He wouldn’t try to take Wolf and go.
She handed him over.
Wolf seemed glad to go there, immersed in rapt fascination with Lucas’s face. She watched softness transform Lucas’s expression like an instant connection had formed right then and there. Lucas put his finger near Wolf’s hand and Wolf grasped it. Her baby had a strong grip.
“He’s something else,” Lucas said. “He has your eyes and hair.”
“Yes.”
“Is he Bo’s son?”
After a few seconds she finally said, “Yes.”
Lucas looked up at her and she felt the powerful meaning that brought to him. Bo might have veered off an honest path into murkiness and deceit, but they were still brothers.
“You were close to Bo?” she asked.
“When we were younger we were practically inseparable. Somewhere along the way he had drifted. I got busy with life and didn’t notice until he started doing questionable things. Lying. Treating female coworkers with disrespect. He’d almost been fired from some early jobs for sexual harassment. That wasn’t the brother I knew. I don’t know why he changed.”
She could see the sadness that brought him, but he also had many good memories. So did she. When she first met Bo, she must have seen the same traits Lucas had. Although Bo had darker hair and green eyes, he’d looked similar to his younger brother. He and Lucas were both handsome in a strong, clean-cut way. He’d also loved the outdoors, hiking and skiing, fishing—and dogs, of course.
She’d fallen for him right away and been certain he’d felt the same. She believed he had, anyway, and maybe hadn’t stopped loving her even after she’d begun to withdraw. She’d caught him in various lies, as well. Not major ones, just a series of little lies that made her wonder why he’d thought he needed them in the first place. But every time she questioned him he would fly into a rage. He’d frightened her once when he’d picked up an iron patio table and hurled it across the yard. That’s when she began to think maybe he wasn’t the one for her. When he left one night after another fight and came home drunk, she’d found another woman’s number written on a business card. That had been it for her. They had broken the engagement.
“I don’t know, either,” she finally said. “He had a lot going for him, but he made a lot of bad choices.”
Lucas watched Wolf fall asleep in his arms. “How did you get together?”
“I’ve always known him. I ran into him a few times. Then one day at the market he started talking to me. A few minutes later he asked me out. We had dinner, then went on a few hikes.” She shrugged. “We just hit it off.”
She wouldn’t add that Bo had reminded her of a nonconfrontational Lucas.
“And then he showed you his new ways?” Lucas’s eyes lifted.
“Yes, but he had some good points. He had his own business breeding dogs for the K-9 Unit and was so good with the mamas and pups. I can see how the two of you were so close before he lost his way.”
A slight upward curve of his mouth told her he appreciated the comment.
“He could be charming. The only problem was, he was charming to other women.”
“Yeah, and he got mixed up with the Larson twins.”
Noel and milder-mannered Evan had caused Red Ridge a lot of trouble, but the criminal twins were behind bars now. Bo could be a real rat, but he hadn’t deserved to be murdered.
“What happened between you and Bo?” Lucas asked.
Unable to resist, Demi reached for Wolf. Lucas gave him up and she held him, seeing him stir a little before falling into sleep again.
“We started fighting a lot. He would lie about stupid things, things he didn’t need to lie about. He had a temper, too.”
“He wasn’t like that when we were younger.”
“He wasn’t like that until we got engaged. He asked me to marry him, I said yes, and then I found out about the harassment. It changed the way I felt about him. After one fight, he left and spent his evening at The Pour House and came home drunk.” She eased Wolf down into his crib and covered him. “The next morning I told him he had to change his ways or it was over.”
“You broke up with him?”
“In essence. I gave him a chance to redeem himself. I guess I still hung onto the man I dated, the man I’d fallen in love with.”
“You did love him?”
She wasn’t sure why Lucas needed to know all of this. Maybe talking about his older brother helped him deal with the loss. “I loved a version of Bo.”
“Did he try to change?”
“Oh, no. He was furious with me. He packed, took back the ring and left. Not long after that, I found out he was seeing Hayley Patton.”
Lucas studied her, or maybe he wasn’t really seeing her, he was so deep in thought over how his brother had ended up so unreasonably callous.
“Did you know you were pregnant when you split up?”
She shook her head. “And I didn’t see a point in telling him. To be honest, I don’t think he would have cared.”
“The previous version of Bo would have.”
She supposed he was right, although at the time of the split she’d believed that when they first started dating, Bo had put on a front to win her over.
After a lengthy stare that began to heat up, Lucas scratched his head as though feeling awkward. “I’m going to be up for a while.”
“Me, too. Should we make some coffee?”
“Sure.” He led her out of the baby’s room.
In the kitchen she went about preparing a pot of coffee, not hearing the snow blowing the way it had earlier. She kept thinking about how loving Lucas had been with Wolf. He seemed a natural with children. Before having Wolf, Demi would not have pictured herself as a maternal person. Now she knew that if she ever married, it would have to be to a man who would be a father to Wolf.
“Do you want kids?” she asked before she could stop herself. She didn’t need to know that about him—Lucas—her rival and a Gage.
“No.”
He answered so quickly that she stopped in the process of pouring water into the coffee maker to look at him.
“I
