Page 20 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

CHAPTER 5

Lukas should never have sent his road crew away for the weekend. The house he’d bought without seeing it for the past eight years was an epic disaster, despite the professionals he’d hired to make it livable by the time he brought Stevie here.

“We’ve found accommodations, sir,” Charles said, slipping his phone into his suit pocket, “but they’re a full hour out of town. The SUV you ordered just arrived so we’re ready anytime.”

“Great. Thanks.” Lukas saw the vehicle parked in the gravel driveway. James was standing talking to the driver.

In theory, taking Mom and Pop Ellis’s old Craftsman-style bungalow, with its breathtaking lakefront view, and turning it into the home it was always meant to be sounded romantic and comforting. After all, it was the only place that had ever felt like home.

The fact was, all the workmen had up and left a half hour ago in a haze of saw- and drywall dust. Lukas was sneezing and his nose was running but Stevie was doing all that plus coughing like crazy. Lukas had finally brought both of them out on the back porch for some fresh air and a regroup for Plan B.

But Plan B, finding a nearby hotel, also failed on all levels. It was Boat Festival weekend and every B and B in a twenty-mile radius and every room in the Grand Victorian Hotel were booked solid.

He didn’t want to take Stevie out of Mirror Lake. When the world found out Lukas had a kid with him, the paparazzi would swarm like a horde of angry bees. That kiss caught on film last night would be nothing compared to the speculation a child would bring. Here in the boonies, at least for now, there was some protection. Being on his own property meant he could control his borders. He needed to keep Stevie private for at least a little while anyway.

Oh, hell. Even Charles and James looked miserable, with drywall dust scattered like a coating of powdered sugar on their nice black suits.

Lukas signaled to Charles that he was going to walk around to the back of the house and sneak a smoke. He tried hard not to smoke in front of the boy, but in the past hour he’d held in every curse word he knew, forced himself not to raise his voice, and signed autographs for all the construction crew’s wives.

Funny that he could summon any kind of help at the crook of a finger yet he felt very alone. But then, he always had. Lukas didn’t lean on people because there was no one he could trust. No one before the Ellises and no one since.

He could have trusted Sam, a voice inside his head chided. She’d begged him to, but he’d pushed her away.

With a pang, he remembered feeling this same helplessness, and Martha Ellis leading him into this very house by the shoulders, sitting him down at the kitchen table, and feeding him homemade chicken soup and apple pie. She’d filled his belly and overfilled his heart. For a brief time, he’d had a family, and it was taken away from him all too soon. He ached for her kind reassurance now.Everything’s going to be just fine, son, was her go-to phrase.

The Ellises had made him feel like he was somebody, not a label—not the persona of a no-good, sassy kid with bad attitude that he’d slid into so well, because it was what everyone had expected. Somehow, they taught him that he could be somebody. Too bad they hadn’t lived to see him now.

They’d made him go to church and they taught him to pray. He didn’t do that so often anymore, but he found that lately he’d been trying it for Stevie’s sake.Please, God, help me to take care of this kid. He didn’t want Stevie to ever sense his fear and unease, and okay, his completeterrorat being the one in charge—the one to give comfort, to reassure, when he didn’t have a clue what the hell he was doing.

Suddenly he heard the crunch of tires up the winding gravel drive, past the apple trees and up to the front of the old bungalow.

Thenshegot out. The sun hit the red-gold highlights in her hair, and her pale skin looked perfect in the midday light. If he were a painter he’d stop everything and paint her, get every peachy-creamy detail down on canvas for posterity. The white gauzy sweater she’d put on over her dress flapped in the breeze like angel wings. That’s when he knew he’d about lost it. She was no angel, just a beautiful woman who’d always made his mouth go dry.

He squashed his cigarette under his heel. For some reason she made him wish he was better and stronger, and being caught with a cigarette was a sign of weakness he didn’t want her to see. That and the fact he was standing outside of his own damn home with Stevie coloring with sidewalk chalk on the patio bricks, oblivious that they were essentially homeless.

Sam carried a manila folder. “Hi again, Spike.”

He winced at the stupid nickname. He wanted to tell her to stop calling him that but he had more important things on his mind. Like where he and Stevie were going to spend the night.

“Nice place,” she said, looking at the old house with the peeling paint and the dilapidated red barn in the distance.

While she studied the house, Lukas flicked his gaze over her. Untamable hair pulled back in a ponytail. Shapely legs. She smelled fresh as the breeze off the lake. Lord, but she was breathtaking, yet she was still the kind of woman who had no idea how gorgeous she was.

What he couldn’t or wouldn’t express, Stevie did instead. “Sam! You’re here!” Stevie dropped his chalk and came up to her, coughing. “Come see my dragons I drew.”

Sam didn’t just walk over and praise the child. She stooped and picked up a piece of chalk and asked if she could add flames coming out of the dragon’s mouth and steam out of his nostrils, which she sketched in quickly.

“I have to talk to your uncle for a little while, then I’ll come back, okay?” Sam said. Then she stood and leveled those jade-green eyes on Lukas. “I’m here on business. Can we talk for a few minutes?”

He guided her over into an area of lawn between the house and the detached garage, which was next to the barn, and they stood in the shade of an old oak tree. He couldn’t help noticing how the dapples of light filtering through the branches caught her hair, turning it to strands of flame.

“You’re doing a lot of work to the place,” Sam said, eyeing the Dumpster full of construction debris, the roof half shingled and partly covered with plastic.

“Do me a favor,” he said. “Just tell me why you’re here. You’re with the Historical Society, right? My crew already told me the gist of it before they left for the weekend. I’m violating some rule or something.”

“Your addition doesn’t meet the architectural review board’s guidelines. You can’t make the roofline that high in a house over a hundred years old. It blocks the surrounding view.”

“The back room is perfect for a studio. I just need more natural light. Can I appeal?”

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