Page 6 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

“Give my keys back,” she said. “I’ve got to go before someone takes more photos of us. My boyfriend isn’t going to like that.”

It was Lukas’s turn to snort.

She put her hands on her hips. “What was that for?”

“I thought you broke up with him once upon a time.” She’d ended up with that blowhard preppy lawyer who even back then was determined to mold her into the perfect political wife clone. She could do so much better.Deservedso much better.

“We—got back together.”

Only a few months after Lukas had left, but he pretended not to know that. Still, the memory stung. He decided to change the subject. “How’s my car running?”

“Is that why you waited for me? Because you want it back?”

“How is it that you’re so feisty in some matters, yet you can’t seem to untangle yourself from that Ivy League idiot?”

She stiffened. Looked like she was about to draw blood. He really should calm down. She was going to figure out she had the equivalent of a stalker in about minute. What was it about her that made him lose his famous cool?

Sam threw the car door open a little too forcefully. “Good-bye, Spike. Nice to see you again. Congratulations on finding success. I hope you—I hope you’ve found happiness, too.”

Before Sam could fold herself into the car, a ragamuffin little boy with wild curly hair wearing Superman pajamas and mismatched socks and carrying a ratty blue blanket came running out of the tour bus. It didn’t take long for Lukas’s guards to suddenly reappear from the inky blackness of the woods. The boy flung himself around Lukas’s legs and looked up with an impish grin. “The guys were teaching me how to play blackjack ’cause I’m smart and I can count to twenty-one. And I won Cheerios and guess what? I ate all of ’em.”

Lukas bent down and lifted the boy into his arms. The child handed him a bottle of beer then rubbed his eyes sleepily with his fists. “Carl said you need a beer. Wanna come see how I can bet?” he asked expectantly.

“Sure, buddy,” Lukas said, biting his lip to avoid saying out loud,Why aren’t you in bed? Why are those guys teaching you that stuff?Stevie had experienced enough negativity in his life. Besides, it was Lukas’s job to make sure his road crew didn’t corrupt an innocent child. Another area where he was epically failing as far as this kid was concerned. Instinctively, he tousled the jet-black mop of hair, stroked the child’s back where he was still horrified to feel the hard contours of his bones through his shirt.

Stevie sized up Sam. “You’re pretty,” he said unabashedly.

“And you’re up too late,” she said with a sweet smile.

“I’m Stavros Spikonos,” he said. “But you can call me Stevie.”

“I’m Sam.”

Stevie smiled widely. “That’s a boy’s name and you’re not a boy.”

No, she most certainly was not. If Lukas was not mistaken, he was witnessing a five-year-old flirt.

Must be a trait embedded deep in the Spikonos genes.

“It’s short for Samantha, but my friends call me Sam.”

“Can I be your friend?”

“Of course.” She smoothed the untamed hair, badly in need of a cut, back from his forehead. “Nice to meet you, Stevie.”

Lukas caught her gaze over Stevie’s head. She was casting him a judgmental look. The situation couldn’t appear much worse—an unkempt ragamuffin up at midnight, toting a longneck bottle and learning how to bet on blackjack. Some father he was turning out to be.

“He looks just like you,” she murmured.

The little boy yawned, propping the tattered blanket on Lukas’s shoulder and then snuggling in against him. How he could be so trusting after everything he’d been through was beyond Lukas.

“Stavros, go with Charles and James, okay? I’ll be in in a minute and we’ll get you ready for bed.”

“And read me a story?”

“Sure.” Lukas set Stevie down. The boy immediately ran over to the guards, took both their hands and walked with them, the big guys swinging him up in the air between them until he giggled with glee. Lukas smiled a little, too, watching them cross the lot. It was a relief every time the kid laughed.

Sam let out a harshtsk. “You think that’s hilarious, don’t you?” She paced in front of him, throwing up her hands. “You haven’t grown up at all. You’re the same irresponsible, self-centered person you were when you left. And now you’re trying to raise yourchildin the middle of all this chaos?”

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