Page 70 of Loyally, Luke
“I don’t want her to be all sad.”
“Of course you don’t. What friend would?”
Faye looked up at him. “She gave me a little journal with notes from her for thirty days.”
“Wow.” Luke released a low whistle. “That’s a really nice gift. Helps her still feel close for a while, like she’s talking to you every day.”
“That’s true.” Faye blinked, tears dangling on her long eyelashes. “For thirty whole days.”
“And she seemed to like to talk, so I bet those notes will be nice and long.”
“They are long. Some are a whole page.” Faye wiped another hand over her eyes. “She didn’t talk when she first came. I had to do all the talking. She was too afraid.”
Luke’s grin stretched. “And I bet you did a fine job talking to and for her, didn’t you?”
Faye’s lips trembled into a little smile. “I did.”
“So fine, in fact, that she couldn’t help but start talking too.”
Faye’s smile grew into dimples, and paired with those freckles, it about did him in altogether. “Ms.Faukes said I loved her so well, she couldna help but grow right into talking so we could all get to know who she was on the inside.”
Luke nodded, allowing the little girl’s simple sentiment to sink in. “Well, I’ve always heard that love has a way of doing things like that.”
Her eyes sparkled, half with tears, half with joy. “Like magic. That’s what my gran used to say. Love is like magic. When you pour it out on someone, it makes wonderful things happen.”
His smile faltered just a little because that sounded too much like something Penelope would say, but the heart behind it was true. He’d seen it happen over and over again, especially with the boys he’d worked with at the children’s home.
Love held power, a truth he knew soul-deep. The earthly sort didn’t always prove magical—he had a track record to support a failure here and there—but the heavenly, pure, all-in kind sure did. Luke’s experience with real romantic love could be counted on one finger and hadn’t proven magical enough to have Clara love him back the same, but he’d begun to realize the problem had more to do with the receiver than the love.
“It’s a pretty special thing to know your love is so big that it makes magical things happen.” Luke smiled down at her.
She nodded, the tears not as intense as they’d been before, thank the good Lord!
“And I’d imagine it’s even big enough to stretch all the way from Skymar to Nigeria. What do you think?”
Her smile dimpled again. “I know it is.”
“And hers to you, because she seemed like she loved you a whole lot too. Notes and all.”
Luke escorted Faye back into the castle and left her in the capable hands of her teacher, Ms.Faukes, before returning to the kitchen, his head and heart nearly aching with... emotions. He pressed a palm to his forehead and sighed. Nasty things. No wonder he didn’t enjoy talking about them.
For some reason he always felt a little nervous when emotion-talk or feelings started pressing in, but how could anyone blame him? He was raised with three sisters. His testosterone levels constantly felt threatened.
Even here, working with mostly men, the little girls found him with their tears and their freckles and... he was sitting on a front porch sipping his coffee and talking about love and magic.
He grimaced.
He needed another large cup of black coffee and a massive hammer.
Nah. The nail gun. Powerful and loud enough to drown out his thoughts for a while.
It was plum disappointing that demo day only came around once a job.
***
Ellie slipped into one of the side doors of Cambric Hall, attempting to time her entry with dinner for the children and the end of a workday for the workmen. Luke and Pete would stay behind, as they did every evening, to make certain everything was “prepped,” as Luke called it, for the next day.
In truth, she’d had a meeting with one of the larger timbercompanies in the North Country to discuss distribution of the natural resource (since the northern part of Skymar provided over 60 percent of timber for the island), reforesting, and a few new ideas she’d gleaned from conversations with Luke on how to salvage some of the unused buildings scattered throughout the North Country for tourism and business.
