His Brown-Eyed Girl

He allowed silence to speak for itself.

“She likes attention.” Courtney sighed. “I wish I could have given you a handbook instead of a page.”

“Me, too.”

“I know it’s not easy, but I knew if any single guy could swoop in and take care of three kids, it was you. You’ve always been so competent, never messing up in life. Really, Luke, I don’t know what I would have done. With your parents in Europe, I—”

“I make plenty of mistakes, Courtney, and I don’t know shit from shinola about raising kids, but we’re all making do.”

“What about Flora and Addy? And the greenhouse?”

“We’re working together on the repairs now. Chris’s dirt bike is in the garage and I’ve hidden the key. We’re good.”

“Okay, apologize to Addy for me and keep the receipts for the repairs. I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed.”

Lucas said goodbye and hung up, not feeling at all comfortable with continuing to lie to his brother’s children. But he wasn’t their parent. He was merely their caretaker, not involved enough in their lives to offer an opinion. He opposed what Courtney was doing, but he understood.

When Courtney had been in high school, her parents had been shot in a convenience store theft. Neither had died in the actual robbery, but they’d been gravely injured. Courtney’s father died from his wounds the day after the robbery, but her mother had held on for days, undergoing several surgeries before succumbing. Courtney had lived at the hospital, Lucas with her, bringing her food and comforting her as best an eighteen-year-old kid could. The loss had devastated the sunny Courtney, turning her into a shell of what she’d been, maybe even driving the wedge between them that allowed for the betrayal.

Lucas walked to where Michael sat tapping on his phone. “Guess we better start demoing the damaged parts of the greenhouse. I’ll grab Chris. Can you dig the shears out of the bag so we can cut away the torn plastic?”

Michael looked up. “So you’re finally going to make him do something?”

The kid’s tone was feral.

Courtney’s secrecy had created an angry monster of a boy...one Lucas had to deal with. And he tired of dealing. “Why don’t you watch your tone, Michael?”

“Why don’t you leave?”

“I wish I could.” Lucas shoved his curled fist into his front pocket and walked away. Toward the front of the house. Away from Michael. Away from Chris and Charlotte and the dotty old lady trilling encouraging words to the kids. Away from Addy and her prickly demeanor.

He needed air. And space. And peace. And quiet.

And maybe a shot of bourbon.

* * *

ADDY SET THE ORCHIDS she’d gathered on the newspaper. She wrapped the roots in wet newspaper and tucked them beneath the blooming azalea bushes framing the back stoop. Thankfully, Cal, the guy who made gorgeous pottery along with inexpensive clay pots, had plenty of selection. She liked terra-cotta for the orchids.

For the past few minutes, she’d tried to forget about Lucas and the guilt she felt about being overly defensive. She hadn’t meant to be so forceful, but the fear inside her over the stupid wildflower tucked beneath her windshield wiper had hooked into her gut and seeped into her bones. When fear came knocking, it was hard to not open the door. So she’d lashed out at Lucas, which was ironic considering her first thought at discovering the “gift” was to call Lucas. Something about the man with broad shoulders and a hard jaw struck something within her, something that told her he could help her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Lucas pocketing his phone and approaching Michael who sat sullenly beside the lumber. A few words were exchanged then Lucas walked away, moving to the Finlay house. Toward his truck. Something in the slant of his shoulders had her dumping the orchids and following him.

Surely he wasn’t going to leave?

True, dealing with kids was tough, but he’d made a commitment, right?

He heard the crunching of the gravel beneath her feet as she followed him, but he didn’t slow or turn his head. She nearly breathed a sigh of relief when he passed his truck and hooked around the front of the house. Lucas climbed the porch steps and sank into a rocking chair that needed a new coat of paint.

Hesitating on the steps, she looked at him, not knowing what to say.

Lucas studied the floating clouds beyond her head. “This was a mistake. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m not the right person to take care of these kids.”

Addy started to deliver platitudes but snapped her mouth closed. “Maybe not, but right now you’re all they have.”

“I need clean air and a clear landscape sitting outside my door. I can’t breathe here.”

The longing in his voice touched her. He felt trapped by the world he now occupied. She knew a little about being confined to a smaller world.

A few minutes ticked by as the sounds of the neighborhood waned and an even smaller world was formed on the porch. A line of black ants squiggled across the top step. A spider clung to a web in the camellia bush, and the rocking chair creaked with the slight motion Lucas gave it. Small, closed in. Intimate in a way she hadn’t experienced the other night. Raw emotion pulsed and she knew it was seldom Lucas admitted defeat, admitted any weakness.

He didn’t look at her, at where she stood near the line of overgrown bushes that had needed pruning last fall. Addy knew Lucas was mentally picking up the scattered bits of his emotions and trying to tuck them into an airtight box he kept in his soul.

Like recognized like.

Something inside her stirred, then stilled. Certainty of what she needed to say settled in her gut.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted earlier. Something happened on Wednesday that shook me up, and I allowed a remnant of that emotion to spill over into today.”

He waved away her apology. “No problem. You were right. I don’t have any business prying into your life. We’re not friends, not really anything to each other. You’re a nice person trying to help me. Bottom line.”

The casual dismissal pricked her. She didn’t want to be nothing to him, and that surprised her all over again. “I’d like to think we are friends.”

His gaze swept to hers. “I suppose we are. In a way.”

“Then you should understand something about me. Not even Courtney or any of my other neighbors know this, but somehow, I think you need to know who I am.”

She saw the muscles in his neck move as he swallowed, as his eyes softened. She didn’t understand the need to tell him about Robbie, about the fear that sometimes ate at her. Just knew it would make things better.

“When I was senior in high school, a neighbor, a man I thought I knew, held a knife to my throat and tried to rape me.”

Lucas’s hands tightened on the rocker. “What?”

Acid ate at her stomach and her hands trembled. She tucked them behind her and met Lucas’s gaze. “I was stupid, a good girl, a quintessential overachiever with a pretty face and a bright future, but I had this need inside me, a little part of myself who wanted to rebel. Down the street lived this older guy. He was in his mid-twenties, cute in a boyish way, rode a Harley and sometimes hung out at my dad’s garage. He flirted with me, I flirted back and then one night I snuck out my bedroom window and climbed on his Harley with him.”

Lucas’s eyes narrowed. “You seem so levelheaded. I can’t imagine you sneaking out with an older guy.”

“Of course not. I’ve changed. But we all have some wildness inside us. I just chose to be wild with the totally wrong guy.”

Silence sat for a moment.

“Eventually, being a naughty girl got old. I didn’t really like him as much as I liked the feeling of being disobedient, of having some say-so in my own life. Eventually, I stopped opening that window. But Robbie wouldn’t accept I wasn’t into him. I tried to tell him I had prom coming up and college. I told him we had no future together. And it got ugly.”

“What did he do?” His voice was soft as the day, like sunlight falling on the emerging green of spring.

“At first he said ugly things. Then he showed up at my high school and watched me with my friends. He slashed my tires, wrote me violent letters and called my cell phone and hung up several times a day. I didn’t tell my parents because I knew they’d be so disappointed...and that I’d be grounded for life.” She offered him a wry smile.

He didn’t smile back.