Page 8 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

“I just need time to sort a few things out,” he said. “I could use some help finding a babysitter while I get things in order. I don’t start touring again until August.”

Wow, August.He was in town with a little kid for three months. That knowledge made her want to run screaming for the hills.

“Look, Sam, I’ve bought my foster parents’ place on the lake and I’m fixing it up. I need a home base somewhere and Mirror Lake is as close as I’ve ever come to having that. I wondered if we could put the past behind us and try to be friends.”

Sam closed her eyes as his words washed over her. He’d broken her heart and she’d waited for him but he never came back. She harbored years of unanswered questions and many things left unsaid. Now suddenly, he wanted to be friends? Well, she wasn’t twenty anymore and she was going to say exactly what was on her mind. “You dumped me right after I’d lost my brother and the next summer, Istillwas stupid enough to sit by your bedside for days after your motorcycle accident until you were out of danger. Then you left with barely a word. And now you’re back, after six years, kissing me in front of all my students like we were—like we were—”

“Like we were what?” His gaze roved up and down her body. He still possessed that hungry, uncivilized look that made certain parts of her light up like a pinball machine. She stepped back until she accidentally bumped into her car. “Like we werelovers?”

She stared at him. Her face burned, a telltale sign that she remembered another time. A sweeter time. She cleared those memories off her mental desk. Her life was different now. She’d started over, and she’d left the past behind for good.

She would never understand him or his behavior. He kept secrets, and he didn’t talk. The list of why he had been a terrible boyfriend could go on for an entire book. No, aseries.

As she opened her door and got in, his gaze glided over the even, polished surface of her beautiful car. “You did a nice job with it.” He had a way of keeping her off balance. She never knew what he was going to say or do next.

When he’d left town, the last thing he did was hand her the keys. The ’84 Camaro had been a rusting, paint-peeling, gas-guzzling mess, and needed just about every part replaced. Which she’d done, bit by bit, until it was a now averysexy car, candy-apple red and gleaming to a spit shine. She’d lived for this day, to show him what she’d done to the rusty rat trap she’d been given. So there, buster. Takethat.

His eyes were so large and so expressive, the fault of his Greek heritage. There were too many feelings flashing in them, ones that she could not possibly fathom. So she avoided his gaze. She needed to keep thinking of him as an asshole.

Which he was. Truly.

He leaned over just a little and touched her arm. Startled, her gaze veered from his long, talented fingers, which looked so dark resting against her own pale skin, to his face.

“I want to be a good father to Stevie, but I don’t know where to start.”

Yes, howcouldhe know? He’d suffered abuse at the hands of his alcoholic parents. He’d roamed from foster home to foster home for years. His smart mouth and brazen attitude had made him unadoptable. Which said a lot because in the looks department, he was King Cotton. His last set of foster parents had been kind but elderly, Mr.Ellis dying before he was eighteen and Mrs.Ellis passing a few years later. He wasn’t kidding that he’d had few examples of what a real family was like.

“Will you help me?”

Lukas represented everything in her life she had fought to get away from. Danger. Instability.Chaos. Not to mention his ability to string her along by dangling a carrot in front of her eyes and then yanking it away without explanation—twice. Harris, on the other hand, had come along right when she’d needed him, and had been her rock. A stabilizing force. One she was so, so grateful for.

She would help Lukas as a friend, but that’s as far as it would go. No matter how hard he kicked her hormones into overdrive.

“I’ll ask around about the sitter.” She cast him a quick, businesslike glance, forcing her gaze not to linger on his too-handsome face. Then she turned the key, put the car in reverse, and drove away.

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