Page 82 of The Hookup
Coming to work and dealing with a pissed off Marie made things even more shitty. “Can you drop it, please?”
“Family relationships are hard,” she held a finger up, mom-style, making him snap his mouth closed. “It was your sister’s wedding, Luke. Herwedding. Would it have killed you to sit down for a couple of hours?”
He swallowed. Marie didn’t know what she was talking about, and he was beginning to lose his patience.
“Quit going on about it, Marie. You’re as bad as Kay.”
“She said the same thing to you?” asked Marie, her voice lifting. “I like that girl. She seems to give you a run for your money.”
He picked apart a large paperclip, bending the thin wire out of shape.
“What did she think?”
“Of what?” he asked, looking up, his mind had completely switched off for a few moments there. His mind had backtracked to him and Kay having coffee, and how differently things might have turned out had he not been careless with his words.
“Of the Easter Bunny,” replied Marie, her face deadpan. “What do you think?”
“She was glad she came with me,” he replied, vaguely, his thoughts distracting him again.
“I’ll have to ask her myself. At least that way I’ll get an honest answer.”
“We have more important things to deal with, and Canal Street is our main priority right now.” Work would soon begin on the new site, and he had a shit ton of contracts and legal paperwork to deal with.
“You should go over there today, and check it out,” Marie told him. “I need to catch up with work here at the office.”
His neck was hurting again, and he’d made an appointment to see the doctor later today. “I’ll go over tomorrow.” He had every intention of keeping an eye on the place while the builders were working on it, but just not today.
“Let me know next time that girlfriend of yours is here,” said Marie, getting up and walking towards the door.
He wanted to see her again. Only, he had stuff to deal with first. He was feeling tired again. The wedding had drained him, seeing his family had emotionally drained him, but physically he was feeling tired, too. The only time he had forgotten all the tiredness, the only time he had felt truly alive was when Kay had been around. Having her next to him in bed and holding her through her night had been comforting. In her he had found the kind of peace he hadn’t found in anyone, and then he’d gone and ruined it.
Opening his desk drawer, he looked at the gifts still lying inside. He had no idea when Kay’s birthday was, and it occurred to him that he could give her these gifts for Valentine’s Day.
But that would risk him making some kind of statement and it wasn’t in his DNA to take a good thing and run with it.
Even if that good thing had helped him to somehow bury the past. Meeting Travis and Maggie hadn’t been as difficult as it usually was. He’d dreaded that moment, but it had lost its impact on him.
Maybe he had moved on. This was all Kay’s doing. She was helping him erase the hurt from his past, and she didn’t even know about it.
He picked up the jewelry box and fingered its embossed gold signage. For a guy who avoided commitment, he was going about things the wrong way.
Unless he was no longer that guy.
~ ~
He had slapped her back to reality with a sentence.
Perhaps that hadn’t been a bad thing, otherwise she would have continued to wrap herself up in grand delusions about their passionate night together.
Luke was so changeable, like a chameleon, and maybe her impressions of him had been right all along.
As the days passed, she found herself confused about the state of their relationship. As much as she wanted to end it, she found herself unable to walk away, especially now that she had a window into his soul and had glimpsed some of his demons. She wanted to help him, but he wasn’t an easy man to help, or love, or be with. This much she had learned.
Spending that night with him after the wedding had convinced her that he was starting to change. Their intimacy had deepened, and waking up the next morning in his bed, with his arms around her, had given her hope that the relationship she had secretly been wanting all along, might slowly come to be.
She had seen a gentler, more considerate side to him, as well as an intensely troubled side, too, and his revelation to her, about his mother and her subsequent death, and his father’s mistress, had caught her off guard. It was as if the stress of seeing his family again had brought down his barriers, and softened him enough so that he could open up to her.
If she had been dreading the morning-after awkwardness, his actions the next day had completely surprised her.
