Her Secret Sons

“Family?”

She put on a coat. “Yes.”

He reached to help her, brushing her cheek in the process. Tingles ran through Pepper, making her grit her teeth. “Please,” she said, turning to face him. “I like to do everything myself.”

His grin was, slow and sexy. “I know what I was trying to remember about you.”

She held her breath.

“Some of our classmates secretly voted you Most Likely to Be Town Spinster. I guess they were wrong.”

She glared at him. “As long as you’re proud of being the town drifter, I’ll be proud of not being the town spinster.” She steered him out the door, shut it and locked it. When he turned and stared through the window at her, clearly surprised to be shoved into the cold, Pepper put a Closed sign up, then went out the back way.

She had a lot to think about.

LUKE WENT AROUND to the back of the clinic and watched Pepper get into her car. She was prettier now than in high school, though she’d been cute then in a studious sort of way. Her features had a warm glow of maturity now, giving her an appealing femininity that was new and refreshing to his jaded eyes.

He’d been lying, of course. He well remembered the last time he’d seen Pepper Forrester. His body remembered how she’d wrapped herself around him with innocent sighs of pleasure. A man didn’t forget that much passion, no matter how distant the memory might be.

He also knew she’d been lying, pretending she didn’t remember what they’d been to each other. A woman who gave her virginity to a man never let go of the knowledge that it had happened, for better or for worse. He hoped her memories of that afternoon—and of him—were kind ones, and his guilty conscience and ego wondered if perhaps the reason she dismissed him now was because the memory wasn’t a sterling one she’d recorded with happiness.

He hoped that wasn’t the case. He’d always prided himself on making women happy.

She got into her car, a serviceable minivan, which surprised him. It was almost a matronly vehicle, far too maternal for such a sexy woman. He would have imagined her, with that hair and her peaches-and-cream complexion, in some sort of fancy roadster. She was, after all, from the wealthiest family in Tulips. A little spoiled behavior from the only female of the Forrester clan wouldn’t have surprised him; the age and make of her vehicle did. The general’s daughters wouldn’t be caught dead driving or even riding in such a vehicle, unless it was an emergency and they had Gucci sunglasses to hide behind. He chuckled to himself. Pepper was a refreshing surprise to him.

Yet he couldn’t afford to linger over pleasant memories of his boyhood. His father—the reason he’d been called home—waited for him, no doubt with dragon’s breath ready to sear him. There was no putting it off any longer, so after Pepper had ridden away in her mommy-mobile, Luke turned to go.

Suddenly, a thought made him spin back around. A mommy-mobile was for a woman who had children, of course. She was married, and he hadn’t even bothered to scan her finger for a ring. Not that it mattered, he decided. He wasn’t the marrying kind himself.

Her van pulled up beside him as he prepared to walk back to the Tulips Saloon and try to hitch a ride off the old fogeys.

“I’m going to regret asking this,” Pepper said, “but where’s your car?”

“Not here. I had a taxi drop me off in town. I was stalling, to be honest,” he said.

She looked regretful. “So you need a ride.”

“If you’re offering.” He raised his brows and waited, hopeful she’d say yes.

She sighed. “This is so not a good idea.”

He grinned and climbed in. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” He chuckled when she rolled her eyes. “We can catch up on what has happened in the past many years of our lives.”

“No, thanks.”

Stiffly keeping her walls up, he noted. That was okay with him. He liked a woman who didn’t throw herself at a man. “You could at least ask something about me.”

“And feign interest in the answer?” She shook her head. “I’m giving a drifter a lift, nothing more.”

Okay, she was starting to hurt his feelings. “I don’t think I’ve ever met such a resistant female.”

“I hardly know what to say to that. The obvious reply, too obvious, is that you haven’t met many bright females. But I prefer to take the high road and tell you that I’m not resistant, I’m merely busy.”

“And have a lot on your mind.”

“Exactly.”

God, he wanted to touch her. She’d jump right out of her straight-laced skin if he did. Luke looked out the window, his ego flattened and his enthusiasm for baiting her declining. “I guess I’ll relieve you of my horse’s-ass attempts at socializing for the moment, then.” He leaned back, closing his eyes for a second. Truthfully, it was kind of nice to be around a woman who didn’t want a thing from him.

He relaxed and made himself stare out the window so he wouldn’t keep annoying a woman whose naked body, he remembered, was quite beautiful.

PEPPER TRIED TO DECIDE what had made her turn back around and pick up Luke. What drove her to dance on the fiery edge of an emotional volcano? He was every bit the dark-haired scoundrel with easy charm he’d always been; if anything, time had put a glossy veneer of sophistication on him that made him more dangerously sexy than ever. The cocktail was devastating to her heart, Pepper noted, analyzing her overrapid pulse and trembling, adrenaline-laced fingertips.

One day, I’m going to have to tell him….

She couldn’t imagine pushing a confession to this suave, confident man past her lips. Luke and she were strangers to each other, even more awkward than total strangers because neither of them wanted to accidentally refer to their past affair. She doubted he’d forgotten her naive crush on him and her willing surrender. Likely, he was being the gentleman by pretending to forget that it had ever happened.

It never happened, Pepper told herself. Toby and Josh were wonderful gifts from heaven.

But no. Her boys were wonderful gifts from the man seated next to her. She clenched her fingers on the steering wheel. “Here you are,” she said, “home again at long last.” She stopped the car outside the front door of the McGarrett farmhouse. Luke had become more and more quiet with every passing mile, and she could feel his dread of the meeting between him and his father. Mr. McGarrett had never been easy on him, therefore laying the groundwork for conflict, to Pepper’s mind, of a son who rebelled in all the requisite bad-boy methods.

“Thanks,” Luke said, opening the van door reluctantly.

She softened for a second, knowing he wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. Her fondest wish would be for her sons to never dread talking to their father…when they got to know him.

Prickles ran over her scalp. Duke and Zach had never had any reason to expect anything other than respect and love from their dad, as had she. “Good luck,” she murmured.

Luke looked at her. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She nodded, their gazes meeting. He hesitated, perhaps recognizing sympathy in her expression, so she broke eye contact and looked at her hands.

“I hope I see you again,” Luke said softly. “I have a feeling you turned out to be a very remarkable woman.”

She didn’t look up. She couldn’t. So he closed the door and walked away. She heard his footsteps crunching up the gravel drive, and sneaked a peek. Toby and Josh walked like their father, she realized, with that same loose, arm-swinging gait of busy alertness. While the walk was cute on her boys, it was darn sexy on a grown man, giving Pepper a flash that one day, her boys were going to turn out much like their father in the girl-magnet department.

They were thirteen, not so much younger than when she and Luke—

Not letting herself think about it, Pepper backed up the van and drove off.

LUKE WALKED INSIDE his boyhood home with reluctance. The front door was open, so he didn’t need the key his father kept under the cracked flowerpot. Luke had checked to make sure it was still there, knowing that nothing would have changed despite time’s certain march.

The house smelled musty, closed up, like library stacks in an unventilated basement. It was a world away from the open ocean and thrilling waters of Greece. Setting down his small bag, he headed to the den, where he knew his father would be on a Sunday evening.

His dad was parked in front of a blaring TV with a cereal bowl perched on a TV dinner tray. Luke swallowed hard, looking at the round top of a nearly bald head, all that was visible from behind the green recliner. “Dad.”

His father got to his feet, finally realizing someone was in the house with him. “Luke. You’re back.”

They stared at each other for a tense ten seconds before the older man finally stretched out his hand. “Good to see you.”

Luke nodded. “You, too.” He shook the offered hand with trepidation.

“Nice of you to come home to see your old man,” his father began, and Luke stiffened.

“You sent for me,” he said. “I assumed it was important.”

“My letter?” His father shook his head. “I didn’t send for you. I merely suggested you might want to take over the family business.”

“It’s your business, Dad,” Luke said, not wanting to jump immediately into a conflict. “Thanks, though. Residential real estate isn’t my cup of tea.”

By the looks of his father’s home, it wasn’t his cup of tea, either. There was a lot of work needing to be done, both inside and out.

Stepping back, his father accidentally bumped the TV table. When he reached to steady it, the cereal bowl went crashing to the floor, and Luke realized that he hadn’t been called home for business matters at all.

His father appeared quite feeble. A flash of despair and recognition washed over Luke as the truth hit him. His dad couldn’t take care of himself as well as he used to, and most certainly could no longer care for a large acreage. My footloose traveling days are over. Luke saw himself locked into the finality of caretaking for a man who’d never loved him or been proud of him.

He swore to himself on the spot that if he ever had children, they were going to know he loved them every day of their lives. Every single damn day.

Chapter Five

“There’s probably a proverb in the Bible somewhere about people who meddle,” Helen said worriedly as the four of them sat around a table at the Tulips Saloon. “We may all go to Hades for our part in this.”

They hadn’t seen or heard anything of Luke since his return. That was not a good sign, Helen thought, but worse was that they hadn’t seen Pepper or the boys. Neither had Duke or Zach graced the saloon with their presence.

“It does seem that we would have heard something from someone,” Pansy said, and Hiram and Bug nodded. “Remember when we promised ourselves a long time ago, before Zach and Jessie got married, that sometimes we overhelped and made things worse? So we quit the busybody business?”

“Yes,” Hiram said, “but then we sort of got roped back into it by Zach. He seemed needier than his brother somehow.”

“Fibbers,” Helen said impatiently. “We couldn’t bear to be left out. And now we may have meddled one time, too many. Someone get the Bible and see if we’re going to hell for it.”

Pansy giggled. “Too late now. I say we get out a cookbook, instead.”

Hiram and Bug sat up with enthusiasm. “You girls bake and us boys’ll play cards and lick the bowls.”

“How can I pass up that deal?” Helen said. “It’s better than waiting to hear something when we probably won’t.” She pulled out her special recipe box. “I’ve got a humdinger to try on you two unworthy guinea pigs. Red velvet cake like you’ve never tasted.”

“Mmm,” Hiram said. “You just go ahead and bake off those nerves you’re having. Bug and me’ll be happy to try your experiments.”

Pansy sniffed. “Useless.”

The door swung open with more force than usual, and Toby and Josh dashed in, followed by a more sedate Pepper.

“Now, boys,” Helen began, in her most grandmotherly voice, “we try to handle that door with care. It was handmade for us specially. We don’t throw it open like regular saloon doors.” She hugged the boys to her.

“Yes, Ms. Helen,” they said, awkwardly trying to squirm out of her embrace.

Pepper gave everyone in the room a kiss. “Good news,” she said. “I hired four girls for my office.”

“Local?” Pansy asked.

Pepper sat down. “Of course. I wouldn’t dream of hiring anybody from outside of Tulips.”

“Oh.” Helen nodded. “We thought maybe you’d want professionals.”

“Well, they’ll be professional with some training.” Pepper motioned for her boys to sit beside her. “A secretary-receptionist, a nurse’s aide, an insurance clerk and an office manager.”

“Wow,” Pansy said, “you had this all thought out, Pepper.”

She nodded. “For a long time.” She gazed at her boys fondly. “I always knew we were coming home, one day.”

For a moment, the room went silent. “Snag a cookie from the kitchen, boys,” Pepper told her sons, laying a couple of dollars on the table.

Helen shook her head. “Put those away, Doctor,” she said. “The boys aren’t going to eat much. There’s a table back there, kids, where you can eat and have some milk, too.”

Pepper laughed. “Growing twins eat plenty. You’ll be sorry you introduced them to your refrigerator.”

The door swung open again, this time bringing Luke. Pepper’s insides went tight, and she hoped Toby and Josh would stay in the kitchen, out of sight. She wasn’t ready for her secret to be out, not just yet, not while she was still getting her footing in Tulips. No one had asked her who the boys’ father was, and she appreciated people respecting her privacy.

Luke looked over the group and then at her, his face tired. “I came by for a refresher sugar binge.”

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