A Family for the Rugged Rancher

There was little space to sit, so she perched on the edge of a homemade sawhorse. Luke cut into his lasagna with the side of his fork, took a bite, and closed his eyes. Emily smiled, pleased she’d made the extra effort. Luke was turning out to be a pleasure to cook for. “It was better, fresh,” she apologized.

“You say that, but I doubt it,” he remarked, biting into the garlic bread, flakes off the crust fluttering down to the plate. “It’s perfect just the way it is. I didn’t realize how hungry I was. You didn’t bring any water, did you?”

“Oh! How could I have forgotten?” She reached into the pocket of her light sweater and produced a bottle of beer, so cold it was already sweating with condensation. “I thought you’d appreciate a cold one.”

He stared at her as if she were a gift from the gods. “What?” she asked, smiling. “You’re not difficult to read, Luke.”

Well, not about food, she amended mentally. In other ways he was a definite puzzle. Emily considered for a moment that perhaps Liz’s perspective on what happened and Luke’s could be very different. Not that Liz had it easy. Losing a parent had to be devastating. But having to step into that role as Luke had…

Luke popped the top and took a long drink. “That is exactly what I needed.” He sighed, swiping the final slice of bread along the plate to get the last of the tomato sauce. “Thanks for bringing it out. You didn’t need to do that.”

“It was kind of quiet in the house.”

He nodded. “Yeah, it gets that way.”

Emily looked down, studying her toes. Had Luke been lonely? Up until now she really hadn’t thought about him living in the house all alone, but now she wondered how it must be to come home to it every day, with no one there to talk to or share the silence with. At least she had Sam.

She picked a wrench up off the tool bench and toyed with it, putting it down and picking up another. When she looked up at Luke she could tell he was gritting his teeth. He came forward and took the wrenches, placing them back on the pegboard. The whole bench was precisely arranged and Emily wondered where he inherited his penchant for neatness from. “Sorry,” she murmured.

“It’s all right.” His voice sounded oddly strained. “I try to keep things organized so…so I can always find the size I need.”

“Tools on pegboard and everything on lists.” She had noticed Luke had a list for everything at the house. Phone numbers. Groceries. To-do tasks. She often did the same thing, but she thought it an unusual trait in a man. “You really are quite neat and tidy, Luke. For a guy.” She a

ttempted to lighten the strange tension that had come over the room.

“I’m a one-man show. Keeping organized saves me a lot of time,” he explained. He finished putting the tools away reached for his beer, toying now with the bottle as he sipped. “You survived Liz’s visit?”

“We had tea and stemmed strawberries.”

“And talked about me.”

Emily felt a flush creep into her cheeks. “My, don’t we have an inflated opinion of ourselves.”

He laughed, the sound filling the quiet shed and sending a tingle right through to her toes. Laughter had been another one of those things that had been missing for a long time. Something that slipped away so innocuously that she hadn’t realized she’d missed it until hearing it again.

“Liz was sticking her nose in. If Cait didn’t have a newborn at home, she would have been here, too. Be thankful they didn’t tag-team you. You wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

Emily stared at him. He was smiling as though it was a big joke. “So it’s funny that I was put under the microscope today?”

He lowered the bottle slowly. “I forgot. You don’t have brothers and sisters. It’s what they do. We’re born to aggravate each other. I guess I’m just used to it.”

“Well she wasn’t aggravating you today, was she?” Emily’s back straightened. Granted, she’d had a nice visit with his sister, but Luke didn’t know that. For all he knew he’d thrown Emily to the wolves and he was relaxed as could be, smiling like a fool.

His smile slid from his lips though when she fired that question at him. “What exactly did Liz say to you, Emily?”

“Worried?” She asked it in an offhand manner, but the smile from earlier was gone. “She didn’t say much. She mentioned you looking after her and Cait and how they’d been holy terrors. But really, that was all.”

Luke seemed to relax, turning the bottle in his fingers. “And she said I should ask you about the rest.”

The bottle stopped turning.

“Why don’t you tell me about your dad, Luke?”

“There’s nothing to tell.” His voice was hard and his knuckles went white on the bottle.

“He’s in a special-care home, right?”

His head snapped up and his blue gaze flashed at her. “Liz has a big mouth.”