Nighthawk & The Return of Luke McGuire (38 page)

“I think she heard your…announcement.”

“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” he said, keeping his back to the house. “On the porch?”

Amelia nodded. “Put on your flame-retardant suit.”

“Breathing fire, is she?”

“Looks that way.”

He drew himself up straight, determined not to betray his inner turmoil. But before he could turn around, Amelia put a hand on his arm.

“Think about it,” she urged. “
She’s
upset.
She’s
lost her cool.
You’ve
done that to
her.
You’re in control.”

The revelation was simple, but profound. For the first time he believed it, really believed it. He wanted to kiss her. But he wouldn’t, not here, not now. Instead he lifted two fingers to his lips, then pressed them to hers.

“Remind me to deliver that directly later.”

Amelia blushed, but her gaze didn’t waver.

He took a deep breath and let his mouth curve into the cockiest grin he could manage.

He turned around.

“Hi there, Mom!” he called out cheerfully, even waving as he walked up to the porch steps. She’d always hated that. From David she would accept “Mom,” from him she had required “Mother.” And had preferred nothing at all that mentioned the connection.

“What are you doing here?” She looked down at him as if he were a slug she’d discovered on her roses. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble already? Humiliating me in front of an entire room of people and inciting David to act so irresponsibly?”

Well, that set the tone, Luke thought. No fence-mending going on here. And an interesting order she put his offenses in. “I heard you lost another son,” he said brightly. “How’d you drive this one away?”

If his mother were the kind of woman who spat, Luke knew he would be wiping his face about now. He hadn’t really meant to start out this way, but just the way she looked at him triggered old, knee-jerk responses he had to fight to control.

“Luke,” Amelia said softly.

He reined in the raw temper his mother brought out in him. “Yeah, okay. Look,” he said to the woman glaring at him from the porch, a bare second, he knew, from ordering him off her property, “I didn’t come here to fight with you. I want to find my brother, just like you do.”

“He’s not your brother, and I’ll thank you to stay out of this. Just go back to wherever you crawled out from and leave this to me.”

“Leaving it to you is why Davie’s gone.”

“His name is
David.
”

“Please!” Amelia said. “It’s silly to argue about names when David could be in trouble, or hurt!”

It
was
silly, Luke realized. Was that all his mother could fixate on? Her son, the son she supposedly cared about, was missing, and all she could get upset about was that he’d used a nickname she’d never liked?

He saw in that moment how truly narrow her world was, how the only things that mattered to her were those that directly affected her. And in that moment he realized how truly far behind he’d left her.

“She’s right. Forget how much you hate me for a minute and tell us if you have any idea where he might have gone.”

“If I had any idea, he would be home now,” she snapped.

“Has he ever talked about any place he liked to go, or wanted to go?” Amelia asked, her voice more conciliatory than Luke liked, but he understood what she was trying to do.

“No. He’s full of stupid ideas about doing reckless things just now, most of them
his
fault.”

She didn’t need to point to make it clear who she meant.

“With all due respect, Mrs. Hiller,” Amelia said, startling Luke with the sudden ice in her tone, “David hasn’t seen his
brother
in eight years. Any stupid ideas he might have, have been nurtured and fed here.”

Jackie Hiller’s nose shot upward. “As if I’d encourage such irresponsible stupidity.”

“Look, Mother,” Luke began, willing to be at least that conciliatory if it would help find David. She ignored him. Nothing new there.

“I’ve tried to overlook the gossip about you, Amelia,” Jackie said, her voice now stern, condescending. “No one knows better than I what a charmer he can be when he chooses to be. It’s how he wiggled out of a lot of the trouble he caused. But you must remember, he’s no good and never will be.”

“We’re not here to talk about me,” Amelia retorted.

“You should listen to me,” Jackie said, almost urgently. “I was like you, once, Amelia. Young and foolish, quiet and shy. And I, too, was taken in by a handsome face, a devilish smile and an attitude. His father had all of that, and he passed it on. Along with the knowledge of how to use it,” she ended ominously.

Luke stared at his mother; he’d never heard her so much as mention his father, not once in his life. Whenever he’d brought it up, her answer had always been “The less you know about him, the better.” And that had been the end of the topic, as far as she was concerned. He’d even searched the house once, looking for some clue to the man whose name was all his son had of him. He’d found nothing, and when his mother realized what he’d done, she’d locked him in his room for two days, telling him he’d wasted his time, she’d destroyed anything connected to Patrick McGuire long ago.

“Believe me,” Jackie said, “I know how exciting a bad boy can be, especially to a sheltered girl like you, like I was. But it’s no good, Amelia. They’re trouble, through and through, and you’ll only be hurt in the end.”

Was this one of her speeches? he wondered. Did she use his father as well as himself to frighten young girls? Was this her platform, using not fire and brimstone, but her own flesh and blood as the example of the wages of sin, as her mother had always put it?

It suddenly occurred to him to look at Amelia, to see how she was enduring this unexpected turn in his mother’s tirade. For the first time since he’d known her, her face was expressionless, and he was unable to read even the faintest clue to what she was thinking.

His stomach knotted. What
was
she thinking? Surely she wasn’t buying this garbage?

“Thank you for your concern,” Amelia said. She sounded stiff, formal and utterly unlike herself. Luke’s stomach began to churn.

“I do understand, dear.” His mother’s voice was suddenly kind, coaxing, leaving Luke reeling a bit from the swiftness of the change. “To a good girl, a boy with a reputation is fascinating. There’s a certain…cachet I can’t deny. I fell victim to it myself. That’s why I’m trying to save you, and others, from the same fate.”

Spoken like the heroine of some tragic melodrama, Luke thought.

“I’ve heard enough of this,” he ground out. “She’s not going to be any help. Let’s get out of here, Amelia.”

“Yes,” she said. But she didn’t look at him. And when he leaned over to look at her face, her expression was still that blank, concealing mask.

He would have bet anything that she wouldn’t go for his mother’s invective. That if there was anyone in Santiago Beach who wouldn’t believe it, it would be Amelia. He just couldn’t believe that five minutes with his mother would have changed how she thought about him.

When they got back to the store and got off the motorcycle, she still wouldn’t look at him. She pulled off the helmet, fastened it to the back of the bike as he had at his mother’s and tidied her hair, all without a single glance his direction. It took him three tries before he could even get out her name.

“Amelia? Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I was just…thinking.”

He had to force the words out past the sudden tightness in his throat. “About…what she said?”

She nodded.

“You know she hates me,” he said, hating the note of desperation that had crept into his voice.

“Not what she said about you,” Amelia said, her voice oddly flat. “What she said about me.”

I
know how exciting a bad boy can be, especially to a sheltered girl like you…. To a good girl, a boy with a reputation is fascinating. There’s a certain…cachet….

His mother’s words rang in her head as she unlocked the door and went into the store. Luke followed her, and she sensed his tension, but she didn’t dare look at him. She had to think, and she couldn’t do that under his steady blue gaze.

She was a little wobbly and having trouble convincing herself it was just the ride back that had her off balance. She’d gone there expecting to hear a tirade against Luke; what she’d gotten was a rather devastating suggestion about her own attraction to him, spoken by a woman who had, for all her faults, clearly been there.

He followed her into her office; she didn’t try to stop him. She couldn’t even think about his presence now, while her mind was spinning, trying to process the assessment Jackie Hiller had hung on her.

She dropped her keys on her desk, pulled up her chair and sat down, needing to.

Was that it? Was that why she’d responded to him, why she’d done things she’d never done before? Was his reputation, that cachet his mother had spoken of, at the root of her attraction to him? Was she simply a good girl drawn to the thrill of being with a bad boy?

But he was so much more than that. She knew he was.

No one knows better than I what a charmer he can be when he chooses to be.

Was that it? Had she fallen for an admittedly gorgeous face and an easy charm? She had so little experience, it was only to be expected.

Am I really a thirty-year-old naive fool?
she wondered.

She cringed inwardly at the thought and wished she was home in her favorite overstuffed reading chair, where she could curl up, like an animal protecting itself. Hoping for distraction, she glanced over at her answering machine, but there were no messages needing her attention. Too bad the mail hadn’t come yet; maybe there would be something there that—

“Amelia.” It was a whisper, barely audible. She didn’t lift her gaze. She stared down at her desk blotter, stared at the notes scribbled here and there without really seeing the words.

“You can’t really think you’re anything like her?” He sounded almost desperate. “That’s what she’s saying, isn’t it, that you’re a fool, like she was? You’re no fool.”

She supposed it
was
rather insulting for his mother to assume that, at thirty, Amelia was being as blind as she herself had been at sixteen. She might not have much experience, but despite her own doubts, she was, as Luke had said, no fool.

“If you think she’s right, if you’re going to believe what she said about you, then you might as well believe what she said about me.”

At that she finally looked up at him. What she saw in his face wrenched her soul.

He was expecting her to turn on him.

Everything he’d ever told her about his life, everything David had told her, all the snide, nasty remarks she’d heard from his mother, came rushing back. Did she really want to believe the vitriol that woman poured out on the head of her own son? Whatever her mistakes had been, what right did she have to blame her child for them?

She supposed the converse of what Luke had said was also true; if Amelia didn’t believe what his mother said about him, then why believe what she said about her?

“It’s not true,” he said, for the first time since she’d known him actually issuing a denial. “I mean, what I did when I was a kid, a lot of that’s true, but—”

“Luke, don’t,” she said. Until she spoke, she hadn’t realized she’d already decided. “I don’t believe her, not about you. But she made me think, made me wonder, about me.”

“Don’t let her do that,” he said, and it warmed her that he sounded as disturbed by the possibility of her taking his mother’s word about herself as he had been for himself.

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said honestly. “Jim was right. I don’t even know who you are now. But I do know what I don’t believe. You’re not what she says you are.”

He let out a long, audible sigh and sank down on the chair opposite her desk, as if his legs would no longer hold him. Elbows on his knees, he buried his face in his hands, rubbing at his eyes as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“I’m sorry, Amelia,” he said.

She’d never heard a more heartfelt apology. But she had to ask, “For what, exactly?”

“Being an idiot?” he suggested ruefully.

“I see.”

She didn’t, but she wasn’t sure what he was referring to and thought it best to just let him get it out. And after a moment he lowered his hands, lifted his head and looked at her. He seemed to be trying to decide what to say, and finally she simply suggested the truth.

“The truth?” he said with a wry chuckle. “The truth is, when I got here, when I realized everybody in this place figured I’d spent the last eight years in jail, or worse, I…got mad. I figured to hell with them, if that’s what they want to think, let them. And I didn’t do anything to try and change their minds. In fact, I kind of…I…”

“Played to their expectations?”

“Exactly. I fed them. Said things that only made them believe it even more.” He grimaced. “I got defensive and decided to let them believe the worst, told myself I didn’t give a damn what anybody in this town thought of me.” His mouth tightened then. “That was before I got to know you.”

She considered that. “But you still didn’t tell me the truth. Whatever that is.”

“By the time I…wanted to, I wasn’t sure you’d believe me. Sometimes it seemed like you believed all the gossip, that you were just…dealing with me because of David. And…you never asked.”

“First I was too worried about David to think about it much. Then, when I realized how bad it was here for you, I was afraid you’d think I thought what everyone else did. That I asked just to find out if it was all true.”

“Or afraid you’d find out it was?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “I can’t deny it’s not easy swimming upstream in this town.”

His mouth twitched. “Interesting you should choose that figure of speech.”

She blinked. “What?”

He let out a compressed breath. “You sure you’re up for a long story?”

“The Closed sign is still up.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said wryly. For a long moment he didn’t go on. Then, with an awkward laugh, he said, “I’ve never really told anybody all this. I’m not sure where to start.”

“I’ve already got a pretty good idea of what your life was like here.”

He grimaced. “Yeah. Well.” He sighed audibly. “First things first, I guess.” He looked up then, met her gaze and held it steadily as he admitted, “I did a lot of the stuff they accused me of. But there was a lot I was accused of I didn’t do. I did my share of smoking, drinking and reckless driving. I trashed more than Mrs. Clancy’s garden. And every once in a while I’d rip something off.”

Amelia wrapped her arms around herself, as if his words could hurt her, even though she already had guessed as much. The words came rapidly, as if he wanted to get them all out before he ran out of nerve. His confession was clearly painful, but it was equally clear he was going to be honest even if it hurt.

“Most people around here wouldn’t believe it, but I did have a line, Amelia. I never intentionally hurt anyone. Except maybe myself. But finally I realized that if I was ever going to find my way, I had to get out of here.”

“So when you left…you were eighteen?”

“Barely. I stuck around long enough to graduate high school, more for David’s dad than anything. He was a good guy.” A shadow flickered across his expression, but he kept going. “I left the next day. I wanted to be gone before she threw me out, like she kept saying she was going to do.”

Irritation stirred in Amelia, not at Luke, but at herself, irritation that for even a moment she’d let Jackie Hiller sway her. With an effort she stayed silent.

“I’d like to say I turned my life around the minute I walked out of her house,” Luke said, his tone rueful, “but it didn’t quite happen that way. I headed for L.A., figuring a big city was going to solve all my problems. I tried, but I kept…backsliding.” He gave her a sideways look, as if wondering how she was taking this all in. “I spent a couple of months locked up. It seemed like trouble was all I was good at.”

“All you had practice at,” she murmured, and he gave her a flicker of a smile. This wasn’t coming easily for him, and she knew he hadn’t lied when he’d said he’d never told anybody all of it before.

But he was telling
her.
She relaxed her defensive posture and sat up a little straighter. “What happened?” she asked softly, letting the warmth she was feeling creep into her voice.

“I got into some serious trouble. Not like here. I got tied in with some guys who were into…selective car procurement.”

“What?”

“You pick your car, they go out and get it for you.”

Understanding dawned. “Oh. And never mind that it happens to already belong to someone else?”

He nodded. “Anyway, when I realized what they were up to, I tried to back out. But I knew too much and they…convinced me to stay quiet.”

“Convinced?”

“They beat the crap out of me,” he said, gesturing at the scar she’d noticed the first time she’d seen him. “A local cop found me in an alley. I figured he’d run me, expected the worst, but…”

“But?” she prompted, trying not to think how scared he must have been, how much pain he must have suffered.

“Turned out he was one of the good guys,” Luke said softly. “Rob Porter wasn’t in it just to throw people in jail, he wanted to help. He really wanted to help.”

“And he helped you?”

Luke nodded. “I didn’t make it easy on him, either. He took me to the hospital, then took me home with him afterward. He set me up with a counselor, but I bailed after two sessions. He signed me up at the boys’ club, but I was so much older—in more ways than one—than most of the kids, I didn’t last there, either. I don’t know why he didn’t give up.”

“He obviously saw something in you that made it worth it,” she said.

“So
he
said later. Anyway, he set it up so I could go on a river-rafting campout with some other kids who were all in the system in various stages. I was technically an adult and too old, but he got them to bend the rules.” He grinned suddenly. “I have a feeling Rob does a lot of that.”

She smiled. So he knew all cops weren’t out to get him. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for thinking the Santiago Beach ones were, considering. “What happened?”

“I…fell in love.”

She blinked. “What?”

He sat up straight, gesturing in the general direction of outside, then went on earnestly. “I grew up here, where rivers don’t really exist unless there’s flooding. The trip was up to the Kings River. I’d never seen anything like it. It’s the whole idea of it. The power, the rush, the rapids.”

“And you…fell in love with the Kings River?”

“Not that one. Nothing wrong with it, but—except during spring runoff, that’s when you can get ten foot waves and really intense water action—it’s pretty mild. Kings, the Merced, the American, the Klamath, the Stanislaus, they’re all great rivers, but…it’s the Tuolumne that’s home.”

“Sounds…invigorating.”

It sounded terrifying, but she wasn’t about to admit that. But he clearly had found something that he loved—she couldn’t miss the glow in his eyes—and if it had straightened him around… She leaned forward herself; his energy was hard to resist.

“It…I know it sounds corny, but it…called to me. There’s nothing like it. The river is…impartial. It doesn’t hate you. If it hurts you, it’s because you made a mistake. It’s…clean, I guess, fighting something that doesn’t have a motive. And if you’re good enough, you can win.”

She wondered if he realized how much he was betraying, how much of his battered soul he was revealing, in his words about the love he’d found. She couldn’t have spoken, even if she had the words.

“Gary Milhouse, the outfitter from up on the Tuolumne who ran the Kings River trip, was a friend of Rob’s,” Luke continued, “and he offered to teach me in exchange for me working on those trips for the city kids. So when the kids left for L.A., I went back with Gary to Whitewater West.”

“Teach you?”

Luke nodded. “We started with class-one water, the easy stuff. I wanted to jump ahead, of course, but he made me take every baby step along the way. Took me three years to get to where I handled class-five to his satisfaction.”

An adrenaline rush, Amelia thought suddenly, can be sparked in many ways. If you don’t live on the edge of trouble anymore, there’s always another way. Like a wild river. Another thought hit her; now she had the answer to the little gold paddle earring.

He paused before going on, and Amelia sensed he was getting to the crux of his tale. “And then?”

“I learned the Tuolumne, and that was it. I was hooked. I’ve been working for him ever since. He sent me to school to learn how to handle big rafts and people, and he paid for it. Then he gave me a job. He knew about my…history but said it didn’t matter. Said Rob vouched for me, and so did the river.”

What a…fanciful way of putting it, Amelia thought. But an unmistakable warmth filled her; while everyone here was convinced Luke was in jail somewhere, he’d in fact been working a steady job for years. And judging by his face, there was more. She waited in encouraging silence.

“And last year…I became a partner.”

Her eyes widened. “A partner? In the business?”

He shrugged. “I’d saved most of what I made. Not a lot of places to spend it up there, and besides, I just wanted to be on the river. Last year Gary wanted to expand, add more equipment, and he needed the cash. He owns his property free and clear and didn’t want to mortgage it, so I offered to just loan it to him. He took it, but insisted that made me a partner.”

He said it as if it were in name only, but Amelia sensed a deep feeling of pride beneath the offhand story. And rightfully so, she thought.