So Now You're Back (38 page)

L
uke scribbled a note on his pad, propped the pen behind his ear, then carried on typing, inhaling the fragrance of freshly baked filou, strong coffee and the acrid echo of a thousand cigarettes that still clung to the wooden booths in Café Hugo despite the smoking ban introduced in 2008.

He came here often to work, the quiet of his apartment somehow much more disturbing than the chattering hum of other people's conversations, the clatter of cutlery and crockery, the light slap of shoe leather on marble tiling as the waiters hurried past with trays of patisseries. Of course, he'd been here even more often than usual in the past two weeks. Ever since returning from London and the Punch-Up at Halle's Kitchen Corral.

Because in the past fourteen days, the silence in his apartment had become unbearable.

He gulped down another shot of the cooling coffee and eased back in the booth. Before clicking away from the document he was working on—an ‘Insider's Guide to the Hidden Treasures of the Marais' for
National Geographic
magazine—to check his emails. For about the two millionth time in the past eighteen hours.

He cursed as the two new messages turned out to be a subscription circular and some spam about Russian mailorder brides.

Just what I need—a hook-up with Olga from Omsk—to turn my personal life completely to shit.

He deleted the messages, flagging Olga as spam so his damn filter could stop doubling as the demon matchmaker from hell, then stared at his empty inbox.

Eighteen hours since he'd poured out his heart in a magazine article, in one last desperate attempt to make amends for all his mistakes, both old and new. And no word from Halle.

So that was it, then. She'd finally washed her hands of him. Of them. Who could blame her? He flexed the stiff fingers of his right hand, still feeling the phantom ache in his knuckles that had healed over a week ago.

Unfortunately, there was no way to heal what he'd done. Not just charging into her home and behaving like a lunatic—his fingers curled into a fist, or rather behaving like his old man, and smashing his fist into some poor kid's jaw because of his own shortcomings as a parent. But also issuing that nutjob ultimatum.

He could have waited. He should have waited, for Halle to talk to the kids. But instead of behaving like a grown-up, he'd panicked and tried to put Halle on the spot. All those insecurities from his childhood had risen up to strangle his sense of proportion, not to mention the self-awareness that had been forged in fire after his breakdown, years of therapy and eleven life-changing days in the Smoky Mountains.

He rested the back of his head on the booth and examined the yellowed cornice on the ceiling.

No wonder she no longer wanted to have anything to
do with him. Some soul-searching, lots of extreme sports activities, too much hot-tub sex and a heartfelt article for
Vanity Fair
wasn't going to atone for the never-ending list of fuck-ups he'd subjected her to over the years.

Especially if he kept right on fucking up.

He heard the tap of heels approaching the booth but ignored them to click back on his work document. Probably just one of the waitstaff come to refill his coffee cup.

‘Merci,'
he murmured, not bothering to look up as the girl stopped by his booth.

But instead of filling the cup, the waitress slid into the booth opposite him. His head came up, and he blinked to try to dispel the apparition sitting across from him.

Halle smiled back at him, her cheeks flushed, her soft blonde hair secured in that habitual knot and her magnificent cleavage displayed temptingly above the bodice of a snug summer dress emblazoned with mutant sunflowers.

‘Hello, Luke,' said the apparition.

He groaned. He was having some sort of psychic freak-out brought on by weariness and stress and bone-deep regret. But he had no clue how to stop it.

‘Hi, Halle,' he replied, deciding to humour it. And himself. If delusions were the only way he could carry on a conversation with her, then he'd take them.

His gaze tracked down to her cleavage and the plump flesh that he'd explored at his leisure in Tennessee. Blood pulsed into his groin and he wondered vaguely, exactly how psychotic you had to be to get a boner from a hallucination.

As if in slow motion, she lifted a dark leather purse and pulled out an iPad. She placed the tablet on the table, keyed in the code, then turned it the other way up and slid it across to him until he could read the standfirst of his
Vanity Fair
article on it.

Cool, so far, so totally certifiable.

‘I thought I should come and tell you in person,' Dream Halle said, sounding super-real now and making him doubt his sanity even more. ‘I'm not going to let you publish a word of this.' Damn, he could even smell that delicious floral scent of summer flowers and vanilla essence. As hallucinations went, this one was actually pretty hot.

He nodded, still in a trance. ‘You hated it, then?'

He would have been embarrassed by the quiver of vulnerability in his voice. But hell, this was a delusion. And it was his delusion. So what did it matter what it thought of him? Real Halle had already dumped him for the last time, so why not let Dream Halle pick through the pieces?

She shook her head, the movement making a curl of hair escape her updo and bob down to bounce on her shoulder. He resisted the urge to capture it and let the gossamer silk wind itself round his finger. He didn't want to shatter the illusion. Not yet.

‘I didn't hate it,' she said, her smile spreading across her full lips and making the heat and the gratitude throb harder in his crotch. ‘I loved it. Almost as much as I love you.'

He did a mental fist pump, his heart galloping at the seductive sincerity in her words.

Way. To. Go. Best hallucination EVAH.

But then her smile quirked, the twinkle of ironic amusement in those golden eyes dimming his euphoria.

‘But I've been in agony for two weeks,' the illusion said. ‘Why the hell didn't you contact me sooner, you stupid snot-bag?'

He frowned, watching the tear slip along her lid and hang in her lashes to sparkle in the corner of her eye like crystal.

Hang on a minute. Why was his dream delusion calling him a snot-bag? Couldn't he even go insane properly?

He reached out to lift the tear off her lashes, deciding it was probably time to make Dream Halle vanish before he got towed off to a mental hospital … and the tip of his forefinger connected with warm, soft, solid flesh.

He shot out of the booth, slamming his knee into the tabletop with a resounding thud. Pain ricocheted up his thigh as he swore viciously and his cup went flying. Coffee sprayed over the tablet, his laptop and his notebook as he gaped at the woman in front of him. The woman who had come to mean everything to him. And who he had always believed, deep down, he had never ever truly deserved—but who was sitting in front of him now in all her three-dimensional glory and telling him she loved him.

And he said the first thing that came into his head.

‘What the ever-loving fuck? You're actually real?'

‘Last time I checked.' Halle laughed at the look of utter shock on Luke's face. Luke's gorgeous, handsome, deliciously scruffed and completely astonished face. She grabbed a couple of napkins from the table dispenser and blotted the flow of spilled coffee before it could drip onto the floor. ‘You might want to rescue your laptop,' she remarked, hearing the sizzle of firing circuits as she wiped the splatter off her iPad.

He glanced at the expensive MacBook Air, which had taken the brunt of the spillage. ‘Sod that.' He grasped her arm and hauled her out of the booth. ‘I can replace a laptop. I can't replace you.'

He folded his arms around her, apparently not caring about the coffee-soaked napkin in her fist that dripped down his shirt. Cradling her cheek, his gaze lifted to her chignon, then focused on her lips. ‘It's really you? You're really here?' he said, the catch in his voice, the quiver of uncertainty
even more beautiful than the adoration reflected in those pale blue eyes.

‘Yes, I'm really here,' she murmured, finding it hard to get the words out round her elation. ‘By the way, I wanted to ask you, what happened to the exposé you were going to write on Monroe's retreat?' she teased, knowing that he'd used the article to speak to her directly, in the only way he knew how.

Lizzie had been right. He was an amazing writer. His article had ripped her apart and then put her back together again. Foolishly he'd taken all the blame for their bust-up, done far too much grovelling and generally proved how much he wanted to make this work. And made her realise that they were equals now, that whatever happened next, they would be going into this together. As adults who knew each other's flaws, each other's weaknesses, but loved each other more because of them.

His mouth tipped up in a lopsided grin. ‘It's kind of tough to write an exposé on a method that actually worked.'

‘Ah, yes, fair point.' She grinned back at him, her heart swelling until it closed off her air supply.

‘I guess I'm going to have to write that bloody puff piece I promised him, after all,' he said, the mock regret making her heartbeat race up to warp speed. ‘Even though it goes against every one of my journalistic instincts.'

Dropping the sopping tissue, she curled her wet fingers round the back of his neck and drew him closer, until their lips were millimetres apart and she could taste the coffee and the desire on his breath. ‘I may know a way to make your journalistic instincts feel better about that.'

‘Oh, yeah?'

‘Uh-huh. But it may require some additional research.'

She dug her fingers into his hair, caressing his scalp as
his arms wrapped around her hips, dragging her against the hard planes of his body. The
very
hard planes of his body.

And then she opened her mouth and captured his thrusting tongue in a soul-stirring, super-hot piece of very important journalistic research.

Christmas Eve, five months later

‘A
ldo Best, get your butt down here and clean up this crap now,' Luke shouted up the stairs. ‘Or there will be consequences.'

He marched back into Halle's basement kitchen and whipped the tea towel off his shoulder to take the roast out, feeling harassed.

Halle was due back from the studio in fifteen minutes and he wanted the place to look good. He had plans for tonight. Important plans. Which didn't involve the kitchen looking like a bloody tornado had hit it.

The tornado in question poked his head round the door two seconds later, the innocent expression on his face not fooling Luke for a second. ‘What consequences?' Aldo said.

‘Consequences that have yet to be decided … but will be a lot worse for you than me,' Luke said, doing his best to keep his straining temper in check. Aldo liked to test his boundaries, because he knew exactly how important it was to Luke that the two of them get on. And generally they did
get on. They got on really, really well. Almost like a real father and son.

He and Halle had decided to take things slowly the past five months. He'd kept his place in Paris and still spent the weekdays there. Even though they'd soon started stretching his weekends in London to four days, he hated having to head back every Tuesday morning. So they'd agreed a week ago he would hang out in Notting Hill over the whole three weeks of the Christmas holidays and see how things went.

And everything had been going great. Until this morning, when Halle had rushed off to the production offices to record an interview that was being screened before her Christmas Special tomorrow and Trey and Lizzie had shot off to do a ton of last-minute shopping together—which he had a sneaking suspicion was just an excuse for them to flirt their arses off without an audience. He resisted a shudder as he basted the meat. While he'd been left to do a thousand and one chores, including cooking the dinner, and Aldo had taken it upon himself to turn into the child of Satan.

Originally, Luke had made a fuss of the kid for Halle's sake, and Lizzie's sake, and because it made everyone's life easier when he was staying over, but the truth was, now he flat-out adored the little monster.

But even though he'd fallen for the boy months ago, he'd been careful not to push the whole Dad routine. He didn't want to scare the kid off by getting too heavy-handed. They were both still feeling their way, but he knew when he was being dicked around. And he had a feeling they might have reached their Armageddon and he was finally going to have to start putting his foot down. Because today Aldo had gone out of his way to strain his patience to breaking point and beyond.

Aldo's eyes narrowed and he waltzed over to the pile
of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and Lego strewn all over the sofa and coffee table that he and Trey had been playing with that morning.

Propping his hands on his hips, Aldo declared, ‘Why do
I
have to clean it up, when Trey made the mess, too?'

‘Because Trey is out Christmas shopping with your sister and you're not.'

Aldo turned, his eyes stormy with antagonism. ‘Well, I'm not doing it and you can't make me, because there aren't any consequences.'

Luke slid the roasting tin back into the oven, still holding on to his temper. Just. ‘Oh, yeah, well, how about if I told you the consequences are gonna involve me slinging the lot of it in the bin if you don't start clearing it up in the next ten seconds?'

Armageddon it is, then.

Aldo's eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Go on, then. See if I care,' he shouted, then drew his leg back and kicked the Harry Potter castle he'd made earlier with all his might. Hogwarts exploded, firing pieces of Lego across the room like a barrage of ground-to-air missiles.

‘OK, that's it.' Luke slammed the oven door with a crash, threw down the tea towel and raced after Aldo as the boy shot out of the room as if his pants were on fire.

They soon will be, you little bugger.

He caught up with Aldo on the stairs, jerked him up under his arm and carried him back into the kitchen as the kid kicked and screamed like a banshee.

‘Get off me, get off me. I hate you. I'm not doing it.'

Aldo's flying heels connected with Luke's shin. Luke stumbled, limping, as pain rocketed up his leg.

‘Shit, that hurt, you little …' He dumped the boy on the
sofa, sat down and grabbed the kid by his T-shirt before he could leap away again, then hauled him over his lap.

He raised his arm, about to lay his hand across Aldo's backside, when the boy's panicked screams cut through the buzzing in Luke's skull, shocking him into immobility.

‘You can't tell me what to do. Because you're not my dad and you don't want to be,' Aldo sobbed.

Luke dragged shaking fingers through his hair as the boy's cries turned to big fat heart-wrenching sobs.

He lifted Aldo off his lap and cradled the kid in his arms. ‘It's OK, Aldo. I've got you. Let it out.'

Thank Christ he hadn't actually followed through and smacked the child. But even though he hadn't hurt Aldo, he had humiliated him, and he knew that could be just as bad.

Hugging the boy close, Luke let Aldo cling to him until the heaving sobs had quietened into choking pants of misery and vulnerability.

There was only one way to fix this. By coming clean with the boy and laying his feelings on the line. He'd planned to wait to square things with Aldo, until he had everything squared with Aldo's mother, but that was the coward's way out. He couldn't let Halle do all the heavy lifting, because this decision was between him and Aldo and not Aldo's mum.

‘I know I'm not your dad,' he said, raising the boy's chin until their gazes met. He pushed the sweaty hair off Aldo's forehead. ‘But I want to be, very much.'

Aldo blinked, staring at him out of Halle's whisky-coloured eyes, his tear-streaked face a picture of astonishment. ‘You do?' He hiccoughed. ‘Really?'

‘Yeah, I really do.'

‘But why?' Aldo asked, as if he genuinely couldn't figure out why anyone would want to be his father.

Luke blinked, too, getting misty-eyed himself.

Jesus, the kid is killing me.

He could have said all the obvious things. That he'd come to adore the little boy's tenacity, his tough boyish exterior and the tender heart beneath it, so like his mother's. That he wanted to do everything in his power to make them all—all four of them—a family. That he couldn't think of a child who needed a dad more than Aldo. And he couldn't think of anyone better to do the job than someone who wanted to be Aldo's dad as much as he did. But somehow he didn't think any of that would wash as well as one simple truth.

‘Because I need someone to play football with if I'm going to live here full-time,' he said. ‘And Lizzie's not into playing football much any more. Plus, she's mostly living in Paris these days.'

And when she wasn't, she was way too busy flirting with Trey, he thought but decided not to add.

‘I could do that.' Aldo's face split into an eager grin, his eyes sparkling like the fairy lights they'd strung on the Christmas tree together two days before. ‘I
love
playing football and I live here all the time, too.'

‘I know. That's why I can't think of anyone better to be my son,' Luke said, emotion careering through him. The way it had when he'd first held Lizzie in his arms, when she was a couple of minutes old. ‘So the job's yours if you want it,' he added as nonchalantly as he could manage while his throat was aching.

Aldo might be ten, but he would be Luke's kid now, too. A Best in a lot more than name only. If he said yes.

‘Would you get angry with me if you were my dad?' Aldo asked, still sounding eager. And although Luke knew he would do his absolute utmost never to lose his temper with
the boy again, he sensed that wasn't what Aldo wanted to hear right now.

‘I might,' he said, trying to look grave. ‘If you did something as diabolical as you just did again. And I would have to discipline you. But I promise never to spank you.'

‘Why?' Aldo said, sounding curious rather than intimidated, which Luke took as a very good sign.

‘Because hitting someone doesn't make you right. It just makes you meaner. Especially if you're bigger than they are.' And Luke refused to become his father, no matter how many buttons Aldo pressed, or Harry Potter castles he kicked over.

‘But what
would
you do, then?' Aldo asked, intrigued now. ‘If I was really naughty?'

‘I'd probably ground you, I guess. Or make you go to your room,' he said, making it up as he went along. This was new territory for him, too. He'd never had to discipline Lizzie as a kid, because he had only ever been Super Dad with her, never Everyday Dad. ‘Which would be a hell of a pain in the arse for both of us,' he added. ‘Because then neither of us would be able to play football.'

Aldo glanced around him at the mess he'd made. ‘If I cleaned this up now, would you play football with me after dinner?'

Luke smiled. Damn, the boy drove a hard bargain—especially as they'd have to play in the frostbitten garden in the pitch-dark. ‘I would if you were my son.'

Aldo climbed off his lap and started the arduous task of clearing up Harry Potter's decimated castle with undisguised enthusiasm, then said, very nonchalantly, ‘OK, Dad.'

Luke's smile burst into what he figured was probably the cheesiest Christmas grin imaginable, even though he felt pretty idiotic.

To think he'd agonised about getting Aldo on-board for weeks, when all he'd ever really had to do was ask.

He was carving the roast five minutes later, Aldo still picking bits of Lego out of Halle's window pots, when he spotted Halle and Trey and Lizzie all coming down the basement stairs together.

‘Look who I found outside,' Halle said as she walked in the door. She raised her eyebrows at Luke in the silent they-were-kissing-again signal the two of them had been using a lot in the past two days, now that Trey and Lizzie were officially an item.

Trey had stopped being Aldo's au pair five days ago. He was going to be starting an access course in January so he could think about going to college with the money his mother had left him in her will. And with Lizzie just back from Paris, where she had started her art course two months back, the two of them had been spending every spare second together.

Luke wasn't comfortable with the situation, but he was doing his best not to go off at the deep end. And Halle was helping out by running interference.

‘Yeah, I can just imagine,' he whispered to Halle as he drew her close for a kiss.

‘Mmmm, that smells glorious,' she said, smelling pretty glorious herself, her signature scent and the feel of her chilly cheek against his making his stomach muscles go all tight and tingly. ‘Watching you carve is such a turn-on,' she added, the naughty twinkle in her eye making him want to forget all about dinner and sling her over his shoulder.

‘Mum, Dad, get a room,' Lizzie said, laughing, as Trey helped her out of her coat.

Ever the gallant young suitor,
Luke thought, shooting the
guy a cautionary glare as he picked up the carving knife and fork. Trey sent him a level look back, not cowed in the slightest.

The guy was genuine and hard-working, all right, and he'd gone out of his way to be as honourable as possible with Lizzie. But Luke knew honour and integrity took you only so far when twenty-something hormones were involved. So he intended to keep an eye on them both. He couldn't exactly stop the two of them from getting together, he knew that, but that didn't mean he was letting the boy get up to anything on his watch.

‘My God, Aldo,' Halle said, tripping over the fairly major mess Aldo had yet to pick up as she went to hang up her coat. ‘What happened here? It looks like a Lego–Yu-Gi-Oh! apocalypse.'

Aldo got off his hands and knees and dumped some more of the Lego into the box. Luke stealed himself for what he might say to Halle about the almost-smacking incident. He would have some explaining to do, but he could handle it, now that Aldo and he had come to an understanding. And if everything went as he hoped later on tonight, once he and Halle were alone, Aldo wouldn't just be his responsibility by virtue of that agreement.

‘The Harry Potter castle broke,' Aldo said, being very economical with the truth. ‘But Dad said he would play football with me if I picked it all up.'

Love and pride blossomed in Luke's chest as Halle's head whipped round and she mouthed the word ‘Dad?' to him, looking stunned but happy.

Lizzie and Trey had heard it, too, because Trey was smiling at him and Lizzie had her hand over her mouth, her eyes sheened with emotion.

Luke lifted his eyebrows at all three of them as Aldo began gathering up the Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

Yeah, that's right, get over it, folks.

‘Aldo's correct. My son and I have an important match planned for later,' he said, just as nonchalantly as Aldo. ‘But first things first. Lizzie, Trey, you guys set the table.' He began directing the troops. ‘And, Hal, stop standing there and crack open some wine. I've had a really bloody exhausting day.'

Halle hummed her favourite Sam Smith ballad as the hot water pounded tired muscles, a secret smile flitting over her lips the way it had been all evening. Ever since she'd walked into the house two hours ago, after breaking Trey and Lizzie apart from a very hot-looking clinch on the basement stairs, to find Luke carving a delicious roast dinner in the kitchen, and her son … She paused to rinse her hair …
Their
son actually doing what he was told for once.

She sung the first few lines of the chorus in her offkey voice as the happiness engulfed her, steaming up the shower cubicle.

She couldn't wait for Christmas morning tomorrow. Waking up with Luke wrapped around her, the presents all waiting under the tree in the living room. Including one very important one that she'd made specially this afternoon at the cake studio. A miniature Christmas cake in the shape of a football pitch with ‘Marry Me' inscribed in flowing blue letters on the top.