“I’ll pay for the rooms at the hotel,” he volunteered since it seemed unlikely that anyone was going to go contrary to Peg’s plans.
“That’s what I told them,” Peg said dryly.
He grinned at her. “You think of everything.”
“I do try,” she said cheerfully. “How did Katie take the news about the custody battle?”
Luke swallowed hard and admitted, “I haven’t told her yet.”
Muttering something that sounded suspiciously unladylike under her breath, Peg latched on to his elbow and dragged him into the kitchen. “Luke Cassidy, what in tarnation were you thinking of? She has a right to know. Does she have any idea at all what brought you back here in such an all-fired hurry?”
“Not exactly.”
“So for all she knows, you just got tired of being alone with her,” she snapped.
“Of course not,” he said, but knew it was possible that that was exactly what Katie thought.
Peg clearly didn’t buy the denial any more than he did. She regarded him as if he were slightly lower than pond scum. “I swear if you don’t tell her everything by tomorrow morning, then I will. I can’t begin to imagine what she must be thinking. Wasn’t it bad enough that you walked out on her once before? Ripped the hell out of her self-esteem, you did. Now you’ve got her thinking you don’t even want to spend three days alone with her. My glory, why’d you even bother asking her to marry you?”
Luke was very much afraid if Peg had too long to think about that question, she’d hit the answer square on the head. “As soon as everyone is out of here and we have the place to ourselves, I’ll tell her everything.”
“See that you do,” Peg ordered, her voice tight. “Just to speed things up, I’ll start clearing these folks out. Don’t worry about the mess. I have someone coming in to clean up first thing in the morning.”
Luke couldn’t imagine Katie being patient enough to leave the dirty dishes scattered around the house. While Peg hustled everyone toward the door, he began picking up, carting trays of glasses and dessert plates into the kitchen and loading them into the industrial-size dishwasher that looked like a relic from the early days of Peg’s Diner.
He’d just hauled a sack of trash to the garbage cans out back, when he looked up and spotted Katie waiting for him in the kitchen door. For one fleeting instant, he imagined that they were a typical couple, tired but elated after a night of entertaining. He could almost envision the two of them settling on the sofa side by side to nibble on leftovers, share bits of gossip, maybe even steal few sweet kisses tasting of wine. It was an image that had once filled his dreams back in the days when he’d had his entire life planned out and Katie had been at the center of it.
But as he neared the back door, one quick survey of Katie’s expression told him there would be nothing sweet or simple about the next couple of hours. She clearly hadn’t forgotten for one single minute her determination to get the answers that he’d been unwilling to provide earlier.
“There’s a nice breeze,” he observed, hoping to distract her. “Want to sit in the hammock for a while?”
She glared at him. “No, I do not want to sit in the hammock. We need to talk.”
“Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Last I heard we could talk in the hammock.”
“But we won’t and you know it,” she said flatly.
Luke grinned. “I see you remember that old hammock Peg had in the backyard and the use we put it to.”
She sighed. “I remember a lot of things, Luke Cassidy, including the fact that you’ve been hiding something important from me.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I was trying to get you to recall.”
“I’m sure. Come on, Cassidy. Stop dawdling. It’s time to face the music.”
Luke sighed as he trudged up the back steps with Katie watching him every step of the way, probably to make sure he didn’t take off. In the doorway, he could easily have walked around her, but he made sure he squeezed past, brushing tantalizingly against breasts and thighs just enough to stir his own senses, if not hers.
Sure enough, heat flared in her eyes. He seized on that. “You know, Peg went to a lot of trouble to see that we had some time alone here. It would be a shame to waste it, don’t you think?”
“What I think is that you’re trying to make me forget all the questions I have,” she said, frowning at him.
“No doubt about it,” he admitted candidly. He grinned unrepentantly.
“Why is that? What are you hiding? And what makes you think a few kisses—”
“Or more,” he taunted.
She scowled. “Or anything on God’s green earth will make me forget what’s on my mind?”
Luke stubbornly resisted being drawn into that discussion. “If I can’t distract you with images of all the wild, provocative things we could do in that hammock, let’s talk about that big, old featherbed of yours.”
“Luke, you could dance around the living room stark naked and I wouldn’t forget what’s on my mind.” She waved an envelope he hadn’t noticed before in his face. “Especially since this apparently arrived while we were gone. Any idea what it might be?”
From her tone, he guessed that she knew precisely what was inside that thick envelope.
“A sweepstakes entry?” he suggested.
Katie looked as if she were about to explode. “Dammit, don’t you dare try to make a joke out of this,” she snapped without any pretense of tolerance.
Luke heaved a sigh. It looked as if they were going to have this discussion whether
