He looked from Luke to Katie, then back to his big brother. Katie waited for Luke to speak, but he remained silent.
Finally, looking dejected, Tommy sighed and stood up. “I’ll be going now.” At the door he paused. Without turning around, he whispered, “I love you, Luke.”
And then he was gone.
“Luke?”
“Not now, Katie,” he said in a tight tone of dismissal.
Katie felt as if she’d been slapped, rejected. They should have been celebrating the end of the custody battle, but there was so much more at stake. Her heart aching for her husband, Katie headed for the stairs. She paused beside him and put her hand on his cheek. It was damp with tears she doubted he was even aware he’d shed. “Are you coming up?”
“Maybe in a while,” he said, his expression bleak.
“I’ll be waiting,” she promised.
But hours later, when sunlight began to spill through the curtains, Katie was still wide-awake and alone. And when she left the house to go to work at the diner, there was no sign of Luke at all.
* * *
It was hours before Katie finally saw Luke again. He wandered into the diner right after noon and took a booth in the back. Katie was waiting on customers at the counter. Ginger was waiting on the tables. She came back to Katie within seconds of taking Luke’s order.
“He wants to see you.”
“Now?” she asked incredulously. She was still too miffed about his running out on her to risk speaking to him in a crowded diner.
“He seems really upset about something,” Ginger observed worriedly. “We could switch for a while and you could take the tables. I think everybody has their order right now, anyway. You’d have a few minutes to talk.”
Katie shook her head. “This isn’t the place,” she insisted stubbornly. She didn’t want to hear that Luke intended to end their marriage in the middle of the diner. What else could he possibly be so anxious to say that would put that grim expression on his face? “But if you wouldn’t mind watching the counter for a few minutes, I could use a break.”
“Sure, but...”
“Thanks,” she said and ducked into the ladies’ room, the one place she was certain Luke wouldn’t follow her.
She was still hiding out in the restroom fifteen minutes later, when the door opened and Lucy appeared. “You okay?”
Katie managed a wobbly smile for her best friend. “I’ve been better. Where’d you come from?”
“I stopped by to see how things were going. Luke told me you were in here. I think he was just about ready to come busting in himself.” She studied Katie from head to toe. “So how are you really?”
“I’m scared, Lucy.”
“Of losing Robby?”
“Of losing both of them. Tommy’s withdrawn his suit. But with the custody issue resolved Luke has no reason to stay married to me.”
“Hogwash! He’s in love with you. He has been forever.”
Katie didn’t believe her, but she clung to Lucy’s reassurances, anyway. It gave her the strength to emerge from the restroom and face Luke with the whole damn town looking on. There was an odd air of expectancy in the diner, as if everyone knew something was up between the two of them.
Katie would have waited until everyone left, but Luke and Ginger, with a little help from Peg, conspired to force her hand. Ginger had taken over the counter. Peg was handling the tables. They’d left her with only the one station to cover, Luke’s booth. Maybe she should have just made a dash for it, but she finally resigned herself to hearing the bad news now and getting it over with.
She marched over to her husband.
“Have a seat,” he invited.
“I don’t think so. Are you planning to file for divorce now that you have what you want?” she demanded, hands on hips, her chin thrust forward combatively.
Luke seemed taken aback at first. Then his expression turned even more bleak. “I suppose that could be one interpretation of our deal. It wasn’t in writing, though.”
“Just implied,” she agreed.
She drew in a deep breath and decided to go for broke. He might leave, anyway, but he wouldn’t go without getting a fight. “Then there was your side of the bargain. I took a look at the books. They’re a shambles. Now that everyone is getting ice cream and cookies in the evening, now that the rent has been lowered...” She shrugged. “Looks to me like you have a long way to go to get things straightened out around here.”
A faint spark of hope lit his eyes. “You want me to stay?”
She refused to be the only one making an admission here. “If you want to.”
“Do you want me to stay?” he repeated insistently.
Katie sighed and relented. Two stubborn people in one marriage was at least one, if not two, too many. “I’ve wanted you with me since I was twelve years old. Don’t you know yet how much I love you?”
“You love me?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” she said impatiently. “Do you think you would ever have gotten across that threshold, if I didn’t? It didn’t have a blasted thing to do with saving this boarding house. I would have managed somehow.”
Luke snagged her wrist and toppled her into his arms. Katie felt a heavy sigh shudder through him.
“When Tommy walked out last night, I should have been shouting with joy, but I couldn’t. All I could think about was that it was over with us,” he murmured against her cheek. “I don’t know what I would have done, if you’d said you wanted a divorce.”
Katie touched his shadowed cheek. “Why?”
“Because...”
“Not good enough. Why?” She kept her gaze pinned on his.
“You’re my best friend.”
She smiled. “Better. Keep going.”
Suddenly he was laughing. “Because I love you, Caitlyn Cassidy.”
“By golly, I think he’s got it,” she
