“But I’m a big girl,” Madelyne said. “I can walk.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure you can. But it’s slippery around the pool.”
Luke watched Madelyne slide her hand into Peyton’s and realized he would have never thought to hold the kid’s hand when they were near the pool. Heck, he probably wouldn’t even have stopped her from running in the halls. All clear signs that he would be a terrible babysitter. An even worse father. Was that even something he could learn? Was there a Dummies book he could read overnight? Or was he better off just staying clear of this whirling, busy girl?
What if something happened to her? What if she ran into the street or tried to climb on the countertop? What if he wasn’t as attentive as he should be? Things could happen when he looked away, he knew that too well. The conviction that he could handle this—handle his own child—began to slip. “Peyton, we should talk.”
“Can it wait a minute? I’ve been promising Maddy that she could go swimming all day and we only have an hour until I need to feed her lunch.”
“Uh, okay.”
Peyton led Madelyne outside, then pulled some kind of blown-up triangular things out of the bag on her arm and slipped them onto Madelyne’s forearms. Madelyne flopped her arms and giggled. “I’s ready now.”
“Okay, give me a second.” Peyton reached down and tugged the hem of the white knit dress, sliding it off her body and tucking it into the bag.
Luke swallowed hard. Holy hell, Peyton looked good. Amazing, in fact. She filled out the dark green fabric of the bikini in a perfect hourglass. He had to force himself not to let his jaw drop, or to say any of the numerous stupid things a man could say when standing beside a beautiful woman in a bikini.
Peyton took Madelyne’s hand and led her toward the pool. The little girl lingered on the top step, her eyes wide and worried again. Peyton kept going, the bottom half of her body disappearing into the shallow end.
Luke pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it, along with his car keys and wallet, onto an empty chair, then slipped into the pool beside Peyton. “Water’s a bit cold.”
Peyton grinned. “Are you saying the big, strapping football captain is feeling a little wimpy?”
“Not at all.” Though he was feeling a little pleased that she’d called him big and strapping. Jeez. He really needed to start thinking with the parts of his brain that existed above his waist.
“Come on, Maddy girl. Your turn.” Peyton put out her arms.
Madelyne stood on the first step, water swirling around her ankles. “I just stay here, Auntie P.”
“Come on, you can swim with me. I’ll hold on to you. You’ll be safe and snug as a bug in a rug.”
Madelyne shook her head and toed at the water. “I just stay here.”
“You can do it, sweetie pie. I know you can.”
Madelyne dropped onto the edge of the pool and swished her feet back and forth, creating little ripples. Her mood had shifted into reserved and distant, her shoulders tensed. “I just stay here,” she repeated.
Peyton sighed. “Are you sure? Because Luke and I are having fun in the water.” Peyton sat back, sweeping her hands back and forth. She arched a brow in Luke’s direction. “Aren’t we?”
“Oh, yeah, uh, sure.” He did the same as Peyton, but felt like an idiot pretending to have fun in the shallow end. He forced a grin to his face even though the water was about ten degrees too cold. “Lots of fun.”
“Swimming is awesome, Maddy. And the water is warm.” She glanced at Luke.
“Yeah, warm.”
“A little enthusiasm, Mr. De Niro,” Peyton whispered to him.
He widened his grin. “It’s super warm!”
Peyton shook her head and bit back a laugh. “You are hopeless. Don’t quit your day job.”
Madelyne just kicked her feet back and forth, watching the adults make fools of themselves. “I just stay here. I swim next time, Auntie P.”
Sadness flickered across Peyton’s face, then she smiled. “Okay, sweetie. That’s fine.”
“She doesn’t swim?” Luke asked.
Peyton shook her head, then lowered her voice. “She’s scared of the water. I don’t know where she got that from because Susannah and I loved the water.”
He remembered. A lot of his best memories centered around those times at the lake with Susannah and Peyton. Those were the best summers he could remember, before his life had taken a left turn he hadn’t seen coming. “That summer of senior year, I swear the three of us spent every single day at the lake. Me and Susannah and...” He flicked some water at Peyton. “Tagalong.”
Her cheeks colored at the old nickname. “It was just because there wasn’t anyone my age at the lake that summer.”
“Jack and Mac were there.”
“Your brothers?” Peyton snorted. “They were always busy. Jack, off hanging with his own friends and Meri’s family. As for Mac, he never wanted anything to do with any of us. I swear, Mac was born an adult.”
Luke laughed. “Very true.”
Then he sobered, because he thought of how long Mac had been gone, how his older brother’s absence had created a vacuum in the family. When they were kids, Jack, Luke and Mac had been the three musketeers, as their mother dubbed them, in trouble more often than not. But as they got older, Mac became the serious one, the determined one. He’d worry over his grades, obsess over every word in an essay, work harder and more than anyone else to keep the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted. He’d been the one who butted heads with their parents the most, the one who thumbed his nose at curfews and rules. The black sheep with the straight As, which made it awful hard to justify grounding him. The minute he was old enough to leave, Mac headed out of Stone Gap, his returns on par with sightings of Halley’s Comet.
Luke glanced over at Madelyne, sitting on the step, prancing a Barbie doll around the edge of the pool. She was his daughter, though he didn’t feel a single thread of emotional connection to what was, essentially, a child stranger. He could see their link in her features, in the way she cocked her head to study him, in the offbeat way she assessed people’s worth. In those ways, they were alike. And maybe he was hoping for too much, expecting some instant bond.
Madelyne, he realized, had a hole in her life now, too. One that was never going to be filled by a quick visit at Christmas, a few checks here and there. What was it the statisticians said? Kids raised with a strong male and female role model did better. They were happier, more grounded. Madelyne clearly already had a strong role model in Peyton, but Luke—
Well, no one was holding him up as an example of what to be when you grew up.
“So, what does this spending-time-with-Madelyne thing entail?” Luke asked. “Exactly.”
Peyton grinned. “Don’t look so panicked.”
He waved a hand. “Does this face say panicked?”
She took a step closer to him, swirling water around their hips. She feigned deep scrutiny, peering into his eyes. Her perfume, something light and airy, wafted in the space between them. “Terrified.”
“Me? I’m only terrified of anacondas and great white sharks. Not kids.”
That made Peyton laugh. He’d never noticed her laugh before, but decided he liked the sound of it. “Wait till she’s having a complete meltdown because she wants to eat cake for dinner or stay up past her bedtime or buy that six-foot teddy bear at the mall. Then