Luke admired the food on his plate. “This looks really good. Thanks.”
“My pleasure.” She turned away from him. “Hey... Where’s Ranger?”
“I put him in the bathroom. He needs to use the head,” he said, then corrected himself. “I mean the facilities.”
“Gotcha.” Sophia smiled; she continued to rub her arm.
Luke noticed the rubbing, of course. Had to comment, of course. “You cold? I’ll get a fire started if you want.”
Sophia looked down at her arm. She wasn’t cold, but what was she going to say, “The feel of your skin on mine gave me goose bumps, Luke”? Not likely! Instead she said, “I’d like that. Tyler or your dad would always build me a fire. I’ve missed them. Do you need anything else? Toast? Orange juice?”
“I’m good. Thanks.”
“Then I’m gonna check on Ranger. Maybe he’ll be brave enough to explore downstairs today.” That little kitten had been a great distraction. She needed a reason to get away from Luke and the bizarre, completely unacceptable feelings he kicked up inside of her; Ranger was a perfect excuse. This reaction she was having to Luke was starting to get really old. She was obviously having some sort of emotional transference brought on by the fact that Luke looked exactly, for the most part, like Daniel. And it was obvious that she missed Daniel and was transferring some of her unrequited desire on to his twin! It had to be that. She didn’t want Luke.
“No. Of course you don’t,” she said under her breath as she climbed the stairs.
Luke had always been a pain. He had always given her a hard time. He was nothing like Daniel, except for the outside package. And even that wasn’t exactly the same. Case in point: a nearly naked Luke had looked quite a bit different than a nearly naked Daniel. Okay, perhaps that wasn’t the best example she could have thought of. But still!
Sophia reached the top of the stairs and put her hands on her hips as if she were scolding a small child. “You want him to be Daniel. But he’s not Daniel. He never will be Daniel, so you really need to get a grip, Sophia!” Her psychology degrees were starting to come in handy; she could psychoanalyze herself.
Sophia opened the bathroom door, and Ranger was more than ready to be let out. He dashed out with a trill, wound his way around her ankles and rubbed his head against her leg.
“Hi, buddy.” Before Sophia could reach down over her belly to pet him, Ranger voiced another excited trill, stuck his tail straight up in the air and zoomed down the stairs without a moment of hesitation.
She stared after him for a moment, bemused. “He’s going to be an absolute terror.”
He’d probably do the family a lot of good during the holidays. This would be the first Christmas without Daniel. Perhaps having a crazy kitten in the mix would distract them all.
Before she went back downstairs, Sophia stopped off at the medicine cabinet to pick out the day’s fragrance. Unfortunately, none of the self-talk up the stairs stopped her from wondering which fragrance Luke would like.
Irritated, she reached for Daniel’s favorite, sprayed it on and went downstairs with a renewed determination not to have any bizarre reactions to Luke.
She found Luke standing in front of the giant bay window that overlooked the ranch. He was staring out at the horizon and seemed to be lost in thought.
“Mission accomplished with the kitty box. Did he come through here?”
“Yeah.” One side of his mouth lifted. Sophia could tell by that one small gesture that the kitten cracked Luke up. “He went tearing through here, ran headfirst into the cabinets, shook it off like nothing happened, jumped up a foot in the air, spun around and went flying back toward the library.”
“That kitten is a menace. Your dad is going to hit the roof when he sees him.” Sophia laughed. She picked up her tea and walked over to stand next to Luke. Perhaps she stood closer to him than she should have, but once she was there, she didn’t have any desire to be anywhere else.
“At first. But he’s always the one who gets attached the quickest,” Luke said as he continued to stare at the horizon.
“It must feel good to be home, especially with all of this,” she said of the snowcapped mountains in the distance. “It’s getting a bit old for me, but this is your home.”
Again, Luke was quiet, as he often was. He stood stock-still, but Sophia could feel his body become tense beside her. She almost moved away, worried she was invading his space, but something made her stay put.
All Luke could do was keep his eyes trained forward. He wanted nothing more than to drape his arm around Sophia’s shoulders and pull her close until her body was molded into his. She was wearing his favorite fragrance. She smelled like citrus and freshly cut grass, and he wanted to bury his face in her neck and breathe her in.
And then she would slap me.
Luke shook his head at himself before he drained his cup.
“What?” Sophia noticed him shaking his head.
“Nothing. I think it’s time for a fire.”
There was something raw in his voice that quickened her pulse. She nodded her head and put some distance between herself and Luke. “I’m going to check my email real quick and then I’ll be back down.”
They both went their separate ways, headed in two completely different directions. No matter how hard Sophia tried, she couldn’t stop her body from reacting to Luke. And it seemed that little Danny was having his own reaction to his uncle’s voice. Was it her imagination, or did her baby seem to get more active whenever Luke was around?
Being around Luke was tying her up in knots on the inside. She felt like an absolute lunatic. She was hormonal and grieving, away from her friends and family, and now she was faced with her husband’s twin. No wonder she was confused. But she had to make sense of it all and do it quickly. After all, Luke had never liked her, not from the very first day that Daniel had introduced them to each other. If he had even a remote clue what was in her head, he’d dislike her even more. This tentative truce he had forged with her for Daniel’s sake would be ruined.
She smoothed her hand over her stomach. “We’re not going to let that happen, are we, Danny boy? No. We’re not.”
More than anything, she wanted Luke to be a big part of her son’s life. She couldn’t screw it up. She wouldn’t let herself screw it up. Instead of booting up her laptop, Sophia did something she rarely allowed herself to do; she curled up on the bed, buried her face into a pillow and cried.
After she cried, she slept. And both activities seemed to do her a world of good. When she awakened an hour later she felt a million times better, and she went downstairs with a renewed sense of purpose. It wasn’t like her to let things eat at her. She liked to bring things out in the open; clear the air. That was just the way she was; that was the therapist in her. And, even though Luke wasn’t exactly the most approachable guy in the world, she wanted to believe that his bark was really much more serious than his bite. She was just going to have to tell him how she was feeling, and he was just going to have to listen. Like it or not.
Sophia found Luke in the library. The fire had died down and the library felt to her as if she was slipping into a warm bath. It was the perfect temperature. Luke was sitting on one end of an overstuffed couch, head back, eyes shut. Ranger was perched on the armrest beside him. When Ranger saw her, he trilled but didn’t move.
“Nice fire,” she said.
“Hmm.” That was the extent of Luke’s reply.
Sophia sat down at the other end of the couch. She sank deep into the cushions and realized that she wasn’t getting back up unless Luke agreed to pull her out. Sophia slid her butt forward and leaned back. She