Chapter Nine – While You Still Can #2
Dad’s chuckle filled the cool air. The clouds were hanging low, threatening to burst again. Hopefully, the rain would hold off until Luca actually had a chance to trick-or-treat.
“No. Not at all. She’s pure havoc.”
Dad’s smile only grew. “Exactly.”
“I’ve had enough chaos with women to last me a lifetime, Dad. I don’t plan to take on more, and certainly not with…” I trailed off. I wasn’t sure what Andie’s deal was, but if people around town didn’t know she was on the run, hiding from someone, I wasn’t going to be the one to spill the beans.
“With a wildly beautiful and whip-smart woman?” Dad finished for me.
“Trouble. Not with trouble.”
Dad’s smile disappeared. “Not every beautiful woman is Eden, Coop. She hid her nasty behind a mask of sweet. It’s not your fault you didn’t see it until she’d already dug her hooks in. She’s fooled the majority of the world with that wholesome act. She’s won awards for a reason.”
“You never liked her.”
Dad tipped his hat back, looking at the storm clouds brewing. “Not sure it was her as much as the knowledge that you settling down with her meant you’d never come home like your mother and I had hoped you would.”
More surprise hit me. “You never told me that.”
“Of course not. You won’t either when it’s Luca’s turn to leave. You want your kids to fly off, do their thing, create their waves, make their mark in whatever way makes them happy.”
“Luca isn’t happy here,” I said, my throat clogging with emotions.
“That’s different.” Dad clapped me on the shoulder.
“You had to tear him out of that life so he could see the other possibilities before it was too late. Now he’ll have some good to counter that world he was caught up in.
And when the time comes, he’ll get to choose for himself which path he wants to take rather than just being led blindly down his mother’s road. ”
Eden had feverishly tried to get Luca into acting.
She’d had him play a couple of tiny, wordless roles in her movies because she’d wanted him to follow in her footsteps—or she just hadn’t wanted him to follow in mine.
He really didn’t want anything to do with law enforcement either, and that was fine by me.
Dad was right. All you wanted was for your kids to find a path that made them happy.
Dad slid the box into his truck, slapped me on the back, and then climbed into his rig. He tooted the horn as he drove out, and I headed for the truck Eden had hated from the day I’d bought it.
When I pulled into my driveway, Luca had already placed the pumpkins we’d carved last weekend by the door. We’d gone a bit wild, taking on three each, and I swore the kitchen still smelled of pumpkin guts.
While carving, especially wood carving, was a hobby of mine, Luca had as little interest in it as he had in acting or police work.
In fact, he’d absolutely hated the one-car garage attached to my LA townhouse I’d converted into a woodworking studio.
And yet, Luca’s pumpkins were as good, if not better, than mine.
He’d carved creatures in transition, bats slowly turning into vampires, and men turning into superheroes.
It had taken us all weekend to finish them.
I unlocked the front door and was greeted with silence and the smell of the carne asada soup I’d thrown into the slow cooker this morning.
“Luca?” I called, trying not to feel disappointed when I didn’t get a response.
He’d been on his best behavior for four weeks. He wouldn’t blow it now. He just wouldn’t.
Searching the house, I found his backpack and a neon-green one in his bedroom, but no Luca or Wysteria, who’d walked home with him. I stepped out onto the deck and started to call his name right as the sound of his laughter greeted me from the yard next door.
I sauntered over to the four-foot slatted fence, leaned my arms on the top, and had my hello stolen from me by the sight on the other side.
Luca was on his back on the ground with a big white furball on top of him. My son was belly laughing as he tried to escape the dog’s tongue, which was going to town on the pretend blood dripping off Luca’s face.
Wysteria was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, giggling almost as hard as Luca, her blue-spiked hair wobbling with the force of it. “He… He thinks the fake blood is a…tr-tr-treat.”
Behind Wysteria’s hunched frame stood a vision of pure delight.
The teens weren’t the only ones in costume.
The Roaring ’20s beaded sheath Andie wore danced in the twilight, shimmering as she too laughed.
For the first time since I’d met her, she’d left her hair down, and it fell well past her shoulders in long, luscious waves that sparkled with fiery highlights, haloing her like an angel in a museum piece.
Delight poured from all of them. Joy and an easy familiarity that hit me in the chest. Luca was rarely this comfortable and relaxed, even with me.
A fist locked around my lungs, squeezing tight, not with anger or anxiety, but with a host of positive emotions. Warmth. Pleasure. Caring. For my son, for the bright girl who was drawing him out of his funk, and for the stunning woman who’d allowed them to have this moment together.
A moment with the dog I’d sent to the shelter and that Andie had obviously brought into her home and allowed my son to care for after I’d sent the damn thing away.
Tears pricked my eyes, and I had to grind my teeth together to prevent them from falling. The effort made my voice gruff as I choked out, “What’s going on here?”