Second Chances by Rita Oberlies

Author:Rita Oberlies
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: second chances, reunited lovers, dealing with past, coming home, Rita, Oberlies, Rita Oberlies, romance, indulgence, Boston
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2013-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Coffee and the faint whisper of jazz music pulled him out of a sound sleep.

Luke rubbed his hand across his chest and held on to the hot images from his dream. It had taken a twenty-minute drive home, followed by a tall Molson, before he’d been able to declare last night a partial victory. Sure, she left her boot print on his ass when he would have preferred to stick around for round three. Sure, he would have liked some sign that he was more than a fast ride on a slow night. Between the hospital and her dad, she’d been riding an emotional rollercoaster. Another woman might’ve turned to sex for medicinal purposes. Clinical pluck-my-strings-until-I-scream sex to get through the night without a breakdown. That wasn’t why she’d given him the green light, though. He knew that, even if she didn’t.

It was only the first step in the right direction. There were definitely hurdles ahead. Her family situation still sucked. He wasn’t a shrink, but he knew the signs of dysfunction. Brenna was still fighting relationship demons. At twenty he didn’t have a clue when to push and when to retreat. She’d created a buffer between her world and his world, and it never occurred to him to challenge it.

That mistake had cost him everything. Instead of turning to him when her dad’s face hit the front-page news, she shut down. “Let me handle it” quickly became “this is what happens when you fish in a pond instead of the ocean.” She accused him of not understanding her or her world, and overall she’d been right. He hated seeing his name crop up in gossip reports about Morgan and his children.

Cara Wright was an imagined sin. The night of the Fire and Ice Ball he’d called in a favor. Three hours with a childhood friend who happened to be the niece of Judge Jackson Wright. Luke straddled a thin line that evening. He’d poured his heart out to Cara, giving her an abbreviated Morgan family history. Cara was a complete sucker when it came to broken homes.

He never asked her to intervene with her uncle, but he walked away knowing that was exactly what Cara would do. A few, well-timed slips about the struggles Brenna and her brother faced hadn’t hurt William Morgan when he stood before Judge Wright.

Things went south soon after. Luke walked away looking like a heel when one grainy snapshot in the Beacon Hill Journal was printed, and Brenna cut him off at the knees. She’d wanted to think he cheated. It was a convenient final straw.

Luke wanted a shower, but settled for a clean T-shirt and a pair of old jeans. He had a guest and that guest deserved more than to sit across an empty kitchen table. Only the table wasn’t empty. Platters of food covered in foil stretched across his breakfast bar. William Morgan, knife in hand, was slicing through a cantaloupe.

“Morning,” Luke said, eyeing the scene before him with blatant curiosity.

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