Chapter Twenty-Five
Apparently Tiffany in a little black dress and a pair of Jimmys could move mountains. The barman gave up Luke’s home address without a fight. Of course, the trip outside to admire the Miura hadn’t hurt either. The crowd swelled around the car world’s Pied Piper rather quickly. It had taken her a good half an hour to get away from the Miura’s fan club. It made a nice send-off.
She’d left a text for Thomas and Dakota, their door still shut tight. Probably still sleeping after a night of movies and pizza that ran well past midnight. This was her mess to sort out, hers and Luke’s. After she got divorced, she didn’t know how her life would play out anymore. But the weight of the past had gotten too heavy to haul around with her.
It wasn’t hard to find the house. Sitting halfway up South Mountain, it nestled comfortably amongst others like it in a quiet neighborhood. The modest front only added to the spectacular view from the back. Below her spread the entire Salt Lake Valley, drowsy in the piercing sunlight.
No time like the present. She wiped her hands on the front of her dress and unfolded from the car. Getting out of an Italian sports car in a short skirt and heels took practice. She’d had plenty of that while she babysat Luke’s baby. It was time to give her back to her rightful owner. Tiffany ran her hand over the gleaming metal of the roof. She sure was a beauty. She let her fingers linger for one more heartbeat. “I’m going to miss you.”
Straightening her shoulders, she picked her way up the stone walkway to the door. The woman from the bar answered the doorbell. It took her a moment shy of a second to recognize Tiffany. Her face went rigid with displeasure. “What do you want?”
Tiffany took a deep breath. She needed to stay calm for this. Her battle was with Luke, not this woman. Whoever she was. “Is Luke here?”
“No.” The woman crossed her arms over her chest.
Tiffany bet she would have said that whether Luke was home or not. Bitch or not, this woman stood between her and her mission. She’d put money Luke was skulking in the house somewhere.
The woman moved to block her view of the interior of the house. “He’s not here.”
“Babe?”
The woman started.
Tiffany’s gaze met hers. Liar, liar. That was Luke.
“Tell him I have something to show him,” Tiffany said.
“There is nothing of yours he wants to see.” Man, this woman was tough. Not tough enough, though.
“I think Luke will disagree with you.” Tiffany stepped aside and revealed the car.
The woman sucked in a breath. She glowered at Tiffany accusingly. If her face wasn’t so twisted in anger she might have been pretty. Luke had sure chosen differently this time. This woman was blond and tanned, with the sort of figure that said she spent a lot of time outside being healthy. “He told me what you did.”
“I’m sure he did,” Tiffany said. She had only so much humility in her, and none of it for Nature Girl. “I’ll wait by the car.”
Thank God, she made it back down the walkway without tripping. Her legs shook so hard she didn’t trust her balance. The Jimmys might have been a mistake.
“Tiffany?” She hadn’t even made it all the way back to the Miura when Luke’s voice stopped her. “What the hell?”
“I don’t want to fight.” Holding up her hands, she spun to face him.
His face was a closed mask, but he didn’t look quite as furious as he had at the bar. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to return something.” The words got caught in her throat and she cleared it rapidly. “Something of yours.”
He jerked to a stop. Like a junkie jonesing for a fix, his gaze ate up the Miura. He took a step outside and then another one. “Is that her?”
“Yes.” She curled her fingers into her sweaty palms. The Miura belonged to Luke, not her. “After you left, I had her repaired.”
Luke frowned and took another few steps toward the car.
“It took a while to find all the original parts. And, of course, to find someone certified to work on her.” Her mouth kept running, laughing at her half-assed effort to get a grip. “I only got her all fixed about two years ago. She’s barely been driven. Only enough to keep her running smoothly, and as you know, she’s not the easiest car—”
“Why?”
“I owed you.”
He looked up sharply. “You owed me?”
“After what I did to her.” Tiffany nodded. “After what I did to us.”
Luke’s dark gaze searched her face. What did he see when he looked at her? The urge to fidget rode her hard, and the silence built like a scream in her chest. “I didn’t come here to pick the scabs off,” she said.
“Then why?”
Tiffany shrugged. She didn’t have all the answers. “It seems like there’s a lot I didn’t say and I should have. I did a lot of things wrong. And if you think this is easy to say, then you’re nuts, but it needs to be said.”
He frowned a bit, as if he were thinking about it.
“We . . . I didn’t do so well with the marriage thing.” Way to go with the euphemism, Tiffany.
He dropped his gaze and gave a harsh laugh. “You had some help with that.”
“Yes.”
“What happened that night?”
Tiffany blinked at him. That’s right, they’d never spoken about it, because Luke had packed his bags and left. Well, here she stood and there he stood, and for once they weren’t screaming. “I saw you at a club that night.” This bit still had claws. “And you were with another girl.”
He frowned. “What girl?”
“I don’t know what girl, Luke. Does it really matter?”
He closed the distance between himself and the Miura and stood there gazing at her. “I suppose not. So you saw me with the girl and trashed the car?”
There was a bit more to it than that. “I was driving home, crying my eyes out.” Crying so hard she could barely see the road. “And that Carrie Underwood song came on the radio. The one about the guy being a cheater.”
Luke shook his head. “I don’t know it.”
Luke was more of an alternative rock guy, but it didn’t matter. “It’s about this girl that trashes her boyfriend’s car when she catches him cheating.”
“So you trashed my best girl?” Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I couldn’t believe you had your hands up some girl’s skirt.”
His eyes flashed fire for a second, then he grimaced. “Fair enough. We were young.”
“And stupid.” Stupid enough to act without thinking, and stupid enough to both run away without talking about it.
Luke shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the car.
“The keys are inside.” Tiffany couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. “I’m going to have to ask you to drive me home, though. Or I could call Thomas to come and get me.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he said.
Tiffany gave a half cough, half laugh. “That’s a first.”
“Yeah.” Shaking his head, he trailed his fingertips reverently across the seam of the door, down toward the handle. “I loved this car.”
“I know. It’s why I did what I did.”
“I know.” His caressing hand reached the handle and he popped it open. The door swung open on a soft hiss. Horns of the bull. Luke bent to peer inside. It took a while and then his head popped out again. “You fixed it all.”
“Yes.” Tiffany took a careful step forward. “Even the busted fuel gauge, and I had nothing to do with that.”
“It must have cost a bomb.” He shook his head.
“It did,” Tiffany said. “I got a job.”
He raised his eyebrow. Okay, she’d give him the skepticism. “Not much of a job. Working with a photographer as his assistant. I paid it off bit by bit.”
“Why didn’t you just ask Daddy?” His lip curled up in a faint sneer.
She couldn’t let him drag her into another insult fest. She’d had enough of those, too. “It didn’t seem right.”
The shutters closed over his expression and his face went so cold it made her shiver. Back the fuck up, screamed her instinct. She took a step closer to him anyway. “I don’t want to fight.”
“So you said before. What do you want?”
“I want to give her back to you. Call it a bribe if you want. I want you to come back to Willow Park and get our divorce. Then we never have to see each other again.”
“And if I don’t want her back?”
Tiffany stopped and stared. She almost started laughing. The Miura had been Luke’s passion. He had loved that car almost as much, in fact more, than he’d loved her. “I don’t know.”
“I’m being a dick.” He dropped his chin onto his chest and folded his arms. “Of course I want her back.”
Tiffany’s head reeled with relief. The thought of the Miura going to someone else made her stomach knot and her chest ache. She loved that car. Really loved it.
“But I don’t know if I want to keep her.” He stared at her as if trying to see right down to her heart. “Why did you do it? Fix her.”
The question she really didn’t want to answer. Like peeling off her skin and leaving her nerve endings exposed. “I owed you.”
“That’s bullshit.” No anger. The truth. His eyes silently asked her for the truth.
Tiffany took a deep breath. Luke was probably the only person who stood a chance of understanding because he’d been right there with her through their crazy ride together. “She was us.” Tiffany let the words come. “She was everything that we were to me, all the passion and the excitement. All the incredible craziness. Most of it bad, but some of it so good.” She was utterly alone as she met his gaze, like something hanging out in the desert to die. Tiffany shivered and crossed her arms over herself. But the cold came from inside and it didn’t help. “You, me, her, we were free.”
Luke moved suddenly. He came toward her and stopped. A slow burn seeped into his expression. “Who’s this guy you’re going to marry?”
“Actually, I’m not so sure I’m going to marry him now.” She and Luke, they’d seen each other at their worst. She didn’t have to pretend to be anything with him.
“You love him?” Luke cocked his head.
“My father thinks he hung the moon.”
“Ah.” Luke stepped closer and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. It was such a familiar gesture it twisted her heart. “Don’t do it, Tiff. We imploded, but the girl you were with me—in the Miura, hair streaming in the wind, laughing like the world was ours to bend—that girl was special. The kind of girl a man wants to keep forever.”
Her heart kicked up an uneasy rhythm. She drew in a shaky breath. Citrus, leather, and man hit her in a familiar sensory tsunami. The smell of him used to drive her crazy. She used to bury her head into the place where his neck met his shoulder and draw it inside her in great gulps. It was the smell of wild, crazy, off-the-charts sex that left both of them wrung out.
“Tiff.” His voice grew husky. He knew how it affected her. His voice said he still knew and he felt it, too. “Don’t bury all that passion. It’s one of the best parts of you.”
She couldn’t meet his gaze. Wild Tiffany stirred inside, responding to the want in Luke’s voice like she always had.
“Babe.” Warm hands on her arms.
Tiffany closed her eyes. One touch from Luke and her knees grew weak. Luke, touching her, drawing her closer until his chest pressed against her breasts, reminding her of how it felt to be truly alive. Beneath all the anger had always been this. Hot and needy. She tipped her head back and he took her mouth. She braced for the onslaught of blistering heat.
His tongue slipped into her mouth and she tasted Luke. The taste of freedom and desire, coursing through her like a runaway train.
Except—not so much.
It was a great kiss. Luke could kiss any girl out of her panties, and there’d been a little interest from the girl bits. But no raging flood. More of a fitful trickle.
Luke lifted his head. A small frown creased the skin between his eyes. “Tiff?”
“Yes.”
He closed the distance between their mouths again.
Huh! Same thing. Luke’s kiss was loaded with memories, sweet, breathless memories, but still—memories. She pulled away from him and looked up.
“That was . . .” He frowned down at her.
“Different.”
“Yeah.” He laughed softly. “Not what I was expecting.”
“Nope, me neither.” She stepped away from him and his arms dropped. “You still give one hell of a kiss.”
“Thanks. You got a little something going there, too.” He snorted and shoved his hands into his pockets. “This is weird.”
“Not really.” The relief nearly made her giddy. A weight lifted off her chest and she breathed free and clear. She finally got the closure thing. “It’s over.”
Luke’s head whipped up and his expression went speculative and finally, softened. He got it, too. They were both free. “Yeah.”
“Great.” Thomas’s voice dashed across her in an icy wave. Both she and Luke jumped and turned. He stood between them and his truck. “Is he coming back to Willow Park?”
Tiffany looked at Luke. “It’s time.”
“It’s time.” Luke nodded.
Thomas glared at Luke like he wanted to rip him to pieces. He yanked his stare away and stalked over to her. “Great. You done here?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go.”
Luke lifted an eyebrow. Tiffany’s cheeks burned. No man had ever used that tone on her, and she wasn’t about to let one start now. She walked over to where Luke stood.
Thomas and his bulk were suddenly between them.
Tiffany threw him another look and neatly stepped around him. “Thank you, Luke.”
“We both know we should have done this years ago, Princess.” His use of his old pet name caused a sweet pang in her chest, and she smiled at him. He had picked it up from Daddy, but Luke used it differently, like a silent joke between them.
Luke raised his hand and touched her face. He leaned in toward her.
“No more kissing.” Thomas honest to God growled the words.
The look Luke shot her made her laugh. Then he raised her hand and kissed her knuckles. “Some of it was fun, Princess,” he said. “Most of it was a pain in the ass, but there was some fun in there, too.”
“Truck.” Thomas stalked over to the truck and threw himself behind the wheel.
Tiffany gave Luke a hug. Thomas could bark all he wanted, she was leaving when she was done.
“I’ll come around and see what to do about Dakota tomorrow,” Luke said. “I think we’ve all had enough for one day. The big guy included.”