Chapter 2

Luke pulled into the church parking lot, stopping beside the tallest vehicle there—a large black truck with flames painted on the sides.

Before Kat opened the door, Luke turned toward her. “Are you sure you want to do this? Why don’t you just go to the normal meeting on Wednesday?”

“Because they’re starting something new. I hate starting in the middle of something. I want to start at the same time as everyone else.”

He couldn’t argue with that. He wanted to help Kat fit in and make friends—the right ones. There was no better place than here, at a church’s youth group. He just wasn’t sure this specific activity was right for Kat, who was short for her age and a bit frail—especially after all she’d been through.

He opened his mouth to tell her to be careful, but she grabbed her duffle and hopped out the door before he had a chance. Instead of escorting her to join the group, he took his time locking up the car then walked to join the crowd.

It had been years since he’d been to a youth group meeting—not since he’d been that age—but not much had changed. Except for those who were already coupled, the boys and girls stood in separate groups, chatting and glancing back and forth at each other.

He knew the routine well, except that this time he wasn’t here as a youth; he was here as a parent, something he didn’t know if he was ready for but hadn’t been given a choice.

Slowing his pace, he walked past the circle of boys, checking out the group of young studs from a different perspective than when he’d been one of them. The oldest in the group appeared to be about seven or eight years younger than Luke and about three inches taller. Although he was talking to the boys, his eyes never left the girls and, Luke noticed, lingered on Kat.

He’d keep his eye on that one.

Luke continued on toward the group of parent volunteers. From a distance, he judged most of them to be at least ten years older than he was. As he joined them, a few of the mothers looked at him, crinkled their brows, glanced at the teen boys then back to him, probably wondering why he’d joined the wrong group. Most guys his age didn’t have teenage children.

This felt more awkward than when he’d gone to the high school and registered Kat for classes and once again come face-to-face with Mrs. Pendegast, the mean secretary from his youth. She still hadn’t retired.

“Hi, I’m new here, I’m with—” A green blur with a hockey stick streaked past him, the clatter of in-line skates drowning out his words.

Instead of finishing his sentence, he turned to the blur. All he could see was the top of a silver helmet with blond hair sticking out as the skater bent at the waist to sort a collection of red and blue vests into piles.

“Everyone who’s playing, line up!” a female voice called out. “We’re dividing into teams. You have three minutes to get your skates on.”

Most of the girls stayed behind, but a few skated to the designated area and lined up with the boys, from shortest to tallest. The tall boy leaned on a light pole to put on his skates. Which meant he’d soon be even taller.

Kat waited at the front of the line, the shortest in the group.

The light-speed skater glided in front of Kat and stopped. The light-speed skater was curvy.

A woman.

She turned to the parent group. “We don’t have enough to make two teams,” the blond called out from across the marked-off area designated as the rink. “We need one more person. Who else brought skates?”

Luke’s breath caught in his throat.

Cindy…

Kat raised one hand. “My uncle did. I told him to. Just in case.”

“That’s great, Kat. By the way, it’s good to see you again.” Luke could see her bright smile even from the distance. Which was good. Kat needed the reassurance of other adults besides him. “Where is your uncle?”

Kat pointed to him, so Cindy turned in the direction of Kat’s finger. The second they made eye contact, he smiled. Cindy’s smile dropped and her mouth fell open.

Her voice came out in a squeak. “Uncle Luke?”

The cylinders in Cindy’s brain fired in a million different directions, high octane.

The tiny girl who got off the school bus every day for the last couple of months was Kat. And she wasn’t a daughter. Cindy hadn’t made the connection between youth-group Kat and the girl she’d only seen from a distance.

Maybe it was time to get a new prescription for her contacts.

Since Luke looked about the same age as she, he’d be about twenty-six or twenty-seven. Cindy had assumed—wrongly, it would appear—he could have had a daughter out of wedlock who could be as old as ten; Kat was that petite. Cindy had given him the benefit of the doubt and credit for taking some responsibility to care for a child. But a niece brought more relatives into the dynamics of whatever had gone wrong in his family. It was so much messier. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—get involved in a situation as bad as, or maybe worse than, her own.

But here he was, just like at work, giving her doe eyes. Or buck eyes. Or whatever that look was that men did when they were interested.

With an adorable niece between them.

Who might be just as messed up in the head as Cindy had been when her mother died.

If it hadn’t been for Farrah, her mother’s best friend and Cindy’s godmother, Cindy didn’t know how she would have made it. But at least until three months ago she’d had her father.

Poor Kat. Did she have a woman to guide her and help her when it felt like the world was against her? If Cindy had grown up with a mother, maybe instead of putting cars back together and having a journeyman certificate for welding she would be doing something feminine with her life. Like a ballerina or a beautician or a model.

Or not.

She cleared her throat. “Luke, if you’ve really got your skates, get them on. We don’t want to run out of daylight.”

Luke nodded then jogged to his car, which she noticed was parked beside her truck. He tossed his shoes into the backseat, yanked on his skates, secured the laces in record time, and was soon on his way back.

He wasn’t a half-bad skater, which meant she would put him on the other team.

Luke waited at her side while she counted everyone off by ones and twos as they stood in line, making the teams as evenly matched as possible. Then she suited up team one with red vests and team two with blue.

“The rules are what we discussed last Wednesday. No bodychecking. There have to be two girls on the ice on each team at all times. I don’t count as a girl. We can’t paint lines in the parking lot for practice, but we will draw chalk lines for a game. Until then, the white pylons show where center line is, and the orange ones mark the blue lines. Our first game is in two weeks against Blessings Fellowship. Pastor is the ref, so behave. Time for face-off!”

As Pastor skated to center ice, or rather, center parking lot, on wobbly ankles, Cindy caught sight of Luke gliding backward on his skates until they were side by side.

“You’re wrong, you know,” he said so only she could hear.

Keeping her attention on the pending face-off, Cindy spoke to him without actually looking at him. “Those are the rules. We were very clear at the last meeting. But I know you weren’t there.”

“Not about the rules.” He smiled. “You definitely count as a girl.”

She didn’t want to hear that.

Fortunately Pastor dropped the puck, setting the game in motion.

Like her, Luke stayed back and let the teens play, including the girls, who were weaker and less aggressive than most of the boys. Whenever the puck was passed to him, also like her, he passed it back to one of his teammates quickly and kept himself out of the action.

Except for when Tyler, the oldest and tallest boy on her team, had the puck. It was like flipping a switch: Luke changed from a playful pup into a grizzly bear. At times, Cindy bit back a grin at the look of fear on Tyler’s face, something she thought good to tame the kid’s ego. Whenever he got the puck, Luke went after him. But as soon as Luke won the battle, he gently passed the puck to the nearest girl on his team and slipped back out of the limelight until the next time his team needed him.

Of course, he was probably just working all the tension out of his system after being nice to cranky customers all day. Whenever she had to deal with unreasonable customers—or worse, her lazy stepsisters—she had the option to go into the shop and break things.

Cindy had no idea how long they’d played because they agreed the game would be over when daylight began to fade. Her team won, which didn’t matter because next week the teams would be different based on her system of dividing the players. Then the week after that, everyone would be on the same team against Blessings Fellowship.

While the teens threw their vests into the box, Cindy skated toward one of the nets to put it back into the church’s storage area.

As she approached the net, a rattle of skates came from behind. She knew whose they were without turning around. Luke zoomed in front of her then spun so he was skating backward. Without missing a beat, he took off his helmet and smiled at her.

Cindy felt her breath catch. With his dark-brown hair and coffee-colored eyes, he was movie-star handsome, except for his big nose—but in her opinion it only added to his masculine appeal. At work his hair was always neatly combed, but now after a workout, it hung in disarray, flopping over his forehead. His killer smile nearly made her lose her balance; Annie’s comment about Luke being hot didn’t even come close to reality.

He jerked his head toward the crowd. “Everyone’s going out for coffee. Are you coming?”

Usually she did, but this time she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea. “I can’t. I have to get up early for work tomorrow morning.”

They stopped at the net. She picked up one side and Luke picked up the other. “I’m sure all the other adults do as well, and the kids all have to go to school. We won’t be long.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that she still didn’t think it was a good idea, but he spoke before she did.

“Kat really wants you to go.”

Cindy turned to the crowd, where everyone was either talking in groups or sitting on the ground taking off their skates.

Everyone except Kat, who was standing alone to the side, watching them.

Cindy gulped. “Sure. I’ll go. As soon as I get everything all packed up.”