Their Unfinished Business. Jackie Braun

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      “I’ve looked in on it from time to time,” she admitted.

      She’d done more than that, actually. She’d kept the grass mowed, the carpet roses trimmed back and the cobblestone path that led from the driveway to the front door free of weeds. She’d done it for Elsie, not for Luke, or at least that’s what she’d told herself. But sometimes, after finishing the yard work, she would sit on the rear porch that faced the big lake, rock slowly back and forth in the wide swing where she and Luke had long ago shared their first taste of passion, and wonder what he was doing and if he ever thought about her.

      The fact that he’d run into her today by accident seemed to answer that question now.

      “I appreciate it,” he said.

      “It’s no trouble to walk over,” she replied on a shrug.

      Luke motioned toward the house behind her. “Does that mean you live here now?”

      She nodded. “My grandmother deeded it to me when she moved to Florida with my parents six years ago.”

      He smiled slowly and despite Ali’s closed posture, laid one warm hand on her upper arm and squeezed. The casual contact caused her traitorous pulse to shoot off like a bottle rocket and had her irritated all over again. He seemed not to notice, lost as he was in reminiscing.

      “I think I spent as much time in your grandmother’s kitchen as I did in my own. She made the best sugar cookies on Trillium. Remember how when we were kids we would sneak them off the baking tray before they even had a chance to cool?”

      Ali didn’t want to be reminded of the ways in which their lives had once twined together so sweetly since his abandonment had caused her heart to fray apart afterward. And so when he asked, “How is Mrs. Conlan doing these days?” she announced baldly, “She died last winter.”

      “God. I’m sorry.” He slipped the glasses back on, making Ali wonder if she had just imagined that fleeting shadow of what had looked like self-reproach. “I didn’t know.”

      “How would you?”

      “Ali.” He said her name quietly, and then stroked her cheek. This time she didn’t back away, if only to prove to herself that his touch meant nothing.

      A bee buzzed past and overhead a blue jay’s shrill cry rent the silence as they regarded one another.

      Finally, motioning in the direction of his grandmother’s property, Ali said, “Don’t let me keep you, Luke. I know you’re a busy and important man.”

      He hesitated, and she thought for a moment he was going to say something, but then he dropped his hand and straddled the bike, firing it to life with a swift downward kick of his booted foot. Over the engine’s throaty growl he hollered, “See you Wednesday.”

      Wednesday, Ali knew, would come much too soon.

      Luke slowed the bike as he approached the driveway to his grandmother’s cottage, but in the end, he sped past it, instead following the rutted road as it wound through the woods and then spilled back onto the main drag a dozen miles later.

      He hadn’t felt up to seeing the cottage and confronting any more of his past. Not after seeing Ali.

      He’d known her right away. She hadn’t changed much. Even the baseball cap snugged over her crown was the same. He snorted out a laugh that was lost to the wind. The woman just couldn’t give up on the Detroit Tigers even though they hadn’t won a World Series since 1984.

      Despite her poor taste in baseball teams, she looked good. Better than good, actually, even with her dark hair sprouting from the back of the cap, perspiration dotting her upper lip and dirt streaking her right cheek. Her eyes were still a couple shades darker than caramel and she’d kept her figure, that long-legged, slim-hipped athletic build that had given him many a sleepless night in his youth.

      He frowned, realizing that none of the women he’d dated during the past decade had looked anything like her. There had been blondes and redheads, but not a single brunette. Certainly none of those women had been a fan of baseball much less able to pitch one low and inside while the bases were loaded in the bottom of the ninth.

      That had been only one of Ali’s talents, of course. Remembering the others nearly had him crashing his bike into the unforgiving trunk of a sugar maple.

      He’d thought he’d forgotten her. No, that wasn’t true. He’d never forgotten her. But over the years he’d convinced himself that adolescence and inexperience had magnified and romanticized the feelings he’d once had for her. In a way, she’d been the girl next door, since their grandmothers had lived side by side. He and Ali had always known one another and hung around together since Luke and her older brother, Dane, had been good friends.

      Then, the summer she was seventeen, the pigtails he’d once pulled had become the sleek tumble of hair he’d weaved his fingers through. God, he still remembered the magic of that first kiss and the way her slim arms had wrapped around him and held tight when he would have backed away. He’d been twenty at the time and Luke had known that everyone on the island, including her family, thought their match was a mistake.

      Looking back now, he didn’t blame them. He’d had no prospects at all, just big dreams as he’d pumped gas for the luxury cabin cruisers that stopped at Whitey’s Marina. Ali, on the other hand, was set to graduate top in her class and had plans to go away for her degree after completing a couple years at the community college on the mainland to save money.

      He’d always figured his leaving had been as much a favor to her as a way out for him. Despite being accepted at the University of Michigan a few hours’ drive downstate, she’d begun to talk about staying on Trillium, taking correspondence courses or transferring to a less prestigious university near Traverse City and commuting a couple days of the week. Both of their futures had seemed so doomed.

      Then his grandmother had died.

      Luke could still hear the words Elsie Banning had spoken to him as she lay in a hospital bed, hooked up to an assortment of beeping, buzzing machines.

      She’d gripped his hand with her knobby fingers and in a voice barely above a whisper she’d commanded, “Be happy, Luke, and make me proud. You’re not your father. It breaks my heart to see you settle for being less than what you were meant to be.”

      Even now, her words drove him. He revved the bike’s engine, catching air as he crested another hill. Before touching down again on the other side he caught a glimpse of the big lake glittering in the midday sun. His grandmother had always loved that lake and the limitless potential she said she saw in its sheer vastness.

      “I’ve made something of myself!” He shouted the words as he raced against the long shadows of his past.

      At thirty-four, he enjoyed the distinction of being one of the few dot-comers who’d gotten rich and then wisely gotten out before the bubble burst. Since then he’d invested in more traditional ventures, primarily real estate, cultivating a reputation as a shrewd dealmaker. He’d accomplished every goal he’d set and exceeded even his own very high expectations.

      He was Luke Banning, successful businessman, respected entrepreneur. No one pitied him now or looked askance at him when he walked into a room. Hell, people paid him large sums of money and sat shoulder to shoulder in crowded auditoriums just for the privilege of hearing СКАЧАТЬ