“It’ll take me a few minutes to get him ready, so you guys should go ahead without me,” Sophie said over her shoulder.
“I don’t mind waiting,” Luke said.
“But I don’t really feel comfortable taking him on the ATVs. We’ll just walk.”
Luke opened his mouth to argue, but when he saw the firm set of her shoulders, he let it go.
“You guys should go out on the ATVs, though. It would be fun.” She clapped her hands when she pushed open the door and greeted Jamie.
The baby grabbed onto the crib rail and jumped up and down, his face lit with laughter and delight.
“Did you have a good nap?” Sophie asked Jamie.
Luke felt like an outsider. Logic told him he had as much of a right to be a part of Jamie’s world as Sophie, but his heart told him he hadn’t yet earned his place. He had to do that. And to do that, he also had to win over Sophie’s trust.
And love.
Because watching her with Jamie, he suddenly realized that a world without Jamie wouldn’t be complete if Sophie didn’t have a place in it. The revelation stunned him and left him weak in the knees. He leaned against the doorjamb for support.
“You okay?” Sophie asked, turning to him.
He wasn’t in love with her. It was too soon for that, but he knew he soon would be. Was he ready?
Was she?
“I’m fine,” he said, a few beats too late.
She narrowed her eyes, as if trying to read him.
He tried to make his expression blank—a skill he’d learned on the force. “We’ll go slowly,” he said. “On the ATVs,” he clarified. “Jamie will be perfectly safe.”
Sophie put Jamie on the changing table and grabbed a clean diaper. “We’re not ready for that,” she told him without meeting his eye.
“Okay, you can call the shots.” For now. He promised himself he’d win her over.
Luke grabbed his jacket from the back of a kitchen chair. It seemed almost like a desecration to leave the kitchen without eating the lasagna, but Sophie wanted to pick out a tree before dark. The slate blue sky told him little.
Mia followed him outside to the barn that served as the garage.
“What happened to Paige?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” Mia said. “Do you think I should look for her?”
“You can do that just as well on an ATV.”
Mia grinned. “True that!” Her expression turned somber. “Something’s up with Paige. She’s not fun anymore.”
“What do you think is going on?”
Mia shrugged. “She broke up with her loser boyfriend, so you’d think she’d be happier. I don’t think she misses him. That relationship had turned pretty toxic.”
“Is it school?” Luke followed the driveway to the barn. Tire ruts too small to be made by the car cut through the field, showing him the path his brother and Chloe used to take. He wondered if Sophie had ever gone with them.
“I don’t think so. She’s almost done and only had a few classes to take this semester. Simon and Briggs—the accounting firm she interned with last summer—has a job for her when she graduates in the spring. Everything should be dandy for her…”
“But it’s not?” Luke pushed open the barn door. There, beside Sophie’s Lexus, stood the two ATVs. Their red paint gleamed through a layer of mud. They promised a good time—but he had to admit, they’d be a lot more fun if he had Sophie sitting behind him with her arms around his waist.
“She sure doesn’t act like it.”
