“My biggest problem is the owner,” she said. “He did some of the more colorful work on the house himself, and he is adamant that it not be undervalued.” She laughed and sawed at her steak again.
“Know the type well. I designed a house for a guy who thought he was an architect, too. Only the things he wanted to do had no basis in sound engineering. Trying to convince him of that was a second job.” He took a bite of fish, eyeing her thoughtfully. “Sounds like you have a good life in Orlando. But not a lot of time for fun.”
“Fun!” She said it as if she’d never heard the word before, she realized, but Madeline did not generally think about fun.
Luke looked up with surprise again. “You know—letting your hair down.”
The mention of letting her hair down made Madeline strangely uncomfortable. “I know.” She looked at her steak. “May I have the pepper, please?”
Luke picked up the pepper and handed it to her, but when Madeline reached for it, he didn’t let go. “Fun, Maddie. Every girl needs a little fun.”
“I know,” she said, and tugged on the pepper, but he refused to relinquish it. “I have fun.”
“Like what?”
“Like… I have to spell out all the ways I have fun?”
“You have to tell me at least one.”
Madeline didn’t really have fun. She had precisely the life she’d designed, built, and inhabited. It was carefully structured, no cracks, no possibility for failure. Nevertheless, his comment made her feel a little strange. Maybe it was because Trudi was always telling her she really didn’t have much of a life outside of checking in on her mother and working. Or maybe because Madeline recognized that it was true. But that’s the way she liked things: no complications. Nothing to go wrong. Nothing to uproot or lose.
She gave one last mighty tug, wrenching the pepper free from his grip. “Okay. I coach soccer.”
Luke’s eyes rounded. “Okay. Now we’re talking. That’s impressive—”
“No, no, it’s not impressive. I coach little girls—most of them are only five years old. I volunteer and I run up and down the sidelines and yell at them to go the other way.”
Luke blinked. His gaze wandered over her again. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you? What’s your record?”
Madeline grinned. “O and four,” she said. “I’m not kidding, we have some serious challenges in the direction department.”
Luke’s laugh was soft and low. “I love it,” he said, and polished off his fish. “Is it just you in Orlando?” he asked casually.
“You’re nosy.”
“It’s called making conversation. You ride into my town on a donut wheel, and I want to know more. My guess is that you’ve got someone there since you won’t say.”
Madeline smiled at him, took another sip of wine. She was beginning to feel woozy. “My mom is there.”
“Cheater,” he said with a grin. “That’s not what I meant, but okay. What about a dad?” he asked. “I mean, other than Grant, obviously.”
Dad, Dad, Dad… Everyone had one but her. “Nope,” she said, and looked at her steak. Her willingness to fight the good fight against the buffalo was beginning to evaporate. She picked up the fork and knife and sent to work again. “A stepfather here and there. But they never stuck around too long.” She continued her attack another moment then sighed, resigned. She put down her utensils and glanced up—right into Luke’s gray eyes. “And I never knew Grant,” she blurted. That peculiar heat of shame instantly crawled up her nape following her admission. She always felt it when she admitted to someone that her father never bothered to know her.
To his credit, Luke did not look particularly shocked or appalled. “Well, I’d say that was his great loss.”
Madeline didn’t know what to say to that; she could only hold Luke’s gaze. She could see his sympathy, and for a moment, it felt as if the world were sinking away from them. Madeline did not like to talk about her life; it made her feel uncomfortably exposed. Her experience was that people tended to make judgments about others when they met, privately assessing by whatever criteria they carried around with them. But in that moment, Madeline had a strange need to speak, to say the things that she had carried for so long and so deep, and Luke—Luke looked like someone she could talk to. “I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup,” she said softly. “I never laid eyes on him. I mean, not since I was like two or something, and I think that was only one time. I never had a card or a phone call from him. He could have been anyone. He could have been the president, and I would be the last to know.”
Luke said nothing at first, just looked across the table at her with something swimming around in his eyes.
Well, if that hadn’t effectively ruined an otherwise pleasant conversation—