“Wow,” Luke said. “Sounds like you’ve had a tough life.”
“You have no idea.” Madeline liked this, she thought. She didn’t get any judgmental vibes from Luke. He made it easy to confess the truth about her family. “I had good grandparents,” Madeline said with a shrug, as if that made up for the completely ineffectual mothering she had received. “I bet your parents were Ozzie and Harriet.”
Luke gave her a rueful smile. “I won’t lie—they were pretty damn good parents. I had a great life at the ranch.”
“Until now,” she said.
Luke didn’t say anything at first. He turned his head and looked at her, his expression resigned. “Until now,” he agreed.
Madeline felt bad for him, truly horrible. But she couldn’t change what had happened to his family. She looked to the window; the rain was still coming down hard, but the wind had begun to die down. Her gaze fell on a picture on a shelf on the wall. She could see Luke and a man who looked a lot like him. Luke had his arm draped around his shoulder. But sitting just to his left was the blonde woman who had come into the Stakeout the first night she’d met him. “Hey,” she said, pointing her beer bottle at the picture. “That’s Julie What’s Her Name.”
Luke glanced up from the study of his beer label and seemed surprised. “I forgot that was there.” He hopped up, walked across the room, and picked up the picture. He took it down, slid it onto a table inside the entry hall.
“Why’d you do that?” Madeline asked as Luke settled back onto the floor beside her. “Isn’t she your friend?”
“More like someone I used to know.”
Madeline felt as if she’d intruded on something very personal. It seemed obvious to her that Libby was right—he still had feelings for Julie. “She must be more than that if you don’t want to talk about her,” she said, and glanced at Luke from the corner of her eye. She smiled. “I’m just saying.”
Luke smiled wryly at her attempt to elicit information about Julie from him. “You don’t want to hear about it, trust me. It’s boring.”
“Yes I do. For one, I’m a good listener. Two, I am basically nosy.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You’re right,” Madeline agreed. “I’m not really a good listener.”
Luke laughed outright. He tapped his fist against Madeline’s knee as if he were considering it. “It’s old news, Maddie.”
“Not to me.”
“Ay yi yi,” he sighed. “I was engaged to her, okay? But then she called it off.”
“Why?” Madeline asked before she could stop herself. “No, sorry, scratch that. I’m too nosy.”
“It’s all right,” he said, and tapped his fist against her leg again. “My brother got sick. He has a nerve disease that attacks the muscles.”
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Madeline said, and pictured something like muscular dystrophy.
“Yeah, that was heavy, but we were managing to get on with it, and then my mother got sick. I don’t think Julie could handle all the attention my family needed from us.”
Madeline gaped at him. That seemed so callous to her. “I’m sorry, Luke,” she said softly. “That must have hurt.”
“Sure it did.” He smiled ruefully. “But it was a while ago, and you know how those things go. You get over them.” He tapped her knee once more. “You know what I mean.”
“Umm…” She tried to think of something clever to say, but her hesitation led him to cock a brow.
“Wait—you haven’t suffered a bad breakup?”
Madeline shook her head.
“Seriously?”
“I dated a guy a couple of years ago. He broke up with me.”
“How long did you date him?” Luke asked curiously.
“I don’t know exactly—four or five months?”
He reared back a little as if he didn’t know what to make of her. “I am not talking about puppy love, baby. I’m talking about full-on adult love. You know, men and women, sex, rock and roll—a lot of emotions and things you wish you’d never said, more things you wish you’d said. Crazy love, crazy pain.”
When he put it like that, heartbreak sounded almost desirable. But the truth was that Madeline hadn’t experienced anything like that. She’d never allowed herself to get close enough for that. She was an expert at keeping a respectable distance from emotions, which was why Trystan broke up with her.
“You’re kidding, right?” he insisted. “Never?”
“No,” she said, her face flaming. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not making fun.” He shifted around to face her. “But are you telling me you have never been in love? How old are you, anyway?”
“God, Luke,” she said, trying to squirm away, but he stopped her with a hand to her leg.
“How old?”
“Almost thirty,” she said, feeling slightly apologetic for it. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not so unusual.”
“Wait,” Luke said, ignoring her argument. “What about the guy?”
“What guy?”