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She’d only been here through the door facing the lake, but Stacey had been surprisingly easy to coax into handing over directions and Luke’s address.
Stacey.
Not so much the jilted bride as…
The one who’d left him.
Hurt him?
Had Stacey broken his heart when she told him she couldn’t marry him? Had the first bride?
Luke’s situation was nothing like she’d assumed, and suddenly Jordan was feeling rather…off-balance.
His house was mostly dark as she made her way toward his front door, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t even considered calling first to see if he was home. The small-town lifestyle—where the unannounced drop-by was the norm—was appar
ently rubbing off on her.
She didn’t know what she wanted to say, only that she was buzzing with…something.
Not the wine—that had more or less faded. But she needed to see him. Needed to lay eyes on the man now that she knew he wasn’t a heartbreaker so much as a…
Really hot, really nice firefighter.
Damn it.
She punched the doorbell, wincing when the sound was met immediately by Winston’s frantic barks.
A second later, Luke opened the door with his right hand, his left holding the collar of the squirming, enthusiastic golden retriever.
Jordan registered the surprise on his face, before taking the coward’s way out and kneeling to greet the dog, who looked a heck of a lot more excited to see her than his owner did.
“He’ll knock you over,” Luke muttered, a second before he released the collar.
Winston didn’t knock her over, but it was a close call, his big body colliding with hers and rocking her back a bit. She recovered, though, and gave him a good rub with both hands before kissing the top of his head and standing up again.
She met Luke’s unreadable gaze. “May I come in?”
He hesitated a second before moving aside.
Jordan stepped into the foyer, first hearing the distant chatter of the television, then catching a waft of tomato sauce and onion from the kitchen.
“Sorry to intrude on your night,” she said.
She expected a sarcastic response, but he merely studied her. “Everything all right?”
Jordan had been taking in the parts of his house she hadn’t seen on her last visit—the wide wooden staircase, the natural-stone floor of his entryway, the usual absence of art and knickknacks that proudly declared its bachelor status.
A status that apparently wasn’t entirely by choice…
She lifted her face to his and went for it. “Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t ditch those women at the altar?”
Luke didn’t move a single muscle, even when a still-excited Winston banged against his shins.
A long moment of silence stretched between them before he crossed his arms and spoke. “What makes you think that?”
“I just had drinks with Stacey. And Isobel,” she added pointedly, after a pause.
He winced—barely, and had she not spent the past weeks studying the nuances of this man’s face, she might have missed it. “Ah.”
