Their Unfinished Business. Jackie Braun

she’d figured Luke would stroll in to their meeting wearing jeans. But he’d looked plenty at ease decked out in what she suspected was Armani.

      “I thought you’d gone to dinner with Dane and Audra.”

      “I took a rain check.”

      “I didn’t hear your motorcycle.”

      “Probably because your music’s kind of loud.” He grinned, nodding toward the house where Bonnie Raitt’s sooty voice wailed from the speakers. Ali wanted to kick herself as she realized the singer was now crooning about how she couldn’t make somebody love her.

      She shrugged. “I always play my music loud. I don’t have any neighbors to worry about.”

      “That could change,” he said. But before she could ask what he meant, he was motioning toward the pastel-flooded horizon. “I’d forgotten how beautiful the sunsets are here.”

      “One of the reasons I could never see myself living anywhere else,” she replied.

      Even so, as she took another sip of her wine, she tried to be objective. She tried to see this small slice of the universe from Luke’s perspective. She tried to understand for the millionth time what had made it so impossible for him to remain all those years before. She couldn’t, though. Not then, and not now. And because of the way he stirred up her emotions Ali discovered that as much as she’d wanted him to stay when she was a naïve twenty-year-old, now she just wanted him to go away and leave her alone.

      Luke didn’t go away, though. He settled onto the top step that led to the deck, and then leaned back on his elbows. He was the picture of a man at leisure even as Ali felt wound up tight and ready to spring.

      “Are the winters still as hard as I remember?” he asked.

      “Worse.”

      “Kids still go sledding down Palmer Hill?”

      “Yep.”

      She’d hoped by not contributing much to the conversation he would take the hint and leave, but he didn’t appear to be put off by her laconic replies.

      “Remember the time we crashed our toboggan into that oak tree near the bottom?” he asked, shaking his head and chuckling softly. “You were what, seven?”