Her Secret Sons by Tina Leonard Page B

her knuckles long enough to enjoy the fact that they were having a lot of fun getting to know their father.
    But Luke brought other dangers that made her nervous. She’d been reckless falling into his arms last night, kissing and being kissed as if they were erasing a time lag that no longer mattered.
    It did matter. She didn’t know Luke, and he didn’t know her, despite their mutual parenting bond. It would be too easy to fall into playing house because the most wonderful components, the parts she’d always wanted, were already in place: the boys, Bill, her family, her home and clinic.
    Something cautioned her that falling into a pattern of family would bring heartbreak to all of them, eventually. She wouldn’t let the boys be hurt by unrealistic expectations. They hadn’t said it, but they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t want their family pieced together to make a whole. It was the essential image of The Waltons, Happy Days and Leave It To Beaver.
    But real life usually wasn’t that neat and orderly. Certainly it hadn’t been for her. She’d gotten by on strength and determination.
    She watched Luke instruct the boys on how to turn on and off the engines and how to avoid a spill. He had certainly embraced fatherhood, she had to admit. She’d worried he might want nothing to do with his sons; in retrospect, that worry seemed unfair to him.
    Still, she knew of his reputation. He couldn’t have changed his spots so much. Could he?
    She sat on a wooden bench next to Bill as he fiddled with his new camera.
    “Fun to watch ’em, isn’t it?” he asked.
    His joy pulled a smile from her. “I can never get enough of them. Maybe that’s too much a mom thing, but they’re good kids. They get in the occasional scrape, but nothing I can’t handle.”
    The words hung in the air and Pepper regretted them almost as soon as she’d spoken. Of course, Mr. McGarrett would want his son to have shared those times with the twins.
    But Bill just nodded. “The Bible-thumpers came to see me last night.”
    “Bible-thumpers?”
    “Yeah.” Grinning, he squeezed off a shot of Toby riding with Luke for a trial run. “Trying to tell me the boys need to be in school in the fall.”
    “I know they need to be in school!” Pepper exclaimed, outraged. “I have a few degrees, myself!”
    He laughed and patted her hand. “I think their complaint was with me, not you. In fact, I think the school question was their excuse to get in my front door. They’re very proud of that new school your family built.”
    Pepper nodded. “Education is important.”
    “Forresters are good for this town. And I think the Bible-thumpers—that would be Ms. Pansy and Ms. Helen—wanted to make certain I planned to meet the standard.”
    “Standard?” Pepper looked at him curiously.
    “They want me in church,” he said with a put-upon sigh and a twinkle in his eyes. “I do believe the school issue was a cover for getting me churched.”
    “Oh,” Pepper said.
    He nodded. “The little one—Pansy—she said as long as it was any institution of faith, that’d be good for my soul. For the boys’ sake, of course.” He laughed to himself. “I don’t think the ol’ gal was as worried about my salvation as she is about my reputation where these kids are concerned.”
    Pepper didn’t know what to think of that. She watched Josh take his instructional turn with Luke, and Bill squeezed off another picture.
    “I think I’ll join them,” he said, and Pepper looked at him.
    “Join them?”
    “The Tulips Saloon Gang.”
    “Oh,” Pepper said, “they got to you.”
    “They’ve been trying to get to me for years,” he admitted. “But it was just easier to sit in my den and be mad. Mad at myself, mad at Luke, mad at the world.” He shrugged. “Then you came along and everything changed.”
    “I hope you’ll forgive me for not letting you get to know the boys sooner.”
    “Well,” he said, “I think I’ll appreciate them more now.