“Let’s just say no one’s suggested naming a street after you.”
A dry chuckle escaped him. “Can’t see that ever happening around here.”
Davenport motioned toward the house. “After you.”
Glaring, Lucas took a reluctant step forward. “Never did like cops,” he muttered.
“From what I’ve heard, the feeling’s been mutual,” Wade replied dryly.
Ringing Emily’s doorbell was one of the hardest things Lucas had done in fifteen years. Well aware of the cop hovering behind him, Lucas wished himself any place but here, still cursing himself for giving in to the impulse to return home.
Emily had been eleven years old the last time he’d seen her. He’d been twenty. She probably wouldn’t recognize the thirty-five-year-old man on her doorstep. And she had no reason to welcome him back into her life.
He’d left without even telling her goodbye.
The door opened. The young woman who stood framed in the doorway had curly, golden-blond hair, big blue eyes and fair skin lightly dusted across the nose with faint, gold freckles.
Though time had wrought its changes in her, Lucas would have known her anywhere.
She’d become a beautiful young woman. And it made him ache to look at her and think of all the years of her life he’d missed.
It had been his choice to leave. Given the same circumstances, he knew he would do the same thing again. But that didn’t mean he had no regrets.
The smile of welcome she’d worn for her fiancé faded when she saw Lucas. Her forehead creased with a puzzled frown. “Wade? Is this a friend of yours?”
Lucas stepped more fully into the light. “Hello, Emily.”
She studied him another moment, then stiffened. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Lucas?”
He nodded, rather surprised that she’d identified him so quickly. She’d been just a little girl....
Prepared for anger, antagonism, or worse, indifference, Lucas was caught totally off guard when she threw herself against him, her arms in a stranglehold around his neck. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered into his ear.
His arms closed automatically around her. His mind went temporarily blank. Of all the scenarios he’d imagined when Emily first saw him, this hadn’t been one of them.
He felt his throat tighten. It had been a long time since he’d been hugged so warmly. Since he’d been hugged at all, for that matter. And, damn...it felt pretty good.
“I take it you’re glad to see him?”
Wade’s dry question made Emily finally draw back. She released Lucas and turned to give her fiancé an equally fervent hug. “You found my brother for me. Oh, Wade, thank you. What a wonderful Christmas present.”
Wade gave Lucas a rueful look over her head. “As much as I’d like to claim credit for making you this happy, I’m afraid I can’t. I had nothing to do with your brother showing up.”
Emily pulled back to look questioningly from Wade to Lucas and back again. “Oh. I just assumed—”
Wade draped an arm over her shoulders. “Let’s go inside and talk about it. It’s too cold for you to be out here without a jacket.”
“Yes, of course. Come in, both of you.”
She reached to take Lucas’s hand, pulling him inside as if she was afraid he’d take off if she let go. “Oh, Lucas, it’s so good to have you home.”
Home. The word made him frown again as he stepped over the threshold. This hadn’t been his home for a very long time.
Funny how little had changed, though, he thought as he looked around the living room. The couch and chairs were new since he was here last, but the wooden tables and the old sideboard covered with photographs had been here as long as he could remember. A fresh-cut fir, almost sagging beneath the weight of the many ornaments hanging from its branches, stood in the big window, the same place they’d always put their Christmas trees.
“So you and Lucas just happened to arrive at the same time?” Emily asked Wade.
Wade chuckled. “Actually, he and I met on Maple Street. He thought he could get away with driving the wrong way on a one-way street.”