“Your father’s getting married for a secondtime?”
He snorted. “The fifth time. We’ve got bets on who ends up with the high score, him or LizTaylor.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of weddings. Does he have some sort of…um,issue?”
“He’s a determined optimist, Iguess.”
From the cynicism in Luke’s voice, he didn’t seem to share thetrait.
“What a coincidence. So amI.”
“Adetermined optimist?”
She chuckled. “Yes. I guess I am. But I meant I’m going wedding present shopping today, too. For B.J.’swedding.”
He glanced up from the JC Penney flyer. “Want to gotogether?”
“Your father’s been married four times?” She still couldn’t get past this rather startlingfact.
“Yep.” You could pack a lot of emotion into one “yep” but Luke didn’t bother to do it. He sounded fine with his dad’s many marriages.Hmm.
“Which union producedyou?”
He glanced at her with a glimmer of humor. “You might say I started the whole train rolling. I was the reason for the firstmarriage.”
“You mean, your mother was…” She petered out, trying to find a sensitive way toask.
“Knocked up with me,yeah.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else tosay.
“You’d think he’d have learned a lesson about sloppy birth control, but—” Luke shook his head sharply and his annoyance was clear. Where he hadn’t seemed to mind about the four wives, the unplanned pregnancies had him narrowing hislips.
“Some men aren’t cut out for marriage,” he said. “My dad should have steered clear of thealtar.”
“I’m sorry, Luke,” she said, wishing there was a way to help him overcome his cynicism about relationships that would be as quick and effective as the book that had launched him on the path to being an outstandinglover.
“My mom always tells me I’m like my dad.” He tossed the papers aside and leaned back, and she heard both pride and defensiveness in histone.
“Are you?” she asked softly, sensing that what he believed might be nothing like thetruth.
He snorted. “I’m not going to marry a string of nice women, if that’s what you mean. And I don’t care what a woman tells me about any birth control she’s on, I always use a condom.Always.”
“That’s sensible, anyway, in this day and age,” she said, feeling a creeping sadness forLuke.
“How about your mother? Did she marry again?” she askeddelicately.
“You don’t know my mother. Being the betrayed first wife is pretty much a vocation withher.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. It’s too nice a day to go into my dysfunctional family. All four ofthem.”
“Surely you only grew up in onefamily.”
“Well, theoretically, but Dad liked the fantasy of one big happy family, so every summer we’d get together at a cabin he owns. All the kidstogether.
“Mum had three kids, and two of the other wives had two each. Of course the last few are a lot younger.” He shrugged. “Most of us still turn up everysummer.”
