An Act of Love by Brooke Hastings Page B

second rule applied.
    Whatever tension remained between them slowly dissipated
as they ate. By the time Randy got up to make the coffee she felt
thoroughly confident about asking a few questions.
    "Where did you get the scar, Luke?" she began.
    "Oh, that was put there by my first kidnap victim," he
said, eyes twinkling.
    Randy shook her head, smiling. "No, really."
    "I grew up in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn," he
explained. "When I was twenty and my sister was twelve, one of the
local thugs started to bother her. I told him to lay off. The next day
he and a group of his friends picked a fight with me and my friends.
Somewhere along the line he flipped out a knife and I was dumb enough
to get in the way. Then a squad car showed up and we all ran like hell.
But he left her alone after that."
    Randy had grown up sheltered in a high security building
and had attended exclusive private schools. Although she'd gone to
college in New York City, just as Luke apparently had, she'd traveled
back and forth to the campus in a chauffeured limousine, not on the bus
or subway. Luke Griffin's childhood was as foreign to her experience as
an Iowa farm boy's would have been.
    "Your nose is a little crooked," she said. "Did you break
it in a fight, too?"
    "You think I'm a physical wreck, hmm?" he drawled.
    "Obviously not," Randy said, refusing to be teased. "Your
nose?"
    "Was broken during a game of street football," he said.
"I'm still hungry, Lin. What's for dessert?"
    "You know what you brought up here as well as I do," Randy
reminded him. "Exactly nothing."
    "I was thinking Spartan. Obviously a major error. Why
don't you make me something? Chocolate chip cookies,
brownies…"
    Since his doctoring deserved something in the way of a
reward, Randy got up and rummaged around in the cabinets. "No chocolate
chips or baking chocolate," she informed him. "What did you have in
mind after lunch?"
    "The floor in the living room could use cleaning and
waxing." He held out his mug for some coffee. "Why?"
    "I could probably manage to bake a cake," Randy said,
pouring the coffee. "Given the ingredients you've got around it would
have to be plain vanilla. That might not serve your purpose as well as
having me scrub floors, but I'll remind you that I'd expect you to
help." She shrugged, then added, "But it's
your
stomach."
    "You're on. The floors can wait." He sat and drank a
second cup of coffee after they'd finished the first, watching as Randy
cleared the table and began to wash the dishes. The soapy water quickly
penetrated Luke's bandage, however, causing her to wince with pain and
pull her hand away.
    "Go sit down, Linda." Randy hadn't heard him get up over
the sound of the running water and she started slightly. "I'll do the
dishes for you," he added.
    She thanked him and went over to the couch, thumbing
through an old magazine she found sitting on an end table. Luke Griffin
could be very sweet when he wanted to be, she decided. When he was
through with the dishes he strolled over to her, holding out one of the
most dog-eared cookbooks she'd ever seen in her life.
    It was no problem to find a recipe for vanilla cake, and
in a creative moment Randy even decided to try using some hot chocolate
mix for frosting, an experiment that succeeded admirably. Luke was so
absorbed in his book that he paid absolutely no attention to Randy
while she worked, but the moment the cake was cooled and frosted some
sixth sense seemed to tell him that food was in the offing, and he
promptly appeared at the table.
    Randy cut two pieces, a large one for Luke and a smaller
one for herself. His was gone amazingly quickly, but then, the cake was
actually quite good.
    "This deserves a reward, Mrs. Franck," he said. "A
reprieve for both of us—no floors till tomorrow. Want to come
for a walk?"
    Randy immediately agreed. She was beginning to wonder if
her father's assessment—that once she'd met Luke Griffin she
wouldn't stand a chance—could be correct. She wanted to