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possible. It wasn’t her that was against rekindling the flame that was obviously still burning bright between them. It was all Luke. He’d been avoiding her whenever possible. Tolerating her whenever the business threw them together. And the way he’d been looking at her made her wonder if he was starting to put together more of her past than she was comfortable with. But he still wanted her. He couldn’t hide that.
    “I’m just saying there’s nothing wrong with a little atmosphere,” she said for the thousandth time. “There’s nothing wrong with candlelight or flowers. No one is going to question your manhood.”
    It was after two in the morning and the last of the customers had already staggered home or back to the hotel. She’d already wiped down each table and stacked the chairs on top, but she still needed to damp mop the floor. Her back ached and the lull of the ocean made her want nothing more than to lay down where she was and fall asleep.
    She wouldn’t admit it to Luke, but she loved what she was doing—serving customers and cleaning up at the end of a long night—learning how to place orders for enough food for the week and how to negotiate orders of the liquor so they didn’t overcharge. She loved it because it was hers. She’d never had anything else she could say that about.
    “We have plenty of atmosphere.” Luke swung out of the kitchen carrying a box of napkins and straws so he could replenish the shelves under the bar. “We’ve got moonlight and the ocean. It doesn’t get any better than that. And the crazy thing is they’re both free.”
    “I mean, the live band is nice,” she said, pretending like he hadn’t spoken. Jessie rubbed the small of her back and looked around the wide open space as visions of what Seeker’s Paradise could be filled her head. “But it would be even better if it was music people could dance to. I’m not sure Stairway to Heaven is the best way to get people on the dance floor.”
    She looked over in time to see his lips twitch.
    “Hmm, is that what that was? I didn’t’ recognize it,” he said, turning back to his task.
    Jessie moved behind the bar and just watched the way he moved. Muscles rippled in his back as he bent to restock. Relaxed and methodical. Luke never got in a hurry for much of anything. The memory of those slow hands made her blood heat and her skin tingle. He could do amazing things with his hands.
    “Why did he do it?” The words came out of her mouth before she could stop herself. But there was no going back now. “Why did old Jesse give you money for this place? We know it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart.”
    Luke stood and turned around so he faced her, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Believe me, I was pretty surprised myself. It’s not like there was ever any love lost between the two of us. He never approved of you and me together.”
    “That’s an understatement,” she said, her laugh brittle.
    Luke stared at her like he’d been doing a lot lately—as if he could see more of her than she wanted. “I’d just turned twenty-one and was in my last semester of college when my grandmother died and left me some money. I’d had enough of school and had already decided I didn’t want the kind of job or life it was steering me toward. So I packed up and came home and told my dad I wanted to open a restaurant and bar on the island so tourists didn’t have to keep ferrying to the mainland. And I asked him to invest the other half of grandmother’s inheritance with mine and go in with me.”
    Her brow raised in surprise. Luke’s parents had always been very supportive of him in anything he’d wanted to do. “I take it he said no?”
    Luke smiled slow and lazy and rubbed a hand behind his neck. “He was pretty pissed I didn’t finish the semester and graduate. He told me he’d do it as soon as I got my diploma and wouldn’t back down. Things got pretty heated for a while there and my mom said