This Loving Feeling (A Mirror Lake Novel) by Miranda Liasson Page B

be able to function.
    “My tummy’s growling,” Stevie said, looking around. “It smells good in here.” There went that uncomfortable pang again in Lukas’s own stomach. It tended to hit him when Stevie spoke. Lukas didn’t want Stevie to be hungry. Ever. He might not know much about being a father, but he knew how to order food. And order away they would.
    “I’m starving,” Stevie said, eagerly popping into an orange vinyl-covered booth that faced the park. Nothing much had changed in the past six years. Or sixty.
    “Hi there, what can I help you—” The waitress was middle-aged, with blonde hair pulled back in a bun. “Oh, wow, hi.” Her face flushed as she realized who she was talking to. “I, um, can I take your autograph—I mean your order.” She cleared her throat and tried again. “Can I take your order?”
    “Leave the guy alone, Darlene,” Buzz, the owner, called from the kitchen, over the sounds of sizzling food and the scrape of a metal spatula against the grill.
    “Sorry. Sure. It’s just that social media is going crazy about you today.”
    Of course. The prom visit. A feel-good story. Not too big of a deal.
    “TMZ’s been snooping around trying to find out about that pretty girl you kissed. It was Samantha Rushford, right? Didn’t you two have a thing a while back?”
    Dammit. He should never have lost control like that. Now the press would go after Samantha, all because of his impulsiveness. He’d wanted to show this town he’d matured. That he wasn’t the pissed-off-at-the-world auto mechanic who’d left here six years ago with fifty bucks in his pocket.
    He wanted to show her he’d matured.
    “Take his order, Darlene,” Buzz called.
    He smiled, hoping that would deflect the waitress from asking more questions. “Coffee for me, please, and pancakes with blueberries for him, thanks.” He turned to Stevie, who was blowing bubbles in his water with his straw. “What do you want to drink with your pancakes?”
    “I’ll have coffee, too.”
    “Nonsense. He’ll have milk.” The proclamation came like a decree, in a loud, take-no-prisoners voice. Lukas and Stevie turned together in time to see a foreboding woman with a bold, flowery dress and hair blacker than Coca-Cola waste no time plunking her large pocketbook onto the tabletop. She squeezed her rather ample form next to Stevie, who quickly scooched over because it was either that or be mowed over.
    Darlene made a break for the kitchen. Even Lukas found himself sitting up straighter and smoothing out his shirt. “Mrs. Panagakos,” he said.
    The woman reached across the table and grabbed his chin in her hand and shook back and forth. “Lukas Achilles Spikonos. You finally had the sense to come back home. It’s about time.” Her brown eyes, heavily made up with eyeliner and eye shadow, got misty behind her big jeweled glasses. “And who, may I ask, is this?”
    She released Lukas’s chin from her death grip to eyeball Stevie, who immediately shrank back into his seat.
    Lukas smiled. “This is my nephew, Stevie.”
    “Hello, Stavros. What a fine, handsome boy. I am Alethea Panagakos. Sit up straight when I speak to you.”
    Stevie looked to Lukas for guidance. All he did was nod a little. Because it was fruitless to fight a tsunami. Fortunately Stevie’s pancakes came just then, and he happily dug in.
    Mrs. Panagakos turned to Lukas. “Samantha told me you need a babysitter.”
    “Yes. But I thought you were moving back to Greece?” Alethea had kept an eye on Lukas after his accident a few years ago. More than an eye. She’d cooked fabulous Greek food for him for weeks while his arm was broken and he couldn’t work. She might look foreboding on the outside but her insides were all rizogalo —Greek rice pudding.
    She sighed heavily. “I was so lonely after I divorced. I wanted to return to Mikonos where I would be surrounded by all my relatives. But then my mother came here to live with me, so I decided to