CHAPTER TEN- A Friendly Wager

Luke stepped back, away from Lorelai, her lower lip sliding just a bit between his as he pulled away, a bratty little sound of need purring in her throat.

Kirk said nothing, merely stared at the two of them, his hands in his pockets. Not even the glare Luke directed at him fazed him, though it was certainly well-earned—Kirk had, after all, interrupted this twice now.

Of course, Luke reasoned, if they'd been somewhere more private, they'd not have had any interruptions.

That particular realization sent his heart to the soles of his feet and back again in a spectacularly hard, blood-stirring bounce.

"Always glad to be the local entertainment," Lorelai finally spoke, her voice sounding faint. She glanced at Luke, then at Kirk, then settled for looking at her feet, one hand touching her lips lightly as though to reassure herself of what had happened.

Twice… no, three times, she reminded herself.

It had not only happened once. She'd kissed Luke three times, only this time had been in public, of a sort.

"Move along, Kirk," Luke said through clenched teeth. "The diner's not open for another hour and a half."

Kirk nodded as though Luke had given him something to consider rather than delivering an order. "Well, Luke, I appreciate your concern. Be that as it may," he said with the pretentious tone he'd borrowed liberally from Taylor, "When the town approved gambling in certain circumstances, they appointed me both collector and distributor of gains."

"Distributor of gains?" Lorelai asked even as Luke echoed "Gambling?"

"Only in certain situations," Kirk said. "And this fulfills… situation 7c., which was… the event I just witnessed. I think I'm going to make money on this one."

Luke grabbed Kirk by the shirt, pulling him closer.

"Careful with the shirt, my mom just ironed it!" Kirk exclaimed, his voice slipping into whiny straight from pretentious.

Lorelai laughed in disbelief, shoving a hand through her hair. Oh, she thought she'd let Luke talk.

For once, she was well and truly speechless.

"You mean to tell me the town approved betting on my love life?" Luke asked incredulously. "And you're the bookie?"

Lorelai felt her stomach flip-flop at the L-word and found she wasn't speechless after all. "I knew I shouldn't have skipped those few town meetings," she said, needing that one little stab at levity.

"Not just yours," Kirk said, and Luke thought he'd be damned if there wasn't a weird, smug, self-satisfied note to Kirk's voice. Like he'd been waiting to tell them this. "You and Lorelai."

Luke found, remarkably, he no longer had the strength to hold Kirk in place. It was just ridiculous enough to be believable. The sheer insanity of it had that fabulous Stars Hollow touch.

"So what were the other situations?" Lorelai asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. But she knew the answer even before it was given to her.

"There aren't actually any other situations," Kirk said, and now he sounded uncomfortable on top of smug as he hurriedly tried to tug the wrinkles out of his collar. "Come on, don't tell me you guys thought everyone didn't know about you two."

"Maybe we thought we didn't know," Lorelai said, turning big eyes to Luke.

She should be writing all this down, she thought, for when Rory returned.

Luke wanted to be mad, really he did, but another corner of his mind, the newfound, slightly conniving, completely confident part of him that had gone after Lorelai in the first place was rejoicing.

What Kirk was saying meant public exposure, and public exposure gave Lorelai Gilmore nowhere to run.

"Well, what are you standing here for?" he asked Lorelai. "People are going to start showing up for their money any minute." And before she could protest, he was tugging her back inside the diner and shutting the door to the sound of Kirk's celebratory whoop.

"What in the world are you doing?" Lorelai asked, pulling her arm away from him as he locked the door and double-checked the "Closed" sign. "We could have paid him, you know. Surely the pot's not that big."

"Ashamed of something?" he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and facing her down. She'd kept him on his toes for so many years, was it so wrong to want to turn the tables?

He figured she needed that now and again, and she'd be needing that for the rest of her life.

He didn't really intend to let anyone else give that to her.

"Asha—what? No!" Lorelai opened her mouth, chuffed out an indignant laugh, shut her mouth, opened it, then shut it again. "Damn! Where's Rod Serling when you need him?" She sat down in a chair, propped her head in her hand, and looked up at him. "You know, Twilight Zone? Black and white, with the—"

"I know Twilight Zone," Luke said, needing movement, needing something to keep him from kissing her again. This time he wanted answers, and this time she wasn't going anywhere. He figured they had five minutes, at most, before people started showing up. "I'm just waiting for you to answer my question."

"I'm not ashamed!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. "And if you're going to be like that, make me some damned coffee!"

It was downright domestic, Luke thought.

Think, think, think, she told herself, burying her face in her hands as she listened to the all-too-familiar sounds of Luke making coffee behind the counter. Had he ever made coffee in her house before? Odds were he had, but she didn't know if he actually had or not. And what did that matter? He'd done everything else in her house, from climbing into an unlocked window to repairing every last inch of the place.

He'd done nearly everything in her house.

With a tortured groan, she laid her head to the cool, clean surface of the table and wondered what the odds were of her waking up in her own bed if she let herself fall asleep right here.

Taptaptaptaptap!

"Luke, you have mice in your walls!" Lorelai yelled, her eyes still closed, her forehead to the table.

Taptaptaptaptaptaptap!

"I'm ignoring that!" she called loudly as Luke set a cup of coffee in front of her.

She wasn't looking up to see the small smile on his face, and she wasn't looking up to see Patty tapping on the glass with her fingernails, her eyes wide and shining.

"Lorelai, honey! We're so happy! Luke, will you open this door? I just made fifty dollars!"

Lorelai shot out one hand, closing it firmly around Luke's wrist and raising pleading eyes to his. "Luke Danes, please do not let them in. If you care about me at all…"

He raised an eyebrow, and she judged that dangerous territory.

"If you value your own life," she amended, "Please don't let them in. I'm a desperate woman, Luke. I've had no coffee and no sleep. Would you taunt a desperate woman?"

"Desperate, huh?" he asked, turning his hand to rub his thumb over her wrist, to watch her eyes darken from bright to navy. "Well, I don't know if I'd taunt a desperate woman." He leaned down to her level, raised his eyes to the growing crowd outside the glass, and brushed his lips over hers once more. "Don't mind me," he said under his breath, eye to eye with her, grinning in a way Lorelai immediately recognized as dangerous. "But you said you weren't ashamed."

She wanted to scream, wanted to hit him, wanted to yell at the people outside, wanted to crawl in a hole. She wanted to retreat back to the couch she'd slept on only a few mornings ago, and she wanted to throw her coffee in Luke's face. She wanted to lean her forehead to his and laugh.

She wanted to sit somewhere quiet and think about what she was feeling for him.

She wanted to revel in what he felt for her.

And then her cell phone rang and Luke stood up, his thumbs tucked in his pockets, a completely uncharacteristic smile gracing that rough-and-tumble face.

"No cell phones," he exclaimed, jerking his thumb first at the sign and then at the door. "I'm afraid you'll have to take it outside."

Later— much, much later— Lorelai would consider it a lucky thing, indeed, that her frustrated yowl made as many people scatter as it did.