Chapter 2

LUKE POV

The morning after the Emily blowout, the diner is packed. The scent of fresh pancakes softens the air, and forks ring against plates with a satisfying speed. Lorelai was in and out with the first rush of people.

We spent last night watching a lot of movies about women kicking villains' asses. Not a bad way to spend a night, considering the use of spandex—both on Lorelai and the actresses. She was cheerful, too. Like she wanted to be sad, but she wasn't, but then there was a little sad mixed into her happy because she wasn't more sad. She's a complicated creature, but easy to comfort with ice cream and the weight of an arm across her shoulders.

I'm elbow-deep in the 9:00 round of plates when Lane pokes her head over the half-door. Moving hesitantly, which is weird for her in the diner. "Hey, Luke?"

I look over. "Hey what? Why're you whispering?"

"You just…better come up front."

I grab a towel and dry my hands, and as soon as I leave the kitchen, I see the problem. Emily Gilmore. In my diner.

I flip the towel over my shoulder and stalk across the crowded room, conversations wilting in my wake. I stop next to her table and cross my arms, staring for one slow breath because the woman eats, breathes and shits manners. I want to watch her squirm when I don't play her little game.

She smiles up at me. "Hello, Luke."

I don't smile back. I watch hers falter, stretch tighter as she tries to hold it, then fall away, the hollows under her eyes a touch too yellow, like she put on some kind of paint to cover the bags. Nowhere in her too-made-up face do I see a hint of resemblance to her daughter.

I jerk my chin toward the door. "Out."

"Now, I know what you must think of me, but I'm not here to make a scene."

"I don't care what you're here for, because you're about to not be here."

From behind me, a male voice chimes in. "Um, Luke?"

"Not now, Kirk."

"Luke, I'm not sure if you knew, but that's Lorelai's mother."

"I'm not so sure we're calling her that anymore, Kirk."

Lane hiccups in a little gasp of air. Emily goes a bit paler, but she doesn't get up.

"I just came for breakfast. My daughter and granddaughter have been raving about the food here for years." She puts back on her soiree smile, so pointedly enthusiastic it's a little gross to look at. "I thought it was past time I listened to their advice."

"You want to try some diner food? Go sit on the curb and I'll toss some out to you. I hear that's where diner food comes from, anyway. If you're lucky, I'll throw in a little roast roadkill."

Her throat hollows around the tendons in that weird way old rich women's necks do. The diamonds in her necklace shimmer and tremble with the movement. "I'm not leaving until I've eaten. I'm simply famished."

I glower at her, pissed in spite of how little I thought I cared any more. She's just lucky Lorelai won't be back until lunch, or I'd take my luck with the lawyers and march her out of here in a half-nelson.

"Fine. I need the table. You won't leave it, it'll leave you." I pick up the table, leaving her and her chair in an empty spot. Everyone in the place stares. The first person in line for a table hesitates, but Lane's greasy band boyfriend jumps forward to take it.

I turn back around and Emily's still there. She'd already unwrapped her silverware, and her paper napkin is spread across the lap of her skirt as if it were Spanish linen. She smoothes it now, her hands jumping ever so slightly as I stride past her to get back to the kitchen.

"New place setting for that table," I say to Lane and she nods, springing into action.

I head back to the kitchen, a headache brewing in my temples. If that woman thinks a pair of genteely trembling hands are going to change my mind, she's about three years of post-Friday dinner Lorelai trauma off base.

"Luke?" Her voice falters just a little at the end, like Rory's does when she's nervous. "May I please just try some coffee? Lorelai thinks the world of it."

"You can die of thirst, or you can get the hell out. I don't care which." I bang the half door of the kitchen closed behind me.

#

Lucky for my future legal fees, Emily gives up by 11:30. Unluckily for my cardiologist bills, she comes back the next day. When I take away her table, she sits next to the wall with a damn napkin over her lap. When I take her chair, she sits at the counter.

The third day, she's still here and it's getting dangerously close to Lorelai's lunch hour. I'll be goddamned if I'll make my girlfriend perform two Emily Gilmore exorcisms in one week.

I come out and lean my elbows on my counter, my face close enough to Emily's that I can see where she's started to nibble off her lipstick. From here, she can count every fucking hair in my beard that I haven't been shaving because I'm hoping it'll annoy her.

"You want to eat?" I growl, because that's what she says every day. Every damn day until her prissy little voice is stuck in my head like a One Direction song.

She sits up straighter. "I would like that, Luke. Very much."

"If I give you food, will you leave?"

"Absolutely." She smiles, but it's not her normal scented-blood triumph smile. I don't know what the hell it is, but I'd be happy to never see it again.

"Diner food. We don't do escargot. We don't do béchamel. We don't do marzipan."

"I understand that perfectly."

"I bring you food, you're eating every damn bite."

"Lovely." She folds her hands on my counter, rings clicking against Formica. "May I have some coffee, too, please?"

I toss a glance at Lane and she nods, looking uneasy as she dashes back behind the counter and grabs the coffee pot. Her normal customer service smile goes crooked and queasy on her face as she tries to figure out how she's supposed to act to her best friend's grandmother who is the bane of her boss's existence.

I leave her sitting there and head for the kitchen, because I've got cooking to do.

I give her the lumberjack breakfast. Six pancakes, side of hashbrowns, two eggs over easy, ham, bacon, sausage. She eats it in small, delicate bites and washes it down with two cups of coffee, me glaring at her the entire time from my spot leaned against the kitchen door, because I'm not going to give her the chance to slip a single bite into her napkin.

But Lorelai must have gotten her appetite from somewhere, because Emily finishes without a single belch, compliments the food without a hint of condescension in her voice, and tips Lane eighteen-and-a-half percent.

She's back the next morning.

I don't even let her get to a table. I just toss down my rag and roar, "EVERYBODY OUT!"

Chairs squeak with alacrity, because everybody's still well-trained from a couple of weeks ago, when Lorelai and I broke up and anybody that pissed me off had a kneecap rattling exit to the pavement out front.

When I stalk out from around my counter, Emily jumps, the chain on her purse strap rattling against her watch. Good. I like her a little afraid of me. I like it a hell of a lot better than her humiliating compliments. And yeah, I don't exactly make a habit of intimidating old ladies, but I figure anything with fangs doesn't qualify.

"We're not doing this, you and me," I snarl at her. "I get it. You want to weasel your way back into your daughter's life so you can keep making her miserable. Too bad. You ain't getting through me."

Her chin goes up, and her mouth pinches. My eyes flare, hungry for the fight she refuses to give me. But instead she takes a breath, her face strange like it doesn't know its own expression.

"Please," she says.

#

I blow out of the diner an hour later, my legs stretching long and hot with all the shouting that's not coming out of my mouth. Emily's probably still there. I left after she polished off a Monte Cristo sandwich and ordered a side of bacon and I couldn't take looking at her anymore.

The dirt lane scrapes under my boots, and I'm probably sending up a cloud of dust behind me, as fast as I'm going. I jog up the porch and the door flies open on well-oiled hinges.

Lorelai's at the front counter and her head comes up from her ledger a second before her eyes follow. "Welcome to the Dragonfly…" She registers my face and keeps right on going, "Dragonfly Pot and Pizza, we make it while you bake it. What can I get for you this fine afternoon? We have a special on hookahs with pepperoni—"

I sidestep the counter and haul her into my arms, my lips coming down on hers so hard she should probably protest.

She doesn't.

I kiss her like a crazy man, my hands clenched in the back of her shirt, breathing her smell into me like I need to revive something. My knee finds its way between hers and even when her back crashes into the counter, she doesn't pull away.

When we finish, gasping, I try to smooth the wrinkles of her shirt against her back. "You ever feel like you've got no idea what the hell you're doing?"

She tips her forehead against mine. "All the time."

"Right. Okay." My thumbs steal one more touch of her soft, narrow waist, then I step back. "See you tonight?"

"Uh huh." She grins. "Come again soon. We've got a two for one special on today's order. The mountain man special, I think they call it."

I walk back to the diner, feeling a little better.

#

The next day at lunch, Lorelai strides into the diner with a little smile on her face and a bounce in her step. Halfway to the counter, her step glitches. But she rebounds without even changing expression, slings her purse on the counter and says, "Did you at least throw in a little rat poison in with the relish?"

"You better believe it." I don't look up from the bread order I'm putting together.

Behind her, Emily stops eating. I really hope she lifts the bun to check for rat poison.

"Side of arsenic chips."

"With anthrax sprinkles." I finish updating the quantities, find a to go cup and grab the coffee pot to fill it. "How's Ironed Sheets Lady?"

"Ironed Sheets Lady is now also starched napkin lady, and you wouldn't believe the stunts I had to pull to keep Sookie out of the dining room so she wouldn't see that the original starch level of the napkins was deemed inadequate."

"Did you have to do the 'Is that your water breaking' trick?"

"Twice! And, as if that wasn't enough, the woman called for laundry service. Gave us her brassieres." She draws out the word extra loud in between sips of coffee. I watch over her shoulder. "Anything?" she whispers.

"Not even a twitch."

"Damn."

I frown. "Do you have to starch the bras, too? Don't they melt when you iron them?"

She tips her head, smile set to stun-level of charm. "Please tell me you've tried."

"Sure. Used to iron Jess's all the time until the little punk switched to girdles."

She chokes on her coffee.

"Trick is, you got to keep it on low heat."

"She'll want us to iron her sex toys next." She half shouts sex toys and Emily looks a little green, so I throw Lorelai a nod so she can enjoy the victory.

The couple at the table by the window look over but whatever. They're adults.

Lorelai leans in. "Got any red wine?"

"Grape juice do?"

"As long as it's in a big, big cup."

I grab a water pitcher and stick it in the juice machine. Wholesale, it's about two fifty worth of juice. Completely worth it.

When it's done filling, I slide it in front of her and fold my arms, leaning on the counter. Her eyes narrow and she drops her voice. "Are you really going to let me throw it in her face?"

"Uh-huh."

"It's going to make a huge mess."

"Floors mop." I shrug.

Behind her, Emily has forgotten to chew. She can't have heard us, but she's just watching her daughter with wide eyes and a frozen, utterly unreadable expression.

Lorelai scrunches up her nose and whispers, "What if we went upstairs and banged around some furniture, gave her a little When Harry Met Sally?"

"Lane!" I call. "Cover the front for me, would you?"

"Uh, sure thing, Luke." She glances up from her coffee rounds, because we don't usually talk about it. If I leave, she covers the diner. She's got eyes, I don't have to tell her how to do her job. But I wasn't saying it for her.

Lorelai looks suspicious, but she keeps her voice low. "What if I just go over and flip the whole table into her lap?"

"Table's sturdy. I'd charge you for the plate."

"You're really going to let me do anything I want, aren't you?"

"Yup."

She tugs on a lock of her hair and looks mischievous. "Does that free pass expire tonight?"

"Nope."

A smile curls up the edges of her mouth. She leans across the counter to kiss me, a little softer than usual.

Emily stands up. "Lorelai?"

She doesn't even react to the sound of her name, or how uncharacteristically tentative her mother's voice is. I try to keep the look of pride off my face.

"We still on for monster trucks tonight?" she says.

"You bet." I nod to let her know Emily looked a little scandalized at the monster trucks. Lorelai's grin broadens, but I don't miss the little gulp of a breath she takes to brace herself before she turns to go.

"Don't forget your coffee."

"Never do." She comes back and swipes up the cup. "Call me when the credits roll?" she asks cryptically.

"Before the soundtrack even shuts off."

She strides out with a cute little jaunt to her step, and I don't even pretend I'm not watching her go.

Emily retrieves her napkin off the floor where it fell when she stood. She gets a fresh one and smoothes it across her lap, maybe one or two passes more than necessary.

"Hey." The room's full, but it's not big, and she looks up immediately when I speak to her.

She must be having some kind of argument with herself, because her face twitches a couple of times before she manages the most plastic smile I've seen that wasn't stuck on a Mr. Potato Head and says, "Yes, Luke?"

"You don't talk to her." I lean on my counter and try to keep my growl from sounding too homicidal. "If she wants to talk to you, she'll talk. First word you say to her, you're outta here."

Her Mr. Potato Head smile is a thing of history. "I understand," she says tightly. "I apologize."

I don't bother to respond, just pick up my pencil and go back to work.

#

True to my word, I slip into the store room and dial Lorelai's cell as soon as Emily's finished paying for her patty melt and double fries. My eye twitches as I listen to it ring, because I'm not entirely sure how this is going to go. Probably not well.

"Hey, you," she answers. "Did the anthrax kick in yet? Need me to help you bury the body? Make sure and sprinkle it with holy water first."

"I didn't tell you she was coming to the diner because I was handling it."

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Somerstein, I would love to bring you some more towels. I'll be right up."

Michel knows better than to be fooled that a guest would be calling on her cell phone, but I don't say anything. If she's decided we need privacy for this call, I've got bigger fish to fry.

I scowl down at a crate of onions and listen to her heels clack on the stairs, then one of the guest room doors open and close behind her. She exhales. "You shouldn't have to handle it, Luke. After what she did to us, I don't want you to have to handle her ever again."

"I don't want you to worry about it."

"I shouldn't worry as in, you're kicking her out? Or I shouldn't worry as in, you're going to let her stay for some mysterious reason so she can keep abusing you every day while you come home at night and play Twister with me and try to sneak vegetables into my ice cream like nothing's wrong."

"I didn't say nothing was wrong. My back's never going to be the same after that game of Twister."

"Yeah, well, it took me a few days to recover from what the Twister inspired you to do, so we're even." She gasps. "How did you do that?"

"Yoga, twice a day. Three times on Sunday."

"Not the Twister, you liar. How did you distract me from the whole Emily torture issue? I want details."

"I'm not kicking her out because I'm letting her learn her lesson."

Lorelai snorted. "What, so through the terrible penance of eating your delicious food, she'll be somehow redeemed? I've been eating your delicious food every day since I moved to Stars Hollow and I still haven't seen the error of my ways."

A smile is tickling its way onto my face. I don't know how we can talk about something so depressing and somehow she can still make it funny, and a little charming.

"I can't believe she manipulated you into thinking she was actually sorry." Bedsprings squeak on her end of the phone and suddenly I really wish we were having this conversation in person.

"Oh, she's not sorry."

"No? No, why would she be? She only emotionally bankrupted her own daughter and dragged you through the mud for the crime of loving me. Ooh, calling it a crime makes it sound a little dirty. Wanna play handcuffs tonight?"

I ignore that, because sometimes when Lorelai gets really racy, it's because she can't face talking about something important. "Emily thinks she's sorry. She really just doesn't want to be the kind of person with an estranged daughter, and she thinks eating my food will make me like her."

Lorelai laughs. "Clearly, she's never seen you interact with your customers."

"Clearly." I smile a little, straightening a crate of bread. "Anyway, if I kick her out, she might start bugging you or Rory. But if I let her do what she wants, one day she'll realize it's pointless and she's tired of vinyl chairs and paper napkins. And she'll go away on her own, for good."

"You do realize this is the same woman who got Kitty VanPetre's thirty-fifth anniversary party bumped from the Rose Room because in kindergarten, she broke Mom's purple crayon?"

"Did you see what she was eating today?"

"Was it a tuna melt? It looked like tuna melt but it rained water today, not frogs, so obviously it was a tuna melt imposter."

"She ate the real thing. And thanked me for it."

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen." Lorelai chortled. "You know, I'm starting to see the appeal."

"Hey, I should get back to work. You okay, though?" I thought she'd take it harder than this. She usually does, when I try to protect her from anything.

"I'm walking on sunshine, babe. I can live on that visual alone. Tell me you make her ask twice for the ketchup, and then you serve at least three customers while she waits. Ooh, ooh and you leave that tiny bit of crusty stuff at the top of the ketchup."

I glare at a tub of mustard. "When have I ever left crust on my ketchup bottles?"

"Can you start?"

I sigh. "If it'd make you feel better."

"Luke?"

"I'm not spitting in anything, so don't even ask."

"If she's mean to you, even once, even nice-mean…"

"Don't worry, I'll just get rid of her. Worst comes to worst, I know how to use speed dial now, and you're sexy when you're mad."

"You won't believe how sexy I can get for a crusty ketchup bottle."

"This just got weird. I'm hanging up."

"Emily Gilmore eating a tuna melt," Lorelai muses, shaking her head.

"With a side of cyanide."

"And that's why I love you."

Author's Note: Hit that follow button, because in the chapter up next, we've got a Kirk incident, Emily pays Luke a compliment, and he puts her in her PLACE.

Thanks so much to all of you who have been leaving reviews! Even a single word makes me so happy to see. To guest reviewer Nancy- I can't respond to your reviews bc of your account status but I adore them! They're so detailed and fun! Thanks so much for sharing them.