“I’m looking for the chemistry lab,” he said to me after the bell rang. I don’t know why he picked me out of the twenty girls and fifteen boys who were all curious about the newest member of our school, but his voice, deep and smooth, curled around me, holding me in place.
“I’m going that way. I’ll take you, if you want.”
He smiled slightly, and that quirk of his lips made me smile too, although I’d never been a big one for smiling. I wasn’t shy, but I wasn’t the most outgoing girl in class. I preferred the library, where I could read to my heart’s content, to the sports field, where I was solid “B” team material. My family wasn’t poor, but I had two older brothers and an older sister, and why buy new books for me when I could read the books we had, even if I wasn’t interested in princesses and ponies, dinosaurs and dragsters. Why waste money on clothes or toys, or anything at all?
“Thanks.” He offered me his schedule, and that’s when I noticed his hands. Big hands. Strong hands. Steady, solid, work hands. They didn’t fit his clothes, or the smooth way he walked, or the musician persona he wore like a shield.
I’d never been with a boy in any way—not even a kiss—but I had a part-time job in the local library, and I’d read about the things a boy could do with his hands when they slipped beneath your clothes. For some reason the idea of Sam’s hands on my body made me hot inside.
“What’s for lunch?” Sam now pushes away the memories of Sam then, and he takes his seat at the dining room table we received as a wedding gift from my sisters when we moved back to Revival to start our family. A life as a farmer’s wife wasn’t how I ever imagined my future, but once he got those beautiful hands on me, I would have followed him anywhere.
“Meatloaf and potatoes.” I put the plate in front of him. “Green beans. Do you want gravy?”
He looks around the kitchen, as if the gravy would be anywhere other than on the stove. “Do you have some?”
“Yes, of course.”
A sunbeam breaks through the clouds, lighting Sam’s face, and I catch a glimpse of the boy I fell in love with beneath the weathered, sun-kissed skin. He is stronger now, heavier and thickly muscled. But unlike many of the local farmers who enjoy their biscuits and gravy, he is still lean, his belly flat and rippled from years of hard labor.
I stare at him, remembering the early days when my heart would have jumped at the thought of touching those rippling muscles, or feeling those strong hands on my body. After high school, we left Revival behind and moved to Billings together, he to pursue his dream of playing in a band, and me to study at college to be an elementary school teacher. An unexpected and late addition to the family—my father was fifty-five when I was born and my mother was forty-eight—I had grown up hyperaware of kids who were unwanted, whether they were in foster care, or neglected, abandoned or alone. Inspired by an English teacher who had taken me under her wing, I had decided to pursue a profession where I could make a difference to kids who needed a little extra love.
If I’d known those would be the best ten years of my life, I would have tried to capture them—from the smell of fresh bread that drifted into our tiny apartment from the bakery below, to the soft strum of Sam’s guitar when he was composing, and from the crazy, wild sex that had consumed our nights to the long, lazy mornings we spent twined around each other in bed. Although we didn’t have a lot of money, we had each other, and that was all I needed.
“I’ll have gravy,” Sam says, pulling me out of the past.
I pour a splash of gravy over his meat and potatoes, but not on his vegetables. Sam likes his vegetables plain.
“I took the day off and I’ve some errands to run, so I’d better get going.” I put the gravy boat on the table. “I made an apple pie. It’s on the counter. Vanilla ice cream is in the freezer on the left-hand side.”
I never eat the apple pies I bake. We planted the apple tree after our son, Ethan, was born, six months to the day after we married in a shotgun wedding that my parents refused to attend. Why would I get married when Sam didn’t have a steady job? And why would I have a baby when I wasn’t even finished with college? They were already busy looking after their six grandchildren from my siblings, and they weren’t keen on any more.
But I didn’t expect them to understand that all my life I’d just wanted something that was mine. Something new and perfect and made for me. My baby might have been unplanned and unexpected, but he would never be unwanted, a burden that slowed the family down.
Maybe I wanted too much for him. Maybe after three months he realized he could never bear the burden of my hopes and dreams.
“Jeff has a new hose waiting for me at the dealership.” Sam cuts his meat, the knife scraping over the plate in a high-pitched, teeth-clenching scream. “Can you pick it up on your way home?”
“Sure.” Sam doesn’t like to go into town, and he rarely goes to the city unless he needs to buy a new piece of equipment. I’ve tried over the years to get him to take a weekend away, maybe stay a hotel, eat in a fancy restaurant, take in a show, see a band, or talk like we used to do, but he is always too busy, too tired, or has too much to do. Why eat in a restaurant when we have good food at home? Or see a show when we have a TV? We see each other every day. What would we talk about anyway? Not work because farm work is all we do, and I gave up my dream of becoming a teacher after we lost Ethan. I couldn’t be around children without thinking of him. Would he have been friends with the little first grader who ran into me on his bike? Would my life have been filled with play dates and puppet shows instead of potatoes and peas?
“And I need some checks for the men,” he continues. “You can pick them up at the bank.”
“I’m getting my hair done, and I have to go to the florist and the bookstore before I visit the cemetery. And then I have to see the dentist. The bank closes at three. I might not have time.”
Today is Ethan’s birthday, and I have a ritual that I follow every year. I buy him flowers—exotic flowers from the faraway places he will never get to see—and a children’s book that I donate to the library in his name after I read it to him at the cemetery.
Sam freezes, the meatloaf dangling precariously on the edge of his fork. “The men need to be paid tomorrow. If I don’t pay them, they won’t show up the next day.” Sam doesn’t ask about the dentist. He probably didn’t even notice I’ve been unable to eat anything but soup and a little porridge for the last two days, and I don’t mention it because I know he has a lot on his mind. Harvest is all consuming. And, of course, we don’t talk about Ethan. Sam made it clear, on what would have been Ethan’s first birthday, that he wasn’t interested in doing anything to remember our son, so for the last ten years I’ve remembered Ethan alone.
I fist my hands by my side, forcing myself to take slow, even breaths as the cream-colored walls of a traditional country kitchen close in around me. “I’ll fit it in.”
He grunts his approval. “Why are you getting your hair done anyway? You look fine.”
Fine.
My hand flies to my thick dark hair, tied back in its usual ponytail. At thirty-five years’ old, I don’t want to be told by the love of my life who used to write songs about me that I look fine.
Fine means you look okay. Not bad enough to embarrass the person you are with, but not good enough to bring the life back to your husband’s eyes.
Fine means barely adequate, and that’s what our life has become.
I’m not beautiful in any sense of the word, but the constant demands of the farm have kept me in shape, and although my skin isn’t quite as smooth, and my eyes aren’t quite as bright, I think I am still pretty. I am pure Italian on both sides, three generations back, with my mother’s high cheekbones, thick straight hair, dark eyes, and long lashes, and my father’s oval face and deeply olive skin. Exotic, is how my school friend Alexis Morales describes me. She was always convinced my looks would take me far. I don’t think by far she meant a lonely acreage twenty-five miles from town.
“I’ll be home.”
I always come home.
There is nowhere else to go.
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Also by Sarah Castille
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Romantic Suspense Series
Legal Heat
Barely Undercover
Burnout
Redemption
Sports Romance Series
Against the Ropes
In Your Corner
Full Contact
Fighting Attraction
Strong Hold
Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club
Biker Romance Series
Rough Justice
Beyond the Cut
Sinner’s Steel
Chaos Bound
Ruin & Revenge
Mafia Romance Series
Nico
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Rocco
Naughty Shorts
Contemporary Romance Series
Naughty Desires (Amazon only)
Naughty Wishes
Naughty Secrets
Club Excelsior
Erotic Sports Romance Series
Yield to Me
Hold to Me (coming soon)
About the Author
After graduating from law school, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Sarah Castille, practiced law on the West Coast and then in London, England for many years. She obtained a Masters degree in law and traveled extensively before returning to Canada where she decided to trade in her suits for pajamas and write novels about hot, sexy alpha males and the women who tame them.
Sarah writes contemporary romance and romantic suspense. Her books have been published by Samhain Publishing, Macmillan and Sourcebooks Casablanca, and have been listed as Publisher’s Weekly’s Top Ten Picks and Best Summer Reads, Amazon’s Best Romance Books of the Year, RT Book Reviews Top Picks, as well winning the Holt Medallion for Excellence in Literary Fiction and numerous reader’s choice awards.
Sarah lives with her husband, three children and a variety of friendly forest creatures on Vancouver Island. She is very easily distracted and loves hearing from readers.
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For more information:
www.sarahcastille.com
Naughty Wishes (Naughty Shorts Book 2) Page 5