Once and Always

by Elizabeth Hoyt

  “Yeah.” She scrambled down from the high seat, the smaller black case heavy and awkward.

  Sam’s cabin was solid looking—a dark brown shingle two-story, nice, but nothing fancy. A bit like Sam himself.

  Maisa shook herself. She had to focus. She needed to get the suitcase away from Sam and make sure he had no way to find out what was inside.

  He was tramping up his neatly shoveled walk, carrying the suitcase as if it weighed nothing at all. Maisa hurried after him, trying to remember if she’d noticed a difference in weight yesterday before she’d opened it. Diamonds were heavy, but the gems were no more than a handful, all told.

  A fabulous, expensive handful.

  Damn, she needed coffee bad. She needed to think.

  Sam mounted the steps and juggled the suitcase, switching hands as he inserted his keys in the bright red front door.

  There was a scrabbling and something coughed behind the door.

  Maisa froze, eyeing it with alarm.

  Sam opened the door and glanced at her. His eyes sparked with amusement at her stiff form. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t bite. Usually.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but followed him inside.

  Immediately a short little furball hurtled at Sam’s legs, barking wildly. He squatted to catch the thing as her glasses fogged, blinding her. Maisa set down her case and took the glasses off to wipe them with a tissue as she glanced around.

  She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. The front door opened into a large, vaulted room, bright even with the overcast sky outside. With the sun out, it’d be blazing. The floor was dark wood, refinished to a high gloss and left bare. The walls were painted white and mostly bare as well, save for sports equipment hung here and there: fishing rods, a fishing net, what looked like an old rifle, and crossed wooden snowshoes. To the left, an enormous fieldstone fireplace took up most of the wall. Straight ahead was an open kitchen, stainless-steel appliances, a light gray granite counter, and dark wood cabinets. In the middle stood a butcher-block island with two stools. Behind the kitchen an entire wall of glass overlooked the lake. A couple of mission style wooden chairs with leather cushions faced the lake. And to the right, up high, was a wide, open, railed loft, obviously Sam’s bedroom, although she couldn’t see the bed from where she stood.

  The whole place, taken together, was stark but calm. Beautiful, in fact.

  Maisa glanced at Sam and saw that he’d been watching her examine his home. She blinked, feeling her cheeks heat.

  Then she took a good look at the animal at his feet. “That’s the weirdest-looking dog I’ve ever seen,” she blurted in wonder.

  The shaggy gray dog was on its back, legs in the air, as Sam went back to rubbing its belly. It was maybe average length for a medium-small dog, but its legs were too short. Add to that, wiry, shaggy fur, an overlarge head, and drooping ears, and the whole was just ugly.

  “Yeah, I know,” Sam said with affection, pulling gently at the hanging ears. The dog’s big eyes gazed up in adoration and its tongue lolled to the side.

  “What is it?”

  Sam shrugged, still squatting easily, still rubbing the stupid dog with his stupid long fingers. “Some kind of pedigreed terrier breed.”

  Maisa glanced irritably at him. “How do you know that, but don’t know the breed?”

  He finally looked at her, his eyes hardening. “Because Otter the Dog is a hand-me-down from an ex-girlfriend. When Rachel moved to her new apartment, they didn’t allow pets.”

  “Oh.”

  Now the dog was looking at her, too, and his expression was no longer adoring. Wonderful. Sam’s dog hated her. Sam’s ex-girlfriend’s dog. Not that it mattered that he’d had a girlfriend—or that they’d been close enough that he’d adopted her dog.

  A sudden thought hit her: how long had Rachel been an ex-girlfriend? Because Sam had been pulling her over for speeding for at least two years. “How long have you had Otter?”

  “Otter the Dog.” For some reason her question made his eyes soften. He straightened, suddenly too close to her. “Two and a half years.”

  “Oh.” Great. The damn dog had reduced her to monosyllables. She glanced away from him. “Mind if I take a shower?”

  “Sure.”

  He took off his hat, shrugged off his coat, and hung them both on a wooden peg next to the front door. There was a row of pegs mounted on a dark board over a wide bench set against the wall. Below that was an old hook holding several keys on key rings.

  He turned and held out his hand to her.

  She opened her mouth, shut it, and took off her black puffy jacket and beret.

  “Thanks,” he said, dry as desert sand.

  He hung up her coat next to his.

  Maisa looked at the polished wood floor and then her heeled boots. She sat on the bench and tugged them off, setting them side by side on a mat to the side of the door. Sam toed off his own big boots before picking up the suitcase. He strode past her, his shoulder brushing her arm, making her shiver in animal reaction.

  The dog hopped up and followed Sam, and she noticed that his tail was stupid as well—much too long for his body and extravagantly feathered. Scowling, Maisa brought up the rear.

  There were two doors beneath the loft, and Sam opened the nearest. Inside she saw what was obviously a spare room. A few cardboard boxes piled on top of a futon, a particleboard desk with a dust-covered computer, and odds and ends stacked here and there.

  “Sorry for the mess,” Sam said as he began moving the boxes. “I use this as my office. Sometimes. The futon isn’t too bad, though.” He glanced at her over his shoulder and must’ve caught her wince. “Unless”—he deliberately straightened—“you’d rather sleep in my bed upstairs? I can take the futon instead.”

  “No, this is fine. What about Dyadya, though? You said his heat wouldn’t be on anytime soon.”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Did you tell him in that note to come here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He turned back to the boxes. “Then he can take one of the chairs in the kitchen when he gets here—they’re pretty comfortable.”

  She frowned. Dyadya was in his seventies. “No, I’ll take the chair and he can have the futon.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She moved forward and picked up a box to move off the bed. It was open and she found herself staring down at a curling photo of a bunch of men in desert army fatigues. She set the box on the desk without thinking, peering at the photo.

  “Is this you?”

  “What?” He glanced over and something in his face seemed to close.

  He reached for the photo, but she snatched it up before he could. There were five men in the photo, loosely standing as if captured after a day of work—or whatever one called being at war. For it was obvious from the background that the photo hadn’t been taken in the U.S. It was some foreign place, somewhere with sand and rocks and very little vegetation for a human to survive on.

  She looked up. “Is this Iraq?”

  His mouth thinned. “Afghanistan.”

  “You were in the war?”

  He didn’t answer, simply turning away to stack boxes.

  She examined the photo. In it, Sam was wearing a helmet, his arm draped over a slightly shorter, stockier man with sunburned cheeks and red stubble. The shorter man grinned, while Sam had half his mouth cocked up. Two of the other three men were sitting, arms draped wearily over knees while the fifth man was half turned away from the camera, a water bottle tilted to his lips.

  “How long were you there?” she asked and somehow her voice had gentled against her will.

  “Three years.”

  “That’s…” She considered her words, choosing them carefully. “Isn’t that a long time?”

  “I was career.”

  She frowned. She knew very little about the military—her own family tended to be on the opposite side of things, generally—but even she knew he was much too young
to have retired. Had something happened in Afghanistan? She winced at her own naïveté. Of course something had happened to Sam. No one returned from war the same.

  Gently, she placed the photo back in the top of the box. There were questions she wanted to ask, but that would only lead to more intimacy and that she simply couldn’t afford. It was none of her business anyway. She’d given up the right to Sam’s secrets when she’d made it plain that she didn’t want anything further from him than that one night of sex.

  She frowned, feeling vaguely melancholy, and then realized that the room had grown silent.

  When she looked up he was watching her, his blue eyes shuttered. “Okay? Do you need anything else? I’ll go get you some clean towels.”

  “No.” She ran her hand through her hair. “Th… this is great.”

  Sam nodded and left. The dog gave her a pitying glance before following.

  Maisa repressed the urge to stick her tongue out at the mutt. Great? She sounded like a peppy cheerleader. So Sam had a few secrets. Didn’t everyone? Except, of course, she wasn’t interested in everyone’s secrets—just Sam’s. The realization made her pause. Well, that was inconvenient. If she were smart, she’d leave the thing alone. Leave the man alone. He was just too dangerous to her peace of mind—among other things.

  Somehow she had a feeling she wasn’t that smart.

  She scowled, turning to the black suitcase. Time to get with it, coffee or no coffee. Maybe she could hide the diamonds somewhere. At least make sure they weren’t right on top if anyone else opened the suitcase. She reached around, feeling for the small zipper tab, but something seemed to be stuck. She bent over the little suitcase, peering at the corner, and saw a strip of ragged masking tape covering the zipper. In neat block letters, written in black marker it said, BOMB. DO NOT OPEN.

  “Oh, Dyadya,” she whispered. “What have you done?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam had his hands full of towels when he nearly walked into May.

  She stopped short, just outside his spare room door, her eyes wide, her pupils dilated.

  He looked down at her. Half an inch more, maybe not even that, and she’d be in his arms, soft breasts pressed into his chest. He inhaled and smelled woman. Smelled May. He’d never had a chance to lick her neck that night, see if she tasted sweet or salty. Find out if he could make her moan without even touching her below the waist.

  He wasn’t an egotistical man, but he was pretty sure he could.

  She slammed the spare room door closed behind her and shifted as if barring his way.

  Sam raised his eyebrows.

  May’s big brown eyes were kind of squinty. “Are those for me?”

  “Yup.” He handed them to her and looked from her to the spare room door. Unless she’d somehow found an old porno magazine in his boxes, he couldn’t figure out what would spook her in there. The photo she’d held earlier was innocent enough—if you didn’t know the fates of the men in it.

  “Sam?”

  She was looking at him with worry now, her brows slightly knit.

  Sam shook his head, exhaling hard. Afghanistan and what had happened there was in the past. It had nothing to do with May. “Don’t you want some clean clothes?”

  She dropped the towels. They both squatted at the same time to retrieve them.

  “May?”

  “Are you saying I stink?” she asked with a half smile like it was supposed to be a joke, but there was worry in her eyes.

  “Uh…” He examined her. Something was up, but for the life of him he couldn’t tell what. “No.”

  Her face softened suddenly as she straightened. “Sorry. That was…” She blew out a breath. “I’m really not terribly civilized before I’ve had my coffee.”

  “Then I’d better get making you some,” he said slowly.

  “Thank you.” She took a deep breath and smiled. It wasn’t a very natural smile. “Shower?”

  He debated challenging her, but maybe she really would be easier with coffee.

  “The shower’s on the upper floor,” he said, leading the way. “There’s a bathroom downstairs off the kitchen, but it only has a toilet and sink. I’ve been meaning to knock out the back closet wall, install a shower stall, but I guess I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “Sam?”

  He stopped at the top of the stairs. He was probably putting May to sleep with all this information.

  She smiled, though, one of her rare, sweet smiles with no hint of sarcasm or malice, her soft pink lips curving gently, and laid her hand on his arm. “It’s nice, Sam, your house. It’s very nice.”

  He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Thanks.”

  She took the towels and shut the bathroom door.

  He waited until he heard the shower running before loping down the stairs. Otter was lying in the middle of the entryway floor—Otter wasn’t much for movement unless he had to. He watched as Sam opened the door to the spare bedroom and peered inside. The room looked exactly like he’d left it only moments before: old cardboard boxes on the desk, suitcase by the futon. He went to the desk and looked in the box she’d carried. Zippy, Enrico, King, and Frisbee, and his own stupid, too-young face stared back, stuck in time. He closed the box and set it on the floor behind the desk.

  He looked around the room again, but didn’t see anything out of place. He’d have to fold down the futon and make it if Old George was sleeping here tonight, but it was still morning. Plenty of time for that later.

  Sam went into the kitchen and started making a fresh pot of coffee.

  Fifteen minutes later he heard May’s footsteps down the stairs.

  Otter, sitting hopefully by Sam’s feet, glanced at her but didn’t move.

  Sam reached over to the coffeemaker and poured May a cup. “I didn’t know if you took cream or sugar.”

  He pivoted to slide the mug across the island that sat square in the middle of his kitchen.

  May was standing uncertainly on the other side of the island. Her short, dark hair was slicked back like a seal, those too-severe black glasses perched on her nose. Without makeup, her hair still wet, she looked very young.

  She’d picked up the smaller black case and now she gestured with it. “I forgot to put this in your guest room.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What’s in it anyway?”

  She hesitated, standing there like a little girl lost, and he was sure she wouldn’t answer. But then she came to the island and set the case carefully down. “Butch.”

  Butch?

  She frowned down at her mug. “Cream.”

  “In the fridge.” He pointed with his chin, putting his curiosity on hold.

  She went over and opened the door. “It’s two percent.”

  “Yeah?” He couldn’t tell if she wanted more or less milk fat.

  “I like half and half.” She stuck out her bottom lip as she poured milk into her coffee.

  “Sorry.” He stirred the eggs, making a mental note to get a carton of cream for her.

  She drifted over, cradling her mug, and peered into the pan on the stove. “Are you making me breakfast?”

  “Yup.”

  “You don’t—”

  He turned and popped a strawberry in her open mouth. “Unless you’d rather I gave it to Otter.”

  Her eyes widened a second before she swallowed the strawberry. “What a weird name for a dog.” She retreated behind the island and sat on one of the stools.

  “Yup.”

  He heard the latches on the case pop behind him and turned in time to see May lift an old black sewing machine out of the case. Gold painted filigree decorated the side, swirling around the word SINGER.

  He raised his brows. “Butch is a sewing machine?”

  “Yup.” She smoothed her hand over the black enamel lovingly. “He’s my travel machine. I’ve got a Bernina and a digital Singer at home, but Butch is kind of special. He was my first sewing machine. Mama got him from a yard sale for me when I wa
s thirteen. I learned to sew on him.”

  “And now you travel with him.”

  “Of course.” She looked at him oddly, and he knew he was missing something. “For my business.”

  “Which is?”

  “Oh.” She blinked and for a moment she looked the most vulnerable he’d ever seen her. “I guess I never told you. I design and sew dresses. I’m on Etsy and I’ve got my own website and a couple part-time seamstresses, but I’m hoping in the next year to hire them full time.”

  She stopped suddenly, her narrow little face pink with excitement.

  Sam couldn’t help but smile in return. Imagine that: his May sewed clothes. Somehow he’d never thought she did anything so domestic for a living.

  Not that he was stupid enough to share that thought.

  “What kind of dresses?” He took a sip of his own coffee—black and unsweetened—and put a tiny slice of cheese on the counter in front of her.

  She looked down at it, puzzled. “Retro styles. You know—full skirts and tight bodices, although I do pencil skirts as well. Everything is originally designed and I sew to order: I have the customer measure very specifically and sew the dress to fit her.”

  “Uh-huh.” He reached for plates from the cupboard. “You’re doing good business?”

  “Yeah. Retro styles are very in vogue at the moment.”

  “And you did this all by yourself?”

  She thrust her chin out. “Yes, I did. I got a small bank loan, worked nights waitressing, and built the business up until I could quit waitressing.”

  “That’s great.” Sam said softly. He glanced over. She was poking at the cheese. He nodded at Otter. “He likes cheese.”

  He turned the scrambled eggs out onto the plates, added toast to both—two pieces for him, one for her—and brought them both to the island.

  May was now holding the cheese between her forefinger and thumb.

  Otter, sensing a patsy, was already sitting patiently by her feet.

  Sam put the bowl of washed strawberries between them on the island, along with the honey, butter, and a jar of strawberry jam already sitting there, and pulled up a stool at the corner across from her.