by Jill Shalvis
“It happens,” Sam said.
“When?” Cole asked. “When does that ever happen?”
Tanner, eyes narrowed, got up into Sam’s space and studied him. “What’s that?” he asked, touching Sam’s throat. “Is that a hickey?”
Sam smacked his hand away. “No.”
“Yeah, it is,” Tanner said. “You totally have a hickey.”
“Let me see,” Cole said, pushing close. At the sight, he grinned. “Nice. I wouldn’t mind one of those,” he said, sounding wistful.
Tanner snorted.
Sam stalked to the bridge, rolling his eyes at their laughter behind him.
It wasn’t until that night, kicking off his shoes in the foyer of his house, that he caught sight of himself in the mirror.
He totally had a hickey on his throat.
“Son, you can have the hot tub tonight,” his dad said, coming in behind him without knocking as usual. “I’m tuckered out.” He plopped himself on the couch.
Sam moved closer and looked him over. Pale. Even a little gray. He knew he’d been taking his medicine; he’d made damn sure of it every morning. But the meds were no guarantee. “You okay?”
“Always,” Mark said.
“Dad.”
Mark opened his eyes. “I’m fine. I’m just overtaxed, that’s all.”
“Maybe it’s not a great time to be screwing a woman two decades your junior.”
Mark grinned. “But what a way to go, right?”
When Sam just looked at him, he sighed. “And that’s not what I’ve been doing.”
“What have you been doing then?” Sam asked.
Mark hesitated.
Never a good sign. “Christ,” Sam said. “Gambling?”
“No!” Mark shook his head. “Still got a real high opinion of me, I see.” He paused. “I’ve been working.”
“Working,” Sam repeated.
“Yeah. I took a job at the arcade, running some of the games, okay?”
“That’s a teenager job,” Sam said.
“Or the job of a man with no résumé,” his dad said.
Sam didn’t get it. “Why?”
“I’m going to pay my own way,” Mark said.
“Since when?”
“Goddamn it, I’m tired of being a mooch off you.”
Sam sighed and sank to the couch next to his dad. “Well, if you’re going to take all the fun out of my resentment. . .”
Mark laughed, but it was hollow. “You’ve worked so hard all your life,” he said. “And people here love you. I want to be a better man, son. Like you.”
Sam took the unexpected hit to his solar plexus, heart, and gut. “You can’t work, not right now.”
“Yes, I can. I am. I already have twenty hours. I’m going to pay you rent and get my own car. And you’re not the only one who can build shit, you know. I’m going to make you shelves so all your CDs and DVDs aren’t on the damn floor all the time.”
Sam stared at him, but his dad looked serious. And sincere. “How about you wait until after you get better?”
Suddenly looking older and very tired, Mark closed his eyes again. “Yeah. Okay. Hey, you got stuff for sandwiches?”
“I think so,” Sam said. “You want one?”
“You got any potato chips to put in it?”
Sam blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
Sam fed his dad, watched him carefully for a while, and determined he really was just tired and not ill enough for a call to Josh.
“Stop hovering,” Mark muttered, eyes closed from his position prone on the couch. “I’m not dying tonight.”
“That’s not funny,” Sam said.
“You’re right, it’s not. It’s sad as hell that you’re watching me instead of being with your woman. Go be with your woman.”
“Dad—”
“Jesus.” Mark pulled out his phone and hit a number. “Hey, darlin’,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine, but I’ve got someone here who’s not. I’m sending him to you, okay?” Mark slid his gaze to Sam. “Okay, I’ll tell him.” He clicked off. “She says to be ready for lesson number five. What’s she teaching you?”
Sam managed to keep a straight face, but Christ, she cracked him up. “I have no idea,” he said evenly.
His dad shrugged. “Well, when a woman looks like that, with a heart like that, you ignore the crazy, son, and get ready for lesson number five.”
Two days—and two extremely long, hot, erotic nights later—Becca was in the hut, opening for the day, when the man single-handedly responsible for the perma-smile on her face walked in. She was surprised, seeing as she’d left him boneless and facedown on her bed only half an hour earlier. Knowing he was leaving today on a two-day fishing expedition, she’d let him sleep.
“You got up early,” he said, heading for the coffee.
“So did you.”
“Twice,” he said.
She laughed. It was true. And once the night before as well. “Did I wake you when I left? I tried to be quiet and not talk.”
“I wouldn’t have minded some talking,” he said. “I really liked the More, Sam, oh please more.”
She threw her pencil at him.
He caught it in midair and grinned.
“I got up thinking I’d try to work on my next jingle,” she said.
“You haven’t said what your next assignment is.” He caught her grimace and smiled. “It can’t be worse than your last few.”
“Yeah, it can. It’s diapers. But at least it’s for baby diapers.” She blew out a breath. “It’s because I’m not doing anything spectacular. I keep waiting for my muse to really kick in, but the truth is, I think I’ve lost my talent.” She caught something in his expression. “What?”
“It’s not because you’re not talented,” Sam said. “It’s the importance you’re attaching to it.”
That this was true didn’t help. “I need to be successful at something,” she said. “At this,” she corrected when he opened his mouth. “I’m going to be successful at this if it kills me.”
“You know,” he said. “It wasn’t all that long ago when you got mad at me for blaming shit on myself, like when I got my dad and me kicked out of that apartment.”
“You were thirteen,” she said. “I’m not a minor by any stretch of the imagination. I run my own life, and I take the fall for it.”
He brought her a mug filled with lots of sugar and a little bit of coffee, and that he knew the exact right formula warmed her heart. Not enough to ward off the unease at the intimacy of this conversation, but enough that she didn’t make a run for the door. Apparently sharing orgasms was easier than sharing her soul. She stared down into the steaming brew, wishing it held the answers to her life.
“Becca.”
With a sigh, she looked at him, and found her gaze locked in his, held prisoner.
“You’re successful just as you are,” he said.
“If you think that’s true, you haven’t been paying attention.”
“Wrong,” he said. “I’ve been paying attention better than you. You came into this job to answer phones and you’ve so completely fixed us up that now anyone could run our place with the blink of an eye.”
“In my past,” she clarified. “I want to have been successful at stuff in my past.”
“Fuck the past. Move on to something that suits you right now.”
She stared at him. “Fuck the past? Is that how you live your life? Not thinking or looking back at all, just forward?”
“Hell yeah.”
She nodded. This was true. She knew it. She’d seen it. She’d just conveniently forgotten it.
Sam’s eyes were warm as his hand curled around the side of her neck, where his thumb gently stroked. “You should try it sometime.”
What she wanted to try was him. She wanted to try him out for as long as they both could take it. She almost said so, but saying it out loud twice wouldn’t make it so. Her life was in flux. She needed to focus, and focusing around Sam w
as proving all but impossible. Still, she stepped into him, meeting him halfway when he lowered his mouth and kissed her, an effective kiss that shut down her ability to think and cracked through her defenses.
Of course that’s when their morning clients showed up—a group of ten fishermen—and just like that, Sam was gone.
Over the next two days, Becca ran the hut and loaned out the rental gear. She finalized Summer Bash plans. She had dinner with Olivia at the Love Shack on Country Night, and even got talked into dancing a little bit. She was having fun—until she realized Lucille was snapping pics.
Lucille told Becca not to worry her pretty little head about it because the pics would only be posted on Lucky Harbor’s Pinterest page, and there weren’t many followers yet.
Olivia went home shortly thereafter because she had to work early the next day. The crowd thinned considerably, and Jax sent Becca a long look and a jerk of his chin toward the piano.
Like a moth to the flame. There were still a few stragglers in the place but she sat anyway. Only a few weeks ago, she could not have done so. Still, her heart began to thump. She looked around.
No one was paying any mind at all.
So far so good. She set her fingers on the keys, closed her eyes, and began to play.
When she’d finished one song, she drifted into another, and after three, a movement caught her eye.
Mark.
“Hey,” she said, startled, jerking her hands back from the piano. “What are you doing here?”
He set down a full shot glass.
She looked at the glass and then into his face, and her heart softened at the inner turmoil she saw there. “You’re struggling.”
“Seems like I’m not the only one,” he said. “Scooch over, darlin’.”
She scooted over, and to her surprise he sat on the bench next to her. “You play the same way you make sandwiches,” he said. “Like heaven on earth.”
She choked out a laugh. “I don’t like it when people listen to me play.”
“Is that true, really?”
She thought about it and slowly shook her head. “No, actually. The truth is that I don’t like worrying about making a fool of myself.”
“Honey, the only foolish act is keeping that talent to yourself.” Then he placed his fingers on the keys and began to play “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”
Becca laughed and joined in, and when they were done, she heard a single pair of hands clapping.
Jax, and he was grinning. “You two are hired,” he said.
Becca looked at Mark.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. Call me a fool, right?”
She grinned. “You play.”
“Nah. I dated a woman who taught me that one, eons ago now. Other than that, I’ve no idea what I’m doing.” He paused, looked at the shot glass. “With anything.”
“Me either,” Becca said and nudged the shot glass away from him. “But I know that won’t help either of us.”
“You’re right.”
“It’s not often I hear that,” she said. “I like the sound of it. You going to tell me what you’re doing here?”
“Maybe I came to make sure I could stay off the booze. But then I saw you and thought to myself that you looked beautiful. And sad. And since you’ve helped me so much, I wanted to do the same for you.”
She met his gaze. “How do you plan to do that?”
“By imparting wisdom,” he said. Then he sighed. “Shit’s hard.”
She nodded. “Really hard.”
“But not having shit . . . that’s harder,” he said. “Know what I mean?”
“Yes.” She paused. “No.”
“We’re still breathing.”
“Yes,” she said. “Last I checked, I was still breathing. You too by the looks of you.”
“Right. And not breathing, that would be worse,” Mark said.
She stared at him. “That’s it? That’s the wisdom you’re going to impart?” Becca said. “Keep breathing?”
“And don’t sweat the small stuff,” he said. “Both good bits of advice.”
“True enough,” she said, and stood up. “Need a ride?”
“Nah. I want to walk. No worries, I didn’t drink.”
“You going to?”
“No, ma’am.”
She kissed him on his cheek and went home and sat on her bed, which reminded her of Sam, and work. By dawn, she’d sent off a jingle for the diaper campaign, but she wasn’t thrilled with it, and she was a little bit afraid she knew why.
She was sweating the small stuff.
She was also sweating the big stuff, but one thing at a time.
Chapter 22
By early evening, Becca had closed the hut and was eating ice cream after snorkeling with Olivia when the guys came back in.
She hurriedly popped the last bite of cone into her mouth and pulled on her denim shorts over her still-damp bathing suit.
“Look at you move,” Olivia said, amused.
“My bosses are back. They might need something.”
“Uh-huh,” Olivia said. “Or you want to pull a Baywatch and run down the beach toward your man. Or maybe I should say Babe-watch.”
Becca ignored her and . . . ran down the beach.
Cole and Tanner were unloading gear to the dock. She didn’t see Sam, and thought maybe he’d somehow gotten by her. She slowed her footsteps, and tried to slow her heart down as well.
After all, he didn’t owe her a special hello. He owed her nothing.
“Hey,” she said, greeting Cole and Tanner. “Everyone good?”
“Sure.” Tanner tossed some more gear to the docks. “We hardly ever kill anyone anymore.”
Cole turned to look at him. “Seriously? You’re allowed to joke about it, but not me?”
Tanner shrugged.
Cole shook his head and pulled Becca in for a hug. “Everything holding up here?” he asked her.
“Of course.”
His gaze said he knew otherwise, but he let her get away with it. “Saw you and Anderson all hot and heavy on the dance floor. You really gotta watch that guy, okay?”
Becca stared at him. “You were there?”
Tanner laughed. “No, he wasn’t there. But please ask him how he knows.”
Becca looked at Cole.
Cole grimaced. “It’s not a big deal.”