“Next building over,” Sam said. “Just past the cafeteria.”
Jax nodded, gave Annie a reassuring little squeeze on her arm, then took off. Nurses gazed at his broad back with longing as he passed them by, but Jax didn’t even glance at them. He had Sarah in his life, in his bed, in his heart, and that all meant that the ex-manwhore was in retirement, and with an unequivocal vengeance.
“Uh, so…” Sam said. “So…”
“So,” Annie repeated, suddenly feeling very alone with him, despite the bustling room around them. “So… how have you been?”
“Oh, good. You know.” Sam removed his glasses and cleaned them, thereby giving Annie a blissfully unimpeded view of those chocolate-brown eyes. “Busy.”
“Sure, I imagine so. Saving lives.”
“Mostly, yes. Thank goodness.” Sam put his glasses back on, going from gorgeous to brainy-gorgeous in a heartbeat. “And you?”
“I’m still at the diner,” Annie said, as always feeling stupid and uneducated next to this man. “Still just a waitress.”
“So bringing people food.”
She shrugged. “Yeah. Nothing glamorous or exciting.”
“Well, people do have to eat, right?” he teased her. “They’d die without food, so really, you’re keeping them alive and saving lives yourself.”
She rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh. Sure, doc. What we do is the exact same thing. I see that now. Serving bad coffee is part of the circle of life.”
“Speaking of bad coffee…” Sam began, then faltered a bit, just froze up with sudden nerves. He wasn’t much of a player – his hours didn’t really leave much time for dating, after all – and it had been a long, long time since he’d asked a woman out. But he was damned if he was going to let Annie get away a second time… not without a fight. So he sucked it up, and forced the words out. “Speaking of bad coffee, could I buy you one?”
She stared at him, those beautiful blue eyes – the same eyes that stared at him from out of Noah and Sarah’s faces – even more astonishing in their honest bewilderment.
“Uh,” she said. “Coffee?”
“Bad coffee,” Sam corrected her cheerfully. “The stuff hasn’t improved since the last one I got you three years ago… but maybe the company can make up for that a bit?”
“The company being – you?”
“Yep.” He was feeling less-than-assured now, but he ploughed on. “The company being me.”
“Oh.” She stared at him some more, now fumbling nervously with her purse. He recognized it as the same one that she’d been carrying that first night that he’d met her, a cheap plastic thing with ripped edges and the gold paint scraped off the clasp, and he wondered if she owned another one. “Um, well… alright.”
“Alright?” he echoed, fighting down the urge to dance around the packed E.R. “Bad coffee on me, then?”
“OK.” She smiled at him now, and Sam damn near reeled backwards. There was that smile, at long last, the one that he’d wanted directed at him for years now… and somehow, the fact that he’d had to wait for it this long just made it all the sweeter now that he’d received it. “Sounds good. I mean, how can a girl turn down bad coffee? Seriously.”
“Right?” Sam agreed. “I figured that was the clincher.”
“Sure was,” Annie said, totally ignoring his incredible chest, warm eyes, amazing smile, broad shoulders and stupendous butt. “It’s all about the coffee.”
Chapter Two
Sam waited for the coffee to be poured, then waited again in line to pay. The whole time, he shot Annie surreptitious glances, stole sneaky little glimpses of her as she sat in a booth across the room.
She looked good, he was happy to see. Much better than three years ago, which wasn’t surprising considering what she’d been going through then… but even if he removed the criteria of dark circles under the eyes, and deep worry lines, and permanent exhaustion and messy hair, Annie still looked light-years better.
She was a bit curvier, more lush and rounded, like she’d taken the time to sit down and have a few decent meals every once in a while. Her hair was cut a bit shorter now, and that brought out a gentle wave that hadn’t been there before. And her eyes – those eyes as deep and blue as the ocean – were calm now, less troubled, more joyous. On the whole, she looked healthier and happier, and Sam believed that when a woman looked like this, so natural and real, she was at her most beautiful.
Or maybe a man is making her look like this, his brain taunted him. Maybe she’s happy because she’s got someone.
Well, OK. If Annie had found someone who was good to her, then Sam would be happy for her. He’d also want to kill the guy.
Time to find out, then.
He brought the coffees over to Annie, and those gorgeous eyes watched his approach warmly. The thing that had always taken him aback about Annie was her sweetness; he supposed that she’d buried it deep for reasons, maybe because she thought that it made her vulnerable. Weak. So she’d perfected her hard bitch persona, erected a tough shell that masked her true nature – one as a surprisingly kind, giving person. Sam had known it the second that he’d seen Annie reach out to Jax that horrible night three years ago – when she’d reached out physically and emotionally, reached past her own fear and anger, reached him in the middle of what was a mother’s worst nightmare.
Sam knew that people revealed true things about themselves in the horror of the E.R. Any strains or tensions between family members exploded, any fault lines cracked fast and hard, any resentments bubbled over and drowned everyone standing in the vicinity. Selfish, small people became more so; generous, loving people did, too. Whatever face Annie showed the world to survive, she’d revealed her real, honest face time and time again when her daughter had been hovering near death.
It was a beautiful, strong, amazing face. It was a face that Sam admired deeply – and wanted to see all the time. He wanted that desperately.
“Thank you,” she said now as he set the cup of coffee in front of her. “I’m so looking forward to enjoying this bad coffee.”
Sam sat, gave her a grin. “I know, right? Enjoy.”
“Oh, I will.” She took a sip, mostly hid her slight grimace at the bitterness. “So… how have you been?”
“Good,” Sam said, relaxing into the seat across from her. “Really busy, with my usual crazy night shift hours, but I like that.”
“Being busy? Or working nights?”
“Both, I guess.”
“I hated the nightshift at the diner,” Annie said. “Worked it for twenty years, and I swear that it made me a nervous wreck.”
“Lots of drunks?”
“Oh, yeah. Drunks and kids looking for trouble and shady characters passing drugs under the table in the corner. Prostitutes, too, looking to get warm before having to go back out, and they kinda broke my heart, ‘cause so many of them were so damn young. Kept seeing Sarah when I looked at them, you know? Lots of fights, too, which meant lots of clean-up after. Broken glass all over the damn shop.” She looked over at Sam. “But I imagine it’s way worse in the E.R. at two a.m. on a Saturday.”
“Can be. People drunk and high can be hard to control.”
“No lie. Thank God I don’t have to take every hour that my boss tries to hand me anymore, so I can mostly work days, or even go a few days without hours if nothing’s being handed out but nights. It’s great, after years of taking anything that I could get just to pay the bills.”
“So things are better financially?” Sam asked quietly. He’d never asked of course, never once probed Annie about her bank balance, but he’d known that things were tight back then. “More steady?”
“Yes. Incredibly so.”
“Is it OK if I ask why?”
“Sure,” Annie said, startled. “It’s not like it’s a threat to national security to talk about it.”
“No?”
“No.” There was that smile again, dear sweet God above. “It’s because the kids have become independent. They pay their own way.”
“Both of them?” Sam was stunned. “Noah earns enough off painting to pay for his life?”
“Oh, he told you about that, did he?”
“Yes. He works with Naomi Abbott’s organization.”
“I’m still not done being in shock over that. I mean, Sarah and me always knew that he had talent, but we had no clue that he could sell what he painted. His painting was more about… I don’t know. Keeping him calm so Sarah could do her work when she was at him with him, mostly. But it was also about him expressing himself. You know? He couldn’t really talk to us, but when he painted, we saw things about him. It was amazing, and he really seemed happy when he was in his world painting, listening to music, creating. And when Naomi told me that she had people who wanted to pay thousands of dollars for one of Noah’s paintings? You could have knocked me over with a feather.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So, he earns great money. Jax’s accountant set things up for him, ‘cause I don’t know the first thing about managing that kind of money, and he’s got a nice little nest egg.”
“He lives with you still?”
“Oh, no. You heard of Carly’s Place?”
“Of course. The assisted-living facility for adults with autism. He secured a spot? They’re hard to get, I heard.”
“Oh, yeah. Incredible admissions process, and we totally lucked out with the timing when an apartment opened up. Of course, Naomi has direct contact with Carly and her staff, and she heard about things before anyone else. She also put in a good word for Noah with the selection board, and said that he could actually contribute financially to his own apartment. And, well… sometimes the stars just all line up, right?”
“Indeed.” Sam thought about the fact that an accident that had hurt Noah had brought Annie back into his life, without warning or planning. It was a shit way for things to shake out – Sam would never wish any harm on anyone, not even if it meant seeing Annie again – but maybe the stars aligned oddly in some ways. “Sometimes they really do.”
“So Carly’s Place isn’t cheap, but Noah covers most, Jax and Sarah cover some, I do too. Noah earns almost enough that he can pay all on his own, but if he did, he’d have nothing left in savings or investments, and we all agreed that’s not the way to go. So we all kick in what we can.”
“And Noah has a girlfriend?”
“Yeah. Callie. Amazing young woman.”
“And Sarah and Jax are engaged?”
Annie’s face lit up. “Yeah. I wasn’t keen on him at first, but now I think he’s the best thing to ever come into her life. He’s a damn fine man.”
“I agree.” Sam remembered Jax sitting next to Sarah’s bed for hours, for days, on end. He’d basically stopped living for those weeks when she’d been in a coma. “I liked him a lot.”
“They live together now, so I’m on my own in the house. The bills are way less ‘cause it’s just me, and of course, feeding myself isn’t much. I eat for free at the diner. It’s mostly crap, but I do get a few OK meals.”
“And you, Annie?” Sam held his breath for this next question. “You seeing anyone, now that the kids are out in the world?”
Annie lowered her coffee cup, stared at Sam. “Me?”
“You.”
“Ha!” Annie laughed. “No way, doc. I’m as single as they come.”
Sam fought down the urge to punch the air. “And why is that?”
“You kidding me?” She shrugged. “I’m pushing fifty now. I work in a lousy diner. I’ve never been anywhere or done anything. I didn’t even finish high school. I’m gaining weight at the speed of light, and my hair is going gray even faster than that. Men my age are going for women twenty years younger, and younger men are looking at twenty year olds who can rock bikinis. I’m just… I’m not really anyone’s idea of a hot babe.”
If there was one thing that Sam knew and understood, it was that opportunity came knocking in the strangest ways… and God knows, it was pounding down his damn door right that minute.
“Not every younger guy goes for twenty year olds, Annie,” he told her. “And you’re definitely someone’s idea of a beautiful woman.”
“Oh, you think so, huh?” She smiled at him. “You got his number?”
“I can do better than that. I can tell you where he is this exact second. I can tell you his name.”
“Shoot, doc. Lemme grab a pen and paper first.”
“He’s here, Annie.” Sam gestured at his own chest. “Right here.”
Annie blinked. “What do you mean?”
“He’s me.”
“You – you what?” Annie almost choked on her coffee. “You think that I’m – I’m –”
“Beautiful,” Sam supplied. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Annie’s mouth dropped open, hung there. She knew that it wasn’t the most attractive look that she’d ever plastered across her face, but come on. Doctor Sam Frickin’ Innis was telling her that he found her attractive? Her, with her swollen ankles and jiggly thighs? Her stretch marks and caesarian scars? Her gray hair and wrinkles? This was utter bullshit and she knew it… but Sam didn’t seem like the type to make fun of her. This must just be a very bizarre form of flattery, him just being a nice guy to the fat, ugly, old lady whose kid got hurt that day.
“Well.” Annie set down her cup carefully, not wanting it to go crashing to the table. “That’s very sweet of you, Sam.”
“I’m not being sweet, Annie.” He sounded almost angry now, and she was caught by surprise again at this kind, gentle man actually showing anger. “I’m telling you what I think about you. What I’ve thought for a long time. Since the first time I saw you, actually.”
“The first time?” Annie recalled how she’d shown up in the E.R. in her stained, unflattering waitress’ uniform – God, I think that was the night that idiot threw a plate of fries at me, got off a direct hit, and the ketchup ended up everywhere – looking like nine kinds of hell. “That’s impossible. I was a walking disaster area.”
“You were beautiful. Strong and sweet, so damn scared but so giving to Jax and Noah. You think I didn’t see that, Annie? See your gentle, bright, compassionate side?”
“Uh.” Annie looked down, looked away from those amazing eyes just burning a hole through her damn soul. “Uh…”
“I did. I saw it every single time that I looked at you, Annie. Christ, honey… it was all that I saw.”
Annie froze. Did Doctor Sam Frickin’ Innis just call her ‘honey’? Her?
“Uh…” she managed again. “Uh, well… thank you, Sam. That’s very sweet –”
“Don’t you dare call me ‘sweet’ again,” Sam growled, and the rapid switch from educated professional to pure animal did incredible things to the area between Annie’s thighs. Things that no man had really done to her since Billy had touched her, way back in those perfect first few months of knowing him. “I’m not a sweet simpleton, honey. I’m a man who is looking at a gorgeous woman, a woman that he wants to get to know better.”
“You – you do?”
“Yes. So.” Sam carefully reached across the table and took her hand. “What are you doing Friday night?”
“Friday… Friday night?”
“Yes. Friday night.”
Annie stared down at his strong, capable hand completely enveloping hers. Her wrinkled, cracked, veiny, unmoisturized hand, damaged from years of carrying heavy trays, and being burned by boiling coffee and sauces. It wasn’t a manicured hand, naturally, and she felt the urge to yank it away, to curl her disgusting nails up and under her palm.
God, she wanted to say yes. Of course she did. What living, breathing woman would turn down a dinner with a tall, built, smoking-hot doctor?
/> Her. She would. Because he had to be at least fifteen years younger than she was… and he was heart-stoppingly stunning, and he was smart as hell, and he should be going to dinner with some gorgeous young lawyer who argued cases in front of the Supreme Court every day and built houses for orphans in her spare time, or maybe another doctor who ran around saving lives all day before training for her next full marathon, without smudging her perfect eyeliner, naturally. A brainy, polished woman, one who spoke another language and knew things about art and earned good money and lived in a cool little studio downtown and did yoga bright and early every weekend.
She opened her mouth to say no.
“Annie?” Sam said.
And that was it… that was the thing that made her change her mind, lightning-quick. The way that he said her name. It was like a sweet drug, a pure addiction, an aching need: she wanted to hear him say her name again. And again.
Her mouth slammed shut; her thoughts raced.
Nothing could ever come of this, she knew that. He needed a woman who could give him babies, a woman who could talk to him on his level, a woman who could challenge him. That wasn’t her; not in any realm or world or parallel universe. She knew that, too.
But she could go for dinner with him on Friday night and make small-talk. She could smile and not embarrass him in public.
She could have him for one night. One perfect night of hearing her name said like that over and over again.
That could fuel her romantic fantasies until the day that she died, couldn’t it? Sure it could. She could think about it just a little bit at a time, dole it out like candy to a greedy toddler, save it for when the nights felt extra-long and -lonely. She could make it last.
“Yes, Sam?” she said, much more calmly than she actually felt.
“Dinner Friday night at Chorus?” he asked. “Can you make it, honey?”
She had nothing to wear to goddamn pricey Chorus. She had no nice jewellery to hang around her neck or dangle from her ears or put on her fingers. She didn’t own a single pair of high-heeled shoes. She had ratty nails, split ends, cheap lipstick in her falling-apart purse. She wasn’t anything like ready to take Chorus by storm.
Lush Curves (Dangerous Curves Book 8) Page 4