She curled her hands around the warm mug. This was the secret behind Sam’s popularity, the reason that women rolled over for him and men liked him. It wasn’t all thoughtless, surface charm with him. He was aware of other people. He noticed things. He cared. He made an effort to learn what you liked, to give you what you needed, to earn your approval. He looked at you like you were the most fascinating person in the room, the most important person in the world.
Which of course made it even more devastating when you realized that all that focused attention was nothing special. That you were nothing special. He was like that with everybody.
She swallowed to dispel the sudden bitterness in her mouth.
“All set,” Cynthie said, bustling back. “Ready to go?”
“Yeah!” Hannah jumped up in her seat.
“She’s little,” Madison said to Taylor. “She gets excited.”
Taylor grinned and grabbed her pillowcase. Meg gulped another mouthful and started to stand.
“Sit,” Cynthie said. “I’ll take them around. You finish your coffee.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Meg said.
“I want to.” Cynthie’s smile flickered, surprisingly sweet in her heavily made-up face. “I don’t get enough time to play with my girls.”
Probably true, Meg thought. Cynthie was probably too busy keeping a roof over all their heads to simply take a night off with her daughters.
“You go enjoy yourselves, then,” Meg said. “Maybe Taylor and I will catch up with you later.”
Taylor shot Meg a look and then ducked her head.
“Oh, but she has to come with us,” Cynthie said.
“Yeah, Mom,” Madison said.
Taylor stared at her shoes, her fingers squeezing her pillowcase as if she could choke it to death.
Meg wished briefly she were back in New York. Managing a department of thirty people and an advertising budget of seventy-four million dollars seemed like a piece of cake compared with the responsibility for the happiness of one ten-year-old.
Matt would know what to do for her. What to say. Meg didn’t have a clue.
It’s Taylor’s first Halloween with us, Tess said in her head. I want it to be special. But what did Taylor want?
“Taylor?” Meg asked softly.
Taylor jerked one bony shoulder in the universal gesture for I don’t care.
“Let her go,” Sam said.
Meg narrowed her eyes at him. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the responsible one. “Is that what you want?” she asked Taylor. “To go with Madison and Hannah?”
“I guess.” Taylor nodded with more vigor. “Yeah.”
“I’ll bring her home,” Cynthie said. “Around nine, nine thirty?”
“That would be great. Have a nice . . .”
And before Meg could do more than give Taylor her flashlight, they were gone.
“Time.” Meg sat back against the bench seat, unsure how she felt about losing control of the evening. “Well. I feel superfluous,” she said, not entirely joking.
“You should be feeling grateful.”
“Why? Because I’m sitting here with you instead of trick-or-treating with my niece?”
“Because Taylor’s acting like a normal ten-year-old. Not clinging. Kids are supposed to ditch you for their friends.”
“Oh.” She thought about it. “You’re right.”
“You did a good job there.” His eyes were warm.
“Thanks.” She curled her toes in her boots, ridiculously flattered, one more victim of the Sam Grady charm. “I thought if I invited Madison over to look at costumes, it might break the ice.”
“I meant by letting her decide just now. Poor kid hasn’t had a lot of choices lately.”
“Well, she’s ten,” Meg said practically.
“Exactly,” Sam said. “Her mom died, what, two months ago? Three? From a brain aneurysm, Matt said.” Meg nodded. “So, she goes to live with one set of grandparents until your brother shows up. He dumps her on the other set of grandparents, and she’s barely settling in there when your mother’s in a car accident. Not Tess’s fault,” Sam said when Meg would have spoken. “But that’s a lot of changes for the kid to have to deal with.”
Meg frowned. There he went with the empathy thing again. She didn’t know another single man in his thirties who would so clearly see Taylor’s dilemma, let alone be able to articulate it. Matt, maybe, but Matt was a dad. Sam . . .
“How did you get to be so smart?”
He shrugged. “I was a kid once, too.”
She gnawed her lower lip, a new thought poking her like a splinter. Sam was fifteen the summer her family moved to the island. But before that, he’d already lived with one, two, three stepmothers. Maybe it had given him an insight she lacked.
“Did it bother you?” she asked. “Your dad remarrying so much? All the changes growing up?”
His smile flickered. “You get used to it. Once you figure out what everybody expects, how you fit in.”
“Like starting a new school,” she offered. “We did that a lot, moving around with my dad.”
“Sure. But you all had each other. ‘Back to back to back,’ right?” Sam quoted softly. “I must have heard you and Matt and Luke say it a hundred times. Pretty intimidating.”
She stared at him. She’d never considered how the words might sound, how their bond might appear to an outsider. To Sam. “But Taylor’s one of us.”
He smiled at her. Raised an eyebrow. “You sure she knows that?”
“Of course she does,” Meg said. Taylor had to know that. Because the alternative was just too heart-wrenching to contemplate. “Luke’s talked to her. Matt’s talked to her.”
“But you’ve still got that custody thing coming up next week, right? Family court. How much does she know about that?”
“That’s not going to be a problem,” Meg said. “Matt hired a lawyer. Vernon Long. He said we don’t have anything to worry about. No court in eastern North Carolina is going to take custody away from an active-duty serviceman without a really good reason. Taylor won’t even be called unless the Simpsons’ lawyer subpoenas her.”
“Great. But from the kid’s perspective, it’s all still out of her control. Her life is basically being decided for her by a bunch of grown-ups.”
Meg stared at him, stricken.
Sam frowned. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Her own situation wasn’t anything like Taylor’s. Meg wasn’t ten. She was thirty-four, totally in control of herself and her choices. She had a plan. She had Derek.
Taylor had nobody.
Correction. She had a father and grandparents who wanted her. She had Matt and Josh and Allison, who cared about her. And now she had Meg, too.
“That’s why you said it was good for her to go with Cynthie and the girls,” Meg said slowly. “Because it gave her a choice. It gave her control.”
“Yeah. And she went, which was great. It shows she’s confident.”
“You never had any problems with confidence.”
He smiled without saying anything.
“Or with making friends,” she prodded.
She didn’t know what she wanted from him. Maybe she wanted him to reassure her about Taylor. Maybe she was just trying to reconcile this sensitive Sam with the boy she remembered. Because if he wasn’t that boy anymore . . .
Maybe he never had been that boy.
Which meant . . . Oh, hell, she didn’t know what it meant, except that maybe her mother had been right about him all along.
“Sure.” He plucked a trio of sugar packets from the bowl on the table, assembling them into a neat A-frame. “Never would have made it through high school without Matt.”
“Not just Matt. You had lots of friends. You were cocaptain of the basketball team. You were prom king.”
“I was friendly with a lot of people.” The A-frame acquired an addition. “Nobody else I told stuff to.”
Ok
ay. She had brothers. She knew guys did not sit around sharing their feelings. But . . .
“How much did you tell him?”
“Not everything.” He looked up briefly, his eyes gleaming between thick black lashes. “So that’s two things I know about you that your family doesn’t.”
She watched his strong, clever builder’s hands move among the sugar packets, assembling, discarding. Two?
Right. She came to herself with a little start. The job.
She moistened her lips. “I have something to tell you. To ask you, actually.”
“Save it.”
“Excuse me?”
He swept the house of sugar packets down with one hand. “You’re finished, right?”
She stared, fighting an unreasonable feeling of disappointment. He didn’t want to talk, fine. She didn’t need a confidant. She didn’t want . . .
“Your coffee,” he said patiently. “Are you done?”
“Oh.” She collected herself. “Yes.”
“Come on, then. I’ll walk you.”
She wasn’t ten, like Taylor. She didn’t need to be escorted like a trick-or-treater out past her bedtime. She lived in New York, for crying out loud. “I don’t need you to walk me home. I’m perfectly safe on my own.”
His eyes, that brilliant bottle green, met hers. His mouth kicked up in a smile. She felt a little flutter like the beat of her pulse low in her belly.
“Who wants to be safe?” Sam said.
Eleven
MEG STOLE A glance at Sam’s profile as they left the bobbing lights of the waterfront behind. He looked good in moonlight, strong cheekbones, straight nose, sculpted lips, chiseled chin. And then there were those not-quite-dimples, the promise of humor, the flashes of empathy. Any woman could be forgiven for losing her head a little over Sam.
It wasn’t just his good looks and his money and his charm. Okay, those things didn’t hurt. But the real appeal was his willingness to put himself out, the way he’d driven to the airport to pick her up or built that ramp for her mother, without looking for payback, without figuring the angles or calculating the cost. She liked that about him. She liked him a lot.
He had always been a friend of Matt’s, a friend of the family. There was no reason after all these years that Meg couldn’t count him as her friend, too. Her good, close friend.
But nothing more.
The clouds against the blue velvet sky were the colors of an oyster shell, purple, gray, and milky white. The last time she had been alone in the dark with Sam, he’d kissed her senseless. If he tried anything this time, she was ready. She would just say no.
But despite his words in the restaurant, he was being a perfect gentleman.
She shivered a little from the breeze and disappointment.
He slanted a look at her. “Cold?”
She wasn’t stupid. She recognized a line when she heard one. “Is this where you offer to put your arm around me to keep me warm?”
“No.” He slid out of his jacket. “This is where I give you my jacket to keep you warm.” He put it around her shoulders, smiling down at her, making her feel safe and warm and cared for. His jacket smelled like him, masculine with a hint of expensive soap. “Then I put my arm around you,” he said, suiting the action to the words.
Meg smothered a laugh. “Where did you learn this move, high school?”
He grinned back, not smug, just . . . Sam. “Why not stick with what works?”
Everything he did had worked for her back then. She’d had the worst crush on him for years. She’d be on her way to the library and see Sam with some girl—always a different girl, always a pretty one—backed up against the lockers. Or glimpse him from an upstairs window shooting hoops in the driveway with Matt as she stripped dirty sheets from the guest room beds. Every cutting comment she’d made had been an attempt to get him to notice her. She was desperate for him to see her as someone other than Matt’s annoying little sister, with her nose in a book and a toilet wand in her hand.
And so when she’d found him momentarily alone on New Year’s Eve, his defenses down and Matt nowhere in sight, she’d set out deliberately to seduce him.
It hadn’t been all bad, she remembered. Even though he was drunk, even though she had no idea what she was doing, making out with Sam had been exciting. She had drowned in his kisses, exploring his body in a blur of lust and wonder, touching him in places and ways she’d never touched a boy before, letting him touch her. Her breasts. Her belly. Between her legs, where she was hot and damp.
Meg drew an uneven breath. She could even look back now on the inevitable fumbling, painful outcome with a certain nostalgia. At least when Sam was laboring inside her—Oh, God, Meggie, you’re so tight—she’d felt like a necessary part of the process. When he kissed her neck, when he exhaled into her hair, she’d stroked his back and felt part of him. His. Despite her discomfort, she’d felt a bond, a closeness with Sam that wasn’t entirely the result of a girlish crush. She’d had worse sex since. In college, for example. Even recently with Derek . . .
She pressed her lips together, her heart thumping. These were not “friend” thoughts. Not safe thoughts.
The half-moon rode a billow of cloud like a pirate ship in full sail, fleeing before the wind.
Who wants to be safe? Sam whispered wickedly in her head.
She did.
It should have been awkward, walking together. They weren’t matched physically. He was too tall, his legs much longer than hers, and her high-heeled boots only shortened her stride. But Sam adjusted his steps, his arm easy on her shoulders, his hip bumping hers companionably from time to time.
“We took the wrong turn,” she said suddenly. “The inn is that way.”
“And the beach is right here.” He steered her gently, inexorably, toward the access.
Their feet crunched on gravel and oyster shells before the boardwalk loomed, ghostly in the twilight.
She shivered again. It was one thing to accept his escort home. Something else to walk open-eyed into a situation that blurred the lines of friendship. Yes, Sam was attractive, confident, and sexy. But she would not cheat on Derek. She was not a cheater. “Sam . . . where are we going?”
“Why don’t we walk and find out?”
She bit her lip against temptation. “I have to get back.”
“Why?”
Her mind blanked momentarily. “I was planning on getting some work done tonight.” The new client, she remembered. She was going to research the author, Lauren Somebody.
“You ever just take a night off, sugar?” Sam asked in his midnight and bourbon drawl. “No work, no plans, just . . . be?”
“No. It’s important to set objectives. You can’t achieve your goals without planning and hard work.”
“Planning for what?”
Wasn’t it obvious? Everyone she knew on Wall Street, anyone who worked with investments, annuities, life insurance, knew the answer. “The future.” What else?
“If you’re too busy living for the future, sugar, you’re missing what you could have right now. Watch your step.”
“What?”
Somehow they had reached the end of the boardwalk already. The salt breeze rippled over the crests of the dunes. Shadowed drifts of sea grass gave way to a long, flat stretch of gray sand and silver ocean. Long pale ribbons of foam unspooled lazily toward shore. Their rushing filled her ears.
Yearning caught her by the throat. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Sam turned back to look at her. “Why not?”
Because I want you. I want this.
She would never say those words to him again. “Because I’m wearing my good boots.”
His grin flashed like a knife in the dark. “Some pirate you are.”
It was a challenge, she’d never been able to back down from a challenge, and Sam knew that. He knew her, damn him.
She jumped down, stumbling as her heels sank into the soft sand, tumbling against him. He steadied her,
his arms warm and strong.
She pushed against his chest. “I suppose you’re going to tell me real pirates don’t lose their balance.”
“I’m guessing real pirates don’t buy their boots at Bloomingdale’s. Not that I’m complaining. I have fantasies about you in black leather.” He sank on his haunches in front of her. “Give me your foot.”
“No. This is silly.” She was breathless. Fantasies? Surely not.
“We’re not taking off our clothes to go skinny-dipping. Just your shoes. Anybody would think you’d never been barefoot on the beach before.”
“I haven’t. Well, not since I got back.”
Sam looked up, that lock of dark hair falling across his forehead. “You’re kidding.”
“I’ve been busy,” she said defensively.
He shook his head. “All work and no play, sugar. Give me your foot.”
He thought she was dull? Wasn’t that the rest of the verse? All work and no play makes Jack—okay, in her case, Jill—a dull girl.
I have fantasies about you in black leather.
She stuck out one booted leg, holding on to his shoulder for support.
* * *
SAM BRACED HER sole against his thigh and ran a hand up her calf. She had great legs. Not long—she’d always been a little thing—but curvy where it counted. When his hand reached her knee, she wobbled and clutched him tighter. He grinned, working the zipper down her inseam to her ankle, aware of her breasts inches from his face.
If he leaned forward, he would fall into her cleavage. He thought about nuzzling the ruffle aside, breathing in her warmth, finding skin. He would turn his head into the pale curve of her breast, kissing her, licking her, biting her gently.
Yeah, and then she’d snatch her boot from him and beat him over the head with it.
He tugged on the boot, setting it on the sand beside him.
“Next foot,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Her bare toes touched the cool sand. She hopped a little, finding her balance, making her breasts bounce.
He thought they were fuller, rounder than he remembered. He used to get hard, facing her breasts across the kitchen table. Hell, he was fifteen. Everything made him hard back then. And then Tess would ask him about his day or he’d catch Tom’s do-you-want-to-die look from the head of the table, and he’d stare at his plate and think about something else until his erection subsided.
Dare Island [2] Carolina Girl Page 14