by Lee, Liz
But no. Ida Mae was in the middle of Senior Power where she helped what she called the “more mature” library patrons learn the ins and outs of Word, Excel and Power Point and how to use their Kindles to access library content. And then they were going to watch Casa Blanca while munching on a Moroccan lunch before digging into a juicy discussion of The Greatest Generation.
The event had reached capacity within a week of Ida Mae posting it. She didn’t have time to listen to Patty whine and complain. No one did.
She opened the serial killer mystery she’d been working on for the last week and sighed. Not even Cornwall could cut it. She bookmarked the page, turned off her iPad and closed her eyes. But that just made her think of Sam. Every time she closed her eyes she saw him and heard him. You have no idea.
She wanted to ask him what the hell he was thinking.
A knock sounded on the front door and Patty’s mind stopped working. Three quick taps, then two, then two more. It had been their knock from forever ago when he’d come to her house to pick her up when they were teenagers. Their secret code. I love you. I do. I do. Wrong on so many levels now.
He had a key, but he was honoring her wishes and waiting for her to let him in. Or not.
She pressed her fingers against her forehead and rubbed. And yeah, the decision was way too easy. But it didn’t stop her.
A few seconds later she stood in front of the door staring at Sam with his wind tossed hair and tight fitting Texas Proud t-shirt he’d probably picked up for free at the visitor’s bureau. Jeans and boots finished off his every day look. His sexy as hell look.
The lines around his eyes were more pronounced than normal since he was squinting through the sunlight at her. So totally unfair that his lines made him look better.
Nothing was going to fix how she looked, and she knew it. Her hair was a mess of bedhead curls. She’d thought cutting her hair short would fix that problem. What a joke.
She didn’t have a lick of makeup on and she was wearing a ratty used to be black now kind of charcoal college sweatshirt and black yoga pants she’d picked up from Target a year ago, so they’d pretty much lost all their shape.
And she was barefoot, which was unfortunate because with the door open her feet were cold.
“Patty,” Sam said looking at her with worry.
“Sam,” she said mimicking him. She didn’t feel like being nice. He was the reason she was so messed up today.
“You look….”
Hand on one hip she leaned against the door and finished for him when he paused. “Like crap. Yeah. I’m aware.”
His eyebrows raised and she could swear there was a hint of a smile. If he so much as cracked a grin she was flipping him the bird and slamming the door shut.
“Uh, I was gonna say hot, but I don’t want to fight with you, so I’ll go with I stopped by because Cadyn called. She’s worried about you.”
Terrific. Heat flushed her cheeks and she shook her head, more at herself than at him.
Stepping back she opened the door with a sigh. “Come on in. That wind is cold.”
He didn’t wait for another invitation. When he walked by her she inhaled deeply and told herself someday soon she’d get over the whole conditioned response thing she had with how good he smelled. But not today. No way.
“You’re not at work.”
She snorted a laugh as she closed the door. “That’s some astute observation skill, Mr. Investigative Reporter.”
He didn’t rise to her bait. “You never miss work. It’s like part of your DNA or something.”
Oh, that was just great. Wonderful. Fan-freakin-tastic. He was known for running into danger around the world. She was known for never missing a day of work.
She held up a hand to stop him. She planned on saying she was fine, but the minute she opened her mouth, it was like every bit of aggravation and anger took over. Once she started talking, she couldn’t seem to stop.
“Okay, enough already, Sam. If you want to talk about me missing work, I’m not interested. If you want to talk about me looking like crap, also not interested. But, if you want to talk about last night, yeah, we can do that. You’ve been in my brain all night, and I think you knew that would happen. You turned everything upside down. I’ve got to think you did that on purpose. That you knew I was pissed and came up with something that would, I don’t know, make me crazy. Make me question everything about who we were. So congratulations. It worked. You can add Master Emotional Manipulator to your resume. I assume you’re going to be looking for a job any day now.”
He had the audacity to smile. And not just any old smile but a full fledged, heart stopping, knee knocking, jello-leg inducing smile. The kind of smile that used to precede let’s get naked, baby.
And that just pissed her off all over.
“No way, Mister. You just go ahead and wipe that look off your face. You do not get to tie me up in emotional knots and then smile at me like that.” She stepped as close to him as she dared and glared into his incredible eyes. And then she pointed her finger at his chest and finished. “I’m not interested in what that smile’s selling, and you damn well know it.”
And he just brought those incredible hands of his up to her shoulders and stood there. Silent. Staring into her eyes. Letting the smile fall and become something very different. Something very real. Something that shook her to her soul.
The truth of the life they’d shared was there in his gaze, stretching between them and she wanted to turn away, wanted to tell him to get the hell out, wanted to beg him to stay.
God, why? Why was she so confused?
“I’m not selling anything, Patty.”
His voice coursed through her, started a slow burn somewhere around her ribcage that worked its way up and out.
She broke eye contact first. Stepped away from him. And he let her. Just dropped his hands like he could live without touching her. And her brain screamed at her to go back to him and his warmth and his everything. Everything that was Sam. Her Sam. But he wasn’t hers.
She looked at the carpet and counted to ten, waited until her heart rate resembled something close to normal then looked back up at him. She needed to prove to him, prove to herself, that she really was okay.
“I’m sorry,” she said shaking her head, running her hands through that awful hair. She could feel it sticking up when she did, and she laughed as she shrugged. “I’m blaming you for something you really aren’t responsible for. I apologize. You were honest last night and it bothered me and I haven’t had any sleep in over twenty-four hours. And yes, that’s an excuse, but it is what it is.”
He slid his hands in his pockets looking so at ease it made her want to scream. Why? Why did he get to be fine with this while she was a disaster of epic proportions?
“I think you need coffee,” he said. “And food.”
That was his answer to everything she’d said?
She rubbed the back of her head and wished her eyes didn’t feel like sandpaper.
Wished her heart didn’t feel like lead.
“How about I make you coffee and food and you sit and drink and eat and if you want to talk, or yell or cuss or, hell, throw me out of the house after you eat and drink, you do it? You can pretend I’m, I don’t know, the waiter at IHOP or something if you want to just ignore me. Or you can keep telling me off if you want. Whatever. You decide.”
Patty blinked. “I don’t ignore the people who wait on me at IHOP. I love the people at IHOP.”
Sam nodded carefully and she almost laughed because he was looking at her like she might be crazy. Good. He needed to understand she was hanging on by a thread.
“Okay,” he said. “You can go get dressed and I’ll take you to IHOP and the people you love. But you might want to get a hat. Because you’re right about your hair.”
She snapped her hands up to her head and groaned at the tiny smile on his face. She must be a world of mess for him to be teasing her and treating her with kid gloves.
“I’m s
ick today, so I’m not leaving this house. Actually, I’m having a pajama day. I’m not changing out of these clothes for any reason. Not you, not Cadyn, not nuclear war. And I’m going to read and watch sappy movies that make me cry. And I’m going to eat my weight in chocolate or ice cream or chocolate and ice cream. If you want to hang around and make me coffee and breakfast first, be my guest.” And once again she couldn’t stop herself. “But the only thing you get to talk to me about is what the hell you meant last night when you said you thought you weren’t good enough for me. Like I’m Mother Theresa or Oprah or, I don’t know, the Queen of England.”
He didn’t answer. Of course not. No, he just walked into the kitchen and started messing around in there like he belonged there or something.
So fine. They weren’t going to talk. And she was going to be okay with that because if he started talking about truths she might not like them. And God knew she could not handle any more of that today. Or maybe ever.
She walked back to the bedroom and grabbed her iPad. Thought about closing and locking the door. Decided against it because…dammit, he was there making her coffee. And breakfast. Probably french toast. God, she missed his french toast. Almost as much as she missed him.
The itchy feeling was back in her throat. The one that sent a sharp pain to her epiglottis and made her want to give in and cry.
She wasn’t going to cry, though. Not any more. She was going to get her shit together. In the living room, watching movies and reading books and pretending it was fine for Sam to be there.
She slipped on a pair of fuzzy pink slippers before she walked back to the front of the house. The family pictures in the hall taunted her as she passed by them. Cadyn through the years. Her through the years. Sam….God, he hadn’t changed other than the new lines and that scar under his eye and that streak of silver in his hair.
She clutched the iPad case tighter and continued to the living room, sat on the couch and pulled the pink afghan her mother had made for her around her because she was cold dammit, and she needed the barrier between them even though that was stupid.
When he brought her the first cup of coffee, she was purposefully scrolling through her Netflix titles. He said she didn’t have to talk to him and she wasn’t going to.
She also wasn’t going to watch a movie in chummy silence with him. She started one of the television shows she’d missed and waited for him to disappear into the kitchen again before taking the first sip of his coffee.
Man, he made a good cup of coffee. He always had. The scent of browning butter tickled her nose and she closed her eyes at the familiar sounds. The whisk in the glass bowl, the crinkle of a bread bag, the sizzle.
When he brought her the french toast with melting butter and his homemade syrup on top her taste buds were practically bouncing in anticipation.
Sam slid the plate onto the table beside her and disappeared back into the kitchen, and one bite was all it took. This was love. Amazing, wonderful love.
Patty swallowed the bite over the lump in her throat and then she took another bite and another.
And when Sam came back in the living room, she could hear the dishwasher running, which was funny since she still had her plate and fork and a coffee mug.
He sat in the chair beside her. The only new piece of furniture in the house. It had taken the place of his awful chair. The new chair was perfect. It was a deep brown leather recliner with copper rivets. It came with a lifetime guarantee and was everything his chair hadn’t been.
And he looked way too good sitting in it like he belonged there.
She finished her french toast and her coffee and made herself thank him.
And he just leaned forward with his elbow on his thigh and his chin in his hand, like he thought he was Abraham Lincoln or something.
She stared at the iPad even though the show she’d planned on watching was paused. She couldn’t look at him. Not when he was watching her so closely.
“I’ve got an interview in Fort Worth tomorrow.”
Patty’s heart stuttered at his words.
An interview. So not the network. But what?
She swallowed and forced herself to ask. “The paper or…”
She let the question hang open ended. The last two years of their marriage Sam had railed against the changing face of media. He’d been kidnapped on a break while working on a multimedia piece about Afghan tribal customs. Because that was what he did. What he was passionate about. Why she’d said no more.
“Not exactly,” he said, which didn’t answer the question really.
“Your awards don’t speak for themselves? God knows you sacrificed enough to win them.”
She couldn’t do it. She could not pretend they were friends. She couldn’t just talk about this, act like it didn’t matter. If nothing else this proved she’d been right all along.
“It’s with the school district.”
His words worked their way through her haze and she stopped and stared at him. “What?”
“The job. It’s a high school job. New teacher quit six weeks in. They’re pretty desperate. Something about deadlines and a budget crisis.”
Patty’s heart started pounding then and she blinked.
“You can’t…” she tried to make sense of his words. “You can’t teach.”
He frowned, and she realized she’d hurt his feelings. She tried to fix that.
“I mean, you CAN teach or try, but you have to commit for the school year. You can’t run at a moment’s notice. And – God – you’ll go crazy stuck with a bunch of kids all day.”
He sat back against the chair and raised an eyebrow in that way that made her hands sweat.
“You’re working awfully hard to change my mind.”
OhmyGod. Patty could hear her pulse in her ears. She thought maybe she was on the verge of an anxiety attack. “So you’re staying here?”
He leaned forward and took her hand, stared into her eyes and she couldn’t look away. “I am. And every day I’m going to remind you that we belong together. That our souls connected and nothing will ever change that. I love you. I will always love you.”
Oh God. The pulse sounded louder in her ears. Patty tried to catch her breath. They needed to talk, really talk.
About everything he’d said. And she needed to be honest like Meg said. Because they were broken, so broken. But this. This. He’d made her coffee and french toast and he was staying. Really, really staying.
“Sam?”
He took both of her hands then and she heard his whispered, “I tried to be good, dammit, but it’s just not in me.”
And then his mouth was on hers, claiming her with a tender kiss. A soul searing, amazing and wonderful, perfect Sam kiss.
Chapter 12
Sam’s mouth knew the magic of exquisite torture. How to move from hard to soft to insistent. With a single touch of his hands, he worked her body into a frenzy of want and need. Her insides clenched in memory.
The door debacle had put her body on notice.
He slid a finger down her neck, over her pulse point, and she felt it clear to her center.
“My God, Sam.”
His lips trailed lower, his hand palmed her breast, and she could barely think straight. Barely.
“Sam.” Saying his name felt like coming home. Feeling him, tasting him. This is what she wanted. Needed. Only this.
And then he pulled away and she snapped her eyes open. He stood and looked at her with such longing her heart broke.
This. They could have this.
She stood then, let the afghan fall to the floor and put her hand in his.
When he pulled her to his chest this time, she leaned into him with a sigh. And when he lifted her in his arms, she didn’t protest. She simply wrapped her arms around his neck and let her head rest against the pulse point there.
He carried her down the hall, past the family pictures that tortured her regularly, into the bedroom that was theirs.
And when he cl
imbed into the bed next to her, she turned into him, thinking, finally.
But he surprised her.
He pulled her to his side and wrapped an arm so she could nestle her head against his shoulder but he could still hold her tight. Just like he had a million times before. And then he said something she never expected.
“Sleep.”
She wanted to resist the siren call. Wanted to say no, Sam. Make love to me. There in the safe warmth of his embrace she finally felt peace.
In her mind she plotted seduction. Imagined rolling onto her forearms and having her wicked way with him. But she couldn’t make her body move. And when he ran his rough hand down her arm and across her shoulder and over her back and then softly over her head, she couldn’t make herself stay awake a moment longer.
When she woke, he was still there. And she felt alive, so alive.
She tensed when he realized she was awake. She wanted to laugh. To tease.
Instead she rolled into him and pressed her lips to his neck.
“God, Patty,” he said. And she pressed her hands up under his shirt, over his warm chest in a combination of hello and welcome back.
She kissed him there, against the skin that covered his beating heart that raced under her fingertips. And he groaned as he trailed his hands over her back. And she knew. This was right. It was perfect. It was time or past time or time no longer mattered.
“Make love to me, Sam.”
With practiced ease he had both their clothes off in seconds and he stared at her body like he wanted to worship it.
She wasn’t cold any more. Heat flushed through her. Everything in her stilled in anticipation as he moved his mouth over her body from her lips and neck to her nipples and stomach and lower still.
Patty cried out as Sam brought her to climax, and she felt his smile before he finally, finally sank into her. Hard, insistent. Careful. The storm of emotions in her released at the pressure. All the tension and worry disappeared. She couldn’t speak, could only meet him thrust for thrust. His skin hot beneath her hands.
This was Sam. Her Sam. And this, this had never been a problem for them.
The orgasm hit in waves this time, soft waves that took over from deep inside. And when she came this time, he did, too. This was right and good and she refused to worry. Not now. Perfection trumped problems.