He watched as one of the twins greeted Hawk and led him back to the restaurant. Sloan went back to the bedroom and watched Sam sleep for a while. He couldn't disturb her, but she sure as hell disturbed him, lying there like that.
Fear was his greatest emotion of the moment: fear that he would fail Sam, fear that he had irreparably damaged the future, fear that he would never explain himself well enough to make her understand.
Lord help him, but he'd operated these last ten years on fear. He recognized that now. He hadn't kept women out of his life all these years because he hated the gender. He'd kept them out because he was terrified of what they could do to him. He had been running for ten solid years. He wanted to stop running. He wanted to face the horrors that had driven him out here and lay them to rest once and for all. Then maybe he would feel free to offer Sam the kind of life she deserved, if not the kind of man she deserved.
It was dark before she finally stirred. He had the boiler stoked and hot water running for her bath by the time Sam rubbed her eyes and sat up in the bed. She stared at him in confusion when Sloan led her to the newly added room behind the bedroom, but her eyes widened with delight as she gazed upon the huge claw- footed tub and the water pouring into it from the pipes the plumber had installed.
"Running hot water," she marveled, testing its heat with her fingers. "A real bath!"
Before Sloan knew what she intended to do, she began stripping off her shirt. He froze in longing as the dirty gingham fell to the floor, revealing the soft lace of her dainty chemise and the white curves of her breasts beneath.
When her trousers dropped around her feet, his gaze was diverted to long legs garbed in ruffled drawers and stockings. Sloan tried to look away, but she didn't even seem aware of his presence. Before he could move one foot backward, she propped her toes on the tub's edge and peeled off one stocking, then the next. Her calves were smooth and long, and he distinctly remembered how they felt when they wrapped around his hips. Blood surged instantly to his groin, and he nearly bent double with the exquisite pain of sudden arousal.
"Sam ..." He tried to warn her, still unable to move.
She merely turned and looked at him impatiently. "I don't suppose you have any bath salts, do you?"
He would be crippled for life. He would ignite in a spire of flame and go up in smoke right here and now. He was going to strangle one Samantha Susan Neely as soon as he recovered the use of his muscles. Sloan shook his head, having forgotten the question already as she peeled off her chemise and added it to the pile of discarded clothing.
That was it. He couldn't take anymore. His gaze came unfocused as he watched the full globes of her breasts bob and dive while she divested herself of her drawers. As far as he could tell, she was all breasts and legs that went on forever until he caught sight of that red thatch of hair before she climbed into the tub. He nearly erupted right there and then. With more dignity than control, Sloan turned his back and walked out, hobbling.
By the time she returned to the parlor—wearing the robe he kept on the bathing room door—Sloan had poured himself a drink and settled his throbbing loins into the room's most comfortable chair. God was punishing him for past sins, he knew. He would take the punishment like a man, even if it meant watching the enticing display revealed when his overlarge robe gaped as Sam sat down across from him.
"You don't look too good," she said worriedly, eyeing his face.
"I don't feel much better," he agreed. "I've sent for some supper. Are you hungry?"
She shrugged. "I'll eat. Why are you staring at me like that?"
"I can't decide what to do with you first," he said slowly, "Bed you, murder you, or give you back to your father."
For one brief moment he managed to make her look slightly uncertain. Sloan gloried in that moment. It might be the last one he would ever have. He'd bullied, intimidated, and threatened her for six solid months. If she hadn't learned by now, she never would. He was ready to give up the attempt.
He watched the uncertainty disappear behind a satisfied smile when Joe knocked at the door with their dinners. Sloan kept his hand near his gun as he let him in. They still hadn't settled the problem of Harry Anderson and his hired killers, but right now that seemed a minor cause of concern compared to the one sitting right there in that chair. Joe gave them both anxious looks, but left without asking questions. For that Sloan gave a prayer of gratitude.
"Is this my last supper?" she asked mischievously as she cut a piece of steak.
Sloan kept a strict rein on the relief welling inside him. He wasn't off the hook yet. Sam was perfectly capable of shooting him down while she grinned. He took another drink rather than face the dinner tray.
"Maybe mine. How much of your memory has returned?"
She sat back and considered as she chewed her meat. He wanted to heave the food out the window to speed the process, but he waited patiently without saying a word until she swallowed.
"Most of it, I think," she answered with a frown. "Some things are still a little hazy. I haven't tried to piece it all together in order. There may be gaps." She turned a frank look to him. "I remember enough. What I don't understand is why you want to marry me now if you didn't when you had the opportunity."
Well, that got right to the crux of the matter. Sloan shoved his tray aside and walked to the window overlooking the street. There seemed more than the usual number of idlers leaning against porch posts and strolling through the plaza.
He turned back to face Samantha. She had made some attempt to brush her curls into order, but they made a silky nimbus around her face in the lamplight. He tried to imagine her sitting there like that every night for the rest of his life, and his heart yearned for that image of tranquility. He had to do this right, but he didn't see how he possibly could.
"I don't know if I can explain it," he told her honestly. "I told you once I was protecting you. You told me I was protecting myself. Maybe we were both right. You didn't know anything about me then. You didn't love me. You told me so yourself. I taught you the secrets of your body, and you were enamored with the mystery. I just wanted to keep you to myself and protect you from gossip until you woke up and realized what I was."
Samantha sipped her water. "Thank you for that high opinion of me," she said wryly. "I'd throw something at you, only I know you think even lower of yourself. What I can't understand is why. Having a two-timing wife isn't any reason to destroy yourself."
Sloan shoved his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall. "That's because I didn't tell you the whole story. Harry Anderson is out there somewhere, probably eager to correct that lack. I'd rather you heard it from me, even if it means I'll lose you forever. At least this time I know you have your father nearby to look after you."
Sam pushed her food aside, curled up her legs in the chair, and folded her hands in her lap. "You'd better tell me you're a bank robber and a murderer if you think you're going to get rid of me that easily."
Sloan's jaw tightened painfully. "Worse. I didn't murder a stranger. I murdered my own son."
He saw the shock in her eyes and turned to look out the window. He didn't have the courage to watch his future smolder into ashes after all.
Chapter Forty-two
“You had a son?" Samantha choked the question out. She could see the pain tensing the shoulder muscles of the man standing at the window. He was as rigid as any statue, and she thought he might fall just as hard with a good shove. She didn't want to shove him. She wanted to love him. Contrary of her, she knew, but she never had been one to do what was expected.
Sloan took a minute to answer. She could hear the degree of control he exerted by the stilted calmness of his reply.
"I thought if we had a baby, Melinda would settle down. Melinda thought if she gave me an heir, I'd leave her alone. As soon as she knew she was carrying a child, she moved out of my bed. Matters between us went from bad to worse after that. I'm not a particularly patient or understanding man."
&nbs
p; Samantha made a crude noise in agreement with that. Sloan didn't turn around to acknowledge it. He merely hunched his shoulders and continued staring out the window.
"We argued constantly. I thought Harry the cause of her discontent, and I ordered him to stay away from her. They sneaked around behind my back instead. I couldn't threaten to throw her out, and they both knew it. I wanted the child she carried. I started drinking to hide my frustration and anger.
"After the baby was born, things settled down for a while. Melinda was confined to bed, and I had my son to myself. I even contemplated buying the practice of a doctor considering retiring. I was still drinking, but not as much."
He finally turned around and faced the room. The light outside had grown dim, but neither of them lit a lamp. Samantha stayed where she was, knotting her fingers in her lap. She didn't know how to reach him, if she could ever reach him. But he'd already told her all she needed to know. He loved his son. He hadn't killed him in cold blood. Sloan Talbott had been capable of love once. He could love again.
When Sam said nothing, Sloan grunted and threw himself into a chair. His long legs sprawled out in front of him as he contemplated his boots. "Melinda recovered remarkably when Harry returned from wherever he'd been. The arguments began again. She wouldn't let me back in her bed. She was sneaking out with him every night. We had nursemaids to care for Aaron. She never looked at him. I started drinking more. We were probably the two lousiest parents this side of hell. Then I came home early one night and found Melinda half dressed and in Harry's arms in the front parlor."
Shock and disgust rippled through Sam even though she remembered the night he'd told her about his wife and her stepbrother. Put this way, it seemed even uglier. She wanted to go to Sloan, hug him and tell him she would never be another Melinda, but he wasn't even looking at her. He was rejecting her with every part of his body: the nonchalant sprawl, the avoidance of her eyes, his hands curled around the chair arms. He didn't want her near him. So she stayed where she was.
"I learned to carry a gun while I was in Edinburgh. I was helping a doctor whose practice included some of the meanest streets in the city. I don't know why I continued carrying it in Boston. I shouldn't have. I was carrying a load of rage and violence around. I didn't need the burden of that gun, too."
He shrugged and reached for his wineglass. "The first thing I did when I saw the two of them together was pull the gun. Harry saw me in time and lunged for it. That was a stupid thing to do, but considering how drunk I was at the time, I suppose he thought he could stop me. He almost did. He shoved my arm up and away from Melinda before I fired. The bullet went through the ceiling."
Sloan threw down the contents of his glass in a single swallow and didn't even choke. His voice remained dead of all emotions as he finished. "Aaron slept in a cradle just above the parlor. The bullet was already blunted by the time it went into him. It tore a hole right thought his tiny lung. I heard him . .."
For the first time, Sloan's voice choked and caught, as the mental images of that night returned. He'd picked Aaron up and held him, vainly attempting to stanch the flow of blood. He had screamed in anguish as the infant face slowly turned blue, and the tiny gasps for air became a rattle. He'd screamed and cried for hours afterward. Nothing would ever heal that pain. Nothing would ever return that tiny life.
Sam's eyes blurred with tears. She might be imagining the wetness on Sloan's cheeks. It was certainly the Sloan she knew who finally slapped his hand back to the chair arm to end the story. The Sloan she knew didn't cry, but slapped things around.
This time he glared at her. "I couldn't save him. All my years of education that had cost me my wife couldn't save my son. He died in my arms."
Tears poured down Sam's cheeks, and her hands shook by the time he finished. She didn't know if she could save him from the enormous load of guilt and bitterness he'd carried around all these years. She wasn't a soft, cuddly kind of woman like her mother and the twins. She couldn't go into his arms and make him forget Melinda and the past. She could start a fire and hunt a deer and ride a horse. She couldn't heal gaping emotional wounds.
But she knew how to be Sloan's woman. No other man had ever made her feel feminine and desirable. She knew how to distract him, even if she couldn't heal him. Maybe, in time, if she could make him forget about the wound long enough, it would heal itself.
Awkwardly, not knowing how to go to a man and make him see her as a woman, Sam rose from her curled position. Seeing her movement, Sloan immediately came to his feet and started for the door.
"You'll want to get dressed and see your father. I'll give you some time alone."
She knew how to handle his kind of blind insensitivity. Sam stepped in front of the door and crossed her arms over her chest.
"I'm not Melinda," she told him slowly and succinctly. "You don't turn your back on me, Sloan Talbott-Montgomery or whoever you are. If you've got a problem with me, you'll tell me right here and now and to my face, and we'll fight it out until it's settled. But don't you dare walk out as if I don't exist."
Sloan stared down at her as though she were crazed. She felt the moment when he was distracted by the gaping neckline of the robe. It made her feel warm and afraid at the same time, but she refused to back down.
"I know you exist, Sam. You've made yourself very visible for six months now. And if you don't get out of my way right now, you're going to be even more visible. I've only got so much restraint, and you've worn right through it."
That was an easy one to counter. He laid himself open for that one. Grinning maliciously, Sam pulled the belt on the robe and let it fall open. "Is this visible enough, or do you want more?" she inquired.
His look seemed stunned, but his hands knew how to respond. Callused fingers reached out to circle her breasts, lifting them with a gentle rasp of his rough skin against her smooth flesh.
Sam drew in a breath at this intimate contact, but she didn't regret what she was doing at all. Heat flared between them, and that cold, detached look in Sloan's eyes became something else entirely, something hot and hungry and filled with longing. She could feel that look as surely as she could feel his hands on her.
With a brazenness she didn't know she possessed, Sam reached her arms around Sloan's shoulders and pressed her mouth to his. His shirt studs dug into her bare breasts, and the buttons of his pants pressed against her abdomen, but those pressures her desire.
In the next moment her feet were off the floor, and Sloan was carrying her through the parlor and into the bedroom.
Sam clung to his neck without protest, pressing kisses anywhere she could reach. Sloan growled and dropped her against the sheets, but she rose to her knees to help him strip off his shirt.
She didn't stop to study the powerful, hair-roughened chest emerging from the linen, but immediately attacked the row of buttons on his trousers. He ripped the remaining buttons open when the pressure of his arousal made the fabric too taut to manipulate easily. He was actually wearing drawers for a change, but with only a drawstring to hold them closed, they concealed and held back nothing. Sam stared in fascination at that male part of him looming before her as he dropped the last of his clothes, and then vaguely remembering one lesson he'd taught her on her own body, she leaned forward and kissed him there.
Sloan roared like a wild man. He shoved her back against the bed and covered her in a single bound. He tore at her mouth with his tongue and teeth and lips and tormented her breasts with his hands.
Sam opened her mouth for his possession, wrapped her hands around his shoulders to lift herself more readily to his touch, and spread her legs to feel him against her softness. She wanted him inside her. She wanted him now and forever and in every way possible. She would never let go if he would just give her that right.
When he drove into her, she was more than ready. He filled her until she thought she couldn't take any more, then proved her wrong and took her even deeper. She gasped and clung and tried to keep up with his frenzied
thrusts until she lost herself in him and just let go.
He howled in ecstasy and carried them into that shattering space where they were neither one nor the other but both. The explosions of their bodies left them drifting weightless for long moments, healing moments, when all outer surfaces fell away to reveal the vulnerability beneath.
Gradually, as she recovered her senses, Sam felt Sloan's bare arms wrapped around her. He had rolled his weight off her, but their legs were still entwined, and she luxuriated in the sensation of his hair-roughened skin rubbing her own. He was all hard male strength as he held her, but she had learned a few lessons these last months. She had power over that strength, one she must wield wisely.
"Satisfied?" he murmured tauntingly against her hair when she stirred against him.
"Pig," she whispered without insult when his hand moved to cup her breast again. She thought she felt him shake with laughter, and satisfied, she curled closer into his embrace.
"Does that mean you'll marry me and punish me the rest of my days for my sins?"
"I don't doubt it," she answered calmly, exploring his chest with her fingertips.
Sloan didn't respond to that challenge immediately, but tested the weight of her breasts with his hand, then moved it intently down her abdomen. With studied deliberateness, he pushed and prodded until she shoved him away, glaring at him.
"I am not a prime candidate for your return to physicking.
Warm gray eyes watched her expression carefully. "No, you're not. You're pregnant."
Shock hit her like a cold wave. Sam stared back at him, letting coldness seep through her when she saw no emotion one way or another in him. She had a vague recollection of his saying he didn't want children. She glanced nervously down at herself. She couldn't see anything. Maybe her breasts were a little larger. She couldn't tell. "I can't be," she finally murmured in perplexity, returning her gaze to his.
"When was your last monthly?" His voice was calm, without any hint of expression.
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