Trusting Chance [Fate Harbor] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

by Caitlyn O'Leary

  “Sam, come on, you can’t mean to continue this farce.” She got out of the car, and moved around to her trunk. He grabbed her stuff before she had a chance to get it.

  “I don’t know what you’re calling a farce. We still have a conversation to finish, and you’ve been avoiding me.” He opened the door to the studio for her, and she went in. He could see she was trying to figure out a way to avoid him, but he was determined not to allow that to happen. They had an hour and a half together, and he was going to make good use of this time. He decided to change tactics.

  “I actually wondered if you could help me out with a problem I’ve been having. You do a lot of the modified positions. I was hoping you could show me some of them, because right now some of the full positions have been leaving me with a headache at the end of class.” Josie turned to him, her face full of concern.

  “Have you talked to Julia about this? You should always feel physically tired after a class, but not unwell.” Sam liked the way she rested her hand on his bicep, and stroked down lightly, as if to soothe away his pain.

  “I was planning to talk to her, but I figured you would understand, just as well. It’s the poses that have my head down toward the floor. Do you have any idea the best way to modify those?”

  “Why don’t you and I workout beside one another today, and I can show you.” Sam looked into her beautiful brown eyes and didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt at manipulating the situation. Anything that got her talking to him was worth it in his book.

  By the time the class ended, Josie had lost all of her tension around him. He was about to suggest they head out for a bite to eat when he realized that she needed to go back to her apartment and put on her brace. He could easily tell from the way her shirt molded to her body as she went through her poses that she hadn’t been wearing it during the yoga class, and the last thing he wanted was for her to end up in pain again. He walked her back to her car, and handed her into the driver’s seat. Before he shut the door, he squatted down in the open car door and pulled the seatbelt over her and secured it. Then he took her hand in his and looked at her, making sure that she was really seeing him.

  “Josie, I would really like to answer the questions that you had. I want to tell you about my injuries, and have you tell me about yours. I want to really get to know you. Could we do that this evening?” He watched as her eyes darkened. She ran her hand down her face, ending with the tip of her thumb in her mouth, delicately biting at it as she tried to make a decision. The eroticism of the act damn near killed him. She finally stopped nibbling and looked up at him.

  “Sam, sharing our pasts makes no sense. I don’t know where we’re going, what we’re trying to accomplish. I also have to get up really early in the morning to start baking.” He didn’t like seeing that look of confusion and sadness on her face. He could tell she was just bracing herself for expected pain, and he knew deep in his gut that people before him, starting with her mom, had conditioned her to expect that pain.

  “Baby, I’m begging you for just a little bit of trust. I haven’t done anything to betray you, have I? When you’ve talked to people around town, have you heard anything bad about me? You know Chance, right? When he comes back the day after tomorrow, you can ask him about me.” Sam waited to see if that made a difference. He felt her grip on his hand tighten.

  “The only people that I really know here in town are Butch and Betty Hutchins,” she whispered softly.

  Sam shifted back on his heels, stunned to find out that this woman knew his foster parents. “How do you know Betty and Butch, baby?”

  “They fostered me, when I was four to the age of eight.”

  “Down in San Clemente?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded.

  “Did you know Chance then, too?” Sam didn’t even have to see her nod her head. Everything clicked into place. No wonder she knew of Chance when she had come to their house. He even figured out why Chance had been abstinent for the last six months. She had heard Chance and Betty talking about one of Betty’s former foster kids coming to town, but he had been so deep in his own shit, he hadn’t given it a second thought. Now he realized this was one big Chance scheme, and that Josie was a woman that Chance had his eye on. Scratch that, Josie was the woman Chance had his eye on. Well to hell with that, Josie was going to belong to Sam!

  “I’ve got an idea, baby. Why don’t you go home and change, and I’ll come pick you up in a half hour, and we’ll go over to Betty and Butch’s. I’m sure they would love it if we dropped by.” Sam watched as Josie’s head jerked up and a smile as bright as sunshine crossed her face.

  “You know Betty and Butch? That’d be great. Oh, we need to call first.” Sam handed her his phone.

  “Plug your number into my phone. I’ll call them. If we can’t go over, I’ll call you and the whole deal is off. Otherwise, expect me at your house in a half hour, okay?” He watched as she inputted her information into his phone, amused to see her include all of the information including her address, when he already knew where she lived. Apparently, she couldn’t abide an empty text field.

  “I hope we get to see them. I’ve only seen them a few times since I arrived in Fate Harbor, and they were the reason I moved here to begin with.” Sam stood up and got ready to shut the door. “They weren’t even here the first week I arrived,” she pouted.

  “That’s not like them, Josie. I would think that they’d have been sure to be here when you arrived.” He looked down to make sure her coat was inside the car.

  “Oh, well, I arrived a week earlier than expected, and Chance said they were at Lake Chelan on a trip that they had planned. Luckily, he was at their house to meet me.”

  “That was very lucky. Chance is always lucky like that.” Sam bent down and kissed her cheek, knowing that anything more would send her running. He wondered just how many kisses Chance had been able to steal. Apparently, his friend had been on this hunt for a lot longer than he had been. Now it was Sam’s turn to be lucky, because Chance was in Boston for another day and a half, and Sam planned to make the most of the time. He watched as Josie drove away and immediately called Betty’s mobile. When he got the welcome he expected, she said she could whip up some dinner. Sam immediately said no, saying he would be bringing some takeout from the Italian restaurant in town. He was already putting her out enough. He made the call for the takeout order as he went back to his house to shower and change.

  When he got to his house, he called Josie and said that Betty and Butch would be ready at 4:30, so instead of being over in a half hour, he would be over in an hour. She sounded relieved at having the extra time. He was relieved to have just a little more time to think things through. There was more afoot than just Chance trying to woo Josie, but that was definitely a big part of the plan. Sam remembered Chance tempting Betty with the resort stay in Chelan, so Chance clearly had designs on some alone time with Josie when she first moved to town. The big question was why Chance or Betty hadn’t mentioned Josie by name in the last four to six months? Why hadn’t Chance talked about this woman that he was planning on romancing or seducing or fucking or whatever the hell he had been planning to do with Josie?

  Maybe Sam was reading too much into Chance’s omission. For God’s sake, the man had been basically his nursemaid on and off up until four months ago. Sam winced, thinking about the other day. It was true that he had experienced a couple of recent relapses that required Chance’s continued care. He wanted to handle things on his own, but he wasn’t doing such a great job. Maybe Chance didn’t think of him anymore like the friend he had once been. Maybe Chance saw him as someone he had to take care of, someone who needed him, instead of as an equal, a friend and a confidante. Maybe that was why Chance hadn’t told him about Josie. Sam winced when he really looked at how selfish he had been in dealing with Chance. He had been so wrapped up in his own pain, and so resentful of Chance trying to drag him out of it, that he hadn’t realized the burden that he had become.

  He had h
is Social Security disability, and he had money in the bank. Hell, he had a lot of money in the bank. He didn’t need to stick around with Chance. But as Chance had said on numerous occasions, if their situations were reversed, he’d want Sam to be with him. They were brothers. Staying here kept him close to his doctors. He was close to Betty and Butch, and he was making progress. Suck it up, Booth, quit your whining! Like Chance said, if he wasn’t here he would just be working 24-7 and falling back into old, bad habits—so this is a win-win situation for both of us.

  As he shaved and viewed his scar in the mirror, he gave one last thought to the fact that Chance was one of the most manipulative bastards on the face of the planet. Granted, Sam had had his head up his wounded ass for the last six months, and maybe Chance didn’t feel like telling him about Josie and his plans with her….but there might be something more going on. Sam slowly grinned at himself as he shaved. Betty might be a great co-conspirator for his foster brother, but she couldn’t hold out on Sam if he put his mind to charming information from her. There was a reason he always knew what he and Chance were getting for Christmas every year. Yep, tonight he was going to clear up many mysteries. First he’d pin down Betty and find out exactly what Chance was up to, then he intended to have Josie securely pinned underneath him.

  Chapter 7

  Josie was nervous. She hadn’t even thought to ask Sam how he knew the Hutchins. They must be close if he felt comfortable enough to just call and drop in on them. She had been seconds away from saying that they could talk, that she did trust him enough to talk about her past. Then he had asked her whom she knew in town. The next thing she knew he was inviting her over to the Hutchins for dinner, as if he had an open invitation to their home. Well, she had wanted to know more about Sam, so this was perfect. But if she were totally honest, the reason she wanted to know more about him was to find a reason to not spend more time with him.

  Since Sam had called, she had extra time to get ready. Even though nobody would see it, she wore matching panties and a corset in gold. The corsets provided the same support as the brace, and made her feel pretty. She just couldn’t show them to anyone. When she had shown her ex-boyfriend Russell, and then when he saw what was underneath, he’d accused her of deceiving him. “I didn’t know I’d be having sex with a cow,” he’d told her, and the words still hurt. Josie shook her head, she didn’t want to think about that now. Instead she pulled on her jeans and oversized, blue, silk shirt to conceal the corset. She took a little more time with her makeup and hair. She told herself she was doing it to impress Butch and Betty, though even she couldn’t convince herself it wasn’t for Sam. She looked in her closet and thought about wearing her gold pumps to go with her gold lingerie, just for an added boost of confidence, but remembered Sam seeing her in pain and decided to forego anything that would put her back in that state. She found her navy ballet flats, and grabbed her coat just as the doorbell rang. Force of habit had her checking the peephole. She knew it had to be Sam, but the years of being responsible for her sisters had her checking.. She noted that he had cleaned up pretty well himself. Before he had a chance to ring the bell again, she opened the door.

  Sam gave her a warm smile, and then his eyes did a slow gaze up and down her body before once again resting on her face. “Baby, you look gorgeous.” There was something about the way he called her “Baby” that made her insides melt. That, combined with the hungry look in his eyes, and Josie was surprised she wasn’t a pile of goo at his feet.

  “Come on, we don’t want to be late,” she forced herself to say.

  The stairs up to her apartment were narrow and only accommodated one person at a time. Sam had let her go first when they went up the stairs, and she was surprised that he went down the stairs first as they went down. Then she noticed how his arm was braced against the rail, and she figured out that he was ensuring that if she tripped he could stop her fall. The man needed to stop making her feel taken care of. When they reached the small parking lot of Sweet Dream Desserts, she looked around for his red truck, but didn’t see it. He ushered her over to an Audi sedan.

  “You have two cars?”

  “Nah, I’m just the proud owner of the truck. This belongs to Chance, who has far too many vehicles. He won’t be back until Tuesday, so I commandeered it. The seats are really comfortable.” Sam held the door open, and once again buckled her in. Yep, she was definitely going to be a bowl of softened butter by the end of the night, and she’d decided that the perfect place to melt would be in these divine leather seats, which seemed to mold themselves around her body. When Sam pulled out of the bakery’s parking lot and headed left instead of right, she asked why.

  “I’m picking up some food from Dolce Vita. When I spoke to Betty and told her we were going to drop by, she said she would whip something up, but I didn’t want to put her to any trouble. I ordered take-out. I know Butch loves Italian food.”

  Josie waited to ask her questions until after they picked up and loaded the food into the backseat. As they settled back into the car and were headed the ten minutes it would take to get to the Hutchins’, she asked, “So were you and Chance in foster care with Butch and Betty at the same time?”

  “I knew you’d put that together. That’s one of the things I like about you, Josie, is how smart you are.” Sam reached over and squeezed her leg, as if emphasizing what he had said. “In answer to your question, Chance and I were in foster care together with the Hutchins, off and on, from the time I was eight to the age of eighteen.”

  “I’m not that smart. I went to dinner with Betty and Butch, and they kept talking about a boy named Sam, but I didn’t put it together before now. I should have realized it when you said we’d go over to their place for dinner.”

  “I’d like to think I had you thinking about other things, baby.” He shot a grin at her. Josie thought about some of the things they had been doing, and realized her mind might not have been clear. Then she realized what he had just said.

  “What do you mean, you lived with the Hutchins off and on?”

  “My birth parents occasionally convinced the state that they had cleaned up their act and I should go home with them.” Josie heard the ice in his tone, and understood it far too well. She decided not to pursue that issue further, at least not now.

  “I imagine there were a lot of other kids besides just you and Chance, if I remember how Butch and Betty operate.” Josie smiled. There were probably never more than five children in the house at one time, but the Hutchins certainly believed in taking in foster children and making a home for them, even when they knew the kids were “hard cases” or that the kids might only be with them for a few weeks. “I can’t remember their names, but Betty and Butch talked about a few other kids besides you and Chance who seemed to have stayed for a while.”

  “There was Olivia, Finn and Brianna, who were there most of the time that Chance and I were with the Hutchins. I know all three of them keep in touch.”

  “Do you stay in touch with them?” Josie asked.

  “I did for the first couple of years, but then I lost track. Chance does a better job of that kind of thing. If you were to ask him, he would know exactly where each of them is right now. Chance is more the glue. I read a birth order book once, and he has all the tendencies of a middle child. He’s a mediator, always wants to keep the peace, always wants to bring people together. Basically, he’s the world’s biggest manipulator…I think that’s what made him so good in business.”

  Josie couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, my God, I remember that about him even when he was three or four years old. He could con me into doing just about anything. He really got away with murder with Betty. She was always cooking him his favorite meals because of some sob story he told her. Did he still get away with that when you two were living with her?”

  “Oh yeah, he had her wrapped around his finger. But I think she knew what he was doing, because for every special meal she cooked for him, she cooked one for every other kid, as well.�
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  “I really loved my time with them,” she said wistfully.

  “After dinner tonight, we’re going to swap stories. Don’t expect to get out of it this time.”

  “I know, Sam,” she answered quietly.

  It was 6:30 when Sam got Josie back to her apartment. Knowing her schedule he figured she needed to be in bed no later than eight. Obviously, she needed to get some help at the bakery. However, there was no way that he was going to just leave her at her door. He was going to get some answers tonight. But unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be able to seduce her as planned. He wanted that to last all night, but now he realized this was going to have to be an all afternoon affair.

  Dinner was fascinating. Betty only brought up three different poly marriages in the course of two hours, and she managed to bring up what great friends he and Chance were about forty times. Josie was totally oblivious to the subtext, but by the time dessert rolled around, neither Sam nor Butch could look at one another for fear of bursting out laughing. Butch finally suggested that Sam come see the new modifications he had made to the motorhome, and Sam jumped at the opportunity to escape the weirdest matchmaking attempt he had ever been subjected to.

  “Where in the hell did Mama Betty get the idea I would want to share Josie with Chance?” Sam asked Butch.

  Sam shook his head when Butch offered him a beer from the cooler in the carport.