by Mary Calmes
“He threw up all over the saddle, Daddy.”
Kola said something no one could understand into my T-shirt.
“Tell me.” Sam smiled.
“Well, it was all fine until—”
“He has it on video,” Hannah informed her father.
“Which I think might have been the problem,” I sighed. “You know when you’re looking through that viewfinder too long… I think he got motion sickness.”
“Poor guy,” Sam empathized, moving over to Kola’s side.
His son rolled over and, when Sam bent, wrapped his arms around his father’s neck.
“Maybe I should order room service too, huh, and stay here with you guys.”
Kola nodded.
“No, you gotta be with your family, Sam. You—”
“I am with my family,” he assured me, reaching out to take my hand. “And my boy needs me.”
“You wanna see the video, Daddy?” Hannah was trying to be helpful.
“Don’t look at the barf,” Kola cautioned.
“Maybe later.”
I covered my face with a pillow so there was no snickering.
When the phone in the room rang twenty minutes later, Sam answered and shook his head, obviously ready to tell whoever was on the other end of the line no. I waved, getting his attention, and told him to go ahead and go.
He covered the receiver with his hand. “Jory, I need to stay here.”
“It’s a reunion,” I reminded him.
His heavy sigh made me smile before he agreed to go.
When he left, Kola snuggled up on my right, Hannah on my left, and we all got warm and toasty watching Homeward Bound in the air-conditioned room. I wasn’t sure what time Sam got in because I fell asleep.
Chapter Six
BASICALLY the adult events and the kid events were separate. I understood it perfectly; you couldn’t really mix them. So while the grown-ups ate and drank and went hot air ballooning and golfing and did yoga and hiked and sat under tents in the gardens, the children, and the guardians of the children, did completely separate activities.
Kola and Hannah loved the paddleboats. We went bike riding together; I took them to the pool, and the waterslide was a huge hit. I was lucky—we did the program at the YMCA every summer, and since Dane and Aja had a pool in the penthouse apartment they lived in—they had ditched the house in Oak Park after Robert was born—we always had a place to swim. So my kids didn’t need the floaties or the swim rings in all assorted shapes and sizes. The only other boy who kept up with mine was a little towheaded kid who was having the best time swimming under ten feet of water with Kola. Hannah couldn’t go down quite that far, but she could swim under the water in the shallow end. They both had their goggles on, and when Kola swam over to me, his friend followed.
“Pa, this is Theo.”
“Hi.” I smiled at him.
He smiled back.
“Are your folks out here, Theo?”
“My dad is. My mom is home with my stepdad and the new baby.”
“I see.”
“Theo.”
We all looked up, and the man who joined us looked a lot like his son except taller, broader, and tanner. He was very handsome, and I was certain that I was not the only one at the pool who noticed the fuzzy chest, long legs, and toned musculature. He must have worked very hard at the gym for that kind of definition.
“Sorry.” He grimaced at me.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I said, moving towels, my cell phone, and the video camera off the chair beside me. “Here, sit, I’ve got the shade here.”
“You sure?” The smile was shy and sweet.
“Please.”
He took a seat, and we all met: Kola; Hannah, who was in my lap, drinking a juice box and eating Parmesan-flavored Goldfish; and him and his son. It was nice to sit and talk, watch the kids, and drink iced tea.
His name was Milton Kage, and he was a professor of biology who lived in Houston. He and his wife had divorced two years ago after an eight-year marriage. Theo was seven and had been the reason they stuck it out for as long as they had.
“He’s gorgeous,” I told Milt.
“Thank you, I think so. Yours too.”
I smiled at him.
“Is your wife busy doing some fun family bonding thing?” he teased me.
“My husband,” I corrected. “I hope that doesn’t bother you.”
He took a breath. “No, actually. That was the reason for the divorce.”
I nodded. “Did you cheat?”
“I didn’t.” He grinned back. “She did with the man she married.”
I shrugged. “Sounds like it worked out for the best.”
“It did. I can’t find the man of my dreams being married to a woman.”
“No,” I chuckled. “Not so much.”
He laughed, and the sound was good. When Kola and Theo were pruney, Milton asked me if we’d like to go to lunch with them. The cheering answered his question.
Lunch was nice. It was always good to go with other parents who got that sitting outside was better than sitting inside, that getting finger food was always best, and that if something spilled, it was not the end of the world.
We all went back to our rooms to shower and change and then met back downstairs for the jeep tour guide. It turned out we could all go together, and the kids had a great squealing time bouncing all over the trail. Going up and over rocks bounced us easily a foot up off our seats. Our tour guide, Robbie, was funny and well informed about all the flora and fauna. He was very cute and very gay and recognizing another bottom when he saw one—wanted nothing to do with me and did everything but put his hand in Milton’s lap. As we were standing looking out at the valley, I leaned close and told Milt that I would watch his kid for him if he wanted to ask the guy out for a drink.
“My folks are with us”—he grinned at me—“and I’d much rather have conversation than a fifteen-minute fuck in the room of the apartment he’s sharing with three roommates.”
“Hey, that was me,” I laughed.
“Yeah, me too, but I shared a room, so I had to have sex in the back of my Explorer.”
Just imagining the fumbling made me dissolve into peals of laughter.
When we got back—Milton with Robbie’s number stuffed into the back pocket of his jeans—we stopped for water, then took the kids to the playground.
Milton wanted to know all about me, about Sam, and about how long we’d been together.
“A marshal? Are you screwing with me?”
“No, why?”
“What is that, cop fantasy on crack?”
My eyes narrowed. “Oh, Milt, honey… are you a badge bunny?”
He spit out his water. “A what?”
I arched an eyebrow for his benefit. “Do cops make your balls ache?”
He nodded vigorously.
I put my head back and laughed like I hadn’t in days.
“Come on, Jory,” he chuckled, arm on the back of the bench we were sitting on. “The whole perfect V those guys have when they’re in their uniforms… I have this one who goes to my gym, and when he changes and comes out—God.”
“You should ask him out.” I waggled my eyebrows at him.
“And if he shoots me?” He gestured at his son. “Then you’ve got a fatherless kid there.”
“You’ve never smiled at him?”
“No, I just ogle from afar.”
“Gutless.”
“Cautious.” He smiled at me. “Jesus, how old are you?”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
“Thirty-five, why?”
He shook his head. “You look maybe twenty-five.”
“Good genes,” I teased him, tugging on the denim I was wearing.
“You’re hysterical.”
“Seriously, though,” I sighed. “The cop, he’s hot, huh?”
“You would drool.”
I doubted that, I only drooled over one man.
“Oh God, Jory, he’s so gorgeous.”
“And really, you’ve never checked him out and let him see you?”
“Yeah, I have.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know. I mean, we’re talking a tall blond god with blue-green eyes and a body that just….”
“Tell me.”
He looked at me. “The deal is I’m verse, right? So it’s either….”
“What? Spit it out.”
“It’s either big gorgeous mountains of men or guys like you.”
“Oh, I see.”
“You have to know that you’re just gorgeous. That boy today had nothing on you.”
“Thank you,” I said softly. “But Milton, you shouldn’t be having any trouble yourself.”
His smile curled his lip. “So I’ve been told.”
I bumped him with my shoulder.
“You sure you don’t wanna be the guy I pick up tonight?”
“Too late,” I teased him. “Already friends.”
“Friends are good too.” He smiled.
“Yes, they are.”
AT DINNER, the rule was that you could not sit with your spouse, but anyone else was fair game. Married people, any kind of couples, were supposed to scatter. So since Sam had not come back to the room by the time we were supposed to go to dinner, I took Hannah and Kola with me to join Milton. His mother, Denise, was lovely, so charming, and she thought my kids were amazing. Since I agreed wholeheartedly, we got along famously.
Milton was entertaining the table with tales of the exam he had given his classes right before he came on the trip. Listening to him talk about some of the answers he got was hysterical.
“Did you know that birds have fur?”
“They did not write that.” I defended the obviously clueless underclassmen he taught.
“As God is my witness.” He grinned. “I had this one answer to a question on convergence—”
“Explain to Jory what that is,” Denise interrupted her son.
“Mom, I’m sure Jory is well aware of what convergence is,” he said as he looked at me.
“I’m not, though,” I told him. “Please explain.”
He smiled at me. “Convergence is when distantly related species have similar forms because they live in the same environment.”
“Oh, okay, so you were looking for examples of this.”
“Yes.”
“And you were what, unclear?”
“No, I was crystal clear. I told them that they didn’t have to use the examples I gave in class, that they could come up with their own.”
“Come up with or make up?”
“See, yeah, right there.” He spread his hands to illustrate the fact that he just didn’t get it. “That’s what happened. I said come up and they heard made up.”
“Did you get unicorns for an answer?” I teased him.
“No, but I did get fish and mermaids.”
I started chuckling.
“This is college, you understand.” He sounded pained. “I mean, come on.”
“That makes no sense.” Kola was frowning.
“No, it doesn’t.” Milton smiled over at Kola. “What would you have said?”
He thought a minute. “Dolphins and sharks.”
His face broke into a wide smile. “You see, that’s a great answer, Kola. What made you think of that?”
“Well, they both have the same kind of bodies.”
“Very good.” His eyes lit up as he leaned on the table. “What’s an example of an amphibian?”
“A frog.”
Milton looked at me. “On the test I just gave, I got ‘bat’ to that question.”
“Oh you did not.” I laughed at him.
“And did you know that Procter & Gamble discovered the DNA molecule?”
“I thought it was Abercrombie & Fitch,” I baited him.
“Oh you’re hysterical,” he said, smiling, before his face slowly started to change.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t—there’s a guy coming over here, and he looks upset, and he’s really… big.”
I turned and saw Sam moving through the sea of tables. He looked dangerous, and the way his clothes clung to him made him seem like a mountain of hard muscle. His stare, currently focused on me, could and did frighten people who didn’t know him, as it looked cold and dead. But I knew better, I knew the intensity of the gaze was just him zeroed in on one particular thing.
Hannah’s greeting, high pitched and excited, always tempered the impression he made on strangers. How scary could he be if he knelt to receive the little girl who had hopped off her chair to run to him? And they had their Dirty Dancing ritual—he lifted her and she did the airplane pose.
There was applause, and she scrunched up her shoulders and waved. She was so cute; sometimes it took all that I had not to eat her.
Sam moved like he always did, fluidly, his innate power so easy to see. When he returned Hannah to her chair, he put a hand on the back of mine before he leaned down close. I was surprised when he kissed my cheek, as the action was more than he was normally comfortable with in public.
“Hi,” I greeted him, my hand going to his shoulder. “How was your day?”
He ran his stubble-covered cheek up the side of my neck to behind my ear. “I missed you.”
It was just a simple statement, but because of his closeness, the soft, husky growl, and the warm breath on my skin, it felt so very intimate. I caught my breath.
“Did you miss me or did you replace me?” He was teasing, mostly.
“Stupid man,” I breathed as I tilted my head back to look up into the dark smoky-blue eyes. “Let me introduce you.”
I saw his jaw clench and knew why. My soft voice, hooded gaze, and the lazy smile I gave him all reminded him of sex, and that fast, he was mine. He tumbled into my web so easily.
“Sam, this is Milton Kage; his mother, Denise; and his son, Theo.
Everyone, this is Sam.”
Milton stood to offer him his hand. “Heard a lot about you today, Marshal. Your family doesn’t talk about much else.”
And that fast he was on the receiving end of happy, smiling Sam Kage. “Pleasure.”
After Sam shook hands with everyone, he hugged Kola and then returned to me, his hand, whether he knew it or not, settling on the base of my throat.
“I’m sending Riley and Peter up to babysit so you can meet me in the bar overlooking the mountains. They have a blue margarita that apparently, Jen says, you would like.”
“Okay.” I smiled up at him. “What time will you be there?”
“I have to go with my dad and Michael to meet some people, so, eight?”
“Eight is perfect.” I sighed, unable to help myself.
“It’s a date.”
“It’s drinks,” I clarified, “and I’m bringing my wingman.”
His eyes flicked over to Milton and then back to me. “You do that.”
THE Blue Moon Lounge, with its indigo-illuminated floor, cobalt glassware, and blue Formica, was aptly named. As I sat with Milton at the bar, nursing a blue Hawaiian, because I thought it would be funny, I should have been the picture of ease. I was tense.
Sam was late.
Sam was never late.
If, heaven forbid, the man couldn’t avoid being tardy, I could always count on a call letting me know what the problem was. It was unsettling that he was not there.
I tried his cell, and it went immediately to voice mail. My heart was suddenly in my throat.
“Jory, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Milton told me. “Have another drink.”
But it was nine, and then it was ten and now eleven, and Sam didn’t answer any of my texts.
“Jory, I’m sure he—”
“No,” I told him, excusing myself, abandoning Milton to go back to the room to check to see if Sam was there.
Riley and Peter were watching a movie they probably shouldn’t have been, but my kids were asleep, and Riley wa
s watching through her fingers while her brother called her a girl. I checked the phone to see if there were any messages and then left the kids alone and went down to the front desk. They had no messages for me either.
Waiting was never my thing.
As Milton joined me, having come to look for me, I called the WITSEC field office in Chicago. They would know what to do.
After a whirlwind of phone calls, I was alone, and I didn’t think I would be.
It turned out that Sam had to be missing a full twenty-four hours before the police in Phoenix would do anything. The deputies at home in Chicago were not aware that Sam was on anything more frightening than a vacation. Even when I spoke to Deputy White, he said that any communication to them would need to come from Sam. If he called them for help, if he got word to them, they would move. Unfortunately my concern over him being gone, and especially for such a short time, was not enough for them to go on. They would not be riding to my rescue.
“But you said all he had to do was call you,” I reminded him, somewhat frantically, over the phone.
“Yeah, him,” White told me for what must have been the fifth time at that point. “I’m sorry, Mr. Harcourt, but you saying he’s missing is just not enough of a reason for us to scramble our team. If he were actually in trouble, he’d let us know.”
“How?” I was yelling by that time, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“We have our channels. I assure you, he’s fine.”
I hung up on him so I wouldn’t yell. I knew Sam Kage; he didn’t.
I knew what trouble looked like.
“Jory,” Milton said hesitantly as I paced the lobby at midnight, “do you think maybe you’re overreacting?”
I reminded myself that he didn’t know me or Sam, so ripping his head off was not fair. “No” was all I said as I called one of Sam’s oldest friends.
Charles “Chaz” Diaz and Patrick Cantwell were Sam’s closest buddies from back when he had been a detective. They had been friends of his first partner, Dominic Kairov, too. But even before it became evident that he was so much more than simply dirty that going into witness protection was Dominic’s only option, they had both taken Sam’s side in the fallout he’d had with Dominic over Sam being gay.