by Amy Woods
As she closed the door, she turned and saw everything that she was experiencing reflected in Sam’s eyes, along with a heat she hadn’t seen there before. She reveled in the fact that he wanted her as badly as she wanted him.
She stood with her back to the door, not knowing exactly what to do next. She was glad when Sam took the lead. He drew near to her, so close she could feel his rapid breathing. He reached up and ran a single finger along the side of her face, drawing it down to her lips. He touched her bottom lip with his thumb, leaving it there as he stepped closer to her.
When his mouth touched hers, it was as warm and sweet as hot caramel, and she melted into it.
His kiss was firmer now than it had been when he’d kissed her before and when he ran his tongue along her upper lip, urging her to let him in, she was more than pleased to say yes. The kiss deepened, and his hands were in her hair, his fingers weaving through her thick curls. At first, her hands remained by her sides, as she was unsure what to do with them. But then she worked up the courage to let them do what they wanted to, and she reached out to settle them on his waist. Her fingers worked his shirttails out of his trousers, and when she was able, she slid them up the sides of his waist and over his firm chest, discovering that the skin there was as hot as his mouth. He kissed her again as his hands wandered away from her hair down to her own waist. He wrapped them around her, pulling her closer still until she could feel exactly how much he wanted her.
He continued kissing her until they were both breathless, and only then did he pull away.
“Lucy...Lucy,” Sam panted, “look at me.”
She obliged and when she met his eyes, desperation and concern warred in them.
“Lucy,” he said again, her name sounding like music on his tongue. “Are you sure this is what you want?” She nodded her head, but Sam shook his in argument. “No, it’s not enough. I need to hear you say the words.”
Lucy hesitated, her confidence suddenly shaken by his doubt, if that’s what it was. “Why? Are you having second thoughts?”
“Absolutely not,” Sam said. “It’s not that at all, I promise you. I just need to make sure that this is okay with you. I don’t want you to do anything that you’re not ready for.”
Sam’s care for her tugged at her heart, but was overridden by her frantic craving to be closer to him. If voicing that kept him from putting a brake on things, then so be it.
“Yes, yes. This is what I want. I’m a grown woman and even though it’s been a while, this isn’t my first rodeo. Now stop yammering, and kiss me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sam said, clearly enjoying her sudden bossiness. He did as she told him, kissing her again and again, pushing her as far as she could stand. He tugged her dress off over her head and explored her skin, his fingers generous and tender. He touched every part of her, bringing her body back to life one starved inch at a time, and she gave back as much as she received.
When they both tottered on the edge, she led him to the bed, where he showed her exactly how much he adored her body. Each time he let go inside of her, and each time he gave her the release she hadn’t known she craved so much, he exposed a little bit more of himself to her. And by the time they collapsed in a happy, exhausted heap in the early hours of morning, the sun peeking in through her bedroom window, Lucy knew without a doubt that she’d fallen in love with Sam Haynes.
* * *
Sam awoke the next morning to find Lucy asleep in his arms. Sunlight streamed in through her window, its rays stroking her fiery hair, illuminating strands of gold. Her beauty was ethereal and he wondered if he was still in a dream.
She stirred and stretched out her arms and Sam leaned on his elbows to watch her, admiring her porcelain skin, fully exposed for his pleasure.
When she showed no signs of joining him in the waking world, he reached over and gently tickled her stomach. Eventually she opened one sleepy eye and caught him, but then she closed it again. He grew impatient staring at her, waiting for her to wake up and join him. He wanted so badly to talk to her, to see if she was as happy as he was about last night.
He tried to ignore the funny feeling in his stomach, the one nagging him to tell her the truth. He would do it today, before he left her house. He knew she might be angry, but the way things had gone last night, he was certain he could convince her that he had no malicious intent in keeping it from her for so long.
She would have to believe him; otherwise he wouldn’t know what to do.
As the night had gone on, as they had made love over and over again, the passion growing deeper each time, he became certain of what he had been feeling this whole time.
He knew now that he was in love with her.
All he had to do was work out how to tell her. But first, she needed to know that he was Shiloh’s father. He knew what he wanted, but he wouldn’t ask her to want the same things. He knew that it might take her some time to decide whether or not she wanted them to be a family. But if there was anything in the world he could give her, it was time. His restaurants were doing fine, according to his most recent check-in phone calls and emails, and he had no pressing need to return to New York anytime soon. At some point he would need to get his things from his apartment there, but for now, he cared only about Lucy and Shiloh.
After he tried again to get her to wake up, Sam gave up and reluctantly dragged himself out of her grasp, tugging on his shorts as he left the room. He headed down to the kitchen and let Thor out the back door to do his morning business. As Sam waited, keeping an eye on the dog out the window, he opened cabinets and found Thor’s dog food, and coffee for himself. He turned on Lucy’s geriatric coffeemaker and added water and grounds, making a mental note to buy her a Keurig on his next trip into town—that is, if one could be located in Peach Leaf.
Starbucks would be better, but he would settle for baby steps.
As the old coffeemaker sputtered to life, Sam glanced out the window to check on Thor. He scanned the front yard a few times, but the dog was nowhere to be found. A twinge of fear prickled at his neck, but he was sure there was nothing to be alarmed about—the dog had probably got distracted by a strong smell. He set down the coffee cup he had pulled out of the cabinet and opened the front door to whistle for Thor to come back inside. But when he looked out, he found the last thing on earth that he would’ve ever expected to see.
A woman stepped out from an old beat-up car and tugged a duffel bag out of the backseat. He knew who she was before she even turned around.
Jennifer.
The obvious question was...what in hell was she doing there?
Sam couldn’t form a single coherent thought. He just stood there like an idiot as she closed the car door and walked toward the house, covering her eyes with a hand to shade them from the sun. His feet were leaden and he couldn’t seem to move at all.
When she stepped onto the porch, she didn’t say anything, just stood there reciprocating his moronic stare.
“Well,” she said. “This is a surprise.”
“Hello, Jennifer,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. He wished he could cross them over other things, as well. He wasn’t exactly adequately clothed to be standing on a porch in broad daylight. The fact that he was so exposed irritated the hell out of him. He might be able to manage some dignity if he’d had a few more stitches of fabric within reach.
No such luck.
“You win the prize for the understatement of a lifetime.”
Jennifer stopped on the porch and dropped her bag. “I have to tell you...I did not expect this of my shy sister.” She looked down and dug her toe into the porch like a nervous child.
“Can I ask what brings you here?” he asked.
“I just came to see my daughter. Our daughter.” Her eyes jumped up to his. She looked the same as she had back then, back when he was in college when they had met each other at that fateful party. Her eyes were the same cobalt as Shiloh’s, but they were tired—old beyond her age. And she was still an attra
ctive woman, though he wasn’t drawn to her as he had been that night, now so far in the past. The evidence of her hard lifestyle was etched into her features. When he looked at her, Sam felt a rush of sadness—a flood of regret at how Jennifer had chosen to handle something that could have turned out so much different, so much better.
“Well,” Sam said, “this isn’t my house and—”
Jennifer reached down to grab her bag and shoved past Sam into the house. He rushed after her, his brain working to find a way to get her to leave. If he couldn’t do it on his own, he’d have to wake Lucy. He didn’t want her to find Jennifer here, knowing the grief it would cause the woman he loved.
But another part of him needed to talk to her—there was so much he wanted to know.
“Jennifer,” he said, “I should’ve said this a long time ago, and it’s probably strange to say it now, but I’m sorry about the way I treated you that night.”
“As far as I recall, you treated me just fine.” Her eyes were filled with pain and regret when she said the words, negating any of their truth.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, his stomach churning. “What I meant was, I should have called the next day. I shouldn’t have just hooked up with you and then let you walk away. Doing so was a mistake. I made a lot of them back then, all of which I’m sorry for. I just want you to know that I didn’t intend to harm you.”
Jennifer studied him. “You don’t owe me any apology. I was an adult and we made a decision to do an adult thing together. Neither of us is to blame for what happened. Condoms aren’t foolproof, and I should’ve thought about that before I took that risk. I made plenty of mistakes on my own back then.”
Under any other circumstances, the words would’ve hurt, but they were completely and totally true. She was right. They were both to blame. That didn’t excuse her decision to block him from Shiloh’s life, but it wouldn’t do any good to rehash that now. What was done was done, and he had already taken steps toward the future he wanted.
Sam’s hands balled into fists of nervous energy. “You’ve got to go, Jennifer. You’ll wake Lucy and I don’t want her to find you here. It will hurt her, and I can’t allow that.”
Jennifer just gave him a sideways glance and moved toward the living room, Sam following quickly behind her. Before he could stop her, she picked up the book that Sam had noticed before on the coffee table and had it open in her lap.
It was a photo album, and as Jennifer flipped through the pages, Sam watched Shiloh’s history unfold before his eyes. There she was as a baby, as cute as she could be, and then again on a bicycle with training wheels, and in a swimming pool wearing pink goggles and flotation armbands.
And then the pictures stopped. There was a huge gap after about age six or seven. Then they started again, but this time Shiloh was in a wheelchair. It occurred to Sam that he should be livid beyond belief at the woman sitting next to him on the couch.
She had given birth to his daughter and kept her a secret. Then she had gone out drinking, and put Shiloh in that car, taking their daughter with her, and had forever destroyed the child’s ability to walk. He had every reason in the world to be angry at Jennifer, to want to punish her for all the suffering she’d caused, but, looking at her there on Lucy’s couch, such a far cry from her sister’s vivacity, all he felt was a wave of sorrow. She was sick, and that wasn’t her fault. He would not presume to understand what it must be like to struggle with a mental illness. But he couldn’t help but wish that she’d chosen a different path—one that involved his and Lucy’s help. And it broke his heart that she’d abandoned her daughter.
He was going to be the one to be a permanent fixture in Shiloh’s life. He was the one who got to start fresh with his amazing daughter. He planned to be around for everything that happened from here on out. For that he was grateful, and his thankfulness eradicated any anger that he might have otherwise felt for Jennifer. He only had so much room in his future, and he chose to fill it with good things. He could only hope that, at some point, Jennifer would get back on her medicine, and make the same choice. Her daughter deserved that.
They sat quietly for a while, Sam studying the pictures over Jennifer’s shoulder as she turned the pages. The photographs were touching, obviously taken by Lucy. The adoration for their subject was evident in each shot.
He sipped his coffee and got lost in the images.
“Does someone want to tell me what in holy hell is going on here?”
Neither he nor Jennifer had heard Lucy pad down the stairs, and they both jumped at the sound of her voice. It was filled with ice, and it splashed across Sam’s neck and down his back. He turned and caught her eyes. Every trace of the heat from the night before had completely disappeared. All that filled them now was unmistakable hatred, most of it directed at him.
He opened his mouth to speak but Lucy raised a hand, commanding him not to say another word. “It looks like you two know each other,” she said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Jennifer look at him before they nodded in unison.
“How?”
Sam would never forget the look on Lucy’s face when she asked the loaded question. He had never seen so many warring emotions in one place— confusion, pain, betrayal—and he wanted to punish himself for causing them.
Sam looked over at Jennifer, but she had disconnected and focused on her lap, refusing to engage any further. He knew it would be up to him to explain. Jennifer did not have the strength. And it was his responsibility to pull himself out of this hole. He’d been digging it for a week now, and he deserved whatever came his way. He should have told Lucy everything sooner, but it was too late for that now.
“It’s a long story,” Sam said, rubbing his hands over his face.
“Well,” Lucy said. “I’ve got time.”
“Jennifer and I...we met a long time ago, in college. There was a party one night and we...I...”
“We slept together,” Jennifer said, her voice low and difficult to interpret.
Lucy crossed her arms over her chest, and Sam noticed even from a distance that she was shivering in the shorts and T-shirt she had thrown on. He wanted to pick her up and wrap her in his arms to warm her against his chest. He wanted to tell her how desperately sorry he was, and that everything was going to be okay. Up until that moment, he had believed that it would be, but now the look in her eyes brought back every doubt he’d had about them before last night.
“I see,” Lucy said. A brief hint of jealousy crossed her features before she headed away. Sam realized that she still didn’t understand the extent of his and Jennifer’s relationship.
“That’s not it,” Sam said. He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut until he felt pain. He opened them again and forced himself to look Lucy straight in the eyes, sending up a silent prayer that what he was about to say wouldn’t change her feelings about him.
He knew that was a lot to ask, but after last night, it didn’t matter. He would do everything in his power to make her understand that he loved her. No matter how long it took, no matter what he had to do, no matter how hard he had to work, he would make her understand that she and Shiloh meant more to him than anything in the world, and that he would be there for them from here on out.
He wasn’t leaving unless she told him to. He ran through a string of words in his mind, all the possible ways he could phrase the facts, but none of them were good enough. None of them would express everything that he was feeling, so he decided to go for the simplest.
“I’m Shiloh’s father,” he said.
Lucy’s face was instantly stripped of its color, and she grabbed the banister next to her for support. Sam shot up from the couch and went over to her, but when he reached out a hand to touch her she batted him away. He expected her to cry, to scream at him and to be angry, but none of that came. What happened instead scared and unnerved him.
Her face was devoid of any emotion, and he had no idea at all what she was thinking.
“Say something, Lucy. Please say something,” Sam said as he knelt on the step in front of her.
Lucy opened her eyes and they burned into his. “I have nothing to say to you—either of you.”
Finally, Jennifer spoke up. “I came here to see Shiloh,” she said as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
Lucy turned her attention to her sister. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lucy snapped. “How dare you walk in here after all these years, after what you did the last time you were here? Don’t you think you’ve caused enough damage for a lifetime?”
Jennifer rose from her position on the couch and stood at the bottom of the stairs. “That’s not fair, Lucy.”
Lucy’s eyes shot daggers at Jennifer. “Not fair? You want to talk about what’s fair? What’s not fair, what’s never been fair, is that the two of you made a choice many years ago, and I’m the one who paid the price for that choice.” Lucy stabbed a finger into her chest. “I’m the one who never got to make a choice. All of your choices fell on me. I’m the one who raised your daughter—the daughter that the two of you abandoned. I love her more than anything on this earth, and I wouldn’t trade her for the world, but I should’ve had a say in the matter.”
Jennifer looked down at her feet in shame.
“I can’t believe that the two of you think you have the right to come into my home and disrupt the life that I’ve made for me and Shiloh. After all you’ve done, you think you can just show up all of a sudden and be a part of her life? It doesn’t work like that. I’ve made a home for her, I’ve given her stability, and I don’t want her to have to go through any more loss.”
“I have a right to see my daughter,” Jennifer said.
Lucy winced at the words. “You have a right to see her when I say you can see her. You know I have full custody of Shiloh. That was the deal. I let you visit back then because I thought that she needed to know her mother, but that was before the accident. You can’t just show up here whenever you want, without calling, and expect me to just let you in. It’s confusing for Shiloh. We’ve built a life here, and it’s a good one. If you want to be a part of it, you’re going to have to start seeing a doctor and taking your medications again.” Lucy sighed and rubbed her temple. “If you need my help to do that, Jennifer, just ask.”