by Laura Moore
“Sounds fine.” Steve nodded, wishing they were alone. A strained expression lingered on Ty’s face, but Steve couldn’t do much about it with a house full of people. Couldn’t do what he wanted, which was pretty basic, really: pull her into his arms and kiss her until she no longer knew her own name, much less her father’s. “I thought I’d go over that list Lizzie brought. See what names I can add.”
The past half-hour, while Ty had been on the phone, the place had been a circus. Emma climbing all over Sam Brody as if he’d suddenly transformed into a human jungle gym. Lizzie trying to coax the toddler away— doing her damnedest, at the same time, to pretend Sam didn’t exist in the first place. An impossible goal: Sam wasn’t a man easily ignored. But Lizzie was bound and determined. She’d chatted Steve up as though she thought he was the cleverest thing since the microchip. And hadn’t graced Brody with a single word.
Something had Lizzie Osborne wound tighter than a top. She relaxed a bit when Ty finally rejoined them.
“Hey, Ty, Emma and I are starving. How’s this for a great idea? Why don’t we treat you to the works at the Candy Kitchen?” It’ll be a girls’ lunch,” she stressed, in case Sam and Steve were too dumb to get the point.
Lizzie had them out of the kitchen in less than thirty seconds, practically shoving Ty out the door and calling out a cheerful “See you later” to Steve.
She might have gotten away with ignoring Sam altogether if it weren’t for Emma. Emma went dashing back to wrap her arms around Sam’s trousers. Picking her up, Sam received a wet kiss on the cheek for his efforts before Lizzie managed to distract her daughter once more with the promise of a grilled cheese.
“ ’Bye, Sam,” Lizzie said coolly. “What with our living in the country and all, I doubt we’ll be seeing you again . . .”
“Oh, I may make it up to Bedford in the near future. Just to satisfy my curiosity.”
Steve saw something dangerous flash in Lizzie’s eyes.
“Well, busy as I am, it’s highly unlikely I’ll be able to fit you in . . . my schedule. You can always call and leave a message, though. Come on, Ty. Let’s take my car so we don’t have to move the car seat.”
The silence was incredible following their departure. Both men sat, slightly shell-shocked. “She always like that?”
“Yeah. Classic Lizzie. A fire storm. Knowing the public-hell her slimebag of a husband put her through made me a little worried that some of that, uh, wild spirit of hers might have been destroyed.”
Alive and well, if Steve was any judge. “Looks like she gave you the brush-off big-time, though,” he observed, not exactly teary-eyed to see Ty’s ex-bodyguard brought so low.
“Yeah,” Sam replied, seeming unconcerned. “She’s been brushing me off for the past hour. The woman’s got some of the most imaginative put-downs I’ve ever heard. Good thing my feelings don’t bruise easily, otherwise, I might start to think she doesn’t like me.”
“No, she clearly finds you irresistible.” Steve walked to the refrigerator. “You hungry?”
“Yeah. What you got?”
“You sure you want to order a sundae on top of everything else, Lizzie?” Ty looked at her friend with deep concern.
“Ty, believe me on this: there are times in a woman’s life when excessive calorie bingeing is an absolute must.” Especially if you’re twisted in lust over some hunk warrior who has the nerve to pop back in your life just when you’ve successfully convinced yourself you will never want another man. Especially if the guy’s all wrong for you. That’s when you go for the extra fudge topping. The waitress delivered Lizzie’s mountain of ice cream and fudge and a smaller orange sherbet for Emma to the booth where the three of them sat. Both mother and daughter dug in with relish. The Candy Kitchen was a favorite lunch spot for the Hamptons’ summer crowd. The ice cream homemade, and delicious. Today, however, the restaurant was virtually empty, it being midweek in October. Only a few locals were perched atop the blue vinyl stools, elbows propped on the white formica counter, reading their newspapers, eating club sandwiches or burgers, drinking bottomless cups of the Candy Kitchen’s house brew.
Ty didn’t bother playing the game of who’s who people usually engaged in when at the Candy Kitchen or any of Bridgehampton’s other restaurants. She was watching Lizzie in stunned amazement. Never had she seen her friend go at food this voraciously before—not even when they’d been gluttonous teenagers. And Lizzie was behaving peculiarly in other respects, too.
It took a while to figure it out, at least six vicious spoonfuls later. But a pattern was definitely emerging. Ty began noticing that for every time Emma mentioned Sam’s name, Lizzie would scoop up about two tablespoons’ worth of ice cream and shove it into her mouth.
“How was it, seeing Sam after so long?” Ty asked, testing her theory. Yes, indeed, there went the longhandled spoon, plunging in, gobs of chocolate sauce and ice cream surfacing, following a direct route to Lizzie’s mouth. “You get a chance to catch up on your lives and everything? It’s been years since you saw him last, right?”
Lizzie clutched her empty spoon in a death grip. “Yeah, years,” she muttered, eyeing the sundae balefully. Then, with a loud sigh of defeat, she stabbed her spoon into the middle of a mound of mint chocolate chip. “If I eat any more, I’m going to be sicker than a dog,” she admitted. Her usual peaches and cream complexion was already an alarming shade of green in Ty’s opinion, but she let it pass. As kids, Lizzie had always been able to eat her under the table.
“Okay, Ty. This is really bugging me, so you’ve got to tell me. Just how is it that Sam doesn’t look a day above forty?”
“Must be well preserved, I guess,” Ty said, biting the inside of her cheek. “Because we celebrated his fortieth birthday a couple of months ago.”
“Good God! He’s only forty? Really?” Lizzie choked out, as surprised as if Ty had said eighty-five instead. “No way!” she challenged, incredulous.
“Uh-huh.” Ty nodded. “Late July. Sam took me out to dinner, then we went dancing at Nell’s. One of my better dates, I assure you. The other women at Nell’s must have thought so, too. All those come-hither wiggles of their hips . . .”
Lizzie wasn’t interested in their night at Nell’s. “But how could he be so young?”
“Well, he’d only been with the NYPD for a few years when Father hired him away. He doesn’t talk about it much to me, but I do know that while he was on the force, he received promotion after promotion in Vice. A real hot shot. Father wouldn’t have hired him otherwise.”
“But he always seemed kind of old and serious, you know? And fat,” Lizzie protested, a little desperately.
“Fat?” Ty repeated blankly. “Oh, I know. You’re thinking of the jacket. Sam always wore a sport coat to conceal his shoulder holster. And back in those days, men’s jackets had that boxy look, didn’t they? I guess that might have made him look bulkier. No,” Ty continued, shaking her head, “I don’t think there’s any fat on him. Afraid it’s pretty much solid muscle.”
“So you mean to tell me he always looked like this, only younger?”
“Um, pretty much,” Ty replied, deadpan.
Lizzie rubbed her hands over her face. “Oh, my God. Where was I, on Mars?”
Ty laughed. “No, Lizzie, not exactly. You were, however, way too busy checking out our little corner of the earth to pay much attention to my bodyguard. Let’s see, there was Connor Ferle, Mitch Robertson, Eddy Wills . . . who else am I forgetting? Not that it matters, anyway. Even if you had noticed that Sam is a . . .” What word could describe her friend and former bodyguard?
“Hunk,” Lizzie supplied dryly.
“Indeed. Even if you had noticed, you don’t really think Sam is the kind of man who’d take advantage of teenage hormones? Remember, you were barely sixteen when he quit working for my father. Of course, you’re both grown-ups now, aren’t you?”
“Not going to work,” Lizzie replied glumly, taking up her spoon once again. “I’m off men.”
“Right.”
“Mind if I take a look at your barn?” Sam inquired. He and Steve had ransacked the refrigerator of its last edible crumb, creating mammoth sandwiches for themselves that they washed down with yet another fresh pot of coffee.
“Sure, be my guest. I need to ride my last horse of the day, I’ll give you a personal tour. You interested in horses?”
“Only insofar as helping Ty’s new business venture pisses the hell out of Tyler Stannard. For that pleasure, I might be willing to invest deeply. Come to think of it, I’ve never owned an animal before.”
“Hey, don’t let me hold you back. Especially if you’ve got money to burn.” He opened the door for Sam, and the two men began walking toward the barn. “I gather Stannard is a real number. How’d you get involved with him in the first place?”
“I was working Vice.”
“New York City?”
“Yeah. One day, Captain calls me in, says some rich fat cat wants us to do a background check on a nanny he wants to hire for his only daughter. A basic courtesy job. One the Captain’s happy to perform, given the size of the guy’s wallet and the healthy donation he’s willing to make to the precinct. Turns out, though, that this prospective nanny’s second cousin happens to be linked to one of the major crime families operating out of Sicily. The same family thought to have orchestrated the kidnapping of a wealthy Italian businessman’s child.”
“Not a good thing to have on one’s r?sum?, I guess.”
“No shit,” Sam agreed. “Anyway, there’d been a wave of kidnappings, mainly in Europe, but here, too. Freaked a lot of people, Stannard included. He took the Patty Hearst kidnapping real personally. Anyway, to make a long story short, Stannard hired me away from the force. Wasn’t hard to do. I’d been on the force three years, and frankly, I’d seen enough to last me a century. Crack cocaine flooding the streets of New York, hoppedup dealers gunning each other down, innocent bystanders, too. Pregnant kids prostituting themselves for a two-dollar hit. Police shootings soaring. When Stannard made the offer, I figured I’d work for him, agree to guard his kid for a year, tops, then use the money to start my own business. Only a year turned into eight.”
“Money must have been pretty good,” Steve said with a sideways glance.
“Didn’t have fuck to do with it,” Sam replied flatly. “I stayed for Ty. There was something about her. Such a scrawny kid, but with these huge, sad, grown-up eyes. I couldn’t resist, didn’t matter that her father was a total asshole, at least until the day I quit.”
The words were out before Steve could stop them. “You got a thing for her?”
Sam laughed, a rich, full laugh. He thought of the folder bulging with clippings of Steve that Ty had kept hidden in one of her drawers. “Ty? I love her. But she’s like a kid sister—only closer.” Sam slowed to a halt, a few yards from the barn’s double doors. “Too bad, though, ’cause there aren’t many people like her. You let her down, Sheppard, and I’ll come after you.”
The two men assessed each other silently. “Fair warning,” Steve replied at last. “You want to see the home of that future horse of yours, Brody?”
“Yeah, don’t mind if I do.”
Lizzie was on her knees, hugging the toilet, retching miserably, too weak to stand any longer. She’d made it through the meeting at Damien Schoenberg’s stable by sheer willpower, speaking little and only through gritted teeth. The half an inch of foundation covering her moldy green pallor kept the Hineses from noticing anything too terribly amiss. Damien probably thought this was her tough horsewoman persona, that she was ready to bargain till midnight if necessary. The Hineses had come away with a terrific pony at a great price. And Lizzie had snatched up Sassafras. Even in her wretched state, Lizzie had known better than to pass up such an opportunity.
It had hit her full force on the way back to Steve’s. Suddenly too dizzy with nausea to steer, she’d had to pull the Volvo over, her clammy forehead resting against the wheel, praying it would subside. To Lizzie, those miles back to Steve’s place took an eternity.
Safely back at Southwind, Lizzie gave up the battle with her body.
Hand clamped over her mouth, eyes glazed and panicky, she’d raced past the living room where Ty and Emma were curled up on the sofa, reading one of Emma’s favorite picture books. Her feet pounded loudly on the stairs, the sound bringing Sam to the bottom landing. His cell phone, the tinny voice of his personal assistant, temporarily forgotten.
And here she was, forty-five minutes later, still heaving up her guts. The faint creak of the door, accompanied by the subtle shift of air signaled the presence of someone entering the bathroom, but Lizzie was beyond caring. From behind her huddled form came the sound of running water, then of something passing through it, interrupting its flow. Abruptly, Lizzie gagged, her stomach muscles contracting violently once again, though she’d long passed the point where even a single greasy french fry remained in her system. Weakly, she sat back on her haunches. And felt the cool press of a moistened washcloth against her clammy forehead. She made out the outline of a large masculine hand. Her eyelids fluttered shut. “Go away,” she moaned, attempting to turn her head away. Sam’s hand merely followed her. “Shush. Here, take this pill, but don’t drink too much water. It’ll only start you up again.”
Lizzie’s eyes opened just enough to see the fat pink tablet lying in the palm of Sam’s hand. “I can’t swallow anything. Go away and let me die in peace.”
“Nope. Come on, Lizzie, this is going to make you feel much better. Good enough so you can yell at me all you want.”
“That a promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
Weakly, her fingers closed around the pill, pushing it into her mouth. The rim of a water glass hovered, and she tilted head to drink from it. Sam allowed her one sip. In tired anticipation, her eyes closed, waiting for the next bout to hit.
Next to her, she felt Sam’s body shift. What felt like a knee brushed her shoulder. He was sitting on the rim of the bathtub. Leaning toward her, he began moving the washcloth around her face, its cooling dampness refreshing, heavenly.
Lizzie frowned, her face scrunching against the cloth. “What are you doing here?” The question came out muffled. Batting the cloth away, she repeated it.
Sam’s quiet laughter mixed with the sound of running water. “Ty wanted to come,” he said, once more bathing her features with the freshly dampened cloth. “But I insisted. I told her, quite convincingly, too, I’m the only one who could get you so annoyed you’d forget about puking. How am I doing, by the way?”
“You get an Aplus for effort. You’re free to leave now.” She really did not want to be sick in front of him.
“Don’t worry, you can thank me later.”
“You, Sam, are a man doomed to disappointment.”
“This is idiotic. I do not need a chauffeur, caretaker, baby-sitter, hand holder, or whatever cockamamie title Sam wants to give himself. I am perfectly capable of driving back to Cobble Creek tonight without him!” After all, it was Sam who’d gotten her into this mess in the first place. If she hadn’t been doing her best to bury her lustful feelings under a mountain of fat, grease, and sugar, she also wouldn’t have been wrapped around the base of the toilet, wondering whether she’d live to see another day. Lord, she hadn’t eaten stuff quite so lethal since before Emma was born. These days, she was strictly a steamed-vegetables-over-brown-rice sort of gal. If she really wanted to go wild, maybe a sprinkle of sesame seeds or a dash of soy sauce. Sometimes, all she ate were Emma’s colored leftovers. Since motherhood, her system’s tolerance for high-calorie junk was practically nil. She’d known it, yet had shoved all that food into her body on top of a gargantuan breakfast of french toast. Her folly was wholly deserved, but that didn’t mean Lizzie had to admit to it, did it?
Ty scooted by Lizzie, busy fixing weak mint tea and dry toast. Although Lizzie’s rioting stomach seemed to have settled, she looked wrung out from the ordeal. Ty wished she’
d stop balking. “Be reasonable, Lizzie. You’ve been sick for the past hour. You’re pale as a ghost, and you’ve got a three-hour drive in front of you. If you really need to be back by tomorrow and can’t spend the night here, then you should at least take Sam up on his offer. He can drive you in your car and pick up his own next weekend. He’s coming back for another computer session with Mrs. Miller, anyway.”
So much for counting on Ty to support her, Lizzie thought petulantly. They were all ganging up on her, even Emma, whose immediate acceptance of Sam felt alarmingly close to betrayal. And Steve, who’d only known her for a few hours. The look he’d given her was downright disapproving after Lizzie had curtly declined Sam’s offer to drive her back to Bedford.
Didn’t they understand? She needed to remain independent. And giving even an inch to Sam Brody would mean his taking the proverbial mile. Amile that covered a whole lot of ground Lizzie wasn’t willing to relinquish.
She hated the varying degrees of censure in their expressions. As though she were some naughty,
spoiled, irresponsible child.
Wasn’t that ironic! She was the only one among them who had a child, who had the care and responsibility of a daughter twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week . . . Her shoulders slumped in sudden defeat.
Of course, she was going to let Sam drive them back. Never would she risk an automobile accident with Emma in the backseat just because she stupidly refused to admit how woozy and exhausted she felt. Walking over to where Sam sat with Emma, quietly reading Emma’s favorite book about a mouse named Maisy, Lizzie spoke, her tone subdued, “I’ll go take Emma to the potty one more time. Come on, Em,”
and lifted her daughter out of Sam’s lap. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
Their eyes met, then Lizzie looked hurriedly away, disliking the understanding she’d glimpsed in Sam’s.
