by Nicole Helm
But it was nearing five years, and it was still there. Eating him from the inside out. More and more. Every year.
Magic? Legends about healing? Change? How could he possibly believe in any of it?
He paused on the large porch of Mile High headquarters. Instead of entering the cabin, he walked over to the railing. Not that many months ago, Brandon had stood there while Sam and Will had impressed upon him how much they needed to hire Lilly.
Now, Brandon and Lilly were a couple. A couple expecting a baby. Planning weddings and houses and nurseries.
Maybe that was it. This evidence of time marching on that crawled up inside him and started to fester. Brandon, the leader through just about everything from those initial carefree days in college, was settling into a real, adult, married-with-kids life. That had to be the source of all this upheaval.
Yeah, blame everybody but yourself, Goodall. That’s the ticket.
He pushed inside, desperately tired of his own mind. He’d get the paperwork from Lilly, do his excursions, then...
Go home and train Hayley again, bright and early tomorrow morning.
Grinding his teeth in irritation, Sam grunted at Skeet in greeting. Skeet glanced up from whatever he’d been focusing on and grunted in return.
“Early,” Skeet muttered, since it was odd Sam would show so long before his excursions.
Sam glanced at the bundle of green and yellow Skeet held in his hands and lap and frowned. “What the hell are you doing?”
“What the hell are you being so nosy for?”
“You’re knitting.” The old troll of a man was sitting there knitting. Maybe the past twenty-four-plus hours was just awaking nightmare.
“So?”
“Why . . . How . . .” Sam shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”
“Known how since I was a kid. The new addition is going to need extended family. You might want to take that under advisement.”
Sam could only blink at the old man who was usually as kind to people as most people were to cockroaches. New addition? Extended family? Last time he’d checked, Brandon and Lilly were the ones procreating and Sam had a big fat nothing to do with it.
“Since you were a kid?” Lilly asked, stepping into the little reception area. She pressed a fond kiss to Skeet’s mangled white beard. “I thought you sprouted from the earth just like this.” Lilly peeked at the bundle of yarn in Skeet’s lap. Her bright smile softened into something Sam was quickly recognizing as the precursor to pregnancy tears.
He started to back away, but Lilly turned to him with straightened shoulders, as though determined not to be affected by Skeet’s kindness.
“Skeet has taken it upon himself to be the baby’s honorary grandpa.” Lilly’s hand drifted to her still-flat stomach. “It’s very sweet, and if you poke fun at him over it, I’ll make your life a living hell.” She flashed him a sunny smile.
He barely bit back what he wanted to say, which was My life already is a living hell, good luck making it worse. But that seemed a bit melodramatic, even for him.
“Brandon around?”
“No, he’s on a canoe trip until three at least.”
Sam grunted in return, mentally calculating his own schedule and if he’d be back in time to get what he needed from Brandon. When he looked back at Lilly, she was pointing to the Grunt Jar.
With another very purposeful grunt, Sam pulled out his wallet and found a ten-dollar bill. He shoved the money into the Grunt Jar. “There, that should get me through this conversation.”
“Oh, Sam, I think you underestimate yourself.”
He might have laughed, if he wasn’t in such a shit mood. Maybe. God knew he should laugh.
“What did you need?” Lilly asked.
“I figured Hayley would need some kind of... orientation manual or something. I know Brandon had to put together some stuff when we started.”
“Brandon’s been getting together the employment paperwork. It’s in his office. I should be able to find it.” She gestured for Sam to follow her through the main room, then down the hallway to the rooms that acted as the different offices.
“When is she going to start?”
“Yesterday.”
Lilly stopped and whirled on him so quickly he had to grab the doorframe to keep from knocking her right over.
“What do you mean, yesterday?”
“I mean . . . yesterday?”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Lilly demanded, her outrage a little over-the-top in Sam’s estimation.
He shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”
“There’s paperwork and insurance and . . . What on earth, Sam?”
“What on earth is maybe I was trying to avoid you screeching at me,” he muttered.
Lilly took a deep breath, then let it out. “I don’t know what’s crawled up your ass in the past few weeks, but we’re all tired of it. Brandon and Will might be willing to overlook it because of testosterone or whatever it is that links the three of you together, but I have had enough. Even Skeet is complaining about your attitude.”
Sam grunted, because hell, he had seven more dollars to make up for.
Lilly threw her arms in the air and stalked into Brandon’s office, rifling through folders on his desk. She pulled one out that had Hayley Winthrop carefully printed on the tab.
“Here,” she muttered, shoving the folder into his chest. “The paperwork is pretty self-explanatory, and there should be some orientation materials in there, but if not you’re more than welcome to make up your own. I had been going to offer to do that, despite it very clearly not being my job or my expertise, but I don’t think you need my help.”
With that she waltzed out of the office and into her own, the clear, decisive click of the door reverberating down the hall.
Sam frowned down at the folder, more because Lilly was a little too on point with her criticism than he cared to admit.
* * *
“We have to do something.” Lilly marched the length of the soft brown rug that lay between the stone hearth and the couch where her fiancé and his twin sat.
She was almost as irritated with them as she was with Sam. Almost.
“Lil, come on.”
She fisted her hands on her hips and scowled at Brandon. No matter how much she loved him, his and Will’s willingness to completely ignore Sam’s increasing surliness was beyond her.
“He trained that poor girl without giving us any warning. If she’d been hurt, do you know what kind of lawsuit she could have filed against Mile High? It wasn’t just irritating, it was irresponsible.”
“I don’t think we’re arguing that Sam’s choice was stupid. Or that he’s been particularly prickly lately. I just don’t know how it’s any of our business.”
These two men who had been friends with Sam for well over a decade, who had worked with him long before Lilly had shown up here earlier in the year, had to see there was more to this than just sit back and accept it.
Lilly knew the basic gist of what had happened to Sam and why that had made him choose his bizarre, self-imposed hermitage, but she was tired of him sniping at her, and she was tired of everyone looking the other way while a man emotionally bled all over the place and pretended he didn’t.
But more, she knew how much it meant to Brandon that his half sister would see him and Will as people very different from their awful father. She couldn’t let Sam jeopardize that. Not when it was so important to Brandon.
Which made it important to her, and their baby.
“I want you both to think about the fact that you want Hayley to trust this man. You want her to feel comfortable enough with this man that she decides to interact with you. How can you possibly think that’s going to happen with the way things are right now? He’s a mess. And he might have all the reasons in the world to be a mess, but your family is at stake.”
“What do you suggest we do?” Brandon asked in that obnoxious, reasonable tone. “Talk to Sam? If you think he’s bad
now, you should have seen him when we pulled him off that fishing boat five years ago.”
“I suggest you stand up and fight. If he really is your friend, you should be standing and fighting.”
“I get what you’re saying. It’s not like we’re not paying attention. We’ve given him the space he’s asked for, we’ve—”
She cut Will off, impatient and a little overly emotional, which she was going to blame on hormones. “Giving him this space he asked for is clearly not the thing he needs. Did you stand back and give Brandon space when he was messing everything up with me?”
“Excuse me,” Brandon interrupted before Will could respond. “You were messing things up just as badly as I was.”
“And Cora talked to me, and she talked me through it and made some reasonable points. Because that’s what family and friends do. Because . . . Skeet—Skeet—wants to be this baby’s grandfather. He wants . . . Don’t you see that you’re building a family here? I want this baby to be born into something . . . We deserve more than the crappy parents we got and the way it screwed us up. I refuse to screw up my child.”
“Lilly,” Will said gently, that smile, which hid so much, teasing the corners of his mouth. “Your child is going to be screwed up. Everyone is screwed up.”
She glared at Will.
Brandon stood and put his hand on her shoulder. It was funny how much that could soothe the emotional upheaval inside her. Even when she was so dang irritated with him she could barely speak, he touched her shoulder and she remembered what it was like to have someone on your side. A partner, her future husband, the father of her child. It meant something.
She wanted it to keep meaning something, even if Will was right and their child would be screwed up no matter what they did. She wanted them to build this big, vibrant, complex family neither of them had ever had.
Even if she had to kick their asses to make it happen.
“Why don’t you tell us whatever it is you have in mind that you want us to do, and save the arguing, because you always find a way to do just what you want anyway.”
“Not always,” she grumbled, placing her hand on her stomach. Which still didn’t feel quite real, no matter how often she thought about it, or touched it.
Brandon grinned. “When you’re right, anyway.”
“Okay,” Will said, “please tell me what to do so I can get out of here before you two start pawing at each other.”
Lilly grinned up at Brandon, more than ready for Will to disappear. “All we’re going to do is be there. Whether he wants us to be, or not.”
* * *
Hayley navigated the curving edge of the road, gripping her steering wheel for dear life for the second time this week.
When Hayley reached the boulders that marked the end of the road, she parked her car and let out a breath. A flashy little sedan was parked there, one she hadn’t seen before. Odd.
She got out of her car and headed for the path up to Sam’s. Again, she was fifteen minutes early and Sam would probably have something to say about that, but she kind of hoped he would. There was something about getting to that man she found oddly exhilarating. Vomit-inducing nervous, but also exhilarating.
She was going to have to get a handle on her reaction to Sam, but for right now she just had to learn. Learn how to guide people, learn how to be a leader. Because she was determined. Because she had found something on that mountain overlook that made sense to her. That opened her up to a possibility she could be more than she’d ever been.
She had been high on that feeling for two days. So, regardless of how Sam might grunt at her, or say his weird, cryptic things about how he couldn’t change, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was she had this life ahead of her.
She grinned at herself, excited for the day ahead.
When she got to the clearing around Sam’s cabin, she saw a woman sitting on Sam’s stoop.
Was Sam training someone else as well? She supposed it could be possible. Him having a girlfriend seemed . . . much less possible.
And none of your business, that little voice inside her head intoned. Because none of your business needed to be reiterated to all of the idiocy fluttering around in her chest, and possibly other parts of her anatomy.
The woman got up from the stoop, smiling welcomingly at Hayley, seeming very at ease in Sam’s sparse yard. Something lodged itself uncomfortably in Hayley’s chest, but she forced herself to smile.
“Hello, Hayley,” the woman greeted, crossing the yard to her. Though she was dressed in clothes clearly meant for hiking, there was an air of polish and sophistication to this woman that made Hayley feel . . . rumpled.
“Hi.”
The woman held out a hand. “I’m Lilly. Lilly Preston. We met at the café once. I’m the public relations specialist for Mile High.” She hesitated for a moment before smiling even more brightly. “And I happen to be engaged to your brother Brandon.”
Hayley wanted to recoil at that, but she forced herself to hold her ground. “Half brother,” she muttered, because that distinction seemed important in the face of this too-bright woman.
“Right. Well, this isn’t . . . I’m not here because of Brandon. I’m here on official Mile High business. I’ve got an orientation binder for you, and I’m going to make sure Sam has you fill out some very important paperwork.”
“Oh. Well, okay.”
Lilly began walking back to the door to Sam’s cabin in quick, efficient strides. She picked up a binder from the stoop, then handed it to Hayley.
“Was Monday all right?”
“All right?” Hayley asked, taking the binder and flipping through the pages.
“Yes. Did you feel . . . comfortable? Like you learned something? I suppose it wasn’t too bad if you’re back.”
Though her smile was still a little overzealous for Hayley’s tastes, Hayley relaxed a little bit with the binder. It was full of information. In a quick flip through, Hayley saw sections on hiking procedures, pictures of what appeared to be hikes and camping sites.
It was almost like a how-to textbook, and Hayley had always been an excellent student. “It’s been great so far,” Hayley managed, forcing herself to smile at Lilly.
Lilly’s pale eyebrows drew together. “Great?” she asked, seeming more than a little confused. “Are you sure?”
Hayley nodded, trying to maintain a cheerful smile instead of say, oh, running away and cowering behind the nearest tree.
“And Sam was . . . great?”
Oh. The woman was worried Sam had been, well, from what Hayley could tell, himself. “He was efficient.”
Lilly chuckled. “That I can believe a little more than gr—”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Hayley glanced behind Lilly at a very angry-looking Sam standing in his doorway.
Hayley couldn’t tell he was angry from any look on his face, because it was all shrouded in hair, but it was in the way he held himself. Not just stiff, but rigid. Restrained. As though he were just barely holding fury on a leash.
“Good morning to you too, Sam,” the woman greeted brightly.
“Why are you here?” Sam demanded through gritted teeth.
It took Hayley a little off guard that he seemed livid when the woman was handing off paperwork. It made her more than a little nervous, and she still wanted to run and cower.
Which pissed her off a little bit.
“I’m going to go over the paperwork with Hayley, and make sure it’s filled out and turned in, and then I’m going to tag along on whatever your training is today.”
“Like hell,” he growled, not backing down an inch.
Lilly didn’t waver, and she lifted her chin. “Who’s going to stop me?”
Hayley didn’t even realize she’d taken a few steps back toward the dirt path back to her car until Sam’s blue gaze flicked to her. “Where the hell are you going?”
“N-nowhere,” she stuttered, then scowled because he’d made her stutter.
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“I’m sorry, Hayley,” Lilly said gently, taking a few steps back toward Hayley and gingerly linking arms with her. The move was light enough that Hayley could have easily escaped her grasp, but the certainty with which Lilly moved and led Hayley toward Sam offered a certain kind of comfort.
“Sam and I tend to rub each other the wrong way. I’m organized efficiency, determined to see paperwork properly filed, and he’s”—Lilly pulled Hayley with her up the stoop, so they stood facing a much larger Sam, who was blocking entrance—“a brooding, tortured antihero. Or at least, that seems to be the role he’s playing lately.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed, but after only a few seconds’ face-off, he moved out of the doorway and let them both in. “Paperwork’s on the table,” he muttered. “Knock yourselves out.”
He marched back to his little cookstove, and expressly ignored their presence. Hayley followed Lilly’s lead and took the few steps to the small wooden table that had a file folder neatly sitting in the center.
“Shall we?” Lilly said, gesturing to the one and only chair.
Hayley glanced uncertainly at Sam’s tense back, then at Lilly. Hayley managed a small smile and slid into the rustic chair. “Sure.” But regardless of what paperwork Lilly shoved at her, Hayley’s glance kept finding its way back to Sam.
And her thoughts kept going back to the fact he had one chair. One. As if he never even imagined someone else might join him here.
Chapter Seven
Sam was livid, and he knew it was making Hayley nervous, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Lilly tagging along on this hike was such an overstep. Every boundary he’d set up over the past few years, and every line he needed to . . . to . . .
He raked his hands through his hair, trying to find some end to that sentence, but the more he searched for a word, a need, the more it escaped him. He couldn’t pound the frustration away on the trail, not with Lilly and Hayley behind him.
“So, Hayley, tell me about your family.” Lilly’s bright voice pierced the quiet calm of the woods.
Lilly had not-so-subtly been interrogating Hayley for the entire hike. His plan had been to have Hayley lead him on the same hike as Monday, pretending he was a customer. Instead, Lilly was with them—slowing them down considerably—and yapping the whole damn way up, the whole way through what was normally a quiet, reflective time at the overlook, then all the way back down.
