by Jill Shalvis
awareness, she admitted, but hunger.
Need.
Damn. He was potent.
Luckily the phone rang, and she shook off the lust and answered, “Lucky Harbor Charters, how can I help you?”
Unluckily, she sounded breathless and . . . aroused.
Sam drank more coffee, but he had a definite smugness to him, cocky bastard.
“The grouch in yet?” Mark asked in her ear.
Becca watched Sam mainline the coffee and wondered if he was ready to face his dad this early. “Uh . . .” Sam’s laser beam eyes were still on her. She smiled reassuringly.
He didn’t return it.
“Darlin’, I know he’s there. If you’re there, he’s always nearby somewhere.”
Was that true?
“How about you just hand him the phone.”
Her gaze was still locked on Sam’s. “Maybe I should take a message.”
“Darlin’, you’re sweet. Way too sweet for the likes of him. And if I wasn’t dying of liver failure, I’d prove it to you myself.”
Sam took the phone from Becca’s hand. “Stop trying to protect me,” he told her. “And stop flirting with my employee,” he said into the phone.
“Just showing you how it’s done,” came Mark’s tinny voice, loud and clear, making Becca realize that Sam had heard everything his dad had said.
“You okay?” Sam asked.
“Never better. Except for the fact that I’m on my deathbed. But you, you’re not okay.”
“What are you talking about?” Sam asked.
“You’ve got a good couple of decades left before you’ve got old-man problems and need a blue pill to get it up, and you’re ignoring that pretty young thing right in front of you.”
Sam looked at Becca.
Becca busied herself by racing her fingers over the keyboard of the computer.
Sam leaned over her and booted up the dark screen.
Becca bit her lip and met Sam’s amused gaze. With a blush, she turned away.
“What do you need, Dad?” Sam asked. “I left you breakfast on the stove.”
“Oatmeal’s disgusting,” came Mark’s answer.
“Oatmeal’s good for you.”
“Sheila called,” Mark said. “She wanted to remind me I promised to pay for the crib.”
“Didn’t she already steal all your money?” Sam asked.
Mark sighed.
“You ask for that paternity test yet?”
“Only an asshole would do that right now,” Mark said.
“A smart asshole,” Sam countered.
“It’s not an expensive crib,” Mark said. “I told her to go cheap with all this shit.”
Sam rubbed the spot between his eyes. “You can’t go cheap, Dad. Not with a baby.”
“It’s just a loan,” Mark said.
“Uh-huh,” Sam said.
“So . . . you’ve got enough to cover it?”
“Yeah, Dad,” Sam said. “I’ve got enough.”
“You’re not going to have to steal it, are ya?”
“Dad—”
“Kiddin’,” Mark said. “Sheesh. This kinda reminds me of when we needed rent money, and you nearly got the shit beat out of you for—”
“Yeah, great times,” Sam interrupted. “Gotta go. Check your account later on today.”
“Love ya, Sam.”
Instead of responding, Sam reached past Becca and hung up the phone.
“That was nice of you,” Becca said into the heavy silence. “To loan him money.”
“It won’t be a loan.”
She figured. “It’s sweet he always says he loves you,” she said. “Really sweet.”
Sam looked like maybe he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
“What?” she asked.
“They’re just words.”
“Well, yes,” she agreed. “But it’d be nice to hear them.”
He looked at her for a moment. “So your parents, they never—”
“They’re not . . . demonstrative.” How the hell did they get on this? Oh, yeah. Her own big mouth. “I want to hear how you nearly got beat up.”
“The rent was past due, and there was no food. We needed money.” He shrugged. “So I found some.”
“Found?”
“The apartment next door was a grow house,” he said. “The lady who ran the place liked me. She used to feed me sandwiches sometimes. I was in her kitchen when she was called to another part of the house. I went to her utensil drawer—which was where she kept her cash hidden—and borrowed some. Then I went to a house down the street where there was always a pool game. I doubled my start-up money in an hour. Where I got caught was trying to return the original amount to the utensil drawer.”
She stared at him. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Holy crap.”
He shrugged. “I was an old thirteen.”
She imagined that to be true.
“My dad took a lot of shit from the neighborhood for it,” he said. “We eventually had to move. It was really stupid of me.”
“How was any of that your fault?” she asked indignantly.
He laughed. “I stole the money, Becca.”
“You had no choice!”
“There’s always a choice,” he said.
She shook her head. “You were a kid. Practically a baby. You were stuck in a bad spot and didn’t know better.”
“The pool house where I played, those guys weren’t exactly Boy Scouts. I brought some real trouble down on my dad’s head.”
She wondered if he always did that, took everything on his shoulders, but she already knew that he did. She rose out of her chair and moved toward him. And then, as he so often did to her, she got in his space and cupped his face. “Not your fault,” she said.
He flashed a small smile that shifted his stubbled jaw against her palms and gave her a shiver of pure lust.
This seemed inappropriate given the conversation, so she let him go and stepped back. “So how many times did that happen, you nearly getting killed trying to keep you and your dad together?”
He made a noncommittal sound and turned to the counter to set down his empty mug, rolling his shoulders like his neck hurt. “You ask a lot of questions.”
It occurred to her that he’d probably watered down the story, and hadn’t even told her the worst of it. She moved close and set her hands on his shoulders.
His muscles were vibrating with tension.
“Shh a sec,” she said, and dug into him, pressing her thumbs into the strained muscles.
He held himself still for a long moment under her ministrations, but finally she felt his shoulders drop and relax, and he let out a low, very male sound that seemed to have a direct line to her nipples.
“Seems like you do have a weakness,” she murmured.
Reaching back, he grabbed her hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing her palm. “More than one.”
Her stomach fluttered. “So, tell me. Did you stay out of trouble after that?”
“Oh, hell no. There was the time I threw the football through the window of a different neighbor—”
“Ha,” she said, laughing. “I did that, too. Only it was a softball. I had to work for a month on the yard, and my brother still teases me about it.” She met his gaze and saw that he was smiling, but there was something else there. “Did you have to work on the yard to make up for the cost of the glass, too?” she asked.
“Not exactly. The ball sailed through the window and beaned the neighbor on the head, and gave him a concussion. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except he happened to be having sex with the woman who lived on the other side of him. While her husband was at work.”
She gaped. “Serious?”
“Serious as the heart attack she claimed to have. The guy came after my dad with a tire iron.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Luckily my dad’s tire iron was bigger,” he said.
&nb
sp; She blinked. “Holy cow. What happened?”
“My dad got arrested, and child services got involved.”
“Oh, Sam,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. That, and a whole host of other shit, landed me here, in Lucky Harbor. With Cole’s family.”
“And you don’t blame yourself for any of it, right?”
He laughed, but the sound was mirthless.
She reached for his hand and entangled their fingers. “Okay, so you do blame yourself. I know you must feel pretty stupid about that, seeing as what I said before is still true—none of what happened was your fault.”
He choked out another low laugh, but she could see how uncomfortable he was that he’d told her the story. She wasn’t uncomfortable; she was the opposite. She was getting a real peek inside the tough, impenetrable Sam Brody, and she liked that peek. She liked the man. But she knew saying so wouldn’t be welcome at the moment, just as she knew she had to lighten the mood or he’d leave. “You probably get a different reaction when you tell a woman that story, right?” she asked in a teasing tone. “You probably get all hugged up on and then taken to bed to be mothered.”
His green eyes gave her a look that said he was on to her but that he’d play. “You want to take me to bed and mother me?”
“Well, mothering you isn’t the first thing that comes to mind . . .”
He smiled. His arm slid around her waist, and he brought her up against his hard body. “That’s good to hear,” he said, “but I’ve never told a woman that story before.”
“Why not?”
“You really do ask a lot of questions.”
This was true. “It’s the writer in me,” she said. “Even if I’m just a jingle writer.”
He laughed. “It’s not the writer in you. It’s the nosy in you.”
“Maybe,” she admitted.
“Once a peeper . . .,” he said, and kissed her neck.
She shivered. “It’s hereditary,” she claimed. “My parents, they’re nosy about everything. Where’s Jase’s itinerary, what’s Jase doing right now, why isn’t he answering his cell, who’s he seeing? Blah blah.” She caught the look on his face and shut up.
“Does everything they’re nosy about have to do with Jase?” he asked.
From day one . . .“They don’t really have to be nosy about me,” she said. “I’m usually the together one. Terrifying as that is to imagine.” She flashed a smile.
He didn’t return it. Instead, he was looking at her like she was starting to make sense for him, and she didn’t like the way that felt. “Jase has some . . . issues,” she said. “He was born premature and almost died a bunch of times. He was small and weak, and played the piano like an angel. He wasn’t exactly a popular kid. It didn’t matter when we were traveling and playing together, but after I stopped, it was hard for him. I still protected him the best I could, but as it turns out, out I wasn’t all that good at it.” She paused. “He says he’s been sober for a few months now, and I have high hopes he’s being honest about it.” Hope, but not a lot of faith.
“He’s an addict?”
“Yes, but he’s not a bad guy.” And damn it, there she went defending him again. That was a hard habit to break.
“If he’s a good guy, then why weren’t you honest with him on the phone at the Love Shack?” Sam asked.
“Wow.” She gave a little laugh, uncomfortable at the direction the conversation had taken. Clearly, he believed Jase was a threat to her, but that wasn’t the case. At all. “You have a long memory. I just don’t want him worrying about me, that’s all,” she said. “He’s got a lot on his plate with his upcoming tour. There’s so much pressure there. He’s got this huge musical gift, but he’s not good at concentrating.”
Sam looked into her eyes. Something intense there made her feel both good and just a little bit off her axis. “And what about you?” he asked quietly.
“What about me? I walked away from that life.”
“Why?”
“I screwed it up. And now who’s asking too many questions?” she asked. “Anyway, I went into jingle writing, and that’s that.”
“Everyone screws up, Becca,” he said. “Some more than others.” He raised his own hand in the air and waved it.
She laughed despite herself. “I’m not cut out of the same cloth as my family,” she said. “I’m not nearly as talented. Jase is amazing. He’s just not all that good about harnessing it. We’re a dysfunctional family, I know, but I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of family.”
He nodded, clearly knowing all about dysfunction. “It’s time.”
“Time?”
“For lesson number three,” he said.
The quick subject change threw her. As did how fast her body tightened at the thought of what that lesson might entail. At what she wanted it to entail.
“Boating,” he said.
She sighed.
He laughed.
She gave him a little shove, or she went to, but he caught her up and surprised her by pulling her in for a hug that made her blow out another breath. “You know what you are, Sam Brody?” she whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck. “A big, fat tease.”
They both knew there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. They also both knew exactly what she meant. She wanted him again. Still. And she knew she wasn’t alone in that wanting. But she found she was alone in the falling. And she was falling, for him. She was falling for a guy who didn’t intend to fall back. She got it, she really did. In Sam’s head, love meant people relying heavily on you, and you couldn’t necessarily rely on them back.
If she pursued a relationship with him, it’d be an uphill battle all the way, but that wasn’t what held her back from saying When. It was far simpler than that.
Just the one night with him had nearly ruined her for all other men. Another night would do her in for sure. “Boating sounds good,” she said.
Chapter 16
Much later that night, Becca was sitting on her bed with her keyboard, staring down at her notebook where she’d scrawled some lyrics. She was playing her fingers over the keys, looking for a melody, when a knock came at the door.
She knew Olivia was working in her shop late tonight, so it couldn’t be her. The third apartment was still vacant. Becca hadn’t ordered a pizza, and she knew Sam was avoiding her at night because he was smarter than she was. Especially after he’d taught her how to operate their boat today, a venture that had ended up being more a lesson on self-control and restraint.
