Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Sam and Evie
by Cassidy Cayman
Other books in the Lost Highlander Series
Lost Highlander
Reunited
Revenge
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Chapter 1
Evelyn Merkholtz put down her phone and stared at the book strewn table. It was impossible to pretend she hadn’t just had a rather loud argument with her ex, the same argument they’d been repeatedly having for almost three weeks now, but she was going to try it anyway.
“Sam wants you to move out,” Piper said.
Of course her best friend on earth wasn’t going to pretend she hadn’t heard the argument, damn her. She shook her head as if Piper was crazy.
“What? No,” Evelyn said.
Piper rolled her eyes and pulled a stack of papers over to sort. Evelyn was about to breathe a sigh of relief, feeling she had gotten off the hook pretty easily.
“He wants you to move back in with him,” she continued.
Her sigh of relief got stuck in her throat, causing her to make a less than attractive gurgling sound. Evelyn was not off the hook and she squirmed uncomfortably under Piper’s know-it-all gaze.
“Well, I guess I can’t live here forever.”
“No,” Piper agreed. “We’re so crowded as it is.”
Evelyn smirked. The bedroom she lived in with her infant son Magnus was twice the size of her entire apartment back home in Dilbert, Texas. She looked around the huge kitchen, surprisingly modern save for the stone fireplace you could roast an ox in. Out of the dozens of rooms in the ancient castle, they tended to congregate there the most. In the mornings, if there was any sun to stream in through the windows, it was borderline cozy.
Piper did her best to make the rooms they inhabited warm and inviting, and had been meticulously renovating the place since she’d inherited a year ago. But it was still a massive, ramshackle behemoth that on its best day could be described as forbidding and on its worst— well, it could be creepy.
Piper reached across the table and patted her arm. She girded herself for whatever came next.
“I think you should go,” she said.
Well, she hadn’t girded enough, because she hadn’t expected that. The words landed hard, settling like a weight in her stomach. After the initial sting subsided, she found herself feeling a glimmer of relief. She hadn’t slept well in weeks. Every little noise in the night sent her flying to Magnus’s crib to make sure he was still there. If he wasn’t with Sam, he wasn’t out of her sight. For the baby’s sake she needed to think about Sam’s offer.
She looked at Piper, so small and frail seeming these days. How could she even think about leaving her alone? How could she admit she didn’t feel safe there anymore?
“Every time Sam brings Magnus back from his visits, he’s a mess. He can barely stand to let him go. I find it difficult to watch,” Piper said primly.
“Oh really?” Evelyn asked, stiffening. Then all the wind went out of her sails as the weight of her situation pressed down on her and she slumped back in her chair. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to move back in with Sam,” she said. “It sends a mixed message.”
“Is he trying to get back together with you?” Piper asked, perking up.
Evelyn frowned. Hmm. No, he hadn’t actually been trying to get back together with her for some time. When he’d first brought up the notion of her moving back in, it had been strictly because he didn’t feel comfortable having her and Mags staying at the castle anymore. And since Magnus had been kidnapped from his crib not three weeks earlier by a vengeful witch, she really didn’t mind the idea of living someplace else. Someplace that didn’t echo. With electric lights in every room and wall to wall carpet, a tiny square patch of garden in the back instead of hills and forest that stretched out for miles.
She frowned harder. Of course Sam wanted his child to be safe, and she and Magnus were a package deal. And she had nowhere else to go. But that was completely different from wanting to get back together.
She felt her face heating up and she cleared her throat. “Pipes, come on,” she said. Which was what she always said when Piper tried to crowbar the reason she and Sam had split up out of her, or tried to weasel them back together again. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea because …” she swallowed hard, choking on her embarrassment. “I don’t have a job. I don’t want him to see me as a charity case.”
“You do have a job,” Piper insisted, waving her hand over all the books and papers they went over endlessly, day and night. “You’re helping me figure out my twisted heritage. If you want, I’ll pay you. If it’ll get you the hell out of here.”
Evelyn laughed. “I’m not taking your money, that’s worse than being Sam’s charity case.”
“Baby mamas are different from charity cases. Didn’t you learn that when you got your degree? Sam has an obligation to you.”
She said it playfully, but Evelyn’s gut twisted. An obligation. Was that how he saw her? He was like that, honorable and good. It was one of the reasons she ... Oh, no.
He was doing the right thing. She was a single mother, homeless and penniless in a foreign land. A tear trickled out of her eye, and then another. She and Magnus had become the right thing to do.
A sharp thump on the side of her head shook her out of her dark spiral and she hurriedly wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweater, smiling shakily at Piper.
“I was just teasing,” Piper said, shaking her head at her. “You’re not an obligation to anyone. And I’m serious, if you want a salary. Lord knows I monopolize all your time.”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said, feeling like she ought to jump at the offer. Her advanced degree in gender studies wouldn’t be turning up any jobs for her any time soon, not in their tiny village. She opened one of the books in front of her and found the page she’d marked. “Anyway,” she continued, “I’d worry about you.”
“I lived here alone for six months before Lachlan came back,” she said, her voice hitching on the name of her eighteenth century Highlander love. He hadn’t made it back from the mission to save Magnus. Yet. Evelyn reminded herself to add the yet. He would come back. He had to, for Piper’s sake. She was bereft without him. “And Mellie lives here now, too,” she finished, her voice falsely chipper and eyes too bright.
“I’m not leaving,” Evelyn said.
“You’d be twenty minutes away,” Piper said. “Come every day to help me study.” Piper reached across the table and took her hand, her gaze steady and vivid. “I know you want to go, and it’s okay. It’s better that you’re with Sam.” She dropped her hand and nodded once.
Evelyn felt a little shaken in her resolve. “I don’t want to abandon you,” she said.
“Evie, don’t make me verbally abuse you. I learned a ton of new swear words from Lachlan’s brother.”
Evie relaxed when she heard the genuine support in Piper’s voice. She’d been so afraid Piper would be offended that she wanted to move out. That was silly, of course. Piper wasn’t that easily offended. You practically had to poke her in the eye to get a rise out of her. She settled back in her chair and wondered nervously about what it would be like to move back in with Sam.
“It might be all right,” she said, trying to convince herself. “It’d be temporary after all. It’
s not like I’ll be tempted to, er, you know.”
She blushed. Why had she brought that up? Why had it crossed her mind? This was an arrangement of convenience, plain and simple. If there was still the least bit of sexual tension between them, she’d never consider moving back in. Those days were well and truly over. She cleared her throat, trying to make a joke of it, and also to convince herself. “I mean, he’s got that awful beard now.”
Piper’s eyebrows shot into her bangs. “I know, right?” she said with wicked glee. “He looks like nerd Jesus.”
Evelyn frowned, stung for Sam. “Well, I wouldn’t say that,” she said.
“If the beard fits,” Piper said with a shrug.
Evelyn narrowed her eyes, realizing what she was up to. “I see what you’re doing. Trying to get me to defend him. You have to let it go, Piper. We aren’t ever getting back together.”
She had to look down because tears sprang to her eyes as the words left her mouth. She couldn’t look at Piper for a second while she got herself under control. She closed her eyes and tried to decide. An image of Sam tucking Magnus into his crib at night flashed briefly in her mind. It would be best for the baby. She could look for a job at her leisure, continue to help out Piper. She wouldn’t jump at every sound at Sam’s house. It was the best possible plan.
“Well, you’ll have to help me pack,” she said.
Chapter 2
Evelyn stopped at the corner and and looked at Sam’s snug stone cottage with trepidation. For a few wonderful months, it had been her home. Some of her happiest memories were under that picturesque thatched roof, before everything went to hell.
The house was relatively new according to Castle on Hill standards, had been built in the 1950s. It was utterly charming, like a perfect postcard sent straight from any one of her daydreams. She stared at the winding pebble walkway that was lined with various clumps of wild roses and brambly berry bushes, let her gaze drift to the ivy covered walls. She found it difficult to breathe.
It wasn’t as if he still tried to get them back together anymore. Ever since she’d come to the heartbreaking realization that she didn’t think she could trust Sam, their relationship slowly degraded into nitpicky fights. After Magnus was born, she panicked, knowing she couldn’t commit to someone who wasn’t one hundred percent honest, and moved into Piper’s estate, flatly refusing to talk about it with anyone and rebuking all of Sam’s efforts to get her back.
Now that she’d been away for a month Sam never brought it up anymore, never even so much as asked her to a friendly lunch. Just picked up and dropped off. Sure, they could spend hours talking about how fantastic their baby was, and huddle together over each other’s phones showing off new pictures, but that was the extent of their intimacy these days.
She sighed, thinking about the last time he’d shown her a video he’d taken of Magnus struggling to roll over. The sun had caused a glare on the screen and they’d had to stand close to each other, Sam’s hand raised above her head to block the light. His shoulder had brushed against hers and she could smell his clean, woodsy scent. She spent the whole time he watched the video watching him. His broad smile and the pride in his eyes made her almost bite right through her bottom lip to keep from turning his face to hers and kissing him.
Why on earth had she decided to live with him again? He was downright dangerous. The chemistry she felt for him was not a replacement for an honest, real relationship, she reminded herself firmly. Why on earth was she doing this?
Oh yes, because she didn’t feel safe living in the ancient castle where her son had been recently kidnapped from his crib, she had no job and no money and was too proud to let her billionaire best friend give her a pity salary for doing something she was doing out of friendship. And she couldn’t go back to Texas. Whatever Sam was, he was a great dad. It would be too cruel to separate him from Magnus.
So, just put your foot on the gas and pull into the driveway, Merkholtz, she told herself. Her foot stayed where it was, firmly on the brake. She glanced down at her watch. He had taken the afternoon off from his book shop to help her unload and was expecting her.
She chewed on the inside of her lip. Magnus had way more stuff than her, and it was all mostly already transferred over. Once she’d begrudgingly told Sam she was taking him up on his offer to stay in his spare bedroom until she found a job, he’d begun taking things that very night. As for her belongings, she had a big overstuffed suitcase, a box of books (that she’d mostly bought at his shop), and a pile of really amazing bedding she’d grown quite addicted to and that Piper insisted she take.
Oh damn it. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel when Sam came out onto his front porch. He was clean shaven and her heart fluttered at his handsome beard-free face. Had he done that for her? She made no bones about her dislike of the beard. She had almost forgotten what a nice face he had.
He wore his most tattered jeans with a flannel shirt open over a green t-shirt. He was more muscular than he had been, and the stretchy fabric strained against his chest. Was he doing extra workouts to ease the stress of their breakup? It looked good on him. And she knew the color would accentuate his beautiful green eyes.
Don’t look him in the eye, she warned herself. Then she pinched her arm, because she was being an idiot. They were adults. Co-parents. Friends, she hoped. Why did he have to look so … so strokable.
“Hey,” he said, slapping his hands onto the window frame of the car and smiling guilelessly at her.
She jumped and the car lurched forward when her foot slid off the brake. “Sorry,” she said, continuing to pull forward slowly as he walked alongside the car. “Didn’t know if you were home yet.”
“Mags is sleeping,” he said, looking into the bed of the truck she’d borrowed from the estate. “Is that it?” he asked.
She stopped in his driveway and got out more briskly than she meant to, nearly bowling him over with the car door. “I guess so,” she said. “You’ve already got most of the baby stuff. I left some things over there for when I take him with me during the day.”
His eyebrows furrowed and she bristled, preparing for an argument. If he thought she was never going back to the castle, or never taking Magnus with her when she went, it was going to get real ugly, real fast.
He merely took her suitcase and swung it over the side of the truck. She grabbed her big bag of bedding and followed him through the house. The smooth plaster walls of the entry hall had new pictures of Magnus tacked up in between the framed newborn photos she’d hung before she moved out. Her heart squeezed that she felt so instantly at home and she dropped her gaze to the threadbare runner that covered the original wood floors, so smoothly worn they glowed in the soft overhead light.
“Where’s Hoover?” Sam asked, taking her suitcase past the guest bedroom and putting it in front of the door to his own room.
Her eye started to twitch. Had he expected her to bring the dog? He hadn’t wanted the dog in the first place, so she left him at Piper’s as a concession. She was being the bigger person, and he was asking her where the dog was as if he was disappointed? And why the hell was he putting her suitcase down in front of his bedroom door?
“I left him at Piper’s,” she said through gritted teeth. She tried to count to ten but only made it to three. “Because you didn’t want him,” she finished, inwardly wincing.
“What?” he asked as if she was off her rocker. She hated that tone of his. But his face looked truly confused. “I thought you were bringing him. I even left a sandwich crust on the floor for him,” he said with a laugh.
She scowled at him in disbelief, using all her restraint not to say something rude.
He took her by the arm and led her into the kitchen, pointed at the floor. It was how the dog got his name. He hoovered up everything that fell onto the ground, sometimes even if it was inedible. With a shrug, he picked up the crust and tossed it in the bin.
“You can bring him another day, if you want,” he said quietly.
>
Oh, hell no. He was stealing the high road out from under her feet! She was the one making the concession in leaving Hoover behind, and now Sam was being all sweet and telling her to bring him! And she had to now, because Magnus adored him, and well, so did she.
With a deeply suppressed sigh, she nodded and smiled, feeling like her teeth were going to dry out. She should thank him. Her lips wouldn’t form the words.
He ran his hand through his hair, a familiar gesture that told her he was as uncomfortable as she was. It took all her willpower not to reach out and smooth the mess he made of it. She could barely remember what the strands felt like between her fingers, but she used to like playing with the softly curling ends that lay at the back of his neck.
She swallowed hard in the silence of the kitchen. Wait a damn minute. Was she mad at him or did she want to run her fingers through his hair? She needed to get it together.
An imaginary countdown started up in the back of her mind. Things were about to get awkward in three, two …
“Are you hungry?”
“I guess I’ll start unpacking.”
They both spoke over one another and stood there staring until Sam’s lip quirked up and Evelyn had to abruptly turn away. How could they have been completely in love, lived together, had a baby and then come to this? It made her stomach churn. No, she wasn’t hungry.
She dragged her suitcase back toward the guest bedroom, but he waved his hands for her to stop.
“I thought you and the baby should have the big bedroom. I moved my things already.” He held up the baby monitor and pointed to the closed door of the master bedroom, reminding her that Magnus was napping in there. Her eye twitched again.
“Thanks,” she said. “That was nice of you.” She meant it, she honestly did, but the words came out sounding hollow, as if she were thanking the kid at the grocery for taking her bags out to the car.
Without having to unpack, and already declining a meal, she was left with nothing to do. She was about to pretend she still had things at the castle and flee. She could bring back a chair or something, Piper wouldn’t care.
Sam and Evie - A Lost Highlander Novella Page 1
