Autumn Getaway (Seasons of Love)

by Gracen, Jennifer

She nodded wearily. “Yes, I do.”

  “Good. That’s a start. Now admit you want me too, as much as I want you.”

  She couldn't hold back a soft smile. “You know I do.”

  “Finally, you admit it.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m satisfied.”

  “Yeah, it only took you staying here through a mini-breakdown for me to admit it. Which means you’re as crazy as I am.”

  He laughed. “Nah, you’re not crazy. Just trying to protect yourself. And stubborn as hell.” His grin was playful. “But guess what? In case you hadn't figured it out yet, so am I.”

  They stood and looked at each other, a new unspoken dynamic blooming between them; something quiet and solid and sweet that washed over them both at the same time. Their eyes locked and the air seemed to still for a moment.

  Lydia broke it first. She turned back to the mirror and sighed at her reflection. “Well, I have to redo my whole face, as you can plainly see.”

  “Why?” Sam grinned. “Your face is fine.”

  She laughed caustically. “Now you’re pushing it.”

  “Come here,” he said, his voice a warm caress.

  She went to him. He placed both hands on either side of her face. His dark eyes swept slowly over her features before he smiled and kissed her very softly, with lingering tenderness. Her heart soared, and her mouth opened under his to kiss him back. She whispered his name and melted into him. He just felt so damn good. She felt safe in his arms, and for the moment, she chose to let herself enjoy it.

  Holding her close, they kissed for a few minutes before he released her. “Go on, fix your makeup. We can still get back downstairs in time.”

  Lydia pulled back to gape at him. “Downstairs? To the brunch? Look at me, I’m a mess! I’m not going down there!”

  “Sure you are,” he said quietly, his eyes not leaving hers. “We’re going down together. It’s Ryan and Melanie’s wedding brunch, and I promised her that I’d find you, and bring you to her. Donna and Kathryn are worried, they couldn’t reach you. And I have to admit—I’m starving.” He grinned as he added, “And since I know the last thing you ate was a strawberry about eight or nine hours ago, I’m thinking you’re probably starving too.”

  Unable to rein it in, a gentle smile lit up her face as she thought back to what he’d mentioned, when he’d fed her the berry in bed and kissed her so sweetly… Sam saw the look on her face, knew she was remembering, and smiled too.

  “Come on, get ready,” he coaxed. “I’ll just hang out while you do.”

  Giving in wordlessly, she moved past him to retrieve her cosmetics bag from the desk, then returned to the bathroom and turned on the extra light above the mirror. Sam went and sat on the closed lid of the toilet, apparently making himself comfortable. He grinned up at her and said casually, “So. How we doin’?”

  Lydia wanted to laugh, but was drained from her ferocious crying jag; all she could manage was a wry smile. “We’re doin’,” she nodded. “We’re doin’.”

  “Okay, good.” He was quiet as he watched her open a small, dark compact and begin to powder her face, using enough of the foundation powder to hide the blotches on her cheeks, which were already fading. Soon, they were gone altogether, and her face was smooth and even again.

  “You’re just going to sit there and watch me?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “Why not?”

  Her eyebrows lifted and she smirked, but she said nothing. She took out her blush and brushed some light brown powder across her cheekbones to add some color to her pale face. “I know this plea is going to fall on deaf ears, but don't get into an argument with your brother over me. It's not worth it. You and I… we're okay now. So don't bother with it, Sam.”

  “Are you going to tell me anything he said to you?” Sam asked.

  “No. You don't want to know. And I just want to forget it.”

  Sam shook his head in dismay. “I'm gonna kill him.”

  Lydia sighed. “I think we should all just let it go.”

  “I think I should throw him into Lake Michigan.”

  She couldn't help but chuckle at that. “Can I watch?”

  “You bet,” Sam said with a grin.

  She put away her blush, and her expression turned pensive. “Can I ask you something? Totally unrelated to you and me?”

  “Sure.”

  Her eyes stayed on her own reflection; she didn't meet his eyes in the mirror as she asked softly, “How long did it take you to get over losing your wife? I mean, really over it? If you can ever truly do such a thing.”

  Sam looked thrown; he obviously hadn’t expected a question about him, much less a question about him and Chelsea. But he recovered quickly and answered in a quiet, even tone, “Well, I'll always miss her when I think of her. It just doesn't hurt so much anymore when I do.” He considered for a minute. “I think that in some cases, it's more that you get past something, as opposed to getting over it. There's a big difference. And while I'm past all of it, I'll never be completely over what happened. She was my first love, she was my wife. It was… life changing.”

  He shifted on his seat, cleared his throat. “I really am past it now, but you have to know that it took me a very long time to get to this point. Chelsea's illness was a long, brutal process, and it beat the hell out of me. I was totally drained after she died… I was deeply in mourning, angry at the world, lost in my grief.” He glanced at her, saw she was spellbound, and continued.

  “So, as you know, I went to Europe for a while, traveled around… I was in a fog for months. Then I went back home, and was still pretty numb for a while. I threw myself into my career. Work, work, work. That was it for me, for a long time. I wasn't very social. Barely even saw my friends at first. And I didn’t go on a date for almost two years after she passed… and when I did, the first one? It was a horror show.”

  Lydia just nodded somberly as she paid attention.

  “But there’s a big difference between your situation and mine, if you were wondering how long it takes to get over a major hit,” he said. “I was still in love with Chelsea when she died, and I didn’t want to lose her. You said you’re not in love with Matt anymore, and the divorce was your idea. So, even though you’re hurt and angry, and the situation does suck, you’re a hell of a lot better off than I was, believe it or not. Which is one of the reasons I know you’ll be fine. You're already mostly past it, and one day, you'll even get over it too.”

  “Wait, wait. I’m not comparing my situation to yours,” Lydia said with gentle force. She turned to look at Sam directly. “I would never do that. What you went through was so much harder, devastating, just unthinkable… I wouldn’t disrespect you, or your wife's memory, that way. Please know that.”

  The corner of Sam’s mouth lifted in a half smile of appreciation, and he nodded. “Okay.”

  “But what you said, about mourning someone or something you've lost…” She took a lip liner pencil out of her cosmetic bag and fidgeted with it as she said, “I think that’s what hurts the most, after the actual end of something, for anyone. Mourning the loss of what might have been… sometimes, just mourning the idea of someone, or something. I mean, I’m not mourning the end of my marriage; it wasn’t a very good one to begin with. But I think I’ve been mourning the loss of our family: thinking about Andy, and if he’d grown up with his mommy and daddy together, and would there have been more children, and wondering what if things had gone differently…”

  She shrugged. “The regret, the guilt, the anger, the what-ifs… that’s what’s been dragging me down the most. I admit it. I didn't think I was still able to be hurt by thinking about things Matt did or didn't do. But you said a few buzzwords, lit the match to my powder keg today, and I went off, didn't I?” She shook her head. “Then again, maybe I’m not even making any sense, or just being completely self-indulgent. Or both. Probably both.”

  “No. You’re making sense,” Sam said. “And you’re not being self-indulgent. You’r
e being… introspective. Wistful. Reflective. That's different. And very healthy. You’re not hiding from your pain, you’re thinking about what happened and dealing with it. Maybe you’re letting yourself over think it and drown in it sometimes, but you’re still dealing with it. Which is a thousand times better than not dealing with it. You know what I mean?”

  She nodded and turned back to the mirror, outlined her lips with the pencil, and then filled them in. It was a soft, neutral shade. She studied her reflection for a moment and was relieved to see she looked better already. “Amazing what a little makeup can do,” she quipped. “I look semi-alive again.”

  “You were fine,” he said.

  She finally laughed. “You are such a liar!”

  He shrugged, shot her a crooked grin. “I know what I saw.”

  She shook her head at him as she rifled through her cosmetics once more. Finding her brown eyeliner pencil, she leaned in closer to the mirror to carefully outline one lid, then the other. “You know, most women wouldn’t let you sit and watch them construct their face so soon. Some wouldn’t ever let a man watch them transform themselves.”

  “You’re right,” Sam grinned. “But then again, you’re not just any woman, like you said last night.”

  “Yeah, I’m a special kind of bedlam,” she said with dry sarcasm. “Stick around and you’ll never be bored, I can at least promise you that.”

  He smiled warmly, a twinkle in his eyes. “Sounds good to me.”

  She found her mascara and carefully applied it to the long eyelashes of one eye, then the other. Her golden-brown eyes seemed to stand out and glow once the lashes went from light copper to black.

  “Ta-da,” she pronounced in a droll tone, turning to him. She batted her lashes at him. “Magic! I have eyes again.”

  “And, honestly,” Sam said, “they’re the most beautiful eyes I’ve seen in a long time.”

  She smiled demurely, flattered. “Thank you.”

  He stood up and looked her over. “Well, you do good work. You’re gorgeous, a vision. Ready to go?”

  She laughed. “I need to dry this mop,” she said, lifting a lock of her still damp hair. “It’s half dry already, it shouldn’t take too long.”

  “Alright,” he said. He went out to the bedroom. He heard the blow dryer roar to life as he stepped to the window to survey the outdoor scenery from her room. She had a good view of the trees, the expansive lawn. He glanced at the skies. The day had started out overcast and gray, but now there were hints of brightness; the sun was breaking through the clouds.

  After a few minutes, Lydia stepped out into the bedroom. Her copper hair was dry, straight, a shiny curtain that flowed past her shoulders. “Almost done,” she said.

  He watched as she went to the dresser, pulled out a pair of socks, put them on quickly; went to the closet and slipped on her tan suede boots. Then she moved to the end table where her jewelry was laid out carefully. Sam continued to observe as she put on her watch, her earrings, a thin necklace, her freedom ring.

  “So here’s the thing,” he began with a casual grin. “I have to go to New York in two weeks for business.” This was a total lie. But he knew he could easily make it happen if he wanted to. “I’m supposed to just do a quickie, fly in on Friday morning, have meetings, fly back Friday night. But if I made a whole weekend out of it, stayed through to Sunday, would you go out with me?”

  She smiled in spite of herself, pressed her lips together. She couldn’t hide the spark of delight in her eyes, and he saw it.

  “Maybe you could ask Matt to watch Andy for the day, and you could come into the city on Saturday,” Sam continued, his grin broadening into a confident smile. “We could do something, spend some time together; let me take you out to dinner. I'd fly home Sunday afternoon. What do you think?”

  Lydia moved to where he stood by the window. She looked up into his face as she put her hands on his chest and murmured, “I think it sounds lovely, if you really want to do that.”

  “I really want to do that,” he assured her, and slipped his arms around her waist to pull her closer. Satisfaction lit his eyes and spread across his face. “So let's consider it a date. I get to New York on November sixth, so you’ll meet me on the seventh.” He kissed her with exquisite tenderness. Her heartbeat quickened, and she responded ardently. She kissed him back with enough force that his arms tightened around her, and his kisses steamed up, went deeper.

  She pulled away unwillingly, smiled against his lips, and murmured, “Do we really have to go downstairs?”

  He groaned and kissed her again. “Yes, we do. So stop being a temptress.”

  “Oh, some temptress,” she scoffed. “Crying all over you and going off like a lunatic. I still can’t believe you didn’t run for the door.”

  He pulled back to look at her intently. “I hope you’re not still waiting for that to happen.”

  “You still can go,” she whispered. “I would understand. C’mon, Sam. Last chance.”

  He shook his head, his dark eyes holding hers, his arms not releasing her. “No way. I’m where I want to be. This is your last chance to bail. So take it or leave it.”

  She pressed her lips together for a moment, then exhaled softly. “You’d just try to talk me out of it,” she joked. “You seem pretty tenacious; you’d probably hunt me down.”

  He grinned. “Yes, I am. And yes, I would. In a totally non-creepy, non-stalker way, of course.”

  She grinned back and said in mock resignation, “Then I might as well hang out.”

  “I knew you could be reasonable,” he said, flashing that captivating smile that had mesmerized her from their first meeting.

  Five minutes later, they were walking together, hand in hand, through the lobby towards the dining room.

  “You’re going to sit with your family,” Lydia informed Sam. “I’m going to sit with my friends. If anyone's even still there.”

  His eyebrows shot up as he smirked. “Is that an order?”

  “It’s a request,” she said mildly. “You need to spend some time with your family before they get mad at you. I need to spend some time with my friends before we all leave, because I don’t know when I’m going to get to see them again.”

  “Okay. That’s fine. But I have one condition.”

  She merely looked up at him in response.

  “After the brunch, we spend some time together before we have to leave. Alone. Maybe a walk outside?”

  “That sounds great.” A little lump formed in her throat, and she realized that she wasn’t yet quite ready to go back home, and didn’t want Sam to leave either.

  He smiled down at her as they reached the door to the dining room. “So? You ready?”

  “I’m good,” she said.

  “Okay then.” He opened the door and gallantly moved aside for her to enter first.

  “Such a gentleman. I really should go compliment your mother on your good manners,” she teased as she passed him. “That, and your smooth moves.”

  “Go ahead, I dare you.” He grinned at her back.

  “Lydia!” Melanie cried. She got up from her seat and ran across the room to clasp her friend in a tight hug. “Are you alright?” Melanie whispered hotly into Lydia’s ear as they embraced.

  “I’m fine,” Lydia murmured back as she returned the embrace. “I’m fine. Relax.”

  Melanie pulled back to examine her friend’s face more closely. Then she released her and demanded, “You’ll tell me everything later.”

  Lydia chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re here, so that’s all I care about.” Melanie looked up at Sam. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.” Sam smiled at both women, then said to Lydia, “I’ll catch you later, right?”

  “Yes,” Lydia said.

  Sam’s eyes lingered on her for a few seconds; then he leaned down to lightly kiss her on the cheek before turning away. He walked over to the table where his family still sat. Melanie raised her eyebrows and gave Lyd
ia a look of delighted approval. “Alright, you. Come. Eat something.”

  “Uncle Sam, Uncle Sam!” the three children cried happily, bouncing up and down in their seats. Sam smiled and kissed the top of each little head before sitting in the only empty chair, between Hope and his mother.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Sam’s father quipped. Henry’s eyes followed his younger son as Sam grinned at him, calmly settled into his seat, and spread his linen napkin across his lap. He took the pitcher that still held some orange juice and poured himself a glass. As he sipped silently, Paige and Marcy exchanged looks.

  “Sammy,” Alec began.

  “No.” Sam set his glass down and shot Alec a venomous glare. “You even look at her cross-eyed,” Sam warned his brother with instant fury, “and I’ll hand you your goddamn head. You stay away from her. Don't even look over at her. Got it?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Alec spat, tossing his napkin onto the table in aggravation.

  “Sam,” Marcy said, looking back and forth between her two sons. “Would you please tell us what’s going on?”

  Sam reached to the half empty platter of muffins and rolls in the middle of the table, chose a hearty looking blueberry muffin, and bit into it cheerfully. “I’m enjoying what's left of breakfast, Mom. Sorry I’m so late.”

  “Apparently I’m in the doghouse because I cared enough about my brother’s well-being to look out for him, and tried to help him,” Alec said sharply. “Heaven forbid.”

  “No one asked you to,” Sam snapped. “Especially me. So the next time you feel the urge to belittle someone on my behalf, fight that urge. I don't even know exactly what you said to her, but I have a pretty good idea. I am furious at you right now. So goddammit, Alec, from now on, I'm warning you: mind your own business.”

  “He never has before,” their father sighed. “Why would he start now?”

  On the other side of the room, Melanie brought Lydia over to her table to say a round of hellos before finally walking her over to where their friends sat, waiting.

  “I was getting ready to send the freaking cavalry out for you,” Donna huffed as Lydia sat down. “Where the hell were you?”