Proud wasn’t the word for how she felt about her work at the camp. Penance was more accurate. She was proud of her counselors and the clinical staff and how they helped the kids who came here. She was proud when she watched a teen overcome horrendous odds because they were determined to do better. Sometimes it felt like her biggest personal achievement had been opening her checkbook.
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
She darted a glance at Trevor, who was studying her with a look on his face that made her think he could read her mind. It was like he was privy to all the deep, dark places she hid. No one looked any deeper than the surface, so she’d gotten used to dealing in facades.
Trevor had always had the ability to draw back the curtain and see her true self. It had scared her when they were younger, and it was even more terrifying now. With a few words and a gentle look, he could make her believe that she was more than she knew herself to be. That despite all the scars and pain and ugliness of her past, she was lovable on the inside.
It was a belief that could ruin her.
“I know who I am, Trevor. We both do.”
“I wonder about that. You’re good with Grace. Now that you’ve stopped freaking out, anyway.”
She pushed his arm and, like the wall of muscle he was, he didn’t budge. “I don’t freak out.”
“Total freak-out mode earlier,” he muttered and nudged her back. “I appreciate that you didn’t throw me under the bus when you had the chance.” He waved to Grace when the girl lined up another shot.
“I don’t agree with what you did, but I understand it. You didn’t want me in your life. Why would you want me in hers?”
“You’re the one who left.”
Her mouth dropped open at the accusation in his tone. “I asked you to come with me,” she whispered. “I wanted you to—”
“Never mind,” he said, shaking his head. “The past doesn’t matter now.”
If only that were true, Sam thought. If only the past and the mistakes and the memories didn’t color every moment of her life.
“Who wants hot chocolate?” a voice called, and she turned to see Mary Henderson, the caretaker’s wife, standing on her front porch. The Hendersons lived in a small house near the archery range, which was on the far end of the camp’s cleared property. Sam owned over fifty acres, but much of it was forest they used for hiking trails and short backpacking trips for some of the older campers. The developed section consisted of the main cabin with the large rec room, dining hall, and kitchen. Surrounding that were girls’ and boys’ sleeping cabins, the counselors’ cabin, and the small cottage the clinical staff used as an office during the summer. Sam borrowed a desk there for her paperwork, but she’d never claimed it as hers.
A shed near the edge of the lake housed the kayaks and canoes they used during the summer, and beyond the cabins was an area under the trees with picnic tables and a wide clearing used for volleyball and tetherball. Down the path past the main camp was the archery range, and a ropes course sat at the edge of the trees.
David and Mary lived up here during the off-season then spent most of the summer visiting friends and family in their RV. It was the perfect arrangement, and Sam had come to think of the older couple as a surrogate family.
“Can we stay for hot chocolate?” Grace asked Trevor, walking toward them with the bow in her hand.
“We can stay a little while,” he agreed. “Then we have to go. It’s a school night and you have homework.”
She groaned. “Not much.”
Sam called to Mary that they’d be right up and then turned to Grace. “Your dad’s right,” she said, even though she would have preferred to keep the girl with her longer. Something expanded in her chest each time she looked at Grace. Something unfamiliar and tender was filling the empty spaces inside her. “School is most important.”
Grace pinned Sam with a look so like one of Bryce’s that the hair on the back of Sam’s neck stood on end.
“Why?” the girl asked. “You left school early, and I’m going to model, too, so—”
Sam didn’t have time to register her shock at that bombshell before Trevor exploded.
“Don’t start with the modeling business again, Grace. You’re staying in school and going to college. You have more to offer the world than your face.” He leveled a look at Sam. “Tell her,” he demanded. “Tell her modeling is a stupid idea. She’s smart and talented. She doesn’t need to sell herself to be a success.”
More to offer . . . sell herself . . .
Those might be Sam’s most secret fears, but they belonged to her. No way in hell was she going to stand here and allow Trevor Kincaid to call her . . .
“Did you just call me a prostitute?” she asked, her voice an angry hiss.
Trevor blinked. “Of course not. I said . . . I meant . . .”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Um . . . Dad, you kind of implied she was a hooker.”
Sam watched as he rounded on his daughter. “How do you even know what a hooker is?”
“Oh. My. God.” Grace gave him a withering look. “I’m thirteen, not three. I’ve seen Pretty Woman.”
He pointed to the caretaker’s house. “Go drink hot chocolate.”
“But Dad—”
“Now, Grace,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I’m going to be a model,” Grace said to Sam, ignoring her father’s hulking presence. It was hard to imagine the girl could be so unaffected by his temper, but Grace seemed to easily ignore his anger. “I’d like your help with modeling. If you think I have what it takes?”
“I think you’re beautiful,” Sam whispered. It wasn’t an answer to the question, but it seemed to satisfy Grace.
Shooting a final glare at her dad, the girl stomped off toward Mary’s front porch.
Sam picked up the bow and quiver of arrows, and moved past Trevor toward the storage shed where they kept the archery equipment.
A moment later he was at her side, easily keeping up with her long strides. At close to six feet tall, Sam was used to being able to outwalk almost anyone, but Trevor had several inches on her and had no trouble matching her pace. It would be easier to pretend he didn’t exist if her body wasn’t so hyperaware of him. Today he wore a long-sleeve deep blue Henley fitted across his broad chest, and dark jeans that hugged . . . she wasn’t going to think about the parts of his body they hugged. She wouldn’t think about his body at all.
“You know I don’t think you were a hooker,” he said into the silence.
Sam forced air in and out of her lungs. Although the camp was only an hour from downtown Denver, the air was cleaner up here. She tried to let the fresh scent of damp pine calm her, but he’d hit a long-buried nerve. “Stop using that word,” she said, her lips barely moving. She was afraid if she opened her mouth too wide she’d begin shrieking like an old-time fishwife.
She heard the muttered curse that was his response but kept walking. Kept her focus on the task at hand, on her burgeoning relationship with her niece, on the need to fix the damage to her camp. Anything but the hurtful words he’d spoken. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more—the implication or the fact that deep inside she believed it to be true. She’d locked away her mistakes but still held the key to that particular door close to her heart. It was so simple to pull it out and release those memories to swirl around her, tainting who she’d worked to become.
Propping the bow against the shed’s stained-wood exterior, she fumbled with the latch. Damn her trembling fingers.
Trevor’s hand settled over hers, squeezing gently.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It was a jackass thing to say, and I’m sorry.”
She didn’t pull away her hand, but she wouldn’t look at him, either. “Part of you believes it.”
“That’s not—”
“Part of me believes it,” she said with a harsh laugh, yanking on the latch and in doing so, shaking off his touch. “I may not want to hear it, but that doesn’t make it
less true. It was another form of selling myself . . . my face . . . a promise of something that wasn’t real. And the way I acted supported it. God, the things she’s seen if she’s Googled me.”
She opened the door and stepped into the shed, wiping down the bow and placing it in its case on the shelf. The familiar movements settled her frayed nerves. When she turned, Trevor was blocking her way out.
He moved closer, crowding her, and then reached for her when she would have turned away again. “You’re real and you’re not the person you were before,” he said, cupping her face with his hands.
They were warm, the pads of his fingers slightly callused. Her eyes drifted closed as a thousand sparks buzzed along her skin, a tremor of awareness moving up and down her body, lighting the dormant fires of need and want she’d safely buried.
Nothing about Trevor was safe.
“Look at me, Sam.”
She did, meeting the intensity of his pale blue eyes. The golden slivers that ringed them seemed to glow with desire as he looked at her. Desire for her.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “You got out of that town. Away from your mother and all the bad shit that filled her world. You made a life for yourself, and I can’t fault you for that.”
“It could have been different for all of us. I wanted to take you with me. I wanted you and Bryce both to—”
“I know, honey.” He leaned in, brushed his mouth across hers. The touch was featherlight, and his lips were soft, completely at odds with the hard strength of the rest of him. His hands cradled her, making her feel cherished. The gentle pressure of his mouth made her feel wanted.
It was embarrassing how much she craved this wanting. Trevor was the only man who had ever expected her to be more than a pretty face. He saw her, and while it was terrifying to think she might come up lacking, it was also exhilarating.
Despite her fears and doubts, she deepened the kiss. She invited him in, shyly tangled her tongue with his. He moaned, and the sound was like a hundred gold stars for good behavior. It gave her confidence to press her body to his, to twine her fingers in the soft hair at the nape of his neck.
Not surprisingly, they fit together perfectly. In this way, they always had. His kiss turned demanding and Sam met each of his silent claims with a demand of her own. Desire swirled through her and when his hand skimmed down her neck to trace the hollow at the base of her throat, she sucked in a breath.
And wanted.
God, how she wanted.
More. Everything. To pretend like nothing else mattered except this moment.
But it did.
Sam couldn’t forget the past that had shaped her and the fact that he’d kept her from her sister’s child.
Gasping for air, she pulled away, pressing her fingers to lips that were swollen from Trevor’s kisses.
“We have to get back to Grace,” she said, ignoring the rough edge to her voice. The need still pulsing through her.
Trevor gave a small nod and placed his hands on his hips. His chest rose and fell in the same way hers did, and it was a slight comfort to know she wasn’t the only one struggling to regain control at this moment.
They were silent as they left the shed. Trevor shut the door and locked it but took Sam’s hand as they moved toward the path. The sky was beginning to streak with patterns of pink and gold. She felt suspended in this quiet corner of her property, the forest around them lending to the intimacy of the moment.
“I will apologize for a lot of things when it comes to you,” he said, lifting her knuckles to his mouth. “But not for kissing you.”
“We shouldn’t go there,” she whispered, even though she wanted to go there so badly it left a gaping hole in her heart.
“We’ll see about that,” he answered with a wry smile. “Getting my hands on you seems to be the only thing I’m clear about right now. That and the fact that Grace will not pursue modeling.”
Sam drew her hand away from his, agitation skittering up her spine. She retraced her steps along the snow path, Trevor at her side. “She’s young still. Thirteen-year-old girls aren’t known for their commitment to one particular career path. She might not even like the business. Things have changed quite a bit since—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupted. She didn’t need to look at him to know that his whole body was tense. She could feel the tension rolling off him like the tide. “She won’t get the opportunity to try. You need to tell her she’s not right for it and you won’t help her.”
Sam stopped at the edge of the archery range and crossed her arms over her chest. “Excuse me?”
His eyes narrowed. “This is nonnegotiable, Sam. My daughter isn’t going to model and I’m not going to let you fill her head with any ideas to the contrary.”
“She’s the one who brought it up.”
“You need to end it.”
“Is that a request or a command?”
His big shoulders lifted. “Call it whatever you want. It’s my decision.”
“And not Grace’s?”
“You know what that world can do.” His tone had gone steely. “You saw what it did to Bryce and what it almost did to you.”
“Bryce had other issues,” she argued. “Don’t blame everything that happened to her on modeling.”
“Are you saying you think it’s a good idea for Grace?”
“I’m saying you can’t order me around like you own me.”
“You wonder why I didn’t want her to know you?”
She poked a finger at his hard chest. “Because it would prevent you from having your perfect baby way on every decision?”
“I don’t want my perfect baby way. I want to keep my daughter safe.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt her.”
“I believe you mean that, but modeling will hurt her.”
It was like arguing with a brick wall, but Sam couldn’t stop challenging him. She had plenty of misgivings about her former career, but anger at Trevor’s reaction trumped her doubts. “You don’t know that.”
He leveled a quelling glare at her. “I know I’m her father and you are not her mother. Before this week you were nothing to her.”
Well, that ended the argument with a total knockout. Sam felt blindsided by the truth of that statement. Grace belonged to him, and Sam was on the outside.
“You made sure of that,” she whispered. “Grace is a beautiful girl and . . .” She took a breath. The girl had found her, and Sam wouldn’t let anyone take that away. “I won’t encourage her, but I’m not going to lie to her about her chances in the industry. She’s not Bryce, Trevor. She’s not me. You must see how much of you she has in her.”
His mouth thinned and he shook his head. “It’s not going to happen.”
She threw up her hands. “Smart move, Dad. Give a teenage girl an ultimatum. Forbid her to do the one thing she wants. See how that turns out for both of you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“That’s not taking chances, Trevor. That’s letting fear run your life.”
Before he could respond, she turned and stomped up the trail toward the caretaker’s house. Despite what he made her feel—the way his kiss brought her to life—Trevor wasn’t her priority. She had to keep calm and stay focused on her camp and Grace. It was the only way to ensure none of them got hurt.
CHAPTER SIX
“Can you explain why I’m paying you a crap load of money to build my house and you’re sticking me with some lackey?”
Trevor took a steadying breath the following Monday morning and adjusted his sunglasses before turning to Jolene Stone, the owner of the flagship lot on which they stood. “Dale Rogers is one of the best construction foreman working in the state of Colorado, and I trust him as much as I trust myself. To call him a lackey is insulting to both of us.”
“He’s not you,” Jolene said with a frown that Trevor would have described as petulant if the woman wasn’t a thirty-something business owner and recent heir to the most
revered development company in the county.
“I’m here now, at your request,” Trevor said, keeping his voice steady by sheer will. He was due to meet with an electrician at Bryce Hollow Camp in fifteen minutes and was going to be lucky to get over there in thirty. “Do you have a problem with our progress?” He gestured to the structure, which was rapidly starting to look like a house due to a week of great weather and the hard work of his framing crew.
“Well, no,” Jolene stammered, kicking at the ground with the toe of one expensive high-heeled boot. “That’s not the point.”
“I assume you have one,” Trevor muttered. His mood had been black since that last conversation with Sam. She’d been avoiding him, and Grace was giving him the silent treatment.
He tried to tell himself it was for the best. He’d started work on the repairs to the camp’s main cabin with David Henderson’s help, and Grace had realized that if she took a different school bus route, she could get off at a stop very near the mile-long dirt road that led to camp.
Sam had volunteered to pick her up each day, and both Sam and his daughter made sure their time together wasn’t spent with him. He felt out of the loop and out of control, and dealing with Jolene’s unnecessary hissy fit wasn’t helping.
“The point is,” Jolene said slowly, moving slightly closer to Trevor. “This house is supposed to be the showpiece for my new development.”
“It will be,” Trevor agreed.
“It better be.” Jolene reached for his arm and squeezed, leaning into him. She wasn’t one for personal boundaries. “The whole reason I’m giving you a chance is because you understand my vision.”
“That’s true.” And it was. Even though Trevor didn’t particularly like Jolene Stone, he respected the environmentally sound construction principles she wanted to employ for this high-end subdivision. While Jolene’s father had developed pricey properties in mountain towns all over the state, the old man’s heyday had been before green building was a priority in the industry, and he’d never seen the need to change his building practices. Henry Stone had retired last year, and Jolene had taken over the family company. It had been a big deal for Stone’s daughter to be handed the reins of the business. She was determined to develop properties in a different way than her father. Trevor’s reputation in sustainable building preceded him, so shortly after he’d founded his company in Colorado Jolene had come calling.
Tell Me Again Page 6
