“Sam...” Rachel’s voice came out low and nearly incomprehensible. “That’s not what I want from you.”
She felt him freeze, felt his lips on her hair. “What do you want from me, darlin’? You want me to let you go? You want me to let you marry that guy? I’m doing it. Hell, I’m doing it, aren’t I?”
Rachel couldn’t have stopped herself from twining her arms around Sam’s waist if an army of police officers had ordered her not to. He was here, he was warm and safe, and he was kissing her, holding her. And they were alone...
“I’m not marrying Don,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest.
She felt strong fingers gently close around her chin. She tipped her head up to meet Sam’s gaze.
“You still haven’t met the man you could love, then?” he asked, sliding his thumb along her jawline.
Long seconds ticked by. She took a deep breath, but she didn’t drag her gaze from his own.
“I never said that,” she said quietly.
“That’s a lie, Rachel Allyn.” Sam’s words were hard, but his voice was whisper soft.
She shook her head slowly, her skin sliding against his fingers.
“I said I’d never met the right man, one I could love and who would love me back,” she offered.
Sam closed his eyes. She felt a shudder run through him. When he opened his eyes again, there was a dangerous glint in those deep blue depths. He tilted his head and lightly brushed her dry lips.
She swallowed hard.
“You turned me down when I asked you to marry me today, darlin’,” he said carefully. “Would that be because you don’t love me?”
Rachel thought she would never find her voice. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find her voice ever. Sam was staring at her, holding her in place simply by looking at her. She’d promised to offer him the truth, she wanted to simply answer his question, but the naked truth was so damning.
She took a deep breath, her effort bringing her breasts up against Sam’s chest. Licking her lips, she let out a sigh.
“I saw you watching me with Annie today,” she finally said. “Sam, I know how much your children’s happiness means to you. I know how it must have made you feel to see her hurt. You’d do anything for those babies. I would, too. I’d do almost anything, except—marry a man who didn’t love me.”
“You think I don’t love you?” Sam stepped forward, lightly nudging Rachel back. She found herself against a porch post, sandwiched between Sam’s hard body and a solid piece of wood. His legs straddled hers, but she wouldn’t back down. She tilted her head higher and stared at him dead-on.
“I think you love your child so much that you’d sacrifice everything for her, and I’m not blaming you for it, but Sam, I’ve been there. Two fathers, neither of whom seemed to love my mother. I swear I don’t know how she survived it, because she sure as death loved them. I don’t even know how I came out of the whole thing intact, except for the fact that she practically loved me to pieces and I had this whole family of babies who loved me back just as hard. But I was a child, Sam. I wasn’t a woman loving a man who didn’t really want me.”
“And you think I’m that same kind of man?”
When she nodded, Sam swore, an ugly word that he’d surely never use in the bright light of day. He took a step back, and Rachel felt as if her bones had turned to butter, as if the only thing that was holding her up was the hard wooden post behind her back. But she managed to put her hand up, to place her fingers over his lips to keep him from swearing again.
“I didn’t mean that as an insult, Sam. A man who cares so much about a child—how could I be offended by that? I think you’re a wonderful man, a kind man, a good man.”
“A very nice man?” he asked, repeating the words she’d used to describe Don.
With his gaze turned from hers the words flowed easier. Rachel even managed a smile at his offended tone. “More than a very nice man, Sam. I came here tonight to explain to you what you once said you wanted me to explain. The reason I ran away from you for so long, the reason I hid myself from you was because I was afraid that you pitied me. And—” She pressed harder on his lips when he started to shake his head and speak. “I know now that wasn’t true. I know you were just being Sam, just trying to help someone who needed it. But it wasn’t your help I wanted, Sam. That was never what I wanted.”
She turned her head away when his gaze locked on hers.
He didn’t ask what she wanted. By now he must know, but she licked her lips and made herself go on. “I’ve loved you all of my life, Sam, even when I was just a kid. I didn’t want you to know, to see. I’ve hidden it from you, maybe even from myself, but it’s always been there. I’ve always cared. That’s why I can’t marry you. I wanted you to know that it wasn’t you that was the problem. It’s me.”
Sam slid his hands against her cheeks, threading his fingers through her hair. “You think it’s a problem that you love me?” he asked, his voice thick and rough. “And what if I told you that I loved you, too?”
Her breathing stopped, her body gave an involuntary jerk. She forced herself to remember just how Sam had looked when he’d seen Annie hurting today. She tried not to remember the look in the child’s eyes herself.
“Sam,” she said, through the tears that were rising in her throat. “Annie wouldn’t be happy if she knew that things weren’t right between us.”
“You don’t believe that I love you?” Sam asked, dropping a kiss on her ear.
Rachel breathed in quickly, trying to ignore the sensitive nerve endings that Sam’s kisses were affecting.
She clutched the front placket on his shirt, asking him to look at her. “You told me that you’d never want love or marriage again...but I wouldn’t blame you, Sam, for wanting to marry a woman you thought would be a good mother for Janey and Zach and Annie. I just—”
“You just—don’t want to be that woman, even if you do love me to distraction?” Sam asked, leaning away and raising one lazy brow.
Sam was laughing at her. Rachel tipped her chin up a notch. She gave him the most disdainful frown she could muster, given the fact that she was still pressed tightly to his body. “I just want to know that I’m wanted for myself and not just for my way with a bowl of oatmeal, Sam,” she said. “I’m not sure I can believe—that is, I’ve known you so long and you—you never loved me before.”
Raking one hand up her arm, behind her neck, and cupping the back of her head in his palm, Sam studied her intently, as if he wanted to look right through her body and into her heart. “Does that mean you’re still saying no, Rachel?”
She closed her eyes, blotting out those blue eyes that could convince her to do almost anything. “It means I don’t know, Sam,” she admitted. “I’ve said what I came to say and I—I’d like to go home now.”
But when she started to open her eyes and step away, Sam didn’t move. Instead he leaned over, taking her lips with his own.
“Not this time, angel,” he whispered. “This time you don’t run. This time I’m not giving you the chance to slip away from me.”
Gently he guided her to the porch swing, easing her back into its depths.
“Wait here,” he said, looking sternly at her. “Don’t go. Don’t get up. If you do, rest assured that I’ll come after you. I’m not standing by silently while you walk away from me again, Rachel.”
“But where are you going?” she asked, as he pulled a pocketknife from his jeans and stepped off the porch into the darkness.
“I’m going to show you, Rachel,” he said, his voice deep and low. “I’m going to woo you, to try to win you. I’m going to do all that I can to prove to you that I want nothing more than to wed you. But I’ve never been a man who knew the words, so...”
He disappeared into the night.
Concerned, she started to rise. The chain on the swing jangled.
“Stay, Rachel,” she heard him say. “I don’t want to have to wake the kids, but I will if I have to follow y
ou. Please. Stay.”
She stayed. She sat. She heard him rustling in the darkness, moving around the house. Once she heard him swear softly in the night. He was gone a long time, so long that she began to wonder why she had come. He’d said that he loved her. Sam had said that he cared, but it was so hard to believe. She’d loved him for so many years without being loved in return.
And that was when she saw him, Sam standing just outside the circle of light, his body shadowed as he slid a single rose upon the edge of the porch.
“You were just a kid when we met,” Sam said, placing another rose beside the first. “But you were sweet and warm and pretty.”
He placed another rose next to the first two.
“I was dating Donna at the time, and...you were right before, when you said that she was very young. She was. So was I. We were all so very, very young.”
Another rose joined the first three.
“Sam?”
“Yes, love?”
Sam continued placing roses on the pile, one at a time. Slowly, very slowly.
“Sam, why are you doing this?”
He stopped, gazing up at her. “Because I ache for you, Rachel. I love you, and I want you to understand how deep that love goes, how much you mean to me. Even when you first came into my life, when you were still just reaching for adulthood, I always did find you absolutely enchanting. You fascinated me. I think I must have cared for you even when I thought you were too young. That’s why I was so upset with Donna that day. I don’t remember the words I said, but I definitely remember being angry with her and defending you. I never, ever thought I would be the one to hurt you with my careless comment.”
He placed another rose on the porch. And another.
“I wasn’t hurt, Sam. I was—”
Sam slowed his movements. He stared at her across the space that separated them, and Rachel could swear she felt that gentle look touch her like a caress.
“Shh. I know what you must have felt, love. Don’t defend me. I did hurt you, and I’ll always be sorry for that. And when you retreated from me, I guess I let my ego stand in the way. I should have chased you, way back then. I should have waited for you to grow up. Instead, I licked my wounds in silence. I married a woman who was way too young herself and made her pay for my own mistakes. I did way too many things wrong, but... don’t ever think that I don’t care. I care, Rachel. I do.”
Sam continued piling roses on the planks of the porch. Already there was a glorious scatter of loose pink and red and white blossoms carpeting the floor.
Rachel rose to her feet. She ignored the forbidding look on Sam’s face as he asked her to stay put and give him a chance to finish.
“I’m not a man who knows how to say the words, Rachel, but I’m trying. I am trying. You asked me if I was marrying you for my children. The answer is, I suppose, yes,” he admitted. “How could it not be, when everything I do in this world impacts them? I want a woman who could love them, too. And I don’t for one second believe you’d have it any other way.”
His eyes were filled with tension now. Rachel knew it was hard for him to admit that he wanted her for the kids, when there was every chance that his words would damn him in her eyes. She took another step closer to the man.
He added a rose to the collection. She noticed he’d snagged one of his fingers with a thorn, and as she reached the edge of the porch, she dropped to her knees and took her hand in his. She cradled it to her cheek.
“I do love you, Sam,” she whispered. “And I’ve made a few mistakes of my own.”
She felt his hand jerk against her skin. “Rachel. Dammit, Rachel, you don’t know how much I love you. So damn much. Do you really think I’d marry a woman just for my kids? Yes, I want them to have a good mother. I want them to have every blessed thing I could give them, but I wouldn’t wed a woman I didn’t love, heart and soul, not even for them. I know all too well that a marriage like that would never work. I thought I’d never want to marry again. I tried to tell myself I’d never love again, but I didn’t count on the woman I’d never really stopped loving in the first place. I didn’t know that it was going to kill me to let you go. I’m not sure I could have done it when it came right to the moment of watching you walk out the door. I think I would have done everything in my power to stop you.”
Rachel leaned forward then. She placed her arms around Sam’s neck as he lifted her from the porch and held her to his heart. “I thought I would have to leave you, Sam. I didn’t know how I could live here and never have your love. And,” she said, pulling back and frowning at him, “I never wanted to be just friends,” she admitted, letting her frown turn into a full-fledged smile.
Sam smiled back. He tilted her head and kissed the column of her neck. “Umm. What kind of a fool ever made that suggestion? Any idiot could see that I was totally incapable of being just friends with you. At least none of my friends would ever allow me to do this,” he said, lifting his head and taking her mouth with his own.
“Then they don’t know what they’re missing,” Rachel murmured, her lips sliding against Sam’s. She ran her hands through his dark hair and brought her mouth back to his. “I can’t believe you plundered Annie’s rose garden,” she said when she finally pulled away and stared at the multitude of flowers blanketing the porch.
“You think my daughter would object to me doing everything I could to show you how much you mean to me? To us? I suspect that if she’d thought it would have worked, Annie would have been out here herself. She would have raided every garden in Tucker, and so would I,” he admitted, lifting her off her feet and stepping up onto the porch with her in his arms.
Rachel rested her head against his shoulder. “So you’d commit illegal acts for me, would you?”
She felt the low rumble of laughter roll through Sam’s chest. “That and more, Rachel. I never before fought for a woman’s love or even wanted to. I certainly never stumbled around a dark rose garden fighting thorns before. But I would do much more than that, angel. I’ll spend my life proving to you just how much I care. You’re a different kind of woman, Rachel Allyn. My kind, and I’d do anything for you. Just you.”
“Just you, Sam,” Rachel agreed, raising her lips to his own. “It was always just you.”
The sun was just slipping up into the sky when Rachel looked up from her perch on Sam’s lap. She wondered how his back was going to feel, pressed against the hard boards of the swing all night. The porch was a veritable garden of roses.
“Wow!” Annie’s little voice rang out, and Rachel turned to see her coming out the door, flanked by two little sausage-shaped children in blue and pink sleepers.
“Wose,” Janey said solemnly, reaching for one of the blossoms.
Rachel sat up higher, ready to pull the little girl away from the thorns, but Annie was already there, instructing her sister in the dangers of “biting” flowers. Rachel’s sudden movement woke Sam, and he tightened his arms about her.
“Good morning, you little squirts,” he said to his children in that sandy, sleepy voice of his.
Annie looked at the way Rachel was perched on her father’s lap. She glanced down at the flowers scattered all over the place. Her eyes were wide, she chewed on her lip.
“What happened?” she asked hesitantly. “What are all the flowers for?”
Sam looked at Rachel, a question in his eyes. She smiled and took his hand, turning to Annie. “We’re going to have a wedding, Annie. Would that be all right?”
“You’re going to marry my daddy?”
The tentative question, the wary look about Annie, gave Rachel pause. Annie might not have wanted her to leave, but would she want to share Sam? Would she worry about Rachel taking her mother’s place?
“We were thinking about it,” Rachel said, ignoring the way Sam’s hand clamped down on her own. She wondered if he was holding his breath the way she was.
Suddenly a smile broke through Annie’s hesitance. She turned to Janey and Zach. “Rachel’s stayi
ng,” she announced with glee. “Rachel’s going to live with us.”
“Ra-chel,” Zach said, totally proud of himself.
Janey simply tromped across the bed of flowers and held up her arms to be picked up.
“Woses,” she repeated, when she was finally seated in the safe circle of Rachel and Sam’s looped arms, and Annie and Zach had both climbed up on the swing, too.
“Yes, roses, sweetie,” Rachel agreed. “What are we going to do with all these wonderful roses?”
Annie patted Rachel on the arm lightly. “We could put them in pots and take them to people, Rachel, couldn’t we? We could share them. Flowers are for sharing,” she said, repeating the words that Rachel had taught her.
Sam leaned down and kissed Rachel on the hair, on the cheek. “Love is for sharing,” he added.
And Rachel couldn’t have agreed with him more. As she leaned back into the arms of the man she loved, she knew that she had come home. Gathering her children close, she felt the warmth of Sam flowing through her as he tightened his arms about her.
Love had finally come out of hiding. Like a flower reaching for the sun, its partner in the dance of life, her heart turned toward the man who held her.
Rachel twisted in his embrace. With the twins now on her lap and Annie’s hand clasped in her own, she lifted her lips for Sam’s kiss. “You’re right,” she admitted. “So very right. Love—real love—can’t hide in the dark. It’s for sharing—for always.”
“Share,” Janey repeated, her voice a soft plea.
And Sam’s laugh was low and sweet in Rachel’s ears as they kissed their children and shared their love.
A Message from Myrna
Thank you for buying this book. Please consider visiting your favorite bookseller and leaving an honest review. Reviews, both positive and negative, are helpful to authors, and I very much appreciate the time that readers take to write them.
If you’d like to know more about when my books are coming out, please visit my blog at https://myrnamackenzie.blogspot.com/, my website at myrnamackenzie.com or my Facebook page at MyrnaMackenzieBooks. I’m also on Twitter at @MyrnaMackenzie.
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