A Better Father (Harlequin Super Romance) (16 page)

With a deep breath and a prayer for strength, he started down
the stairs.

A creak from the upper step made Libby jerk and look toward the
hall. There was just enough illumination from the night-light at the bottom of
the stairs for her to follow Sam’s descent. One foot, two feet...calves, thighs,
the lower edge of his boxer shorts. She should be considerate and close her
eyes, but she was too busy absorbing the sight of the muscles she’d felt when he
tangled against her beneath the raft.

She gulped. Why on earth didn’t they make night-lights a bit
dimmer? Or, maybe better, a few watts brighter?

His feet hit the ground floor. She lingered over the sight of
his stomach and his chest, naked above his shorts. She’d seen his unclothed
chest many times, had felt the firmness of his pecs when he brushed against her
under the raft. But there was something about seeing him like this, in the
silence broken only by Phoebe’s soft snuffling, in the darkness that seemed to
obliterate the rest of the world, that made catching a glimpse of him all the
more tantalizing.

Sam Catalano had grown into one hell of a man.

His feet changed direction. He was turning toward the kitchen.
Libby wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen, but she did know she didn’t want
him to walk away. Not yet.

“Sam?”

Her whisper hung in the darkness before he turned back toward
her. She propped herself up on her elbow to watch him cross the space to where
she waited.

“What’s up?” he whispered as he crouched beside her.

“Thanks for your help tonight. It was...nice...knowing you were
there. To help, I mean.” She allowed herself a small sigh. “I’m, um, not really
used to that. You know?”

“I know.” His hand hovered near her cheek. She fought the urge
to press against it.

Silence filled the space between them, cut only by Phoebe’s
sudden snort from the other side of the room. His grin flashed bright in the
darkness. She bit down on her lip to hold back the giggles.

“So. You didn’t want Tanya up here tonight, huh?”

“It seemed the most prudent course, all things considered.”

“You think she planted a skunk in her cabin to get close to
me?” His leer was pure testosterone. “That’s kind of hard to believe, even for
someone as awesome as
moi.
”

She would slug him, except her palm might misinterpret the
signal and turn it into a caress. Instead, she fisted her hands around her
blanket and pushed herself upright. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it was too
convenient. Know what I mean? Something is making my antenna beep.”

“Hmmm.”

He must have said all he’d planned to say, because he put his
hands on his knee as if to stand. But she wasn’t ready for him to leave. Not
yet. Not when the darkness and the false intimacy made it so much easier to give
voice to her thoughts.

“Sam...I know about your parents.”

“Son of a— Did Brynn tell you?”

“No. I mean, she said something at the barbecue that made me
wonder, but don’t blame her, okay? She didn’t give me any details. I found those
on my own.”

Silence.

She rushed on, desperate to have it over now that she’d begun.
“I read about your mom being sick and your dad leaving.” She leaned closer.
“That was why you walked away from me back then, wasn’t it.”

He froze, his face blank in the bits of moonlight reaching
through the windows. With slow, deliberate movements, he rose from his spot on
the floor.

Don’t leave. Don’t go. I need the
truth.

As if he’d heard her, he stood only enough to reach the sofa.
She pulled her legs up to give him room to perch on the edge, elbows on his
knees, all his energy seeming to be centered on his clasped hands.

“Mom was supposed to pick us up from camp,” he said slowly.
“Me, Brynn and Trent. But instead of her, it was—our father. We asked him what
was up but he brushed it off. ‘Nothing,’ he said. Mom lost a crown and had to go
to the dentist. It sounded legit to me. I had other things on my mind.”

She palmed her cheeks. Could he feel the heat of her blush? She
could well imagine some of those
other things
that
had been filling his thoughts.

“So we drove home, and Mom wasn’t there, but hey. The dentist.
The old man sent Brynn and Trent over to the neighbor’s place to get Lukie.
While they were gone, he sat me down and told me what was really going on.”

Even the shadows couldn’t soften the sudden tightening of his
shoulders. “It was cancer, Lib. Bad. She’d been in the hospital for two weeks
already but wouldn’t let us know. She didn’t want to spoil our fun.”

Her hand slipped from her knees to his back as she leaned
forward, aching to embrace the scared kid he had been. “Oh, Sam. I’m so
sorry.”

“Yeah, well, that was just the intro, you know? Because after
spilling that all over me, our so-called father told me he was leaving.”

Oh, dear God. She had hoped it wasn’t true, hoped like hell the
coach’s memory was mistaken or that there had been some time between his
mother’s illness and his father’s desertion, or...

She didn’t realize she had moved until she rested her head
against the side of his shoulder. She tried to pull back from the heat, but his
hand came up as if reaching for her. So what could she do but slip her palm into
his?

“Good old Dad. Said he was no good in a crisis, that he would
just make things worse if he stuck around. We’d be better off without him, he
said. He was just waiting for us to come home so we could look after Lukie.” His
muscles bunched beneath her hand. “The selfish son of a bitch left without even
saying goodbye to the others.”

“I am so, so sorry. If I had known...”

“You had your own problems. Neither of us was in any shape to
help the other.”

“Maybe not,” she said softly. “And I do understand, Sam.
But...I would have liked the chance.”

There was a moment, as if he was weighing his answer, before he
said, “When I said there were things I regretted...that was the biggest.”

Sense told her she should let him go now. Between what he’d
said and what he hadn’t, she was swimming in a sea of emotions that needed time
and processing and distance. Add in her worries over what he was still hiding,
and the smartest move she could make would be to let him get up and do whatever
he had come downstairs to do.

But she needed sleep. She needed to know a little comfort after
a rotten night. She needed to know that five, ten years from now, when she
thought back to this moment, she wouldn’t curse herself for being chicken.

Most of all, she needed to touch Sam.

So she reached up, sliding her hand over his. She flattened her
palm over the cords in his arm and let it slide high, higher, urging him closer
to her. Her fingers brushed the hair at the nape of his neck and he rested his
hand gently on her waist and she smiled, not just with her mouth, but with
everything in her, because it felt so damned good to lean toward him and know
what was going to happen and know, really know, that it was the only thing she
could possibly do. And that even if she had a choice, she wouldn’t want it to
turn out any other way.

I refuse to regret this,
she
thought, and then her lips brushed his.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
HE
FIRST
TOUCH
WAS
SOFT
, tentative, a physical question
awaiting a response. Libby closed her eyes and let herself sink into the kiss,
into the feel of Sam’s lips against hers, into the warmth of his touch and the
shape of his mouth. He was the same but not, yet a part of her recognized him at
once as the
something
she’d been searching for in
all the kisses she’d shared with other men in the past twelve years.

It’s Sam,
a voice whispered in her
head.
Of course.

She’d been waiting for him and she didn’t even know it.

He ended it first, easing away to rest his forehead against
hers. “Hey.” The word was warm against her cheek. “Guess I should have come
downstairs a while ago.”

Silly man. Didn’t he know that there was a time to talk and a
time to put that mouth to far better uses?

This time the question mark was gone. This kiss was one that
demanded attention, the kind that made a girl sit up and say,
Hot
damn,
where have you been all
my life?
It was the kind of kiss that evolved, that spiraled and
swirled as it grew hotter and harder, the kind that made her wind her arms
around his neck and arch herself up and ache for the feel of Sam against her,
the weight of Sam over her, the heat of Sam inside her.

This
was supposed to leave her
relaxed enough to sleep?

She couldn’t stop kissing him. She couldn’t. Even when her
mouth slipped away from his she kissed him, tasting the salt of his skin,
caressing the stubble on his cheeks, pressing her lips into his hair to muffle
her gasp when his mouth scraped against her neck and his tongue traced her and
she remembered, oh, how she remembered....

“Twelve years,” he whispered against her skin. The vibration
shuddered through her.

“Worth the wait.”

She could feel his smile on her neck before he spoke. “You
gonna make me wait another twelve?”

“Mister,” she said, shifting to be even closer, “you couldn’t
last another twelve seconds.”

“You want to bet?”

No.
“Sure.”

“Okay. Here’s the deal.” His fingers were in her hair, playing
against her scalp. “If I make it twelve full seconds, you kiss me again. If I
don’t...”

“If you don’t?” She arched against him, needing more of his
touch.

“Then I guess I have to kiss you.”

This was bad. This was so, so bad. “One Mississippi,” she
whispered into the night. “Two Mississippi, three Mississ—”

The word was swallowed by his mouth on hers, pleading,
demanding, and she gave him everything he asked and more. If the first kiss had
been a question and the second the answer, this one was the promise of what
could be. This kiss was hot and liquid, and when he moved and his fingers
brushed the side of her breast she moaned into his mouth, willing him to leave
his hand exactly where it was. She could never get close enough to him.
Never.

Until she realized that Phoebe wasn’t snoring anymore.

The silence barely registered at first. Her mind was filled to
overflowing with the slam of her pulse and the ragged catch of Sam’s breaths.
But there was something unnatural about it. Something she couldn’t ignore, no
matter how much she longed to simply lose herself in Sam.
Something...watchful.

She pulled back, raising a hand to stop Sam from following. His
eyes narrowed. They stayed silent, frozen, listening.

Nothing.

Finally Sam leaned closer to whisper, “You think she woke
up?”

“Probably.”

“You think she’ll talk?”

“No.” She reconsidered. “But if anyone asks her anything, she
probably won’t deny it.”

“I, uh, think maybe I’d better go to the kitchen. Get whatever
the hell it was I came down here for and head back upstairs.” There was a
huskiness in his voice she’d never heard before, and damn, she loved the sound
of it.

“That’s probably a good idea.”

He stroked her cheek. “Don’t suppose you want to come with me.”
His finger trailed lower. “After Phoebe is sound asleep.”

Want
to? Oh, yes, more than she’d
wanted anything in a long, long time. But it was a big step between a kiss and a
trip upstairs, and as much as her body said
go for
it,
her damnable common sense had started to kick in as her
temperature dropped.

“Sorry.”

“I must be psychic. I knew you’d say that.”

“Then you know I really, really mean it about being sorry.”

“Not as much as I am, sweetcheeks.” With a quick, silent kiss
to her nose, he moved away from her. “Never thought I’d be grateful to a
skunk.”

“Me, either. Sweet dreams, Sam.”

“I doubt they’ll be sweet.”

Libby knew the feeling.

“See you in the morning,” he said, and padded away.

Libby watched until he left the room, then pulled her pillow
over her head so she wouldn’t hear him when he climbed the stairs. There was no
telling where her body might lead if she listened to his footsteps. The only
certainty was that if she followed him now, there’d be no stopping.

* * *

S
AM
COULDN
’
T
REMEMBER
the last time he’d snagged so little sleep yet still woken up feeling
like the world was full of rainbows and unicorns.

His good mood stayed intact even after discovering that Libby
and Phoebe were long gone. It kept him smiling through the adventures in diaper
wrestling that Casey seemed intent on winning. It had him whistling as he headed
down the hill and into the kitchen to check on the tomato juice supply.

And that, of course, was where his grin met its match.

Cosmo greeted him with a glare. “You got a hell of a nerve,
lover boy.”

Oh, hell. So much for Phoebe not talking.

“You’re the soul of tact, you know that, Cosmo?”

“Tact my ass. I told you to stay away from Libby.”

It would feel so damned good to point out that the lady in
question had been the one initiating things, but no way in hell was he sharing
that little tidbit. Time for an abrupt change of topic.

“How much tomato juice do we have?”

“None, and it won’t work in a cabin. Gotta use vinegar and
coffee grounds. I already put some in there and opened the windows.”

Now, that was definitely not the response he’d been expecting.
“You didn’t have to do that. Thanks.”

“Some of us sleep downwind of there.” Cosmo fixed Sam with the
evil eye. “You know. Sleep. That thing most people do in the middle of the
night.”

“You were always too fast for me, Cos.”

“And you were always a troublemaking little twit, so we’re
square. Leastaways on that.”

Sam could see where this conversation was going. He figured he
had three choices: walk away, let Cosmo get things out of his system or take the
old “the best defense is a good offense” route.

Time for Cosmo to get a taste of his own medicine.

“Tell me something, Cos. Why do you keep coming back here?”

“You trying to get rid of me?”

“Not yet. Let’s just say I’m curious. You’ve been working here
every summer for as long as I can remember.”

“So? Maybe I need the money.”

“I sign your checks. You’re not making that much.”

“Lucky I’m independently wealthy.”

“Avoiding the question, Cos?”

Cosmo’s grunt was so deep, it could have been scraped from the
bottom of his barrel chest.

Sam grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter. “See, here’s
the thing. You always had that grumpy old man thing going for you, but never
this bad. I have a feeling something’s eating you, and call it ego, but I don’t
think it’s just me being here.”

He was totally talking out of the side of his ass but
something—maybe the way Cosmo seemed to be hanging on his every word even while
he cracked three eggs at a time—told him he was zeroing in on a truth Cosmo
would prefer remained unsaid.

“So what’s the deal? You don’t want the job, you hate me or you
keep coming back because there’s something here you love?” Sam squinted into the
light, carefully assessing the sudden shake to Cosmo’s hand, the way he fumbled
an egg and let the shell slip to the counter.

Incidents from the past few weeks spun and settled into a
pattern. Cosmo’s over-the-top belligerence...his refusal to make Myra’s favorite
meat loaf...the way he stumbled over Myra’s name and changed the topic whenever
someone else mentioned her...

Well, damn. He hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Or should that be, some
one
else?”
Sam asked, a bit more gently. “Someone who
used
to
be here?”

Cosmo stood with his hand hovering over the bowl. For just the
briefest second, Sam read the sheer agony on the older man’s face. Cosmo looked
like a giant Saint Bernard who’d just lost every friend he’d ever had in the
world.

Then he tossed the shells into the sink and pointed toward the
door. “I don’t have time for this horseshit. Out.”

No way. “You have a thing for Myra.”

Cosmo’s laugh sounded far too forced to be convincing. “Look
who’s talking. A guy who can get his face on a cereal box but still lets some
gal lead him around by his—”

“Libby isn’t leading me anywhere, mister.” At least, nowhere he
wasn’t headed already.

“Not even under the raft?”

“Nothing happened. You tell Myra you have the hots for
her?”

Cosmo shook his head in disgust. “You had a beautiful woman
hidden away with you and you expect us to believe you didn’t do anything about
it? Even you aren’t that pathetic.”

“You spent thirty-some summers with a woman and never told her
you want her? That’s textbook pathetic.”

“Maybe you oughta use some of that body-wash stuff on your
hair. You know, to get rid of the crap that’s working its way into your
head.”

“Maybe you oughta call Myra and tell her you miss her before
you drive the rest of us round the bend.”

From the way Cosmo shrugged, too casual, too careless, Sam knew
he’d suggested a course that Cosmo had already considered at great length.
Considered and rejected.

Which meant he was hurting.

Which meant Sam’s camp was suffering.

But more than that—Sam was shocked to realize that he was
hurting for Cosmo.

Sam tossed his apple from hand to hand. Maybe it was because he
himself had just been treated to a hell of a belated welcome back by Libby, but
he hated to see Cosmo this miserable. Despite everything, he liked the man. He
liked the way Cosmo always looked out for Casey and slipped him extra treats. He
liked how protective Cosmo was of Libby. He liked the way Cosmo treated him just
the same as he had all those years ago.

The guy was a pain in the ass, but he was a loyal, reliable
pain, and that went a long way with Sam.

“You know,” he said slowly, “every time I’ve talked to Myra,
she’s asked about you.”

No response.

“And when we were negotiating the sale, she made sure you would
have a job here as long as you wanted. You and Libby. You were the only two she
pointed out specifically.”

Cosmo pulled a whisk from a drawer and commenced a brutal
attack on the bowl of eggs.

“And call me a fool, but I seem to recall Myra hanging out in
the kitchen a whole lot back in the day. Way more than I’ve ever needed to be
here, or Libby, either. Makes me wonder if Myra might have been looking for
something more than cooking tips.”

Cosmo hefted his bulk away from the work island and ambled
toward the refrigerator, where he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.
“You’re right. You are a fool.”

“Yeah, well, here’s the thing about fools. Something I learned
back in school.” Sam gave the apple a quick shirt polish before admiring its
gleam. “The old fools—you know, the court jesters—they had two jobs. The first
was to make the king laugh. The second was to call things the way they saw them.
You know. To tell the truth that nobody wanted to hear.”

He bit into his apple and sneaked a peek at Cosmo while the
juice dribbled down his chin.

“I’m just talking about what I see, Cos. And the way I see it,
you have two choices. You can keep on making yourself and Myra and everyone
around you miserable.” He backhanded the juice from his chin while heading for
the door, where he paused to salute Cosmo with the upraised apple. “You can be
as pathetic as you want for as long as you want.”

Cosmo’s lips clamped together as if he were forcing himself not
to ask about the alternative. Lucky for him, Sam was going to offer it
anyway.

“You can be miserable. Or you can man up, speak up and live the
goal.”

* * *

S
AM
WAS
STILL
SHAKING
his head when he walked into Libby’s cabin.
As he’d expected, she was already there, looking around the area near the door.
As he hadn’t expected, the scent had already faded from tear inducing to nose
wrinkling.

She hadn’t noticed him yet, bent over as she was, peering
intently at the area around the door. Looking for—what? Footprints? She had said
something seemed off, but in all honesty, he wasn’t sure how Tanya could have
engineered a skunk spraying on cue, even if she had wanted to.

On the other hand, Libby looked mighty cute bent over like that
with her shorts riding up the back of her firm legs and one very fine
badonk-a-donk beckoning to him. Memories of the night before filled his head and
heated his body. It might have been nothing more than some kisses and a little
groping, but it was the most action he’d seen in longer than he cared to
remember. Add in the fact that it had been luscious Libby in his arms, and he
couldn’t be blamed for having wicked thoughts about grabbing her around the
waist and hauling her into the deserted cabin for some further indulgence.