Authors: Maureen Child
“Excuse me,” a huge woman in a garishly flowered dress said as she tapped Mike’s arm. “Do you know where I can find those cute little lamps shaped like dogs?”
“God, no,” Mike said, drawing her head back and staring at the woman with a horrified expression.
“They’re down at the end of aisle three,” Sam interrupted smoothly, shooting Mike a quelling look before smiling at the offended woman.
“Thank you.”
As she moved off, Mike said in her own defense, “Well, do I
look
like I have dog lamps?”
Sam laughed and carried her coffee to the far end of the Marconi booth. Here, she had a sheet of primed plywood set up and awaiting her first painting demonstration. She’d brought a dozen of the plywood sheets so that she could keep up the demos for the entire twoday presentation.
She might not be in the mood for it, but she was determined to do a good job. Marconi Construction was always looking for new clients. Even though they’d be tied up with Grace’s place for the next two months, there was no harm in having future jobs lined up. And with the hundreds of people wandering through the show, they were bound to pick up their fair share.
Getting busy, she knelt beside the row of neatly stacked paint cans, brushes, sponges, and rollers. She shoved Jeff to the back of her mind, where no doubt he’d still be lingering in ten years. But if her heart was aching, no one else would ever know about it.
Jeff walked into what looked to him like an Arabian bazaar. But he was willing to bet this place was a lot louder. Shouted conversations rose and fell like ocean waves and there was a background hum of machinery whining at the various booths. Thousands of people were crammed into a warehouse nowhere near big enough to hold all of them, and he guessed the fire marshals were going nuts trying to keep a lid on the place.
Trying to find Sam was going to be like searching the shore for a particular grain of sand. But he was a man on a mission.
She loves me
.
All he had to do was keep reminding himself of that and he’d find a way back into her heart. Her life. And that was more important than anything.
Stepping into the chaos, he bumped into a big man in overalls, then steered around him, squeezing between kids and parents, darting into gaps in the crowd,
and scanning the booths as he passed. The urge to hurry dogged him. Seconds ticked into minutes and the minutes flew.
He felt the urgency pounding inside him and went with it. Nine years gone. Nine years when they could have been happy, making more babies, loving each other crazy. They’d lost too much time together already and he wasn’t willing to wait even one more day.
Thanks to talking to Emma last night, he’d known about the Home Show and hadn’t wasted precious time going to Chandler first. Maybe this wasn’t the best place to be hunting Sam down.
But dammit, he was through waiting.
Jeff’s gaze swept the crowd, searching for a familiar face. At this stage of the game, he’d even be willing to catch a glimpse of Mike or Jo. At least then he’d know he was on the right road. “Too many damn people,” he muttered.
“Ain’t that the truth?” A man beside him grinned and shook his head helplessly as the crowd carried him away, like a feather buffeted by the wind.
Jeff laughed and waved as if saying good-bye to an old friend. Then he ducked his head, hunched his shoulders, and hit the crowd like a three-hundred-pound linebacker sacking a quarterback.
“Can I paint now, Mommy?”
“Sure, baby,” Sam said, grinning at her daughter. “You can show these nice people how easy it is to sponge-paint.”
A half-dozen people stood around her in a semicircle and watched as Sam tugged a rubber glove onto
Emma’s small hand. Then she helped her dip the sea sponge into a paint tray of dark green paint and scrape off the excess against the edge.
“As you’ll see,” Sam said, addressing the interested faces turned toward her, “sponge painting is so easy, your kids can help you decorate.”
“I don’t know if that’s a plus,” someone muttered.
Sam laughed. “Up to you, but my daughter Emma will show you just how creative children can be.” Then to Emma, she said, “Go ahead, baby, show these nice people how easy it is.”
Eagerly, Emma practically launched herself at the plywood sheet. Since the little girl had already been helping Sam on the job site, she was confident and raring to go. This was her second demonstration of the morning and she was already handling it like a pro.
Carefully, she reached out and pressed the sponge to the flat white surface, then pulled it back. The imprint of the sponge left a delicate, lacy pattern of green paint. As everyone watched, Emma repeated the process two or three times, overlapping and turning the sponge so that the pattern never really repeated, but left the sheet of plywood looking as though it had been wallpapered.
“Well, I’m impressed,” one woman said and stepped forward to take one of Sam’s business cards. “And you, little one,” she added, smiling down at Emma, “are a very talented painter.”
“Just like her mother.”
Sam froze.
Her smile fell away like a stone dropped into a well.
Turning slowly, she faced Jeff with what she hoped, for the sake of prospective customers, was a civilized expression.
“Daddy!” Emma ran at him, still clutching her paint sponge. Before he could dodge out of the way, Jeff’s jeans were decorated nicely.
Small satisfaction, but Sam would take it.
He stepped into the booth as the customers left.
Her stomach jittered and her blood pumped in a frantic rush. “Go away.”
“Not until we talk.”
“We talked yesterday.” Sam bent down, snapped the lid on the paint can, then turned to take the sponge and the rubber glove from Emma.
“No,
you
talked,” Jeff muttered, grabbing up a handful of snack bar napkins emblazoned with the words “Hot Dogs and Beer—a Marriage Made in Heaven,” and rubbed them across his paint-smeared jeans. Finally, he gave it up and looked at her. “Now it’s my turn.”
“There’s nothing left to be said,” Sam said, standing up to look him dead in the eye.
“Well, you won’t know that until I try, will you?”
All around them, the crowds shifted and moved, surging through the building like lemmings rushing toward a cliff’s edge. They moved as one, winding and meandering up and down the aisles, their voices ever rising to compensate for the noise level.
“Mommy?” Emma took Sam’s hand. “Are you mad at Daddy?”
“No, honey,” she lied smoothly and gave that small hand a squeeze. “I’m just too busy to talk right now.”
Jeff snorted. “You don’t look busy.”
“Trouble?” Mike strolled up, thumbs tucked in the front pockets of her jeans.
“Not yet,” Jeff said, sliding her a glance and hoping
to hell she wouldn’t start in on him. A wise man only tried to handle one Marconi woman at a time. “Mike,” he said, “I just have a few things I need to say to Sam.”
Mike met his gaze for a long minute, then shifted a look at her sister. Sam stood with one hip hitched higher than the other and her arms folded across her chest. She tapped the toe of one boot against the concrete floor in a staccato beat that belied the serene expression on her face.
“Aunt Mike, my daddy came!”
“Yeah,” Mike said, clearly making a decision. “I can see that. Why don’t you and me go find Papa and Aunt Jo and tell them? I think your mommy and daddy want to talk.”
Sam lurched forward, making a grab for her sister and missing. “Mike, don’t you leave here.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Jeff said.
“Don’t make me sorry, weasel-dog.”
Emma laughed. “Aunt Mike really thinks you’re
great
, Daddy.”
“Oh man.” Mike winced, but kept moving, dragging Emma in her wake. This love business was really way too complicated, she thought and wondered when in the hell she’d gone soft enough to cut the weasel-dog a break.
Sam thought about chasing Mike down to kill her, but there’d be time later. Instead, she faced down the man from her past. “Do we really have to put each other through more of what happened yesterday?”
“There’s that warm Italian welcome I’ve missed so much.”
She smirked at him. “I can show you a warm Italian good-bye.”
“I’ve had one of those. I never want another one.”
Sam inhaled sharply, deeply, and it didn’t help. Her insides jumped and her mouth went dry. Dammit, where were all the customers? Most of the morning, she’d been tortured by people asking inane questions. She’d given demonstrations, pointed out directions to the restrooms, and even turned down a dinner invitation.
Now, all of a sudden, when she most needed a distraction, there was
no one
?
What was up with that?
“I broke it off with Cynthia.”
Her head snapped up and she pinned him.
“She admitted that she lied to break us up.”
Sam sucked in a shaky breath. “Well, she did a good job of it.”
“Don’t let her win,” Jeff said softly.
His voice, his very nearness, touched something deep inside her and made her want to forget all the pain. Forget being careful. But clearly, her body didn’t know enough to protect itself, so it would be up to her brain to handle it. “Don’t you get it, Jeff?
Nobody
wins here.”
“Doesn’t have to be that way.”
Her stomach did a quick somersault, then nosedived to her knees. “It’s too late for us. Go back to your girlfriend.”
“I don’t want a girlfriend,” he said. “I
want
my wife.”
Too late. Too late
. The words echoed over and over inside her, bouncing to the beat of her thundering pulse. Her blood bubbled and boiled in her veins and she could almost feel each one of her cells exploding with want and need. But she couldn’t do this. Not again. Couldn’t let herself love him only to be slapped
down for it. Do it once, it’s bad luck. Twice, you’re an idiot. Three times, and the guys in white coats would come looking for her.
“I’m not your wife,” she reminded him. “Not anymore. I signed your stupid papers, remember?”
“I tore them up.”
Oh God. He tore them up. What was she supposed to do now? “I—” She stopped and looked around wildly. She needed something to do with her hands. Needed something to hold. To throw. To twist.
Deep within her, fury warred with misery and strangled the tiny bud of hope that sprouted in the bottom of her soul. She couldn’t risk this. Couldn’t love him and lose him. Not again. “I can’t do this, Jeff. Not again.”
A woman stepped up out of the crowd. “Excuse me, but are you going to be giving another demonstration of the faux-suede look?”
“I can show you right now.” Eagerly, Sam grabbed the woman and dragged her bodily into the booth. Concentrating solely on the short brunette, she ignored Jeff, ignored her every instinct, and turned to the one thing that had never let her down. Her work.
Jeff quietly simmered for about ten seconds. He had half a mind to grab her, toss her over his shoulder, and race out of the building. But they’d never make it through the crowds.
“Sam,” he growled, and paid no attention as the customer gave him a wary look. “Why do you have to be so damn stubborn?”
“It’s not stubbornness,” she said, without even turning to glance at him. “It’s self-preservation.”
“Excuse me,” the confused-looking woman asked, “but am I interrupting something?”
“Yes,” Jeff said.
“No,” Sam insisted.
The woman winced, but stood her ground. Clearly, she was siding with Sam on this one. Didn’t surprise him. Women, of course, would stick together.
“This isn’t finished,” he grumbled, glaring at the back of Sam’s rock-hard head. Couldn’t she see that they belonged together? That fate had smiled on them for a change and had presented them with a shot at what they should have had nine years ago? “Dammit, Sam . . .”
She completely ignored him and that just fired off what was left of his self-control. For God’s sake, he’d told her he wanted her. That he’d called it off with Cynthia. That he loved her.
Hadn’t he?
Jeff straightened up, frowning.
No.
He hadn’t mentioned that one little detail.
Stupid.
He watched her studiously avoiding noticing his existence and knew that making her listen was going to take more than a quiet chat in a dark corner. She was scared—and that shook him.
Nothing
had ever scared Sam Marconi. But he’d seen it in her eyes just a minute ago. He’d watched as she’d fought an internal battle over whether or not to believe. To trust. To take another chance on him.
He couldn’t blame her.
He’d let her down before. Sure, they’d both made
330 Maureen Child mistakes, but he was only in a position to do something about the ones
he’d
made. Jeff wouldn’t lose what he’d just found again.
He’d have to find a way to make her listen. Make her hear him.
His gaze frantic, he scanned the crowd, and got an idea. Jumping into the sea of people, he let them carry him toward his goal.
Sam took a deep breath and let it slide from her lungs on a sad sigh. He was gone. It was better that way, she knew it. But dammit, if he wanted her so badly, why hadn’t he tried harder?
And just how contrary could she be? she wondered as she set up a private demonstration area. She tells him she doesn’t want him, but then is pissed off when he doesn’t try harder to do what she told him not to do?
God. Her head was going to explode.
“Honey,” the short brunette standing beside her said, “none of my business, but are you out of your mind?”
“What?” She looked up to see the woman smiling at her.
“The guy’s clearly nuts about you,” she said. “Why not cut him a break?”
“Wish I could,” Sam said, and shifted her gaze to the crowd, amazed at just how quickly Jeff had managed to disappear. “But we had our chance.”
“Maybe,” the woman said, “but if he’d been looking at
me
like that, I wouldn’t have let him go.”
Sam sighed again. “I didn’t
let
him go,” she reminded the woman. “He
left
.”
“If you say so . . .”