Maybe he had actually cared about someone other than himself. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
Sam hiked his shoe up on his other knee and settled back to twiddle his thumbs, watching Ethan fill his dump truck with sand and push it to the flower garden.
She looked at Sam’s hands noticing, besides the strength and size, how work-rough they were, how dexterous they appeared. Memories grew more vivid by the minute, sent a tingling shiver straight to the pit of her gut.
“
So, you’re like a real life cowboy now?”
He chuckled. “Guess so. It’s not much. I’ve got three sections, about a hundred head of cattle.”
“
Then where are your cowboy boots?”
He looked down at his sneakers. “I’m not welded to them. I like to get comfortable now and then.” He gave her a solid once-over. “So, what have you been up to? Finished with law school yet?”
She averted her gaze. “I only made it through one semester. But I’m working at my dad’s old law firm.” And that was as much as he needed to know.
Sam glanced at her with a slight grin that didn’t seem to reach his eyes. “So, who’d you end up with? Anybody I’d know?”
“
You know him, but I didn’t end up with him,” she answered, daring him to question her further. She felt very close to telling him, to blurting out the truth. One more question and she might just do it. The warmth with which he remembered his grandfather broke down her defenses. The fact that he’d been doing something responsible with his life.
He eyed her curiously for a moment, and then looked at Ethan again. “So you still live here with your mom?”
She was almost disappointed. He’d seemed very close to guessing the truth. “My mother died when I was ten. Brain aneurism. It’s just Brianna and me now. And Ethan, of course.”
“
Right, you told me that, about your mom. Sorry. Sorry about your dad, too. I just found out about that.” He looked up at the roof of the porch, and scanned what he could see of the house, the fenced-in yard, and the expanse of thick woods hugging the fence that stretched into the distance.
Suddenly she wanted to tell him, so much she could barely sit still in her seat. So much the words lodged in her throat and her hands began to shake.
She was going to do it, maybe.
She nodded toward Ethan. “Does he look familiar to you?”
“
The boy?” Sam asked. “Well, he looks a lot like you. You say I know his dad?” He turned his gaze to her and she froze beneath the interest that seemed to gleam in those blue depths. “Yeah, I saw you with your boyfriend. Didn’t know there was a kid involved, though. You need me to leave? I will, just say so. I’m no angel, but I don’t do that. I don’t break up families.”
Surprised by his wild assumption, she had to struggle to follow his direction. “Are you talking about Brandon Stewart? Because Ethan is
not
his son.” That fact needed to be made perfectly clear. “And if I wanted you to leave you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“
Ah,” Sam said, glancing away with an embarrassed grin on his face. “Okay, then, who is it? Somebody I oughta know?”
“
You know him,” she said, “very well.”
He turned toward her, dropping his feet to the floor, gripping the arm of the wicker chair, and frowned sharply. The confident smile fell from his face. “What are you saying, Jenna?”
Watching him intently for his reaction, shaking so violently his face blurred slightly, she said, “He has your eyes.”
CHAPTER THREE
Sam was gone. After a fair amount of stuttering and stammering, he’d inched his way toward the steps, no longer able to find a smile for his stunned face. Finally, he’d turned and jogged around the corner of the house. The gate had slammed behind him and seconds later his truck had roared to life.
Suddenly feeling calm, extraordinarily calm, Jenna stood and followed his path to the gate. All that remained of him was a fine dust and the scent of tire rubber hanging in the air from his desperate escape.
She leaned against the gate to rest, pressing down on the violent buzz in her stomach. She’d done it. She’d finally told him.
Oh great
….
Covering her mouth with both hands, she made a mad dash for the back door. She’d done it, and now she was going to be sick.
After she’d washed her face in the kitchen sink, she turned around, noticing her sister sitting at the table, watching her. Jenna hadn’t even noticed her there as she’d run inside.
“
Who was that guy? Sam Strickland?”
Jenna stalled, wiping her face with a kitchen towel.
“
You’re not pregnant again, are you?” Brianna said with a bland, emotionless expression on her face.
Jenna took a deep breath and made her decision. “I’m marrying Brandon Stewart.”
That got a reaction. Brianna jumped up from her chair. “What?
Why
? Eww. When?”
“
I don’t know. Soon.” As soon as he called her back and assured her he could uphold his end of the deal. He’d offered to make her monthly mortgage payments on the house if she would marry him, and she’d flatly refused. But then, he’d offered to pay Brianna’s college tuition for a year, as well.
She’d agreed to think about it. She’d held on to some dim hope that Sam would remember what they’d once had. That he would want to be with her again. She didn’t expect him to solve her money problems, but she didn’t want to marry another man, especially a man she detested, if some hope remained with Sam.
Now she knew there was no hope with Sam and Brandon’s offer was the only way out of the hell she was living. The only way to save her sister’s future. His grandmother had left him some money, enough to buy his fancy car and possibly allow him to help her out of her jam – he had to check with his accountant. But the real money would come from his grandfather – a man who apparently wasn’t expected to live much longer.
A man who would only leave Brandon tens of millions if he were married, to the right sort of girl. Even with her fall from grace, birthing a bastard child and all, Brandon had said, she would do. Her great-grandfather had been a congressman. Her grandfather a state senator. Her father had been mayor. She came from a good family. Good enough. They wouldn’t even have to live together, just have a big wedding and then make a few appearances to family functions.
Then, when Brandon received his big inheritance, he would pay off her house in full and leave her with enough to put Brianna through college. They could get a divorce after his grandfather passed away.
In her frazzled state, it seemed like the only solution. The right thing to do.
When the deal was done, she’d still have a house for her son, her sister would have a future, and then… well, she couldn’t think beyond that point.
Ethan pulled at the screen door and she went to let him in.
Then why, as she lifted her son into her arms, did she feel as if she were selling her soul to the devil?
Because the deal was dirty.
The deal was downright disgusting.
And because Brandon would never be Sam.
Yet, Sam had rejected her, and with her, his own son.
“
Plan on Vanderbilt,” Jenna told her sister and hurried from the room.
***
That night Sam drove five miles out of town and parked in front of his brother’s 1920s farmhouse. After making the fastest escape possible from Jenna’s house, he’d gone out to the lake with his friends, but had barely known where he was. He’d spent the time trying to convince his brain his ears hadn’t been playing tricks on him.
He has your eyes.
For as long as he lived, he’d never forget those words.
Shaking his head, he climbed out of his truck. He’d lived with his brother on and off over the years since high school and still kept a room there. Somehow, it felt more like home than his parents’ place.
Although Jack was the oldest of the five Strickland siblings, and Sam the youngest, there had always been an understanding between them that didn’t exist with the others. A likeness. They saw life in much the same way, and were different from the rest of the family in the same ways. Also, they were the only two left who hadn’t married.
The house was dark and no one was in the living room when he stepped inside, so he headed through the house, calling a warning.
“
Out here,” Jack called from the back porch.
Sam stopped at the refrigerator for a beer before stepping through the screen door. Jack had turned on the intricate landscape lighting that transformed the back yard and pond into a fairyland of sparkling lights.
Sam took a moment to simply stand and appreciate the sight. He opened his beer and took a long, soothing drink. He noticed his brother sitting on the porch, whittling. “You didn’t come out to the lake,” he commented. “Everybody asked about you.”
“
I was gonna,” Jack said, lazily stroking the stubble on his jaw, “but I forgot. Then I sat down and got to watching the sunset. And then the moon came out and I got to watching it glitter on the pond. Couldn’t move.”
Sam turned to look at the water, a three-acre pond stretching out in no particular shape across the landscape. Probably more of a lake than a pond, but everyone had always called it a pond.
“
You drunk?”
“
Naw, just mellow,” his brother said. “Getting old…. Angie moved out. Did they tell you?”
Sam checked his brother, a little worried now. Their grandmother had suffered from dementia. “You told me yourself. Two days ago when I got here and asked where she was. Remember that?”
“
Oh, yeah,” Jack said. “Guess I do.”
Jack and Angie had been a couple for five years, had lived together for probably two of those years. She’d become part of the family. Sam didn’t ask, but assumed she’d moved out because Jack wouldn’t get around to marrying her.
“
Gonna be forty-four in a month.”
“
No kidding,” Sam said, even though he knew how old his brother was. They were fifteen years apart in age. Jack really was beginning to look old. His hair was graying, as was the hair on his chest. Their dad would turn sixty-seven soon. Their mom had just turned sixty-five. Time seemed to be slipping away from them all.
Sam’s head was too full already without worrying about how old everyone was becoming. He had far more important things to think about now. “Never mind. I’m headed down to the dock.”
With a grunt, Jack pushed himself higher in his seat. “Yeah, okay. I need to get up and move around.”
Sam led the way, not really caring if his brother tagged along. The humidity had gone down with the sun and a nice breeze cooled his skin as it swept across the water. The big, wooden raft rocked tunefully on the slow rolling ripples. He walked to the end of the short pier and stepped down onto the unsteady floor of the raft.
Jack made it to the end of the pier and sat down to skim his bare feet on the water.
Sam rocked the raft, having to use all the strength in his legs to set the heavy wood buoy rolling beneath his weight, to his own rhythm. Then, tiring of that, he pushed himself and the raft from the pier post. He rode the arch of the rope around in front of Jack to the other side of the pier. He caught the post and stopped himself.
“
Hey, you remember a while back, this girl, Jenna Morgan? I used to bring her out here to the pond.”
Jack stared down at his floating feet then finally seemed to snap out of his daze and looked up. “Not really. You were always bringing girls out here.”
Sam frowned at his brother. “No, I didn’t. Just one. Tall blonde. You remember.”
Jack blew out a breath and thought for a moment. “Okay, yeah. The pretty blonde, long legs, shy? Damn-near six feet tall with both feet flat on the ground. She was afraid of me, couldn’t look me in the eye.”
“
That’s the one.”
“
What about her?”
Sam stepped up to the pier and leaned against a post, wondering why his arms were tingling – wondering if he might be on the verge of having a heart attack. “She’s got a kid. Says he’s mine.”
Jack didn’t seem surprised, or very interested. “So when did this happen?”
“
Before I left, I guess. I just found out. He’s, I don’t know, two or so. Blond hair, healthy-looking. Likes to sing.”
“
You used to do that,” Jack said. “Running around singing up a storm even before you could talk good. Mom swore you were gonna make a country singer. Bought you a little toy guitar.”
Sam had no memory of that, but he’d said the same thing to Jenna. That the boy needed a guitar. “Instead, Mikey turned out to be the musician.”
“
He just bought a recording studio in Nashville.”
“
Yeah, I heard.”
The night fell silent and Sam looked at the raft, remembering the face of a fun, beautiful girl with long blond hair and lips as red and delicious as ripe plums. Legs that stretched on and on. Her face had fallen into his sight so many times over the past few years, and a ball of anger and regret settled in his gut. He deliberately looked away from the raft.