It's in His Kiss (32 page)

“You tell me what. You’re talking to yourself.”

“The fuck I am.”

“You said you don’t need this shit.”

“I don’t,” Sam said.

Ben nodded, and looked a little bit amused. “What shit are we talking about exactly?”

“Nothing.”

“This have anything to do with the pretty new music teacher?”

When Sam narrowed his eyes, Ben shrugged. “Hey,
man, you know Lucky Harbor. There’s no need to bolt your door at night, but you’ve gotta keep your secrets under lock and key. And anyway, you being into the pretty music teacher isn’t much of a secret.”

Sam shook his head. “Don’t you have your own problems to worry about? Seems to me it wasn’t all that long ago that you made news when a certain blonde stood outside your house yelling all of
your
secrets for the world to hear.”

“Yeah.” Ben smiled. “I was pretty sure I didn’t need that shit, either. I was wrong. You’re wrong, too.” And with that asinine, ridiculous statement, he turned and walked away.

“I don’t,” Sam said to the morning. “I don’t need that shit.”

The morning didn’t answer.

He walked into his house to shower, and found his dad at his kitchen table on the laptop.

And Becca at his stovetop cooking breakfast.

Sam stopped short. Hell, his heart stopped short, despite the possible hostility in her gaze. He started to smile at her, so fucking happy to see her that it had to be all over his face, but she gave him a blank face and turned away from him.

Yeah. Definite hostility.

“I felt sick,” his dad said. “Weak. I called you, but you didn’t answer.”

Sam pulled his cell phone from his pocket. No missed calls.

“So anyway,” his dad said, not meeting his eyes. “My blood sugar was low or something.”

Sam gave him a long look.

“
Real
low,” Mark added.

“So you call Cole,” Sam said. “Or Tanner.”

“Uh . . . they didn’t answer, either.”

Becca brought a plate over to Mark, nudging Sam out of the way to do so. Actually, it was more like a shove. “Leave him alone,” she said to Sam. “He has low blood sugar.”

“He always has low blood sugar in the morning,” Sam said. “That’s why I’ve got a fridge full of food for him. All he had to do was take a bite of something, and in less than sixty seconds he’d have been fine.”

Becca turned to him, hands on hips, face dialed to Stubborn, Pissed-Off Female. “It’s no bother for me to help him.”

“Of course it’s a bother,” Sam said. “You had to get up even earlier than usual, which you hate. You had to drive here. He’s not your responsibility, Becca.”

“I didn’t mind,” she said.

“Well you should have.”

“Why?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “Just because
you
don’t feel anything doesn’t mean I can’t.”

Okay, there it was. The two-ton elephant in the room. Finding his own mad, he stared at her, hard. “You don’t want to go there with me right now.”

She lifted her nose to nosebleed heights. “You’re absolutely right.”

“I mean it, Becca.”

Mark started to rise with his plate. “You know what? I’ll just go eat in the other room—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Becca said, and pointed her wooden spoon at him like she meant business. “Sit,” she commanded. “Eat.”

“Go in the other room, Dad,” Sam said.

Mark gave them a look like
You’re both crazy
, grabbed his plate, and walked out of the kitchen—but not before bending to drop a kiss on Becca’s cheek.

She sighed, softened, and gave him a quick hug.

And then Sam and Becca were alone. Perfect. Just where he didn’t want to be.

Becca looked at him for a moment, shook her head, muttered something to herself that sounded suspiciously like “jackass idiot,” and then walked out of the kitchen.

He followed after her just in time to catch the double doors as they closed.

In his face.

“Damn it.” He managed to catch her in the living room by the front door—barely. She was ticked off, and she was quick.

But he was quicker.

“Knock it off,” she said, pushing at him. “I’m only here to check on him, not to see you. You’re here now, you can take over, I’m out.”

“You’re out,” he repeated.

“Yep,” she said, popping the
p
. “Out. As in all the way out.”

He pinned her to the front door. “Not before we discuss this like adults.”

“Seriously?” she asked incredulously, fighting to free herself, nearly catching him in the jaw with her elbow until he leaned in and flattened her to the wood.

Panting, she blew her hair out of her face and glared up at him. “Is
discuss like adults
what you did yesterday when you flung my own words back in my face?
Damn it
,” she said, struggling. “Let me go!”

“I didn’t fling your words back in your face.”

“You basically said I didn’t mean them,” she said. “Same thing. I mean honest to God, Sam, you reacted to my
I love you
like I’d tried to kill you!”

“You don’t tell your summer fling in the town you just happened to ‘pit-stop’ in that you lo—” He fumbled over the word that she seemed to have no trouble with at all.

“My God, you can’t even say the word?” She shoved him again. “And you’re not a pit stop, not for me, and you damn well know it so stop saying it.”

“
You’re
the one who said it in the first place.”

“I say a lot of things, especially when I’m pissed off,” she snapped. “In fact, I have another thing to say to you—I quit.”

Well, hell. “Becca—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t leave you in the lurch, that’s not how I operate. But I’m giving you notice, Sam. I’ll spend the next two or three weeks finding my replacement and training them before I go, because it turns out you were right, we can’t work together, and do . . . whatever it was that we were doing.”

The past tense killed him. “You’re not quitting.”

“I need to,” she said. “It’s for me. And you’re going to let me go, because you didn’t want me to work for you in the first place.”

Christ. She was killing him.

The soft knock on the other side of the door galvanized them both.

“Sorry,” came Cole’s sheepish voice. “I kept waiting for a good time to interrupt, but it never came. I missed a call from your dad, wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

Becca wriggled out from between Sam and the door, but he caught her hand. “We’re done here,” she said, trying to pull free.

He held on and studied her face, taking in the misery and pain he’d caused her. “I don’t think we are,” he said quietly.

“Think again.” And without looking back, she tore loose and headed back to the kitchen. A minute later, he heard the back door slam as she made her escape.

Sam swore as he hauled open the front door.

Cole was arms-up on the door frame, and gave him a long look. “She said
I love you
and you flung it in her face?”

Sam started to shut the door on Cole’s nose but Cole was quicker than he looked, and stronger too, and shoved his way in.

Sam turned to ignore him and go after Becca, but Cole got in his way and in his face.

“Don’t,” Sam warned him.

“You going to say it back?” Cole wanted to know.

“We’re not discussing this.”

Cole stared into Sam’s eyes and saw the truth: No, he wasn’t going to say it back. “You’re a fucking idiot,” Cole said, but he wasn’t done. Hell, no. Cole always did have plenty to say, and no one, not man, woman, or God himself, could shut the guy up when he had something on his mind.

“You’re not good with letting people in, I get that,” his oldest friend said. “We
all
get that, but—”

“You don’t get shit,” Sam said.

Cole ignored this, because he knew, as did Sam, that no one knew Sam better than Cole himself.

No one.

“You go so far with trust and no further,” Cole said, “and I get that, too. You got it from your dad. He let you in and then let you back out again how many fucking times? I can’t imagine it, going through all that, except I can, since I watched you go through it.”

“Drop it, Cole.”

Of course he didn’t. Cole was incapable of dropping a damn thing. “But,” he went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “you landed at a damn good home when you needed one, and we never threw you away, not once. So you do know real trust, and that it can be good.” He paused, waiting for his words to sink in. “That woman you just chased out of here, she’s got eyes for only you. And she’s the kind of woman that loves down to her toes, with her entire heart and soul. You’re safe with her, Sam. You get me? You’re as
safe
with her as she is with you.”

“Shut up or I’ll shut you up.”

“You know, it’s funny,” Cole said casually, unperturbed by the threat. “We all think of you as the guy always willing to risk whatever it takes. And it’s true. Physically.”

“Gee, thanks, Dr. Phil.”

“But the one thing you never risk is your emotions. You hold them close to the vest,” Cole said. “I think it’s because you’re afraid they’ll be taken away. You’re too stubborn to realize otherwise, and now after listening to your conversation with Becca, I think you’re also a little bit stupid as well.”

Sam shoved free without a word, mostly because he was fresh out of words, and maybe a little afraid that Cole was right—about everything.

“You want to be an idiot, be my guest,” Cole said, lifting his hands like he surrendered. “It’s certainly your turn after all these years of keeping our shit together for us. But if that’s your plan, you’ve got to stop reeling her in, man. She deserves more than that from you. Hell,
you
deserve more from you.”

Before Sam could respond to this, Cole added one more thing. “And if she really quits because of you, I’m going to kick your ass. I might need Tanner to help me, but I will do it.”

Sam actually agreed with most of what Cole had said. Becca deserved more from him. As for what
he
deserved, the jury was still out on that one. So he went to work. He opened his shop and stood in the middle of it, wondering when the hell he’d stopped enjoying the solitude of his warehouse, instead looking forward to the moments Becca spent in here with him. But he’d blown that one.

I love you, Sam
. . .

The words mocked him. He’d heard those exact same words from his dad throughout his life, and they’d never meant a damn thing. Those three words had never gotten him anywhere, not once. The only thing to do that was hard work. He had a lot to show for hard work, and absolutely jackshit to show for love.

But at the thought, he felt only a sense of unease. Because it wasn’t strictly true. Cole and his family had taken him in every time he’d needed it. They’d fed and housed him. That had been love.

Without the words.

He liked it a whole lot better that way.

He needed to talk to Becca. Make her understand that they didn’t need the damn words. But, typical of the season, the day was crazy, and she was swamped, giving him the stink eye every time he showed up in the hut.

A busy business was great, he told himself. After the way he’d grown up and the long years on the rigs where he’d worked 24/7 in conditions he wouldn’t wish on an enemy, he knew more than anyone just how good he had it. He enjoyed chartering, enjoyed the work—which didn’t really feel like work at all—enjoyed the people, and their bottom line had been more than decent. He’d made sure of it.

But today, he didn’t enjoy shit. By midafternoon, he was over pretending to work and headed back to the hut. He had no real plan. He was hoping one would come to him.

Becca was in denim shorts, a halter top, her little name tag pinned to it, a straw hat on her head, with her hair loose and tumbling around her shoulders. It’d gotten sun-streaked over the past weeks, and her shoulders and toned arms were tanned, as were her mile-long legs. She had a few freckles, too. She hated them, but he didn’t. In fact, he enjoyed connecting the dots.

With his mouth.

As if she could feel his presence, she looked up. She was busy with several clients, but as she gave him yet another Come-closer-and-die look, he realized that beneath her temper, she was hurt as hell.

That was all on him.

“Ouch,” Tanner said, coming up beside him, slipping
an arm around his shoulders. “Looks like you’ve been served.”

Sam gave him an elbow to the ribs that Tanner returned.

Normally Sam would’ve been ready for it but he’d caught sight of a guy skulking off to the side of the hut, just out of Becca’s sight. Waiting. And because Sam was concentrating on that, Tanner’s elbow to the ribs nearly sent him sprawling into the water.

Tanner started to laugh, but the smile died on his face at the sight of Sam’s expression. “What?”

“Keep Becca occupied,” he directed, and strode for Jase.

Jase saw him coming and straightened. “Hey, man.” He lifted his hands. “I just want to borrow your employee for a minute, that’s all.”

“She know you’re here?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“Good. Get the fuck off my property.”

Jase’s good-natured smile slipped. “What?”