Authors: Jill Shalvis
It was two thirty in the morning when the bar finally got quiet. Becca was cleaning up, or supposed to be, but really she was staring at the piano again.
It was always like this. She’d be drawn by the scent of the gleaming wood, the keys, the beauty of losing herself in the music.
And then she’d sit and the anxiety would nearly suffocate her.
It’d taken her ten years of playing, from age seventeen to twenty-seven, ten years of needing anxiety meds to get on stage, before she’d admitted she didn’t have the heart for that life. She might have said so sooner but her brother had needed her, and her parents had depended on her being there for him. A painful crush on their manager Nathan had only added to the pressure. The crush had eventually evolved into a relationship, but when that had failed, she’d walked away from the life.
That had been two years ago.
She’d been working at an ad agency ever since, writing jingles for commercials. Behind the scenes really worked for her, though about a year ago, Jase had hit rock bottom and Nathan had come to her, pressuring her to give their world another go.
She’d refused, but the aftermath from that confrontation had killed off her muse but good.
Becca had promised herself that she’d never again duet in any capacity. Especially relationships.
Now, at age twenty-nine, she decided she was all the wiser for that decision, and not missing anything.
Play me, Becca
. . .
Once again she looked around, and when she saw no one watching, she allowed herself to sit. Before she knew it, her fingers were moving, this time playing one of the first songs she’d ever learned, “Für Elise” by Beethoven. She’d been twelve and had eavesdropped on Jase’s lessons. He’d hated practicing, but not Becca. She’d been happy practicing for hours.
When she finished, she sat there a moment, alone in the bar, and smiled. No urge to throw up! Progress! Getting up, she grabbed her things from the back, turned to go, and found Jax standing there.
“You going to freak out again if I tell you that you’re really good?” he asked quietly.
“At waitressing?” she asked hopefully.
“No, you suck at that.”
She sighed.
He smiled and handed her an envelope. “The night’s pay.”
She looked down at it, then back at his face. “I’m not invited back, am I?”
He gave her a small smile. “Did you really want to be?”
She blew out a breath. “No.”
His smile widened, and he gently tugged at a loose strand of her hair. “Come play piano anytime you want. You’ll make bank in tips.” He looked at her. “Breathe, Becca.”
She sucked in a few breaths. “I’m not ready for that.”
His eyes were warm and understanding. “When you are then.”
She laughed softly, unable to imagine when that might be. “Thanks, Jax.”
“You going to be okay?” he asked.
A lot of people asked that question, but few really wanted to hear an honest answer. She could tell Jax genuinely did. But being okay was her motto, so she mustered a smile. “Always,” she said.
She walked home, let herself into her building, and then stopped short when she realized that the middle apartment, the one next to hers, was open. The front door was thrown wide, and from inside came a bunch of colorful swearing in a frustrated female voice.
Becca tiptoed past her own door and peeked inside the middle unit. There were lights blaring, boxes stacked everywhere, and in the center of the mess stood a young woman about her own age, hands on hips, surveying the chaos.
“Hi,” Becca said, knocking on the doorjamb. “You okay?”
The woman whipped around to face Becca, a baseball bat in her hands before Becca could so much as blink. She took one look at Becca, let out a short breath, and lowered the bat. “Who are you?” she demanded.
Becca let out her own shaky breath. She was good with a bat, too, but it was one thing to have it in your hands,
say at a softball game. It was another thing entirely to be in danger of having it wielded at your head. “I’m Becca Thorpe,” she said. “Your neighbor. And I recognize you. You were working at the vintage store where I spent a fortune the other day.”
“Oh. Yeah.” The woman grimaced and set the bat aside. She was petite, with dark hair and dark eyes. Caucasian features but she looked somehow exotic as well. Beautiful. And wary. She was wearing low-slung jeans, a halter top, and a bad attitude as she dropped the bat. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“You didn’t,” Becca said. “I’m just getting home from being fired from my first day on the job at the bar.” She smiled, thinking that she would get one in return, but she didn’t.
“Olivia Bentley,” the woman said. “Sorry about the job, I’ll try to keep it down in here.”
“It’s okay. I just moved in, too. Need some help?”
“No.”
“You sure?” Becca asked. “Because I—”
“
No
,” Olivia repeated, and then sighed. “But thank you,” she added as she moved toward the door in a not-so-subtle invite for Becca to leave.
“Okay then.” Becca took one step backward, out of the doorway and into the hall. “Well, good—”
The door shut on her face.
“—Night,” she finished. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one having a rough day.
Sam told himself he was too busy to be curious about Becca over the next few days. He and the guys took a client for an overnight deep-sea fishing trip. They also
had two scuba trips. They were running ragged, but that was the nature of the beast for the summer season.
Not much of a sleeper, he tended to stay up late, which is when he did the paperwork required for the business, and his boatbuilding. He liked to do both alone. In fact, he liked to
be
alone.
He’d noticed that there were now curtains on the lower windows of the building kitty-corner to his. And that sometimes, he could hear the strains of a piano playing. The classical music wasn’t something he’d have thought was his type, but he found himself keeping his own music off in order to hear more of it.
He also noted that when he ate at the bar and grill, there were no pretty, curvy, charismatic brunette waitresses spilling beer and mixing up orders.
Telling himself to stop noticing such things at all, he was in the office of his shop working on his laptop on finances. His own, and the few others he took care of. One of those very people walked in about an hour later.
Amelia Donovan had her latest investment statements in hand.
“I need an English translation,” she said, and tossed the statements onto his desk.
Amelia was Cole’s mom. And in some ways, maybe the best of ways, she was also Sam’s. He’d landed with her one of the times that his dad had screwed up enough that social services had stepped in. Once Amelia had gotten him, she’d made sure she was his only foster care after that, which meant that for most of Sam’s trouble-filled teenage years, he’d seesawed between his dad’s place and Cole’s.
Sam hadn’t been easy.
Actually, he’d been the opposite of easy.
But Amelia had accepted him in her house without fuss up until age seventeen, when he’d left to go work on the rigs in the Gulf. She’d even forgiven him when Cole had given up a promising college baseball career to follow him. She was a born caretaker, handling her large family with the perfect mixture of drill-sergeant and mama-bear instincts. She easily kept track of everyone, from their birthdays, to their coming and goings, to whom they were dating. She always knew if her little chicks were bored, happy, upset, or hurting.
What she couldn’t ever seem to do was balance her own checkbook.
Cole’s dad had passed away the previous year from a heart attack, and Sam had been doing the banking for Amelia, handling all her other finances as well. But the reality was, he’d been doing that for years anyway. She’d retired from her high school teaching job and was still doing okay, a feat she attributed entirely to Sam, always saying that she owed him.
She didn’t owe him shit.
Sam didn’t care how much money he’d made her in investments, he could never repay the debt of having her watch out for him and keep him on the straight and narrow.
Or at least as straight and narrow as he got . . .
He picked up the statements and looked at her. “It’s late. You okay?”
“Yes. I just got held up watching
The Voice
.” A natural beauty, Amelia had turned fifty last year, but looked a decade younger. Cole had gotten all of his charm and easy charisma from her. She was barely five feet tall, of Irish descent, and had the temperament to go with it.
And a backbone of pure steel.
Sam handed her back the statements. “The English version is that you made a shitload of money this quarter, so no worries.”
She nodded, but didn’t smile as he’d intended.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” But she was clearly biting her tongue about something.
He knew her well and braced himself, because that look meant she had something on her mind and there’d be no peace until it came out. “Just say it,” he said.
“I heard that your father called you.” Her sweet blue gaze was filled with worry. “Is it true?”
Well, shit. There was no love lost between Amelia and Mark, mostly because Amelia had always had to clean up Mark’s mess—that mess being Sam. It didn’t matter that he and his dad had lived in Seattle. She’d made the two-hour drive and claimed him whenever he’d needed her.
“Sam,” she said. “Is it true? Did Mark call you?”
“Listen, it’s late,” he said, trying to head off a discussion he didn’t want to have. “Let me walk you out—”
“It’s a simple enough question, Samuel.”
He grimaced at his full name, the one only
she
used. Pulling in the big guns. “Yeah, he called. I call him, too, you know that.”
Her eyes went from worried mom to very serious mom. “Honey, I need you to tell me you weren’t stupid enough to give him another penny.”
“You know, it lowers a person’s self-esteem to call them stupid,” he said with mock seriousness.
“Damn it!” Amelia stalked to the door that led to a hallway and into the small kitchen.
Against his better judgment, Sam followed, watching as she bypassed the fridge, going straight for the freezer, exclaiming wordlessly when she found it empty.
“You used to always keep vodka around,” she muttered. “Where’s the vodka?” She turned to him, hands on hips. “Sometimes a woman needs a damn vodka, Sam.”
He knew that. He also knew that sometimes a man needed a damn vodka. For a long time after Gil’s death, vodka had soothed his pain. Too much. When he’d realized that, he’d cut it off cold turkey. It’d sucked.
These days, he stuck with the occasional beer and did his best not to think too much. “I’ve got soda,” he said. “Chips. Cookies. Name your poison.”
“
Vodka
.”
He sighed and strode over to her, shutting the freezer, pulling her from it and enveloping her in his arms. “I’m okay. You know that, right?”
She tipped her head back to look up into his face. “Does it happen often?”
“Me being okay? Yes.”
She smacked him on the chest. “I meant your dad. Does he call you often then?”
“I call him every week,” Sam said.
Her gaze said she got the distinction, and the fact that Sam was usually the instigator didn’t make her any happier. “And do you give him money?” she asked.
“When he needs it.”
She gave a troubled sigh. “Oh, Sam.”
“Look, he’s getting older and he’s feeling his mortality,” he said. “He’s got a silly, frivolous woman, and a baby coming—”
“Which is ridiculous—”
“—And he realizes he fucked up with his first kid.”
“You think?” She cupped his face. “Sam, I don’t like this. I don’t like him taking from you. He’s done nothing but take from you, and I know damn well it affects your relationships. Because of him, you let women in your life here and there, but you don’t let yourself fully rely on anyone, ever. That isn’t healthy, Sam. Is Becca any different?”
He thought of the only woman who’d caught his eye lately. Becca. She certainly wasn’t the type of woman to rely on anyone. “I think she might be,” he said.
“But will you be able to rely on her? That’s what a woman will want, Sam. For you to do the same.”
He gave a short laugh. “You’re way ahead of yourself.”
“Well, I worry about you,” she said. “All of you.”
“Marry off all those crazy daughters of yours, and then we’ll talk,” Sam told her.
“You’re changing the subject on me.”
“Trying.” He sighed at the dark look she shot him. “Look, I don’t like that he’s getting older and feeling regrets. Or that he doesn’t have enough money to support that kid. He’s my dad. What would you have me do?”
Amelia sighed and shook her head. Then she went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I know better than to argue with you. I’d do better bashing my head up against the wall.”
He smiled, as this was true. “So you’ll leave me alone about it?”
“No.” She kissed his other cheek. “But I’ll give you some peace. For now.”
It was nearly midnight when she left, with one last long hug that Sam endured. When he was alone, he shut the laptop and hit the lights. Bed was the smart decision
but he was far from tired. Thinking about his dad had dredged up some shit he didn’t want dredged.
He needed to expel his pent-up energy. Usually he did this by running with Ben, a longtime friend from town. Like Sam, Ben appreciated the art of not talking much, which meant they were well suited as running partners, but Ben wasn’t sleeping alone these days, and it was too late to call. So, restless and edgy, Sam hit the beach by himself, pushing himself hard. He tried to clear his mind, but things kept popping into his head.
Love ya, son
.
It drove him crazy how his dad threw around the words like they meant nothing. Love, real love, would have protected him from being taken from their home due to neglect. Real love would have forgotten the stupid get-rich-quick schemes that never came through and attempted to keep a job so they had a roof over their heads and food in their kitchen.
Sam shook off the bleak memories and kept running. The past didn’t matter. The here and now mattered. Building boats. Running the charter business. Coming through for Cole and Tanner the way they’d always come through for him.