Run Wild With Me (18 page)

“Why, Ed?” Andrea had to ask. “Why do this to me? I thought we were friends. I don’t understand.”

“I cared about you, Andrea. I know you don’t think so. But I did. After the truck crashed, and you said that you were going to marry Sam, I think I went a little crazy. I’m sorry,” Ed said with a waver in his voice.” I was going to be the governor, and you were going to be my wife. I never meant to hurt you … I mean …”

“Oh, Ed. What did you do to Sam?”

“I went by Sam’s place on the way to the picnic. I was going to tell him that you were mine. I didn’t know what to do. My driver had disappeared. The FBI and the sheriff were combing the county. It all came to a head. I hit him. Can you believe it, Andy? I never hit anybody in my life, but I hit Sam, knocked him into his electric saw and cut his forehead.

“Then when he came to the picnic and I saw
that scratch on his head, I knew that was all I needed.” Ed’s voice had trailed off, and he looked at the floor, shame and defeat evident in his face.

Andrea looked at Ed, the man she’d trusted simply because he’d lived his whole life in Arcadia. She’d been such a blind fool. For one crazy minute at the picnic she’d almost let him make her believe that Sam was guilty. How could she ever make it up to Sam?

“Oh, Sam.” Andrea turned to apologize to the man she’d wronged so badly. But he was gone.

“Go after him, babe,” Buck urged.

From the doorway, Andrea saw Sam walking slowly up the highway. His back was straight and proud. Two drivers stopped to offer Sam a ride, but he refused.

She couldn’t go after him. What she’d done was unforgivable. She’d put locks on any doors she might have opened once. It was too late.

Andrea left the front porch and walked up the hill through the apple orchard in the moonlight. She couldn’t throw off the tight pain of her ever-present tears as she let herself remember. It had been three days, and nobody had seen Sam. He hadn’t answered his phone. Even Otis hadn’t been able to rouse him.

Crickets and katydids trilled a chorus in the silence, and fireflies danced through the branches. But the peace and beauty were gone. Andrea knew Buck didn’t understand her behavior. Even she didn’t understand why she let Sam walk out of her life. By now he was probably out of the state, gone who knows where, and she couldn’t blame him. Andrea leaned her head against the apple tree under which Sam had kissed her. She tried desperately not to think. If she didn’t think, she wouldn’t hurt so bad.

“It’s not going to work, Andy.”

“Buck! What are you doing up here? You shouldn’t be walking on that leg.”

“I’m all right, Andy. I can’t stand by and watch you hurt any longer.”

“I’ll be fine, Buck, really I will.” She drew herself upright, hoping he couldn’t see that she’d been crying.

“Andrea, I’ve never interfered with your decisions before. When you left Arcadia for the city, I hurt, but I let you go. When you came back here wounded and silent, I didn’t pry. Then Sam came along, and I saw you come to life again. Now I’m going to say something I should have said long ago.”

“Please don’t give me advice, Buck. I’ll have to work out my problems by myself.”

“This isn’t your problem, at least not completely. I’ve had a hand in it too. It’s about your mother. I’ve never really talked to you about her, and I think it’s time I did, Andrea. I met her while I was in the veterans’ hospital. There was someone else I cared for. She married another man. I got drunk and married your mother. I always told you that she left here because she couldn’t stand small-town life. That wasn’t true. She left because I never let her forget that she was my second choice. You know when I found out that I loved her? After I’d driven her away.”

“Oh, Buck. I’m so sorry. Not for me, but for you. You must have suffered very much.”

“I was a damn fool. Once I realized it, I should have gone after her, but I couldn’t. I was a coward. Don’t you make the same mistake. If you want Sam Farley, go after him.”

Andrea didn’t know whether she quite believed the story Buck had told her about her mother, though she appreciated the reason he’d done so. She’d known all along that her mother was a nurse from the hospital where Buck had been treated. She remarried the year after she left Arcadia and was killed in a car accident the next. Andrea had learned the truth a long time ago.

“Oh, Daddy, I don’t know. This is different. Sam isn’t like you. He’d never forgive me.”

“Well, it’s your life, but I wanted you to know.” Buck started clumsily back down the hill, leaning heavily on the cane he’d substituted for crutches. When he reached the fence, he paused and called over his shoulder, “Andy, I hate to intrude. I know you have your own problems, but I think I’d like a ride over to Louise Roberts’s house.”

“Now?” Andrea asked in surprise.

“Yep!” Buck answered firmly. “You’ve heard of ‘physician, heal thyself.’ I’m about to take my own advice.”

Andrea followed Buck back down the hill. She got her purse and her keys, and started out the door. Stopping, she turned and raced back to her bedroom, running a comb through her hair and touching a lipstick to her lips. She told herself that she was checking to make sure her eyes weren’t puffy from crying.

“Do you want me to come back for you later, Buck?”

“No, I don’t plan to be home before sometime tomorrow. I think I’d better tell you that Louise is the girl who married somebody else. Maybe I’ve been given another chance. You’d better think about that too, Andy.”

Louise? Andrea smiled. Somehow Louise and Buck seemed right together.

She let Buck out and watched him disappear into the darkness of Louise Roberts’s back porch. Andrea backed the Bronco slowly down the drive. Maybe Buck was right about taking chances. She turned toward the Hines place. It seemed a lifetime since she’d made her first trip over there at night. As if on cue, a rumble of thunder groaned in the distance, and a flash of summer lightning split the sky. There was a storm coming.

She expected the house to be dark, boarded up again. But there was a faint light shining through the trees as she drove up the drive. Even in the darkness she could see that the shutters had a fresh coat of bright yellow paint. A gust of wind swept through the screened porch, moving a newly painted swing back and forth.

Andrea’s heart took a sudden glad little lurch. He was still there. She sat in the darkness for a long time, trying to form a plan, but her mind jumped from one idea to another, and finally she knew that she’d simply have to face him and hope that he was still a man willing to take chances too.

Nervously she got out of the Bronco and walked up to the back porch. She started to knock, then tried the door instead. This time it wasn’t locked. She hadn’t known how important that was until she found it open. Suddenly she began to feel good.

“Evening, Chief. Aren’t you coming in?”

The glow of a cigarette lit up the porch for a second, then died. He was sitting there bare-chested,
a square of white thrown across his lap in the darkness.

Andrea pushed open the screen and walked inside. “You’re smoking,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I didn’t, before.”

A rush of uncertainty engulfed Andrea. She could hear the sound of her breathing in the silence. And her heart was pounding so, she knew it must be audible to the man sitting at the end of the porch. Her mind went blank, and she couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say.

Sam stood up. “I’m glad you came.”

“I thought you would leave.”

A night bird called out in the distance. Andrea had never been so uncertain of her actions. Suddenly she was drifting, floundering around without knowing exactly where she was going.

“Damn!” Sam’s sudden movement brought a startled scream from Andrea as he put out his cigarette and dashed inside. There was a squeak, a yelp—“Sawblades and sledgehammers! They’re burned!”—and a clatter of noise.

Andrea followed the sounds to the kitchen. What she saw was mind-shattering. There was a thin dusting of flour all over the kitchen floor and cabinets. Crumpled empty chocolate-chip bags were everywhere. An open can of shortening, a half-empty canister of sugar, and an almost-empty gallon of milk covered the work area.

Standing in the midst of this whirlwind was a barefoot Sam Farley, wearing flour-splotched jeans and a white apron. At his feet was a cookie tin and a dozen blackened cookies spilled into broken crumbs all over the floor.

Sam looked up, an expression of pure frustration on his face. “I burned them.”

“What are you doing, Sam?”

“What does it look like? I’m baking cookies. Like my grandmother used to make.” He leaned down and began to clean up the mess, depositing it into a can already overflowing with what looked like gooey, half-cooked mistakes.

Andrea took a long look around. On shelves behind open cabinet doors, on the dining-room table behind her, and in the breakfast room in the kitchen were plates and plates of different kinds of cookies.

“Why, Sam? Why all these cookies?”

“To go with the lemonade, of course.”

“Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“They go with the swing on the front porch.”

“How long have you been practicing?”

“Well, let’s put it this way. If the birds like cookies, they’ll be fed for the next couple of years. I never dreamed making cookies could be so hard.” He turned back to his table and began to put his cooking supplies away. “Good thing you finally got here. This is my last sack of sugar.”

“ ‘Finally got here’? You mean you expected me?”

“Sooner or later. It’s that trust you were talking about. I guess you did too good a job convincing me about this town. I just waited out here, having faith.” Sam placed the cookie tin on the counter and turned his eyes to the floor as he spoke. “Are you going to marry me, Andrea Fleming?”

A great joy swept over her. He’d waited for her. He’d known she would come. She felt tears of happiness well up in her eyes. “Oh yes, Sam Farley. I’m going to marry you, if you’ll have me.”

The sound of thunder rumbled closer, and a sharp breeze sprang up, ruffling the trees outside the kitchen window. Sam looked up and slowly untied his apron, allowing it to float to the floor. Andrea felt her heart skip as their gazes locked.

“Are you sure, Stormy darlin’? I’m still an outsider.”

“Oh, Sam,
you
were right about Arcadia—not me. It’s just a town, a place, with all kinds of people, neither all good nor all bad. I’ve been such a blind fool. I needed a sanctuary, and I made Arcadia more than it could ever be.”

“But you weren’t completely wrong, Andrea. Arcadia isn’t perfect, but it is special. That’s what my mother understood. That’s the sanctuary Arcadia offers both of us—a place where mothers still make cookies for their children, and sit in swings spinning wonderful tales of the outside world. We’ve found a place for our love to grow, a place to belong.”

“Dear, wonderful Sam. Do you suppose we could eat your cookies tomorrow, or maybe the day after? Right now I want you to kiss me. And, Sam, you know what happens when you kiss me. I figure it might be tomorrow before we get from the bedroom to cookies and lemonade in the swing.”

Sam reached back, snapped off the kitchen light, and took a step toward Andrea. “You know what, Stormy, maybe I don’t need the cookies anymore. Maybe the only thing I ever needed was you.”

Andrea sucked in her breath when he took her in his arms. And then his mouth was on hers, and she was responding greedily.

The storm overhead suddenly broke in a fury, pelting the rooftop with raindrops and slapping the tree limbs against the house. Lightning split the sky, and a clap of thunder racked the night.

Sam took Andrea’s face in both hands and tilted her head back as though he could see her face in the darkness. “Oh, Andrea, there are so many things I want to give to you.” His voice grew husky. “I love you so much that I’m going to stay right here in Arcadia and spend the rest of my life loving you.”

He buried his face in her hair, clasping her to him so tightly that she felt as if she were a part of him. Outside lightning flashed over the countryside as the fireworks display had down at the lake.

There was a fierce, intense splendor about the storm. Just as there was about Sam. And Andrea knew that she never wanted to tame the wild passion of the man holding her. She’d never known such joy, and she’d never let it go.

Run wild with him?

Oh, yes. Always.

Wherever he wanted to go.

Welcome to Loveswept!

Kick off the summer with these sultry Loveswept reads. We’re starting June off with two fantastic e-originals …

 … And ending the month with
HER BETROTHED’S DILEMMA
, a special original historical short story from Loveswept author Megan Frampton.

We also have some wonderful classics for you to enjoy:

Temptation runs rampant in Linda Cajio’s
DOUBLE DEALING
, #1
New York Times
bestselling author Iris Johansen tells an engrossing story about a man who promises a forever love in
FOREVER DREAM
, and Sandra Chastain enthralls with her three searing romances,
SINNER AND SAINT
,
SHOWDOWN AT LIZARD ROCK
, and
SCARLET LADY
.

If you love romance … then you’re ready to be
Loveswept
!