I sighed again.
Vacation over. Fun on the Mediterranean abruptly terminated.
Cooter, dead and still a major pain in my ass, was finding new ways to haunt me.
Shit.
Sam moved me away from the window to the couch and I sat on it, knees to chest, soles to seat, arms around my calves as he moved to the windows and drew all the curtains.
Then he came back and crouched in front of me.
“I have friends,” he said softly.
I bet he did.
So much for Luci not wanting him to take another job. Another job sat down to breakfast with him eleven days ago.
Of course, that “job” was paternally manhandled to his table by an overly romantic, matchmaking Italian maitre d’ but still.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.
“Barney Oswald just got himself a shitload of help.”
I sighed again.
He straightened, bent into me and wrapped a hand around the back of my neck as his face got in mine.
“I won’t let anything harm you,” he whispered and I knew by the timbre in his voice he was very, very serious but even if the timbre in his voice didn’t say it, the hard, glittering look in his eyes did.
“Can you do me a favor?” I asked quietly.
“Anything.”
“I know it’s you and I know you’re allowed to have a genuine reaction to whatever happens, including getting pissed off but until I’m used to it, can you at least try not to scare the shit out of me when you get angry?” I watched remorse score across his features, I hated to see it and I uncurled an arm from my legs, wrapped my fingers around his forearm and squeezed as I whispered, “Seven years, Sam, I’ll do my best to get over it but I had it for seven years. And you’re bigger, you’re stronger and when you get pissed, that’s all I can see. If he could hurt me, you could break me. I know you’ve promised me you won’t and you’ve given me no indication you ever will. I know this is all about me and I have to work on it. I’m just asking you to help.”
“I’ll check it,” he whispered back instantly and I gave his arm another squeeze.
“I know you won’t be able to do that, it’s impossible but I’m asking you to try.”
“Baby,” his face got closer, “I’ll… check… it.”
I stared into his eyes and somehow I knew he’d check it.
And there it went. That settled in my soul too.
“Well, in your defense, it isn’t often you find out the woman you’re banging has had a hit put out on her.”
Sam stared at me. Then I watched his face warm and my heart warmed with it.
Then he leaned in, touched his mouth to mine, pulled back an inch and said softly, “Shower. Calls. Then we’ll figure out what’s next.”
I nodded.
He moved in again to kiss my nose.
Then he let me go and strode into the bedroom.
I watched him until he disappeared.
Then I watched the space where he disappeared.
Then I shoved my face in my knees.
Then I made a mental note to call Paula in three hours and tell her I was the woman Sampson Cooper was currently banging before she pulled up any of her gossip sites at the office (which I knew she did first thing while listening to phone messages), found out before I could tell her and lost her marbles.
Then, suddenly, I whispered, “I fucking hate you Cooter Clementine,” to my knees.
Cooter, being dead and buried in Indiana, had no reply.
Chapter Twelve
My Girl Deserves Gentle
After Sam had a shower and got on the phone, I hopped into the shower and did what I did since I started things with Sam which meant the whole shebang of shaved legs, shaved pits, all over lotion, half-squirts of perfume in strategic areas and a cute outfit of white short-shorts and tight-fitting, coral pink, eyelet camisole that kicked ass with my tan.
Seeing as we were on the Med and I was confined to quarters due to the possibility that my life would imminently be snuffed out, I forewent makeup and the big blow out of my hair as such effort was clearly unnecessary. But I did blow out the long fall of bangs that fell past my eyes because, really, if I didn’t, it could get scary. The rest of my hair I was going to let dry curly, wavy and untamed and if Sam thought it made me look like a wild woman raised by apes, so be it.
I had bigger things to worry about.
Seriously.
And anyway, he’d seen me at the beach and he hadn’t escaped in the middle of the night so I figured I was good.
Then I went to the bed, laid on my back, cocked my knees, stared at the ceiling, tried and failed to eavesdrop on Sam’s various conversations in the lounge, gave up on that and was far more successful in plotting Cooter’s grisly death and imagining it to its culmination.
Unfortunately, Cooter was already dead.
Still, a girl could dream.
I also counted down the minutes to when I could start calling my family and friends. I wasn’t sure I was going to get into the fact that my life was in danger, that might be too much after the, “Sampson Cooper is doing me” news.
I had an hour left to wait and Cooter had died in twelve bloody, painful, macabre ways in my murderous fantasies that were even more bloody and macabre than having half his head blown off when I felt Sam’s presence enter the room.
I kept my eyes to the ceiling even as I felt Sam’s presence enter the bed.
He stretched out beside me and I felt his hand come to rest on my belly.
“What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.
“I’m plotting Cooter’s murder,” I answered.
This brought silence and then, “Baby, he’s dead.”
“Good, I can’t go to prison for plotting the murder of a dead man.”
“Kia –”
I turned my head and caught his eyes. “Sam, he put a hit on me.”
Sam pressed his lips together, his eyes went hard and scary and I made a mental note not to remind him my dead husband hired a hit man to murder me.
It was clearly time to change the subject.
“In an hour, I’m starting the round of calls to my friends and Mom and Dad telling them about us.”
“All right.”
“I’m not informing them of the, uh… other stuff.”
“Probably a good idea.”
I drew in breath.
Sam spoke.
“Do you want some good news?”
“Yeah, Sam, that would work,” I replied and he grinned.
“Clinic in Heraklion called. Your tests came back clean.”
Well, thank God for that.
Sam had located a private, clean, exclusive (by the looks of it, though I wouldn’t know since he’d insisted on paying, something he insisted on doing all the time, I hadn’t so much as bought a drink) clinic in Heraklion and I’d gone for my tests the afternoon of the day we arrived on Crete.
So there you go. Cooter didn’t give me herpes; he just put a hit on me.
At least that was one way Cooter didn’t screw me from the grave.
“Excellent,” I muttered and my head turned back, my eyes going to the ceiling.
Sam’s hand pressed into my belly and he asked, “What’re you tellin’ your folks about us?”
I stopped breathing.
Oh God.
What was I going to tell my Mom, Dad and friends about us?
I forced air into my lungs and my eyes slid to Sam.
“Uh…” I mumbled and he grinned again.
Then his hand slid around me and he pulled me to my side, facing him, my legs fell into his, his immediately shifted to tangle with mine and he pulled me into his solid heat.
“How’s this?” he whispered, I stared into his warm, intense eyes and stopped breathing again and he kept talking. “We met, we clicked, this is somethin’ we both wanna explore so that’s what we’re gonna do. Right now, things are up in the air so when we go home, you might be comin’ with me to m
y place in North Carolina or I might be goin’ with you to Indiana. You’ll let them know when we know.”
I consciously made myself breathe again and asked, “North Carolina?”
“If I think you’re safer there, that’s where you’re goin’.”
This made sense.
But I totally could not do this.
“Sam, I can’t go to North Carolina with you.”
His brows drew together and he asked, “Why not?”
“Well, Memphis, one. My house just sold and I have tons of stuff to do, two. I haven’t seen my family or friends in five weeks, three. I’ve never been gone this long before in my life and they miss me, four. And I’m going to be homeless if I don’t get my shit sorted and find a house, five.”
To this, Sam countered with, “You got a man who knows you live in Heartmeadow who’s got you in his crosshairs.”
If we were writing lists, this would go in big, block letters at the top of the con list for returning to Indiana.
Shit.
I closed my eyes and tipped my chin down.
Sam kissed the top of my head.
God, he was sweet.
“Tell me about the unit,” he murmured.
“They upped their offer another ten K.”
“Back out.”
I opened my eyes and tipped my head back, shocked by this instantaneous and decisive reply.
“Really?”
“Baby, it’s a condo in Heartmeadow, Indiana, not a co-op on Central Park. You’re lookin’ at least at putting thirty large over asking price into it in a market that is far from stable. The market could nosedive and you’ll be sittin’ on a condo that’s worth less than you paid for it and in this market that could conceivably happen in a day. No shit. This is a bad investment. Back out.”
Right.
Well, that was easy.
Except…
“But I want it,” I told him.
“I see that but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a bad investment and when I say that I mean a really fuckin’ bad investment.”
Hmm.
“My buyers have gone fast-track and Paula says I could close on my house in three to five weeks. One of those is already gone. If I don’t find something, where do I live?”
“This shit gets sorted, move in with your folks for awhile.”
“Do you like my ass?”
His head jerked slightly on the pillow then he answered, “Uh… yeah.”
“Would you like it if it was five times the size?”
He grinned and his arms gathered me closer.
Then he muttered, “I’m not gonna answer that.”
This was a good choice.
“Mom doesn’t drain the grease off hamburger meat when making chili, spaghetti, anything and she might say you can help in the kitchen but what she means is, you can stand there, drink a beer and chat with her while she concocts meals that are at least five thousand calories a plate and even the vegetables are fried. So, no. I am not moving in with my parents.”
“Honey, you’re twenty-eight, buy and eat your own food.”
At his statement, I even felt my eyes get big.
If I tried to bring carrot sticks and yogurt into my mother’s house and inform her she could not find some way to fry the former or use the latter in a cake, she’d lose her mind.
“Are you nuts?” I cried, the last word rising three octaves.
Sam burst out laughing.
I watched because I liked it but I didn’t participate partly because there was a good possibility he thought I was overreacting when I… was… not.
When he stopped laughing, he smiled down at me and muttered, “Strike that. Your Mom obviously is serious about her command of the fridge and, we’re with your parents, I fuck you, you can’t moan the way I like to make you moan.”
That was when I felt my mouth drop open as well as my eyes get wide again.
“We’re not having sex in my parents’ house.”
He started chuckling and through his chuckles he said, “Baby, again, you’re twenty-eight.”
“And honey, you grew up in LA where things are fast and loose. This is Indiana. This is in the Bible belt. LA and all the rest of the world may have hit the new millennium a good while ago but Indiana is firmly stuck in the 50’s and they… are… never… coming… out. And my parents are happy as clams right there until… they… die. You do not sleep with your boyfriend in the same bed in your parents’ house and even if we were married for twenty years we would not stay at my parents’ house and have sex. If we did, the house would explode and then everyone in Heartmeadow would know we tried to have sex at my parents’ house!”
Sam burst out laughing again but this time he rolled into me while he did it.
When he was done, his torso on mine, smiling down at me, he murmured, “Right, so, I find a way to make you safe and get you home to your Mom, your dog and your friend who has a cutout of me in her bedroom, you close on your house, we’re staying in a hotel.”
“We can’t stay in a hotel. The only hotel in town is a motel and that was where Cooter was murdered so that’s out. I like the people who own it, they go to my church. Still, it’s the principle of the thing. It wouldn’t do for me to stay at the motel my husband used to cheat on me then got half his head blown off in. I’d have to ask Celeste about how appropriate amongst the jet-set that is but I’m thinking her answer will be a big, fat no.”
Sam was grinning when he murmured, “Probably.”
“Definitely.”
“Then it’s North Carolina.”
My body tensed and I whispered, “Sam –”
I stopped talking when his face got to within an inch of mine and all humor fled from it.
“Right, I like you, baby, I’m hopin’ you’re gettin’ that I like you a lot. A big part of being able to keep doin’ that is you need to be breathing,” he stated, I bit my lip at the scary veracity of his words and he kept talking. “And I like fuckin’ you and I’m hopin’ you’re gettin’ that I like that a lot too so I wanna keep doin’ it and if you’re in the bedroom you grew up in and I’m on the couch and your Dad feels like wrestlin’ me out the door if he hears a floorboard creak, that is not gonna make me happy. The motel that piece of shit bought it in is out. So, what we gotta do is, we gotta get you home, connect you with your people for a few days, get your fuckin’ dog and get your ass to my place in North Carolina which is big, it’s got a security system, I have guns and I feel more positive about the fact I can keep you safe there. Is this a plan?”
“You’d take Memphis?” I whispered.
“Does the dog come with you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered.
“Then yeah.”
My body relaxed and I said softly, “Then yeah, we have a plan.”
He closed his eyes and I saw relief in his face for the briefest moment but I saw it, I definitely did and it rocked me because I knew he liked me but it wasn’t until I saw that that I had an indication of just how much.
And it was then I understood his earlier anger.
It wasn’t so much he was mad at me.
He was angry because he had feelings for me, he’d found out I was in danger and he was hot guy, ex-commando worried.
“Sam,” I whispered, his eyes opened and his mouth came to mine.
“We got an hour before you call home and at least that until I get some callbacks. Your tests came back clean; I don’t have to wear a condom so all I get to feel is you so I know what we’re gonna do with that hour.”
“Sa –” I started his name but didn’t finish.
His head slanted and he kissed me, hard, wet and long.
And then we did what Sam knew we were going to do.
And it was over an hour before I was again clothed, sitting cross-legged on the bed certain my hair was beyond wild and raised by apes, Sam was murmuring on the phone in the lounge and I had my cell in my hand.
Mom first.
I
hadn’t spoken to her since Florence and, obviously, a lot had happened and, further, Mom was not big on not being in the know with what was up with her kids. She’d had seven years of me keeping secrets, living in denial and thus shutting her out and, from that, I’d bought nearly five months of Mom being more up in my business then Luci was in Sam’s.
This could go in a variety of ways, not all of them good.
Shit.
I sucked it up, scrolled to her contact and hit go.
It rang twice then, “Sweetie! You’re home in three days!”
I smiled. “Hey, Mom.”
“Oh Kia, honey, are you having a good time?”
“Yeah, Mom, it’s been great.”
“Good, I’m so happy. And you’ve lit a fire; I’ve been talking to your Dad for ages about taking me to Europe and just the other day I saw him on the internet looking at tourist sites for London. I think I’m going to have a good Christmas present this year!” she declared gleefully.
I kept smiling. “That’s cool, Mom, listen –”
She cut me off. “I’m calling Paula, Missy, Teri. We’ll have a get-together. Margaritas, your Dad’s brats on the grill and you can show us all your pictures. I cannot wait to see your pictures.”
“Mom, I’ve met somebody,” I blurted.
Silence.
No.
Loaded silence.
And it was listening to her loaded silence that I knew more than I already knew that my Mom had been through hell. The first and only boy I dated, I married, it was a supremely bad decision and the weight of her silence meant she wasn’t feeling confident in my ability to choose another one. Especially on vacation in Europe where I could get played by a whole new field of losers. Probably also especially due to the fact that Cooter had been dead for just shy of five months and she might suspect this was a rebound.
“You know him,” I told her.
“I… know him?” she asked hesitantly.
“Or, I mean, you know of him.”
“Kia –”
“It’s Sampson Cooper,” I said quickly then finished, “Sam.”
More silence then a shrieked, “What?”
I pulled the phone away from my ear on a wince then put it back and told her, “I, uh… met him at breakfast about a week and a half ago. In Lake Como. We, um… hit it off. He came to Crete with me.”