Yes, a bright yellow Lamborghini.
Seeing his car, for some reason, I deflated. Not totally but I felt it.
This was not to say it was not a cool car, it definitely was. And this was not to say I didn’t look forward to my first ever and probably only ride in a freaking Lamborghini, I did, I definitely did.
This was to say it was expensive and flashy to the point of being a shade off trashy and I did not see Sampson Cooper this way. This car screamed, “Look at me! I have money! I have fame! I am important! Bow to me, all you minions.”
Okay, maybe it didn’t say all that but it said enough of it to make me, for the first time, wonder about a Sam who stayed at an expensive hotel, owned an expensive tuxedo that had been tailored for him and ate at restaurants like the one he ate at last night. I didn’t pay, Thomas did and refused to even discuss it (my debt to him and Celeste was growing by the day) but I knew it was expensive and when I say that I mean, if you think of the most expensive restaurant you’ve ever been to, it was more as in a lot more. One bottle of wine was more than a three course meal at a normal expensive restaurant, so it was that expensive.
And the Sampson Cooper I had in my head from all I knew about him and his life before I met him and the man I’d been in the presence of three times who’d been real, who cursed when he felt like it, held my hand when he saw tears in my eyes, that Sampson Cooper, or Sam, did not have a flashy car that screamed, “Look at me!”
He opened my door for me and, with his long fingers wrapped around my bicep, guided me gently into the car, making sure I cleared my skirt and was settled in before closing the door.
I glanced through the interior as he rounded the hood and vaguely wondered how he’d get his tall, sizeable frame in it then I looked out the windshield, weirdly despondent and suddenly not nervous or even excited about the evening.
Very weird. Very stupid. And also judgmental.
But there you go. Men were men and, just like Cooter but for Sam in a bigger, showier way, they all found their ways to prove they had a big dick, even Sam Cooper.
It wasn’t until Sam burst out laughing that I realized he’d folded in beside me and he’d been there awhile.
I turned my head to look at him.
Okay, I was suddenly nervous and excited again. This was because he might want the world to know he had a big dick but he was unbelievably gorgeous while he was doing it.
He stopped laughing but kept smiling at me when he declared, “It’s Luci’s.”
“What?” I asked.
“The car,” he answered and I felt my lips part.
Jeez, was he in my head or what?
Sam kept speaking. “She has five cars and she insisted I use one and not rent one. She also insisted I stay with her. I won on having some privacy and not spending every minute I wasn’t workin’ having Luci in my face about all the things Luci gets in my face about, and, baby, there’s a lot of that shit. I gave in on the car. I see from your face I shouldn’t have. Then again, I didn’t know I’d meet a beautiful blonde who’s the only beautiful blonde on five continents who would not get off on sittin’ beside me in a car like this.”
“I didn’t –” I started to deny through a lie.
He kept smiling, though bigger, and interrupted through it, “You did.”
“I –”
He leaned toward me, his hand reached out, his fingers curled around the side of my neck again and I shut up.
“You did,” he said gently and kept going, “and I don’t care because I agree. This car is not me and it’s good it’s not you either. But,” the smile came back, “wait ‘til it goes. This ride screams euro-trash and anyone who’s got a hint of class feels like an asshole sitting in it but when it purrs, it makes it worth it.”
“Okay,” I whispered and I whispered because I couldn’t get my voice to go louder. There were three reasons for this. One, he was touching me again. Two, it hit me he called me a beautiful blonde. And three, I really wanted to feel that Lamborghini purr.
“Buckle up,” he murmured, let me go and turned away.
I buckled up. Sam turned the ignition and the car came to life.
I sighed with deep content and I did this audibly.
Sam burst out laughing again.
I bit my lip to stop myself from doing anything (else) stupid as Sam backed out of the spot, still chuckling and my mind turned to Celeste’s advice because I was getting the distinct feeling I was not holding anything secret.
I pulled myself back on track when we were away and I did this by asking, hopefully casually, “Uh… Luci, that is, Luciana owns five cars?”
“You can call her Luci, I’ll say it before she says it and when she meets you, she’ll definitely say it.”
This was a somewhat weird comment but I had no time to decipher it or ask because Sam kept talking.
“And yeah, she owns five cars. She’s loaded. Her parents are loaded, she’s a trust fund baby and, on top of that, before she hooked up with Gordo, she was a model. A successful one. You see her face, you’ll probably recognize her.”
Oh man. I wasn’t sure that was good.
Sam went on.
“Sayin’ that, about ten seconds after you get over it, you’ll see she’s not a Luciana, she’s a Luci.”
“How is she a Luci?” I asked.
“She’s a Luci because, regardless if she’s sittin’ beside a catwalk at a fashion show in Milan or sittin’ on your deck, drinkin’ a beer, she always acts like she’s sittin’ on your deck drinkin’ a beer.”
I felt my heart flutter because I liked that he liked that because I was the kind of girl who knew all about sitting on a deck drinking a beer and not the kind of girl who knew what it was like to sit beside a catwalk at a fashion show in Milan. And I felt slightly less nervous because I liked that Luci was like that. It was only then I realized that part of my anxiety was about meeting Luciana, going to her party and being amongst her set which was not my set.
But the way he described her, at least she was.
“So, uh,” I started cautiously, “what does she get in your face about?”
“The better question is, what doesn’t she get in my face about?”
I looked from the view of the road, the brilliant blue of the lake stretching out on one side, sharp rises of green mountains dotted with gray stone on the other, to Sam.
“Sorry?” I asked as a prompt.
He glanced at me then back at the road.
“She’s an only child. Gordo was like a brother so she thinks of me as her brother-in-law. Before we lost him, they didn’t have kids. She loves kids and since she can’t have her own and won’t be an aunt any other way, she’s counting on me and she’s impatient.”
I found this open declaration intriguing for more reasons than the fact it was an open declaration.
Before I could say word one, not that I had any clue what to say, Sam kept going.
“She’s desperate for me to hook up. I’m thirty-five, she’s known me five years, Gordo’s been gone one of those. She’s spent that time concentrating on me.”
“I get this,” I said softly, because I did but not for the reason Sam thought I did and I knew the reason he thought I got it because, at my words, there was an intense pulse coming from Sam that hit the air of the car. I powered through the pulse and continued, “My friend Missy lost her husband in a car crash. Sudden. They’d been married less than a year.” I looked out the side window and kept sharing. “I never saw her cry. That was a long time ago and I still have never seen her cry. But she had a full-time job and still, she volunteered for, like, seven charities, went for every promotion going and enrolled in night classes to get her MBA. All this time, she’s never slowed down. She’s done anything she could do to concentrate on anything other than losing Rich, what that meant, dealing with it and moving on. Now she’s a Deputy Director of one of those charities she volunteered for. It’s her life. It’s been years and she hasn’t even dated.”
I told Sam this but what I didn’t tell him was one of the charities she went all out for was me.
By this time, I’d been married to Cooter for five years and there wasn’t much of me left. All my friends had said things, done things, I’d noticed the looks and they all avoided Cooter like the plague and not because he made it clear he didn’t like my friends around the house or me spending time with them (both of which he made very clear), but because they hated him for what he was doing to me and, by that point, they hated him so much they couldn’t be responsible for their actions or their words if they had to spend too much time with him.
But, after Rich died, Missy had approached me three times, each increasingly more assertive, to discuss what was happening to me or, more to the point, what Cooter was taking from me. Finally, I had to lay it out that Cooter and I were just fine, not perfect but happy and I’d done this in a way that was not mean or ugly but definitive.
After that, none of my friends said things or did things (but I still noticed the looks). And, sitting in that Lamborghini, it hit me that they didn’t probably because Missy warned them I was living the dysfunction and, until I got my head out of my ass, there was nothing they could do.
And I got this too. I loved them all enough to know that, even if a man had stripped away most of what was them; I’d take what was left rather than pushing something that might mean she’d take away anything I could get.
I pressed my lips together and tried to force this new knowledge out of my brain. I was failing at this when Sam spoke again, taking my attention and when he took it, the way he took it, he took all of it.
“So tell me, baby,” he asked gently, his tone in his deep, rough-like-velvet voice gliding along my skin, coating it with a sheen that was like an invisible barrier that I knew, if I had a lifetime of his voice stroking that soothing ointment along my skin, nothing would ever harm me and my head turned to him. “You get this, what do I do?”
I was lost in his voice, so lost, his question confused me. “What do you do?”
“Gordo was my boy, we spent a lot of time together, good times. He also had my back in some serious situations and there was no one I trusted more than him. Knowin’ Luci loves him like she does, witnessing her devotion even after he’s gone, gotta admit, Kia, I dig that. Gordo deserves that. But time is passing. She’s young and she’s got a life she isn’t livin’ because she’s dedicating hers to livin’ mine. How do I stop that?”
There was something about this question, an intimacy, a trust that threw me. I’d been in his presence three times and he was asking me a question the answer to which was beyond important. It was about friendship and the wrong answer could lead to the wrong action and might result in the end of their friendship and that could mean me giving him an answer that would guide him to a loss of something that was unbearable.
And, for some insane reason, I found my mouth telling him that.
And I did it like this, “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know Luci so I can’t say and I’d never give blind advice when something as important as friendship lies in the balance. Your friend, if he knew what would happen to him, would trust you to handle her with care. And I wouldn’t be handling her with care if I pretended to know the answer just for the sake of giving you one.”
Sam didn’t reply but the air in the car changed again. This wasn’t an intense pulse. But whatever it was shifted in like it was going to stay awhile, it was warm, languid and it had the kind of feel you wanted to float in forever.
I faced forward, trying to ignore the air and what it was doing to my state of mind and understanding of the world.
“Kia,” Sam called.
“Yeah,” I answered the windshield.
“Your friends handle you with care?”
Oh man.
Shit.
I closed my eyes and opened them, trying to think fast of how to answer without giving away any secrets.
When I did this by not speaking at all, undeterred, Sam compounded his question.
“His boys?”
I pressed my lips together.
Then I gave away a secret, I didn’t say much and hoped it wasn’t too much.
“Yes,” I answered his first question, paused then answered his second question softly, “and no.”
“Right,” he murmured, that word quiet but heavy with an easily read edge of harsh.
This said he got me and he gave a shit. This said he understood and he knew exactly what kind of “boys” Cooter had. And being a man, this meant he could probably guess a variety of ways, some of them likely accurate, of just how Cooter’s friends did not handle me with care not only after his death but prior to it.
And they hadn’t.
Well, it appeared I’d said three words and still I said too much.
I looked out the side window. Sam drove without speaking. After some time, he turned into the forecourt of a rather large but weirdly not imposing pink villa.
He rolled the Lamborghini to a stop, a red-coated valet rushed to his door and another one rushed to mine as I undid my seatbelt and saw Sam turned to the valet but shaking his head.
Then, when I’d released the seatbelt, he turned to me.
His hand shot out, caught me around the back of my neck and pulled me across the short expanse of the car to within an inch of his face and when he had me in position and I was concentrating on breathing, he rocked my world.
“There are very few, very fuckin’ few people, Kia, who get what’s precious in this world. They work their asses off for pure shit and think they’d fight and die to keep it. You don’t fight and die for shit. You fight and die for things that matter. You are the first woman I’ve met outside a life that leads you to understand that shit who gets that. And straight up, baby, you gotta know, I like that a fuckuva lot.”
Oh… wow.
“Sam –”
He shook his head, his eyes dropped to my mouth, I kept consciously breathing in air and letting it out then his eyes came back to mine and he brought me half an inch closer so I stopped breathing completely.
Then he whispered probingly, his eyes staring deep into mine, “Unless life led you to that.”
At that moment, that close, with his hand on me, his eyes looking deep into mine, I wanted to hand him another secret.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
He could never know.
Because I understood right then that I was an imposter. Sampson Cooper thought I was someone I wasn’t.
Celeste had been wrong. I didn’t need to find a man who proved his worth before I shared my secrets.
Sam needed to find a woman who proved hers before he shared his.
And I decided, staring in his eyes, I would live that night with Sam, live it to its fullest.
I’d need it because it would have to last a lifetime.
And that was why I answered, “Can we go in, Sam? I need champagne.”
Sam said not a word. He also didn’t let me go. And lastly, he didn’t release my eyes.
Finally, he spoke and when he did, he did it with a quiet warning that made my heart hurt.
“I see it, Kia, and I get this is gonna take effort. But what I’m sensin’ is, you don’t notice I’m makin’ that effort. Don’t fuck up, baby, and, out of habit, reinforce your shields to hold back a threat that doesn’t exist. You get me?”
Okay, it was safe to say he was kind of freaking me out with how much he knew when I thought I was doing a bang up job keeping it guarded.
Without a single clue as to how to reply, I licked my lips to buy time. His eyes dropped to them, I watched them heat, their heat made heat rise in certain areas of my body and his fingers tensed at my neck.
Right, mental note, when Sam Cooper was an inch away, don’t lick your lips to buy time.
His eyes came back to mine and, when they did, immediately I nodded.
He let me pull away two inches and he did this with his mouth twitching.
Then h
e said, “Fuck me, how a woman can be so transparent and so full of shit at the same time is beyond me, but, baby, you got it down to an art.”
Well! I was so sure.
“I’m not full of shit,” I informed him.
“Your eyes run through every play you can make before you even twitch. Don’t know what I do or what shuts off in you when you forget that bullshit and be real but, I promise you, Kia, I’m gonna find out.”
Uh-oh.
That didn’t sound good.
I had no idea how to respond so I decided to go with annoyed bravado.
“Sam, I keep telling you, I’m not playing at anything.”
“Then, baby, you are totally clueless but still an idiot savant with this shit because I’ve had my fair share of experience and you’re a master.”
Seriously?
I mean, seriously?
“All right, Sam,” I retorted acidly. “I’ll tell you what’s not a good play. What’s not a good play is telling your date on your first date that you’ve had your fair share of experience.”
He burst out laughing and jerked me forward the two inches I gained and, let me tell you, watching him laughing that close was hot.
Shit!
He was still smiling when he stopped laughing and asked, “Honest to God, you think you can convince me you didn’t already know?”
“Didn’t already know what?” I snapped.
“I played football then I joined the Army, these are not the occupations of a man who does not like to get himself some and often. You know both. You also know I played pro ball so you know I had choices and there is no way you can convince me you think I’m a man who wouldn’t avail myself of that every chance I got.”
Was he for real?
Suddenly, I was rethinking Sam needing a good, loving, decent woman working hard to prove she was worthy of his secrets. Suddenly, I was thinking Sam needed a woman, any woman, to kick him in the shin.
“You aren’t making things better, Sam,” I warned, pulling at his hand.
This was a mistake. That hand tightened. I got the message. Do not pull away.
I stopped pulling.
His hand told me one thing but his face was smiling huge and in a way that did crazy things to my system, crazy things that felt really good at the same time they scared the shit out of me.