A Favor (13 page)

Austin was my start over and that’s how I think of it. Starting over and building something new, me the way I want to be.”

Sam’s stroking of my back is almost hypnotic and I just want to stay like this forever. The feel of Sam all around me, the dark and stars glittering what feels like just for us. Sam carries my hand that had been lying flat on his chest to his mouth and presses a kiss to the middle of my palm. My hand closes over his mouth and then runs over his face, wanting to soothe the tension in him. The skin below my hand is the scarring and again I remember how I felt when I really took it in, anger and oddly grateful. Anger that he had been hurt so badly, knowing he had gone through so much pain. Then pure unadulterated gratitude that he had come through the pain and suffering and was still here, and safe.

“Why, Sam? Why would you throw it all away and go into something so dangerous when you could have gone and been safe in a place where the worst thing that could happen was a paper cut?”

His sigh is captured and carried off in the wind but it sounds heavy all the same. “The forces are where you go when you have nowhere else to go and that’s what it felt like. That and I felt like I had failed and had to make up for it, some kind of atonement.

I worked hard in school and yeah I managed to make it into Harvard but my mom should never have sent me. There were no scholarships for a business owner’s kid so she worked her ass off to keep not just the business going but to pay tuition. I came back to Texas and worked the first two years during the summer and I came home for Christmas but the last two years there was an internship and she was just straight and told me she didn’t have the money for a ticket home.

She wouldn’t tell anyone how bad it was and she was so proud of me. She flew in for graduation and she was so happy I thought it was worth it. Then we went back to Texas and I was back about two weeks, she kept putting off going over the books. Instead, she kept telling me she wanted me to look over the changes and how maybe I could make updates and improve it. We were walking back into the house and she went down and never came back up. Massive heart attack, the doctor said she was probably dead by the time she hit the floor.

I couldn’t believe it, I was in shock. It was a good thing she had already bought and planned out her funeral arrangements because I couldn’t have done it, as in make decisions or pay for it. The day after she died the bank came and hit me with it all. She was in debt so bad the bank was in trouble. Had they been a bigger bank with more oversight they never would have leant anyone that much money. But they were a small bank and our families had known and done business since hell, since Sweeny was founded practically. They hated to do it but regulation was talking fines and penalties unless they evened out their books and they needed at least half of the debt back in days. I went home and looked at it all and I don’t know how she had lasted so long on so little. There was nothing, the contracts my father had written were still in place almost fifteen years later. She had managed to add stores to supply to but all she did was use the same damn contract and change the names.

John was mom’s right hand and he’d been practically my father since my dad died. He taught me how to take an engine apart and put it back together. He taught me to ride and how to shave, I never understood why he stayed all those years when my mom kept pushing him away. He told me straight up to not even try. He’d seen the place take my father, my mother and he’d be damned if he’d see it take me too. I had to let it go, there was no room to try.

In business people hear things and I’m sure with my mom they saw it before I ever did. The day of her funeral I was dealing with low ball offers left and right. I stood on the front porch and as far as the eye could see was land that had been in my family for generations and I was supposed to let it all go. I didn’t know what to do so for a few days I did nothing, I just couldn’t. Then I get a knock on the door. It’s an offer, not for the land but the chickens, the coops and basically all but a few pieces of equipment, the man had his own land and didn’t need mine. However, he was looking to add and he could take it all. The offer was for just a little more than bank needed so I did the only thing I could and said yes. I put the check in the bank and still didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with empty land, and still owing the bank money.

Two weeks later I get a call and sales pitch. Could they maybe take a look for natural gas deposits, they could be valuable and the numbers they gave just blew my mind. I say yes, because it’s the only thing I can think to say but that night I get to thinking. I call John and he tells me yeah the men had called before and my mom sent them on their way. She never did trust something that sounded too good to be true. Unless it was actual oil she didn’t believe gas would be that valuable. That night I go to work and I’m pissed at her for turning it down. Until I find the results and the stuff put out by people not controlled by the natural gas companies. It was poison and it was leaking into water supplies. My mom had said no for the wrong reason but it was the right thing to do.

They come out, they find what they want and they offer me rights that would have paid it all off and let me walk away a millionaire. But I told them no. What I did do was look into the wind farms, they had come up again and again as alternatives to natural gas. I made a few calls and within about three weeks I had finally hammered out a deal, where I got to keep the land and they leased. It was enough to pay off the banks and send some John’s way and the few other men who’d worked so hard for so little. I get quarterly profits and a yearly payment for the lease. It all worked out in the end, I guess. But I couldn’t stay there anymore. It didn’t matter I had saved the land from being sold I felt like I failed. All of that work, all of those years for nothing.

I got a call from a classmate who heard about it all because he worked for one of the companies that had put in an offer. He told me he could get me a job and come into Houston for an interview. Driving into Houston, I was on autopilot I said the right things and I got the job but as I walked out of the building I just wandered the city. I walked and walked until my feet were killing me and I stopped at a coffee shop. Across the way was an Army recruitment center and as I drank my coffee I thought about what my life might turn into if I stayed and I stared at the center and just knew it wasn’t what I deserved. The nice house in the burbs, a couple of kids running around, I hadn’t earned that life that my mother paid for with an early death. I walked across and joined that day. I shipped out a week later.

I was only in about a year when I was encouraged slash ordered to sign up for the Rangers where I belonged. And it was, it was where I finally felt alive. Where I became me, just like Austin was where you became you.”

His phone went off, indicating he’d gotten a text, but he ignores it. Instead he sighs and his arms tighten around me for a moment before he sits up. “We have to get going, I don’t want to speed with you in the car but I’ll be cutting it close.”

Slowly, we both slide out of the back and then put the cover back on and he slides my paintings underneath. Back in the truck he holds out his hand for mine and I give it to him. The drive back to Austin feels quicker than it had leaving it and he pulls into the driveway and comes around to help me down and gives me the paintings. I take them and he brushes a kiss across my cheek but he doesn’t say goodbye and neither do I. I’m on the porch and I turn and watch until he’s out of sight.

Once I’m inside I put the paintings back and look around and notice the empty spots that were only there because of Sam. They were gone but in their place was something else, hope. Hope that they would sell and happiness that they were finally being seen by someone else besides me.

I’m tired and as I prepare for bed it takes longer than normal and laying in bed, even though he’s not here the memory and scent of Sam is all around me. I want to sleep but I can’t because I finally understand why everything has felt so different. This is what love feels like, now my only question is now that I’ve found it, how do I keep it?

Three weeks later and I’m hanging up with Dale, all four of my paintings had sold. I’m stunned and so happy I want to call Sam but I eye the clock and decide against it. I know he would be trying to sleep, that didn’t mean he would be asleep, only that he was trying. I’m starting to get worried about him, he only seemed to sleep deeply once I had come home and we drifted to our room after dinner.

Quincy Tucker had worked out and been staying at the house, he’s a nice guy but Sam didn’t like me without a bra in front of anyone but him. So I wore a bra after I changed out of my work clothes and we would usually all eat dinner together and then Sam would pull me into our room and remove the bra I wore. Many times it would lead to making love but not always and we just lay in bed, wrapped around each other, talking about our day or sharing memories. Then he would fall asleep and sleep deeply. I couldn’t always fall asleep but I loved to watch him and sometimes I could escape just enough to reach my ereader and read the night away in his arms.

“Did you get a call back on that prospect?” Taylor comes out of his office, he’s tense. We hadn’t found someone since Quincy Tucker.

“It’s a no, drug abuse. Maybe we should reach out to Dean? The way things ended between you two, he won’t be rushing back to admit he made a mistake. Yet, I heard from gossip that he and the slut broke up for the fourth and what has to be the final time. If I approached him, it might be easier for him to save face. Tomorrow is Saturday, I don’t mind going tomorrow instead of waiting for Monday.”

“Hmm, maybe.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if Sam would be okay with that.”

Instinctively, I hate the idea of being limited by anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do. After I exhale and think about it, I know Taylor is right, Sam would not be happy about me going up to Dallas to see Dean. How the hell did Taylor know Sam so well, and that it would matter so much to me about making Sam angry?

“Let me deal with Sam. If I can get Dean back, I want Sam on days. He’s not getting sleep and I don’t like how tired he looks all the time.”

Taylor doesn’t like demands, hates them, but he just looks at me for a long minute and then he nods. “Bring back Dean and Dean will go to nights and Sam will go to days.”

“Maybe on the drive up to Dallas you can pump Sam for another recruit.”

This time I just look at him until he walks away. He was right, Sam would be with me when I went to Dallas. After the way we had met Sam wouldn’t allow me to try and talk someone into a job without him right behind me the whole way through.

When I get home, Sam isn’t in the living room or our bedroom, I find him in my studio. He has a laptop open and he looks up when I step inside.

“Perfect timing, come take a look.” Sam moves away from the computer and I look at the screen and freeze.

It’s my website but it looks amazing. Pretty, wispy font and four different types of paintings can be clicked on to take a look through. In the middle of the page an automatic run of every painting loads and then cycles back through. I turn to him and I burst into tears.

His arms come around my middle and he picks me up and walks me to our bedroom. He settles on the bed and holds me while I cry.

I’m finally able to form words. “Thank you, you didn’t have to do that. How did you do all of that?”

“I’m going to tell you right now, the sight of you in tears is extremely painful to me so you are going to have to learn how to smile and laugh when I make you happy. It was easier than I thought, I found the guy for the photography, his card is taped up in your studio. I went through your browser history and found the web page. The girl who built the page was nice and promised a web page quick and easy to use. You can call her when ever you need something. Her fee includes unlimited calls for the first month, after that she’ll charge per hour.”

“Sam! I can’t help it, I’m not used to being so happy! I was going to tell you I sold the paintings at the gallery and I was already happy about that but then I come home to this.

This is too much. All of that work and money, I don’t want you to take care of all of this, I can take care of myself. I’ll pay you back, with the money from the sales I know I can pay you back.”

He throws back his head and laughs and pulls me closer to him, so that I’m straddling him. “You aren’t paying me back and I’m calling bullshit and taking care of you.” His mouth comes down on mine and his kiss is demanding. I give in without a thought. When he breaks the kiss, the world is still hazy for me. “I believe we had this discussion before. Who does your body belong to? Who, Zoe, who does your body belong to?”

Wet heat floods me, “You.”

“You’re mine?” He asks softly.

“Yes, Sam. I’m yours.”

“Then there’s nothing more to talk about. Just like I take care of your body and make sure you only have pleasure I’m going to continue to see to all your other needs. I have to take care of my trucks oil changes, I have to take care of you. I want to take care of you. You happy and succeeding with this website gets you closer to your goal of quitting and painting full time. Those things are necessary to your happiness so I need to make sure you have what you need because then I feel good when I know you’re good.”

“But you can’t be responsible for my happiness. I have to take responsibility for that.”

“So if I went to the strip club with Taylor and stayed out until the sun came up, would that make you happy?”

“Of course not!” The thought has me pushing away but he keeps a tight hold on me.

“Then again, I’m calling bullshit. I know the things that will make you happy and the things that won’t. Now if the things that made you happy didn’t make me happy, then we might have a problem but they don’t. So there’s no problem.”

I sag against him and lay my head on his shoulder. Had he really compared me to his truck? It doesn’t matter, I understand what he means. Just like I had started to learn to cook his favorite things and taken to buying the things I knew he liked because I want to make him happy I get why he did the website and did the things he did.