Currant Creek Valley (16 page)

That would have meant the world to Sam, she thought. Coming from the hardscrabble beginnings he had shared with her, she could only imagine how he must have wanted acceptance from his wife’s family.

“Once I started working for him, I quickly realized our, uh, ethical baselines didn’t quite mesh.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s not unusual in huge construction contracts to underbid the competition and then cut corners so you can still make a profit. J.T. took that to extremes. I guess I was too distracted while Kelli was dying to really pay much attention to anything else. A few months after her death, I sort of woke up one day and realized I couldn’t do some of the things he was asking of me.”

Sam had a strong core of honor. It was one of the things she most admired about him. How had he developed such a thing through the turmoil of his childhood, with a father who had abandoned him and a drug addict for a mother?

“So you quit.”

His rough laugh held little amusement. “I took things a little further than that. I actually ended up turning him in for gross building code violations for an elementary school he was building. Six months ago, I testified against him and the building inspector he was paying off to look the other way. He was convicted of fraud and bribery, among a host of other things, and is headed to prison pending his appeal.”

“I think I read about that case,” she exclaimed. “It must have been ugly.”

“You could say that. I guess it’s also safe to say J.T. and Margeaux won’t be inviting me over to any family barbecues in the near future.”

She didn’t miss the pain in his voice. How hard it must have been for a man who had grown up in chaos and probably craved a family to make choices he knew would cost him dearly.

Despite knowing it probably wasn’t the wisest thing she’d ever done, she reached a hand out and placed it over his fist curled on his thigh, compelled to offer comfort.

“Losing them must have been hard for you.”

He seemed to freeze at her touch and she could hear the quick inhalation of his breath. He held himself stiffly for just a moment and then seemed to relax on a sigh. He even turned his hand over and entwined his fingers with hers.

The sweetness of the moment nearly took her breath away, sitting here in the darkness with him while the breeze ruffled the new leaves of the big elm beside his house and the dog snuffled softly at their feet.

“It was harder on Ethan,” he said. “He loves his grandparents and doesn’t quite understand another loss.”

“Kids are resilient. They learn to bounce back.”

Ethan would always have a hole somewhere in his heart for his mother and the grandparents, just as she did for her father. People learned to patch up those holes and throw on a little drywall mud and tape until it was almost as good as new.

“I hope so. Being a parent is just about the toughest thing I’ve ever done, especially without Kelli.”

She thought of a tiny baby she had loved inside her for a few short months, that magical time when the world had seemed full of joy and possibilities...until all the pain and hurt came later. Sometimes all the patch jobs in the world couldn’t cover some holes.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. For so many things. For his wife’s death and her parents’ betrayal, for a boy who had grown up without a home he could call his own but had been determined to give first his little brother and then his son something more, for her own mistakes and the chances she had lost because of foolish choices.

The swing continued its endless rhythm, like life, and a soft, tender intimacy swirled around them.

“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, his voice low.

It seemed the most inevitable thing in the world—natural and sweet and perfect—when he shifted that big, rangy body to face her, cupped her cheek and lowered his mouth to hers.

She sighed, so very drawn to his strength, to his heat, to this hunger that blasted away every thought in her head but
more.
He kissed her softly, his mouth firm but easy as he delivered slow, tender, barely there kisses that left her achy and trembling.

He pulled her against him, until she was half lying across him on the swing, her legs tucked up beside them. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let him sweep away all her fears about the next day, every doubt, every qualm, every fretful thought.

He held her close while the swing swayed, while her dog snored, while the night seethed with quiet life around him, and she never wanted the moment to end.

In his arms, she felt this strange sense of safety, peace, comfort.

This wasn’t merely physical desire. Yes, she wanted him in a hundred different ways, but this was something more, something so wild and bright and terrifying she was almost afraid to examine it.

She had to, though. She couldn’t run away from it, couldn’t hide under her bed and pull the covers over her head and pretend this wasn’t happening.

She was falling in love with him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE
IDEA
BURST
across her mind like the sun exploding over the snow-shrouded mountains on a winter morning.

Wild panic fluttered in her chest and everything inside her seemed to go cold.

No. Not now. She had so much going on at this point in her life. She didn’t have
time
for another heartache.

Like it or not, she was very much afraid she was too late.

She was falling in love with Sam Delgado—his sweet smile and that strong sense of goodness and honor and his longing for home.

Throw in that adorable, motherless little boy who completely tugged at her heart and it was a miracle she had resisted the Delgado males this long.

Oh, what a disaster.

Though it sliced at her more acutely than her best knife, she slid away from him on the far corner of the swing. He was breathing hard, his eyes slightly dilated in the dim light.

“I thought we decided it was a bad idea to make out again.”

His laugh was rough-edged and sexy. “
You
might have decided that, but I’m a guy. For us, it’s never a bad idea to make out.”

She wanted so much to nestle back into his chest—or better yet, go inside his half-finished house and work out her restlessness the very best way she could imagine—but she had already made a mess of things. Making love, no matter how much her body craved him right now, would turn a disastrous situation into a catastrophe of epic proportions.

“Isn’t it a good thing one of us has better sense,” she finally said. “I’ve got a long day tomorrow. I need to go.”

“You don’t have to. Stay, Alexandra.”

She could come up with a dozen reasons why she needed to slide off this porch swing, grab her dog’s leash and keep walking.

Sam needed someone soft and warm, giving, not a prickly, neurotic chef who sucked at relationships.

Beyond that, her restaurant was opening in less than eighteen hours. How on earth could she possibly indulge in this wild heat with him tonight and expect to have any powers of concentration left for Brazen, especially when she had a feeling once they started, she wouldn’t want to stop?

Finally, and most significantly, she was already falling in love. Contrary to popular belief, she didn’t sleep around. She had slept with exactly three men in her life and each had carved away a little chunk of her heart. She thought she had cared about each of them at the time but those feelings were nothing compared to this soft, seductive tenderness.

She could run a restaurant staff of two dozen, she knew exactly how much produce to order for a busy restaurant, she could juggle eight or nine deliveries at a time, but she had absolutely no idea how to keep fighting what she wanted so very desperately.

“I can’t,” she whispered, giving it one more try. She managed to make it to her feet but couldn’t seem to move down the steps and away from him. “I told you I’m not going to sleep with you. I’m not sure how many times I have to tell you I’m not interested.”

“I don’t know. Maybe I would believe you if you didn’t kiss me like I’m your favorite dessert and you’ve been on a hunger strike for weeks.”

Oh, he was so very right. Every time they kissed, she forgot all the reasons she shouldn’t indulge in all those wonderful, glittery feelings.

“I can’t be what you’re looking for, Sam.”

“And what’s that?”

He sounded genuinely curious but she didn’t miss the edge to his voice.

“You’re looking for a home. A warm hearth. You all but admitted it yourself. That’s why you moved to Hope’s Crossing. You need somebody sweet and giving who can offer the home you’ve never had. If she wasn’t five months pregnant and deeply in love with my brother, I would have said Claire was the perfect woman for you.”

“How do you know what I want or what I need?” His voice was tight, each word clipped, and she realized this might be the first time she had heard him angry.

“This porch swing, this house. Moving to Hope’s Crossing in the first place, just because a few people said hello to you in a pizza parlor, for heaven’s sake. It’s all proof.”

“That I’m looking for a woman like your friend Claire.”

“Maybe not Claire exactly but someone like her. Calm and serene. Sweet. That will never be me. I was born sarcastic. I’m moody and unpredictable. I can be downright bitchy. Just ask my two sous-chefs, who are both ready to quit right now.”

“Maybe I like that about you. You always keep me guessing. Don’t take this the wrong way but Claire would probably bore me to tears in about ten minutes. Maybe five.”

She bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean? Claire is my best friend. She’s a wonderful person!”

He shook his head and then had the effrontery to laugh at her, and she had to fight the urge to slug him.

“Yeah, moody and unpredictable just about covers it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Claire. I never said that. She seems lovely. But she’s not you. What if I like all those things you spewed out as faults? I like that I can never figure out how that mind of yours works.”

She could feel the ache of tears behind her eyelids and they completely appalled her. She never cried, damn it. It was only exhaustion, because she had been working so hard at Brazen. It certainly had nothing to do with Sam, sitting there so big and tough and wonderful on the swing he had put up to provide his son with a better life than he had known.

“I need to go. Tomorrow’s only the biggest night of my life and I don’t have the time or the energy for this right now.”

He looked as if he wanted to argue but he finally only stood up. The chains rattled a protest at the shift. “I’ll walk you the rest of the way to your place.”

“You don’t have to do that. I’ve got Leo.”

“Tonight, you’ll have me, too.”

She supposed it took less energy to let him walk her the three hundred feet to her house than it would to stand here and continue arguing with him.

“Fine.”

She walked down the stairs, gripping her dog’s leash. Her
temporary
dog’s leash. Look at her. She couldn’t even open her heart and her life to a
dog,
much less a man and a boy who needed so much more than she could give them.

* * *

S
AM
DIDN
’
T
KNOW
when he had ever been so tangled up over a woman.

Things with Kelli had been so easy. He couldn’t remember ever being this stirred up, even in the beginning of their relationship.

He had been temporarily stationed near San Francisco, where she had been going to graduate school for social work. He had walked into a bar with a couple of buddies, seen her there with some of her girlfriends and asked her to dance.

Six months later, they were engaged, married a year after that, and Ethan had come along almost two years to the day after that.

He couldn’t say their marriage had been perfect. Kelli had been on the spoiled side and had been frustrated living on an enlisted soldier’s salary. She could be petulant when she was mad at him and generally spent way too much time on the phone with her mother and her girlfriends in Denver.

Still, he had spent two years grieving for the life they could have made together.

Alex, on the other hand, was the antithesis of easy. For all her prickliness, there were glimpses of something else, something soft and sweet she seemed to think she needed to hide away from the world.

Why? What was she hiding?

None of his business, he reminded himself. As she had so bluntly told him, she wasn’t interested. He needed to back off, no matter how frustrating he found her.

“Have you met any of the neighbors yet?” she asked when they passed the house just to the north of his.

“A few. The lady who lives across the street from you dropped by with some cookies.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning Anita Adams has been divorced for about five months now, something of a record for her. She’s probably looking for husband number four. Gorgeous single guys aren’t exactly thick on the ground in Hope’s Crossing, as you might have noticed.”

“I guess I haven’t really been paying attention,” he said drily.

Though tension still tugged and stretched between them, she smiled. “That was probably mean of me. Forget I said anything. See? I told you I can be bitchy. I actually really like Anita. She is a lot of fun under the right circumstances. You should ask her out.”

He somehow managed not to growl under his breath, though it was close. She was trying to throw him at someone else again, just minutes after that heated kiss, and it bugged the hell out of him.

“Thanks for the dating advice, but I’ll probably pass on that one, too.” He changed the subject. “I understand the house to the south of me is a vacation home for a couple from California.”

“Bob and Cindy Whittal. They only come out a couple times a year, usually at Christmas and for a week or so in the summer. They’re really nice. He’s a plastic surgeon to the stars or something like that. They make a point of always coming to the restaurant up at the resort and saying hi. I guess I’ll have to let them know about my new situation now.”

“I haven’t met my neighbor on the other side. I haven’t even seen him, but I know someone’s there because I’ve seen lights on and someone moving past the curtains. Seems a bit of a recluse.”

“Mr. Phillips. You and Ethan should really take a moment to stop in and say hi. He has health problems and doesn’t get out much but he’s very kind.”

“I’ll do that.”

They reached the walk leading to her house, and Leo strained on the leash, eager to be home.

They walked up the steps and she unlocked her door. For a minute, he felt uncomfortably like a sixteen-year-old kid on his first date, not sure if he should swoop in and steal a kiss.

“I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” he said.

She had left a porch light burning when she and Leo went for a walk. In its glow, he watched her mouth twist into a grimace. “We’ll have to see if you’re still talking to me on Saturday after you try to force down the gag-inducing dinner I’m sure will be in store for everyone.”

“Would you stop, already? You know perfectly well it’s going to be fantastic, just like everything you cook. You’ve worked damn hard to get here and you need to just relax and enjoy this moment.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then, to his delight, she started to laugh. “You’re right. Absolutely right. That was the perfect thing to say.”

Before he quite knew what she intended, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him just above his jawline but stepped quickly away before he could sweep her into his arms and give her a proper good-night kiss.

She opened her door and would have stepped inside and probably closed the door on him but he shoved a hand out to keep it open, framing her with his arm.

“You probably ought to know that my nickname in the Rangers was Unstoppable. When I go after something, I’m all in. I don’t back down.”

She was silent and he saw her throat work as she swallowed.

“Then I guess it’s a good thing there’s nothing here you need,” she said softly.

“Wrong,” he murmured.

She looked at him and for the first time he saw something in her expression that made him pause. She looked...wretched.

“This isn’t some mission, Sam. This is your life. And Ethan’s, too. Remember that.”

Without another word, she tugged her dog inside and closed the door, leaving him standing on her porch wondering how in the space of about five minutes, she could leave him just about trembling with hunger one minute, frustrated enough to pull his hair out the next, and aching to comfort her after that.