It's in His Kiss
Page 46

“Love ya, Sam.”
Instead of responding, Sam reached past Becca and hung up the phone.
“That was nice of you,” Becca said into the heavy silence. “To loan him money.”
“It won’t be a loan.”
She figured. “It’s sweet he always says he loves you,” she said. “Really sweet.”
Sam looked like maybe he wanted to say something, but he didn’t.
“What?” she asked.
“They’re just words.”
“Well, yes,” she agreed. “But it’d be nice to hear them.”
He looked at her for a moment. “So your parents, they never—”
“They’re not . . . demonstrative.” How the hell did they get on this? Oh, yeah. Her own big mouth. “I want to hear how you nearly got beat up.”
“The rent was past due, and there was no food. We needed money.” He shrugged. “So I found some.”
“Found?”
“The apartment next door was a grow house,” he said. “The lady who ran the place liked me. She used to feed me sandwiches sometimes. I was in her kitchen when she was called to another part of the house. I went to her utensil drawer—which was where she kept her cash hidden—and borrowed some. Then I went to a house down the street where there was always a pool game. I doubled my start-up money in an hour. Where I got caught was trying to return the original amount to the utensil drawer.”
She stared at him. “How old were you?”
“Thirteen.”
“Holy crap.”
He shrugged. “I was an old thirteen.”
She imagined that to be true.
“My dad took a lot of shit from the neighborhood for it,” he said. “We eventually had to move. It was really stupid of me.”
“How was any of that your fault?” she asked indignantly.
He laughed. “I stole the money, Becca.”
“You had no choice!”
“There’s always a choice,” he said.
She shook her head. “You were a kid. Practically a baby. You were stuck in a bad spot and didn’t know better.”
“The pool house where I played, those guys weren’t exactly Boy Scouts. I brought some real trouble down on my dad’s head.”
She wondered if he always did that, took everything on his shoulders, but she already knew that he did. She rose out of her chair and moved toward him. And then, as he so often did to her, she got in his space and cupped his face. “Not your fault,” she said.
He flashed a small smile that shifted his stubbled jaw against her palms and gave her a shiver of pure lust.
This seemed inappropriate given the conversation, so she let him go and stepped back. “So how many times did that happen, you nearly getting killed trying to keep you and your dad together?”
He made a noncommittal sound and turned to the counter to set down his empty mug, rolling his shoulders like his neck hurt. “You ask a lot of questions.”
It occurred to her that he’d probably watered down the story, and hadn’t even told her the worst of it. She moved close and set her hands on his shoulders.
His muscles were vibrating with tension.
“Shh a sec,” she said, and dug into him, pressing her thumbs into the strained muscles.
He held himself still for a long moment under her ministrations, but finally she felt his shoulders drop and relax, and he let out a low, very male sound that seemed to have a direct line to her ni**les.
“Seems like you do have a weakness,” she murmured.
Reaching back, he grabbed her hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing her palm. “More than one.”
Her stomach fluttered. “So, tell me. Did you stay out of trouble after that?”
“Oh, hell no. There was the time I threw the football through the window of a different neighbor—”
“Ha,” she said, laughing. “I did that, too. Only it was a softball. I had to work for a month on the yard, and my brother still teases me about it.” She met his gaze and saw that he was smiling, but there was something else there. “Did you have to work on the yard to make up for the cost of the glass, too?” she asked.
“Not exactly. The ball sailed through the window and beaned the neighbor on the head, and gave him a concussion. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except he happened to be having sex with the woman who lived on the other side of him. While her husband was at work.”
She gaped. “Serious?”
“Serious as the heart attack she claimed to have. The guy came after my dad with a tire iron.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Luckily my dad’s tire iron was bigger,” he said.
She blinked. “Holy cow. What happened?”
“My dad got arrested, and child services got involved.”
“Oh, Sam,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. That, and a whole host of other shit, landed me here, in Lucky Harbor. With Cole’s family.”
“And you don’t blame yourself for any of it, right?”
He laughed, but the sound was mirthless.
She reached for his hand and entangled their fingers. “Okay, so you do blame yourself. I know you must feel pretty stupid about that, seeing as what I said before is still true—none of what happened was your fault.”
He choked out another low laugh, but she could see how uncomfortable he was that he’d told her the story. She wasn’t uncomfortable; she was the opposite. She was getting a real peek inside the tough, impenetrable Sam Brody, and she liked that peek. She liked the man. But she knew saying so wouldn’t be welcome at the moment, just as she knew she had to lighten the mood or he’d leave. “You probably get a different reaction when you tell a woman that story, right?” she asked in a teasing tone. “You probably get all hugged up on and then taken to bed to be mothered.”