Teresa Hill (9 page)

Water was still dripping from her ceiling. It was still raining like crazy.

Samantha glanced out the window over the tops of the trees and thought about how few people she knew in this town. No one she could call at nearly one in the morning.

And then she thought of Joe. She wasn’t that far from him. Only six blocks or so. She’d been so sad when she realized that he was so close and yet so far away, that he always would be. She’d missed him terribly these past two months.

And she shouldn’t call him now. He was nothing to her.

She tried Abe one more time and got nothing. A drop of water hit her on the nose. She wanted to cry, but that would only make more water, the last thing she needed.

And then she called Joe.

He answered on the first ring, his voice smooth and deep.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s me.” Which was a silly thing to say. She realized it right away. She always said the silliest things to him.

But if he saw anything silly about it, he didn’t say. All he said was, “Samantha, what’s wrong?”

“I’m so sorry for calling you so late…”

“Don’t worry about it. I was up.”

And then she had an awful thought—what if he wasn’t alone? What if he was still awake at this hour because he wasn’t alone?

“Are you—” She stopped herself just in time. No way was she asking him that. “I’m sorry.”

“Somehow I don’t think you called for the reason I wanted.”

“You wanted me to call you?”

“Yes,” he said.

She closed her eyes, thinking she was so glad, so very glad. “Why did you want me to call?”

“Because you missed me. Because you were going crazy trying to forget me.”

“I do miss you,” she admitted. What was the point even trying to deny it?

“Thank goodness,” he said.

“But that’s not why I called. I called because my ceiling’s dripping.”

“Your ceiling?”

“No. I mean water. Water is dripping from my ceiling.”

“Oh.” Joe frowned and shook his head. Until that moment he hadn’t been quite sure that he was awake and this was real. Because as dreams went, this was a pretty good one. Samantha finally calling him and telling him she missed him.

But it was raining like crazy tonight—he’d figured that out now. He was sprawled across his couch in a position that had left a crook in his neck, and the TV was still going, showing him a ball game from the West Coast. His big Saturday night—asleep in front of the TV and dreaming about Samantha.

Who’d called him because Abe Wilson had botched the job on her roof. He knew she was in trouble the minute he’d heard she’d hired Abe. She had to have been desperate to hire Abe, and even more desperate now to call Joe. It had taken water coming from her ceiling, after all.

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“Bad. It’s coming in in a dozen places. I’ve used every pot and pan I have, and they’re going to overflow soon, and I don’t know what else to do. I’m sorry. I tried to call my contractor—”

“Don’t bother. It’s Saturday night. Abe’s drunk.”

“He gets drunk every Saturday night?”

“He gets drunk most every night, Samantha. What were you thinking, hiring him? You were asking for trouble.”

“I was thinking I had to get out of the house I rented, and I wanted to be in here, in this house right away, and nobody but him could start right away.”

“Sam,” he groaned.

“I was just going to let him do the roof. That was all. And then I was going to hire someone better. Really.”

“Anybody but me,” he said.

“Yes,” she said miserably. “Anybody but you.”

He picked himself up off the couch and started looking for his shoes, hoping she’d been as lonely without him as he’d been without her.

He didn’t sound that upset, Samantha decided, throwing on some dry clothes so she could go to Joe’s house.

He had kids there asleep, after all. He couldn’t just rush off to her rescue and leave them. So she was going there. He’d insisted. She could stay there with the kids, and he would go do what he could to keep the rain from ruining her house tonight. If he was willing to come rescue her on a night like this, it was the least she could do. Sit in his warm dry house while his kids slept in their beds.

She wouldn’t have to see them. They wouldn’t even know she was there, and she could pretend
they
weren’t there. No problem. Joe would do what he could for her poor roof, and she’d leave. No big deal.

She got to his house in ten minutes flat. He opened the door before she could even knock, and she fought the insane urge to throw herself into his welcoming arms. He looked every bit as tall and strong and good as she’d imagined in the past few endless weeks.

“Hi,” she said shyly, standing in the foyer with water dripping off her and looking at him in his faded jeans and San Antonio Rodeo T-shirt.

He pulled the door closed behind her and said, “You’re soaked. Let me get you a towel.”

He did. She took it gratefully and wiped the moisture from her face and the worst of it from her hair and then stood there, not much but the towel between them. She held it like a shield, thinking she had to keep something right there between them.

“I just moved in today, and I couldn’t even find my raincoat,” she said. “I just got dressed and ran over here.”

“It’s all right. And there’s no reason for you to stay in those wet things.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said.

But he didn’t listen. He went to the laundry room and came back with a T-shirt and a pair of gym shorts, still warm from the dryer. They smelled like him. She took the clothes but made no promises about putting them on.

“Thank you for doing this.”

“No problem,” he said.

“I didn’t know who else to call.”

“It’s all right, Samantha. The kids have been asleep for hours. I don’t think they’ll need anything, but I really couldn’t leave them here by themselves.”

“Of course not.”

“Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Thanks.”

And then she stood in the doorway and watched him head out into the rain, stood there thinking about how many times she’d watched Richard walk away from her and the girls, how seldom she’d wondered where he was going and who he might be with. How foolish she’d been. How much it had hurt in the end, when the truth came out. That he didn’t love her anymore, that he didn’t need her. That he could break her heart and walk away without a backward glance.

She had to be smart, she told herself. She had to be smart so she didn’t get hurt again.

Samantha must have dozed on the couch, and she thought she was dreaming at first that she heard Abbie calling for her father. But then she woke up and realized it wasn’t a dream. She wasn’t back in Seattle, and the child wasn’t Abbie. She was in Virginia at Joe’s house, and the child crying out for her father was Dani.

Samantha got to her feet and ran down the hallway, following the urgent little voice, and found Dani sitting in the middle of her bed, the covers pulled up all around her like a shield, her eyes so big and the sound of thunder booming through her little-girl-pink bedroom.

Lightning lit the room for an instant. Dani shrieked again, and then Samantha heard more footsteps behind her a second before Luke burst into the room.

For a moment the three of them just looked at one another, puzzled, scared, sleepy, uncertain what to do next, and then they all started talking at once.

“Daddy’s not here,” Luke said.

“An’ there’s thunder,” Dani complained.

“It’s all right,” Samantha said, then did her best to explain about her roof and Joe going to fix it and that there was nothing to fear from the storm.

The children accepted it all with remarkable calm—until she tried to get them back to sleep. Dani wouldn’t go with the storm scaring her, and Luke didn’t say anything, but Samantha thought he was thinking the same thing.

“When it’s really loud like this, Daddy lets us sleep in his bed,” Dani said.

“Oh. Okay.”

Off they went to Joe’s bedroom, a no-non-sense room painted a faint chalklike color with a plain pine bed and a green comforter, green-striped sheets. This was not his ex-wife’s doing. He’d redone this room after she left.

The children climbed into the bed and settled in. She hoped it would be okay with Joe when he came back.

“Well,” she said, reaching for the bedside lamp. “Do you want this on or off?”

“On,” Dani said.

“Off,” Luke said.

They argued about that for a few minutes and finally agreed on a compromise—bedside lamp off, bathroom light on with the door open just a bit to bring dim light into the room.

Samantha leaned over them both, tucking them in tightly one by one, kissing them in turn.

Dani wrapped her arms around Samantha and squeezed tight. Luke just lay there and looked sad and finally said, “You know exactly how to do it.”

“What?”

“How to tuck us in.”

Samantha thought he might as well have ripped her heart right out of her chest, wrung it out and shoved it back in. He knew exactly how to get to her.

She tried to shrug it off, as if it didn’t mean anything at all. “I just thought that was the way it was done.”

“I missed you,” Luke said solemnly.

“Me, too,” Dani said.

“You don’t even know her,” Luke insisted.

“Do, too. She gave me the glow-in-the-dark toof-bwush, and she’s my friend,” Dani said. “We didn’t think you was ever comin’ back.”

“Oh. I’m…I’m just here because I had some trouble at my house. Remember? I told you about it.”

Dani nodded, looking like she didn’t understand at all.

“You don’t like us?” Luke said.

“Oh, of course, I do. I like you both. Very much.”

“But you don’t want to see us? You’re too busy?”

“No. It’s not that, Luke, not at all,” she said. “You two need to get some sleep. Your father will be back anytime now.”

“Where ya goin’?” Dani asked.

“Back to the living room,” Samantha said.

“Uh-uh. You gotta stay here. It doesn’t work if you don’t stay here.”

“What?”

“She’ll still be scared, even if she’s in Daddy’s bed and even if I’m here. You gotta stay,” Luke said.

“Oh.”

Which was how she ended up putting on Joe’s dry T-shirt and his gym shorts and climbing into Joe’s bed, wedged between Joe’s children. And sleeping better than she had in months.

Joe felt a bit like Papa Bear coming home to find three people snuggled up asleep in his bed. He was drenched and cold and tired, and despite all that, he stood there staring at them.

It was the last thing he’d pictured when he’d tried to imagine Samantha in his house, but there she was, looking for all the world as if she belonged there. She was lying on her side facing Dani, who was wedged up against her spoon-fashion, Samantha’s arm around her protectively. Luke was on his side, too, curled up against Samantha’s back, and Joe found it hurt just to see them like this, all together, so trusting, seemingly so loving.

He wanted to climb right into that bed beside them, wanted all of them safe in arms.

She had none of Elena in her. He could swear that.

But then, he hadn’t seen it in Elena at first, either. He hadn’t even known what to look for, what was important to him back then. He and Elena had been having fun. That was all. And she was fine for having fun with, but she was not the kind of woman to have children with.

He’d been so stupid, and his kids had been hurt so badly because of it.

He wouldn’t do that to them again. He wouldn’t put them at risk that way. Not until he was sure. And Samantha didn’t want to put her heart on the line, either. He understood that. He didn’t want to hurt her any more than he wanted his kids hurt.

So tomorrow she had to go. He’d hustle her out of here before the kids even woke up.

There, he thought, as he bent over and kissed the three of them good-night. He had everything figured out.

S
amantha tried to roll over, but there was something wedged against her back keeping her from moving that way. She tried to go the other way, only to find that way blocked, as well.

She thought she heard water running and waited an instant to see if any was going to land on her again, but it didn’t. So she cautiously opened her eyes to find sunlight streaming in the window and that the running water was coming from a shower.

She was in Joe’s bed with Joe’s kids beside her. The water stopped and a moment later Joe stood in the bathroom door in a clean T-shirt and jeans.

He gave her a slow smile. His hair was dark and still dripping, a cloud of steam billowing out of the bathroom around him and the fresh scent of him coming with it. She should have looked away, she knew, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to.

He was beautiful.

Richard had been fifteen years older than she was, closer to her father’s age than her own, and…well, maybe he’d once been lean like Joe, but not at any time Samantha had known him. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a man who looked as good as Joe did.

“Good morning,” he whispered.

“Morning,” she said, odd little flutters in her stomach making her voice sound breathless and strange.

Dani stirred beside her, turning over and shifting closer.

“The storm woke her,” Samantha said, then looked down at her predicament, his kid, his bed. She’d spent the entire night here. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but they said this is what you do when they wake up scared. They didn’t want me to leave.”

“That’s what we do. Crowd into my bed.”

“I didn’t mean to stay,” she said, coloring profusely now.

“It’s not a problem, Doc. Sorry I woke you. I thought I’d grab a shower and clear out of here before I disturbed anyone, but I guess I’m not as quiet as I thought I was.”

“Oh. It’s all right,” she said.

“You know,” he said with a grin, “if you slide out of that bed very carefully, they might sleep for another couple of hours. We could have some peace and quiet.”

“Oh. Of course,” she said, carefully disentangling herself from both children and climbing over his daughter.

He caught her by the arm when she was off balance and trying not to disturb Dani, and she tried very hard not to think of how nice it felt to have his hand steadying her.

She tucked the covers around his sleeping children and tried not to think of the last time she’d slept this way. One night when Richard had been away on a business trip—or maybe off with his soon-to-be wife—and Abbie had crept into Samantha’s bed, Sarah joining them that morning, the three of them lying there for a long time laughing and sharing stories and planning their day. She blinked back the memory, determined that her life would never be that way again.

Joe pulled Samantha out into the hallway with him. She stood there trying not to draw in the scent of him or even think about kissing him or anything like that. Instead, she looked down at his rumpled shirt that she wore and pushed her hair back from her face and tried to ignore the implied intimacy of the situation. She shouldn’t have stayed.

“It can’t be that bad, Doc,” he said, taking her chin in his hand and tilting her face up to his.

“It just…it’s hard,” she said. “It makes me remember…”

“Abbie?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And her sister? What’s her name?”

“Sarah.”

“Sorry. I don’t want to bring up bad memories for you.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s just…this is what my life was. Being here with someone else’s children, acting like a mother when I wasn’t, when I didn’t have any of the rights a mother has. That’s what’s still messing with my head and my heart, and I look at you and those two kids and…”

“It’s too soon. The worst possible time.”

“Yes.” Everything that scared her, everything she wanted to forget. “And for your kids, too. They’re lonely, too. They need someone. It would be just as easy for them to get hurt as it would be for me.”

“I know.”

They’d latched on to her from the first moment, so eager, so lost.

“It’s an impossible situation,” she argued.

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Doc. I’m not trying to make this any harder than it already is.”

“You’re not?”

“No. Do you think I’m going to push you into doing something you don’t want to do? No matter how I might want it, even if I know it’s not smart at all?”

“I don’t know what you’re going to do. I just know that one of us needs to be smart and strong and careful, and I’m not sure I can be that person anymore, and you’re…just about perfect.”

“Perfectly wrong, Doc.” He grinned when he said it. “Remember that. You said I was all wrong for you.”

“You are.” She touched him—and then took a much-needed breath. “Perfectly wrong, and still…perfect.”

“I think you should kiss me good-morning,” he said.

She frowned at him.

“Sorry.” He shrugged in mock innocence and with a hint of a smile. “I’ve been strong and smart and careful for just about as long as I can. It’s my turn to be reckless. I get to touch you now.”

“Please don’t,” she said, both her hands coming up between them, landing squarely on his chest. She could push him away if she had to, if she had her hands between them and if she found the will.

“One kiss, Samantha. Do you know how long it’s been since I kissed you?”

“A long time.”

“Sixty-two days,” he groaned. “Sixty-two?”

“Yes. Want to know how many hours? Because I can tell you.”

“Just one kiss?” she asked.

He laughed then. Joe had the most amazing laugh. His mouth came down to hers slowly. Her heart was thundering before he ever touched his lips to hers. And then…she was letting Joe Morgan kiss her.

“Joe,” she protested after a moment.

“What can I do, Samantha? I see you, and I want to touch you. I touch you, and I want to kiss you.”

“I…I don’t know what to say.”

“Can you really stay away?” he whispered. “Can you really forget? Can you walk away from something that might be exactly what you need? What you’re supposed to have in your life? Have you thought about that?”

She frowned, feeling so vulnerable. “It’s like that for you, too?”

He nodded. “Right away. From the first time I saw you, I just liked you so much. It felt so good to be with you. I felt happy for the first time in a long time and hopeful and that little zing of magic. Like anything was possible, any long list of wonderful things.”

She thought she might cry. “Me, too. That’s it. That’s exactly it.”

“We’re going to have to do something about that, Doc. We can’t ignore something like that.”

“But we can’t ignore everything else, either. That I’m a mess, Joe. A mess. I’m scared and mixed up and sad and hurt—all those things. And we’re just the same, you and me and your kids. Have you thought about that? All of us scared and lonely and needing each other.”

“I know. You think it makes us absolutely wrong for each other, and I think it makes us right. Think about it. We know what it feels like to be hurt. We know about being careless in the choices we’ve made, and we want to be careful and smart now. We don’t want to hurt each other.”

“No.” He’d turned everything around, and he was confusing her terribly.

“Just think about it,” he said. “Open yourself up to the possibilities. Stop looking at all the reasons to stay away and think about what we might find together. Think about how good it could be for all of us.”

“I can’t afford to do that.”

“You won’t let yourself do that,” he insisted. “Just try. Tell me you’ll do that much.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you,” he said. “Will you stay and have breakfast with us?”

She shouldn’t. But she wanted to.

He moved closer, had her thinking he was going to kiss her again.

“Okay.” She threw up her hands, stopping just short of touching him, him stopping just short of touching her. “You take one step back and I’ll stay.”

They were a festive group that morning. Joe made French toast. Samantha put Dani’s hair in a French braid, which she loved, and even Luke, poor sad Luke, looked happy. They ate and laughed and thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

Samantha found herself still there at noon and reluctant to leave. The kids were outside playing in the backyard when she said to Joe for the third time, “I really have to go. I have to do something about my house.”

“Yes, you do. You have to fire Abe. There’s no excuse for the way he left that roof. He’d done a half-assed job of patching it, and things are only going to get worse the more work he does for you.”

“Okay. I’ll get rid of him.”

“I can get the work done for you, Samantha. I’ll see that it’s done right. Let me do that much, at least,” he said. “We won’t have to see each other, if you don’t want that. I’ll be there during the day while you’re working, and I’ll be here with the kids while you’re home. Think about it. How much have you seen of Abe?”

“Not much,” she said.

Joe nodded. He’d made his point. She really didn’t have to see that much of him, just because he was working on her house.

“Just the roof?” she asked. “And then we’ll see how it goes.”

“Okay.”

“I…I knew I shouldn’t have hired him. I did. I just…I had to move on. Can you understand that? I’ve spent the last year feeling so bad and just drifting along, and when I thought I wasn’t going to see you again, not ever, I looked at the other parts of my life and decided I just had to do something. I had to put it back together again, and the house…it’s the way I grew up, in a house a lot like that one. It’s the kind of place I’ve always wanted to live, and I thought if I could put just part of that in place in my life, maybe the rest of it would come, too, in time. Can you understand that?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I do. But running away from me isn’t the answer, Samantha.”

“Running away could keep me safe,” she said. “I step back and when my head clears and I can think, that’s what I see. Running away and staying away keeps me safe.”

“No, it keeps you all alone, and I don’t think that’s what you want or need. I just figured it out myself. I thought the same thing you did—that I just wanted to be safe, and I had to make sure the kids were safe. But that’s the price for playing it safe here—being alone. I don’t know if I’m willing to pay that price. Are you?”

“I don’t know.” She felt tears gather in her eyes. “And I can’t think when I’m this close to you. When you kiss me and make me want all these things. Joe, you make me want so much.”

“Me, too. I want just as much.”

She sighed, thinking it only got worse. No matter what she did, things only got worse. She stepped back and said, “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

“You’re welcome.”

He leaned down and kissed her lightly, and the kids came and hugged and kissed her, too.

“Are you gonna come back soon for another sleep-over?” Dani asked hopefully.

Sleep-over? Samantha could just imagine how that would sound if Dani went around telling everyone she’d slept over. “I don’t know, sweetie.”

“And you can do my hair again? And teach Daddy to do it?”

“We do need to give your father a lesson,” Samantha said, thinking that maybe they could take this slowly. Very, very slowly. Maybe if she just let herself have a little bit of him and his kids, and they were all so careful. Maybe none of them would get hurt. “What if you all come to my house next weekend? I can fix dinner for you and we’ll give Daddy a lesson in French braids.”

Dani beamed. So did Luke. Joe looked as if he was going to grab her and kiss her any minute.

“I have to go,” she said, practically running away. This time, she was running. This time, she still had the strength.

It didn’t take long for Dani’s sleep-over talk to reach Joe’s motherin-law. She picked the kids up from school one afternoon a week and did homework with them and fed them dinner, a night when Joe always worked late to catch up on all he’d let go the other days when he rushed to school to get them before late-stay closed.

On Tuesday when he picked them up from his in-laws’ house, Katherine Graham was waiting for him, the kids outside and out-of-the-way so they could talk privately.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she began.

“Dani mentioned the sleep-over?” Joe guessed.

Katherine nodded. “Really, Joe. Having a woman spend the night when the children are there? A woman you barely know? I assume you barely know her, because I can’t believe you’ve been seeing her for any length of time. Otherwise I would have heard about it. You know how well developed the gossip system in this town is.”

“I know, and it’s not what you think,” he said. He’d love for it to be what she thought, but it wasn’t. “Samantha just moved into an old house on Dogwood Lane. Abe Wilson was supposed to be fixing it up for her, and he left her with water coming through her ceiling last Saturday night when we had the thunderstorm come through. She came over to stay with the kids while I got a tarp over her roof, and she fell asleep before I could get back. She slept with the kids, Katherine, not me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Dani just made it sound like—”

“I know. I’ve been trying to get her to stop throwing that word around—sleep-over. But she was excited. She likes Samantha, and she…she needs a mother, Katherine.”

“Of course, she does. I just…I hate this, Joe. I hate what my daughter did to you all and that my granddaughter is so desperate for a woman in her life that she’d latch on to the first one that comes along.”

“Samantha’s a wonderful woman.”

“I hope so. And I hope you’ll be careful.”

“We will.”

“They’ve been through so much,” Katherine said.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry. You’ve done such a wonderful job with them, and I guess it’s inevitable that you’d find someone else someday.”

“Katherine, we’re just getting to know each other.”

“Of course, you just…you look happy for the first time in so long. Just saying her name, you look happy. And the kids seem happy, too. I thought… I assumed it was more serious than it is.”