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Sam's heartfelt admission made something in my gut tighten uncomfortably. "Was that the fucker's name?" I asked. It was one of those questions that I already had the answer to, but I was desperate to get the focus off me and back where it belonged.
"Yes. Blake. He worked for me before I retired."
Sam sounded disappointed, but I wasn't sure if it was because I'd swept aside his words of thanks or if he was thinking about his former employee’s betrayal. I chose to believe it was the latter because that was much easier to deal with.
"He was in love with you," I said. Rage began simmering in my blood as I thought about what the lunatic could have done to Sam if he'd managed to abduct him like he’d planned. I slammed the nail into the window frame with one hit of the hammer.
"He only thought he was. Like I said, he was emotionally—"
"He was a psychotic son of a bitch," I muttered as I grabbed another nail from Sam and pounded it into the window frame. I turned to get yet another nail but found that Sam had moved away from me and was now sitting on a small picnic table bench next to a sandbox. He had the box of nails in his hand and was rolling it back and forth between his fingers.
"I didn't see it," he said softly as he stared at the lush green grass. "He worked for me for years, but I had no idea."
"The most effective predators are the ones you never see coming," I said as I went to the table and eased the box of nails from his hand. "You couldn't have known. He would've made sure you didn't."
Sam shook his head. "If you and Declan hadn't been there, both my children…" Sam dropped his head into his hands.
I knew I was supposed to comfort him in some way, but even if I’d known how, the last thing I should be doing was putting my hands on him. But as I stood there silently and watched Sam suffer through his emotions, I felt that unfamiliar itch beneath my skin. That strange restlessness that I was afraid had nothing to do with wanting to fuck the guy in front of me.
I hated it.
The helplessness.
It’d been the same thing I’d felt when Sam had turned away from me in his son’s room after I’d gotten him off. I hadn’t known what to do then just as I didn’t know what to do now. I told myself to just turn around and finish up with the window… to leave Sam on his own to deal with whatever he was going through.
I managed to turn away from him.
I even managed to return to the shed and begin hammering more nails into place.
But when Sam suddenly got up, collected his beer and began walking toward his house, I blurted words that I’d never said to anyone in all of my thirty-five years.
“Don’t go.”
Chapter 10
Sam
If he hadn’t begun furiously pounding nails into the window frame the second I turned around, I would have asked him to repeat himself because I was still in complete and utter disbelief that he’d said the words in the first place. But his obvious agitation was proof that he had said them.
And he wasn’t happy about it.
Although I was still feeling overly emotional, I quietly turned around and returned to the picnic table. Matias never once looked at me as he continued securing the frame, nor did he say anything else. I didn’t really care, though, because I was reeling from the fact that the man had actually asked me to stay.
I used the opportunity to study Matias as he worked. He was wearing jeans and a navy-blue t-shirt along with heavy-looking work boots. The sleeves of his shirt hugged the curve of his large biceps as he swung the hammer with precision. My eyes couldn’t help but follow the colorful ink that ran down the length of his arm and covered the back of his hand.
A shiver of excitement went through me as I remembered how that particular hand had felt wrapped around my most sensitive flesh.
Matias chose that particular moment to glance my way, so I busied myself with taking a sip of my beer and pretended to be interested in the flower beds bordering my fence. I could feel the man’s eyes on me, but I didn’t dare look at him again until the hammering resumed.
By the time Matias knocked the last nail into place, my body was alive with energy.
But it wasn’t until he looked my way again that my mouth did what it did best.
Went haywire.
“I should be planting my hyacinths and tulips,” I blurted. “I mean, how often do we get weather like this, right?” I asked. “I can plant them in the rain, of course, but I should be taking advantage of the dry spell.”
