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I’ll be there. He didn’t want her to second-guess his intentions, so he laid them out there.My mom will be at her book club, and my dad has bowling. They’ll both be out.He hated that he felt like a kid, sneaking a girl into his house, but he had no other choice.Come home with me for a few hours?
She answered with one word.Yes.
* * *
As soon asthe plane had landed, Sam checked her phone to find a text from Mike, informing her he was at baggage claim. She’d had the most fun with her girls, eating, drinking, and sunning themselves into stupors, but after her dirty texts with Mike, she couldn’t wait to get home. Couldn’t wait to see him in person.
That was why when she spotted him leaning against a pillar with a baseball hat on, she took off at a quick clip. She had to get her hands on him.
“Hey,” he said, a smile blooming as he reached his arms out for her. She nearly jumped into them.
“Hi.”
“How was your weekend?”
“Good.” She spoke the word into his shoulder.
“I feel like I lived it with you. Your friend posts a lot.”
She smiled against his collarbone before lifting her face to him. “Laney? That’s the one I told you about. She said she’d contact you to see how she could help.”
He turned his hat backward before curving his hands around her throat, gentle yet possessive as he pivoted so her back was against the cement pillar. “Yeah? Well, her stories kept me well-informed of the colors of your bikinis. My favorite is that flowered one with the little ties at your hips.” When she raised one teasing eyebrow, he lifted an unrepentant shoulder. “I did take a break from studying that picture to work out and grab lunch with Jimmy.”
Then he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her like she’d been away for three years instead of three days. With his fingers tilting her jaw up, he coaxed her lips open, sliding his tongue against hers. Her teenage dream come to life.
She slid her hands from his forearms to his biceps when he backed away, and it took a moment for her to be able to focus and open her eyes again. She found him grinning.
“Hey,” he said again.
“Hi.”
He gave her another quick kiss then righted his hat before slipping her purse off her shoulder to hold it with one hand and lace their fingers together with the other. While they waited for her suitcase, he asked her to tell him about the girls. She described Gem and Jason’s backyard wedding last year, vegan barbecue included, and informed him that Laney had actually had a sports scholarship to their university but lost it when she got a compound fracture in a softball game and needed surgery, and how Bronte was a middle school teacher, determined to keep a low profile, no matter that she was about to marry an Oscar-nominated actor. When Sam handed him her phone with a picture of the whole group, including Jason and Chris, his brows drew together slightly as he took it in. “That’s everybody, huh?”
“We don’t get to see one another a whole lot, so when we do, we’re pretty glued together. Jason and Chris are basically best friends now too.”
He handed the phone back to her. “Seems like a good group. You’re lucky to have them.”
She stuffed her cell into her back pocket and fiddled with the ring on her middle finger. “You have a group of friends like that?”
He shook his head, his eyes on the luggage carousel, his jaw set beneath his beard. “By the time I’d come home, the people who used to be my friends had moved away or moved on. I have my family, my brothers. That’s enough.”
Sam had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from telling him he had her too. But she was leaving soon. There was nothing she could do or offer him to make him feel more at home after being away for so long. Although, if she could, she would.
Before she could formulate any other response, he moved away to grab her suitcase. After looping her purse over the handle, he grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”
Once they got back to their neighborhood, Sam didn’t need to question what was going to happen next, but she did need a shower. Taking her suitcase from his hand, she said, “Give me ten minutes, then I’ll be over.”
He bent to kiss her cheek, murmuring in a low voice, “One second more, and I’m coming to get you.”
Tingles spread out from her belly, and she didn’t waste one more moment. Darting inside her house, she waved to her father on her way upstairs, where she didn’t bother to put anything away. She spared just enough time to throw her hair up into a bun and rinse off from the day of travel before tossing on leggings to go right back downstairs.
“Hey, where are you going? How was your trip?”
Sam backtracked from the front door, leaning her head into the kitchen. Her dad sat with his laptop open at the table while he fiddled with papers filled with charts and lines of data.
“The trip was great, and I’m going next door.”
“To see Mike? You’ve been spending a lot of time over there lately,” he said, his eyes never drifting from his work. She shrugged anyway. “Okay, well, I’m going to bed soon. I’ve got to get into the lab early tomorrow to get some work done before the surgery. I’ll probably be late most nights too.” He glanced up at Sam then. “Okay?”
