A Better Father (Harlequin Super Romance) (22 page)

She stopped at the edge and waited. Sam’s light had
disappeared. She couldn’t see him but she could sense his presence, close and
welcome in the dark.

“You made it.” His voice came from her left, and she turned to
it, aiming her light near where she thought his feet might be. His chuckle
reached through the blackness. His hand closed over her wrist then slipped down
to her flashlight. She let it go without protest, even when he switched it off
and the darkness closed around them.

Her eyes adjusted quickly, but the night was too deep to allow
her to see anything more than the solid black of his bulk directly in front of
her. With her vision hijacked, all she knew was the soft tune of the chimes and
the softer patter of rain on the roof, the slight hitch to Sam’s breathing and
the scent of wood smoke that clung to him.

She would never be able to walk past a campfire again without
remembering this moment.

She ached to touch and be touched but there were things she had
to say first. Lord knew that once she started she wouldn’t want to stop to talk.
So she inched closer and swayed in his direction. And then, because she needed
to know just a little of him, she let her hands bump forward until they found
his.

“Hope you weren’t waiting long.”

“Just a couple of minutes. It’s okay. I hear you have a
miserable boss.”

“The worst.” She slid her fingers over the skin on his hand,
lingering over each ridge and valley.

“So how was the interview?”

“It was...” She bounced a little in her shoes, just
remembering. “I couldn’t believe how great it felt. It was like we were in
perfect sync all along. They loved my experience with parents. They asked lots
of questions about integrating everyday science and nature into the curriculum,
and that was straight from what we do here...and the whole time, I kept
thinking, this was what I wanted back then.
This
was
what I planned to do, to be with the kids, hands-on. I kind of lost that along
the way.”

“More like you had it stolen from you.”

His knee bumped against her thigh. Sheer hot want jolted
through her. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply to remind herself of the
things she needed to say. As much as she wanted him, she also didn’t want
anything hovering between them.

This was their fresh start, the clean slate Sam had asked for
when he first showed up in the office. She wouldn’t let anything mar it.

“Here’s the thing. I didn’t exactly... I could have pushed
myself, you know? But when I finished the degree, I promised myself a year off,
just to enjoy life without classes and homework and racing back and forth. Then
Myra had surgery, Gran got sick, and then Myra told me she was leaving the camp
to me and I...I told myself that this was right, that it was what I wanted.
Because I love this place, and I still do. Nothing about that has changed.”

“But...”

She nodded. “But when you were talking about Sharon yesterday,
you said something about her holding on to Casey for all the wrong reasons, and
I—well—I did the same thing. This place was supposed to be a way station. I let
it be the final destination. And that would be okay if I’d gone out and tried
other things and knew I wanted this because it was right, but—”

“But you were holding on to it because it was all you
knew.”

His forehead rested against hers. She breathed him in, all
smoke and wood, and forcibly reminded her jumping hormones that they’d waited
twelve years and they could damn well wait another five minutes.

Maybe.

“You know you can come back here anytime.” His whisper caressed
her cheek. “Say the word and you have a job. Or say a different word and you can
just come over and spend the day.” His fingers slipped free of one of her hands.
A moment later they were in her hair, caressing, tugging. “Or the night.” His
lips brushed the side of her neck, making her knot her hands in his shirt to
supplement the strength leaching out of her knees. “Or both.”

If that didn’t sound like perfection, she didn’t know what
would.

“I’ll still have summers.” Her hands flattened over his chest
and slid slowly higher to rest on the firmness of his shoulders.

“Too far away.” The hand that wasn’t caressing the back of her
neck slid down her rib cage, a steady path of pleasure that made her wriggle
forward to press her hips against his.

“And there’s weekends,” she whispered into his ear while he
circled her waist and tugged her flush against him.

“Still too far.”

“Mmm, I think you might be onto something.” Was there a pillar
behind her? She hoped so, because staying upright without support was becoming a
waste of energy that could be spent in much more delightful ways. Like sliding
her hands over the smooth curve of the bum she’d been eyeing all summer. Like
nudging her hips closer to his to feel him pressing against her, feel him
wanting her the way she wanted him.

Like arching her back away from the pillar when his hands
slipped beneath her shirt and his skin was hot against hers at last...

Like yanking on his shirt because she needed more of him and
his strength and his heat...

Like clinging to his shoulders while he shoved her bra high and
palmed her breast and she wanted to tell him she needed him, right then, right
there, but there was so much need and so much wonder and so much urgency taking
her over that there was no room left for words.

Until he froze, cursed beneath his breath and stepped back.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to tell you something. Something I did. I was going to
tell you first thing, then you started talking and then I got distracted and—
Shit.”

“Your timing sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

She breathed in, blinked into the night and forced herself to
concentrate on the hard push of the stones behind her back instead of all the
other things she wanted to feel pressing against her front.

“I didn’t... Lib, I had a choice. I didn’t have to do the
hearing tomorrow. They gave me the choice of now or in a couple of months, and
I—”

“You went for Option A.”

“And almost cost you the chance at this job.”

“True,” she said, and gave a flickering consideration to the
fact that she might not feel quite so generous if she was fully clothed. “But
did you know I had the interview when you made the choice?”

“No.”

“Was I speaking to you when you made the choice?”

“No, but—”

“Were you trying to hurt me, or were you trying to do what was
best for your kid by putting an end to an incredibly stressful situation?”

“Yeah, but even after I knew about your interview, I still
didn’t offer to change things or help you or—”

She stopped his silly protests with a kiss.

“You’re distracting me again.” The words were warm against her
lips.

“Blaming me?”

“Hell, no, but—”

“Sam.” She reached deep inside for her best no-nonsense teacher
voice. “Listen to me and listen good, because I am not wasting any more time on
this. Casey is your son. It’s your job to do what’s best for him. If I were in
your shoes, I would have made the exact same choice.”

He didn’t protest, but he wasn’t kissing her, either, and that
was so wrong she could hardly breathe. She had to fix this. Fast.

“I had a choice, too, you know. I could have said the hell with
you and the camp and gone to the interview anyway.”

“You wouldn’t have, though. You’re not that selfish.”

“Trust me, Sam, I can be very selfish when I put my mind to
it.” She slipped her hands around his waist and tugged him closer to help drive
her message home. “But I made the choice that was right for me. So did you.
Sometimes that’s a problem. Sometimes it’s just life.”

“I don’t—”

“Stop. Now. You took care of your child and then you came back.
That’s more than enough for me.” She nipped at his lower lip. “But if you’re
really feeling guilty, maybe you’d better start apologizing, hmmm?”

He growled low in his throat and his mouth took hers and she
was sandwiched between him and the pillar and it was a damned good thing because
her knees were buckling and her blood was pounding and all she could do was push
herself against him and pull him tighter and harder and closer.

“There’s an air mattress about two steps behind me,” he
whispered, and the rest of the world disappeared.

So did her clothes.

And much to her delight, Libby discovered that there were times
when Sam did indeed know when to slow down...and when he knew to go numbingly,
blissfully, shooting-star fast.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
N
HOUR
OR
FOUR
LATER
—who could tell?—Sam stared
into the darkness and thought about lines.

Not the lines decorating the blanket he had pulled up over
Libby as she dozed beside him, although he had taken a minute to admire the way
the green and yellow stripes molded against her dips and curves in the soft glow
of his flashlight.

No, the lines in his mind were red and blue, painted on ice.
The lines of the game. Red across the middle of the rink. Blue dividing the
areas between that red center and the goals. Cross the blue line ahead of the
puck, you’re offside. Penalty. Send the puck flying across too many lines at the
wrong time, another penalty.

Those lines had been so burned into him over his years of play
that he hadn’t needed to look to know where they were. He just knew. He could
feel it within him as he skated. They were the markers that shaped his game and
guided his movements.

But now—now, he was pretty sure he was balanced on a line that
was growing narrower and skinnier all the time. He couldn’t see it, but he sure
as hell could feel it. It was the line between
You’re
amazing and I want you now,
and
I love you and I
want you forever.

He’d been at this point before, with Robin, but that line had
been much wider, and nothing had pushed him over. He’d tried. He’d hoped it
would happen, because he had wanted to be part of his kid’s life, not an
absentee jerk like his own father, but the last push, the magic—it never
happened.

But with Libby...

He tightened his grip around her waist and closed his eyes.
Libby was part of him in a way Robin had never been. When he was with her, he
had the same feeling he used to have when he was skating full tilt down the ice
and the crowd was with him and the puck was calling him. Like he was flying.

Libby might be leaving the camp, but she wasn’t leaving his
life. He was going to hold tight to her and keep flying while the line he was
balancing on got skinnier and skinnier, until he finally toppled over it.

Because if he wasn’t in love already, he was definitely on the
verge.

* * *

I
T
WAS
STILL
O
-
DARK
-
HUNDRED
when Sam stumbled through airport security in search of
coffee. Waking up to Libby had made him lose track of time. When he finally
hauled himself out of the blankets, he’d barely had time for a shower before
jumping into the car and making the hour and a half drive to the airport.

But if he didn’t get some caffeine into his bloodstream soon,
he was going to pass out right there in the terminal and sleep through his
flight announcement. If not for Casey waiting for him at the other end, he
wouldn’t care in the least.

He hauled his blissed-out behind to the coffee bar and parked
himself in the back of the line of folks in similar states of zombie-dom. He
checked the clock and wondered what Libby was doing. Then he remembered what
Libby had been doing not so long ago. While that was a very fine thought indeed,
it probably wasn’t one he should have while out in public, so he distracted
himself by examining the counter to see if there was anything worth eating.

Chocolate, chocolate, a bag of mixed nuts, some cardboard
masquerading as a pastry. He grabbed the nuts and shuffled forward, searching
farther down the counter in case there might be something edible hiding in the
rows. But as he looked past the obscenely bright packaging his attention was
caught, not by real food, but by something that looked a hell of a lot like his
name.

His name, on a tabloid headline.

Panic jerked him to full wakefulness. He dodged out of line,
mumbled an apology to the half-asleep man standing in front of the rack of
papers and returned to his place while scanning the article. Some mix of prayers
and disbelief churned in his gut as his eyes jumped from one damning phrase to
the next.

Children’s camp...secretive
silences...appointments with unnamed doctors...lurking beneath a
raft...mysterious visitors...playing in the craft room with the kids while
leaving the running of the program to his assistant Libby K—

“Libby?”

His breath flew out of his lungs in a giant
oof,
the way it used to when he’d been checked from
behind. The way it had when Sharon told him she was filing for custody.

He lurched out of line, grabbed a bill from his wallet and cut
in front of the woman at the register to toss it on the counter.

“Hey!” she protested, and “Dude,” said the cashier. He shot a
quick look at the bill—crap, he’d grabbed a twenty instead of a five—and then at
the woman he’d cut off, with a baby strapped to her chest and a toddler by the
hand. A toddler who looked to be Casey’s age.

“Sorry,” he muttered to the woman. He jerked his thumb toward
her and told the cashier, “My treat. Keep the change.”

An astonished “Dude, wow” echoed in the background as he walked
to an empty space along a wall of windows and read the article from start to
nauseating finish. His whole summer was laid out before him, twisted and spiked
to make him sound like some sort of playboy at best and a pervert at worst.

He’d had worse written about him. He was no Brad Pitt, but
between the commercial and the starlets he had sometimes taken to charity
events, he’d landed in the tabloids a time or two. But he’d never hit the front
page before, and he sure as hell had never been publicly slandered on the
morning of his custody—

Oh, God. The hearing. He had to... What the hell was he
supposed to do now?

He pressed his hands to his forehead and forced himself to
breathe, slow and deep, even while his feet itched with the message to
run, now!

Focus.

He could handle this. It was as if he was back on the ice, down
one player while the other team trash-talked their way through a power play. As
long as he stayed calm and focused, he would be okay.

Live the goal.

The first step was to make as many calls as he could before it
was time to board his plane, starting with his lawyer.

While Joe was less than excited about the content of the
article or the hour of the call, he assured Sam that no judge worth his or her
salt would let a tabloid article influence the final decision.

“The worst that can happen is the other side will use this to
buy some more time, maybe ask for a more extensive home study. But I doubt
that’s going to happen. And if it did, once it was proven that these allegations
are untrue—”

“Damn straight they’re untrue.” Sam pressed the phone to his
ear as he paced along the wall of windows.

“Then there’s nothing to worry about. You’re Casey’s biological
father. No one is going to take him away from you.” Joe’s voice turned
speculative. “Do you think Sharon might be behind this?”

Sam considered the idea, then just as swiftly dismissed it. “I
don’t think so. She’s desperate, but she’s never resorted to anything dirty, and
she’s basically a decent person. Besides, there’s too much that’s based on real
events. Sharon couldn’t have known about those things.”

“Unless she had someone working with her. Like, who’s the one
that’s mentioned in here? Your assistant, Libby—”

“No!” Sam barked the word with such force that Joe could
probably hear it in his office without benefit of the phone. Libby would never
do something like this. He knew it.

“You sure?” Joe asked. “Even by accident? Sometimes reporters
can be sneaky and weasel information out of a source without that person ever
realizing what’s up.”

Sam paused in his pacing. Could that have happened? Could
someone have got to Libby,
his
Libby, and used her
this way?

“In any case,” Joe continued, “we’ll figure out the details
once the custody suit is behind us. Right now, just get on that plane and
breathe easy. I’ll do damage control from this end. Everything will be okay.
Trust me.”

Sam grunted at the thought of trusting a lawyer and ended the
call. He rubbed at the pounding in his head, then inhaled deeply. It would be
okay. A few more hours and it would be over and he could breathe freely again
without this band of panic around his chest.

In the meantime, he had to call Libby. She needed—no,
he
needed—to tell her there was a problem. Needed to
let her know that somehow, someway, she had been sucked into this. Needed, more
than anything, to hear her voice telling him it would all work out, that the
legal types knew their stuff, that at the end of the night she would be waiting
for him and Casey and it would be just like they were a—

The
bing
of his phone cut off the
thought. He frowned at both the display—his manager—and the fact that
preboarding had started. This was going to have to be quick.

“Hey, Taylor,” he said with a sigh, not the least surprised
that she was already aware of the problem. Sometimes he thought she had Google
Alerts poised to wake her if it turned up anything with his name involved.

Ten long minutes later, Taylor had been calmed and his flight
had been called. He shuffled through the line while speed dialing the camp
office, then looked at the clock and realized, crap, Libby would be at
breakfast. He called the kitchen and braced himself.

“What?”

“Cos, it’s me,” he said as he handed his boarding pass to the
gate attendant. “I need to talk to Libby.”

“She’s eating.”

“I figured she would be eating, okay? That’s why I called the
kitchen. Could you get her please? It’s urgent.”

Cosmo sniffed. “Urgent? You want to talk urgent? I got a
hundred and fifty hungry mouths to feed, Libby’s floating around here wearing
the kind of grin that makes me think I oughta be takin’ you out back for a
proper talking-to and my so-called boss has pulled a disappearing act.
That’s
urgent, mister.”

“Of all the— Dammit, Cosmo, listen up. I’m getting on a plane.
Some idiot splashed lies about me all over a tabloid. And on top of all that, I
have to go convince a judge that those lies really
are
lies and he shouldn’t take away my kid. Now will you get Libby
for me or does your last paycheck go to your obedience training?”

Stunned silence on the line echoed that which Sam realized had
settled all around him. Stuck in the middle of the airbridge, waiting to board
the actual plane, he was surrounded by a half dozen faces watching him in
various shades of worry, confusion and curiosity. Another half dozen were either
pretending not to notice or grabbing for their cell phones, undoubtedly to
record the Cold Ice man in a very different kind of lather.

He sighed. “Sorry,” he said both to Cosmo and all those around
him. “Bad morning.”

The other passengers nodded almost in unison. Cosmo, however,
seemed to be falling over himself.

“Geezum crow, Sam, I’m sorry. You know I didn’t— Hell. Son, are
you okay?”

Sam wasn’t sure what was more astonishing—the fact that Cosmo
had apologized, or that he’d called him
son.
Now
there was something to ponder during the flight.

“It’s okay. Just please get Libby.”

“Already on it. Libby!”

Sam winced and yanked the phone from his ear as Cosmo let loose
with a bellow that seemed to echo through the walkway. He offered the people
around him a sheepish grin. They were probably already alerting the flight
attendants that it would be a good thing to make sure there was extra security
on the plane.

He held his breath and bumped his way to his seat. Phone
cradled beneath his ear, he shoved his bag into the overhead bin and dropped
into his seat just as he heard Libby’s worried “Sam?”

It was as if someone had pulled a plug from a leaf blower or a
jackhammer he’d been holding. That was how fast the sound of her voice settled
him.

“Lib. Babe. I—”

The canned announcement that it was time to discontinue the use
of all electronic devices rolled over his words.

“Sam, what’s happening? Cosmo said—”

“I got to the airport and there was this tabloid. This trash.
And it said—”

He was pretty sure he heard Libby saying a word he never once
expected to hear from her lips. At least not when there were kids within
potential earshot.

“Lib? Your name was in it. Do you—”

“It’s not what you think, Sam, I swear. I—”

A flight attendant stopped beside his seat. “Sir, I need you to
put that away now and fasten your seat belt.”

“Wait,” he said, to both Libby and the attendant. “You knew
about this?” The panic-band around his chest pulled tight and cold.

“Sir! Did you hear me?”

“I...I might. I have this neighbor...I didn’t think she
would...”

“Sir, either the phone goes or you’re off this plane. Do you
understand?”

“Call back as soon as you can,” Libby said, and ended the
connection just as the flight attendant seemed ready to blow his whistle.

“Wait! No!”

“Yes,” said the attendant before bustling up the aisle to close
the cabin door.

With three languages full of curses flying through his head,
Sam shoved the phone into the seat pouch in front of him before wrestling his
belt into position and snapping it around his hips. Then he let his head drop
back against the seat, closed his eyes and prepared for an hour of torturing
himself by imagining what, exactly, Libby had told someone.

* * *

L
IBBY
STARED
AT
THE
PHONE
and let loose with a string of words that made Cosmo step back and blink.