Carolina Girl (12 page)

Sam shook his head, as if he could restore the blood flow to his brain. The island gossips had it all wrong. Meg wasn’t coming back. She was leaving, always leaving.

Unless this time he gave her a reason to stay.

His heart spurted again in panic. Where the hell had that come from?

“Walt, I need to go, uh . . .” Christ, he couldn’t think. “Go,” he finished.

Walt chuckled. “Hope she’s prepared to be boarded.”

Sam rolled his tongue back into his mouth and sauntered across the bar, reminding himself to breathe. Playing it cool. He stopped for a better view and looked her up and down, deliberately provoking, determined to regain the advantage in whatever game they were playing.

* * *

M
EG WATCHED AS
Cynthie hoisted Hannah in her arms, smiling at the contrast they made, a mermaid with a princess on her hip, Cynthie’s glittery showgirl face against her daughter’s soft topknot. Taylor and Madison had their heads bent over the candy bowl, debating the merits of M&Ms over Skittles.

The back of her neck tickled. She felt a premonition like a finger drawn along her spine, like a whisper against her skin, and turned.

Sam.

Of course he wasn’t in costume. He was too cool for that. With his black knit shirt tucked into lean black jeans, he looked dark, dangerous, and ready for action, like an Italian movie star or a jewelry thief.

He perused her head to toe before his gleaming eyes returned to her face. A corner of his mouth curled upward in a smile. “Nice boots,” he drawled.

The Stuart Weitzman knee-high boots had been her reward to herself after her March bonus. Even on sale, they were an indulgence. After traipsing almost a mile in four-inch heels, her ankles were wobbly and the balls of her feet hurt, but it was totally worth it to put that look in Sam’s eyes.

She tossed her head, making her gold hoops sway. She stepped in close and dropped her voice, enjoying his quick intake of breath. “Hey, sailor,” she teased, her lips close to his ear. “Is that a belaying pin in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

He expelled his breath on a laugh. “We use cleats now, darling. If you’re talking about sailing.”

She drew back and grinned. “Actually, I wouldn’t know a belaying pin from my . . . elbow. I just thought it sounded pirate-y.”

The slashes in his cheeks deepened. “Next time try blunderbuss.”

“Hornpipe,” she countered.

“Peg leg.”

“Jolly Roger,” she said triumphantly, and he raised his hands in surrender.

“You win. Let me buy you a drink.”

“I’m with the girls.”

“They can have sodas.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right. Because more sugar and caffeine are just what they need about now. Hey, girls.” They all looked over. “Want to stop and get something to drink?”

Madison’s face dropped comically. Hannah stared at her like an abused orphan from her mother’s arms.

“Are we done trick-or-treating?” Taylor asked, not arguing. More . . . resigned.

Kid, you have been disappointed too often in your life, Meg thought.

“No way,” she said firmly. “This is just a pit stop.”

“You wait right here with your drinks,” Cynthie said, “and I’ll clock out and take you the rest of the way. Okay?”

The little girls scooted into a booth.

“Lemonade or orange juice?” Sam asked, standing over them.

Meg glanced up in surprise. She hadn’t expected him to take her caffeine remark seriously.

He took their orders and fetched the girls’ drinks from the bar, complete with paper umbrellas and maraschino cherries.

“Very slick,” she murmured.

His teeth showed in a brief smile. “I aim to please.” He set a mug in front of her. “I thought you might like coffee.”

“Thanks.” She sipped. Milk, no sugar. There was something flattering, something seductive, about his attention to detail.

She curled her hands around the warm mug.
This
was the secret behind Sam’s popularity, the reason that women rolled over for him and men liked him. It wasn’t all thoughtless, surface charm with him. He was
aware
of other people. He noticed things. He cared. He made an effort to learn what you liked, to give you what you needed, to earn your approval. He looked at you like you were the most fascinating person in the room, the most important person in the world.

Which of course made it even more devastating when you realized that all that focused attention was nothing special. That you were nothing special. He was like that with everybody.

She swallowed to dispel the sudden bitterness in her mouth.

“All set,” Cynthie said, bustling back. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah!” Hannah jumped up in her seat.

“She’s little,” Madison said to Taylor. “She gets excited.”

Taylor grinned and grabbed her pillowcase. Meg gulped another mouthful and started to stand.

“Sit,” Cynthie said. “I’ll take them around. You finish your coffee.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Meg said.

“I want to.” Cynthie’s smile flickered, surprisingly sweet in her heavily made-up face. “I don’t get enough time to play with my girls.”

Probably true, Meg thought. Cynthie was probably too busy keeping a roof over all their heads to simply take a night off with her daughters.

“You go enjoy yourselves, then,” Meg said. “Maybe Taylor and I will catch up with you later.”

Taylor shot Meg a look and then ducked her head.

“Oh, but she has to come with us,” Cynthie said.

“Yeah, Mom,” Madison said.

Taylor stared at her shoes, her fingers squeezing her pillowcase as if she could choke it to death.

Meg wished briefly she were back in New York. Managing a department of thirty people and an advertising budget of seventy-four million dollars seemed like a piece of cake compared with the responsibility for the happiness of one ten-year-old.

Matt would know what to do for her. What to say. Meg didn’t have a clue.

It’s Taylor’s first Halloween with us
, Tess said in her head.
I want it to be special.
But what did Taylor want?

“Taylor?” Meg asked softly.

Taylor jerked one bony shoulder in the universal gesture for
I don’t care
.

“Let her go,” Sam said.

Meg narrowed her eyes at him. Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the responsible one. “Is that what you want?” she asked Taylor. “To go with Madison and Hannah?”

“I guess.” Taylor nodded with more vigor. “Yeah.”

“I’ll bring her home,” Cynthie said. “Around nine, nine thirty?”

“That would be great. Have a nice . . .”

And before Meg could do more than give Taylor her flashlight, they were gone.

“Time.” Meg sat back against the bench seat, unsure how she felt about losing control of the evening. “Well. I feel superfluous,” she said, not entirely joking.

“You should be feeling grateful.”

“Why? Because I’m sitting here with you instead of trick-or-treating with my niece?”

“Because Taylor’s acting like a normal ten-year-old. Not clinging. Kids are supposed to ditch you for their friends.”

“Oh.” She thought about it. “You’re right.”

“You did a good job there.” His eyes were warm.

“Thanks.” She curled her toes in her boots, ridiculously flattered, one more victim of the Sam Grady charm. “I thought if I invited Madison over to look at costumes, it might break the ice.”

“I meant by letting her decide just now. Poor kid hasn’t had a lot of choices lately.”

“Well, she’s ten,” Meg said practically.

“Exactly,” Sam said. “Her mom died, what, two months ago? Three? From a brain aneurysm, Matt said.” Meg nodded. “So, she goes to live with one set of grandparents until your brother shows up. He dumps her on the other set of grandparents, and she’s barely settling in there when your mother’s in a car accident. Not Tess’s fault,” Sam said when Meg would have spoken. “But that’s a lot of changes for the kid to have to deal with.”

Meg frowned. There he went with the empathy thing again. She didn’t know another single man in his thirties who would so clearly see Taylor’s dilemma, let alone be able to articulate it. Matt, maybe, but Matt was a dad. Sam . . .

“How did you get to be so smart?”

He shrugged. “I was a kid once, too.”

She gnawed her lower lip, a new thought poking her like a splinter. Sam was fifteen the summer her family moved to the island. But before that, he’d already lived with one, two, three stepmothers. Maybe it had given him an insight she lacked.

“Did it bother you?” she asked. “Your dad remarrying so much? All the changes growing up?”

His smile flickered. “You get used to it. Once you figure out what everybody expects, how you fit in.”

“Like starting a new school,” she offered. “We did that a lot, moving around with my dad.”

“Sure. But you all had each other. ‘Back to back to back,’ right?” Sam quoted softly. “I must have heard you and Matt and Luke say it a hundred times. Pretty intimidating.”

She stared at him. She’d never considered how the words might sound, how their bond might appear to an outsider. To Sam. “But Taylor’s one of us.”

He smiled at her. Raised an eyebrow. “You sure she knows that?”

“Of course she does,” Meg said. Taylor had to know that. Because the alternative was just too heart-wrenching to contemplate. “Luke’s talked to her. Matt’s talked to her.”

“But you’ve still got that custody thing coming up next week, right? Family court. How much does she know about that?”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” Meg said. “Matt hired a lawyer. Vernon Long. He said we don’t have anything to worry about. No court in eastern North Carolina is going to take custody away from an active-duty serviceman without a really good reason. Taylor won’t even be called unless the Simpsons’ lawyer subpoenas her.”

“Great. But from the kid’s perspective, it’s all still out of her control. Her life is basically being decided for her by a bunch of grown-ups.”

Meg stared at him, stricken.

Sam frowned. “What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Her own situation wasn’t anything like Taylor’s. Meg wasn’t ten. She was thirty-four, totally in control of herself and her choices. She had a plan. She had Derek.

Taylor had nobody.

Correction. She had a father and grandparents who wanted her. She had Matt and Josh and Allison, who cared about her. And now she had Meg, too.

“That’s why you said it was good for her to go with Cynthie and the girls,” Meg said slowly. “Because it gave her a choice. It gave her control.”

“Yeah. And she went, which was great. It shows she’s confident.”

“You never had any problems with confidence.”

He smiled without saying anything.

“Or with making friends,” she prodded.

She didn’t know what she wanted from him. Maybe she wanted him to reassure her about Taylor. Maybe she was just trying to reconcile this sensitive Sam with the boy she remembered. Because if he wasn’t that boy anymore . . .

Maybe he never had been that boy.

Which meant . . . Oh, hell, she didn’t know what it meant, except that maybe her mother had been right about him all along.

“Sure.” He plucked a trio of sugar packets from the bowl on the table, assembling them into a neat A-frame. “Never would have made it through high school without Matt.”

“Not just Matt. You had lots of friends. You were cocaptain of the basketball team. You were prom king.”

“I was friendly with a lot of people.” The A-frame acquired an addition. “Nobody else I told stuff to.”

Okay. She had brothers. She knew guys did not sit around sharing their feelings. But . . .

“How much did you tell him?”

“Not everything.” He looked up briefly, his eyes gleaming between thick black lashes. “So that’s two things I know about you that your family doesn’t.”

She watched his strong, clever builder’s hands move among the sugar packets, assembling, discarding.
Two?

Right.
She came to herself with a little start.
The job.

She moistened her lips. “I have something to tell you. To ask you, actually.”

“Save it.”

“Excuse me?”

He swept the house of sugar packets down with one hand. “You’re finished, right?”

She stared, fighting an unreasonable feeling of disappointment. He didn’t want to talk, fine. She didn’t need a confidant. She didn’t want . . .

“Your coffee,” he said patiently. “Are you done?”

“Oh.” She collected herself. “Yes.”

“Come on, then. I’ll walk you.”

She wasn’t ten, like Taylor. She didn’t need to be escorted like a trick-or-treater out past her bedtime. She lived in New York, for crying out loud. “I don’t need you to walk me home. I’m perfectly safe on my own.”