Shameless (26 page)

It was late afternoon the next day when Sam arrived at John’s. He’d promised to make her dinner. He was a wonderful cook. She, on the other hand, was no Rachael Ray.

He’d just finished working out when she arrived, fresh from a shower and wearing only blue jeans. He greeted her with a long, leisurely kiss at the front door then invited her in. She smelled something delicious coming from the kitchen. “Mm, what are we having?” she asked as he took her coat. “I’m famished.”

“Chicken cacciatore,” he replied. “It’ll be done in about half an hour.”

He poured her a glass of wine and she sat on a barstool at the counter. The denim of his jeans stretched taut over his firm behind as he squatted to pull vegetables from the refrigerator crisper. His back muscles rippled and contracted with every movement. A delicious little tingle skimmed over Sam’s nerve endings as she remembered how those muscles felt under her exploring hands. She noticed a faint set of bite marks near his shoulder — that would have been from this morning — and his taste came to her. She licked her lips and shifted on the stool. If she wasn’t so starving for food she’d jump him here and now. They could do it on the counter next to the salad spinner.

She grinned. She still couldn’t believe she was having an “affair.” She didn’t have affairs. Since her divorce from Wayne, she’d had a limited number of controlled relationships, none too serious, none too exciting. She’d always kept a certain amount of emotional distance between herself and the man. Enough to keep from being hurt. Far enough away to stay in control. Still, the future had always been in the back of her mind and she’d always ended up disappointed.

But in none of those relationships had she felt so content, so happy as she did with John. She didn’t care if he saw her in the morning with bed hair or morning breath, because she wasn’t trying to impress him. They had no plans to meet the other’s family. They had no plans at all, in fact. Their affair was a one day at a time sort of thing, the only objective to get her pregnant. Amazingly, their relationship wasn’t based solely on sex, like most affairs were. Sure they had sex, but she enjoyed just spending time with him, whatever they did. And she was pretty sure he felt the same way. They’d become friends.

John stood and brought the vegetables to the center island where she sat. As he cut cucumbers and radishes, she watched the way his pecs flexed. She almost sighed her pleasure out loud. “I could stare at your body all day.” She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until he glanced up from the radishes.

“Feeling’s mutual, beautiful.” He grinned. “Hey, could you hand me my shirt? It’s on the railing behind you.” She grabbed the white T-shirt and tossed it at him, thoroughly enjoying the view as he pulled the shirt over his head, his stomach muscles rippling with the movements. She was in GQ heaven.

He stirred the chicken simmering on the stove. Replacing the lid on the pot, he turned toward her, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Not much longer, then we can eat.” He came around the island and sat on the barstool next to hers. Grabbing her stool, he dragged it across the tile until she was between his thighs. He nudged her short skirt even higher.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I can’t get enough of you, Sam.” He slipped his hands beneath the skirt and cupped her bottom through her panties. Her breathing sped up. “It’s physically impossible for me to be in the same room with you for more than five minutes without needing to touch you.”

“That long, huh?” she murmured, her voice husky. He leaned closer to kiss her. “John,” she whined against his mouth. “I’m starving.”

“Me, too.” He dipped his head and kissed her neck and shoulder. “Ravenous.” He nibbled on her earlobe.

If she didn’t get some food in her belly soon, she would keel over. She was sure of it. “So, how long have you and Alex known each other?”

“I don’t want to talk right now, beautiful.”

His fingers inched toward no-man’s land so she gathered all her willpower and pushed him away. “John. I’m serious. The buzzer for the chicken is going off any time now, and when it does, I want food.” The disappointed look on his face was endearing. “Just think of all the energy I’ll have after I’ve eaten. They’ll have to pry our naked bodies apart when I’m through with you.” She raised and lowered her eyebrows a few times.

He tugged her skirt back into place. “I’m going to hold you to that promise.” He gave her a hard kiss on the mouth then sat back on his stool. “Do you really want to know about me and Alex, or were you just trying to distract me?”

She popped a cherry tomato into her mouth. “Both.” Juice dribbled down her chin and John swiped it away for her.

He licked the juice from his thumb. “It’s a long story.”

“You have until the buzzer goes off.”

“Would it surprise you to know when I met him, he was about the meanest, toughest son-of-a-bitch you could imagine? He was the leader of a gang—”

“Alex was in a gang?” she interrupted, incredulous. “As in guns, knives, drive-by shootings?” He nodded and she grabbed more vegetables from the salad bowl. “How in the world did you ever meet someone like him?”

“At a boys’ home.”

She stopped chewing. “You mean like jail?”

“Basically, yes.”

“What did you do? Steal your dad’s car and go on a joyride?” She smirked.

His eyes veiled over and he stood to check the chicken. The spoon clanged against the pot and the lid banged as he replaced it. As a reporter, Sam was dying to learn what he’d done to land him in the boys’ equivalent of jail, but as his friend she figured she’d better tread lightly.

“John? If this is a touchy subject, we don’t have to talk about it,” she said gently.

He didn’t respond. She hated it when people wouldn’t talk to her, which was probably why she was so good at her job. She plucked a cherry tomato from the salad bowl and threw it at him. She aimed for his shoulder blades but hit him in the back of the head. Not quite as accurate as she’d been in her Little League days, but close enough. She stifled a giggle with her hands.

He turned around and glanced first at her and then to the floor where the tomato had rolled near the baseboard. He picked it up and tossed it into the sink. When his gaze met hers again, his expression was sheepish. “Guess I deserved that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He shook his head. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Yeah. I probably should.” He circled the island counter and sat beside her.

He shoved fingers through his hair. “I’ve told you about my scrawny and insecure days?” Sam nodded. “I was basically a punk. Drinking, smoking, shop-lifting, stealing cars, you name it. I was only fourteen but saw no future ahead of me. At least, not a future
worth
seeing. Well, my life kind of did a three-sixty at that boys’ home. A guy named Hank Hardy was our instructor. Man, he worked us hard, cut us no slack. Alex and I credit him and the weight training for turning our lives around. It was the first time I’d ever had any self-esteem. The first time I saw a future. That’s why Alex and I are working with these inner-city kids. We want to give them the same opportunity before they get into serious trouble.”

He paused, and Sam noticed he hadn’t answered her question about what he’d done to land in the boys’ home. She didn’t know if he was beating around the bush or changing the subject. She stayed silent and waited for him to continue.

She remembered her first impression of him, that he was an arrogant egomaniac who thought of nothing but himself. How wrong she’d been. She reached across the space dividing them and took his hand. “If your intent is to make me see what a nice man you are, then you’re doing a good job.”

“That was the plan.” He chuckled, but it sounded forced, even to his own ears. He pulled his hand away. “But you may not feel that way when I’m done with this story. Christ. This is something I should have told you a long time ago.”

Her brows furrowed. “It can’t be that bad.”

“When you asked me if I’d gotten in trouble for stealing my dad’s car and going on a joyride, you weren’t far off the mark. I used to hang with this bad group of guys, and one night we were doing our usual thing of looking for trouble, and we ended up stealing a car.” He paused. “A Mercury.” Another pause. “A blue one.”

Sam watched him with a tolerant expression, as if he were one of those people who routinely peppered his stories with mundane and utterly useless information.

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, on this particular night, we crashed a big party at a deserted airstrip near Bothell.”

She went still. Her gaze didn’t move from his face, but her eyes widened. “One of the guys in my group, Morris — I guess you could call him the leader because he was the oldest — saw a girl he liked and proceeded to get her drunk. Probably slipped a little something extra into her drink.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. Her fingers clutched the edge of the barstool so tight her knuckles had turned white.

He pushed onward. “Once she was too out of it to know what was going on, he tossed her into the back of the Mercury. At my feet.” He stopped here, knowing he didn’t need to go any farther. Sam hadn’t budged from her seat, but the distance between them had lengthened considerably.

“Johnny.” Her voice was a fraction above a whisper.

He closed his eyes. “I would’ve helped, but—”

She held up a hand, halting his words midsentence. She opened her mouth to speak just as the buzzer rang, echoing loudly in the deafening silence. They both glanced toward the noise, unmoving. Finally, she nodded toward the stove. “Go.” Her voice was a raspy whisper.

Slowly, he stood and circled the counter. He flipped off the buzzer and the burner, and the house was quiet again. He drew a long, steadying breath. “Sam,” he began on the exhale, turning toward her.

She was gone.

He rested the heels of his palms on the counter’s edge and hung his head. “Dammit.” After another moment like that, he went after her.

The bathroom door was closed and he heard running water. He stood in the middle of his bedroom, clenching and unclenching his fists. He debated whether to knock on the door, or let her have some space. He sat on the edge of his bed to wait.

It wasn’t long before the water turned off. The door opened and Sam stopped short in the doorway when she saw him. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears as she stared at him, unmoving. “How long have you known?” she asked him.

“Since the Extravaganza.”

“You recognized me?”

For the first time in years, John blushed. “Well, I — er — knew you’d be there. I’d hired a private investigator to find you.” His fingers curled around the edge of the mattress, bunching the down comforter in his hands.

“What?” Her eyes widened even further. “So that’s the reason you were staring at me so much. And that whole song and dance about ‘seeing someone in the audience you wanted to meet’ was a bunch of bunk.”

“I did want to meet you, Sam. I—”

She waved her hands in the air between them. “Stop. This is too much for me right now.” Her gaze skirted to a space behind him, staring vacantly. Her hands went to the lapels of her jacket and pulled them tighter across her chest, appearing to hold on for dear life. Dropping her hands to her sides, she said quietly, “I need to go.”

It was like someone had slammed a fist into his chest, a feeling so intense, he was short on air. He puffed out his cheeks and blew a long breath. “Okay.” What more could he say? “I’ll walk you out.”

“No,” she said, holding up a hand. “I just… no.” She left the room. A few minutes later, he heard the front door open and close.

He sat on the bed and a wave of emptiness swept over him.

Chapter 14

Sam remembered nothing from her drive home, not the trip across the 520 bridge, not the reflections of city lights in the black waters of Lake Washington, not merging onto I-5 rush-hour traffic. Nothing. Her brain had pretty much shut itself off to outside stimulation. All that spun through her mind were images long buried but not forgotten. The dark car, the taunts, the threatening promises. The pain, the smell of gasoline, the screams… the dead silence.

Much of that night was a blur. She’d snuck out of the house to meet her girlfriends, Bonnie and Michelle, then drove out to the kegger they’d heard about through the party grapevine. Her parents would have skinned her alive if they’d known — they’d been so protective.

A good-looking older guy had brought her a beer. She’d taken the plastic cup and intended just to sip from it because beer always made her loopy. The next thing she knew, she was lying in a dark, cramped space that seemed to move beneath her, and her head spun faster than the spin cycle of a wash machine. As consciousness slowly overtook her, she realized she was in a car with a bunch of drunks. After listening for a while, she knew she was alone with them. Bonnie and Michelle weren’t here. These guys must have taken her.

A paralyzing fear shot through her, so paralyzing that when a couple of the boys looked up her shirt and someone dripped beer onto her face, she hadn’t even flinched. Where were they taking her? What did they plan to do with her? She’d hardly dared think in those frightening directions.