With This Ring (9 page)

Before long, the chair they were in was too uncomfortable and unaccommodating, so Sam lifted her up and carried her into his bedroom. He laid her on the bed and shucked off his shorts, T-shirt, and briefs in a matter of seconds. Before he lowered himself beside her, some semblance of sanity made him ask, "Are you sure?"

"Oh, yes. I'm sure." She held out her arms.

Minutes later, he was thrusting deep inside her. In some part of himself, he wanted to slow down. He wanted to make this first time between them special. But his need was too intense. When he felt her spasm around him, crying out his name, he could no longer hold on. He exploded into her, and as the powerful sensations pummeled him, he knew they had started something that might be completely impossible to stop.

* * *

"It'll be better next time, I promise."

Amy smiled lazily. "So you've decided I'm your type after all?" she teased. In all of her twenty-seven years, she had never felt this way. Making love with Sam was incredible. It was everything she had ever imagined it could be.
He
was everything she'd ever imagined he could be. He was everything she'd ever wanted.

She sighed with happiness and deep contentment.

He cupped her left breast, rubbing the nipple until it perked into a hard little nub. "Don't be a smart ass."

"Why don't you show me right now?" she murmured.

"Show you what?"

"You know. How much better it can be." She couldn't believe this was her, Amy Carpenter, talking this way. She'd never talked this way to a man before. Of course, she'd never felt this way about a man before. Totally shameless. She tightened her arms around him, feeling the hard contours of his back, the muscles moving beneath the surface of the skin.

"Oh, I'll show you all right." His mouth moved slowly down her body as his fingers delved, finding the exact spot that ached to be touched.

They didn't talk again for a long time.

For the next two weeks, Amy walked around in a dizzying haze of new love and sexual discovery and physical wellbeing. Years from now, she would look back on these magical days and nights and remember them as a perfect time.

Everything she did and saw and smelled and tasted and touched was clearer and brighter and richer and more intense. Her body was on sensory overload, and she reveled in it.

She and Sam spent every moment they could together. After that first night in Sam's apartment, where they'd awakened the following morning to no food in the refrigerator and barely enough coffee to brew a pot, they'd spent most of their time at Amy's place. Gradually, Sam's belongings appeared. His bathrobe joined her bathrobe on the hook at the back of the bathroom door. His toothbrush and shaving supplies joined her toothbrush and cosmetics on the bathroom vanity. His clothes and his camera equipment joined her clothes and her art supplies in the closets and cupboards.

They couldn't seem to get enough of each other. He would no sooner walk in the door than they were tearing off their clothes and heading for her bed. Sometimes they didn't even make it to the bed. Sam joked about it, saying, "we've got to stop doing this on the floor, it's killing my back."

Amy was deeply in love. So in love that it almost hurt to look at Sam. Even hearing his whistle as he came up the outside stairs could make her knees go weak and her chest tighten.

Sam hadn't said he loved her, but Amy knew what he felt down deep, even if he didn't yet. She also knew he would eventually realize what his feelings for her were . . . and then he would say the words.

She could wait. In the meantime, she would just enjoy being with him, laughing and talking and making love.

They had so much fun together.

They went to movies and ate hot dogs dripping with mustard and huge bags of buttered popcorn, then came back to her apartment and shed their clothes and slipped into her bed where they whispered and laughed and made unhurried love.

They swam naked in the moonlight in the backyard pool and made love standing up in the warm water. Amy liked it so much, she wanted to do it again and again.

They went to Astroworld one day and rode every single roller coaster and stuffed themselves on junk food and stayed late to watch the fireworks.

One night they got all dressed up—it was the first time Amy saw Sam in a suit, and she couldn't believe how handsome he looked—and went to Brennan's. They sat at a window table and drank wine and ate turtle soup and warm spinach salad and baked red snapper stuffed with crabmeat and tiny shrimp and finished off the enormous meal with the best crème brulée Amy had ever tasted. Afterwards they came back to her apartment and put on some of her forties music and danced close together until they couldn't stand it anymore, then they went into her bedroom and slowly undressed each other and made love.

On Friday of their first week together, they drove to New Orleans where they stayed in one of the small, luxurious hotels in the Quarter. That first night, they sat outside on their tiny balcony and absorbed the charm and decadence of the city. Amy had been to New Orleans before, many times, but that night she saw the city through new eyes. There was something elemental and darkly sensual about the atmosphere, something that she knew would add another dimension to their lovemaking that night.

On Saturday they walked the narrow streets—Bourbon and Royal and Chartres and St. Peter's. They gazed in shop windows and bought junk souvenirs and a poster of Jackson Square that Amy just had to have. They drank hurricanes at Pat O'Briens and listened to jazz at Preservation Hall. They rode the trolley out to the Garden District and ate oyster poorboys and jambalaya. They danced at Tippitino's and Amy laughed so hard she got the hiccups. They ended the night at the Café DuMonde where they gorged themselves on warm beignets and chicory-laden coffee.

Sunday morning they went to Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. Amy wasn't Catholic, but Sam was.

"Well, I was baptized a Catholic, but I don't go to church much," he said, grinning down at her. "Sure you want to go?"

"Yes." At that moment she'd have followed him anywhere.

They talked about everything and anything. They discovered they both liked to read thrillers. Sam was amused. "I'd've pegged you for romance novels," he said. "Or poetry. Yeah, highbrow poetry."

"What a chauvinistic remark!" Amy said, trying to maintain a stern expression was not succeeding very well. "Although I do like poetry. Especially Emily Dickenson."

"Figures." But he smiled when he said it.

Amy tried to get Sam to talk about his childhood, but he always changed the subject, and she didn't push him. She figured when he was ready to tell her, he would. He loved hearing about her childhood, though, and asked her hundreds of questions.

"Were you lonely as a kid?" he asked one night after they'd watched a couple of rented movies, shared a pizza, and made love.

Amy shook her head. "I always wanted a brother or sister, but I was never
lonely.
I had lots of playmates, plus a really active imagination. I pretended my dolls were people. What about you? Were you lonely?"

He didn't answer for a long moment, just lay staring at the ceiling with his arms crossed behind his head. "Yeah, I was lonely."

Amy longed to put her arms around him, yet knew that in moments like these, he would reject any overture that hinted at pity. She vowed he would never be lonely again. She would fill up every empty place in his heart, and gradually, he would forget about those long ago days of his childhood.

One night, he did talk about Gus and Peggy, the foster parents who had made such a difference in his life. "They were hippies in the sixties, anti-Vietnam, peace marchers, the whole bit," he said, "and even though it was the late seventies when I lived with them, they were still kind of out of the mainstream."

"Tell me about them."

"Gus is a photographer, mainly portraits. He's retired now, but back then, he specialized in children. He was great with them, too. Probably because he has a kind of Santa Claus look about him—you know, hearty laugh, twinkly eyes, bushy hair and beard."

Amy could tell by the fond smile on Sam's face that he had related to Gus the same way the other children had. "What about his wife?"

"Peggy? She's great, too, but in a different way. She's one of those tall, thin women who always have a tan and a cigarette dangling from their mouths. She wore Mexican dresses and sandals and long turquoise earrings and she was a writer—still is, I guess. I don't think she's ever made much money writing, but she'd find these odd people and she'd write about them. Once in awhile she sold her stories to local papers or magazines." He grinned. "She wrote a story about me once."

"She did? Did it ever get published?"

He nodded.

"Do you have a copy of it? I'd love to read it."

"Somewhere. I'm not sure where."

"What was it about her that you liked so much?"

He turned to look at her, his gold-flecked eyes thoughtful. "You know how most people love to talk? Well, Peggy was just the opposite. She loved to listen." After a moment, he reached over and curled a lock of Amy's hair around his finger. "You're like that, too. It's one of the things I like best about you."

Tenderness flooded Amy. At that moment, she wanted so much to tell him she loved him, but she knew she couldn't. Not yet. He wasn't ready yet. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and soon she was lost in his kisses.

The only discordant note in the idyllic days was the return of Glenn Wilhelm, the teacher Amy had been dating before meeting Sam. Glenn called her within hours of arriving in Houston after a three week trip to his hometown in Idaho.

"Oh, hi, Glenn," she said, wishing she hadn't been such a coward earlier in the summer when she'd first realized she wasn't interested in pursuing the relationship. "You're back. Did you have a good trip?"

"It was great, but I sure missed you."

Amy grimaced.

"I can't wait to see you," he continued. "Can I come over tonight?"

"I'm sorry, Glenn, but I have plans for tonight."

"Oh. That's okay. How about tomorrow night?"

"Um, Glenn? I . . . " She closed her eyes. She knew she shouldn't be doing this over the phone, but she also knew it wasn't fair to let him go on thinking they had any kind of future together. "Listen, something's happened while you were gone. I . . . I've met someone."

"You've met someone?" he echoed.

"Yes."

He was silent so long, she began to wonder if he were still there. Finally she said, "Glenn, I'm sorry. I—" Oh, shoot. Why was she apologizing? There had been nothing between them. They'd only dated a few times. It wasn't like they were going together or anything.

"I guess I'll see you when school starts," he finally said, his voice strained and stiff.

"Glenn . . . " She started to say she was sorry again, then stopped. She was just making things worse.

After she'd hung up the phone, she could've kicked herself. Surely she could have handled that better than she had. She stewed over the conversation for a while, but then Sam called, and soon everything else was driven from her mind.

* * *

Sam knew he was playing with fire. He also knew that eventually, someone was going to get burned—and that he should do something about it. Yet each day, no matter what his good intentions might have been, he did nothing to clarify his relationship with Amy.

He couldn't. When he was away from her, he would think, today I'll tell her we have to cool it. I'll tell her I'm just not the settling down kind. And then he would see her—eyes filled with happiness, smile lighting her face, soft lips parted in a "hello" kiss, and he would forget all about his intentions. All he wanted was to take her into his arms and make love to her.

When Sam made love to Amy, he felt things he'd never felt before. Things that scared the hell out of him. Things he wasn't sure what to do about.

One day, while Amy was working her regular shift at the pet shelter, Sam and Justin had lunch together. Throughout the meal, in the back of Sam's mind, was the dilemma of Amy and the conflict she had introduced into his life. Suddenly, surprising even himself, he said, "You ever been in love, Justin?"

Justin nodded and told Sam about a girl he'd met in college. "Why'd you ask? Don't tell me you've fallen for someone."

Sam shrugged.

"Well,
have
you?" Justin pressed.

"Ah, hell, forget it. I don't know why I asked."

Justin grinned. "I can't believe it. You
are
in love. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Sam Robbins, love-'em-and-leave-'em Robbins, break-their-hearts-and-hear-them-cry Robbins, is in
love.
Miracles
do
happen."

"Will you wipe that shit-eating grin off your face?"

Justin laughed. "Sorry. I can't help it. I never thought I'd see the day. So who is she?"

"It's that girl . . . you know . . . the one I met at the shelter. Her name's Amy. Amy Carpenter."

"Well, c'mon, tell me about her."

So Sam did. "I don't know what to do," he said when he'd finished.

"You've only got two choices. Marry her or break it off for good."

That night, long after Amy had fallen asleep in his arms, Sam thought about Justin's words. Marry her or break it off for good. White or black. Justin was right. No wonder Sam had been unable to tell Amy they needed to cool it. Cooling it wasn't an option. Cooling it was in a gray zone, a zone Amy would never accept.

He knew he had to decide, and soon, because if he chose to break it off completely, the longer he waited, the harder it would be.

And not just for Amy.

* * *

On Wednesday of her second week with Sam, during a telephone conversation with Lark, Lark said, "Amy, are you
sure
you know what you're doing?"

"I've never been surer of anything."

There was an audible sigh. "So when am I going to meet him?"

Amy felt a twinge of guilt. She'd neglected Lark shamelessly the past ten days. "How about tonight? We'll all go out for Mexican food."