All-American Girl (16 page)

Sam’s hand gripped Lance’s arm, and he tensed, unable to hide her. Hell, he knew once she realized it was her brother, she’d stick her nose right in it. He couldn’t blame her, or stop her. When she stepped around him and stood at his side, a sudden, protective urge raged through him. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and carry her away from the things he knew Cole would say, but Sam was a fighter, and although he hated the thought, he knew she had to deal with this sometime.

“Cole?” she asked quietly.

Cole blinked slowly. He took a step forward and tripped over his own feet. Lance tried to catch him before he hit the ground but couldn’t. Cole managed to get upright and stared emotionlessly at Samantha.

“Isss that y…you, Samantha?” he asked.

“Are you drunk?”

Cole scratched his scruffy face and leaned back. “I…I don’t like to say ‘drunk.’ I’m more of a…highly inebriated guy.” He leaned forward and took a shaky step to the left.

“Why would you come here, drunk, of all places?”

“Heeey now, lil’ sis. Don’t be judging what you don’t kn…know.”

Sam stepped toward him. Before he could think, Lance grabbed her wrist, and her head whipped around. He shook his head and mouthed the word “don’t.” She only glared at him, the ice returning to her features. Reluctantly, he released her.

Sam closed the distance between her and Cole. “There are families and children out here. You look dreadful and you smell worse.”

Cole words came out in almost a growl. “And this coming from a…a…whore?”

Lance stood there—shocked—as Sam’s closed fist came flying out of nowhere and landed a solid hit on the side of Cole’s face. Cole stumbled backward and fell flat on his rear, his legs splayed out in front of him. Sam hovered over him; Lance could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.

“How
dare
you call me that. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Cole tried to get back up but kept collapsing back onto the grass.

“I do believe you have earned that title,
Sam
,” he said mockingly. “After all, you were the one who fell in love with Lance here.” Cole jabbed a finger in Lance’s direction. “You let him come between us, as a family. You went to him when I needed you. Whore.” He spat at her feet.

Sam reared her leg back like she was going to kick Cole. Lance jerked her away.

“Let go of me!” She fought, twisting and turning beneath his grip, flinging her arms out and kicking like a wild animal caught in a trap.

Lance thought he finally had a good hold on her when she bit him.

“Son of a bitch!” His grip loosened, and she wriggled away. He had dealt with Cole before and knew what kind of anger the man harbored, but never in his life did he expect to have to deal with two people with the same untamed temper at the exact same time. He didn’t have the strength to handle them both.

“Enough!” he yelled. Sam froze and Cole stopped trying to get back up. “Both of you listen to me, very carefully.” He looked at Sam, hardening his expression so the message was clear. “You, go home—no, don’t argue. Go home
right now
.” Her jaw tightened, and her pulse visibly pounded at the base of her neck. He softened his tone. “Please, just go. I’ll come check on you after I’ve taken care of Cole.”

Samantha looked down at her brother and then back at Lance. Were those tears in her eyes? “Fine.” She twirled around and disappeared in the darkening night.

Lance walked over to Cole, held out his hand, and pulled him to his feet. “Now, you—”

“I don’t need a damn babysitter.”

“The hell you don’t. You’re a mess. Have you looked at yourself lately?”

Cole smacked Lance’s hand away. “Don’t need any compliments either. I’ll just be going home.” He dug in his pocket and yanked out his keys. Lance snatched them away.

“If you think you’re driving, you’re crazy.” Lance led Cole away from the crowd and toward the car.

He gave Lance a hard glare with bloodshot eyes. “Damn it, Lance. I don’t need a chaperone. Unlike you.”

“And just what is that supposed to mean?”

“Like I need to explain it,
Romeo
.”

There were times when even Lance’s temper got the best of him, like now, after witnessing the vile things Cole said to his only sister. The hate in Cole’s face when he looked at her made him feel sick. No woman, no matter who she was, should ever be treated that way. He grabbed Cole’s shoulder and pressed him to the side of the car.

Lance poked a finger at his chest. “Yeah, I think you do.”

“I don’t answer to you, man. Just take me home and leave me alone.”

“Not until you answer me.”

Cole raked his fingers through his greasy hair. It looked like he hadn’t showered in days, weeks, maybe. “I need a drink.”

“You need a drink like I need a hole in the head.”

“My freakin’ head is pounding. I need a drink.”

“No. Now answer me.”

“Shit. What was the question?”

Lance backed away from him, crossed his arms, and eyed Cole carefully. “Why would you say I needed a chaperone with your sister? I would never hurt her.”

Cole snorted and flashed a cocky half-grin. “You already did.”

Lance was back in his face in an instant. “And now you can explain that, too.”

“Drink.”

“Hell no. I’ll stand here all night until you tell me what you’re rambling about. That’s a lot of head pounding for you.”

“Fuck off!”

“Watch your language. There are children around.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“What are you? Ten years old?” Lance tapped the imaginary watch on his wrist. “Time’s a’wasting.”

“Fine. I said you already hurt her. That’s why you need the chaperone, so you don’t do it again.”

Lance almost laughed. He’d never hurt Samantha. Never wanted to and never would. Aside from the obvious provoking he’d done when she got back into town but, at the time, he was just trying to pull her out of her tightly locked emotional bunker.

“Exactly how did I hurt her?”

The cocky smile returned to Cole’s face. Lance had the urge to punch it off. A quick vision of his stepfather smacking him around in one of his drunken rages quickly erased that thought from his mind. Violence was never the answer. “Tell me,” Lance demanded.

Cole’s shoulders sagged. “It’s nothing, really. She was my sister, one of the few people I had left after my parents died. She cared about me—”

“She still does care about you.”

Cole’s lip curled in a snarl. “No, not after you got a hold of her. She abandoned me when I needed her help. After the night you spent with her, when I was suffering in pain in my bed at home,
alone,
I just told her what she really needed to hear.”

“And what was that?”

“That you didn’t want her. That you didn’t love her.” Cole looked up at the twinkling sky. “That you used her.”

“No,” he ground out. “That’s what you told
me
about
her
.”

Cole chuckled. “Well, that’s what I told you both.”

“What?
Why?”

Cole shrugged carelessly. “She’d forgotten to be a sister. I needed help. I was suffering. I
am
suffering.”

It was all Lance could do to control the waves of rage crashing over him. He wrenched the car door open. “Get in,” he said, pushing Cole down in the seat.

Cole said nothing else on the drive to his house, which was for the best. Here he’d thought, all these years, that Samantha had run out on him because she didn’t think he was good enough for her.
A loser,
Sam had called him. Well, that’s what Cole had told him. Then to learn she had been told the exact same thing about him…He could only imagine how much that hurt her. His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that he almost ripped it from the dash.

No wonder Sam acted like she hated him; she probably did, and he couldn’t blame her. She’d been a virgin, and she thought he took her virginity and pushed her aside. He took deep, calming breaths through his nose, but it didn’t help. He still saw red.

How would he even begin to explain this to her? Would she even believe him?

Lance stopped the car and hurried around to help Cole out, dragging him up the steps and shoving him through the front door. Cole stumbled in and sat down on the linoleum floor. Lance dug Cole’s keys of out his pockets and jingled them in his hand. “I’m keeping these. I’ll be back to check on you later. Sweet dreams.”

He got back in his car and headed to Sam’s without a backward glance. One thing was certain: he was going to clear the air between them—tonight.

“Sometimes good things fall apart
so better things can fall together.”
~Marilyn Monroe

H
ER
B
ROTHER
W
AS
A
N
A
SS
, that much was clear. Samantha had known Cole was battling his own demons, but she had no idea he had turned into such a monster. When’d he spat the word
whore
at her, it was all she could do to not kick him repeatedly. Too bad Lance had stopped her. She could handle her brother; she’d done it when she was younger, and she could do it again.

She stopped rearranging the trinkets on the shelf and paced the living room. She couldn’t really blame Cole. He harbored anger, much like she did—only his anger came from something different. Cole hated that he’d lost his leg, couldn’t play football after the accident, and most of all, hated that their parents were dead. He’d shrunk back into his own world of pity and despair and dared people to bother him. Samantha hadn’t even tried to help back then because she hadn’t known how. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. Cole was stubborn, just like she was. It was clear tonight that Cole had gone over the edge and might never return.

That crushed her heart. Cole was her brother, and she did love him. She knew what it felt like to be abandoned, left alone to suffer, and not be cared about by those you loved. Maybe that’s why Cole had sought financial help from Gram. Samantha cared about Cole, and she could help him if he’d let her.

There was also the animosity between Cole and Lance. She was missing some of the history, and Samantha wondered what she would discover if she asked. Talking with Lance about Cole would upset her, though, not because she didn’t want to find more about her brother, but because things had been so strained between her and Lance.

Samantha had been trying to control her temper around him—and had been doing pretty well—but she had been crushed when he said she’d looked “nice” at the festival. Just “nice”? A large part of her had hoped for something a little more descriptive. Not that she was trying to impress him. She stopped pacing and sighed, acknowledging that she was lying to herself. She
did
care and it hurt.

There’d been a brief moment when he’d looked at her as though she was the only person he saw in the crowd. For a second she’d felt like she captivated him. She wasn’t oblivious to the fact that his eyes raked over every inch of her body, making her tingle. His gaze burned her without a single touch. He’d looked devilishly handsome as always; the ever-present jeans and T-shirt had been replaced with tan slacks and a blue button-down dress shirt. He’d looked…touchable. And she noticed, briefly, that his scent was different. Instead of sawdust and sweat, the faint scent of Irish Spring and aftershave swept into her senses. She’d liked it.

Then he’d kissed her, dragging her down to the roots of ecstasy with one tangling, mesmerizing kiss. She could still taste him.

Her cell phone rang, and she cursed when she saw the number. It was her low-life ex-husband, Ryan—again. She hurled the phone across the room and it smashed against the wall. Maybe she would regret that later. Probably not, though.

She circled around the living room for the fiftieth time as headlights pulled into the driveway.

Lance knocked, and she answered. Time stood still as they stared at each other, his gaze combing over her body again. A look of hunger flashed in his eyes, followed by apprehension. The twinge was back in her stomach, involuntary heat erupting through her body. She would never be able to control herself around him no matter how much she both hated and…what? Liked him? Wanted him? Needed him? No—she did not
need
him. What she needed was for her body to stop reminding her that Lance was the only person she’d ever truly loved. The only person who’d made her feel safe. He was just another man who’d used her and pushed her aside. So long as she could remember that, she could keep her arousal in check.

“I need to talk to you,” he said as he eased past her into the kitchen. His unsettled tone caught her off guard. He did a lap around the island before grabbing a soda out of the fridge and plopping himself down at the table.

“Make yourself at home,” Samantha said with a hint of irritation as she stepped into the kitchen.

He popped the lid on the soda can and glanced at her. “I’ve always felt at home here. Dorothy made it that way for me and Jax.”

She took a step toward him and stopped when his eyes went from pain to hunger. “Oh…I’m sorry.”

His lips titled to a smile. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I should be apologizing to you.”

Her brows furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

He dragged his tan fingers through his hair and took a long drink. “It’s Cole.”

She dropped into the seat next to him and gripped her dress. “What’s the matter? Is he okay?”

“Yes, he’s safely at home and passed out, I assume. I’m sorry you had to see him like that.” He cocked his head and studied her. “You should know he’s an alcoholic.”

“I figured as much.” She let go of her dress and twisted her hands in her lap, doing her best to ignore his scent.

Lance shifted so they were face to face before taking another long drink of soda. His head tilted back slightly, and she had the sudden urge to stroke her fingers down the length of his neck. She was losing it. Sweat formed on his brow as he clanked the can down on the table. “Your brother is also a liar.”

“Why would you say that?” She wiped her hand over the wooden table, sweeping imaginary dust particles to the floor.

“Because he told me as much.”

She wiped the table again. “I don’t understand.”

He shifted, looking more uncomfortable by the second. Finally, he stood and leaned against the island. “I’m not sure I can explain it to you.”

She rose and walked over to him, annoyed that he’d bring something like this up and then not say more about it. “Would you please just spit it out?”

He crossed his arms and blinked slowly, his eyes darkening more as she stared back at him. He ran his thumb over his bottom lip, contemplating something, she guessed. It made her focus on his mouth, and remember how dangerous his kisses were. How stimulating his hands could be. How devastating his body would be entangled with hers. She licked her lips and gripped her dress between her fingers again.

His words came out low and even. “Why did you go to New York after the night we made love?”

She drew in a sharp breath. “What?”

His mouth took on an unpleasant twist. “When we were younger, after we went out, after we made love for the first time, you left. I want to know why.”

She jabbed her finger in his chest. “How dare you come in here and force me to relive one of the most degrading moments of my life. I want to know about my brother, not a damned memory I’ve been trying to erase for twelve years.”

He flinched. “You don’t under—”

“Stop.” She waved a hand in his face and turned away from him. She walked over to the window, pulled open the blinds, then put them back down. She shook out the curtains and yanked them shut. “The last thing I want is for you to mock my humiliation. You hurt me enough then. I won’t allow you to do it again. Get out.”

Within seconds he was behind her, his heat spreading over her back, breath radiating down her neck. She wasn’t going to turn around and face him. He could rot in hell for all she cared.

“Listen.” His voice combed over her bare skin and fueled her anxiety. She needed to clean something. Rearrange something. Organize
anything.

“I need to know what your brother told you after that night. I think he told you the same lies he told me.”

Her body tensed. She turned to face him, uncertain of the memories from that night of love making they’d shared. The pain he’d caused her. The shame she’d harbored.

The smoldering flame in his gaze startled her. She spoke through trembling lips. “What?”

“Cole lied to me. I think he lied to you, too. I need to know what he told you that made you run off.” His eyes sharpened as they swept over her face. “I never said anything mean or hateful about you. I was crushed when you left.”

She obviously hadn’t heard him right. Lance had been crushed when she left? His expression was a mix of sorrow, anger, and hint of hunger. The electricity crackled and strengthened between them when he ran a thumb down her cheek.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. He gently took her face into his hands, stroking his thumb along her jaw. “I didn’t use you. I wanted you to stay…with me.”

“I don’t know—” She had more words, and more than anything, she had more questions. But as he continued to caress her face and look into her eyes, her body went liquid. It was as though he could see into her soul, straight to what she’d been desperately trying to hide: her weakness for him.

His other hand found her waist and pulled her roughly to him. A brief shiver rippled through her; she took a deep breath, trying to gain clarity, but all hope was lost when she once again caught his scent.

He crushed his lips to hers, devouring her with a fierce hunger. Her entire body sparked with arousal and she arched against him. He groaned and circled his hands around her waist, lifting her onto the island counter top.

Her legs curled around his back, clinging to him as the kiss deepened. He tasted just like she remembered, spicy and dangerous. He’d been a good kisser then, but now, as he took her mouth with savage intensity, she knew no one had ever kissed her with such need and powerful longing.

She had a burning desire, an aching need to have all of him. “Lance,” she panted between kisses. He eased his head back, grazing his lips over her cheek, then her earlobe, before taking a nibble of her neck. She jerked and tightened her legs around his waist. “Lance.”

His hands splayed out on her ribcage and drew her back onto the counter. The thickness of his erection pressed between her legs. Two pieces of fabric separated them, and she groaned in frustration.

His fingers massaged her skin through her dress as it inched upward, leaving everything beneath her belly-button bare. Lance dipped his head and placed soft, tantalizing kisses along the edge of her panties. She was putty and he was the artist. At that moment, he could have every bit of her, and she wouldn’t deny him. She was drunk—from the love she’d kept hidden, from the desire she’d been afraid to unleash, from the man she’d never truly let go. And now it was about to overwhelm her.

The front door swung open, and Jenny’s voice rang in her ears. “Samantha!”

Samantha’s eyes snapped open in shock, and she pushed Lance away. As quickly as she could, she hopped off the counter and straightened her dress. She looked at Lance, and his expression reflected the same mind-numbing intimacy as hers.

“Oh!” Jenny popped into the kitchen. “There you are.” She stopped dead when she caught site of Samantha and Lance.

Samantha could only imagine how disheveled her outfit and hair looked. After sparing another glance at Lance, his erection still very present in his slacks, Samantha was thoroughly embarrassed.

“Um…I’m sorry, did I interrupt something? I can come back later if you want.”

Samantha stepped forward. “No—”

Lance shook his head and tugged at his collar. “I was just leaving.”

Jenny shot both of them a confused stare.

“We…uh,” Samantha stammered. Hell, why wasn’t her brain working? Jenny was her friend. She knew people had sex. No big deal. Right? Samantha should not be embarrassed, but for some reason she felt as though she had just been caught doing something very, very bad, and with the person who was so easily capable of breaking her already-wounded heart. What had she almost done?

“I’ve got to go.” He flashed an unsure smile. “Early start in the morning.”

“It’s Sunday,” Jenny said.

“Oh.” He seemed at a loss for words. “I’ll be working here.”

Sweat trickled down Samantha’s back. Lance turned to her, and her eyes grew wide at his strained expression. “Is seven too early?” he asked.

She shook her head, doubt keeping her mouth clamped shut. Awkwardness consumed her as she questioned each move she’d made in the last five minutes. “That’s fine,” she muttered.

“I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier, Sam. You look breathtaking tonight.” He walked out of the kitchen, his gait less arrogant than normal, his shoulders slightly slumped. The front door clicked shut behind him.

Samantha didn’t dare look at Jenny.

Breathtaking.
That was what she’d wanted to hear earlier, and now he’d stolen her breath away.

“I’m going to bed,” Samantha said as she whizzed past the foyer and headed up the stairs.

“Goodnight,” Jenny said playfully.

Samantha knew Jenny thought she’d just interrupted a sex fest in the kitchen. Wrong. It was all wrong. And now it felt dirty.

No, saying it was dirty was wrong. It was miraculously sensuous and pleasurable in the best possible way. She could still feel his
hands on
her body, taste his spice on her lips. She swore she still heard his thundering heartbeat in her ears.

Her heart clenched tightly in her chest, mind racing with the thoughts she’d tried to hide. But after the floodgates opened, the dam gave way, allowing the thoughts and feelings she’d pushed away for so long begin to rage through her. There was no stopping it.

She loved him.

She’d always loved him.