Carolina Girl (4 page)

He thought of the way things were at home right now, no one stepping up, no one stepping in, everybody too damn afraid of the old man’s displeasure to make a move, and his gut tightened.

“You staying for dinner?” Matt asked.

Sam glanced at Meg. “I don’t want to horn in on your sister’s first night home.”

“There’s plenty to go around,” Allison said.

He kept his eyes on Meg.

She met his gaze. Her lips twisted in a smile. “You’ve never turned down a free meal before. Why start now?”

Sam grinned back. It wasn’t much of a welcome, but he’d take what he could get.

He always had.

* * *

S
HE SHOULD HAVE
said something, Meg thought as she passed the basket of rolls across the table.

When Matt asked if everything was okay, she should have just told him. Told them.
I was fired
.

But when she opened her mouth, the words refused to come. They stayed stuck in her throat, burning in her chest like failure.

Maybe if she and Matt had been alone . . . But what could she say in front of the kids? And Allison. And Sam.

“Are you kidding me?” Josh hunched forward in his chair. “North Carolina has a better preseason ranking than Duke.”

Sam grinned, leaning back. “But Duke had more wins last season.”

He went to Duke, Meg remembered, along with the rest of the rich kids. But despite the schools’ heated rivalry, his voice was easy. He was just arguing the way men did, to score points and for fun.

“Because the teams they play are shit,” Josh said. Taylor snickered, and he winced as somebody—Matt, presumably—kicked him under the table. He shot an apologetic glance at Allison. “Sorry. Crap.”

Sam picked up without missing a beat. “Duke has more players drafted by the NBA.”

“Yeah, and now that Rivers is gone, they’re screwed,” Matt put in.

Virginia Dare Island School was too small to field a football team, but Sam and Matt had cocaptained the basketball team their senior year. Sam was more than a jock; as the only son of the biggest developer on the island, he had reigned as undisputed King of the School. Meg, two years behind, had spent that time cementing her role as Queen Geek, busting her ass, obsessing over grades, following a carefully plotted course that would take her to college, to the big world, to success.

Island kids often didn’t adjust well to school on the mainland. Like little fish in the deep ocean, they were swallowed by bigger fish or carried away by the current.

But Meg’s years as a military brat had given her an advantage over her peers. She was already used to proving herself. She knew how to make her way in a new school. All she’d needed was a ticket out. A scholarship.

She stared at her plate, her appetite gone. Fezzik watched soulfully from the corner as Taylor waved her hands, telling some complicated story about a hamster.

“Then Chewy jumps on the water bottle,” she said through a mouthful of corn, “and he scratches with his little claws to the top of the cage, right? And he’s pushing with his head, trying to squeeze out. Only he can’t, because Mrs. Webster put books on the lid. So . . .” She coughed.

Allison slid her water glass across the table. “Drink.”

A thousand remembered dinner conversations, a million mealtimes, rushed in on Meg. By choice and habit, they had all left the two ends of the long oak table empty, her mother’s chair, her father’s place. But the food, the smells, the conversation around the table were disconcertingly familiar, like the echoes of her childhood.

Almost, Meg thought, as if she’d never left home. Never gone to Harvard, never got a job that didn’t involve waiting on others, never made anything of herself.

A spurt of panic rose in her throat. She swallowed hard. She wasn’t back to stay. Tomorrow she would start rebuilding her contacts list, rewriting her résumé. By the end of the week, she fully expected to have a lead on another job. No matter how stressed out and preoccupied Derek was now, he would miss her. She belonged with him, in their condo, in New York. As soon as Mom was on her feet again, Meg was out of here.

“Sam thinks we should hire his crew to build a ramp for Mom,” she said abruptly.

Sam met her eyes across the table. “Not hire. My crew’s tied up with insurance claims from the hurricane.”

She frowned. “But you said . . .”

“Your mom needs a way in and out of the house, yeah. When does she get out of rehab?”

Matt set down his beer. “That’s up to the doctors. Next week sometime.”

“Good. The two of us . . . three,” Sam said with a glance at Josh, “can bang out a ramp in a couple of days.”

“Cool,” Josh said.

“
After
school,” Matt said to his son.

“Tomorrow’s a half day,” Allison said. “And we’re off on Friday. Teacher workday.”

Meg once again had the sense of things moving swiftly beyond her control. “What about our guests this weekend? They’re not paying to stay in a construction zone.”

“The only rooms overlooking the back are yours and Taylor’s,” Matt said.

“We start tomorrow, we could be done before check-in on Friday,” Sam said.

“Look, we appreciate the offer,” Meg began.

“It’s settled, then,” he said, smiling at her. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Warmth spread in her stomach. It was hard not to respond to that smile. But the glint in his eye made her nervous. She didn’t want to owe Sam Grady anything. The emotional cost was just too high.

“Don’t you have work or something?”

Sam shrugged. “Nothing that can’t wait. As long as I’m here, I might as well make myself useful.”

Right. Sam had never needed to work, never held a job his father hadn’t gotten for him.

“Must be nice to be boss,” Meg said.

Sam’s face smoothed to a pleasant mask, wiped of expression. “Yeah.”

Matt shot her a look down the table.

“What?” Meg said.

“Sam’s dad had another bypass surgery,” Matt said. “Sam’s helping out while his dad’s laid up. I thought you knew.”

“No, I . . .”
Crap.
“No.”

A combination of guilt and concern heated her face, pinched color to her cheeks. Sam was essentially doing what she was doing, coming home to support an ailing parent. Just because he was stepping in as heir apparent to a multimillion-dollar development company while she was making beds and scrubbing toilets was no reason to resent him. Much.

“Sorry,” Meg said. “So you’re running two companies now?”

Sam’s eyes gleamed. “No. The old man’s doctors want him to avoid stress. If I really ran things, I’d give him another heart attack. I’m just overseeing day-to-day operations.”

“How’s the new development coming?” Matt asked.

“Dare Plantation. It’s not,” Sam said. “Between the hurricane and the economy, nothing’s getting built. We’re focusing on repairs to rental properties.”

“I thought the luxury market wasn’t affected by the economy,” Meg said.

Those brilliant green eyes leveled on her face. “Uh-huh. How many expensive life insurance policies are you selling these days?”

She sat up straighter. “I don’t sell insurance. I’m in public relations. It’s my job to help people understand that no matter how bad the economy gets, they still need to pay their burial expenses. Send their kids to college. Pay off their mortgages when they die. I perform a service.”

She winced internally.
Used
to perform a service. It
used
to be her job.

“Well, then, you have an advantage over me. Everybody dies. Not everybody needs to take on a second mortgage for a twelve-bedroom beach house.” Sam picked up his beer bottle. “Especially not with foreclosures glutting the market.”

“So you can’t find buyers?”

“We can’t find funding. In construction, you either build to the clients’ needs or you design a project you think will make you money and try to talk the client into needing it. The old man is stuck on building another overpriced, overblown luxury development. And that’s the last thing Dare Island needs.”

Meg studied him across the table. The Grady family had made a fortune building mansions on stilts, the great homes that had popped up like giant mushrooms along the coast. “That’s a mighty enlightened opinion for a developer. So what does the island need?”

He grinned at her. “It’s not my company. That’s not my call.”

“But you must have ideas.”

He tipped back his chair, eyeing her over the bottle. “Not my responsibility.”

She frowned, unexpectedly disappointed. She’d been drawn to his honesty, to that spark of conviction. For a moment, she’d almost thought he’d changed.

He winked at her and drank.

The conversation around the table shifted to Halloween next week. Taylor sat silent, her shoulders hunched and her eyes lowered. Maybe she considered herself too old for trick-or-treating. Or maybe she hoped no one would notice her sneaking food from her plate to her lap.

Meg smiled and turned a blind eye to Fezzik under the table.

“Lame,” Josh proclaimed. Apparently the new police chief had encouraged a party at the gym for the older teens, a supervised alternative to traipsing door-to-door or drinking under the pier. “What’s the point of Halloween if you can’t binge until you puke?”

His father shot him a narrow look. “You better be talking about candy.”

Josh flashed a smile, quick and charming.
Oh, God, he’s Sam
, Meg thought. “I’m just saying, nobody will go,” he said.

Allison cleared her throat. “Actually, as the newest teacher, I got drafted to chaperone. They’re showing scary movies. You should come.”

“You need me to hold your hand?”

Allison’s gaze slid to Matt. A smile curved her lips. “Actually, I was hoping your father would do that.”

Taylor made gagging noises.

Meg could sympathize. She was glad her steady, hardworking brother had found love again. But this Young Love’s Dream routine was embarrassing. She and Derek didn’t go around holding hands.

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Josh said.

Sam shook his head pityingly. “You’re not thinking this through. If your dad is there, he can drag your chaperone off to a dark corner and nobody will notice what you’re up to.”

No, Meg thought, Sam hadn’t changed.

But he
had
volunteered to build a ramp for her mother, she reminded herself later that evening as she slipped outside with the recycling. The way he’d built this deck, the way he’d labored over the house addition with her father and Matt. A hundred memories crowded in on her of Sam, sweaty, shirtless, smiling, every teenage girl’s fantasy.

Including hers.

She dropped the bottles she carried into the bin and gazed out over the darkened yard. The soft night air wrapped her in humidity and darkness. A chorus of frogs rose from the trees. The whisper of the wind carried the sound and scent of water.
Home
, she thought before she had a chance to barricade her heart against the word.

The yellow kitchen light spilled across deck. She ought to go in before Matt came out or sent one of the kids after her. But she lingered, tipping back her head to stare at the evening sky. An unfamiliar yearning flooded her chest like starlight.
I wish I may, I wish I might
 . . .

The points of light pulsed and blurred. The screen door opened. Heavy footsteps approached.
Matt
. She blinked hastily and spoke without turning her head. “We don’t get stars like that in New York.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t get in New York,” Sam said behind her. “Like me.”

Four

S
AM STUDIED THE
tilt of Meg’s head, outlined against the soft shadows of the yard, and the silhouette of her shoulders, braced against the night. Standing gazing at the stars, she looked oddly vulnerable and alone.

The loneliness was an illusion, of course. Her boyfriend was only a phone call away. She had an entire table full of family inside ready to laugh with, commiserate, and support her. She didn’t need him. She’d made that plenty clear years ago.

But something about her pose tugged at him. The Meggie he remembered wasn’t the brooding, stargazing type. She was confident, assured, and in charge.

“There are a lot of things you don’t get in New York,” he drawled. “Like me.”

Air escaped her—a hiss? a sniff?—before she turned. Her face, sharp and fine as a pen-and-ink drawing, thumped into his chest like a fist.

She tossed her short cap of dark hair. “There are eight million people in New York City, half of them men. Even if you were one in a million, I could find four other guys just like you.”

He grinned, relieved by her flash of spirit. “That’s telling me,” he said with approval. “Everything okay out here?”

“Fine.”

The same answer she’d given her family. No reason to doubt her.

Except her eyes still swam in the light from the kitchen windows. Her long black lashes were spiky with tears. He felt that inconvenient tug again and drew in his breath.

Not his family, he told himself. Not his problem. “Okay. But I’m here if you need anything.”

She narrowed those shining blue eyes. “Like what?”

He shrugged. “An ear. A shoulder.”

“Thanks, but . . .”

“A full-body naked rubdown.”

That choked a laugh from her. He watched, satisfied, as some of the tension drained from her shoulders. “I can do without the extraneous body parts, thanks.”

“Anytime,” he said sincerely. “You let me know if you change your mind.”

And tried not to imagine her tight, compact body, round and responsive under his hands. Under him.

“In your dreams, Slick.”

Probably. Tonight, for sure.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow?” She looked wary, like he was coming over to make good on that full-body naked massage.

“To work on the ramp.”

“Oh. Yes. Good idea.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I’d take that as a compliment if you didn’t sound so surprised.”

“I meant it as one.” An actual smile this time. “I appreciate you doing this for Mom.”

“Not just for your mother.”

“And Matt.”

Matt was his best, his oldest friend. Sam shook his head. “Not only for Matt.”

She pressed her full lips together. “You’re not doing it for me.”

He didn’t answer right away. He owed the Fletchers, Tom and Tess, more than he could say. Their home had been his refuge throughout high school, an escape from his stepmother’s moods and his old man’s tirades. Tom had taught Sam to change the oil in his first car. Tess had taken him in and treated him as one of her own, equally quick with a cookie or a scold. He would have done a damn sight more for either of them than build a ramp.

But his feelings for Meg were mixed in there, too, a potent brew of attraction and regret.

He smiled at her with intent.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You don’t even know me anymore. There’s nothing between us but one lousy hookup and some memories.”

He took his hands out of his pockets.
Nothing between them?
“Let’s see,” he suggested and made his move.

* * *

M
EG WASN’T STUPID.
She saw the kiss coming. She could have avoided it easily enough, brushed him off with a snarky remark or a laugh.

But she stood her ground. She was no weak-willed, empty-headed coward, no longer a quivering adolescent in the throes of her first crush. If Sam needed this little demonstration to prove that she was all grown up now, fine.

It wasn’t, she told herself—as his head bent over hers, as his broad shoulders blocked the kitchen light—as if she
wanted
him to kiss her.

With one hand, he tipped her chin up. He settled the other firmly at the small of her back, bringing her against him, hips, belly, thighs. Her lips parted in surprise. That was . . . He was already half aroused.

His gaze—rueful and aware—met hers. Her stomach clenched with anticipation as his breath drifted warm across her cheek, against her mouth. Her knees trembled. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. But it was too late to back out now.

His hand cupped her jaw with infinite care. His lips pressed hers. He tasted of salt and faintly of beer, heady, rich, masculine flavors. She caught a graze of beard, a hint of moisture before he withdrew.

Okay. She released her pent breath. Kiss survived. Point made.

And then his hands tightened and his mouth came down hard on hers.

She jolted at his heat, his urgency. She knew better than to kiss him back. She did. But every time she tried to ease away, to end the kiss, he was there, coaxing and relentless. Pleasure rippled darkly through her. He tasted her, deep and slow, taking over her mouth, commanding her response, until her resolution eroded like a sand castle swamped by the tide and she sank into some hot, dark, liquid place. Her bones went limp, her balance crumbled as he kept on kissing her, dragging her under. Blindly, she dug her fingers into his shoulders, kissing him back, clinging to him as if she were drowning. He used his knee to push between her thighs, pressing her
there
with his hard-muscled thigh, and she moaned.

The sound shocked her back to sanity.

She pulled back, gasping. “We can’t do this.”

He held her close, his chest rising and falling with his breath. His mouth crooked. “Seems like we just did.”

“All right,
I
can’t do this.”
Not again.
Her heart thudded. Was she insane?

“Sugar, you’re doing fine.” Desire roughened his voice. But she could still hear, beneath his deep drawl, that little undernote of laughter that was pure Sam.

She glared at him.
Didn’t he get it?
“I’m with Derek.”

“No, you’re not,” Sam contradicted, nuzzling her neck, making the nerve endings there dance with delight. “He’s not here. So you can’t be with him.”

She hunched one shoulder, trying to ignore the tingle working its way down her body. “Stop that. Derek has to work. He can’t take time off simply because my mother was in a car accident.”

Sam raised his head. “You did.”

She met that sharp green gaze, her mouth drying.
Because I was fired.
But she couldn’t say that. Even her family didn’t know that yet.

“She’s not Derek’s mother,” she said instead. “It’s not Derek’s problem.”

Sam regarded her without saying anything.

Right. Tess wasn’t Sam’s mother, either. That hadn’t stopped him from offering to help. But the comparison was unfair.

“Derek doesn’t really know my family,” she said, driven to defend him.

“The guy bailed. He should be here to support you.”

She was annoyed with Sam for pointing that out, annoyed with herself for agreeing with him. Disappointed in Derek for not feeling the same way.

“Derek supports me. He understands me. We share the same goals. The same
condo
.” Her voice was pitched too high, thin with a lack of conviction. She stuck out her chin. “Besides, there’s nothing he can do here.”

Sam’s eyes gleamed. “Then he’s either incompetent or he doesn’t understand you nearly as well as you think he does.” He leaned over her, teasing her with the intimate scent of his skin, the smell of sex and summer nights. His warm lips brushed her hot cheek. “Good night, Meggie. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She watched him stride down the flagstone path, his black shirt blending into the shadows, and pressed her lips together, trying to hold on to her annoyance. Resisting the crazy urge to call him back.

* * *

“T
HE TRIP WAS
fine,” Meg told Derek. She settled against the headboard in her old bedroom, cradling her phone to her ear. “A little delay in Charlotte, but that’s to be expected.”

The room had been repainted a deep blue, her old quilt swapped for the same lush white linens used in the other guest rooms. A view of the lighthouse had long ago replaced her poster of the Backstreet Boys. But her old books still crowded the bookcase in the corner. And on the wall, next to the engraving of Mary Read with her cutlass, was Meg’s graduation photo with Harvard’s crimson banners in the background.

Derek didn’t ask how she got to the inn from the airport. He knew she was competent. He trusted her to take care of herself.

He
trusted
her. She winced.

“How’s your mother?” he asked.

See?
she told Sam silently in her head.
Derek cares about me. He’s concerned about my family.
“She’s fine. I mean, they haven’t released her yet, but the more time she spends in rehab, the better off she’ll be when she gets home.”

“So, that’s good,” Derek said.

“Yes.” Guilt pinched her. She should tell him about seeing Sam. About kissing Sam.

No.
It wasn’t like the situation would ever be repeated. Telling Derek would invest the kiss with a significance it didn’t deserve. It was a momentary lapse, a onetime burst of nostalgia and hormones. She would never actually cheat on Derek. He had enough on his mind right now without her dangling some ex-boyfriend like bait, to elicit a jealous response.

Not that Sam had ever even been a boyfriend. More like a spectacular error in judgment. Like a tattoo or a winter invasion of Russia.

Meg cleared her throat. “How are things at work?”

“Busy.”

She wanted more of an answer. She wanted him to confide in her, to feel a part of the office again, a part of his life. “What are people saying about my being fired?”

“Not much.”

“Oh.”

Derek released a breath into the phone. “No one would say anything to me anyway,” he said patiently. “The higher you go in the organization, the less you hear from the ranks.”

“Right.”

“We had to bring in Nicole today to manage the fallout from the layoffs,” he offered after a pause.

A jolt in her stomach, like a drop in an elevator. “Nicole Hayden?” Her counterpart at Parnassus, a blond, ambitious fembot in a slim dark suit.

“Stan and Gordon wanted someone to coordinate with the outside PR firm,” he explained.

Meg’s hands were cold. Her head buzzed like a swarm of bees. “So they called in Nicole.”

“Yeah. Thank God you hired that outside team. She doesn’t know a damn thing about handling reporters.”

“I can’t believe they kept her over me.”

“Well, she’s cheaper,” Derek said reasonably.

“She has no experience.”

“Compared to you. She’ll grow into the job.”

My
job, Meg thought, with a stab of betrayal. She took a deep breath. “How’s she getting along with you all on the transition team?”

He didn’t answer right away. “All right.”

She clutched the phone a little tighter in her hand, frustrated by their lack of real communication. But given the things she’d omitted from the story of her day—
Don’t think about the kiss
—she could hardly complain. It would be better if she could see him.

“It would be nice if you could come down,” she said.
I need you.

“You know that’s not possible.”

“I know,” she said, and tried to dismiss the memory of Sam’s scorn.
The guy bailed. He should be here to support you.

“I’m really busy right now,” Derek said.

“I understand.”

“Naturally I want to help any way I can.” Another pause. “I was thinking I could assume your share of the mortgage as long as you’re down there.”

She felt a prickle along the backs of her upper arms. “Bribing me to stay away?” she joked.

“Of course not,” he said so stiffly she realized she’d offended him.

Derek was a CPA with an MBA in finance. Naturally he thought of help in terms of money. But she didn’t like feeling obliged to him, didn’t want their relationship reduced to dollars and cents.

“You’re sweet to offer,” she said, “but it’s not necessary. I have my six months’ severance. Besides, I’m calling the outplacement service tomorrow.”

“That’s my girl,” Derek said. She relaxed a little into her pillows. “Although . . .”

Another brush of cold in the pit of her stomach, on the back of her neck. “What?”

“There’s no telling what a job search will turn up. Or where. You can’t count on the right position opening in New York right away.”

“Then I’ll wait until one does.”

“Who knows how long that will take?”