Dark and Damaged: Eight Tortured Heroes of Paranormal Romance: Paranormal Romance Boxed Set (81 page)

“Do you need help getting to the front door?” she asked.

His lips quirked as he looked down at her five-two frame. The smiling glance was so reminiscent of the old Sam, the one she’d loved, that for a moment she could only soak it in. Obviously, he considered the idea of her helping his six foot, two hundred pound self with anything amusing. She had a flashing image of him falling on her, leaving her like a splattered ink mark on the sidewalk.

“Okay, then,” she said and walked ahead, refusing to give in to the compulsion to glance over her shoulder and make sure he followed.

The house was still and quiet when they entered. In an hour, she’d need to pick up Justin from the bus stop. He was in first grade. Eleven year old Lexi and her pack of mean girls wouldn’t be caught dead walking with her step-monster. They’d take the long way home to avoid an accidental encounter. Like Maggie, both children were confused and conflicted about their father’s homecoming, though Justin was too young to vocalize his feelings and Lexi too much a hormonal pre-teen girl to indulge in sharing at all.

“Do you want something to eat?” Maggie asked after an awkward moment of silence. “I made lasagna for dinner last night.”

Which she knew he didn’t like, but some passive-aggressive—
vindictive
—ogre inside had pushed her to make it anyway. If he couldn’t remember being married, he shouldn’t remember that either, right?

“Does he—do I like lasagna?” Sam asked.

“Not usually,” she answered truthfully and then blushed like a school girl.

Sam cocked his head, watching her so intently that she had to fight the urge not to look away. He stood much too close and smelled way too good.

“Sit down and I’ll make you a plate,” she said. “If you don’t like it, you can shove it across the table like you did the last time I made it.”

She hadn’t meant to say that. The doctors had told her that a calm, tranquil environment would enable him to find those memories he’d lost—unless, of course, it didn’t. They hadn’t expected him to survive the brain injury, let alone
remember
.

His gaze followed her as she moved to the refrigerator and pulled out the lasagna. She could feel it lingering on her stiff back, traveling down the curve of her spine. A tingle followed its trail.

“Did I really do that?” he asked after a moment, his voice soft. Husky, with just a hint of his Texas roots in it. Something else she’d fallen in love with, that deep, intimate timbre and the peek-a-boo accent that only surfaced when he was tired. Or aroused.

“Once,” she answered with more attitude than she’d intended.

He frowned and his lashes lowered as he considered that, perhaps searching for the memory. After a moment, he looked up. “What did you do?”

Another flush heated her face. “I threw it at you.” She shrugged at his startled expression. “Not one of my finer moments. I should have found a more adult way of handling it.”

A slow grin spread across his face, the one that turned her insides to mush even now. “Did you hit me with it?”

She nodded. “Tomato sauce and cheese from head to toe. Now I make it just to spite you.”

She hadn’t meant to say that either, but this new, vulnerable Sam had her off balance and letting silence drape the spaces between them seemed like a bad idea. She cut a piece of the lasagna and put it on a plate, accidently splashing sauce on the counter and her shirt. Cursing, she put the plate in the microwave, licked a glob of sauce off her fingers and wiped up the rest, all the while hyperaware of Sam tracking her every movement from his seat at the island counter.

The microwave dinged, and she set a plate in front of him with a bottle of sparkling water. He caught her arm before she could move away and towed her closer. With a gentle, warm hand he brushed something off her cheek. She glimpsed sauce on his finger before he licked it.

Watching her the entire time.

She was pretty sure all of her traitorous girl parts just went up in flames.

“Your lasagna is getting cold,” she muttered, pulling away.

Finally, he lifted his fork and stared at the food for a quiet moment. Maggie steeled herself when he took a bite, chewing with that contemplative expression that made her want to ask what he was thinking. She suppressed the urge. Too many times, Sam’s thoughts had come with sharp little barbs.

“His—my mother worked in the cafeteria,” he said, his voice lilting up, as if this revelation were a discovery they shared.

“I didn’t know that. You never had much to say about your family.” Even when she’d asked, which she’d done a lot.

She’d always thought family was the nucleus of who and what a person was. Even before her parents had died leaving her all alone in the world, she’d found the subject endlessly fascinating.

Sam nodded and took another bite, lashes lowering as he chewed and swallowed. “I was ashamed of her,” he said finally, his words a peculiar mixture of wonder and fact. “She worked at my school.”

Maggie poured herself a glass of water and leaned against the counter, undeniably curious.

“She used to bring the lasagna home,” he said, taking another bite. “It was her favorite.”

“And you grew to hate it?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just her. It was always my favorite, too.”

She stared at him, glass half raised to her lips. “I can make you a sandwich if you’d prefer.”

He took another bite. “She’s dead, now.”

“I knew that. She died when you were a boy.”

“Last year.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She died last year. May.”

“But ...”

They’d gotten married in April. Yet he’d never said a word. His mother had
died
and he’d never bothered to mention it. She hadn’t thought he could hurt her any more, but she’d been wrong.

“Is that why you left?” she demanded.

He blinked at her and his brows pulled together in consternation. His eyes shifted as he scanned his memory for answers.

“I don’t remember leaving.”

She sighed and rubbed her face with her hands. She needed to get some distance—from him, from her feelings about him.

She cleared her throat and looked away. “You always made it sound like she died a long time ago.”

“I don’t know why,” he said simply.

Maggie nodded. Silently, she watched him eat, his aversion to the dish apparently banished now. He ate slowly, savoring each bite. When he paused to take a drink, he looked up and caught her staring. And blushed. Sam Sloan blushed. In the world of crazy that life had become, this was an anomaly she couldn’t reconcile.

“Tell me about us,” he said.

Maggie stiffened. “What do you want to know?”

“Why did you marry me? Am I rich?”

“You think I married you for money?”

“Did you?”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “The doctors told me not to upset you.”

“And telling me the truth about us will do that?”

“I don’t know, Sam. I haven’t seen you in months. I don’t even know who you are.”

He waited, quizzical. Pretty much the opposite of upset. He gazed at her with the dispassion of a detective, waiting for a witness to respond.

“I have to pick up Justin in a few minutes,” she said, turning her back.

“You’re fond of h—my children.”

Half statement, half question. She drew in another steadying breath and nodded.

“Justin’s not even six. He doesn’t remember much about ... before.”

And he loved her unconditionally.

“Lexi is—”
hormonal—
“almost twelve. She remembers everything.”

Lexi was hard to love and yet, at times, there were glimmers of the lost child inside. Maggie understood that inner child. She had one like it inside herself. The children needed her almost as much as she needed them.

She faced Sam again and her gaze was caught by his impossibly blue eyes. What was he thinking?

“Yes,” she said thickly. “I’m very fond of them.”

“You said you’d keep them, take care of them.”

At her blank look, he went on.

“You said it in the hospital.”

He’d heard that? What else had he heard?

He took his last bite, wiped his mouth with his napkin and smiled. “That was delicious, Maggie,” he said.

“Thank you.” Inside, she felt raw. Exposed. She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned away. “I need to go meet Justin’s bus now. Why don’t you rest? The doctors said you should take it easy.”

He eyed her, making her feel like he could see right through to all the churning emotions inside. Before he could say anything else, she strode to the door, not stopping until she was outside on the front porch. She leaned against the railing, trying to catch her breath, trying to understand who the man in her kitchen was and why she saw a stranger when she looked in his eyes.

Maggie took all the warmth from the room when she left. At least that’s how it felt. It had been the same during the interminable time he’d spent in the hospital, waiting for her to visit. Dreading the moment she’d leave.

The Reaper stood, rinsing his plate in the sink as he’d seen humans do before. He knew that Sam Sloan wouldn’t have bothered and wondered why he should either, but it seemed a little thing to do, and it would keep her off balance until he could find a way out of this situation.

He stepped through the rooms, feeling the disjointed memories of the man whose body he occupied echo with his footsteps. Alone, the panic seeped in.

He still didn’t know how it had happened. He remembered stepping in—early because he’d
needed
to touch Maggie for reasons he still didn’t fully understand. Half in, half out, he’d bridge the gap between them. Even now, he could feel that sense of
her
. The wonder, the beauty, the draw that had kept him holding on when he should have let go and taken both himself and the dying Sam Sloan to the Beyond.

The pain had come fast and hot, electrifying. He’d felt the human’s body seize, felt the clutch of Sam’s consciousness as it sparked and then ... the inferno had seared him, melted him, melded him into something he wasn’t.

Now here he was, trapped in this body.

And still thinking about touching the woman.

As far as he could tell, no one in the Beyond knew he was here. Reapers were a common, expendable thing, not unique enough to even bear a name. Not like angels or demons who were tallied and tracked, albeit with limited success. No rescue party would be coming to help him get back to the Beyond, where he belonged. He’d have to find the way on his own.

The logical solution would be to kill the vessel that lodged him and free them both. But in those seconds when he’d tried to pull Sam’s soul from his body, a sense of wrongness had enveloped him. A tainted hue had smothered Sam’s light—a corruption of some sort that had taken flight in the final moments, leaving Sam’s soul damaged and weak.

There were several possible explanations for what the Reaper had seen and felt. Possession was the most likely. Sam could have sold his soul to one of the many demons of the Beyond, and that dark veil that had doused his light could have been the courier come to claim it. Perhaps the events that followed, the electrifying pain, the entrapment in this body ... that had trumped the demon’s plan. A soul could only be taken in death and Sam was still alive.

It all made sense, except it hadn’t
felt
like a demon and that intrigued him. What else had the power to control a human soul? Equally important, had Sam been aware of it—whatever the illusive
it
was? Had he consented and let it in?

Is that why you left?

Those five words spoken by Maggie had been so pain-filled, so angry. So telling. He’d wondered at the estrangement between Sam and his wife. He’d puzzled over the stupidity of the human male.

To be near Maggie was to yearn to touch her. Each touch made him long for another. He wanted to press his mouth against hers more than he wanted to breathe. He wanted other things, too. Things he could barely conceive.

This, Sam had left.

He shook his head, fighting the urge to dwell on that. Sam’s foolish decisions were not his concern. Escaping this human casing was. Yet ...

Killing the vessel would solve the problem and send him back where he belonged. It would release Sam’s damaged soul and leave it to whatever fate awaited in the Beyond. But it wouldn’t answer the question—what taint had darkened Sam Sloan’s soul in the first place?

Nor, would it appease the hunger inside the Reaper, the hollow need for the woman that was too great to ignore. The very idea of leaving before he had the chance to understand, to satisfy his desire, filled him with frustration. He wouldn’t—
couldn’t—
do it.

He stopped his relentless pacing, decision made. He would delay the destruction of this body until he knew more about the corruption he’d sensed ... and until he could quench his thirst for Maggie. He would have the woman first. Return to the Beyond after.

“Maggie,” he said aloud, as he’d done in the hospital when he’d waited for her.

He moved to the window. She was coming back, strolling down the sidewalk holding a boy by the hand. As they walked, the child spoke with animated gestures, and she listened with undivided attention, a slight smile on her lips.

Until she looked up. Until she saw him.

She froze. So did the Reaper, while all the breath left his borrowed body.

What was she thinking? How could just a look make every inch of him feel hard and hungry?

Mouth dry, he waited for her to come to him.

The afternoon and evening had crept by, marked by Sam’s veiled glances and Maggie’s overwhelming awareness of his every move. He always seemed to be too close, too observant, too big ... too masculine. When he was near, she felt it beneath the skin. It had always been like that between them, even in the end.

They had breakfast for dinner, usually a favorite, but as Maggie moved around the kitchen, Sam seemed to be everywhere she turned. In her way. Making her agitated and so aware of him that her nerves buzzed. Every time he touched her—which was pretty much every chance he got—he scattered her thoughts and turned her into a bumbling fool. Once he reached around her at the sink, and she nearly melted to the floor in a boneless puddle. If anything, this new version of Sam—Sam 2.0—had made her attraction to him more lethal.