Heaven and Hell (30 page)

It wasn’t over.

They actually
hired
a hit man to
murder me.

And Ozzie knew.

And he thought I was too fragile so he
didn’t tell me.

God.

On the things in life that sucked scale,
this was seriously at the top of the list and would be for
anybody.

Not surprisingly, on that thought, Sam was
done with giving me space and I felt him fit the front of his body
to the back of mine as his arms closed around me.

“They actually put a hit on me,” I whispered
when he did.

“No beach, no pool and we’re not hittin’
that island today,” Sam said quietly. “I gotta shower then make
some calls then we’ll talk about what’s next.”

I stared at the view. Then I sighed.

Then I said, “Whatever.”

“Room service. You don’t open the door and,
in about two seconds, I want you away from this window.”

I sighed again.

Vacation over. Fun on the Mediterranean
abruptly terminated.

Cooter, dead and still a major pain in my
ass, was finding new ways to haunt me.

Shit.

Sam moved me away from the window to the
couch and I sat on it, knees to chest, soles to seat, arms around
my calves as he moved to the windows and drew all the curtains.

Then he came back and crouched in front of
me.

“I have friends,” he said softly.

I bet he did.

So much for Luci not wanting him to take
another job. Another job sat down to breakfast with him eleven days
ago.

Of course, that “job” was paternally
manhandled to his table by an overly romantic, matchmaking Italian
maitre d’ but still.

“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled.

“Barney Oswald just got himself a shitload
of help.”

I sighed again.

He straightened, bent into me and wrapped a
hand around the back of my neck as his face got in mine.

“I won’t let anything harm you,” he
whispered and I knew by the timbre in his voice he was very,
very
serious but even if the timbre in his voice didn’t say
it, the hard, glittering look in his eyes did.

“Can you do me a favor?” I asked
quietly.

“Anything.”

“I know it’s you and I know you’re allowed
to have a genuine reaction to whatever happens, including getting
pissed off but until I’m used to it, can you at least
try
not to scare the shit out of me when you get angry?” I watched
remorse score across his features, I hated to see it and I uncurled
an arm from my legs, wrapped my fingers around his forearm and
squeezed as I whispered, “Seven years, Sam, I’ll do my best to get
over it but I had it for seven years. And you’re bigger, you’re
stronger and when you get pissed, that’s all I can see. If he could
hurt me, you could break me. I know you’ve promised me you won’t
and you’ve given me no indication you ever will. I know this is all
about me and I have to work on it. I’m just asking you to
help.”

“I’ll check it,” he whispered back instantly
and I gave his arm another squeeze.

“I know you won’t be able to do that, it’s
impossible but I’m asking you to try.”

“Baby,” his face got closer, “I’ll…
check…
it.”

I stared into his eyes and somehow I knew
he’d check it.

And there it went. That settled in my soul
too.

“Well, in your defense, it isn’t often you
find out the woman you’re banging has had a hit put out on
her.”

Sam stared at me. Then I watched his face
warm and my heart warmed with it.

Then he leaned in, touched his mouth to
mine, pulled back an inch and said softly, “Shower. Calls. Then
we’ll figure out what’s next.”

I nodded.

He moved in again to kiss my nose.

Then he let me go and strode into the
bedroom.

I watched him until he disappeared.

Then I watched the space where he
disappeared.

Then I shoved my face in my knees.

Then I made a mental note to call Paula in
three hours and tell her I was the woman Sampson Cooper was
currently banging before she pulled up any of her gossip sites at
the office (which I knew she did first thing while listening to
phone messages), found out before I could tell her and lost her
marbles.

Then, suddenly, I whispered, “I fucking hate
you Cooter Clementine,” to my knees.

Cooter, being dead and buried in Indiana,
had no reply.

My Girl Deserves Gentle

After Sam had a shower and got on the phone,
I hopped into the shower and did what I did since I started things
with Sam which meant the whole shebang of shaved legs, shaved pits,
all over lotion, half-squirts of perfume in strategic areas and a
cute outfit of white short-shorts and tight-fitting, coral pink,
eyelet camisole that kicked ass with my tan.

Seeing as we were on the Med and I was
confined to quarters due to the possibility that my life would
imminently be snuffed out, I forewent makeup and the big blow out
of my hair as such effort was clearly unnecessary. But I did blow
out the long fall of bangs that fell past my eyes because, really,
if I didn’t, it could get scary. The rest of my hair I was going to
let dry curly, wavy and untamed and if Sam thought it made me look
like a wild woman raised by apes, so be it.

I had bigger things to worry about.

Seriously.

And anyway, he’d seen me at the beach and he
hadn’t escaped in the middle of the night so I figured I was
good.

Then I went to the bed, laid on my back,
cocked my knees, stared at the ceiling, tried and failed to
eavesdrop on Sam’s various conversations in the lounge, gave up on
that and was far more successful in plotting Cooter’s grisly death
and imagining it to its culmination.

Unfortunately, Cooter was already dead.

Still, a girl could dream.

I also counted down the minutes to when I
could start calling my family and friends. I wasn’t sure I was
going to get into the fact that my life was in danger, that might
be too much after the, “Sampson Cooper is doing me” news.

I had an hour left to wait and Cooter had
died in twelve bloody, painful, macabre ways in my murderous
fantasies that were even more bloody and macabre than having half
his head blown off when I felt Sam’s presence enter the room.

I kept my eyes to the ceiling even as I felt
Sam’s presence enter the bed.

He stretched out beside me and I felt his
hand come to rest on my belly.

“What are you thinking?” he asked
quietly.

“I’m plotting Cooter’s murder,” I
answered.

This brought silence and then, “Baby, he’s
dead.”

“Good, I can’t go to prison for plotting the
murder of a dead man.”

“Kia –”

I turned my head and caught his eyes. “Sam,
he
put a hit on me.
”

Sam pressed his lips together, his eyes went
hard and scary and I made a mental note not to remind him my dead
husband hired a hit man to murder me.

It was clearly time to change the
subject.

“In an hour, I’m starting the round of calls
to my friends and Mom and Dad telling them about us.”

“All right.”

“I’m not informing them of the, uh… other
stuff.”

“Probably a good idea.”

I drew in breath.

Sam spoke.

“Do you want some good news?”

“Yeah, Sam, that would work,” I replied and
he grinned.

“Clinic in Heraklion called. Your tests came
back clean.”

Well, thank God for that.

Sam had located a private, clean, exclusive
(by the looks of it, though I wouldn’t know since he’d insisted on
paying, something he insisted on doing all the time, I hadn’t so
much as bought a drink) clinic in Heraklion and I’d gone for my
tests the afternoon of the day we arrived on Crete.

So there you go. Cooter didn’t give me
herpes; he just put a hit on me.

At least that was one way Cooter didn’t
screw me from the grave.

“Excellent,” I muttered and my head turned
back, my eyes going to the ceiling.

Sam’s hand pressed into my belly and he
asked, “What’re you tellin’ your folks about us?”

I stopped breathing.

Oh God.

What
was
I going to tell my Mom, Dad
and friends about us?

I forced air into my lungs and my eyes slid
to Sam.

“Uh…” I mumbled and he grinned again.

Then his hand slid around me and he pulled
me to my side, facing him, my legs fell into his, his immediately
shifted to tangle with mine and he pulled me into his solid
heat.

“How’s this?” he whispered, I stared into
his warm, intense eyes and stopped breathing again and he kept
talking. “We met, we clicked, this is somethin’ we both wanna
explore so that’s what we’re gonna do. Right now, things are up in
the air so when we go home, you might be comin’ with me to my place
in North Carolina or I might be goin’ with you to Indiana. You’ll
let them know when we know.”

I consciously made myself breathe again and
asked, “North Carolina?”

“If I think you’re safer there, that’s where
you’re goin’.”

This made sense.

But I totally could not do this.

“Sam, I can’t go to North Carolina with
you.”

His brows drew together and he asked, “Why
not?”

“Well, Memphis, one. My house just sold and
I have tons of stuff to do, two. I haven’t seen my family or
friends in five weeks, three. I’ve never been gone this long before
in my life and they miss me, four. And I’m going to be homeless if
I don’t get my shit sorted and find a house, five.”

To this, Sam countered with, “You got a man
who knows you live in Heartmeadow who’s got you in his
crosshairs.”

If we were writing lists, this would go in
big, block letters at the top of the con list for returning to
Indiana.

Shit.

I closed my eyes and tipped my chin
down.

Sam kissed the top of my head.

God, he was sweet.

“Tell me about the unit,” he murmured.

“They upped their offer another ten K.”

“Back out.”

I opened my eyes and tipped my head back,
shocked by this instantaneous and decisive reply.

“Really?”

“Baby, it’s a condo in Heartmeadow, Indiana,
not a co-op on Central Park. You’re lookin’ at least at putting
thirty large over asking price into it in a market that is far from
stable. The market could nosedive and you’ll be sittin’ on a condo
that’s worth less than you paid for it and in this market that
could conceivably happen in a day. No shit. This is a bad
investment. Back out.”

Right.

Well, that was easy.

Except…

“But I want it,” I told him.

“I see that but that doesn’t change the fact
that it’s a bad investment and when I say that I mean a
really
fuckin’
bad
investment.”

Hmm.

“My buyers have gone fast-track and Paula
says I could close on my house in three to five weeks. One of those
is already gone. If I don’t find something, where do I live?”

“This shit gets sorted, move in with your
folks for awhile.”

“Do you like my ass?”

His head jerked slightly on the pillow then
he answered, “Uh… yeah.”

“Would you like it if it was five times the
size?”

He grinned and his arms gathered me
closer.

Then he muttered, “I’m not gonna answer
that.”

This was a good choice.

“Mom doesn’t drain the grease off hamburger
meat when making chili, spaghetti, anything and she might
say
you can help in the kitchen but what she means is, you
can stand there, drink a beer and chat with her while she concocts
meals that are at least five thousand calories a plate and even the
vegetables are fried. So, no. I am not moving in with my
parents.”

“Honey, you’re twenty-eight, buy and eat
your own food.”

At his statement, I even
felt
my eyes
get big.

If I tried to bring carrot sticks and yogurt
into my mother’s house and inform her she could not find some way
to fry the former or use the latter in a cake, she’d lose her
mind.

“Are you
nuts?
” I cried, the last
word rising three octaves.

Sam burst out laughing.

I watched because I liked it but I didn’t
participate partly because there was a good possibility he thought
I was overreacting when I… was…
not.

When he stopped laughing, he smiled down at
me and muttered, “Strike that. Your Mom obviously is serious about
her command of the fridge and, we’re with your parents, I fuck you,
you can’t moan the way I like to make you moan.”

That was when I felt my mouth drop open as
well as my eyes get wide again.

“We’re not having sex in my parents’
house.”

He started chuckling and through his
chuckles he said, “Baby, again, you’re twenty-eight.”

“And honey, you grew up in LA where things
are fast and loose. This is
Indiana.
This is in
the Bible
belt.
LA and all the rest of the world may have hit the new
millennium a good while ago but Indiana is firmly stuck in the 50’s
and they… are… never… coming…
out.
And my parents are happy
as clams right there until… they…
die.
You do not sleep with
your boyfriend in the same bed in your parents’ house and even if
we were married for twenty years we would not stay at my parents’
house and have sex. If we did, the house would explode and then
everyone in Heartmeadow would know we tried to have sex at my
parents’ house!”

Sam burst out laughing again but this time
he rolled into me while he did it.

When he was done, his torso on mine, smiling
down at me, he murmured, “Right, so, I find a way to make you safe
and get you home to your Mom, your dog and your friend who has a
cutout of me in her bedroom, you close on your house, we’re staying
in a hotel.”