It's in His Kiss (31 page)

There’d always been excuses for Jase, and Becca had long ago accepted that. But she couldn’t do it anymore. “Mom, Jase has a problem. He needs rehab.” She’d said this in the past, and it had gotten her nothing but more excuses and arguments. But this time her mom didn’t rush in to dispute the fact that Jase did indeed need rehab. This time her eyes filled with tears, and she put a shaky hand to her mouth.

Her father hugged her. Evelyn gave him a watery smile but shook her head and reached for Becca’s hand across the table. “I know,” she said simply.

“You . . . do?” Becca asked in surprise.

“Yes.” Her mom swiped at a tear that slipped and looked around the café self-consciously. She didn’t like to show a lot of emotion unless she was on stage. “I’ve known for a while,” she went on softly. “I just didn’t want to accept it. After you left. . .” She stopped to blow her nose. “It became more clear.”

“You protected him, Becca,” her dad said. “We didn’t realize how much because you were also protecting us, when we should have been protecting you.”

Becca gave up staring into her water like it held the secrets of life and looked at Sam. “What did you say to them?”

“Don’t be upset with him,” Evelyn said. “Everything
he said was true. Painful to hear, but true. And last week, the Seagals came to us.”

Nathan’s parents.

“They confessed their knowledge of how . . . terribly he’d treated you in the end—” She broke off, her eyes filling. She reached for a napkin from the table’s dispenser, but she couldn’t get one out. “Damn it.”

Sam opened the dispenser and handed her a huge stack.

“I’m . . . devastated,” Evelyn said, dabbing at her eyes. “I didn’t understand—” She shook her head. “Honey, I need to know something.”

Becca had to swallow the lump in her throat to speak. “What?”

“That you’ll . . . you’ll forgive us. Can you? Forgive us?”

“No,” her father said to Evelyn firmly. “We don’t get to ask that. Remember, actions, not words. We just want her to be okay.”

And from the way he looked at Sam as he said it, Becca knew exactly where those words had come from. She hesitated and felt his hand gently squeeze her thigh, infusing her with strength. Not his, which he had in spades, but her own, and it welled up from within her. “Mom,” she said softly. “I’m okay.” She marveled that it was the utter truth, thanks in no small part to Lucky Harbor. To her friends here. To the peace and joy she’d found here.

To Sam himself . . .

“I know it’s late for this,” her mom said, “but I promise you I won’t offer any more excuses for Jase. Ever. We did you wrong, Becca. We let you suffer rather than rock our boat. I can’t ask you forgiveness for that, but. . .” She sucked in a breath along with a short sob. “But we are sorry, baby. So very sorry.”

Becca felt her throat tighten, her eyes burn. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Her father cleared his throat, his own eyes suspiciously red. “In realizing our mistakes,” he said, “we realized something else—we’ve done Jase wrong, too. We’ve enabled him. That will stop. We came out here to talk to him, to see if he’d go to rehab.”

“How did that go?” Becca asked.

Pain crossed her dad’s features. “He’s not ready. And we don’t know if he will be. All we can do now is stand back and let him come to the realization himself.”

“We’ve lost you both,” Evelyn whispered. “Our own fault. Love you, baby. So much.”

Beside her, she felt Sam stiffen. She didn’t know what that was about, but she took her mom’s hand. “You haven’t lost me. I’m still yours, Mom. Always.”

Sam tried to watch over Becca as much as he could, but he must not have been too subtle about it because by noon she’d told him that if he was going to hover around like a protective mama bear, she was going to call in Lucille and the rest of the geriatric gang for snorkel lessons and book him as the instructor.

That’s when he figured Becca wasn’t in danger of having a meltdown. That she was dealing in the only way she knew how—by burying her shit deep and moving forward. And he left her to it.

So he was relieved when, at the end of the day, she poked her head into his warehouse, looking good. “I’m off to the rec center,” she said, and was immediately on the move.

He barely caught her, snagging her wrist and pulling
her back inside. Gently he pushed her up against the wall and cupped her face, tilting it up to his.

She met his gaze, hers clear and remarkably calm. He slid the pad of his thumb across her full lower lip, and it tipped into a smile.

“I’m really okay,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, and pulled him down for a quick but very hot kiss before shoving at him. “Gotta go.”

Not budging, he pulled out his phone and looked at the time. “You’ve got half an hour.”

“Ten minutes of that is drive time.”

“Twenty minutes then,” he said. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”

Her eyes softened. “For?”

“For whatever comes to mind,” he said, and kissed her neck “What comes to mind, Becca?”

When his mouth got to the sweet spot beneath her ear, she moaned. “Everything that comes to mind takes more than twenty minutes,” she whispered.

“Let me prove you wrong,” he whispered back, and ran his hand from her hip to the underside of her breast, his thumb gliding over her already hardened nipple.

Eyes closed on another moan, her head thunked back against the wall as she arched her back, pressing herself into his palm. “Here? Against the wall?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” he said with a laugh, mouth open on her throat. “Last time I nearly killed you when my legs gave out.”

She pointed to his worktable across the vast expanse of the room. Then she began to pull him toward it. Halfway there she apparently gave up on trying to walk and kiss at
the same time because she threw herself at him. He carried her to the worktable, where he kicked the stool out of his way and, holding her with one arm, swiped a hand across the surface, sending the tools, everything, to the floor.

“Sam,” Becca gasped on a laugh, a thrill racing through her entire body as he lifted her to the table. “It’ll hold, right?”

“Yeah.” He stepped back to look at her sprawled out on the table. “Oh, yeah,” he said, voice thick. “It’s perfect.” He yanked his shirt over his head, as always rendering her stupid with the sight of his bare torso. He made quick work of her shirt as well, and then her shorts and her senses with equal aplomb. Between his mouth and his hands, she was quivering from head to toe in two minutes flat.

She knew she was supposed to be keeping track of time, but honestly she couldn’t do anything except melt over what he was doing with his tongue between her legs. In fact, she might have fallen right off the table with all her writhing but Sam had a firm grip on her thighs, preventing her from moving anyplace but closer to his mouth. “Sam—” She stopped when he swirled his tongue over an exceptionally good spot. “Oh, my God. I love that.”

He did it again.

And then again.

And then he added a well-placed stroke with the pad of his callused thumb, and she just about screamed his name. “And
that
,” she gasped. “I love that, too.”

“How about this?” He slid a long finger into her, timed with another swirl of his tongue.

“Yes! God, Sam—I love that so much—”

“And this. . .?” Another finger, and another pass of his tongue, all of which melted her into a puddle of desperation. “Tell me, Becca,” he commanded.

“Yes,” she whispered, shuddering. “I love it when you do that—” She’d been trying to last, straining to hold on, but she couldn’t. She came, just as he’d intended.

When she could breathe again, she realized he’d set his head in her lap and was pressing a soft, hot, open-mouthed kiss low on her belly.

“In me,” she whispered. “I love it when you’re in me.”

Lifting his head, he looked right into her eyes as he pulled a condom from a pocket and protected them both before sliding into her. “This?” he asked, voice thick with his own need.

Half-delirious with desire, on the edge of yet another orgasm, her mouth disconnected from her brain. “Yes,” she gasped. “That. I love that. And you, Sam. God, I love
you
.”

Becca heard the words escape her but she was too far gone. With one of Sam’s hands fisted in her hair, the other possessively on her ass holding her close, buried deep inside her as he was, she felt it when every inch of him froze.

Felt it, but couldn’t stop the freight train of the orgasm hitting her full blast. She rocked into him, clutched him hard, and let go.

From some deep recess of her mind she was aware that she took him with her, felt him shudder in her arms. She let herself get lulled by that into a puddle of sated bliss.

But then Sam didn’t lift his head and flash his sexy smile, as he usually did. He didn’t press his mouth to her temple, or drag it along her throat. Or cuddle her in close.

He didn’t do any of things he normally did postcoital. In fact, he slid out of her, pulled his jeans back up, and vanished down the hall, presumably into the bathroom since she heard the click of the door shutting.

Letting out a breath, Becca hopped down off the worktable.
It took her a moment on shaky legs to straighten and fix herself, not to mention gather her wits. Scratch that, she couldn’t gather her wits, not even a little bit.

She opened her eyes and startled. Sam was there, right there in front of her, big and silent. Too silent. “I didn’t hear you come back,” she said inanely.

He held out her keys, which she’d clearly dropped.

Taking them, she stared up into his face, which was utterly cool and composed.

“You’ve got to get to the rec center,” he said.

“What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer. Or move.

“Sam,” she said, heart in her throat. “I said I love you, and you . . . well, I don’t know what exactly, but one minute you were right here with me, and now you’re gone.”

He slowly shook his head. “You shouldn’t say things that you can’t possibly mean.”

She stared at him. “And how do you know I don’t mean it?”

“Look, I get it,” he said. “You were in the heat of the moment. But you need to be more careful.”

There were so many things wrong with those two sentences, she wasn’t sure where to start. “And you weren’t in the heat of the moment?”

“I was,” he said. “You know I was.”

She moved onto the more problematic statement. “And . . . careful?” She was as confused as hell, and hurt because he was maintaining his distance with a cool ease she couldn’t begin to match. “I just told you that I love you. Love isn’t
careful
, Sam.”

He looked at her for a long beat. “You called Lucky Harbor a pit stop. You don’t fall in love with a pit stop.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “When did I say that? When I first came here? I wouldn’t have recognized love then if it’d hit me in the face. But you know as well as anyone that things change.
Feelings
change. And you said you weren’t a commitment-phobe.”

“I’m not.”

“Just as long as the L-word doesn’t come into play?”

Turning his back to her, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked out the window. “I’ll ruin this,” he said softly.

“This?”

He shrugged. “I’ve ruined a lot of relationships. Just about every one of my father’s while growing up. And then my own.”

She stared at his tense shoulders. “You can’t possibly believe that.” But clearly, he did. Shocked, she shook her head. “Sam, any woman your father was seeing while you were growing up, whatever happened was on them. You were just a kid; you don’t get to be blamed for adult relationships going bad.”

“My own then,” he said. “I’m not good at long-term relationships. They don’t work out.”

He was grasping at straws now, and she knew it. “It only takes one,” she said. “The right one.”

Unable, or unwilling, to believe her, he shook his head, and then walked out.

Sam woke up and stared at the ceiling of his bedroom.
I’m not good at long-term relationships
, he’d said, and here he was alone.

A self-fulfilled prophecy.

He rolled out of bed and went for a long, hard run with
Ben. The problem with running, especially predawn, was that it allowed a lot of thoughts to tumble through his brain.

So he cranked his iPod higher and did his best to drown those thoughts out.

They leaked in anyway, and at the forefront was the memory of the sweet, open look on Becca’s face when she’d said it.
I love you
. He knew she’d expected to hear it back, but he hadn’t been able to say it.

Christ.

Why she’d had to say it at all was beyond him. Love wasn’t in the damn words. Love was in the showing. And if he’d gone there with Becca—which, he could admit, he maybe had—then she should know it without him saying it.

And actually, her using those words, especially when she had, was selfish. Thoughtless.

Because now it was over.

He and Ben normally didn’t say much on their runs but after running to the pier and back, Ben stopped and looked at him.

“What?” Sam asked.