Too Stupid to Live(Romancelandia) (9 page)

Andrea leaned forward, looking past Ian to the guy who’d made the comment. Sam cringed, waiting for whatever she was about to say.

“Tierney, that was uncalled for,” she said. The guy spluttered.

Sam blinked. Oh. That was . . . not mean.

As Andrea sat back, she glanced over her shoulder and saw Sam. She must have made a noise, because Ian turned, too, and then the other guy, Tierney. They stared at him with different degrees of embarrassment. For just a millisecond, Ian closed his eyes. Then he stood up. “I’ll help you with that,” he said, taking a step toward Sam.

“No.” Sam was surprised to hear how hard his voice sounded. He cleared his throat, looking Ian in the eye, and kept his voice low so only Ian would hear. “I don’t need your help.”

Ian looked away. “Sorry.” He hesitated a second before sitting back down.

Sorry for what? The one-night stand, or laughing at what that asshole said, or for assuming I’m too weak to lift my own damn tray of drinks?

Did it fucking matter?

Suddenly Tineke was there with the second tray of drinks, looking at him in concern but smiling for the customers, most of whom didn’t even know anything was wrong. It was too loud in Fatty’s for normal voices to carry far.

With Tineke’s help, Sam made it through distributing drinks, and even taking orders—she took the shadowy end of the table, which Sam refused to look at. She even whispered something into Juan Miguel’s ear in the kitchen, resulting in his growling and casting hateful glances toward the dining room.

Ian and that dick sitting next to him both got screwed up orders, and Juan Miguel’s normally attractive plating was sloppy.

The whole staff rallied around Sam, even Sheff, and Sam hadn’t known the man had a clue how to rally. In the end, the group containing Ian left without Sam having to speak with him again, or even meet his eyes.

Afterward, Tineke arranged most of their dinner break together. Sam didn’t know how she did it, but Sheff actually helped the other waitstaff when the bar wasn’t busy.

“Okay,” Tineke interrupted after listening for ten minutes to Sam whining about what had happened, how humiliated he was, and how he was now getting
pissed off
, dammit. “Which pisses you off the most: him saying sorry for the sex, the chuckle, or him offering to take the drinks tray?”

She always asked the hard questions. Sam slumped back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared.

She laughed. “Dude, I’ve got a ten-year-old son. Do your worst. I can take it.”

There was only one reasonable response to that. Sam stuck out his tongue at her.

Sam made it through the rest of the night. By the time he helped Tineke shut the place down at eleven thirty, he felt tired, dispirited, and sick. Not
really
sick, just the sort of sick he got when something icky happened in his life and he had to deal with it. Because what else was he going to do? He was a too-tall, too-skinny, not-very-attractive, very-obviously-gay dork. He had shit to deal with on occasion. So he dealt.

It was moments like this Sam wished he was a drinker. Or a runner. Maybe both. Not at the same time, though.

Tineke followed him out the back door, still talking at him. “C’mon, you don’t want to ride the bus home after a night like that. Let me give you a ride.”

“Don’t you need to get home to your kids?”

“My husband’s there. They’re fine.”

Sam stopped in the circle of the parking lot light at the employee entrance. He turned and squeezed Tineke’s shoulder. “Really, I just need to be alone.”

She wouldn’t believe him. Girls never believed anyone wanted to lick their wounds alone; females wanted to pet and coddle and share things. It drove Sam nuts. If he needed coddling and petting, he wanted a hot guy doing it.

But Tineke cocked her head and looked at him carefully. “You really would rather be alone, wouldn’t you? Okay, hon, but I expect you to feel better by your shift Saturday. All right?”

Sam was so surprised and relieved, he hugged her. She looked dazed when he let her go, and he felt sort of proud of himself for befuddling her.
Bet her ten-year-old can’t do that
.

Sam walked down to the bus stop at the dark end of Fatty’s parking lot and checked his watch. Five minutes until the bus arrived. If it was actually on time. He was just debating whether to sit on the bench in the shelter when Ian’s voice nearly made him jump out of his skin.

“Sam.”

He whirled around to see Ian step out of the shadows under a tree. He could just make out a pickup behind him. “
Shit
! What is
with
you? Can’t you lurk in well-lit areas so I know you’re there? My God.”

Ian stepped closer to the light. “Let me give you a ride home.” He was still wearing the suit, but he’d taken off his tie. Sam really hated how good he looked in those clothes, especially with the two top shirt buttons undone. Regardless, a tiny part of him patted itself on the back.
I hooked up with him
.

“No, I’m taking the bus. Go away, Ian.”

Ian looked at him silently for a long second. “Please.” Somehow, the way he said it, Sam got the feeling it wasn’t a word he often dusted off and put into use.

He hesitated. “No.”

“Sam.”

“Stop saying my name like that! Sheesh, you think that’s going to work? It’s not. Why do you even want to give me a ride home? We hooked up once because I was convenient, you know it and
I
know it and I’m okay with that, so you can stop feeling guilty. Go away.”

“That’s not why I feel guilty,” Ian said, as if guys felt guilty all the time for how they treated Sam. Well, they did, but they usually weren’t such persistent apologizers.

Sam felt righteously annoyed, and surely when he opened his mouth, his brain would provide a scathing retort. “Do you have to sound so
reasonable
? You were a bastard.”

Miserable fail
.

“I’m sorry. Let me give you a ride home, and I’ll show you how sorry I am.”

Sam’s stomach muscles clenched without his express permission. “Why does that sound like a line?”

“It’s not, I swear.” Ian hesitated, and Sam could see a smile in the corners of his lips. “Unless you want it to be.”

Sam opened his mouth to deny it.

Another
miserable fail. “What are you sorry for?” he asked instead, after far too long a pause.

Ian hung his head a second, then looked back up. “For laughing at Tierney’s lame comment. That was . . . I’m sorry.”

Sam almost shrugged, but he sighed instead. At least Ian wasn’t sorry for hooking up. “Okay.”

“Okay, you’ll let me drive you home?”

“Okay, you’re sorry. It’s fine. I wish you hadn’t done it, but, whatever.”

“Let me drive you home?”

The man was a talking parrot with a limited vocabulary. And so fucking sexy in that suit.
Maybe if you let him take you home, you can play businessman and delivery boy
. Sam rolled his eyes at himself. Ian’s smile grew.

Sam huffed out an annoyed breath—not that he had any clue who he was annoyed with. “Okay. Drive me home already.”

The worst thing about having laughed, even weakly, at Tierney’s stupid comment was that Ian had promised himself he wouldn’t put up with the man’s homophobic crap anymore. After they’d left the restaurant—riding in Tierney’s stupid, phallic BMW 7-series back to Ian’s work, where they’d left his truck—Tierney had asked, “So what, dude, you fuck that kid? Throw the gay boy a little bone? C’mon, man, you can tell ol’ Tierney if you sometimes get a jones for cock.”

“Lay off Sam,” Ian had growled. Tierney had laughed at him and punched him in the shoulder, but he’d dropped it. Tierney always had that vicious edge in his voice when he joked about Ian’s sexual orientation—something he brought up a lot. It was only a matter of time before Tierney saw the obvious, had his little tantrum, and then refused to be buddies with Ian anymore.

Why the fuck were they friends again? Maybe he should have let Tierney fall by the wayside in the last year, just like his job and his occasional half-assed attempts to find women attractive.

But this was his new life, right? Driving a guy he was into home, hoping to, uh, further the relationship. Sometime tonight, Ian had decided he didn’t need to figure out why Sam did it for him. It obviously wasn’t going away. He’d spent the last eleven days thinking about the kid at random times, sometimes very inopportune ones. Seeing him tonight had convinced Ian the attraction wasn’t some weird figment of his imagination.

Sam wasn’t really a kid, anyway. More like an adult. And yeah, he wasn’t the kind of guy Ian was normally into, but maybe after the accident his tastes had changed. Sometimes people became allergic to stuff as adults. Maybe his hormones had gotten re-keyed or something. Who cared?
Forget about that stuff
and focus on Sam
.

“Nik said you used to be a firefighter,” Sam said suddenly.

Hell
. “Yeah.”

Sam waited a few seconds before going on. “But you aren’t anymore.”

“Nope.”

Sam sighed loud enough to fill the truck’s cab. “So why is that?”

Ian gripped the steering wheel harder. “Had an accident at work.”

Silence. They came to a stop at a red light, only the slight growl of the engine audible. Ian closed his eyes a second, steeling himself. “I had to have surgery on my back, and it took about a year to get back to normal. Sort of normal. I could have had an admin position at the department, but it seemed like a good time to move on.”

“Oh,” Sam all but whispered, then added in a louder voice, “So, you moved here?”

The light turned green, so Ian started moving, saying casually, “I like Jurgen.”
More than the rest of my damn family
.

They drove the rest of the way in near silence, broken only by Sam giving Ian directions while he thought about the best way to talk himself into Sam’s place, then talk Sam out of his clothes. The important ones, at least.

Yeah, he was a bastard, thinking about ways to seduce Sam again, but he was nearly certain Sam wanted it too. Ian didn’t do dubious consent, but he wasn’t feeling dubious tonight, in his dark truck, the air humming with Sam’s nerves. The kid kept clearing his throat and readjusting his legs. Ian caught him readjusting his package once.

Yeah, Sam wanted him.

When they pulled into the lot at Sam’s apartment complex, Ian still hadn’t come up with the best way into the kid’s pants.

He could hear the nerves shaking in Sam’s voice as he handed Ian the opening he needed. “I thought you were going to show me how sorry you were.”

Ian parked in a visitor spot. “You have a roommate?” he asked as he killed the engine and took the keys out of the ignition.

Sam cleared his throat again and poked at a hole in the denim covering his knee. “No.”

“I’ll come up to your place and show you there.”

“That sounds like another line,” Sam muttered. Ian got out of the cab and walked around to Sam’s side, then watched him through the window as he kept worrying the hole in his jeans. What did the kid’s internal dialogue sound like?

Sam’s internal dialogue went on forever. He sat there so long that Ian became concerned Sam would talk himself out of this. When he did eventually get out of the pickup, he stood there a few more seconds, looking at Ian. His hand trembled slightly where it rested on the door.

“Okay,” Sam said quietly. He sounded hypnotized. That was it: Ian was a snake and had charmed him—the snake analogy fit him tonight. Wait, wasn’t it the snake who was charmed by the handler? But he probably shouldn’t think like that, or he’d be the one who’d back out.

When Sam finally moved, he kept looking back over his shoulder, so much so that he ran into the handrail of his stairs. Ian grabbed his arm to steady him. “Be careful, kid.”

Sam yanked his arm out of Ian’s hold. “It’s your fault, following me like that. Distracting me.”

Good
. “Don’t let yourself get distracted by me, kiddo,” he said.

Sam turned and started upstairs, conspicuously looking forward. He was almost to the top before he said, “Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t take orders.”