lift to the boy’s chin and knew he wasn’t going to get any more out of Will. But patience had never been Sam’s strong suit. He wanted to push, to keep driving and get to the bottom of what Will had said—and whatever it was he was trying not to say.
Deciding to leave the ball in Will’s court for now, he nodded toward the sedan. “Think you can take care of this oil change?”
Will nodded, relief filling his young features.
“All right, then. Get back to work.”
Following his own advice, Sam checked the inventory for a replacement tire for Kara’s minivan. Even though she hadn’t told him where she’d be staying, he could easily find out. But for now it was another opportunity to play it cool. He’d given her the perfect excuse to see him again. If she didn’t take it—well, then he’d have to come up with an excuse of his own.
Never, in her wildest imagination, had Kara dreamed of being a spy. She’d never tried opening a lock with an unfolded paperclip. Never sent away box tops from sugary cereal for a secret decoder ring. Never tried eavesdropping with a glass pressed against a door.
Just as well, she decided, as she sank further down behind the steering wheel. Because she certainly would have been very, very bad at it. Not that she was actually spying. She’d parked beneath a shady spot across the street from Sam Pirelli’s garage fifteen minutes ago, the windows rolled down to catch a breeze carrying the scent of surrounding pines, but she wasn’t spying.
You aren’t going to find out anything about the man unless you really get to know him.
The voice of Olivia Richards, her best friend, rang in her thoughts. Olivia was a fellow teacher and the only person besides Kara’s parents to know the reason she had made the trip to Clearville.
Unlike her parents, Olivia had supported Kara’s decision to find Sam Pirelli.
“I can’t believe you met him already. What are the odds?” her exuberant friend had demanded when Kara phoned her after checking in at a local hotel and settling Timmy down for a nap. “It’s like fate.”
“It is not fate.”
Olivia snorted. “You break down in the middle of nowhere and the very guy you’ve traveled hundreds of miles to see is there to change your tire. That is fate, Kara-girl.”
“He’s a mechanic. He was doing his job, not riding in to save the day on his trusty steed, okay?” Kara wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Sam Pirelli’s arrival had very much smacked of a white-knight rescue whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Her friend sighed. “Fine, so he was simply in the right place at the right time. Tell me what he’s like.”
“He’s—he’s like too many of Marti’s past boyfriends,” Kara said dismissively. “Good-looking and out for a good time.”
“How good-looking?” Olivia pressed, curiosity clear in her voice even from miles away.
“Are you even listening to me?” Kara had demanded in a whisper as she glanced to the bedroom door only a few feet away from the suite’s tiny living area.
“I heard you say he was good-looking. In all the years we’ve known each other, you’ve been blind to the opposite sex.”
“Not blind,” Kara murmured, her friend’s teasing words stinging a little even though she knew they shouldn’t. The truth was, she’d been blinded by love before, and she’d sworn she’d never be so vulnerable again. “And you missed the part where I said Sam Pirelli’s only out for a good time.”
And not father material.
Kara might not have said that last part out loud, but Olivia had been her friend long enough to hear the unspoken accusation. “How do you know after one meeting?”
“I just know,” she argued. When her friend’s silence continued, she blurted out, “He hit on me, okay? Five minutes into meeting the guy, and he was pushing for a dinner invitation. What does that tell you?”
“Um, that’s he’s interested in you?”
“He’s a player, Liv. He’d hit on anything with a pulse.”
“You don’t know that.”
But Kara felt she did. Knew the type, at least. The kind to make promises, to vow to love a girl forever. But she’d learned those words—like those men—were meaningless.
“You have to give him a chance,” Olivia encouraged. “Weren’t you the one who said it was wrong of Marti to keep Timmy’s birth a secret?”
“I know, but Marti must have had her reasons, right?”
And what those reasons were…the possibilities made Kara sick to her stomach when she thought of handing Timmy over to the stranger who was his father. As much as she’d loved her sister, she’d never understood Marti’s attraction to rough and rowdy men.
But Sam’s not like that.
The voice that sounded so much like Marti’s whispered through Kara’s mind. On the surface, at least, Sam was more the golden-boy-next-door type than dark and dangerous. He had a quick and easy smile, a good sense of humor and a willingness to laugh at himself.
All…not bad qualities.
Kara could see why Marti would have found him attractive. But her sister had excelled in picking men suited for short-term relationships. None of them had been built for the long haul. Even if he didn’t possess the worst qualities of some of Marti’s previous boyfriends, was Sam Pirelli the type of man to put the needs of a child before his own?
“You may never know what made Marti keep silent in the past. But I think in that letter she was pretty clear about what she wanted for the future.”
The letter. The one that had sent Kara on this mission in the first place.
The shock of her sister’s death in a small plane crash had been like a nightmare. Too horrible and unreal to be true. Kara had sleepwalked through those first days, waiting for someone to wake her up. But reality had set in quickly, forcing grief aside. After all, she had Timmy to think about.
Finding out her carefree sister had a will had come as another shock. And the letter naming Timmy’s father for the first time and asking Kara to take the little boy to meet Sam Pirelli had been the last painful blow.
How could you ask me to do this, Marti? How could you ask me to give up a child I love as if he were my own?
But if Marti’s voice had spoken before, it was silent now, leaving Kara’s raw and aching questions unanswered.
After the reading of the will, Kara had talked with the lawyer. Because Marti had named Kara her son’s legal guardian, he reassured her, in the eyes of the law, Timmy was hers…as long as the boy’s father didn’t sue for custody. Then, the lawyer told her, the courts tended to side on behalf of the biological parent.
She swallowed hard, the sign for Sam’s Garage blurring before her eyes as she blinked away the hot press of tears.
She
