released a long, exasperated breath. He was sorry he’d ever let her get started on this pitch. “Such as…?” he asked, disinterested.
“Our families have known each other forever. And in Laramie, we help each other when circumstances warrant it.”
That was true, Sam thought, but only to a point. He reached for the bottle of Scotch. “You’re forgetting the fact your father despises me.”
Twin spots of color appeared in Kate’s fair cheeks. “What happened between you two was a long time ago,” she countered.
Sam poured himself another shot. “I’m betting your dad hasn’t forgotten or forgiven.”
Beginning to look a little annoyed herself, Kate replied, “That’s not the point.”
With an economy of movement, Sam set the uncapped bottle back on his desk. He regarded her steadily. “Isn’t it?”
“Ellie used to baby-sit me when I was a kid. Did you know that?”
Sam shrugged. As far as he was concerned, that was of no significance. “She used to baby-sit a lot of people around here.”
“Yeah, well…” Kate’s voice took on a tremulous, emotional quality Sam liked even less. “Ellie was especially kind to me in the months after my brother died, and I’ve never forgotten it.” Kate paused and looked down at her hands. “I’ve been thinking—maybe this is the way I’m supposed to repay her kindness.”
Which was, Sam knew, exactly how Ellie would have seen it. Hadn’t that been one of her favorite sayings? One kindness begets another. He sighed again, more loudly, wondering how he had ever allowed himself to get into such a mess. Now he was going to have to do what Ellie would not have wanted him to do: turn down Kate’s offer of help. Aware Kate was waiting for him to say something, Sam finally allowed, “Ellie was a good person.”
“The best.” Kate’s eyes shimmered suddenly. Her voice grew even huskier. “Everybody loved her, Sam.”
But not as much as me, Sam thought, knowing as much as everyone still missed Ellie their grief was nothing—nothing—compared to his and the boys’. He looked at Kate. “The answer is no,” he said flatly.
Her eyes widened with disbelief. “Why not?”
Sam swore silently. She was really going to torture them both by making him do this. He didn’t want to put her down. But, damn her, she’d left him no choice. “Because you’ve never been married or had kids of your own,” he told Kate, giving her a look that immediately relieved her of any responsibilities, any past debts, she thought she had here.
“A fact that will be remedied soon enough,” Kate interjected, wiggling her left ring finger.
Sam blew out an aggravated breath. “The fact you’re getting married to Craig Farrell later this fall changes nothing, Kate. You still know nothing about being a mom.”
“Maybe not,” Kate conceded, clearly hurt he didn’t think her capable. “But I know plenty about being a friend.”
What little patience he had fading fast, Sam shoved a hand through his hair. He wished Kate would just give up and go home. “My kids have friends,” he told her gruffly. “They need a disciplinarian.”
A fact that, to Sam’s consternation, did not faze Ms. Kate Marten in the least. “If you think I can’t bring order to your five rowdy boys, think again, Sam. I worked as a camp counselor five summers in a row. I was an athletic trainer for my father’s football team all four years of high school. I can handle your boys, Sam.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “That’s what Mrs. Grunwald said. And she was a marine. They drove her out in two weeks.” Sam shuddered to think what his kids would do to someone as well-intentioned but as hopelessly naive as Kate Marten.
Kate shrugged and continued to regard him like the dynamo she thought she was. “All that proves is that she wasn’t the right person for the job,” she persisted amiably.
Sam took in Kate’s dress-for-success clothing and carefully selected jewelry. With her soft honey-blond hair falling about her shoulders in a style that probably took hours every day to maintain, she looked as though she belonged in an office, not a kitchen or a laundry room. “And you are?”
“You’re darn right I am.” Kate looked at him steadily. As she continued, her voice dropped a compassionate notch. “Furthermore, I can help you, too, Sam.”
Now that grated, Sam thought. To the point it really shouldn’t go unrewarded. “How?” Sam asked sharply, eyeing her with a brooding stare designed to intimidate.
“By giving you someone to talk to.”
Finally, he acknowledged silently, they were down to the tiny print at the bottom of every contract. “What are we talking about here?” Sam asked in a deceptively casual voice that in no way revealed how truly annoyed he was with her. “Some sort of informal grief counseling on the side?”
“Yes.” Kate beamed her relief that he was catching on. Her blue eyes gleamed with a mixture of gentleness and understanding. “If that’s what you want, certainly I’d be happy to help you with that.”
Sam drained the last of his Scotch. Setting his glass down with a thud, he got slowly, deliberately, to his feet. What was it going to take, he wondered, to get people to stop trying to examine his private pain and leave him alone? What was it going to take to get people to let him grieve, in his own time, in his own way, at his own pace? He’d thought if he left Dallas—where he and Ellie and the kids had made their life together—and returned to the town where he and Ellie had spent their childhoods, that the people would be kind enough, sensitive enough, to just leave him and the kids alone to work through their grief however they saw fit. Instead, everyone wanted to help. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had some method of coping they wanted him and or the boys to try. Leading the charge of the “Laramie, Texas, Kind Friend and Neighbor Brigade” was Kate Marten.
Sam had tried ignoring her. Been rude and unapproachable. He’d even—for a few minutes tonight—gritted his teeth and tried to reason with her. To his chagrin, all he’d done was encourage her.
And that, Sam knew, as he stood in front of Kate, would not do.
To make everyone else cease and desist their well-intentioned yet misguided efforts to snap him and the boys out of their grief, he would first have to make Kate Marten back off. As disagreeable as he found even the idea of it, Sam knew of only one surefire way to do that.
“If that seems like too much at first, we can just—I don’t know…be friends,” Kate continued a little nervously, finally beginning to eye him with the wariness he’d wanted her to all along.
“Suppose I want more than that?” His idea picking up steam, Sam reached down, took Kate’s wrist, and pulled her to her feet. Ignoring the soft, silky warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, and the widening of her astonished blue eyes, he danced her backward to the wall. “Then what?”
“Um—” Kate swallowed as she tried and failed to unobtrusively extricate her wrist from his iron grip. “We could get into other areas, too.”
Sam smiled cynically at the sheer improbability of that ever happening. Aware his plan
