Part 17 (2/2)

”Oh. Why?”

The smile danced back to his face. ”Because I was awake when she came into my room,” he said, giggling again, pleased with himself. ”I peeked when the door opened, and I saw it was her.”

”Well, maybe the Tooth Fairy asked Caroline to help her out. Maybe the Tooth Fairy was too busy to get to everybody last night. There are a lot of children who lose teeth every day.”

”Santa Claus gets toeverybody in one night.”

”That's true,” Angela agreed hesitantly, wondering how to argue with his logic. Aware that she probably wouldn't be around to comfort him when he figured out that Santa Claus had help too.

Hunter shrugged his small shoulders. ”I like Caroline. She's nice.”

”Mmm.” Angela looked away, unable to bring herself to giving the other woman any endors.e.m.e.nt at all.

”I'm going off the high-dive again,” Hunter announced, pulling away and scampering toward the ladder leading up to the board, the bottoms of his wet bathing trunks sagging down to his knees. ”Watch me, Mom.”

”Hunter, no!”

”He'll be fine.”

Angela glanced down. Sam was hanging on to the edge of the pool a few feet away, submerged in the water up to his neck. She hadn't even noticed him in her panic-induced sprint down the deck. ”But he's only six years old.”

”Relax.” Sam chuckled. ”He's growing up. You'll just have to accept that, Angie.”

The world blurred before her momentarily. Other than her father, Sam was the only one who had ever called her ”Angie.” She loved the sound of it, even if it was Sam saying it. Maybe she loved itbecause it was Sam. She swallowed hard and looked away. She still wasn't over him. Despite all the grief he had caused her, she still couldn't shake him. Perhaps she never would.

Sam hauled himself out of the water without using the ladder, sitting on the side of the pool for a moment, then rising to his feet. ”How you been, Angie?” he asked, striding confidently to a lounge chair and grabbing a towel.

”Fine,” she answered, still not looking at him.

He wanted her to look at him, she knew. Look at him in just his bathing trunks, his tanned body glistening with drops of water. She'd been attracted to Sam from the first moment she'd seen him across the Duke business school cla.s.sroom. It had never been that way for her before, or since. Not with anyone else.

When they were introduced two days later-during a coffee break between marketing and finance cla.s.ses-Sam had had the audacity to gently take her hand, lean forward, kiss her on the cheek, and whisper in her ear that he couldn't take his eyes off her in cla.s.s. That he'd noticed she couldn't take her eyes off him, either. And that he could think of a much more exciting way to spend an hour and a half than sitting in a cla.s.sroom listening to a professor drone on about finance.

Had it been any other man, she would have tossed her coffee in his face for saying something forward. But for some reason she'd simply gazed at him as he'd pulled back, marveling at his ability to calmly say what he'd said. He'd said it in the same way he spoke in front of the other eighty students in cla.s.s when professors asked him to lay out the case they were working on that day. Without a trace of fear or hesitation in his voice. Unlike the nervous tones she and everyone else had spoken in during the first few days.

The most incredible thing was that, even now, she didn't have any regrets about meeting Sam. It wasn't as if she wished they had never been introduced. Or wished that she'd actually thrown the coffee in his face that day, which would have saved her the emotional anguish she'd endured since that day she'd discovered him in bed with another woman and realized he wasn't hers anymore. The thing of it was, she didn't blame Sam. Not for most of what had happened anyway. She blamed Chuck Reese. If he had supported their marriage, they would still be together. She was sure of it.

”You're late, Angie. You're never late to pick up Hunter. What happened?”

”My boss wouldn't let me go.”

”Mom!”

Angela glanced up. Hunter had made it to the end of the high-dive again. ”Careful, baby,” she called, her voice echoing around the huge room.

”Can't call him 'baby' anymore, Angie,” Sam chided gently, moving next to her. ”He's growing up. Pretty soon you'll be watching him on the football field. He's got a good arm for a six-year-old. You should see him.”

Sam's voice was like the gentle purring of a cat: low and smooth and soothing, with a hint of a Southern drawl in his words. The enticing inflections of his voice brought everything hurtling back, the way sounds sometimes stir latent, nearly lost memories more powerfully than sight ever can. ”Careful, Hunter.” She was trying not to think about the memories, but it was hard.

Sam clapped, urging his son on. ”Come on. Make this one a real good one.”

Hunter followed the same routine, swinging his arms by his sides three times, then leaping fearlessly into the water.

Angela brought her hands to her mouth as he fell, her heart in her throat. But once again, Hunter popped right to the surface, and was already paddling determinedly toward the ladder before his head had fully emerged.

”Good job, son,” said Sam. This time he reached down and helped Hunter up the ladder. ”Now you've got to get ready to go with Mom.”

”Aw, Dad. One more time. Please.”

”No. It's getting late.” Sam waved toward the other end of the pool, where the maid stood. ”Alice,” he called loudly, ”please take Hunter to the house and get him dried off and into his clothes.”

”Yes, sir.”

”Go on, Hunter. Go with the help. Your mom and I will be back over to the house in a minute.”

”Oh, all right,” Hunter agreed dejectedly, walking head down and shoulders slumped for the first few steps. Then, sneaking a look back, he broke into a trot, then into a full sprint, yelling and shouting as he ran.

”Careful,” Sam shouted. ”The deck's wet. Watch out.”

But Hunter made it to where Alice was waiting without incident, and then they were gone, heads disappearing down the steps leading to the underground pa.s.sageway, the boy's first, then the maid's.

”I better get going, too,” Angela murmured, taking a step in the direction Hunter had just gone. She felt Sam's fingers curl around her wrist.

”Not yet, Angie.”

He might as well have glued her shoes to the deck. She tried pulling away, but it was impossible.

Sam chuckled. ”It'll take Alice a half hour to get Hunter ready to go. The boy will run her ragged. You know that.”

”This isn't right. We shouldn't be here like this.”

”Why not?” Sam asked, turning her toward him. ”What's so wrong with this?”

She gazed down at the puddles beneath her shoes, wis.h.i.+ng he would take his hand from her wrist and, at the same time, hoping he would keep it right where it was. She tried to keep her head down, tried to count the tiny decorative tiles embedded in the deck at the water's edge, but in the end she had to look up, up into the confident eyes of a man she knew lived only in the moment.

She'd known that the first time she'd kissed him-a week after they had met. He was not safe, not stable. Far from it, in fact. But she'd kissed him anyway, trying to resist at first, then just trying to maintain control.

Sam wasn't a physically imposing man. He wasn't overpowering like John Tucker. And he didn't have Jake Lawrence's pretty-boy looks, either. Sam was lifeguard handsome: blond, slim, and taut. But it was his presence that had caught Angela's attention so long ago, the cool confidence in his light blue eyes and his I-know-something-you-don't smile. The way he could hold a cla.s.s full of cynical graduate students and professors in the palm of his hand while he calmly presented his solution to the day's case. Somehow, he made even the most boring material seem fascinating as he wove personal stories and anecdotes into his tale so that, when he had finished his presentation, the room was pin-drop quiet until the trance was broken by the professor. Sam was part evangelist and part politician, with a little bit of the devil thrown in somewhere. And he had that swagger too. The one John Tucker had. He'd hooked her in a heartbeat.

”I've got to go.”

”No,” Sam said firmly, ”you don't.”

”Sam.” He was leading her toward a little room off the pool, a private dining area with a table and chairs where people could take a break from swimming and look back at the mansion through the woods while they ate. ”What are you doing?”

”I just want to talk.”

<script>