It's in His Kiss Read online

  “It happens,” Sam said.

  “When?” Cole asked. “When does that ever happen?”

  Tanner, eyes narrowed, got up into Sam’s space and studied him. “What’s that?” he asked, touching Sam’s throat. “Is that a hickey?”

  Sam smacked his hand away. “No.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Tanner said. “You totally have a hickey.”

  “Let me see,” Cole said, pushing close. At the sight, he grinned. “Nice. I wouldn’t mind one of those,” he said, sounding wistful.

  Tanner snorted.

  Sam stalked to the bridge, rolling his eyes at their laughter behind him.

  It wasn’t until that night, kicking off his shoes in the foyer of his house, that he caught sight of himself in the mirror.

  He totally had a hickey on his throat.

  “Son, you can have the hot tub tonight,” his dad said, coming in behind him without knocking as usual. “I’m tuckered out.” He plopped himself on the couch.

  Sam moved closer and looked him over. Pale. Even a little gray. He knew he’d been taking his medicine; he’d made damn sure of it every morning. But the meds were no guarantee. “You okay?”

  “Always,” Mark said.

  “Dad.”

  Mark opened his eyes. “I’m fine. I’m just overtaxed, that’s all.”

  “Maybe it’s not a great time to be screwing a woman two decades your junior.”

  Mark grinned. “But what a way to go, right?”

  When Sam just looked at him, he sighed. “And that’s not what I’ve been doing.”

  “What have you been doing then?” Sam asked.

  Mark hesitated.

  Never a good sign. “Christ,” Sam said. “Gambling?”

  “No!” Mark shook his head. “Still got a real high opinion of me, I see.” He paused. “I’ve been working.”

  “Working,” Sam repeated.

  “Yeah. I took a job at the arcade, running some of the games, okay?”

  “That’s a teenager job,” Sam said.

  “Or the job of a man with no résumé,” his dad said.

  Sam didn’t get it. “Why?”

  “I’m going to pay my own way,” Mark said.

  “Since when?”

  “Goddamn it, I’m tired of being a mooch off you.”

  Sam sighed and sank to the couch next to his dad. “Well, if you’re going to take all the fun out of my resentment. . .”

  Mark laughed, but it was hollow. “You’ve worked so hard all your life,” he said. “And people here love you. I want to be a better man, son. Like you.”

  Sam took the unexpected hit to his solar plexus, heart, and gut. “You can’t work, not right now.”

  “Yes, I can. I am. I already have twenty hours. I’m going to pay you rent and get my own car. And you’re not the only one who can build shit, you know. I’m going to make you shelves so all your CDs and DVDs aren’t on the damn floor all the time.”

  Sam stared at him, but his dad looked serious. And sincere. “How about you wait until after you get better?”

  Suddenly looking older and very tired, Mark closed his eyes again. “Yeah. Okay. Hey, you got stuff for sandwiches?”

  “I think so,” Sam said. “You want one?”

  “You got any potato chips to put in it?”

  Sam blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

  Sam fed his dad, watched him carefully for a while, and determined he really was just tired and not ill enough for a call to Josh.

  “Stop hovering,” Mark muttered, eyes closed from his position prone on the couch. “I’m not dying tonight.”

  “That’s not funny,” Sam said.

  “You’re right, it’s not. It’s sad as hell that you’re watching me instead of being with your woman. Go be with your woman.”

  “Dad—”

  “Jesus.” Mark pulled out his phone and hit a number. “Hey, darlin’,” he said. “Yeah, I’m fine, but I’ve got someone here who’s not. I’m sending him to you, okay?” Mark slid his gaze to Sam. “Okay, I’ll tell him.” He clicked off. “She says to be ready for lesson number five. What’s she teaching you?”

  Sam managed to keep a straight face, but Christ, she cracked him up. “I have no idea,” he said evenly.

  His dad shrugged. “Well, when a woman looks like that, with a heart like that, you ignore the crazy, son, and get ready for lesson number five.”

  Two days—and two extremely long, hot, erotic nights later—Becca was in the hut, opening for the day, when the man single-handedly responsible for the perma-smile on her face walked in. She was surprised, seeing as she’d left him boneless and facedown on her bed only half an hour earlier. Knowing he was leaving today on a two-day fishing expedition, she’d let him sleep.

  “You got up early,” he said, heading for the coffee.

  “So did you.”

  “Twice,” he said.

  She laughed. It was true. And once the night before as well. “Did I wake you when I left? I tried to be quiet and not talk.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded some talking,” he said. “I really liked the More, Sam, oh please more.”

  She threw her pencil at him.

  He caught it in midair and grinned.

  “I got up thinking I’d try to work on my next jingle,” she said.

  “You haven’t said what your next assignment is.” He caught her grimace and smiled. “It can’t be worse than your last few.”

  “Yeah, it can. It’s diapers. But at least it’s for baby diapers.” She blew out a breath. “It’s because I’m not doing anything spectacular. I keep waiting for my muse to really kick in, but the truth is, I think I’ve lost my talent.” She caught something in his expression. “What?”

  “It’s not because you’re not talented,” Sam said. “It’s the importance you’re attaching to it.”

  That this was true didn’t help. “I need to be successful at something,” she said. “At this,” she corrected when he opened his mouth. “I’m going to be successful at this if it kills me.”

  “You know,” he said. “It wasn’t all that long ago when you got mad at me for blaming shit on myself, like when I got my dad and me kicked out of that apartment.”

  “You were thirteen,” she said. “I’m not a minor by any stretch of the imagination. I run my own life, and I take the fall for it.”

  He brought her a mug filled with lots of sugar and a little bit of coffee, and that he knew the exact right formula warmed her heart. Not enough to ward off the unease at the intimacy of this conversation, but enough that she didn’t make a run for the door. Apparently sharing orgasms was easier than sharing her soul. She stared down into the steaming brew, wishing it held the answers to her life.

  “Becca.”

  With a sigh, she looked at him, and found her gaze locked in his, held prisoner.

  “You’re successful just as you are,” he said.

  “If you think that’s true, you haven’t been paying attention.”

  “Wrong,” he said. “I’ve been paying attention better than you. You came into this job to answer phones and you’ve so completely fixed us up that now anyone could run our place with the blink of an eye.”

  “In my past,” she clarified. “I want to have been successful at stuff in my past.”

  “Fuck the past. Move on to something that suits you right now.”

  She stared at him. “Fuck the past? Is that how you live your life? Not thinking or looking back at all, just forward?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  She nodded. This was true. She knew it. She’d seen it. She’d just conveniently forgotten it.

  Sam’s eyes were warm as his hand curled around the side of her neck, where his thumb gently stroked. “You should try it sometime.”

  What she wanted to try was him. She wanted to try him out for as long as they both could take it. She almost said so, but saying it out loud twice wouldn’t make it so. Her life was in flux. She needed to focus, and focusing around Sam w