Allison Leigh - Secretly Married

“What?” He swore and swept her up in his arms, heading back toward his house before she could blink.

She went board stiff. “Wait. My briefcase.”

“Christ, Delaney, are you afraid you’ll misplace some precious bit of work? I’ll get it after I get you settled.”

“But I don’t—”

He kissed her again and shock swept through her, taking her words right along with it.

When he lifted his head, his breathing was rough. “At least there’s still one way to get you to shut up.”

She hastily closed her mouth, stemming her next words. Put me down screamed through her mind.

Sam grunted a little. “Better.”

She shifted as far from him as humanly possible. Which wasn’t far, given the fact that he had one arm around her back, his hand practically cupping the side of her breast. His other arm’s position wasn’t much better, tucked beneath her knees, causing her skirt to rumple up around her thighs. She surreptitiously tugged at the skirt. It didn’t help. The more she moved, the less space she could keep between them. She settled for trying not to breathe as his long stride ate up the distance back to his house.

He carried her straight through, back to the kitchen again, settling her on a bar stool. “Sit tight. I’ll get some ice.”

Delaney looked at her palms. They were red, raw, dirty. “I need to wash first.” She started to slide off the high bar stool.

“Dammit all, Delaney, would you just sit still?” He’d yanked open the freezer door.

“Don’t bark at me.” She focused on the bag of frozen peas he pulled from the freezer. “What…are you hungry now?”

“The bag’s easier to use than ice.”

It had always been hard to read his expressions, but just then Delaney thought he looked near the end of his patience.

Well, her patience was sorely limited, too. Particularly when he cupped her calf and lifted gently. He’d had his hands on her more in this one day than nearly the entire last month they’d been together.

“Which heel?”

She leaned over, pulling off her shoe, holding it up. “No amount of frozen peas is going to help it, I’m afraid.”

He studied the shoe for a long moment. “I thought you meant your heel.”

“I realize that. Now. You, um, you can let go of my leg.”

He did so. Quickly. She still felt the imprint of his gentle touch.

Distance. Distance was paramount.

She slid off the bar stool and scooted around him, awkwardly toeing off the other shoe at the same time. She hadn’t thought to bring a spare pair. She sidled past him and carefully stuck her hands under the faucet.

“I’ll get your briefcase.”

How could she have managed to forget about it so quickly? “Right—” he’d pulled a very sturdy-looking flashlight from the same drawer that had held the other one. She swallowed the thanks she’d been about to voice. The flashlight he’d chosen for his own use undoubtedly had strong batteries. “Make sure you get everything,” she said waspishly.

“Would you rather do it yourself?”

She shut off the water and snapped off a paper towel from the stone holder next to the sink. “It’s your fault I fell in the first place. You could have just driven me back to Castillo House, and none of this would—”

“I thought assigning blame was against your professional ethics.”

She looked at him, their past a sudden, deluging wave. “Janie mentioned that your father is here. Staying with…Etta…she said. How do you feel about that, Sam?”

His expression closed down, just as she’d known it would, just as it always had whenever she’d broached the subjects he’d deemed off-limits.

There’d been a time when she’d only wanted to understand the man who’d finessed her heart right out from under her. So she’d probed. Delicately. Hopefully.

It made her ill that she now used the same knowledge about Sam to retaliate. Wound for wound.

“Sam, I’m sorry.”

He never heard the words.

He’d already walked out of the room.

Kissing her like that had been stupid.

Sam raked his hands through his hair. Pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Twenty-one months. He’d had to say that, hadn’t he? As if he’d been counting.

He’d even picked up the contents of Delaney’s briefcase after walking out of his own damn house. Papers. Pens. Cell phone. Organizer. A thin bag holding her personal items. When he’d finished, he’d contemplated pitching the entire thing off the cliff behind his house. Instead, he’d left the briefcase sitting on his front porch, and he’d driven back into town.

The bar fight he’d broken up earlier at the Seaspray couldn’t have come at a more opportune time, as far as he was concerned. He’d almost tossed the two idiots in jail, just because it would’ve felt good to do so.

Instead, he’d sent them home and planted his own butt on the end stool—one of the few the Haggerty fools hadn’t broken before he and Leo contained the fight. The Seaspray had once been a motel until a storm leveled it. So far, the only thing to be rebuilt was the bar. Mostly because the long wooden bar itself was the only thing that had been left standing.

He hunched over that bar, his hands cradling his mug. But he wasn’t seeing the dark liquid. He was seeing Delaney’s face; her expression when he’d kissed her. When he’d called her his wife.

In the opposite corner of the bar, his brother Leo slopped a cleaning rag over the bar stools.

“Sam?”

He looked up. And swore silently again. “Kind of late for you to be out, isn’t it?”

It was a testament to Sara Drake’s good nature that she didn’t slap him when she slid onto the stool beside him. “Thought I’d check and see how you’re doing. Went by the sheriff’s office. Was heading home when I saw your SUV outside this place.”

“You shouldn’t have bothered.”

“Maybe it’s not a bother.” Her smile flashed briefly. She nodded at Leo when he abandoned his cleaning rag to fill a glass with soda that he placed in front of her before he moved over to the small television at the far end of the bar.

Sam thought maybe he owed Sara an apology. But the Vega and Drake families went way back. Sam had grown up with Sara’s brother, Logan. Long ago both he and Logan had left Turnabout Island.

They’d both returned.

And while he felt an apology was in order, he wasn’t entirely certain why. Things weren’t that way between him and Sara. They never had been. Never would be, even if he weren’t still married and his kid brother wasn’t hung up on her.

He picked up his mug and drained it before he spoke. “I should have told you.”

“Why? There are things I haven’t told you, either.” Her smile widened a little. “Nothing quite as major as a marriage, mind you.”

“You’re too nice, Sara.” He meant it. She was nice.

“Yeah,” she agreed lightly. “All that niceness going to waste with no man around to take advantage of it.”

Sam looked up to find her watching Leo as she spoke. “Don’t expect your grandmother to be quite as understanding,” she warned, sounding amused. Then she nudged his shoulder with hers, companionably, and sat forward, propping her elbow on the bar. “Funny that I never pictured you with the buttoned-down type,” Sara murmured. “How’d you two meet?”

Buttoned-down type. Laney would detest that description. He’d have to remember it. “Working a case.”

“And you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No.”

“Well, that’s fair enough.” She was silent for a moment. “Janie told me she took Delaney to your place. Presumably you know that, by now.”

He grunted noncommittally.