Tempted by the Single Dad, page 15
She heard a growl.
And a bear’s cave at that.
“Sam?” Her eyes adjusted to the dark. He was sitting up on a sofa, glaring at her, but he was rumpled looking, and she knew he had slept there.
In the course of just a few hours, he had changed completely. His hair was sticking up all over the place, his face was shadowed with whiskers, his T-shirt had a stain on the front. He was in boxer shorts. He looked haggard. And he looked tormented.
“What do you want?” he snapped.
“I want to know why you left.”
He snorted. “I think that’s obvious.”
“It’s not to me. You’ll have to explain it.”
She held her breath. He looked like he was in a dangerous and foul mood, the kind of mood that told nosy people to get lost, to leave him alone.
But, instead of telling her to get lost, to go away, Sam took a shaky breath, and Allie felt herself start breathing again.
“I’m a failure, Allie. Do you get that?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Looking around it seems as if you are the furthest thing from a failure.”
He snorted. “You, of all people, know that none of this matters.”
“That’s true.”
“What matters is being there for people when they need you. Knowing the right thing to do. Cody needs a family, not some bumbling uncle. That’s why he finally talked. You know it is. Because they knew how to make him happy. And I didn’t.”
“You never asked what he said,” she told him softly. “When he spoke.”
“It doesn’t matter. He spoke. He spoke when he was with them and he never did it for me.”
“The words he said were Need Unca.”
Sam went very still. He rubbed his eyes. She thought she saw a tremble in his shoulders.
“A three-year-old doesn’t know what he needs. I just had a video chat with him. He was fine. Happy. Learning to make blueberry pancakes. Not that he chatted. Nope. Silence for me. I’ve failed him. I told you about my first wife, I failed her, too.
“This is the part you don’t know, Allie, that you really, really need to know. I failed Adam and Sue. After my parents died, I promised myself I would look after her, that I would never let anything bad happen to her again.”
The pain was quivering in the air around him. His voice was a croak of pure, unadulterated feeling.
“I was supposed to be with them that night. I begged off. You know why? Because some woman, named Bambi or Bobbi or Barbie, called and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. It was more important to me than them.
“If I had gone with them, maybe I would have been driving. Maybe we would have taken a different route, or left at a different time. Maybe it could have been me, instead of them.”
He put his head in his hands.
Allie could not bear to not be with him. She went and sank on the couch beside him and put her hands on his shoulders.
She could feel the strength he could not feel.
She could see the bravery he was blind to.
She could sense the torment that he was carrying alone, that he could not control the fates of those he loved, and she could not let him be alone with it anymore.
“At the very least, I could have had those moments with them,” Sam said hoarsely. “One last night. To cherish them. To hold on to. Maybe I could have told Sue I loved her. I never said that to her. Thought it was sappy. Unmanly. Even after Mom and Dad died, I never said it. I never said it to him, either. I never told Adam I loved him like he was my brother.
“Love,” he snorted. “I don’t know anything about love. It’s a relief that Cody is going to go with them, with Bill and Kathy. I have a life. I need my life back. My old life. Parties. Good times. Racking up successes like billiard balls before the break.”
“Liar,” she said, oh, so tenderly, just as he had called her a liar when she had claimed her independence and strength and resilience.
Now she could see the lie he was telling himself.
“The lie you are telling yourself,” she said softly, “is that you are terrified of failure.”
“That’s not a lie.”
“What you’re really terrified of is love. You’re so afraid of it wounding you again. So afraid that all your strength will not be enough. Not just to save yourself. I don’t even think you care about yourself. You’re afraid all your strength won’t be enough to save others.”
He was silent, so silent.
“You are,” she said softly, “sacrificing your own happiness to do what you think is right. For me. For Cody. For Bill. For Kathy. Ironically, isn’t that love itself? The ability to put the needs of others ahead of your own?”
Silent.
“I need you,” she whispered.
“No! You are better off without me. Don’t you get it? Both of you. Cody and you—”
She stopped him with a raised hand. “Unfortunately for you, Sam, you’ve hit me at a point in my life where I’m not letting anyone else decide for me what I need. I need you. And you need me. Desperately.”
“I don’t need you,” he said scornfully, “especially not desperately.”
She smiled at him. She touched his cheek. She looked deep into his eyes. “Especially desperately,” she told him.
And then, tenderly, she claimed his lips, and kissed him.
Desperately.
And he answered her with equal desperation.
* * *
A long time later, Sam broke away from her kiss. How was it that something rooted in complete desperation could make him feel as if he had been pulled back from the brink?
He was aware that everything he had learned as a lifeguard was wrong. Completely and totally wrong.
Because he was not pulling her down with him.
She had the lifesaving ring. It was called love.
And it was strong enough to hold them both. It was strong enough to save them both.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ALLIE SAT ON her back porch and strummed her guitar. The beach in front of her was packed. This was the last day of the Labor Day long weekend. Tomorrow, the beach would be nearly empty and the children would all be back in school.
She gulped. One of the neighbors who had joined the impromptu Fourth of July party at Kathy and Bill’s—that seemed a lifetime ago—was a teacher. She had found Allie and asked if she would consider singing a few songs at the first-day-back-to-school assembly.
We can pay you a little bit.
Tomorrow. How had it arrived so quickly?
Unlike trying to produce a jingle for Phil’s Steakhouse, which she had finally given up on, her guitar loved this assignment. The songs flowed out of her and her guitar: beloved children’s rhymes, traditional tunes, folk songs, melodies and lyrics she created herself.
Was it the assignment that the guitar was reacting to, or was her guitar absorbing the love that shimmered in the air around Allie’s life? Everything, including the music, seemed infused with light.
It had been the most blissful summer she had ever known. She and Sam had given themselves over to exploring what had leaped up so suddenly and so unexpectedly between them.
They had spent the summer going back and forth between each other’s houses. At her house, they did yoga on the beach, and learned to paddleboard. They tried beach volleyball. They hiked in the hills that surrounded Sugar Cone Beach. They bought kayaks, and rode bikes and had sunset picnics. They played music and tried out recipes and danced on the back porch as the stars came out and the waves lapped at the shore.
At his house, they experimented with his expensive coffee machine and his state-of-the-art kitchen. They enjoyed his home theater, and the condo complex swimming pool. They went to five-star restaurants and attended live theater. They went dancing at exclusive clubs. He took her to the first Major League ball game she had ever been at. They swooped over twisting highways on his motorbike, her arms wrapped around the solidness of his waist, the wind playing with the tufts of her hair.
Kathy and Bill bought the beach house that Allie had run by—again, it seemed a lifetime ago—that had been up for sale.
Bill went home to tie up loose ends in Australia before transferring to the United States, but Kathy and the kids stayed for the summer.
And so, as well as exploring the amazing energy that sizzled in the air between them, Allie and Sam learned what it was to become a family.
They took all the kids to every Sunday matinee at the local theater. They built sandcastles and baked cookies. They made blanket forts on rainy days. They worked their way through the menu of the local ice cream store. They introduced Popsy to the new puppy that Kathy brought home for the kids to help them adjust to their new life.
Cody, Nicole and Bryan were a willing and enthusiastic audience as Allie tested every song she played and every song she wrote on them. Soon, all the neighborhood kids, new friends to the gang, seemed to be showing up for the little impromptu concerts that sprang up.
Allie had a sense that she and Sam looked after Kathy and she looked after them. Cody happily stayed with his cousins as the romance unfolded between Allie and Sam. Kathy cheerfully accommodated, and encouraged, Allie and Sam’s growing need for adult time, alone time.
Cody spoke a little more every day, blossoming under the love that had taken so many different forms around him, the love that filled his life until it spilled over.
As she strummed her guitar, and thought about the wonderful summer she had experienced, and the new adventure she was going to have tomorrow, Allie heard a noise at the front door.
She smiled at the full-circle feeling of the moment, set down the guitar, got up and greeted Sam just as he came through the door.
How could her heart still pound like this every single time she saw him? He kissed her, his lips warm and familiar and lovely, and then held her back and looked at her. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“As ready as I’ve ever been for anything.”
He smiled at her, that now familiar smile that made her world feel right and complete and as if she could do anything. Climb mountains, jump from airplanes.
Sing to three hundred small children.
“I’ve got a little surprise for you,” he said.
This was what he was like. He loved surprising her. He seemed to have a theme, his gifts seemed intent on filling her world with beauty. They almost always had something to do with painting pictures, telling stories, or singing songs.
And so he had made her gifts of exquisite paintings and pieces of art, wonderful books, both old and new, and beautiful instruments like an antique ukulele.
Which she was going to use in one of her new songs tomorrow.
He handed her an envelope, and watched her intently as she opened it. She looked at the pieces of paper without comprehension.
“What is this?”
“Kathy has already agreed to babysit.”
“Tickets?”
He nodded. “Airline tickets.”
“To Paris,” she whispered. Once, she realized, she had been afraid to go. Afraid of broken promises and her own expectations. Afraid to leave the safe little world she had created for herself.
But loving Sam had removed her limitations. It had filled her with curiosity about the world and a bold desire to explore it and to embrace all the adventures it held. Love had made her brave.
“It’s supposed to be beautiful in the fall,” he said, as if she needed coaxing.
“Are these first-class tickets?” she asked, pretending disapproval. As she hoped, it got a rise out of him.
“Look, Allie, as much as every man wants to be loved for himself and not his money, I have long legs. I need to have more legroom. I know you’d be comfortable in one of the overhead bins, but, for once, can’t you just go along?”
She gave up the charade of being disapproving, allowed herself a little shriek of pure delight and threw herself into his arms, covered his face with kisses. “Yes, yes and yes. I think it was Audrey Hepburn who said, ‘Paris is always a good idea.’”
“You didn’t think it was such a hot idea the first time I suggested it,” he reminded her.
“You’ve been a good influence on me,” she said, and fluttered her eyelashes at him demurely. He roared with the laughter that she loved drawing out of him.
* * *
Sam was quite familiar with Paris, but they explored it as if it was brand-new to both of them. They strolled the misty banks of the Seine at dawn, and experienced the Louvre at dusk. They ate take-away crepes, and freshly roasted chestnuts from street stalls. They drank chocolat chaud at the Café de Flore, one of the oldest cafés in Paris. A favorite historical haunt of painters, writers and philosophers—“The people who make the world beautiful,” Sam reminded her—it served the melted chocolate and the hot milk in separate jugs. Then they walked the streets of St. Germaine until their feet hurt.
They reveled in the sights of Luxembourg Palace and its gorgeous gardens, kicking through piles of leaves with the delight of children. They discovered the underground world of the catacombs. They found the graves of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Now, they sat in a small café with steamy windows, sampling the most delicious coffee and croissants Allie had ever tasted.
“This is the café you were going to recommend, when you first tried to get rid of me by sending me to Paris,” she said softly, when they were settled.
Sam looked distracted. Normally he would have taken her words as an invitation to tease her about Look what had happened because you didn’t listen to me.
“Is something wrong?” she asked him.
Sam looked flustered.
If there was one thing she had come to know about him, it was that he was never flustered. He handled life with great confidence and courage and aplomb.
They had just had a wonderful day, but he did not seem to be filled with the kind of contentment or wonder such a day should bring.
Instead, Sam was patting his pockets and stammering.
“Have you lost your wallet?” she asked him.
“No, I—”
He found what he was looking for. He pulled back his chair and took a deep breath. He stood up.
And then he sank down on one knee if front of her. He held up a small box to her and snapped open the lid.
But it wasn’t the light that shone from the ring that set her heart on fire. It was the light that shone from his eyes.
“Allie, I was wondering—”
He cleared his throat.
“Allie, I was thinking—”
She was crying so hard she couldn’t help him out. The other patrons had stopped what they were doing. The waitstaff had stopped what they were doing.
The whole world stopped, even in this city that celebrated such things all the time, the whole world stopped in the absolute stillness of what was unfolding here.
The sacredness of it.
“Would you be my wife?” he whispered, hoarsely. “Would you walk through this world, and the days of my life with me?”
His voice was gaining strength now.
“Would you be the one who gives me courage when mine falters, and who shows me the way home when I have become lost?”
Though not everyone in the restaurant understood English, everyone seemed to understand the universal language of the heart. There was not a sound: not a coffee cup rattled, not a teaspoon moved, not a throat was cleared.
“Would you allow me to be the one who helps you up when you stumble, and who shows you the way back to yourself when you forget who you are?
“Can I be the one who is there as you sing your songs to the world?”
Through the tears, she said yes. Through the tears she told him that every song was really for him.
That every song was really about love.
He came off his knee and stood above her. He held out his hand to her. She took it. And entered his embrace.
The café exploded into the sound of people cheering and clapping as Sam kissed Allie and Allie kissed Sam.
But neither of them could hear a single sound above the rapturous beating of their own hearts.
EPILOGUE
“LOOK,” CODY CALLED. “All you have to do, Allie, is hold the kite. Throw it up in the air when I tell you. Unca, you run!”
Cody was six. His three-year-old sturdiness had given way to knobby knees and ribs that showed, no matter how much they fed him. Today, he was wearing a suit. It looked as if he had already lost the bow tie, and the shirt was rumpled where it was untucked from his pants. Sam felt just a little gleeful about a six-year-old’s innate ability to thwart anyone’s vision of perfection.
Sam did as he was told. He ran.
“Faster, Unca, faster.”
Sam did not think he would ever stop marveling at Cody’s voice: strong, sure, light-filled.
“Okay, Allie, throw it!”
Sam turned to see the kite lift, then nosedive toward the earth. When he turned to run again—hoping to make the kite catch the wind—he lost his footing and fell headlong in the sand. He twisted into a roll, hoping Allie would admire his graceful athleticism. He turned to look at her, and felt the breath whoosh out of him more than it had when he fell.
Honestly? The baby was due any day. She should have looked like a leprechaun explosion in that tent of a jade green dress she was wearing. Instead, she looked gorgeous.
“I think you may have ruined the kite. You’re definitely ruining your clothes!” she called to him, as if she hadn’t noticed his brilliant recovery from his tumble at all.
Sam felt annoyed—again—at his mother-in-law. A beachfront wedding. So close to Allie’s due date that she could have the baby out there on the beach. But there was no talking any sense to Professor Cook, Priscilla. She was bossy and controlling and easily the world’s most annoying person. Sam was only sucking it up for Allie’s sake.
