Any Man Of Mine (17 page)

“You, too.”

And then Faith was gone, leaving behind the scent of expensive perfume. The door closed behind her, and Autumn was alone with Sam. In his loft. On his turf.

“Can you move your arm?” Conner asked his dad.

“Yeah,” Sam reassured Conner. “I broke my clavicle.” He pointed to his collarbone. “I’m just wearing the sling to keep my arm still.”

Conner looked up at his father and shook his head. “I saw that man hurt you.”

“This is nothing compared to the time I busted up my ankle. At least I can walk around this time.”

She put her Hèrmes knockoff from Target on the barstool with Conner’s Old Navy hoodie. She left her own jacket on because she wouldn’t be staying long enough to get comfy. “But should you be walking around?” Autumn much preferred being around Sam in her house. Where she felt some semblance of control. Although with Sam, control had always been an illusion.

“Yeah. But I’m about to sit down.” He pointed to the cupcake. “I’ll eat the red worm. You have the green one.”

“Okay.” Conner grabbed a worm and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Later though.” He shut the top of the cupcake box as if the sight of worms coming out of a dirty-looking cupcake made him a bit queasy. “I’m not sure a worm will agree with all the medicine I just took.” Slowly, he moved past her, and Conner trailed behind. Maybe she should leave. Come back in an hour. She didn’t belong there. In Sam’s bachelor pad.

“Autumn, could you grab a bag of peas out of the freezer?”

“Sure.” She moved across the stone floor to a stainless-steel side-by-side and opened the door. The first breath of chilled air hit her face and the hollow of her throat as she looked inside at frozen juice, a box of Toaster Sticks, and about ten bags of frozen peas. She grabbed the one on top and walked from the kitchen. Sam sat on a leather sofa, Conner by his side. With his arm trussed up and the straps of his splint around his shoulder, he looked almost helpless. Well, as helpless as a six-two, two-hundred-plus wall of solid muscle could look.

She handed him the bag of peas. “Should I call Natalie for you?”

“Why?” He put the peas on his shoulder and sucked in a breath.

“Isn’t she your ‘assistant’? Maybe she should assist you.”

“Mostly she’s Conner’s babysitter. I don’t need a babysitter.”

Seeing him in pain, he not only looked helpless, but he really didn’t fit her image of him. The image she’d had over the years of a man with multiple girlfriends and even more sexual partners. He looked like a regular guy. Well, kind of. A regular guy with a scruffy five o’clock shadow on his movie-star jaw. “Do you need anything else?”

“No.” He shook his head and looked up at her through sleepy blue eyes. She didn’t know if he was tired or doped up. Probably both.

She glanced at the watch on the inside of her wrist. Five more minutes.

“Dad, what does
conceived
mean?”

Both Autumn and Sam looked at Conner, then at each other.

“What?”

“You said I was conceived. What does that mean?”

“Well ahh…” Sam stammered, and slid his gaze to his son. “It means that when two people… It means that…” He shifted the peas on his shoulder. For a guy who’d had a lot of practice at conceiving, he sure was having a hard time explaining it. Not that
she
wanted to give it a try. Especially not in front of Sam. When she had “the talk,” she didn’t want an audience. “Well, it’s when…” He winced as if he was in sudden and excruciating pain and couldn’t possibly think. “Ouch. My shoulder hurts. Ask your mother.”

“Me?”

He pointed to his collarbone. “Cut me some slack. I’m in a lot of pain here.”

Which wasn’t an excuse. “Fine.” She could probably answer the question better than Sam anyway. Her answer would be safer, at any rate. She sat on the sofa and turned to face Conner. “It means made.” There, that was easy.

“Oh.” He stared up at her though blue eyes so much like his father’s it was crazy. “I was made in Las Vegas?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” He swallowed, and she could practically see the wheels turning in his little brain. “How?”

She’d always known that someday she’d have to answer this question. She was prepared. She’d gone over it in her head several times, but never in her imaginings had Sam been sitting two feet away, a bag of peas on his shoulder, looking like he wanted to know the answer, too. “Well, when two people make love, they sometimes make a baby.”

“Oh.” Autumn held her breath, waiting for the next “how.” The questions were only going to get harder. He turned and faced Sam. “Can I have your gummy worm?”

“Go for it.”

Conner jumped up and ran into the kitchen as fast as his little sneakers could carry him.

A sigh of relief escaped her lungs as she scrubbed her face with her hands. “I feel like I just dodged a bullet.”

“I was kind of interested in how you were going to answer the questions working their way through his brain.”

She frowned and dropped her hands. “You were no help.” She leaned forward to make sure Conner was still in the kitchen before she said, “He asked you, and
you
certainly know what
conceived
means. Good God, you’re the biggest perv on the planet.”

He laughed, not at all ashamed. Of course not. He was Sam. “Not the biggest.”

“You’re right up there.”

“Which is why I probably shouldn’t answer such delicate questions.”

Conner returned, munching on a red gummy worm. The little wheels in his head were still turning. Just because he’d taken a worm break didn’t mean he was ready to let the subject go.

“Okay.” Autumn jumped to her feet before Conner could get his questions out. “We better get going now.”

“We just got here.”

“We talked about this, Conner. You knew we weren’t going to stay long. Your dad needs to rest.”

“What I need is a shower.”

She started toward the kitchen. “Let’s get your hoodie.”

“I need your help.”

That stopped her, and she slowly turned to face Sam. He was looking at her. “Me? You need me to help you take a shower?”

He chuckled and used his good hand to push himself up. “No. Not unless you insist.” He tossed the peas on the coffee table and pointed to his sling. “Somebody hooked this thing up in the back, and I can’t get it off.” He moved past her, just naturally assuming she’d help him out. “I’m not so sure I need it anyway.”

“Can I have your cupcake, Dad?”

“Knock yourself out, but just make sure you eat at the bar. I can’t break out the DustBuster after you leave today.” He looked back at Autumn over his shoulder. “Come on.” When she didn’t move, he stopped and turned to look at her. “I’m not trying to push you around. I just need a little help.”

That wasn’t the reason her feet were glued to his carpet. Helping him out of his sling felt a little too intimate. A little too close.

As if he read her mind, he asked, “Do you think I’m going to try something on you?”

He made it sound so ridiculous that there was only one thing left for her to do. She shook her head and shrugged out of her fleece jacket. She tossed it on top of her purse and followed Sam. “Of course I don’t think that.” They moved down a curved hall and passed a room that could only be Conner’s.

“That’s good, because I’m in no condition to start something that I can’t finish,” he said over his shoulder. “No matter how pretty you beg.”

If he hadn’t already been hurt and moving kind of slow, she might have been tempted to hit him. Instead, she kept her attention focused on the dark blue figure-eight splint across the back of his white T-shirt and the beige strap of his sling. He was right. The figure-of-eight and sling were Velcroed in back.

She followed him into the large master bedroom with a spectacular view of Elliott Bay. The bed itself was still unmade and rumpled from the night before, and a pair of hockey shorts, socks, and big pads had been kicked to one side. The walk-in closet was as big as her bathroom at home and the bathroom as big as her kitchen. Only fancier. A lot fancier.

He flipped on a switch with his good hand and a brushed-nickel chandelier and rows of canned lights shone down onto white-and-black marble. The shower stall could comfortably seat a family of six and was enclosed in glass and black granite with tiny silver flecks.

He stopped in the center of a zebra-skin rug. She was fairly sure it was a cowhide dyed to look like a zebra, but it was still mildly disconcerting.

He turned to face her. “What?”

She ran her gaze up his legs, past his waist, over the arm pinned to his chest, to his face. “That rug is a whole cowhide.”

“Yeah?”

She shook her head. “Aren’t you disturbed by it?”

“No more disturbed by it than by your leather sneakers.”

To her, it wasn’t really the same. Her shoes served a worthy purpose, and she thought animal skins used for nothing more than decorations were creepy. Like skulls and heads and antlers. Yuck. Her feelings didn’t have to make sense to anyone but her. She moved around behind him and reached for the buckle just above his right shoulder blade. “Has Conner seen it?”

“Yeah.”

Her knuckles brushed the warm cotton of his T-shirt. “Did he cry?”

“No, but he doesn’t like to walk on it.”

That was her boy. “He has a kind heart. He doesn’t like to hurt people or animals.” Which brought her to a subject she’d wanted to talk to him about. “Last night, he totally lost it when he saw you.” She rose onto the balls of her feet and tried to touch him as little as possible. She lightly put one palm in the center of his back for support as she pushed a strap over his shoulder. “It really upset him.”

“I know, but getting hurt is a risk that I take every time I step on the ice.” She moved around him as he slowly lowered his arm. “Last night was a freak accident.”

She carefully pulled the beige sling from his arm, sliding it past his elbow. She wanted Conner to take a break from hockey games, but she supposed the subject was moot for a while. At least until Sam returned to the ice. “From where I sat, it looked on purpose to me.” She glanced up into the grimace bracketing the corners of his mouth. She was so close, she could pick out every whisker on his stubbly chin.

“Oh, the hit was on purpose.” He sucked in a breath and looked down into her eyes. “The injury was a freak accident. I slammed into the wall at a bad angle.”

She set the sling on the black granite vanity top, then moved behind him once more. She ripped the Velcro on the figure-eight bandage and lightly slid her fingers beneath it.

“Shit.”

“You okay?”

“I’ve been worse.”

She slipped the bandage from his shoulders and set it next to the sling.

“Conner will learn that getting hit is just a part of hockey. He’ll be okay.”

She doubted it and once again moved to stand in front of him. “He’s a pacifist.”

“He’s a LeClaire.”

He was also a Haven. Nonviolent. Well, except for Vince. “Conner’s a lover, not a fighter.”

Sam gathered the hem of his T-shirt with his good hand and pulled it free. “You say that like he has to be one or the other. He’s a LeClaire.” He glanced up, and a slow smile curved his lips. “We’re gifted in both areas.”

She shook her head. “Even after all these years, I’m still amazed by your gigantic conceit.”

“It’s not conceit.” He motioned for her to help him out with the T-shirt. “Not if it’s true. I just don’t suffer from false modesty.”

Or any sort of modesty at all. She took a step closer and grabbed the edge of the soft cotton. She undressed Conner all the time. This was no different. It was mechanical. No big deal. She lifted his shirt past his waist and up his chest. See. No big deal. No biggie. No—
Holy mother of God
! She’d forgotten what corrugated muscles and six-packs and happy trails looked like up close. Her mouth went dry, and she swallowed hard. “Can you pull your arm out?” She didn’t like him. She didn’t hate him. Emotionally, she felt nothing. No pitter-patter of her heart, but physically… Physically, she felt like she’d been hit in the stomach with a flaming ball of lust. Reminding her for the first time in a very long time that she was more than just Conner’s mother. She was a thirty-year-old woman who hadn’t had sex in over five years.

He grabbed her hand and pressed her palm against his chest. His warm, hard,
bare
chest. Once upon a time, she’d licked that chest. Run her mouth up and down that flat belly like he was an all-you-can-eat buffet. “Did I hurt you?” When he didn’t answer, she looked up. Up past his hand over hers. Past his thick throat, and parted lips, and into his blue eyes.

“The first time I saw you,” he said, “I thought you had the prettiest hair I’d ever seen.”

What? While she’d been thinking about his hard belly, he’d been thinking about her hair. “Are you high?”

He grinned. “Very.”

He was goofy from pain medication and helpless from his injury. She didn’t have an excuse for her mental wanderings.

“I still think your hair is pretty.”

That was obviously the drugs talking. “Now, don’t say anything you’ll be embarrassed about tomorrow.”

He brushed his thumb across the backs of her knuckles. “Why would I be embarrassed?”

“Because you don’t like me.”

“I like you.”

He lifted his good hand and slid his big warm palm across her shoulder to the side of her neck. Suddenly, he seemed neither goofy nor helpless. “Sam.”

“You smell good. Like cupcakes.” He lowered his face and pressed his forehead into hers. “I like cupcakes.”

She gave a little laugh, and her fingers curled into his T-shirt. “You’ve never had my cupcakes.”

“Honey, I’ve had your cupcakes.” His fingers plowed through her hair, and he held the back of her head in his hand.

Her voice sounded kind of breathy and strained when she said, “I didn’t mean that.”

By contrast, he didn’t sound breathy at all. “I did.”

“Dad?”

At the sound of Conner’s voice, Sam lifted his head, and Autumn jumped back. Her hand fell to her side.

“Yeah, buddy?” Sam ran his gaze over Autumn’s face and hair before his own hand dropped to his side.