“I need help,” she said desperately.
To her sister’s credit, she remained steadfastly calm. “Where are you? Do you need me to come get you?”
“No. But can I stay the night?” Delaney heard herself ask. Until the words had come out of her mouth, she hadn’t known what she wanted. But now she was clear—she needed to be somewhere safe and grounded and real. And she knew her sister’s family could provide that for her.
“I’m making up the spare bed as we speak,” Claire said calmly.
“I’ll see you soon, then.”
Delaney ended the call and went into her bedroom. Shoveling clothes randomly into her overnight bag, she turned toward the door just as Sam walked in. He’d stopped to pull on a pair of jeans and nothing else, and he looked ready to spit fire at her.
“Please, Sam,” she said, stopping in her tracks.
Spotting her overnight bag, Sam looked startled.
“Where are you going?”
“To Claire’s. I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she said.
They stood for a moment in thick, heavy silence, then Sam stepped to one side. Delaney’s shoulders slumped a little as some of the tension left her and tears filled her eyes. She didn’t have the strength to resist him again. If he hadn’t let her go, she would have been powerless. She shot him a small, grateful look as she moved past him.
“Thank you,” she whispered. And then she was past him and moving away, determined not to look back.
“Okay. Tell me what’s going on,” Claire said as she plonked herself cross-legged in front of the bed while Delaney slumped onto the bed itself.
Delaney shrugged her shoulders to indicate how helpless she felt in the face of the mess she’d made of her life.
“I don’t know where to start,” she said.
“Let me help you narrow it down. Is it about work?”
“No. Well, some, I guess.”
Her sister nodded as if this made perfect sense to her. “Is it about work, and Sam?” she asked next.
Delaney nodded, holding the wineglass so tightly that her sister obviously feared for its safety. Uncurling Delaney’s fingers from the stem, Claire slid the glass onto the bedside table.
“Perhaps now’s a good time for me to let on that I know you love Sam, and that you have for years,” her sister began prosaically.
As absurd as it was after everything that had happened over the past few days, Delaney buried her head in her hands with embarrassment.
“God. Is it that obvious?”
“It’s okay. I only know because I’m your sister. To the independent observer, you and Sam are just great buddies. Although one or two of my friends have asked if you have any idea how hot Sam is.”
“Am I blind?” Delaney said, choking on a half laugh, half sob.
“So, what’s happened? Don’t tell me Sam’s finally met the girl of his dreams?” Claire guessed.
Just the thought of it made Delaney’s stomach clench. “No. No, he’s still footloose and fancy free, sleeping his way through the phone book as usual.” She snuck a glance at her sister and decided to go for broke. “I guess he must be up to the Ds,” she said, then winced as she anticipated her sister’s response.
“Oh!” Claire said. Then, “Riiiiight.”
Delaney felt she’d better explain.
“It just kind of happened. And then it kind of happened again. It’s insane, because as soon as I came back from holidays with you guys, I told Sam that I was going to leave the business, and then all this just…happened.”
Claire was nodding, but Delaney could tell her sister’s mind was elsewhere.
“What?”
“Well, to be honest, I always kind of thought you and Sam had already slept with each other. I figured you were bed buddies, sleeping with each other on and off. I mean, he’s pretty hot. And you’re pretty hot. It seemed…natural that you’d have done it before now.”
“Really?” Delaney was genuinely stunned by her sister’s observation. And by the fact that her sister’s married-mother-of-three sensibility acknowledged concepts like bed buddies.
“Yeah. I guess I have to reassess my opinion of Sam a little. One of the reasons I don’t invite him over here so much is because I don’t like the idea of him using you like that.”
“But he wasn’t. He’s never laid a hand on me until recently.”
“No. I know. I get that now.” Claire shook her head, a bemused expression on her face. “All I can say is, you must have self-control to spare.”
Delaney pictured Sam’s naked body again. “Yeah. And forearms like Popeye,” she said before she could stop herself. To her surprise, Claire threw her head back and laughed.
Delaney felt a small smile curving her own lips. She and Claire had always been close, but never this intimate. Most of their talk was oriented around family and friends, and Delaney couldn’t remember ever having a conversation that strayed into territory as revealing as jokes about self-gratification and sex. It was a relief to realize that her sister had a robust sense of humor about this sort of thing, as well as a much more worldly viewpoint than Delaney had previously given her credit for. She was beginning to think that coming here had been the smartest thing she’d done in a long time.
“So you and Sam have just caved after sixteen years of foreplay,” Claire said, shaking her head in amazement. “Did the sheets catch fire?”
“We didn’t make it to a bed. Both times,” Delaney said, taking a big sip of wine.
Claire huffed out a laugh. “Go, girl!”
Delaney managed a small smile, but the reality of her situation was starting to weigh down on her again. Claire seemed to sense this. Reaching for the wineglass, she took a sip, then eyed Delaney carefully.
“So what went wrong? Obviously the sex was good, or you wouldn’t have gone back for seconds.”
“The sex is—I mean was—off-the-planet good,” Delaney said.
“Right.”
Claire waited patiently while Delaney picked at the hem of her tank top.
“It doesn’t mean anything, though. We had sex, sure, but that just means I get to join the Sam Kirk Hall of Fame. He has no idea how I feel. And I know he doesn’t feel the same way about me because there’s no way he would have taken off like he did if he did.”
“Whoa, slow down there for a second,” Claire said, passing the wineglass back across and signaling for Delaney to have a drink. Delaney took a big mouthful and blinked away the tears that had rushed to her eyes. Ordering her thoughts, she tried again.
By the time she’d finished filling her sister in, they were on their third shared glass of wine and halfway through a jumbo jar of olives.
“I almost feel sorry for him,” Claire said, shaking her head as she contemplated the ruin of Delaney’s life.
“Thanks a lot.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. But you’re going to be okay, Laney. You’re going to move on with your life and finally get over him and meet someone else and have the family that you want. And when it’s too late, Sam’s going to understand exactly what he’s missed out on. I think that’s very sad.”
“I would, too, if I ever thought it was going to happen. He has a pretty good time just hanging around doing his guy thing. He’s not like me—it’s not like he’s going to wake up one day and realize that his dream of having a family is going to disappear in a puff of smoke if he doesn’t do something about it.”
Claire eyed her shrewdly. “Is that what happened when you were on holidays with us?” she asked.
Delaney nodded. “How did you know?”
“You went very quiet after that day with Callum on the beach,” her sister said, referring to her four-year-old middle child.
Delaney smiled faintly. She could still remember the exact moment that she understood she was in danger of missing out on one of life’s most amazing experiences. Some idiot had ignored the prominent notices along the beach that warned visitors about the safe disposal of glass, and Callum had stepped on a shattered beer bottle and let out a howl of pain and fright.
Her sister had been busy dragging Alana from the shallows, and she’d looked up instantly, alarm writ large on her face.
“Could you…?” she’d asked, her hands full of squirming two year old.
Delaney had already been racing to Callum’s side. She’d lifted him to her hip and held him tightly.
“It’s okay, hush, it’s okay,” she’d said soothingly.
Callum’s face had been streaked with tears and he’d already managed to somehow transfer a fine coating of sand to his cheeks. But it was the way he held her that inspired her epiphany. Reverting to pure baby status, he’d wrapped his arms and legs around her torso and clung on for dear life, pressing his head to her chest as though she was the only thing in the world that could comfort him. His small, podgy limbs had been warm and soft around her, and his hair had smelled of salt and sand and little boy. Her heart had squeezed in her chest, touched by his faith in her, and low in her midriff, her long-ignored ovaries had sprung to life as though they’d been waiting for just this cue before making their presence felt.
“It was that hug,” Delaney said fondly after a long moment of reflection. “Just for a second, I got a tiny taste of what it must feel like to be a mom. And I swear my ovaries just went crazy.”
Claire smiled a little smugly. “I knew if I kept throwing you at the kids you’d work it out for yourself.”
Delaney opened her mouth in shock, amazed to hear that her sister had had a secret agenda all these years. Claire shrugged unapologetically.
“I want my kids to have cousins,” she said. “And if Sam isn’t up for the job, then we’ll find someone else who is.”
Delaney nodded her agreement, but it didn’t take the weight of sadness off her chest.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing, selling out from the business and moving away from the apartment. For all his faults, Sam is bloody charming, and I can imagine how hard it must have been for you to pull away from him like this.”
“Yeah.”
“It will get better, Laney.”
“I know. But it has to get worse first. Why did I sleep with him?” she wailed. “I was almost home free, and then I had to go and taste what I’d only imagined all those years….”
“That good, huh?” Claire asked a little wistfully.
Delaney uncrossed her arms from where she’d instinctively covered her breasts, revealing her erect nipples. “Just from talking about him,” she said wearily.
“Wow. That is good.”
Delaney nodded sadly. Claire’s face wrinkled as she thought hard.
“Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. Cold turkey is not going to work in this situation. You’ve tried that, and I gather it’s not really a happening thing.”
Delaney thought back over the past week. “No, abstinence doesn’t seem to work where Sam is concerned.”
“So what you have to do is burn it out,” Claire announced decisively.
Delaney raised a questioning eyebrow. “Which means?”
“Remember when Todd insisted that I give up smoking before we got married? And how I tried and I tried and I just couldn’t kick it? A few nights before the wedding, I sat down in my room and I smoked a whole packet of cigarettes, one after the other. I was as sick as a dog the next day, but I have never touched one since. Can’t even stand the smell of smoke.”
Delaney was still frowning. “So you’re suggesting I take up smoking?” she asked, not quite grasping the full concept.
“No, my sweet idiot. I’m suggesting you bonk Sam’s brains out and keep on bonking until you can bonk no more. That, or until you’ve worn him down to a nubbin. Either way should do it for you.”
Delaney stared at her sister, then glanced at the bottle of wine they’d been drinking. It was still a quarter full, so her sister couldn’t be that drunk.
“You seriously think having more sex with Sam is the way to get him out of my system?” she asked incredulously.
“Yep. Look at it this way, if it doesn’t work, you’ll have some great snaps for the mental photo album.”
Delaney turned the idea over in her head. It couldn’t work. It was too attractive, for starters. And, besides, she had no guarantee that Sam would want to bonk until he could bonk no more. Even if there had been some heartening indications in that direction, there was no guarantee it would last. After all, Sam had hankerings for women all the time, and they never lasted longer than a few weeks.
“Think about it at least,” Claire said, then she hiccupped loudly.
Delaney took the wineglass from her hand. “We still have bedtime to get through,” she reminded her sister.
Claire pulled a face, then grabbed Delaney’s hand. “Promise me you’ll think about it. What have you got to lose, anyway? Believe me—anything, no matter how good it is, loses its luster after repeated viewings. If you know what I mean.”
Delaney eyed her sister warily. “Please tell me you’re not about to start talking about suburban sex parties,” she said.
“God, things aren’t as desperate as that,” Claire said. Then she winked broadly. “We still do okay, don’t you worry.”
A knock sounded on the door, and Todd stuck his head in. “The kids want their aunt Delaney to read their bedtime stories.”
Delaney stood with alacrity. “I’m on it.”
As she slipped past Todd and out into the hallway, she heard her sister speaking behind her.
“Why don’t you shut the door for a minute?” she suggested to her husband meaningfully.
Delaney gathered by the way the door promptly clicked shut that Todd wasn’t about to look a slightly drunk gift-horse in the mouth.
She paused in the hallway for a moment. She wanted all of this. The domesticity, the familiarity, the belonging. And she was never going to get it until Sam was out of her heart.
Maybe her sister’s advice wasn’t so silly after all.
SAM ENTERED HIS OFFICE the next day and blinked in surprise at the expanse of polished wood that greeted him. Someone had cleaned his desk while he was away. He bristled instantly. He hated it when anyone cleaned his office. It was his mess, he knew exactly where to find things in it, and anyone who had half a brain cell knew that to rearrange a single piece of paper on his desk was to invite a reprimand. He guessed immediately who would have taken it upon themselves to do it—Debbie. She was new, so it was conceivable that she hadn’t been warned about his no-touching-the-desk rule, and she’d been sending out signals that he’d been trying to ignore for a while now. Why was it that chicks thought that cleaning up a man’s personal space was the way to impress him? In his book, it was about as hot and sexy as them spitting on a handkerchief and wiping something off his face.