Secretly Married

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.

Chapter 3

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.

“Do we need to check your place for a body?”

His lips twitched. “Not yet.”

“So, what are you doing here?”

He nudged his mug. “What’s it look like?”

“Come on, Sam. You dropped the news that you’re secretly married and walked out of Annie and Logan’s party. And now, hours later, you’re at a bar you detest. Did you leave her alone at your place or what?”

“Delaney’s capable of fending for herself. Believe me.” More than capable. The woman preferred it to ever depending on someone else. She could dredge up a wealth of trust for her patients, but had she had enough in him?

Had he deserved it? No.