Daddy Says, ''I Do!''

His smile threatened to shake something loose inside her. What would it be like to have those teasing lips flirting with hers? Her heart skipped a beat, but she’d long ago learned the dangers of dancing to that foolish rhythm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Hey, it was your idea in the first place. You’re the one who insisted on paying.”

“And you always take sandwiches over cold hard cash?”

“I was thinking maybe steak and potatoes, but if you’re craving sandwiches—”

Throwing her hands out to her sides, Kara protested, “I did not say I was craving sandwiches!”

Sam grinned again, stopping any further protest as she realized he wasn’t looking at her. Glancing down, she saw Timmy watching the exchange with wide-eyed interest. He looked slightly puzzled, as if wondering what his normally calm, cool and collected aunt was doing standing on the side of the road, arguing with the most infuriating man.

It was a question she had to ask herself, and she felt her face heat as she looked back at Sam. Seeming to realize he’d pushed as far as he should, he flicked the edge of the business card she still held. “Don’t forget to get that tire replaced.”

He turned to walk back to his beat-up-looking car, and Kara knew she should let it go. Just let him walk away. But the words escaped before she could stop them and she called out, “I’m going to pay for the new tire.”

He turned with his hand braced on the driver’s side door. “No problem. I’m all for dessert, too. You know where to find me when you decide what you’re hungry for.”

The ridiculous, arrogant parting line was still ringing in her ears when Sam’s car sped off with a squeal of tires and cloud of dust. What she was hungry for…

Kara snorted in response as she helped Timmy back into his booster seat. When it came to men like Sam Pirelli, she was on a permanent diet!

“What’d you say, Aunt Kara?”

“Nothing, sweetie.” Looking up from snapping the belt at his waist, her heart stuttered as she met the little boy’s gaze. She swallowed as recognition hit hard, and an unwanted thought drifted through her mind for the first time.

He has his daddy’s eyes.

Chapter Two

As Sam walked into his garage later that morning, he spotted a familiar pair of worn work boots and skinny, jeans-clad legs sticking out from beneath a navy sedan. Even though Will Gentry had been working for him since the beginning of summer, Sam still wasn’t one hundred percent accustomed to someone else in his shop.

He had long prided himself on taking care of his customer’s cars as if they were his own—doing all the maintenance and repairs, and not letting anyone else lend a hand. Thanks to that work ethic, he was busier than he could handle, to the point of turning work away. Hiring an employee had been a big step, but it was only the beginning of plans that included the Corvette he’d parked out front.

A grin tugged at his lips when he thought about Kara’s obvious lack of appreciation for the work he’d done on the car. Obviously she wasn’t easily impressed. What would it take, he wondered, to really wow a woman like her?

Anticipation fueled the blood in his veins even though he wasn’t sure what to make of his undeniable interest. He didn’t usually go for serious types. Or single mothers, he reminded himself. Knowing Kara had a son should have been enough to keep his mind off the woman, beautiful or not. But she was only visiting. So, it wasn’t as if he was expecting anything permanent. Just a chance to get to know the lady, short-term, until she was ready to move on.

“How’s it going, Will?” Sam asked, turning his attention back to his young assistant. One good thing about having an employee was having someone to talk to. With Will, that meant having someone who listened, but rarely responded beyond a mumbled word or two.

The grunted response from under the sedan was less verbose than usual, but Sam knew the simple oil change wasn’t enough to give Will any trouble. “Come on out for a minute, will ya?”

Moving in slow motion, Will’s scuffed heels inched along the concrete, revealing more of his threadbare jeans, then a ratty yellow T-shirt over a nearly skin-and-bones torso, until finally Sam got a glimpse of the kid’s face—and the black eye he’d been reluctant to reveal.

Sam frowned as the kid tucked his legs up beneath him. “What happened, Will?” he demanded even though the fist-shaped bruising around the boy’s swollen eye told the story. “Or should I say who?”

Smart, skinny and shy, Will could easily be the target of bullies, and Sam felt a protective instinct to step in and defend the kid. By the time he was Will’s age, he’d filled out enough that his size alone silenced the insults that had done more damage than any physical fight.

“It was my fault,” Will mumbled, refusing to meet his gaze. “I started it.”

“Oh, really,” Sam said, deadpan. Will was a good kid. Not the kind to get into trouble or cause fights.

“Look, if some kid’s been bullying you, you can tell me.”

Will kept his head down, as if Sam might forget about the black eye if he didn’t look him in the face. “It’s not some kid. It’s—Something I can handle.”

“If you want, I can show you some ways to defend yourself.”

“Yeah, right.” Will paused. “The guy’s like twice my size.”

“Self-defense isn’t about being bigger than your opponent, you know.”

Will snorted as he stood and glanced between Sam’s six-foot-three-inch, two-hundred-pound frame and his own five-seven and buck-twenty-five. “Easy for you to say.”

“Hey, I wasn’t always this size, and growing up I had two older brothers who used to gang up on me. It felt like they’d always be bigger and stronger and that no matter how much I grew, I’d never catch up.”

Sometimes it still felt that way. As if his brothers’ successes and accomplishments were somehow greater than his own.

It wasn’t that he was jealous of his brothers. He was proud of them. And, okay, so Nick and Drew had gone to college—Nick to be a veterinarian and Drew to study architecture before he decided he preferred building to designing—while Sam had struggled far more than he’d let on to just finish high school.

His brothers had been the good students, and he’d been the troublemaker, the class clown. All his life he’d heard the same comments from his teachers, his parents, even his high school girlfriend. If you’d just try harder…

The hell of it was, he had tried. He could remember being ten or eleven years old and sweating bullets as he struggled to finish a test or a project or a reading assignment. But he’d been unable to focus, to concentrate. His mind would drift away. Soon his gaze would follow and before long he’d have to escape. To be outside where he could run and play and forget.

By the time he hit junior high, he realized failing without trying was easier. He doubted he could explain it, but to his frustrated, angry mind, it had made sense. If he didn’t study, if he didn’t do his homework, if he didn’t complete assignments, he had a built-in excuse for failing. All it meant was that he was lazy, a goof-off who lacked discipline. If he tried and failed, well, that meant he was stupid, didn’t it?

When he reached high school, he discovered an alphabet’s worth of acronyms for learning disabilities. Part of him had been relieved to discover a reason for his problems, but by then keeping those difficulties a secret for the sake of his social standing had been second nature.

So he’d continued to hide his weakness behind an easy laugh and a what-the-hell smile and managed to get through high school. Barely. God, he’d been so scared, nearly sick to his stomach, his entire senior year. Terrified that he’d fail a class so badly his teachers would hold him back when all he wanted was to get out. Stuck behind a desk, crowded inside four walls, he’d itched for freedom, desperate to escape and unable to sit still.

Even though the worst of his symptoms had faded as he grew older, something his online research had told him didn’t always happen, that same feeling still snuck up on him when he thought about settling down. Trapped by a white picket fence instead of the chain link that circled the high school, but trapped all the same.

Shaking off those memories, Sam told Will, “If you change your mind and decide you’d like some help, let me know.”

“Just forget it, okay, Sam? I can take care of myself.”

Sam recognized the defiant lift to the boy’s chin and knew he wasn’t going to get any more out of Will. But patience had never been Sam’s strong suit. He wanted to push, to keep driving and get to the bottom of what Will had said—and whatever it was he was trying not to say.

Deciding to leave the ball in Will’s court for now, he nodded toward the sedan. “Think you can take care of this oil change?”

Will nodded, relief filling his young features.

“All right, then. Get back to work.”

Following his own advice, Sam checked the inventory for a replacement tire for Kara’s minivan. Even though she hadn’t told him where she’d be staying, he could easily find out. But for now it was another opportunity to play it cool. He’d given her the perfect excuse to see him again. If she didn’t take it—well, then he’d have to come up with an excuse of his own.

Never, in her wildest imagination, had Kara dreamed of being a spy. She’d never tried opening a lock with an unfolded paperclip. Never sent away box tops from sugary cereal for a secret decoder ring. Never tried eavesdropping with a glass pressed against a door.

Just as well, she decided, as she sank further down behind the steering wheel. Because she certainly would have been very, very bad at it. Not that she was actually spying. She’d parked beneath a shady spot across the street from Sam Pirelli’s garage fifteen minutes ago, the windows rolled down to catch a breeze carrying the scent of surrounding pines, but she wasn’t spying.