Honest, he reminded himself. “I thought I was.”
She tipped her head to one side. “But?”
“She broke up with me and I ran after her, but that wasn’t about love. That was about family. Safety. And it’s over. From here on out, it’s all about you.” He ripped the paper off the landscape; he’d gone to great pains to first find the artist, then acquire it.
A soft sigh escaped her lips. “You really were paying attention to me.”
“Every minute, even if I did have to run off. Which I handled badly, by the way. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes blazed brighter. “I don’t want your apology.”
“You don’t.”
“Nope.”
“Then what do you want?”£
She walked toward him, placing her arms around his neck. “I want you.”
“You have me,” he said in a gruff voice he barely recognized. Then he did what he’d wanted to do since the moment they’d met. What he’d only done once, and it wasn’t nearly enough.
He kissed her.
Eighteen
When Sam told Mike to go after Cara, he’d been so sure of his advice, Go big or go home. Mike had had a point to make: that he wasn’t leaving Serendipity or Cara, and most importantly, that he’d changed and wanted to put down roots. So Mike had purchased a house and an engagement ring and gotten his girl. Sam didn’t see his situation with Nicole the same way. He was here, he wasn’t going anywhere, and she’d shown him what it meant to fall in love. For Sam, it was simple. Except she didn’t believe he loved her, and he didn’t know what to do in order to convince her he meant what he said.
Frustrated and not in the mood to be alone in his house, wondering what Nicole was doing next door, he drove over to his parents’. He found his mom working outside on her hands and knees in one of the flower beds.
He parked in the driveway and joined her, kneeling down by her side. “Hi, Mom.”
“Sam! I’d hug you but my gloves are covered with dirt.” Her eyes, so similar to his, lit up as she met his gaze. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t I just come to visit?”
“I suppose you could.” She eyed him
warily. “If you didn’t have that lost-little-boy expression I remember from . . . the time we don’t discuss,” she said, her voice trailing off.
He shook his head, amazed at how stupidly stubborn he’d been about a woman and a time long past. “You can talk about Jenna,” he told his mother.
She stripped her gloves off her hands. “Help me up.”
Sam rose to his feet and helped his mother do the same.
“Let’s go sit.”
He followed her to the front steps and they sat down on the top one. It reminded him of when he and his siblings were in elementary school and they would all wait here for the bus to pick them up. His mother had always been there, day in and day out. He doubted Nicole could say the same.
“What’s on your mind?” his mother asked him.
He rested his hands between his legs and groaned. “I blew it with Nicole.”
His mother looked up at him. “It can’t be that bad. What did you do?”
“From the beginning, I told her I didn’t want a serious relationship and never would. So by the time I took my head out of my . . . you know . . . and told her I loved her, she didn’t believe me.”
Her eyes took on that sad, disappointed look he hated. “Oh, Sam.”