Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
This time yesterday, Lola had been certain she would never come back to Virtue for the long term. Reuniting with Sam, just for the afternoon, had thrown all of that—not into uncertainty, she thought. It was just that she now knew, with absolute confidence, that she could come back here and be with Sam and be happy for the rest of her life. It hadn't seemed possible, a day ago. Today, anything did.
Anything except walking the seven miles out to Sam's estate. She stood on the sidewalk outside the ice cream parlor, arms akimbo and astonishment in her voice. "What do you mean, you didn't drive into town today?"
"The investors," Sam said with helpless amusement. "They already had a vehicle, and I think I imagined we'd go back out to the house to talk about things this evening, so I drove in with them."
"Even if this was fifty years ago and not March, I wouldn't walk to your house, Sam!"
"No, no, I know." He took his phone out, laughing. Lines crinkled around his eyes when he did, and the beard that she was growing fonder of turned up at the corners of his mouth. "I'll call a taxi. I don't plan to walk that far in the cold, either. Not in this condition, anyway."
"What condition," Lola said, "being seventy?"
"I won't be seventy for weeks . Yes, hi!" he said into the phone. "I need a taxi at the Silver Dollar Ice Cream Parlor, please? Or we can walk up the block to the square." He paused, nodded, and said, "See you in a minute."
Lola looked at his phone curiously as he hung up. "I didn't think anybody called actual taxis anymore. I thought you'd use one of the ride share services. And an app."
"The township banned rideshares," Sam said absently as he put the phone away. "There still aren't a lot of taxis, but putting them out of business for somebody else's side hustle seemed like a bad idea. When people said they couldn't make ends meet, the town council voted to raise the minimum wage in the township."
"You're kidding."
"I'm not. It was controversial, obviously, but strangely enough nobody went out of business." Sam squinted down the street, as if the taxi might somehow sneak up on them. "That's not true. A couple places did go out of business, but it turned out they were carrying unmanageable debt loads that would have driven them under within a few months anyway. They mostly just gave up when the minimum wages rose. I know one place refinanced and they're still going." He cast her a brief smile. "I try to pay attention, for a man who hides in his house on the edge of town."
"Virtue is so much more vibrant than I remember it, or expected it to be," Lola admitted, then cast a flirtatious smile at Sam. "And I don't think it's just that I'm happy to see you and it's casting a rosy glow over everything."
He laughed and opened the taxi door for her when it drove up. "No. It's doing well. Unexpectedly well."
She scooted over so he could climb in the same side she'd gotten in, and leaned against him as he tucked his arm around her shoulders, as if nothing had changed in fifty years. And in some ways, nothing important had. Her heart still soared when she saw Sam, and that was what mattered. She murmured, "Thank God Charlee called me," and he turned his head to smile into her hair, breath stirring it because she'd put her hat in her coat pocket.
"I'm going to have to thank her," he said just as quietly. "I didn't expect my life to be completely different by dinnertime, today."
"Is it?" Lola asked happily.
Sam tilted back enough to be able to see her, his eyebrows lifted a little. "Isn't it?"
"It is." He was right there. Lola lifted her chin a bit and pressed her mouth to his.
Sam made the smallest possible sound against her mouth and slid his hand into her hair, warm and strong and confident, just as he'd always been. The spark that they'd always had flared to life again, shining through Lola and sending shivers over her body. They broke apart, both breathless and both aware the taxi driver was trying not to grin into the rear-view mirror, but Lola, blushing with happiness, didn't really care. Sam brushed his nose against hers. "And here I was trying to be a gentleman."
"You always were. And I, according to your mother, am a wanton gold-digging hussy with a heart of stone, so be warned."
"My mother must have been looking in a mirror when she said that." Sam tucked her close against his side again, and Lola closed her eyes, smiling as they drove out of town. It was only a few minutes out to his house, but she floated through them, quietly joyful, until the car pulled up to the house.
She took a breath, steeling herself to see it again, opened her eyes, and blurted, "You repainted the windows!" They'd been dark with black shutters, last she'd seen them, and she'd never thought the colors went well with the old red brick house. Now they were white, and the shutters a deep forest green that contrasted nicely.
Sam chuckled. "New roof, too. And the floors have been redone. It has been fifty years."
Lola sat straight up, horrified. "You didn't get rid of that old original hardwood, did you?"
"God, no. I should have said refinished, not re done ."
"Oh, thank goodness. Those floors were beautiful. There were always dog claw marks on them, though, so probably refinishing them was necessary."
"Not dog claws," Sam said half under his breath as he helped her out of the car in an unnecessary but chivalrous offer. "But you're right, they were scratched up. Mother hated that."
"Was there anything she did like?"
"Money," Sam replied ruefully. Lola snorted and he laughed. "I forgot you did that. You snorted like that at a teacher in about sixth grade and it was the first time I noticed a girl in my whole life. I mean, noticed a girl."
"I did not!" Lola was almost certain she had, but it was such an indelicate way to be noticed.
"Oh, you did. He'd said something incredibly stupid, like women should be seen and not heard, and you snorted. Half the class laughed, he turned red, and you sat there glaring at him with the most scathing look I'd ever seen on a girl's face. It was love at first sight." Sam pushed the door open, and Lola forgot to be embarrassed at the story as his house unfolded for her.
It had always been a spectacular old building, three stories high with a blocky central house and what Sam's mother had insisted on calling 'wings,' although Lola had always privately thought of them as extensions. Still, they were symmetrically added, each of them two floors high, so she supposed 'wings' wasn't wrong . A well-finished hardwood-floored foyer spread out in front of her, with a broad staircase going upstairs; she knew there was a library and a living room to the left and right, a second living area straight ahead, and a tremendous kitchen that led into a dining area behind the first living room. Lola had always thought the house was suitable for holding state dinners in, although the most formal thing she'd ever attended there had been Sam's funeral, and…well, she'd been right. It was perfect for that kind of large, solemn affair.
She really only had the faintest idea what the wings contained: offices, bedrooms, and bathrooms, presumably. The second floor was mostly bedrooms, and the third on the main floor had once been, and probably still were, servant's quarters. She guessed the second floors of the wings might house more servant's quarters, although there weren't that many people working for the house anymore.
But the last time she'd been there, even overlooking the fact it had been a funeral, the house had been…stiff, Lola thought. Stiff, stuffy, rigid, formal. It had looked like a museum more than a home, with period furniture and portraits that told the family's story in a way that made it clear the past was at least as important as the present, and probably more important than the future.
Now, although Sam said it had been a long time since he'd had foster kids there, it felt like a home . There was a shoe rack, for heaven's sake. And an umbrella stand next to it, the kind that came from Ikea, not…not Benjamin Franklin's personal woodworker, or something. A comfortable bench also had shoes under it, and was obviously for sitting down to put them on at. There were paintings, some bad, some fantastic, on the walls, but they all had personality and the really terrible ones looked like they'd probably been done by happy children, which made them wonderful in a different way.
"Well," Lola breathed. "If you'd told me it was like this now, I would have come home with you right away. This feels like a home, Sam. It's not how I remember it at all."
"A mostly-empty home these days," he agreed with a melancholy smile. "But a home. Can I get you a drink?"
"I'm still full of ice cream soda," Lola promised. "Will you show me around? And how on earth did you get foster children past your parents? And all of the changes you've made? Or did you wait until—" She broke off, not wanting to be indelicate, but Sam gave a low chuckle.
"I did wait until they died, in a manner of speaking, but it wasn't…they died quite young. A stupid accident, really, only a few years after I came home. The toxicology report said Father had been drinking."
Lola put her hand on his arm. "Oh, God, Sam. I'm sorry."
He exhaled and, with a questioning glance to make sure it was all right, folded her into his arms. She held on to the hug, willing him to be comforted, and after a moment he murmured, "Thank you. It was a long time ago now, and I've long since come to terms with it. It's difficult, though, when you lose someone close to you, even if you don't particularly get along with them. I spent about a year just…numb. Confused. And then a social worker from town approached me about possibly becoming a foster parent."
"For children with special needs?" Lola asked, genuinely surprised. "When you were still in mourning?"
"Ahhh…" Sam released her and stepped back, brushing a hand over his white hair. "They were special needs I was specifically well-suited for. I will show you around, Lola, if you still want me to in a few minutes, but first I need to tell—show—you something. Something I should have told you after graduation, and had every intention of doing, but…"
"It was a difficult time," Lola said with an easy shrug. "We both knew it then, and know it now. It just doesn't hurt quite as much now as it did back then."
Not quite as much, she thought, but the old memories did still carry a powerful sting, at times. Sam hadn't actually proposed, not yet, but it was a given for both of them that they would get married soon. Lola had still held out hope, at the time, that his parents might come around, and hadn't wanted to elope because she'd been afraid it would set them against her forever. "The last thing I wanted was to be the reason you were estranged from them," she said now, as she had all those years ago, then sighed. "Although your mother insisted on interpreting that as I didn't want to risk losing your fortune. She told me they'd disinherit you if we got married. That was after I refused their money, so you'd have thought she would have figured out that I wasn't a gold digger by then."
"I remember. Or what I remember," Sam said gently, "was how upset you were. You didn't want me to lose my family, or my fortune. Not on your account. And I remember telling you it didn't matter. That fate meant us to be together. There was something else I should have told you then, too. Would you mind sitting down? This might be a bit of a shock."
"What'll be a shock? You were too mad at them to tell me much of anything," Lola said, the distance of years making it easier to see the humor in it all. She let Sam lead her to the central living area and settled onto a couch, watching him pace nervously. "You were too mad to think of much of anything. You spent about a week spluttering, if I recall."
"I thought of joining the military so I wouldn't have to rely on their money," Sam said wryly. "Look how well that worked out. But I meant it when I said we were fated to be together, Lola. I—God, I'm nearly seventy and I don't have any more idea how to do this than I did when I was nineteen!"
Lola gave him a sly look, though she kept her voice prim as she said, "I also recall you having a pretty good idea of how to do 'this' when you were nineteen."
Ruddy bars showed in Sam's cheeks, and Lola clapped her hands with delight. "I can still make you blush. That's wonderful. Sam, whatever it is, just go ahead and tell me. We're too old to keep secrets from each other."
"You know my family had plans for me to marry someone," he said in a rush of words. "Somebody they considered appropriate."
"Another wealthy blueblood," Lola said dryly. "I do remember. She was quite pretty. Valerie something?"
"De Vos."
She gave him a look. "You didn't have to remember it quite that easily."
Sam had the grace to squirm with embarrassment. "Well, it's relevant to the conversation. She wasn't exactly a blueblood, but she did fit certain expectations my parents had for me. We were—she was—oh, for God's sake. She could do this, too."
With that, right there in the middle of his living room, Sam Todd turned into a fox.