Three #4
Rachel rolled her eyes, and her daughter, Riley, caught the look and giggled. It was nice to see, and when Rachel’s eyes flicked to mine, I saw the happiness there.
“The good thing about a Glock,” Sam began, “is that it’s dependable. It never needs to be taken apart, you don’t have to clean it or oil it, and you can fall into water, wearing it, and it will still fire.”
“Okay, that’s cool,” Peter chimed in.
“Yeah, see?” Sam shrugged. “So, the good outweighs the bad, but for home and for my secondary weapon, I have the Colt because if I aim at something, I want it to go down and have no chance of getting back up.”
And the last part he said while looking at Noah, and I thought the guy was gonna throw up right there.
I put my hand on Sam’s thigh under the table and patted gently.
“My daddy was a Marine,” Kola told the stranger. “Do you know what that is?”
“Yes,” Regina asked the guest, “do you know what that is?”
Poor bastard, but really, what had he been thinking with that comment?
Gay equaled good dresser, good dancer, and good decorator?
Really? I was sure that Michael had mentioned it in passing to his friend, like, I have two sisters and one brother; one of my sisters is divorced, the other’s married, and my brother’s married to a man.
It would have been nothing, a throwaway comment that his buddy had pulled out for no good reason.
But it was offensive, and Sam was annoyed and then made sure the guy knew it. Sam and subtlety had never met.
“Yeah,” Sam told Doug. “I’ll take both you and Pete out. It would be my pleasure.”
“Great.” Doug smiled at him. “I can’t wait.”
“Pass the potatoes,” Ally, Jen’s daughter, said to her mother. “And I wanna learn to shoot too, okay, Mom? I’m thinking about joining ROTC next year in high school.”
“Oh, that’s great,” Sam told her.
She beamed back at him, and Kola told her that since Sam was an expert marksman—he had explained in his report how Sam had to take a test every six months to keep that status current—there was nobody better for her to learn to shoot from.
“So, you see,” Regina commented, arching one eyebrow at Michael, “dancing is not the only thing Hannah’s fathers know how to do well.”
Michael threw up his hands in defeat. I doubted his friend, whom I didn’t even get a proper introduction to, would be back.
Everyone came outside after dinner, before dessert, to look at the new minivan. Sam explained that the old one was done for and would be sold as salvage, and Hannah was sad that she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to it. He told them that this one was a steal and looked over at me.
“Are you mad?”
“It’s really safe,” he told me. “And we’ll send the insurance money to Aaron when we get it.”
“He called me because he needed a favor, and I explained about the van, and—”
“I already heard all this.” He smiled, hand on the back of my neck, pulling me close and pressing his lips to my forehead.
“How?”
“He called me,” Sam said, curling a piece of hair behind my ear. I had worn it long for many years, but felt that wearing it shorter was more fatherly, serious. So now my dirty-blond hair fell above my shoulders.
“He did?”
“Yeah, he’s getting smarter in his old age about talking to me, including me. I mean, I know how he works. I know he just does things. I get it.”
“He just sees it as helping.”
“I know. If we end up keeping it, as I said, we’ll give him the insurance money and make up the difference. We don’t take charity.”
“I told him that’s what you’d do. What I would do too.”
“It’s better not to argue with him, just go along. When he gets a cashier’s check, he won’t have a choice but to cash it.”
“He’ll just overpay me for the job we’re doing for him,” I sighed.
“Whatever. That’s between his company and yours. That has nothing to do with me or my kids. So, I’m good.”
“He’s gonna be pissed,” I said, chuckling.
“He’s lucky I’m not,” he said, smoothing a hand down my back, pressing me close. “Because he doesn’t provide for you or my kids, only I do.”
“I know.”
“He can’t ever cross the line again, J. You understand?”
I did.
“I already told him.” Sam coughed.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And what did he say?” I was interested.
“He said okay. We’ll see if he can do it.”
I bit my bottom lip.
“What?”
“I, um, cheated.”
Sam let out a breath. “He showed you whatever he had about me and Kevin Dwyer.”
I was stunned. “How did you know?”
“I know you, and I know what he wants, and whatever he can do to help you helps him.”
“Sam, he—”
“Oh, I’m not saying that Aaron Sutter has been anything but civil to me and not a complete gentleman with you for the past four years, but one of these days, he’s gonna slip up.”
“He’s not in love with me anymore, Sam. Not really.”
“If I died tomorrow, J, he’d be the first guy there to offer condolences.”
“Well then, you’d better stay alive so the kids and I don’t fall into his clutches.”
“That’s my plan,” he said, dipping his head so he could gently bite down on my earlobe. “It’s always been my plan.”
He was very pleased with the goose bumps that covered my skin.