“I’ll check it,” he whispered back instantly and I gave his arm another squeeze.
“I know you won’t be able to do that, it’s impossible but I’m asking you to try.”
“Baby,” his face got closer, “I’ll… check… it.”
I stared into his eyes and somehow I knew he’d check it.
And there it went. That settled in my soul too.
“Well, in your defense, it isn’t often you find out the woman you’re banging has had a hit put out on her.”
Sam stared at me. Then I watched his face warm and my heart warmed with it.
Then he leaned in, touched his mouth to mine, pulled back an inch and said softly, “Shower. Calls. Then we’ll figure out what’s next.”
I nodded.
He moved in again to kiss my nose.
Then he let me go and strode into the bedroom.
I watched him until he disappeared.
Then I watched the space where he disappeared.
Then I shoved my face in my knees.
Then I made a mental note to call Paula in three hours and tell her I was the woman Sampson Cooper was currently banging before she pulled up any of her gossip sites at the office (which I knew she did first thing while listening to phone messages), found out before I could tell her and lost her marbles.
Then, suddenly, I whispered, “I f**king hate you Cooter Clementine,” to my knees.
Cooter, being dead and buried in Indiana, had no reply.
Chapter Twelve
My Girl Deserves Gentle
After Sam had a shower and got on the phone, I hopped into the shower and did what I did since I started things with Sam which meant the whole shebang of shaved legs, shaved pits, all over lotion, half-squirts of perfume in strategic areas and a cute outfit of white short-shorts and tight-fitting, coral pink, eyelet camisole that kicked ass with my tan.
Seeing as we were on the Med and I was confined to quarters due to the possibility that my life would imminently be snuffed out, I forewent makeup and the big blow out of my hair as such effort was clearly unnecessary. But I did blow out the long fall of bangs that fell past my eyes because, really, if I didn’t, it could get scary. The rest of my hair I was going to let dry curly, wavy and untamed and if Sam thought it made me look like a wild woman raised by apes, so be it.
I had bigger things to worry about.
Seriously.
And anyway, he’d seen me at the beach and he hadn’t escaped in the middle of the night so I figured I was good.
Then I went to the bed, laid on my back, cocked my knees, stared at the ceiling, tried and failed to eavesdrop on Sam’s various conversations in the lounge, gave up on that and was far more successful in plotting Cooter’s grisly death and imagining it to its culmination.
Unfortunately, Cooter was already dead.
Still, a girl could dream.
I also counted down the minutes to when I could start calling my family and friends. I wasn’t sure I was going to get into the fact that my life was in danger, that might be too much after the, “Sampson Cooper is doing me” news.
I had an hour left to wait and Cooter had died in twelve bloody, painful, macabre ways in my murderous fantasies that were even more bloody and macabre than having half his head blown off when I felt Sam’s presence enter the room.
I kept my eyes to the ceiling even as I felt Sam’s presence enter the bed.
He stretched out beside me and I felt his hand come to rest on my belly.
“What are you thinking?” he asked quietly.
“I’m plotting Cooter’s murder,” I answered.
This brought silence and then, “Baby, he’s dead.”
“Good, I can’t go to prison for plotting the murder of a dead man.”
“Kia –”
I turned my head and caught his eyes. “Sam, he put a hit on me.”
Sam pressed his lips together, his eyes went hard and scary and I made a mental note not to remind him my dead husband hired a hit man to murder me.
It was clearly time to change the subject.
“In an hour, I’m starting the round of calls to my friends and Mom and Dad telling them about us.”
“All right.”
“I’m not informing them of the, uh… other stuff.”
“Probably a good idea.”
I drew in breath.
Sam spoke.
“Do you want some good news?”
“Yeah, Sam, that would work,” I replied and he grinned.
“Clinic in Heraklion called. Your tests came back clean.”
Well, thank God for that.
Sam had located a private, clean, exclusive (by the looks of it, though I wouldn’t know since he’d insisted on paying, something he insisted on doing all the time, I hadn’t so much as bought a drink) clinic in Heraklion and I’d gone for my tests the afternoon of the day we arrived on Crete.
So there you go. Cooter didn’t give me herpes; he just put a hit on me.
At least that was one way Cooter didn’t screw me from the grave.
“Excellent,” I muttered and my head turned back, my eyes going to the ceiling.
Sam’s hand pressed into my belly and he asked, “What’re you tellin’ your folks about us?”
I stopped breathing.
Oh God.
What was I going to tell my Mom, Dad and friends about us?
I forced air into my lungs and my eyes slid to Sam.
“Uh…” I mumbled and he grinned again.
Then his hand slid around me and he pulled me to my side, facing him, my legs fell into his, his immediately shifted to tangle with mine and he pulled me into his solid heat.
“How’s this?” he whispered, I stared into his warm, intense eyes and stopped breathing again and he kept talking. “We met, we clicked, this is somethin’ we both wanna explore so that’s what we’re gonna do. Right now, things are up in the air so when we go home, you might be comin’ with me to my place in North Carolina or I might be goin’ with you to Indiana. You’ll let them know when we know.”
I consciously made myself breathe again and asked, “North Carolina?”
“If I think you’re safer there, that’s where you’re goin’.”
This made sense.
But I totally could not do this.
“Sam, I can’t go to North Carolina with you.”
His brows drew together and he asked, “Why not?”
“Well, Memphis, one. My house just sold and I have tons of stuff to do, two. I haven’t seen my family or friends in five weeks, three. I’ve never been gone this long before in my life and they miss me, four. And I’m going to be homeless if I don’t get my shit sorted and find a house, five.”