It's in His Kiss

  “Dad.” Sam rubbed his temple. “Be straight with me. For once.”

  “It’s a liver problem,” he repeated.

  Sam drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What’s the plan?”

  “My insurance’s crap.”

  Of course it was. “What’s the plan,” Sam repeated.

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll fill you in when I do.” Mark paused. “Your woman’s a real catch, you know. You should hold on to her.”

  “She’s not my woman, dad. She’s my employee.”

  “Son, if that’s true, then you’re not as smart as I’ve always thought. She gave me a sandwich.”

  “Becca gave you a sandwich.”

  “Yeah, and she put chips on it. The girl’s brilliant, I tell you.”

  “When did she feed you?”

  “After I left your shop, I sat on the beach for a while, then wandered back to the hut. Becca asked if I needed anything, and I said not unless she had a sandwich, and she said she did have a sandwich, and yeah. It was amazing.”

  “You realize that you probably ate her lunch.”

  “She said she didn’t want it.”

  Sam rubbed his temples again but it didn’t help. The headache was upon him. “She was just being nice,” he said. “Next time, if you’re hungry, come to me. Got it? Not her, never her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’d give you the shirt off her back, Dad.” And you’d take it. . .

  “She said it was okay,” Mark said stubbornly. “She said I could go see her any time I wanted.”

  Sam could actually feel his blood pressure rising. Before he had a stroke, he said, “I’ve got to go.”

  “You coming home soon?”

  The thought of going home to his dad didn’t help the blood pressure levels one little bit. “I don’t know.”

  “Can’t work the remote.”

  Sam closed his eyes. “I’ll text you directions.” He disconnected and considered throwing his phone, but then he spotted the pieces of the snowman still on the floor. Shit. He headed out and down to the hut, telling himself it was to get a soda.

  He found his newest employee working the phones, the computer—hell, everything around her—with quick order.

  When she saw him watching her, she tossed him the key to the back room. “Need two kayaks for these gents,” she said, nudging her chin in the direction of two college kids waiting off to the side.

  Sam caught the key but kept walking toward her until she was forced to tip her head up to meet his gaze. “You gave my dad your lunch?” he asked quietly.

  Something flickered in her gaze. “Working here, Sam.”

  “You gave my dad your lunch.”

  “He was hungry.”

  “He’s a fucking mooch, Becca.”

  “He’s still your dad, Sam.”

  He dropped his head and studied his feet for a moment, then lifted his head. “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  She wouldn’t tell him if she was. He knew that damn well. Her picture was in the dictionary under Stubborn.

  “The kayaks,” she said, clearly not wanting to discuss this. Or anything. Not that he blamed her. He hadn’t wanted to talk to her earlier, and she’d been right the other day when she’d told him she was a quick learner. She’d learned from him how to be emotionally unavailable.

  Sam watched the clock and tried to catch Becca after work, but he got caught handling the boat with Cole because Tanner had a previous commitment. By the time they finished mooring it, the hut was closed up and Becca was gone.

  No strains of a haunting piano came from her windows, and she didn’t answer her door. With no reason to stand there in the hallway and wait for her like a stalker, he went back to his shop to work. He had the table saw on when a sound penetrated.

  A piano?

  He snapped off the saw and the music, and lifted his head.

  Nothing.

  He was losing it. He went back to work, but five minutes later he hit the switch again when he was sure he heard a piano.

  It stopped immediately.

  And then he got it. She was only playing when she thought he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, hear her. Goddamn it. Dropping everything, he strode out the door. Night had long ago fallen. He had no idea what time it was. Late.

  Becca’s place was dark, but he was on to her now. He moved across the alley and knocked. She didn’t answer, but he’d expected that. He pulled out his phone and called her.

  No answer.

  He texted: Open your door.

  Her response was immediate: Not home.

  Bullshit. He could feel her. He didn’t care how crazy that made him, it was true. He knocked again, just once, softly. “Not going away, Becca.”

  There was a huge hesitation from the other side of that door; he could feel that, too.

  Then it slowly swung open.

  Chapter 14

  Becca had answered the door against her better judgment, and at the sight of Sam standing there, a little bit edgy and a whole lot hot, she cursed herself for being weak. “You should be at home with your dad,” she said, and started to close the door.

  He caught it and held it open. “I have questions,” he said.

  “I’m busy.”

  He looked around at the apartment. “Doing. . .?”

  “Writing a jingle. A very important one.” She crossed her arms. She’d admit she was writing for a line of feminine products . . . never.

  “I’ll start with an easy one,” he said, apparently not caring. “Ben told me he saw a Snapchat of you teaching at the rec center.”

  “Snapchat?”

  “It’s an app where you send a picture, but whoever you sent it to can only see it for a few seconds—”

  “I know what Snapchat is,” she said. “What was I doing on it?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  She stared at him. “One of the kids,” she muttered. “My money’s on Pink.”

  “So it’s true?” he asked. “You’re teaching music to kids?”

  “Apparently.”

  He took that in for a moment and nodded. “It suits you. Moving on to the next question.”

  She leaned on the doorjamb, all casual-like, as if she wasn’t aching at the sight of him so at ease in his own skin—which, by the way, was dusted with wood shavings. “You miss the I’m-busy part?” she asked.

  His eyes softened. Warmed. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Her knees wobbled. Stupid knees. “No, you won’t,” she said. “You’ve gone all prim and proper and stodgy on me.”

  “Stodgy?”

  She shrugged.

  He stared at her, then let out a sound that might have been a laugh as he hauled her in close and personal, and kissed her right there in the doorway. It was a really great kiss, too, all slow and long and deep and hot.

  Finally, when she was good and speechless, he pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Why do you play the piano when you think I can’t hear you?” he asked.

  Still not the question she expected, but not exactly one she wanted to answer, either, so she dropped her gaze from his beautiful, piercing eyes and looked at his throat. But this only reminded her that she liked to press her face there and inhale him because he always smelled amazing, like the ocean, like the beach, like one hundred percent yummy man. “That’s ridiculous,” she finally said.

  He put a hand on her stomach and nudged her clear of the doorway, then stepped inside her apartment.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He eyed the portable piano keyboard on her bed and the blankets wrinkled like she’d just been sitting right there playing—which, of course, she had.

  He turned back to her, brow raised.

  She crossed her arms. “I—” But she broke off because he got right in her precious space bubble. Like he’d forgotten he’d made her choose between him and the job. She’d been trying to maintain some distance, but it wasn’t easy because
. . . well, because she still wanted him, damn it. And she especially couldn’t maintain any distance with the taste of him still on her tongue.

  Then he cupped her face and made her look at him, and she couldn’t remember her name much less why she didn’t want him to cup her face like she was the most precious thing in his life.

  As if.

  “Why do you play the piano only when you think I’m not listening?” he asked again, his eyes unwavering, telling her that her answer really meant something to him.

  She closed her eyes.

  He merely shifted closer. “And why,” he whispered against her lips, “are you giving me attitude when you used to give me sweet, like maybe you want to piss me off so I’ll go away and leave you alone.”

  “Because I want you to go away and leave me alone,” she whispered back.

  “Because you don’t want to talk about things,” he said, calling her on it. Didn’t he know that wasn’t the polite thing to do? The polite thing to do was let her hide, damn it.

  “You prefer to live in your head instead of the here and now,” he said.

  “Correct,” she said back, and gave him a long look from beneath her lashes. “And anyway, you’ve asked your questions. Where’s my worthwhile?”

  His gaze heated about a gazillion degrees as he leaned in and kissed first one corner of her mouth, and then the other.

  She tightened her grip on him, closed her eyes, then moaned and dropped her head to his shoulder when he stopped.

  “You still work for me?” he asked, voice gruff.

  Great. They were back to that. “Unless I’m fired.”

  “If I fired you, would you go get a job that better suits your abilities?” he asked.

  “Like?”

  “Like . . . being a full-time music teacher. Or writing more jingles.”

  “Because I just love writing about feminine products.” Damn it, she hadn’t meant to let that slip. “If you laugh,” she warned, “our friendship—or whatever this is—is over.”

  He paused, as if doing his best to bite back his amusement. “How about doing whatever floats your boat?”

  “Why do you care about what floats my boat?” she asked.

  He didn’t have an answer for that, apparently, since he said nothing, just looked at her with those eyes that seemed to see far more than she wanted him to.

  “Stop worrying about me,” she finally said. “It’s not your problem. I’m not your problem.”

  “I don’t know what kind of men you’ve had in your life, Becca, but that’s not how I work.”

  “What are you saying? You’re in my life?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t know what to make of that, so it was her turn to say nothing, but she couldn’t help but stay a little too close. It was his warmth, she told herself. In any case, she wasn’t the only one feeling . . . things. She could feel him still hard against her. “Your body doesn’t agree with the not-sleeping-with-your-employee decree.”

  “You know I still want you,” he said. “That’s not exactly a secret. But I want to know what happened today in my office more.”

  She pulled back, but he caught her. “It was nothing,” she said.

  “Becca.” His eyes were still on hers, his voice low but oddly gentle, as if he knew she’d just told a big, fat whopper.

  And then, oh God and then, he cupped her face yet again and lowered his head, brushing his lips across hers. “It was a lot more than nothing,” he said with another soft, devastatingly gentle kiss.

  She sighed and pressed her face into his neck.

  “I get that you don’t know this about me yet,” he said. “But you can trust me.”

  She lifted her head. “I do trust you.”

  “Not yet, you don’t.” He let his thumb glide over her lower lip, the one tingling for more of his mouth. “But you can,” he repeated.

  “Sam—”

  “You’ll tell me when. I won’t push, Becca.” And then with one last soul-warming kiss, he was gone.

  Over the next few days, the guys were busy nonstop and nearly always gone. During that time, Becca had plenty to keep her occupied. Her mind was something else entirely. She wondered what Sam would do if she said When.

  She wondered if she even could say When.

  Lucille stopped by to visit.

  “Thought I’d see about trying paddleboarding,” the older woman said.

  Becca tried to picture Lucille on a paddleboard in the harbor, but mostly all she could see was the Coast Guard trying to rescue her. “Um. . .”

  “You don’t think I’m too old, right?” Lucille asked.

  “Well. . .”

  “Because I keep in great shape.” Lucille pointed to a biceps. “I’ve been hauling cans of prunes to the senior center all morning—”

  “It’s just that the guys are out of town,” Becca said. “And first-timers need instruction.”

  “Oh.” Lucille sighed. “Damn. That’s a shame.”

  “A big shame,” Becca agreed.

  “I’ll just come back another time.” But she didn’t leave. Instead, she made herself comfy on a stool. “So how’s the jingles going? What are you working on?”

  Becca sighed. “Feminine products.”

  Lucille grinned. “Sorry, honey, can’t help you with that one. I don’t need ’em anymore. Why don’t you get something good to write about, like denture glue? I need a new brand and could use a suggestion.”

  Once Lucille finally left, Becca took a lunch break and went to work on a curriculum for the kids at music hour. She needed to keep them busy, she discovered, or tiffs broke out among their ranks over who got to play what. So in addition to teaching them basic chords, they were working on how to respect other people’s space bubble. The latter was a far more difficult lesson, but it would come along.

  Everything would come along.

  Or so she told herself in the deep, dark of the night when her insecurities beat the crap out of her.

  After another homemade meal with Olivia—to-die-for lasagna this time—Becca finally wrote a passable jingle for the feminine products and sent it off.

  And late at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she played. Afterwards she’d walk home from the Love Shack at two thirty in the morning, alone with the salty ocean breeze and the moonbeams and her own troubled thoughts. A few nights back, on her first night