Page 33 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

Harris stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. Yet for some reason, she resisted relaxing into him.

“I’m really beat. And yeah, the stress has been pretty bad. I hope you can forgive me for this but I’m really exhausted. I promise you, Sam, everything will be back to normal in a couple of weeks when this case is over. I’ll see you next weekend, okay?” He pecked her on the cheek and left.

Sam felt a little stunned. The moodiness and the irritability she could understand, but was it normal to go so long without sex? She felt pretty sure two months was so not right, even with the stress he was under.

Harris would never cheat on her. He was too upstanding for that.

He loved old people. And dogs. He was honest.

If she was totally honest, she had to admit she was secretly a little relieved he was gone. Who was she to criticize, when she kept replaying in her mind that hot smoking kiss that had tasted of danger and felt like a cavalcade of shooting stars that Lukas had planted on her lips the other night in front of half the school?

Sam had not told Harris about Lukas and Stevie staying in the guesthouse. Well, he’d be on his trip and then in Boston working on his case and by then Lukas and Stevie would be gone. No need to stress him out any further, right?

She walked in and flicked on the kitchen lights and headed straight for the freezer. Maybe she couldn’t drive these awful thoughts from her mind alone, but surely Ben and Jerry could help.

What kind of man would leave his woman for a week without making love to her first? Especially if that woman was Sam. Lukas had been so busy trying not to move, wedged as he was between two boxwoods near the guesthouse, that he’d forgotten to light his cigarette.

He’d come out to sneak a smoke and instead he’d heard everything Sam and Harris had said. Way more than he’d wanted to hear, but it only confirmed what he already knew. Harris was out for himself. Lukas knew men enough to worry that unless the guy was a eunuch, he was probably getting some on the side. No normal guy with a girlfriend would go two months without sex. No way.

Lukas lit up but didn’t have time to put the cigarette to his lips because at that moment, Sam opened the sliding doors to the house and walked onto the deck. He quickly tossed his cigarette down and snuffed it out with his shoe.

“Who’s there?” Sam said in a panicked voice.

Busted. She must’ve smelled the smoke. Not wanting to frighten her further, he said, “It’s just me—Lukas,” and emerged from the shadows.

“God, Lukas, you scared the crap out of me,” Sam said, collapsing onto a cushioned chair at the wrought iron table. The pool was lit up, its blue shimmering glow reflecting off Sam’s face on the perfect late spring night. Crickets chirped in the woods. The air was hot and humid, the perfect kind of night to lie on a blanket and stare at the stars and make love on one of the low, gentle hills by the lake under the pine trees.

Just sayin’.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just came out to grab a cigarette.”

“How long have you been out here?” She stared at him with no-bullshit eyes.

He raised his hands up in surrender. “Okay. Long enough. I’m sorry.”

A long sigh was her answer. She opened the ice cream and chipped away with her spoon at the frozen top.

He pulled out a chair. “Mind if I join you?”

She looked like she didn’t want him to. But she also looked miserable and he didn’t want to leave things that way.

“Harris is a great guy,” Sam said. “He’s just under a lot of stress right now.”

He could have disputed that but then she’d make him leave. So instead he said, “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“He’s trying a big Wall Street fraud case. It’s really stressful but he feels like he’s got to do his time in the prosecutor’s office so he can be known as someone who fights corruption.”

“That’s honorable,” Lukas said. He mentally patted himself on the back because he’d somehow managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“And I’m not bingeing out on ice cream because I’m miserable or confused. I’m just really hungry.”

“Great,” he said. “Ice cream is the perfect food. Lots of calcium and vitamin D and all that.”

“Exactly. I think my body’s craving calcium.”

His body was craving something else that he didn’t dare show. So he rubbed his hands around the tub of ice cream to thaw it out quicker.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

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