Page 26 of Nailed

I whipped my head in the direction of the voice, relaxing when I saw it was Sam.

I grunted something like a hello, then went to take a sip of my whiskey, but found it empty. That was fast.

“I wanted to thank you for getting me a pass to the conference,” he said. “I’m assuming it was you.”

“Don’t assume anything.”

He had a beer in his hand, and he took a swig. If I wasn’t mistaken, his eyes were on Sarah’s friend; who was dancing with her arms above her head. “You’re right,” he said, tearing his eyes away from her. “But I wanted to thank you anyway, because I got a job offer today.”

I turned to him. “With who?”

He told me. It was a company I knew well. In Colorado.

“I thought you came home to be close to your family.” I knew from Cora that his parents were in Greenville, the next town over from Quince Valley. Sam had said himself he’d been away from home too long.

He took another swig. “‘Change hurts, but the best things are on the other side of that pain.’”

He was quoting my keynote this morning.

“Don’t listen to me, kid.” I’d been talking about business, about how I’d been pissed when Seamus took off to do the job in New York State. How he’d left me juggling everything when I hadn’t even wanted to expand the business. But expanding meant taking the Rolling Hills renovation, and that meant hiring Sarah.

And for all the pain it had caused me, knowing her had changed my life for the better.

She’d made me realize I still had room in my chest to feel.

And it had scared the hell out of me.

“So you don’t think I should take the job?”

I looked down at him. Then I reached into the pocket of my tux and pulled out one of my cards.

“When you get back to town next week, drop me a line. I know someone in town looking for people with initiative like you. And I can get you into the trade college outside the admission cycle once you decide what you want to do.”

Sam blinked, his expression a little stunned. “Why are you helping me?”

“So you’ll leave me alone.”

The kid grinned. Then he practically skipped around me to the other side of the bar. “’Scuse me, ladies,” he said to the women who’d been drawing next to me. “Is this where they serve the beer?”

I sighed, my mouth almost twisting up in a smile. But when I looked back to where Sarah had been, the smile fell clean off my lips.

My stomach lurched like I’d been hit in the gut with a block of Bob’s concrete.

“There’s no fucking way,” I said, even as I knew there was, in fact, a way. It was Gary, my ex-best friend. The man who’d worked for me from the first day I opened my homebuilding business.

Itwashim I’d seen at the gym yesterday.

And he was talking to Sarah.

My whole body went rigid. If a couple hadn’t walked in front of me, I’d have sprinted over there. But as it was, I felt a hand on my arm.

“Jamie.”

It was Sam. He must have seen the look on my face.

“Jamie, I don’t know who that is, but I don’t think you’re going to win any prizes knocking his teeth in for talking to Sarah.”

I turned on him. “Do you know who that is?”

---