Page 81 of Cowboy Stole My Heart
“I just came to see Mia,” Sam said, backing up and holding his hands up in surrender.
“Yeah? Well, you mess with my sister, you have me to deal with.” Tanner edged closer. “I’m counting,” he said.
Sam looked at Tanner and nodded. “I get it. I have a sister and I’d protect her with my life. But—”
“What part of me wanting to kill you don’t you get?” Tanner demanded, stepping in and moving so fast that Sam didn’t have time to fully evade the knuckles skimming past his jaw. The blow sent him staggering but he didn’t swing back, wasn’t about to have a fistfight with the guy.
“Tanner!” Mia’s scream was piercing as she ran from the house, barefoot in jeans and a t-shirt, her eyes wide as she stared at them.
“Mia, please, I just want to talk to you,” Sam said, ignoring the fact her brother looked even more enraged now. But she had her hand on his arm, and Sam was certain he wasn’t about to pull anything violent again with Mia looking on.
He could have fought back, it wasn’t that he was a coward, he’d learned more than his fair share of physical hand-to-hand combat skills when he’d been serving, but he wasn’t about to get into a fight with Tanner. The guy was protecting his sister, and that was one of the few things in life Sam understood implicitly.
“Move,” Tanner said. “She doesn’t want to see you, she’s not talking to you, she wants you the hell away from her. We both do.”
Mia stepped forward and Sam took his chance, deciding to say what he’d come to say before following orders and leaving.
“Mia, if we can just go inside and talk for a few minutes,” Sam said, staring into eyes that had always reminded him of the ocean. He’d almost forgotten how beautiful she was, how effortless she was with her hair in a ponytail and her lack of airs and graces. What the hell had he been thinking running out on her like that? The hurt in her gaze right now told him that she was nothing like Kelly; there was no possible way she could deceive him, no way a woman as sweet and kind as Mia could have ever done to him what his ex-girlfriend had.
“No,” she said, moving closer to her brother, like she was scared. “Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Tanner.”
Sam nodded. He deserved that. “What I did to you, it was wrong. You scared me and instead of leaving you that night, I should have been honest with you,” he said, struggling to explain how he was feeling. “I never meant to deceive you, but, damn it, I fell for you, Mia. I fell for you even though I tried to pretend like I hadn’t, and when you said that I…”
“That’s enough,” Mia said, cutting him off before he’deven finished. She had tears in her eyes and she was clutching her brother’s arm. “I will never forgive you, Sam. What you did? I don’t even know where to begin. Have you even been honest with your wife or did you just want to come here to make yourself feel better?”
“My wife?” Sam asked, perplexed. “I don’t know…”
“Don’t act stupid,Romeo,” Tanner interjected. “She knows all about it, there’s no point sticking to a story now.”
Sam went to answer but Mia spoke before he could. “I came face to face with her, Sam,” she hissed. “How could you do that?”
“Mia, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I don’t have a wife.”
“Sam, I saw her with my own eyes! I went to your house and…”
He relaxed a little, relief pulsing through him. “You met Faith,” he said, realizing what had happened. “Faith’s my sister,” he explained, “she was staying at my place while I was away.”
Mia was ghostly white, like all the blood had drained from her face. “So you don’t have a child either?” she asked.
“No, Mia, I don’t have a wife or a child. All I have is a seriously screwed up past and a lot of shit to work through,” he said, wishing they weren’t standing outside, and that Tanner wasn’t there between them like a guard dog. “I would never intentionally hurt you like that, it was why I insisted on ourarrangementin the first place, but it didn’t work, did it? Because I care for you, and I want to ask you for a second chance. I miss you and it’s taken all this time apart and me acting like a stubborn jackass for me to realize how wrong I was.”
Mia shook her head. “I need you to leave, Sam. It wasgood of you to come by, but things have changed,” she said, giving him a sad smile. “I’ll be forever thankful that you came into our lives to help Tex, but what we had is over.”
She turned and walked away, and Sam tracked her with his eyes all the way into the house. When she disappeared from sight, he turned to Tanner.
“It’s time for you to go,” he said, but this time he was less aggressive. Sam got it; up until a few moments ago Tanner had thought he’d been a married man deceptively sleeping with his sister. Now he was just a regular kind of jerk.
“Yeah, I’m going,” Sam said, backing away then stopping, forcing himself to get out of his comfort zone and admit his damn feelings for once. “I fell for her, Tanner. I want you to know that I never meant to hurt her and if there was anything I could do to change the way I reacted that night, I’d do it.”
Tanner nodded. It was barely noticeable but he did and Sam turned and walked away. He’d been a fool. He’d already had to leave his past behind once, when he’d returned from active duty, and he needed to put it behind him again now or he was going to end up miserable for the rest of his life, too fearful of being hurt to ever learn to love and trust again.
Trouble was, he’d left it too late to apologize to Mia. The damage was already done, the hurt was already inflicted. The fact she’d thought Faith was his wife? That was the icing on the cake. But he deserved it. All of it. He knew Mia had been to visit and he’d been too pig-headed to man up and admit his mistake then, to call her the moment he’d known she’d come looking for him. If he had? Then she atleast wouldn’t have had to spend the last four weeks thinking he was an even bigger jackass than he was.
***
Mia sat on the edge of the pool, toes dipped in, jeans rolled up to mid-calf so they didn’t get wet. She’d known that one day she’d end up crossing paths with Sam, but after a while she hadn’t expected him to just turn up on her doorstep ready to apologize.
He wasn’t married.The words kept circling her mind, torturing her, making her question everything. She’d spent all this time despising what he’d done, determined not to tell him about the baby, but if he wasn’t married, if it wasn’t going to cause hurt and pain to anyone else… she placed her palm flat to her stomach. She knew the right thing to do, she just wasn’t ready to tell her secret to anyone else, not yet.
