Page 14 of Stand

Sam parked Ty’s car in short-term parking and burned off her nervous energy walking Cai around in circles, checking her phone every thirty seconds. After forty-five minutes, he texted:We’re done.

That was when Sam remembered she didn’t have her wallet. She’d driven all the way here without a license. “Well, shit, Cai,” she told him. “So much for being his knight in shining armor.”

Thank God she could download the app on her phone and had memorized her credit card. Panic over, she cracked a back window so Cai could stick his nose into the late afternoon heat and pulled around to the drop-off area.

She had to circle a couple of times before she spotted them. Ty had one arm around his daughter. She had both arms around him, and her head was buried in his side. His other arm was around Matt, who stood slumped against him, his blond head leaning against Ty’s.

Sam’s heart twisted. Ty Cavanaugh was adad. And a good one, from the way Alyssa was holding on to him. Sam could hardly wrap her head around it.

They looked completely wiped out. Alyssa’s cheeks were still wet. What had they thought when their mother had driven them onto the highway and into the airport? Their pain was clear on their faces.

Under one of Ty’s eyes was an angry red mark that covered his cheekbone.Where the hell did that come from?

It was Matt who recognized the car first and instinctively straightened.

“Hi, Matt,” she said quietly. “Hi, honey,” she added to Alyssa. “I just drove your dad here.”

“You brought Cairo!” Alyssa said. Not that the kid was capable of a big grin right now, but she brightened.

“Let’s go, peanut,” Ty said.

The kids’ backpacks were in a pile next to them. As she rounded Alyssa for the backpack, Sam couldn’t help but lay her hand briefly on the girl’s vulnerable back. Alyssa gave a sigh that shook her whole frame, and Ty’s arm tightened around her. To an observer, they looked as if they had recently been bereaved.

It must feel like that.I lost Mom and Dad once; they lose their mom every time they trust that something will be different and she lets them down.

Ty got in the back, sitting between the children as though he needed their bodies pressed against his to reassure him they were safe. The narrow seat made a joke of his long legs, and his head brushed the roof. Both kids reached around to pet Cairo and then, as far as Sam could tell, fell asleep on the drive home. A few times, she caught Ty’s eye in the mirror; he didn’t smile at her and he looked away every time, but she thought she felt his eyes on her when she wasn’t looking. Ty looked shattered, as if the responsibility he carried was literally pressing him into his seat.

He nudged them awake as she pulled into his driveway. The soft murmur of his voice threatened to bring tears to her eyes. He had a nice voice, low and melodious. She wondered if he sang. Megan could sing, and part of her charm was her deep, sexy voice.

Sam blushed a little.Not the time to think of Ty and sexy simultaneously.

“I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” Alyssa said.

“It’s your last day of middle school, Lyss,” Ty said. “You don’t want to miss it.”

The kids got out of the car and began to walk to the front door. Ty shifted along the seat to follow them, but Alyssa had come back. Her blue eyes were big and dark with fear, just as her father’s had been an hour before. “Can you check the house?” she said in a low voice that Sam nevertheless heard as she had her window open.

Ty answered by getting out and going with them. Sam got out of the car as well, and she and Cairo hovered by it. She tossed the keys in her hand.

In a few minutes, he came back outside. Wordlessly, she handed him the keys. Again, there was the briefest touch of his fingers on her palm, but she noticed. Noticed the glints of gold in his blue eyes, the thick blond hair now spiky from his running his hands through it so often.

Despite being in a car and an airport for the better part of the last two hours, he smelled as though he’d come back from walking on the beach. He had a long nose to go with the long chin he’d grown into since high school. She could see the small cut under his eye. His broad shoulders filled her line of sight, making Sam, who considered herself well-muscled after years working outdoors, feel small and suddenly very female.

His lips parted. Sam looked up at him. Again, there was that sense of waiting, of something unsaid, just out of reach. Maybe it was just this attraction, one she had no right to, especially if she allowed herself to remember how she’d ignored him and his kind all those years before.

He blinked, twice. Shook his head quickly like a dog with water in its ears and backed up. “Thanks for what you did today,” he said. “It was… I should have called their grandmother, like you said.”

She hadn’t said it—he had, which proved that she’d been right to insist. “It was the least I could do.”

“It was more than that. I appreciate it.”

The words hovered. Did he hate being beholden to her? She wasn’t getting hate from him right now. Had he felt the attraction she had?

Jesus, Sam. Get out of your own head. This week had been the first time in a long time she’d had to please anyone but herself. She liked to think of herself as a thoughtful, helpful person, but two hours with this guy and she was reverting to a selfishness she didn’t like.

He looked around them, at the dark night, at his car. “You’ll need a ride home.”

Okay, good. Practical matters. “I can walk.” Although suddenly, she was exhausted. Too much emotion. “Or my sister will come get me.”

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