Page 62 of Stand

“Oh, you are so sweet!” Tammy sighed. “You must be real proud of this one.”

“Yep.”

Sam finally dared to look at Ty, to whom Tammy had spoken. “He’s my joy,” he said. “Come on, my joy, let’s find your room so I can appreciate you some more.” Somehow, he managed to say all this without actually moving his jaw. His eyes were ice-blue pinpricks beneath lowered brows. Matt might have to sleep in the car tonight.

They said goodbye to Tammy and her exclamation points and walked outside. As they walked around to the line of doors to the rooms, Ty said, “What the hell was that?”

Matt and Alyssa exchanged smug looks. “What?” Matt said, turning to his father and blinking innocently. “I was helping. You guys want to take this key, and we’ll—”

He reached for the keys in Sam’s hand, but she snapped them out of the way. “You’re lucky you’re not sleeping in the bathtub,” she said. “You want to explain to her why a newly married couple booked rooms with twin beds?”

Matt shrugged. “You’re kinky that way.”

“Ew, Matt, gross,” Alyssa interjected.

“Yeah, Matt, gross,” Ty squashed the conversation. Well, all right, he didn’t have to be that pissed off. The idea of the two of them sharing a twin bed wasn’tgross. It was… Sam watched him carrying three backpacks easily, his muscles bunching across his shoulders and arms. His hair had been cut recently, so recently that a tan line sat a fraction of an inch below his hairline. Another cord of muscle showed on his neck as he took the weight.

What was the question?

Sam shook her head to clear it. They were all waiting for her to open the doors. She stepped forward to hide the flush on her cheeks and unlocked the first door. Could she pull out her ponytail to hide her face with her hair and not have Ty know why she was doing it? Not really. She willed the color out of her cheeks and went to the second door.

“I call this one!” Alyssa said at once, though from the dingy view she had, Sam couldn’t see a difference between the two rooms. “Closer to the vending machine,” Alyssa clarified as she passed through and dumped her small backpack on the bed farthest from the door. In seconds, she was hidden behind a book.

Ty brushed past Sam to deposit their backpacks in the room. Sam remained paralyzed in the doorway.

“First in the shower!” Matt called from his and Ty’s room.

Ty turned back to her. “You okay? You look like you’re planning a murder.”

“Aren’t you?” she shot back. Her shoulder and—yes, one nipple—were still tingling from the brief contact they’d had with his arm, but she had to gain back some control. “You sure hid your children’s sass from me.”

He folded his arms. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It showed off his rock-hard biceps. “Don’t you meanourchildren?”

Her mouth dropped open. “I would never produce children this bratty.”

“This smart, you mean? This able to push your buttons?”

“You’re fine with this?” Her eyebrows rose.

He shrugged. “At least Matt’s regained his sense of humor.” One side of his mouth lifted.

“That’s what you call it?”

She shook her head, feeling her ponytail swish slowly at her neck. A chill went down her spine that had nothing to do with the room’s air conditioner. After what had happened in the field today, was he really going to think this wasfunny?

He turned in the doorway, which hid her from Alyssa’s view. “Sam,” he said in a low voice. “It’s okay. I know it’s not what you planned, but it’s gonna be okay. Kids do that. They screw with plans. It doesn’t really change anything. You and Alyssa can still take one room and Matt and I will have the other.”

“That’s not the—”

“But also, if you keep standing here arguing, Tammy might remember us more than I’d like her to.”

Sam jumped away from the door as though it were electrified. “Fine,” she said.

“Idiots,” Alyssa said from her book.

♦

However mad at each other they all were, they still had to eat. So at seven o’clock, Ty and Matt knocked on the girls’ door; they silently trooped out onto the main road, and as instructed, they walked two blocks to the building with an orange awning that proclaimed it Joe Cobra’s.

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