Shiver

Marco was making her feel weird. Kind of panicky and—totally resistant to letting it happen. Unreal to think that she now associated being with him with being safe. “I’m not going. We’re not going.”
    “I don’t think no’s an option.” Marco’s grip on her hand was warm and strong. It was also, she had little doubt, unbreakable unless and until he wanted to let her go. “Look, Sam—”
    He broke off as Tyler called from upstairs, “Mom? Can you come here? I need help.”
    Sam kept her eyes fixed on Marco even as she raised her voice to respond to Tyler. “I’ll be right there.”
    Marco said, “Everything will be okay, I promise. I need you to trust me on this.”
    Sam’s eyes searched his. At what she saw in them, she felt cold all over. “So you really want us to go?”
    “Yes.”
    “Fine,” Sam said, and yanked her hand free from that not-so-unbreakable-after-all grip as Tyler called, “Mom?” again.
    Without so much as a backward look, conscious of Marco’s eyes on her until she was out of sight, she headed upstairs. She was furiously angry, she realized, and refused to even try to analyze why.
    For the next couple of hours, she was busy. She got Tyler to bed without telling him what was getting ready to happen in the morning. That would be because she knew that he would be upset at the idea of leaving “Trey” and she didn’t want to deal with what that might entail, which would almost certainly include but not be limited to his being unable to go to sleep, while her own emotions were in such turmoil. After Tyler was finally asleep, she set out the clothes that they would wear tomorrow, then packed their newly acquired belongings in a trash bag. Not that anybody had said she would be allowed to take said belongings with them, but it didn’t matter; she was determined that she would. Then, finding herself totally wired with sleep the last thing she felt like doing, she went along to the second bathroom and took a long, hot bath. When she emerged fromthe bathroom, all rosy and still faintly damp and wrapped in her white bathrobe with her hair twisted into a loose knot on the top of her head, she cast a quick glance down the hall toward Marco’s bedroom. His light, which had been on when she entered the bathroom, was now off.
    He had gone to bed. Without even trying to talk to her, to clarify what she’d thought had been building between them, or even to say a private good-bye. Maybe he was hoping to make his good-byes brief and unemotional, and thus was saving them for the rush and confusion of the morning. But, she discovered, she needed more than that.
    Sam felt furiously angry all over again. As she stood there in the shadowy hall, glaring at Marco’s dark bedroom door, the reason she was so mad at him hit her.
    Once she and Tyler left the town house, they were probably never going to see him again.
    Her heart broke at the thought. And the jackass didn’t even seem to care.
    Sam couldn’t stand it. No way was she leaving it like this. There was too much unsaid—un-everythinged—between them.
    After tonight, she would never get another chance.
    Tightening the belt around her waist, shaking her head so the knot of her hair came loose and spilled around her shoulders, she turned, padded down the shadowy hall, and walked through Marco’s open bedroom door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
     

     
    M arco was indeed in bed. It took Sam’s eyes a second to adjust to the gloom, but when they did she had no trouble picking out the long, large mound under the covers that was him. If she’d heard snoring, she probably would have killed him there and then and been done with it, but luckily for him she did not. Looking around, she located the switch on the wall, snapped on the light, then blinked at the sudden brightness as a single bedside lamp came on. By its light, she could see him lying on his back with one arm curved beneath his head. He was bare to at least the waist, where the striped blanket that was the top layer of bedclothes ended. Above that, he was all broad shoulders and sinewy muscles and tanned skin against white sheets. Even as she absorbed how absolutely sexy he looked lying there like that she saw that his eyes were open. He was awake and looking at her. That was when the thought hit her that maybe coming into his bedroom like this had been a mistake—okay, coming into his bedroom like this definitely had been a mistake—but she was too mad to care.
    “Something