River of Love(6)

“Thanks for letting me help out today.”

“Are you kidding?” Her beautiful dark eyes finally found his. “You didn’t have to stay all day. Thank you.”

“It was fun.” He pulled his checkbook from his pocket. “I’d like to donate to the group.”

“Sam.” She shook her head.

“What? I spent the day getting to know everyone. Did you know that Brittany found her boyfriend in bed with another girl just an hour after she left for work one morning?”

“Yes, but I’m surprised you do.”

“Me too.” That made her smile, and boy, did he love the way it lit up her eyes. “These girls have been through a lot. They said you’re using the proceeds from the car wash to pay for the site hosting and a possible site upgrade.”

“Well, that’s the hope.” Her voice went serious again. “It’s hard when a guy cheats on a woman. It makes her feel small and unimportant. Like anything they may have had before that point didn’t mean anything.”

“That sounds like firsthand knowledge.” Had some bastard cheated on her? Made her feel small and unimportant? His chest constricted with the ugly thought. Sam knew what that felt like. Though he’d been just sixteen, it had cut him to his core.

“I’m also thinking of trying to find therapists, career consultants, and other types of resources to donate advice, or maybe an initial consult, or something along those lines. Maybe they can offer a discount, or WAC can pitch in some amount. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.”

The fact that she didn’t respond to his comment about firsthand experience, and the set of her jaw, told him that she wasn’t about to share that information with him.

“That’s a big endeavor, and an important one.” He opened his checkbook and began writing a check.

“Sam, please don’t.”

Her admonishing tone surprised him. He slid his sunglasses to the top of his head, trying to read her expression. Determination? Frustration? He wasn’t sure, but it definitely wasn’t the I Want You look he’d hoped for when he’d arrived.

“This is important, and real to me, Sam. I want to help these women and you just want to do them. I don’t want something I’ve worked hard to build becoming part of your game for picking up women.”

Her words stung. “You really do think poorly of me, don’t you?” He shook his head, trying to figure out where to go from here. “Faith, I’m not the person you think I am.”

“So, you haven’t dated nearly every woman in town? Sometimes sleeping with two at once? Because those rumors seem pretty consistent to me.”

For the first time in as long as Sam could remember, his reaction to hearing his reputation thrown in his face wasn’t to laugh it off. He cringed inwardly. Not because he was ashamed of a damn thing he’d done, but because for some reason he cared about what Faith thought of him.

“Faith.” He didn’t know what to say, so instead he took her by the elbow and led her over to his truck.

“What are you doing?”

“I want you to see something.” He grabbed his phone from the glove compartment and handed it to Faith.

Confusion riddled her brow.

“Take a look. It’s not password protected.”

“Sam—” She held the phone toward him and he pushed it gently back toward her, curling his fingers over hers.

“Please, just…”

“No. Sam, I’m not going to look through—”

He took it from her hands and navigated into his call history.

“I don’t want to know who you call. God.” She took a step away, and he grabbed her gently around the waist and pulled her back, bringing her firmly against his chest.

She went rigid in his arms and just as quickly seemed to melt against him. And maybe stop breathing. He wasn’t certain, but it felt like she was holding her breath.

“Give me two minutes; that’s all I want.” He wanted a lot more than two minutes. “Then you can run away.”

“Okay,” she said breathlessly.

Oh yeah, she was into him. She was so warm and tempting, he lost his train of thought for a minute.

“Sam!”

“Sorry.” He scrolled through the log. “Whose names do you see?”

“I feel like a voyeur.”

“Just read the names.”

“Ty, Shannon, Tex, Tempe...Sam, why am I reading this?”

“You’ll see.” He navigated to his apps. “What do you see?”

“Sam!” She wriggled against him, trying to free herself.

He tightened his grip. She felt too damn good to let go that easily.

“No Snapchat. No Facebook Messenger. Just regular stuff.” He scrolled to the Internet and showed her his history. “No porn sites, no—”

She turned in his arms, and a current spiked up his spine at the look of lust and disbelief mingling in her eyes. While he was hanging in a fog, she took a step out of his arms, and he fought the urge to tug her back in.

“What do you expect me to learn from that?” Determination carried every word again. “It doesn’t change who you are or what you do.”

She was right, and that slapped something inside him down a notch. She wasn’t a random woman he wanted to hook up with. She was smart, and she respected herself enough to keep her distance from the likes of him. That confidence, that belief that she was worthy of more, made her even more intriguing.

“I just want you to see that I’m not a pig who has booty call numbers on my phone or uses Snapchat to exchange naked pics, or any of that crap. I am who I am. With me, what you see is what you get. I’m not hiding anything from you, Faith, and I’m not trying to say I haven’t slept around.”

“Then what are you saying?” She crossed her arms, a barrier between them.

He remembered what Cole had said, and he knew his brother was right. Faith didn’t need him screwing up her life. The look in her eyes, everything she said, every signal she was currently sending, told him that she might believe that, too. But a voice inside his head told him not to give up. He’d been drawn to Faith since they’d first met, but he’d put her in the too-sweet-for-Sam zone. Now he wanted to breach that zone.

Maybe Cole was right about him wanting what he couldn’t have. How the hell should he know why he suddenly wanted to take Faith in his arms and kiss the concern off her gorgeous face? To get a taste of the sweetness he’d been trying to resist and prove to her he wasn’t the person she thought he was.

But so much of what she’d said was true. How was he supposed to reconcile asking her to take a chance on him? Fuck, this was not the way he’d imagined today going.

“I guess I’m saying you might miss out on a really great story if you judge a book by its cover.” He took one last long look at her before saying, “Thanks for letting me take part in something so important. It was an honor to get to know the girls. I wish them all the best.”


**

“HE DIDN’T EVEN try to cover up the fact that he’d slept with so many women.” Faith wriggled into her jeans and pulled on a silky top as Vivian chose earrings from her jewelry box.

“I don’t know what you expected from him, but I have to say, I’m surprised. How many guys would stick around all day and let you see their phone?” Her eyes widened as she handed Faith the dangling earrings. “Ohmygod. That’s probably his burner phone!”

“What’s a burner phone?” She slipped her feet into a pair of heels. They were meeting some of the girls from the group for drinks in half an hour.

“A burner phone. You know, drug dealers use them so the cops can’t track them.”

“Vivian, Sam is not a drug dealer.” She stood in front of the mirror, surveying her outfit. “Does this say sexy?” Sam had said she should loosen up, and she wanted to prove him wrong on that, too. She was plenty loose. In a non-loose type of way.

“No. You are not wearing that.” Vivian tugged Faith’s top over her head and threw it on her bed. “What did the womanizer say about our group?”

She gave Vivian a deadpan stare. She hated linking Sam to the term womanizer after he’d tried so hard to prove that he wasn’t one, but who was she to deny it?

“He joked that women who had been cheated on were the best in bed because they have something to prove.” Her stomach felt queasy repeating that to Vivian. It had taken her half an hour to pull herself together after Sam left. When he’d held her against his chest, he’d felt like heaven. His big, strong arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her trapped against all his body heat, all those muscles. She’d almost started to believe that rumors about him were false, until he’d snapped those heady thoughts from her head by flat-out admitting to them.

“He’s got that all wrong. We were the best in bed even before we had something to prove. Shows you how much he knows.” Vivian dragged Faith into the guest bedroom.

“He was kidding, and hey! I’m not dressed.”

“You’re wearing my clothes. Tonight we’re going to stir up every man in that bar and leave them all high and dry. And they can blame it on Sam Braden’s stupid comment.” Vivian grabbed a black leather miniskirt from the closet and tossed it to Faith. “Put that on.”