Page 8 of Stand
“Worked her way through the basketball team?”
“Yes! That Sam Fielding!” God, if that was the kind of gossip that even Noah remembered, Ty could sympathize with the woman for getting the hell out of town like she had. For looking so pissed off that she was back.
“Wow. Did she give you the time of day?”
“Of course she did. This isn’t high school anymore.” His hand was gripped too tightly around the handle of his blade. He forced himself to relax. Noah was only voicing everything Ty’s scrambled brain had thought on first seeing Sam. It was Ty who’d been ruder than he wanted. “Her sister got married.”
Belatedly, he realized something. “Thea. Matt’s friend Jake’s mom. I’ve talked to her a couple times this year. She’s all right.” Meaning, she hadn’t turned her nose up at him when they’d met on the b-ball sidelines.
“And?”
“And what?” Dammit. He sounded stubborn and childish. He knew what Noah was asking. “Yes, she’s still…”Breathtaking. Beautiful. Heart-stopping. “Attractive.”
“God. What would I say to her if I met her now?” Noah mused.
Not what I did, I hope.“Welp. I doubt I’ll see her again.”So quit feeling bad for being such a prick. Hasn’t she earned it?
No, she hadn’t. “Their dad died in that explosion, remember?” he added. “They were all kinds of fucked up after that.”
“Doesn’t give her an excuse to treat us the way she did.”
“She ignored us, mostly.”Mostly.
“There’s ignoring and there’s ignoring,” Noah said wisely.
“She was nice to Matt and Lyss today.” Now why had he said that? What did he care about defending this woman?
“Oh-ho. Attractive, you say.Andnice to your kids? You sure she isn’t sticking around town?”
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay, okay. If youdosee her again, tell her I said hi. Actually, tell her I said I hope she gets… uh… rickets.”
Noah could always make him laugh. “Sure. I’ll do that. See ya.”
Chapter 3
“Want me to drive you guys to school today?” Sam asked Jake when he came downstairs the next morning. If the buses were on the same schedule as they’d been twenty years ago, he and his cousins were about to miss theirs, and she hadn’t even seen Paolo and Mateo yet.
Jake focused on her with difficulty. Six forty-five was way too early for a teenager. His dark hair stuck up at the back, and he obviously hadn’t showered. “Yeah?”
Last night she’d remembered a lot of things she’d pushed to the back of her mind. She wanted to check out the high school, wanted to push on that sore tooth that was her guilt for her last two years there. “Sure. Go get showered. I’ll make you a smoothie to drink on the way.”
He perked up at once. “Could we take my friend too? He lives on the way.”
“I don’t see why not if you get a move on.”
“Cool, thanks, Aunt Sam. I’ll text him.”
While he showered, she made smoothies. The boys came down, and although they made a face at the sludge-colored smoothies, once they tasted them, they didn’t complain. Cat kissed the top of her sons’ heads; Sam took her keys; Jake shuffled into his Converses, and they were off.
Sam should probably be having some deep conversation about Jake’s feelings about his mom’s remarriage, but she just wasn’t up to it, and with the twins in the back seat, he might not have wanted to talk anyway. Instead, while Paolo and Mateo seemed to fall back to sleep, she and Jake discussed her work. Jake was into computers and asked a bunch of questions about monitoring equipment and using sonar to find buried artifacts.
Tyler Cavanaugh and his friends had been into computers. Back then, their interest had damned them to the fringes of school society. Sam frowned at a traffic light. Shehatedremembering high school. This was a bad idea.
They pulled up to a townhouse, one in a long row with scant landscaping out front. A small SUV sat in the driveway.
Jake unfolded himself from her front seat and went to ring the bell. A man with blond hair opened the door, looked behind him, and yelled, “Matt!” before squinting out into the sunlight.