Texas Vows: A McCabe Family Saga. Cathy Thacker Gillen

would have hated this. Hated what I’ve become….

      Pushing the guilt away, Sam went back to his bottle. He tipped it up, drank deeply. “You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through,” he said roughly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

      “But I will, Sam,” Kate promised. “Before all is said and done, I will.” She surveyed him with one last contemplative glance, then turned on her heel and stomped out of the study.

      Sam followed her into the foyer, the Scotch he’d consumed doing nothing to abate his misery over either losing Ellie or this latest debacle in his life. “Leaving? So soon?” Since Ellie’s death, he’d been empty inside. Dead. Now Kate, with her endless prodding and pushing, had made him cruel, too. He wouldn’t forgive her for that, any more than she was going to forgive him for the pass.

      Kate shot him a look over her shoulder, anger flashing in her eyes. “Go to hell.”

      Can’t, Sam thought miserably, I’m already there.

      Not about to apologize for what he’d known would happen all along if he spent any time alone with her, he shrugged. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

      Kate gritted her teeth. “Only because you’re behaving like such a self-centered jerk.”

      “What can I say? You bring out the best in me.” Ignoring the hurt in her eyes, Sam forced himself to not feel guilty, to not take anything of what he’d said or done back, no matter how unkind it was. He hadn’t invited her here. He hadn’t asked her to stir up his pain to unbearable, unmanageable levels. She’d ignored all his signals to the contrary and barged in here at her own risk. What she had gotten was her own damn fault. Not his.

      “The best or the worst?” Kate returned sharply. “’Cause if this is as good as it gets from here on out, I’d sure hate to be one of your sons.”

      Sam had never slapped a woman—he never would. But she made him want to slap the daylights out of her. Another first. “Get the hell out.” Sam scowled. He jerked open the door, took her by the shoulders, and shoved her stumbling across the jamb. As soon as she’d cleared the portal, he slammed the door behind her, and didn’t look back.

      There were some people it was best just to stay away from.

      Starting now, Kate Marten topped his list.

      CHAPTER TWO

      FOOTSTEPS clattered across the floor, not stopping until they were precariously near. “I had a feeling this was going to happen.”

      Sam McCabe groaned. That voice again. Do-gooding. Soft. Persistent. He struggled to bring himself out of his stupor, felt the sledgehammer pounding behind his eyes, and decided it wasn’t worth it. Sighing, he headed back into the blissful darkness of sleep.

      Feminine perfume teased his senses. A small, delicate hand touched his shoulder.

      “Rise and shine, big guy.”

      Knowing full well who it was without even looking, Sam moaned and tried to lift his head. He swallowed around a mouth that felt as if it were filled with cotton and tasted like the bottom of a garbage pail. “Go. Away.”

      “You keep saying that.” The low voice was laced with amusement. “Don’t you know by now it’s not going to work?”

      Realizing the only way to get rid of the busybody was to face her, Sam grimaced and lifted his head as far as he could—which turned out to be several inches above the desk. Feeling as if he were going to throw up at any moment if he moved even the slightest bit in any direction, he struggled to open his eyes. Kate Marten was standing beside him, dressed much the same as she had been the night before, in some sort of dress-for-success business suit. Her hair fell in a gentle curve of silk to her shoulders, before flipping out and up at the ends. Her fair skin glowed with good health and just a hint of summer sun. Worse, unlike him, she looked and smelled like a million bucks.

      “Do you know what time it is?” she asked with a sweet, condescending smile that made him want to throttle her all the more. Not waiting for him to answer, she replied for him. “Seven-thirty.”

      Sam groaned again, even louder and, using his hands as levers, pushed his head up a little more. The last thing he wanted to be doing in his hungover state was noticing what a pretty face Kate Marten had.

      “Do you know what time John and Lilah are due to bring your boys back this morning?” Kate Marten continued in a bright cheery voice that grated on his nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. Her long-lashed light blue eyes arrowed in on his. “Eight-thirty. That gives you an hour to look halfway sober. Unless of course you want your boys to see you this way.”

      Sam regarded her with unchecked hostility. Damn her not just for seeing him this way but for coming back…after what he’d done. He turned his glance away from the determined tilt of her chin. “I thought you would have learned your lesson last night,” he mumbled, cradling his pounding skull between his hands. Hell, if putting the moves on her as crudely and rudely as possible hadn’t chased Miss Respectability of Laramie, Texas, away, he didn’t know what would. He’d been damn sure his actions would send her running as fast and far away from him as possible, never to return again, or he sure as shooting wouldn’t have grabbed her and kissed her in a way neither of them was ever likely to forget.

      “That works both ways,” Kate retorted. “How’s your shin?”

      It still hurt like the dickens where she’d bruised it. But he wasn’t telling her that! “None of your damn business.” With a groan, Sam sat up all the way.

      “I’m not afraid of some bad behavior, Sam. In my line of work, I see that all the time.”

      Sam narrowed his eyes at her skeptically, taking in her finely arched brows, pert, slender nose and nicely curved lips, before returning to her wide-set, light blue eyes. “You get kissed and groped?” Sam didn’t know why, but the idea that Kate might have been manhandled that way by anyone else rankled.

      “No, you were the first,” Kate said, crossing her arms against her waist in a way that accentuated the curves of her breasts beneath her sophisticated-yet-oh-so prim-and-proper dress. “No other patient has ever lashed out or acted out his grief and anger in quite that way. Not that I’m all in a tizzy about it, since I know darn well that what happened last night happened only because you were drunk.”

      Sam had news for Kate: he hadn’t been that drunk when he’d made the pass. If he had been, he wouldn’t be able to remember it nearly as well as he did. He wouldn’t have had to spend half the night, and another quarter of the bottle of Scotch, trying to obliterate the soft, sexy feel of her lips or the responsiveness of her slender body as it molded sensuously to his. Because the last thing he had wanted last night was to get aroused. The last thing he had wanted was any proof he was still alive. When he had made that pass at her, he had just been angry, and looking for a way to vent.

      Sam glared at her, wishing she would just go away. And stop acting as if she had something to do with the mess his life had become since Ellie died. “I’m not your patient.”

      Kate looked at him as if she wished he were her patient. “I think before all is said and done I’m going to end up helping you and your boys.”

      “That’s going to be hard to do if you never see us.”

      “Oh, but I will see you, all of you, all the time, starting tomorrow afternoon.”

      Sam tensed. “How do you figure that?”

      Kate circled around the desk. She leaned against the edge, arms still folded in front of her. “Because you’re going to let me move in here until you find a suitable housekeeper for the boys.”

      Sam blew out a contemptuous breath and tipped back in his swivel chair. “Dream on.”

      Ignoring his hostility, Kate crossed her legs at the ankles and continued sweetly, “And you want to know why you’re