Texas Vows: A McCabe Family Saga. Cathy Thacker Gillen

never been married or had kids of your own,” he told Kate, giving her a look that immediately relieved her of any responsibilities, any past debts, she thought she had here.

      “A fact that will be remedied soon enough,” Kate interjected, wiggling her left ring finger.

      Sam blew out an aggravated breath. “The fact you’re getting married to Craig Farrell later this fall changes nothing, Kate. You still know nothing about being a mom.”

      “Maybe not,” Kate conceded, clearly hurt he didn’t think her capable. “But I know plenty about being a friend.”

      What little patience he had fading fast, Sam shoved a hand through his hair. He wished Kate would just give up and go home. “My kids have friends,” he told her gruffly. “They need a disciplinarian.”

      A fact that, to Sam’s consternation, did not faze Ms. Kate Marten in the least. “If you think I can’t bring order to your five rowdy boys, think again, Sam. I worked as a camp counselor five summers in a row. I was an athletic trainer for my father’s football team all four years of high school. I can handle your boys, Sam.”

      Sam rolled his eyes. “That’s what Mrs. Grunwald said. And she was a marine. They drove her out in two weeks.” Sam shuddered to think what his kids would do to someone as well-intentioned but as hopelessly naive as Kate Marten.

      Kate shrugged and continued to regard him like the dynamo she thought she was. “All that proves is that she wasn’t the right person for the job,” she persisted amiably.

      Sam took in Kate’s dress-for-success clothing and carefully selected jewelry. With her soft honey-blond hair falling about her shoulders in a style that probably took hours every day to maintain, she looked as though she belonged in an office, not a kitchen or a laundry room. “And you are?”

      “You’re darn right I am.” Kate looked at him steadily. As she continued, her voice dropped a compassionate notch. “Furthermore, I can help you, too, Sam.”

      Now that grated, Sam thought. To the point it really shouldn’t go unrewarded. “How?” Sam asked sharply, eyeing her with a brooding stare designed to intimidate.

      “By giving you someone to talk to.”

      Finally, he acknowledged silently, they were down to the tiny print at the bottom of every contract. “What are we talking about here?” Sam asked in a deceptively casual voice that in no way revealed how truly annoyed he was with her. “Some sort of informal grief counseling on the side?”

      “Yes.” Kate beamed her relief that he was catching on. Her blue eyes gleamed with a mixture of gentleness and understanding. “If that’s what you want, certainly I’d be happy to help you with that.”

      Sam drained the last of his Scotch. Setting his glass down with a thud, he got slowly, deliberately, to his feet. What was it going to take, he wondered, to get people to stop trying to examine his private pain and leave him alone? What was it going to take to get people to let him grieve, in his own time, in his own way, at his own pace? He’d thought if he left Dallas—where he and Ellie and the kids had made their life together—and returned to the town where he and Ellie had spent their childhoods, that the people would be kind enough, sensitive enough, to just leave him and the kids alone to work through their grief however they saw fit. Instead, everyone wanted to help. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had some method of coping they wanted him and or the boys to try. Leading the charge of the “Laramie, Texas, Kind Friend and Neighbor Brigade” was Kate Marten.

      Sam had tried ignoring her. Been rude and unapproachable. He’d even—for a few minutes tonight—gritted his teeth and tried to reason with her. To his chagrin, all he’d done was encourage her.

      And that, Sam knew, as he stood in front of Kate, would not do.

      To make everyone else cease and desist their well-intentioned yet misguided efforts to snap him and the boys out of their grief, he would first have to make Kate Marten back off. As disagreeable as he found even the idea of it, Sam knew of only one surefire way to do that.

      “If that seems like too much at first, we can just—I don’t know…be friends,” Kate continued a little nervously, finally beginning to eye him with the wariness he’d wanted her to all along.

      “Suppose I want more than that?” His idea picking up steam, Sam reached down, took Kate’s wrist, and pulled her to her feet. Ignoring the soft, silky warmth of her skin beneath his fingertips, and the widening of her astonished blue eyes, he danced her backward to the wall. “Then what?”

      “Um—” Kate swallowed as she tried and failed to unobtrusively extricate her wrist from his iron grip. “We could get into other areas, too.”

      Sam smiled cynically at the sheer improbability of that ever happening. Aware his plan was working, he said gruffly, “You’re not getting it.” Sam caged her with his body and braced an arm against the wall on either side of her head.

      Her expectant look changing to one of alarm, Kate tried and failed to push past him. “Not getting what?” she asked, still smiling, albeit a lot more nervously now.

      “That’s not what I want from you, Kate,” Sam murmured as he slanted his head over hers. Telling himself this was for both their sakes, Sam let his gaze slowly trace the contours of her face, linger hotly on her lips, before returning—with all sensual deliberateness—to the growing panic in her ever-widening eyes. “That’s not what I want from any woman.”

      Fear turned to anger as he leaned impertinently close. “Sam…” Kate warned as she splayed both her hands firmly across his chest and shoved. Again to no avail.

      Now that he’d found something that would work to rid himself of her, Sam wasn’t going anywhere.

      “This is the liquor talking,” Kate continued in her pious counselor’s voice.

      Knowing he would have to become a real bastard to remove Kate and her damnable interference once and for all, Sam merely smiled. “I’m not that drunk,” he said, his voice taking on a menacing tone. “Yet.” Before the evening was over, for the first time since the night of Ellie’s funeral, he would be.

      “You don’t have to behave this way.” Kate lectured him with a mix of compassion and desperation. Ignoring his obvious disillusionment, she insisted stubbornly, “I can help you.”

      Sam shook his head. Kate was wrong. She couldn’t help. No one could. The best thing anyone could do—the only thing—was leave him the hell alone. The sooner Kate Marten understood that, the better.

      “The only thing I want is this.” Grabbing her roughly, Sam lowered his lips to hers and delivered a short, swift, punishing kiss meant only to inflame her anger and vent his. “And this…” His hands moved from her shoulders to her breasts in a callous way he knew would infuriate and frighten her even more than his brief, bruising kiss. Ignoring her muffled cry of dismay and shuddering breaths, Sam forced her lips open with the pressure of his and deepened the contact.

      “Are you willing to give me that, Kate?” he demanded contemptuously, shifting his hands lower still. “Do your professional services…your unending sympathy for me and all I’ve been through extend that far?” He kissed her again, harder, more relentlessly than before as his hands slipped beneath her dress and closed around the satiny softness of her inner thighs. “Or are their limits on what you’ll take, too?” he taunted, wanting her—needing her—to share some of this pain she had so cruelly dredged up.

      Breathing hard, Kate shoved him away from her. Hauling back her hand, she slapped his face. Hard. “That’s for kissing me, when you know I’m engaged,” she spouted angrily, fire in her eyes. “And that—” Kate kicked his shin even harder than she’d slapped his face “—is for the grope.”

      “Got to hand it to you, Kate,” Sam drawled, mocking her, even as shame flowed through him at his behavior. Limping, grimacing, he let her go. “You haven’t lost your fighting spirit.” Nor your aim. Even through the numbing haze of alcohol