Sam frowned as the kid tucked his legs up beneath him. “What happened, Will?” he demanded even though the fist-shaped bruising around the boy’s swollen eye told the story. “Or should I say who?”
Smart, skinny and shy, Will could easily be the target of bullies, and Sam felt a protective instinct to step in and defend the kid. By the time he was Will’s age, he’d filled out enough that his size alone silenced the insults that had done more damage than any physical fight.
“It was my fault,” Will mumbled, refusing to meet his gaze. “I started it.”
“Oh, really,” Sam said, deadpan. Will was a good kid. Not the kind to get into trouble or cause fights.
“Look, if some kid’s been bullying you, you can tell me.”
Will kept his head down, as if Sam might forget about the black eye if he didn’t look him in the face. “It’s not some kid. It’s—Something I can handle.”
“If you want, I can show you some ways to defend yourself.”
“Yeah, right.” Will paused. “The guy’s like twice my size.”
“Self-defense isn’t about being bigger than your opponent, you know.”
Will snorted as he stood and glanced between Sam’s six-foot-three-inch, two-hundred-pound frame and his own five-seven and buck-twenty-five. “Easy for you to say.”
“Hey, I wasn’t always this size, and growing up I had two older brothers who used to gang up on me. It felt like they’d always be bigger and stronger and that no matter how much I grew, I’d never catch up.”
Sometimes it still felt that way. As if his brothers’ successes and accomplishments were somehow greater than his own.
It wasn’t that he was jealous of his brothers. He was proud of them. And, okay, so Nick and Drew had gone to college—Nick to be a veterinarian and Drew to study architecture before he decided he preferred building to designing—while Sam had struggled far more than he’d let on to just finish high school.
His brothers had been the good students, and he’d been the troublemaker, the class clown. All his life he’d heard the same comments from his teachers, his parents, even his high school girlfriend. If you’d just try harder…
The hell of it was, he had tried. He could remember being ten or eleven years old and sweating bullets as he struggled to finish a test or a project or a reading assignment. But he’d been unable to focus, to concentrate. His mind would drift away. Soon his gaze would follow and before long he’d have to escape. To be outside where he could run and play and forget.
By the time he hit junior high, he realized failing without trying was easier. He doubted he could explain it, but to his frustrated, angry mind, it had made sense. If he didn’t study, if he didn’t do his homework, if he didn’t complete assignments, he had a built-in excuse for failing. All it meant was that he was lazy, a goof-off who lacked discipline. If he tried and failed, well, that meant he was stupid, didn’t it?
When he reached high school, he discovered an alphabet’s worth of acronyms for learning disabilities. Part of him had been relieved to discover a reason for his problems, but by then keeping those difficulties a secret for the sake of his social standing had been second nature.
So he’d continued to hide his weakness behind an easy laugh and a what-the-hell smile and managed to get through high school. Barely. God, he’d been so scared, nearly sick to his stomach, his entire senior year. Terrified that he’d fail a class so badly his teachers would hold him back when all he wanted was to get out. Stuck behind a desk, crowded inside four walls, he’d itched for freedom, desperate to escape and unable to sit still.
Even though the worst of his symptoms had faded as he grew older, something his online research had told him didn’t always happen, that same feeling still snuck up on him when he thought about settling down. Trapped by a white picket fence instead of the chain link that circled the high school, but trapped all the same.
Shaking off those memories, Sam told Will, “If you change your mind and decide you’d like some help, let me know.”
“Just forget it, okay, Sam? I can take care of myself.”
Sam recognized the defiant lift to the boy’s chin and knew he wasn’t going to get any more out of Will. But patience had never been Sam’s strong suit. He wanted to push, to keep driving and get to the bottom of what Will had said—and whatever it was he was trying not to say.
Deciding to leave the ball in Will’s court for now, he nodded toward the sedan. “Think you can take care of this oil change?”
Will nodded, relief filling his young features.
“All right, then. Get back to work.”
Following his own advice, Sam checked the inventory for a replacement tire for Kara’s minivan. Even though she hadn’t told him where she’d be staying, he could easily find out. But for now it was another opportunity to play it cool. He’d given her the perfect excuse to see him again. If she didn’t take it—well, then he’d have to come up with an excuse of his own.
Never, in her wildest imagination, had Kara dreamed of being a spy. She’d never tried opening a lock with an unfolded paperclip. Never sent away box tops from sugary cereal for a secret decoder ring. Never tried eavesdropping with a glass pressed against a door.
Just as well, she decided, as she sank further down behind the steering wheel. Because she certainly would have been very, very bad at it. Not that she was actually spying. She’d parked beneath a shady spot across the street from Sam Pirelli’s garage fifteen minutes ago, the windows rolled down to catch a breeze carrying the scent of surrounding pines, but she wasn’t spying.
You aren’t going to find out anything about the man unless you really get to know him.
The voice of Olivia Richards, her best friend, rang in her thoughts. Olivia was a fellow teacher and the only person besides Kara’s parents to know the reason she had made the trip to Clearville.
Unlike her parents, Olivia had supported Kara’s decision to find Sam Pirelli.
“I can’t believe you met him already. What are the odds?” her exuberant friend had demanded when Kara phoned her after checking in at a local hotel and settling Timmy down for a nap. “It’s like fate.”
“It is not fate.”
Olivia snorted. “You break down in the middle of nowhere and the very guy you’ve traveled hundreds of miles to see is there to change your tire. That is fate, Kara-girl.”
“He’s a mechanic. He was doing his job, not riding in to save the day on his trusty steed, okay?” Kara wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince. Sam Pirelli’s arrival had very much smacked of a white-knight rescue whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Her friend sighed. “Fine, so he was simply in the right place at the right time. Tell me what he’s like.”
“He’s—he’s like too many of Marti’s past boyfriends,” Kara said dismissively. “Good-looking and out for a good time.”
“How good-looking?” Olivia pressed, curiosity clear in her voice even from miles away.
“Are you even listening to me?” Kara had demanded in a whisper as she glanced to the bedroom door only a few feet away from the suite’s tiny living area.
“I heard you say he was good-looking. In all the years we’ve known each other, you’ve been blind to the opposite sex.”
“Not blind,” Kara murmured, her friend’s teasing words stinging a little even though she knew they shouldn’t. The truth was, she’d been blinded by love before, and she’d sworn she’d never be so vulnerable again. “And you missed the part where I said Sam Pirelli’s