Page 23 of Lush Curves

“Right?” She popped the rest of the spring roll in her mouth. “So you love and support your brother, and don’t want him to get hurt or get dead. Nothingwrongwith that, and there never will be.”

“True.” He suddenly looked mightily cheered, and she smiled back at him. “So, anyway…that’swhere I come from. I’d say that pretty much anythingreallygood about me is because of my brother’s sacrifice – and it’s one that I can’t ever repay or match. I know that.”

Annie nodded, and he gazed at her across the table, admiring how blue her eyes were, how they sparkled when she smiled.

“And where doyoucome from, Annie?”

She looked down at her plate, blinked in a bit of confusion. After all, she’d gone along for three years, just assuming that Sam’s life had been totally unlike hers, totally unlike Sarah and Noah’s. She’d wrongly – due to a serious case of reverse-poverty-ism – thought that anyone who was a doctorhadto have had a pretty easy start in life. At the very least, parents to kick in for an education and food and rent when things got tight.

Not in a million years had she thought that Sam – happy, kind, confident, commanding Doctor Sam Frickin’ Innis, E.R. trauma doctor – had pulled himself out of such a howling pit of poverty, despair, hurt, and loss.

Not in abillionyears had she thought that she and Sam had anything in common whatsoever.

But they did. More than she’d ever have been able to imagine.

And that was when Annie looked at him differently, right there in that Chinese restaurant, over a mostly-eaten plate of food and a once-again-empty glass of wine that Sam was already quietly refilling. She saw his grit and guts; she saw his humanity and determination. She saw him as a bewildered, terrified, twelve-year-old boy watching his older brother dragged away as an explosion killed their parents, and she saw how that horrific loss had propelled him forward and on, into a profession where he sawnothingbuttrauma and near-death rolled into the E.R. to him, every single day.

She’d seen how he’d fought like hell to save her daughter’s life three years ago, and she knew that he buckled down and fought just as hard for every person’s daughter, husband, mother, brother-in-law. Sam Innisknewwhat it was to lose someone to stupid fate, to a pointless accident, to bad timing and worse damn luck – and he’d walked away from that stupid, fateful, untimely car accident that had taken his parents right in front of him, and he’d walked away determined to stop anyone else knowing that devastating loss, if it was at all possible for him to do so.

He’d become stronger in his loss, in his pain.Thatwas something that Annie Matthews could relate to. That, and how some of the pain had come about.

And that was when shesawhim. Really,reallysaw him.

That was also when she knew that they had plenty to talk about after all; maybe enough for a lifetime.

But since she wasn’t going to get a lifetime with Sam, she knew that it was certainly enough for one date.

The fact that she never talked about her early life made her pause, just for a few seconds, but then she realized: Sam had just shared the most heart-wrenching, devastating experience of his life with her. He’d made himself vulnerable to her, he’d shown her his heart, and how it had been hurt. He’d just handed Annie a large piece of who he was, and how he’d become that way. He’d trusted her. Was shehonestlygoing to withhold anything from him?

No. No, she wasn’t. She was going to show Sam her heart, too, even if that thought scared her about to death.

Deep breath. In, out. Another one. In. Out. Maybe a gulp of wine. Maybe another. Good. Oh, shit,notgood. That was most of the glass.

OK… go.

“Well… I’m from Kansas, originally,” Annie said. “Born and raised there, went to school there, left there when I was seventeen, back when I was still called ‘Anne’.” She hesitated. “Actually… ‘left’ is the wrong word.”

“So whatisthe right word, honey?” he asked her gently. “If you didn’t leave, what did you do?”

“Escaped,” she said bluntly. “Ran away. Ran for my damn life.”

He sat back now, those brown eyes steady and calm and focused on her, totallyonher. It wasthatlook, the one that made her feel like Sam could strip her flesh right off her bones, see so deep inside her, that he saw her actual, real, true heart. The realest, truest parts of her. Maybe both the best and worst parts of her, all at once.

She felt cradled in that gaze. Held close and cherished and valued, like a princess.

She felt at home.

“Escaped from what?” he asked. “Ran to what?”

“Two big questions.” She smiled a bit shakily. “In short: I escaped from my physically abusive, alcoholic stepfather, and ran straight to my emotionally abusive, alcoholic husband.”

“Well,shiiiiiiiit,” Sam said, drawing out the swear word in an almost-Texan drawl that made her laugh a bit. “Maybe we need to break out the hard stuff for this part of the conversation?”

“What hard stuff?” she asked, already regretting that fourth glass of wine, sure that if she drank one more sip ofanything, she’d do the world’s most inelegant face-plant onto the table in front of the world’s hottest doctor. “Whiskey?”

“Hell, no.” He waved at the waitress. “Fortune cookies.”

Annie laughed out loud this time. “Perfect.”

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