Page 19 of Tell Me Again
“We can stay a little while,” he agreed. “Then we have to go. It’s a school night and you have homework.”
She groaned. “Not much.”
Sam called to Mary that they’d be right up and then turned to Grace. “Your dad’s right,” she said, even though she would have preferred to keep the girl with her longer. Something expanded in her chest each time she looked at Grace. Something unfamiliar and tender was filling the empty spaces inside her. “School is most important.”
Grace pinned Sam with a look so like one of Bryce’s that the hair on the back of Sam’s neck stood on end.
“Why?” the girl asked. “You left school early, and I’m going to model, too, so—”
Sam didn’t have time to register her shock at that bombshell before Trevor exploded.
“Don’t start with the modeling business again, Grace. You’re staying in school and going to college. You have more to offer the world than your face.” He leveled a look at Sam. “Tell her,” he demanded. “Tell her modeling is a stupid idea. She’s smart and talented. She doesn’t need to sell herself to be a success.”
More to offer... sell herself...
Those might be Sam’s most secret fears, but they belonged to her. No way in hell was she going to stand here and allow Trevor Kincaid to call her...
“Did you just call me a prostitute?” she asked, her voice an angry hiss.
Trevor blinked. “Of course not. I said... I meant...”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Um... Dad, you kind of implied she was a hooker.”
Sam watched as he rounded on his daughter. “How do you even know what a hooker is?”
“Oh. My. God.” Grace gave him a withering look. “I’m thirteen, not three. I’ve seenPretty Woman.”
He pointed to the caretaker’s house. “Go drink hot chocolate.”
“But Dad—”
“Now, Grace,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I’m going to be a model,” Grace said to Sam, ignoring her father’s hulking presence. It was hard to imagine the girl could be so unaffected by his temper, but Grace seemed to easily ignore his anger. “I’d like your help with modeling. If you think I have what it takes?”
“I think you’re beautiful,” Sam whispered. It wasn’t an answer to the question, but it seemed to satisfy Grace.
Shooting a final glare at her dad, the girl stomped off toward Mary’s front porch.
Sam picked up the bow and quiver of arrows, and moved past Trevor toward the storage shed where they kept the archery equipment.
A moment later he was at her side, easily keeping up with her long strides. At close to six feet tall, Sam was used to being able to outwalk almost anyone, but Trevor had several inches on her and had no trouble matching her pace. It would be easier to pretend he didn’t exist if her body wasn’t so hyperaware of him. Today he wore a long-sleeve deep blue Henley fitted across his broad chest, and dark jeans that hugged... she wasn’t going to think about the parts of his body they hugged. She wouldn’t think about his body at all.
“You know I don’t think you were a hooker,” he said into the silence.
Sam forced air in and out of her lungs. Although the camp was only an hour from downtown Denver, the air was cleaner up here. She tried to let the fresh scent of damp pine calm her, but he’d hit a long-buried nerve. “Stop using that word,” she said, her lips barely moving. She was afraid if she opened her mouth too wide she’d begin shrieking like an old-time fishwife.
She heard the muttered curse that was his response but kept walking. Kept her focus on the task at hand, on her burgeoning relationship with her niece, on the need to fix the damage to her camp. Anything but the hurtful words he’d spoken. She wasn’t sure which bothered her more—the implication or the fact that deep inside she believed it to be true. She’d locked away her mistakes but still held the key to that particular door close to her heart. It was so simple to pull it out and release those memories to swirl around her, tainting who she’d worked to become.
Propping the bow against the shed’s stained-wood exterior, she fumbled with the latch. Damn her trembling fingers.
Trevor’s hand settled over hers, squeezing gently.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “It was a jackass thing to say, and I’m sorry.”
She didn’t pull away her hand, but she wouldn’t look at him, either. “Part of you believes it.”
“That’s not—”
