Daddy Says, ''I Do!''

You’re only encouraging his fears by pandering to them, her father had argued.

It never failed to amaze Kara how Marcus Starling, a brilliant surgeon, could know everything there was to know about the heart and yet be so clueless about his grandson’s feelings.

Honestly, though, she didn’t know why she’d been surprised. Her father had never made much of an attempt to understand his daughters either. But his own feelings when it came to this trip had been more than clear.

The fall semester starts in two weeks. You have a responsibility to the college and your students.

Fortunately, her boss at the small private college where Kara taught had been more understanding, lining up part-time teachers to cover her classes in case she needed more time off. Explaining that to her father had been as useless as trying to explain Timmy’s fear of monsters.

Have you considered how this leave of absence might affect your chances of being named chair of the department?

Kara already regretted telling her father about the upcoming vacancy. The current chair of the English department was stepping down the next year, and she’d been both surprised and pleased that she was one of the professors under consideration to replace him. But the position was anything but a sure thing and if the faculty chose another teacher…well, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d disappointed her father.

Giving a resigned sigh, Kara gave her nephew’s hand a reassuring squeeze. We all have our monsters, don’t we, Timmy?

Before she could come up with a response to soothe her nephew’s fears, the off-key whistling from the back of the van was followed by a soft thud. Kara turned to watch Sam Pirelli lift the spare. The faded cotton stretched across his wide shoulders, and the bulge of his muscular thighs tested the worn seams of his jeans as he crouched down to maneuver the tire into place.

Kara swallowed, her mouth drier than the mild temperature could account for.

“Wow, he’s superstrong.”

The whistling stopped for a moment at Timmy’s awefilled comment, only to start up again a little louder, and if possible, a little cockier. The flush of embarrassment on her face burned hotter when Sam glanced over his shoulder with a knowing grin. It was almost as if he’d overheard her raving about his super strength, which was ridiculous because she certainly wasn’t impressed with his muscular arms or chest or—

Oh, who was she kidding? She was just as impressed as her nephew, if for very different reasons. She could only hope she was slightly better at hiding it.

“Okay, you’re good to go. You’ll want to replace the spare before you head home…” His voice trailed off as if expecting her to fill in where she was from, but that, like her last name, was information Kara wasn’t willing to give.

“I’ll do that.”

“Here.” Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out a business card and handed it to her. “Stop by the shop and I’ll set you up.”

“Thank you. What do I owe you?”

He shook his head before she could finish the question. “Don’t worry about it.”

Kara frowned. She didn’t like being indebted to anyone, and she was especially uneasy about owing Sam Pirelli. Maybe because, deep down, she knew what she owed him most of all was the truth. Shoving the thought aside, she said, “I owe you for your time.”

“Okay, then.” The glint in his eyes should have warned her what was coming, but she was still caught off guard when he announced, “Dinner.”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you wanted to repay me, so I’m thinking dinner. Nothing too fancy. It was just a tire, not like replacing the carburetor or anything.”

His smile threatened to shake something loose inside her. What would it be like to have those teasing lips flirting with hers? Her heart skipped a beat, but she’d long ago learned the dangers of dancing to that foolish rhythm. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Hey, it was your idea in the first place. You’re the one who insisted on paying.”

“And you always take sandwiches over cold hard cash?”

“I was thinking maybe steak and potatoes, but if you’re craving sandwiches—”

Throwing her hands out to her sides, Kara protested, “I did not say I was craving sandwiches!”

Sam grinned again, stopping any further protest as she realized he wasn’t looking at her. Glancing down, she saw Timmy watching the exchange with wide-eyed interest. He looked slightly puzzled, as if wondering what his normally calm, cool and collected aunt was doing standing on the side of the road, arguing with the most infuriating man.

It was a question she had to ask herself, and she felt her face heat as she looked back at Sam. Seeming to realize he’d pushed as far as he should, he flicked the edge of the business card she still held. “Don’t forget to get that tire replaced.”

He turned to walk back to his beat-up-looking car, and Kara knew she should let it go. Just let him walk away. But the words escaped before she could stop them and she called out, “I’m going to pay for the new tire.”

He turned with his hand braced on the driver’s side door. “No problem. I’m all for dessert, too. You know where to find me when you decide what you’re hungry for.”

The ridiculous, arrogant parting line was still ringing in her ears when Sam’s car sped off with a squeal of tires and cloud of dust. What she was hungry for…

Kara snorted in response as she helped Timmy back into his booster seat. When it came to men like Sam Pirelli, she was on a permanent diet!

“What’d you say, Aunt Kara?”

“Nothing, sweetie.” Looking up from snapping the belt at his waist, her heart stuttered as she met the little boy’s gaze. She swallowed as recognition hit hard, and an unwanted thought drifted through her mind for the first time.

He has his daddy’s eyes.

Chapter Two

As Sam walked into his garage later that morning, he spotted a familiar pair of worn work boots and skinny, jeans-clad legs sticking out from beneath a navy sedan. Even though Will Gentry had been working for him since the beginning of summer, Sam still wasn’t one hundred percent accustomed to someone else in his shop.

He had long prided himself on taking care of his customer’s cars as if they were his own—doing all the maintenance and repairs, and not letting anyone else lend a hand. Thanks to that work ethic, he was busier than he could handle, to the point of turning work away. Hiring an employee had been a big step, but it was only the beginning of plans that included the Corvette he’d parked out front.

A grin tugged at his lips when he thought about Kara’s obvious lack of appreciation for the work he’d done on the car. Obviously she wasn’t easily impressed. What would it take, he wondered, to really wow a woman like her?

Anticipation fueled the blood in his veins even though he wasn’t sure what to make of his undeniable interest. He didn’t usually go for serious types. Or single mothers, he reminded himself. Knowing Kara had a son should have been enough to keep his mind off the woman, beautiful or not. But she was only visiting. So, it wasn’t as if he was expecting anything permanent. Just a chance to get to know the lady, short-term, until she was ready to move on.

“How’s it going, Will?” Sam asked, turning his attention back to his young assistant. One good thing about having an employee was having someone to talk to. With Will, that meant having someone who listened, but rarely responded beyond a mumbled word or two.

The grunted response from under the sedan was less verbose than usual, but Sam knew the simple oil change wasn’t enough to give Will any trouble. “Come on out for a minute, will ya?”

Moving in slow motion, Will’s scuffed heels inched along the concrete, revealing more of his threadbare jeans, then a ratty yellow T-shirt over a nearly skin-and-bones torso, until finally Sam got a glimpse of the kid’s face—and the black eye he’d been reluctant to reveal.

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 only out for a good time.”

And not father material.

Kara might not have said that last part out loud, but Olivia had been her friend long enough to hear the unspoken accusation. “How do you know after one meeting?”

“I just know,” she argued. When her friend’s silence continued, she blurted out, “He hit on me, okay? Five minutes into meeting the guy, and he was pushing for a dinner invitation. What does that tell you?”

“Um, that’s he’s interested in you?”

“He’s a player, Liv. He’d hit on anything with a pulse.”

“You don’t know that.”

But Kara felt she did. Knew the type, at least. The kind to make promises, to vow to love a girl forever. But she’d learned those words—like those men—were meaningless.

“You have to give him a chance,” Olivia encouraged. “Weren’t you the one who said it was wrong of Marti to keep Timmy’s birth a secret?”

“I know, but Marti must have had her reasons, right?”

And what those reasons were…the possibilities made Kara sick to her stomach when she thought of handing Timmy over to the stranger who was his father. As much as she’d loved her sister, she’d never understood Marti’s attraction to rough and rowdy men.

But Sam’s not like that.

The voice that sounded so much like Marti’s whispered through Kara’s mind. On the surface, at least, Sam was more the golden-boy-next-door type than dark and dangerous. He had a quick and easy smile, a good sense of humor and a willingness to laugh at himself.

All…not bad qualities.

Kara could see why Marti would have found him attractive. But her sister had excelled in picking men suited for short-term relationships. None of them had been built for the long haul. Even if he didn’t possess the worst qualities of some of Marti’s previous boyfriends, was Sam Pirelli the type of man to put the needs of a child before his own?

“You may never know what made Marti keep silent in the past. But I think in that letter she was pretty clear about what she wanted for the future.”

The letter. The one that had sent Kara on this mission in the first place.

The shock of her sister’s death in a small plane crash had been like a nightmare. Too horrible and unreal to be true. Kara had sleepwalked through those first days, waiting for someone to wake her up. But reality had set in quickly, forcing grief aside. After all, she had Timmy to think about.

Finding out her carefree sister had a will had come as another shock. And the letter naming Timmy’s father for the first time and asking Kara to take the little boy to meet Sam Pirelli had been the last painful blow.

How could you ask me to do this, Marti? How could you ask me to give up a child I love as if he were my own?

But if Marti’s voice had spoken before, it was silent now, leaving Kara’s raw and aching questions unanswered.

After the reading of the will, Kara had talked with the lawyer. Because Marti had named Kara her son’s legal guardian, he reassured her, in the eyes of the law, Timmy was hers…as long as the boy’s father didn’t sue for custody. Then, the lawyer told her, the courts tended to side on behalf of the biological parent.

She swallowed hard, the sign for Sam’s Garage blurring before her eyes as she blinked away the hot press of tears.

She didn’t know for sure that her sister wanted Sam to raise their son. Didn’t even know if Sam Pirelli would want to take on that responsibility.

Inhaling a deep breath, she forced the rush of emotion aside. She had two weeks to find out. That was the timeframe she’d given herself, one that coincided with the start of the fall semester and also the beginning of the year at the preschool where Timmy was enrolled.

“Aunt Kara.” She glanced in the rearview mirror to meet her nephew’s disgruntled gaze. “I wanna go home.”

That refrain, coupled with “are we there yet?” had repeated with headache-inducing consistency over the past two days. “I know, sweetie.” Turning around in the seat to face her nephew, she said, “Do you remember the man who changed our tire? Well, we need to go to his garage and replace the one that went flat.”

“But why are we just sitting here?” He drummed his heels against the edge of the seat, revealing his impatience.

“Because Mr. Pirelli is…busy.”

And he had been since the moment Kara parked the van across the shop. The prosaically named Sam’s Garage looked like the kind of place that would have a girly calendar pinned to a wall, but it was Sam who could hold his own with Mr. November any day.

Even from across the street, she could see the wink of his dimples, the flash of bright white teeth, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Little wonder women fell for him, and from what she had witnessed, Sam Pirelli did not discriminate.

A tall, stunning redhead had stopped by, followed by a short, curvy blonde. He greeted them with that killer smile and exchanges were made—keys, cars, laughter, embraces. A petite, doe-eyed brunette then brought him a late lunch in a brown paper bag—a huge sandwich he ate with the gusto of a man who was starving. Not that Kara believed it.

With so many women flocking around, going without hardly seemed necessary. Or even possible.

All of which made her wonder again what her sister had been thinking.

It also made Olivia’s advice ring through her thoughts again.

And once the brunette left, Kara decided this might be her best opportunity to get to know Timmy’s father. “All right, Timmy. It looks like Mr. Pirelli has some free time now.”

And as long as no other women stop by, maybe he can squeeze in a few minutes for the son he’s never known.

The thought was more than a little unreasonable, but then again, so was the jealousy she’d felt. She’d told Olivia the man was a playboy, flirting with any woman who crossed his path. That his interest in her and his angling for a dinner date meant nothing. But watching proof of her words brought to light right in front of her made her feel foolish for thinking she might have been wrong.

The motor roared in protest as she turned the key, forgetting she already had the engine running. Even more flustered now, she sucked in a calming breath as she pulled out of her hiding place and drove the minivan the short distance into the garage’s parking lot.

She’d barely set one foot on the ground before Sam appeared, opening the door the rest of the way and offering her a hand.

“Come for that spare?” he asked with enough question in his voice to suggest she might have shown up for another reason. Like the dinner he thought she owed him.

“That’s why I’m here. For the tire.” One that, hopefully, wasn’t as overinflated as Sam’s ego.

Even though they’d only met that morning, Kara had already tried to convince herself he wasn’t that tall, his shoulders weren’t that wide, his smile wasn’t that tempting. That in an effort to distract her emotions, her mind had simply exaggerated, focusing on unimportant details and blowing them all out of proportion. That was what she’d told herself. Unfortunately, Kara realized as she gazed up into his handsome face, she’d lied.

He didn’t give any ground as she stood, keeping her caught between the V of the open door and his body. His eyes searched hers as if looking for answers to questions he’d yet to ask, and Kara’s heartbeat stumbled uncertainly. Standing this close, she could smell the unfamiliar combination of motor oil and machinery, but also the clean, simple, sexy scent of the man beneath.

“Caramel.”

The unexpected reference to candy took her by surprise. “What?”

“Your eyes. They’re the color of the caramel my mom used to make for dipping apples when I was a kid. My brothers liked the crunch of hard candy, but I always wanted rich, swirling caramel.” His gaze roved over her face, but it wasn’t her eyes he finally honed in on.

Kara swallowed hard, biting back the urge to run her tongue over lower lip. Not in anticipation of a childhood treat, but with a longing for the sweet promise of Sam’s kiss. The shock of her own desire was enough to lock her trembling knees in place. “My eyes are brown. Plain and simple.”

“Oh, I’d be willing to bet there’s nothing simple about you.” His voice held a hint of teasing, but something told her he wasn’t joking. That he knew she had her secrets and wouldn’t stop until he discovered them all. “You had sunglasses on earlier. For some reason with your blond hair and fair skin, I expected your eyes to be blue.”