Texas Vows: A McCabe Family Saga

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 and grief, his face stung and his shin throbbed even worse.

“Too bad I can’t say the same for you.” Hands propped on her hips, she regarded him with unmitigated disgust.

Ellie would have hated this. Hated what I’ve become….

Pushing the guilt away, Sam went back to his bottle. He tipped it up, drank deeply. “You don’t know anything about what I’ve been through,” he said roughly, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

“But I will, Sam,” Kate promised. “Before all is said and done, I will.” She surveyed him with one last contemplative glance, then turned on her heel and stomped out of the study.

Sam followed her into the foyer, the Scotch he’d consumed doing nothing to abate his misery over either losing Ellie or this latest debacle in his life. “Leaving? So soon?” Since Ellie’s death, he’d been empty inside. Dead. Now Kate, with her endless prodding and pushing, had made him cruel, too. He wouldn’t forgive her for that, any more than she was going to forgive him for the pass.

Kate shot him a look over her shoulder, anger flashing in her eyes. “Go to hell.”

Can’t, Sam thought miserably, I’m already there.

Not about to apologize for what he’d known would happen all along if he spent any time alone with her, he shrugged. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”

Kate gritted her teeth. “Only because you’re behaving like such a self-centered jerk.”

“What can I say? You bring out the best in me.” Ignoring the hurt in her eyes, Sam forced himself to not feel guilty, to not take anything of what he’d said or done back, no matter how unkind it was. He hadn’t invited her here. He hadn’t asked her to stir up his pain to unbearable, unmanageable levels. She’d ignored all his signals to the contrary and barged in here at her own risk. What she had gotten was her own damn fault. Not his.

“The best or the worst?” Kate returned sharply. “’Cause if this is as good as it gets from here on out, I’d sure hate to be one of your sons.”

Sam had never slapped a woman—he never would. But she made him want to slap the daylights out of her. Another first. “Get the hell out.” Sam scowled. He jerked open the door, took her by the shoulders, and shoved her stumbling across the jamb. As soon as she’d cleared the portal, he slammed the door behind her, and didn’t look back.

There were some people it was best just to stay away from.

Starting now, Kate Marten topped his list.

CHAPTER TWO

FOOTSTEPS clattered across the floor, not stopping until they were precariously near. “I had a feeling this was going to happen.”

Sam McCabe groaned. That voice again. Do-gooding. Soft. Persistent. He struggled to bring himself out of his stupor, felt the sledgehammer pounding behind his eyes, and decided it wasn’t worth it. Sighing, he headed back into the blissful darkness of sleep.

Feminine perfume teased his senses. A small, delicate hand touched his shoulder.

“Rise and shine, big guy.”

Knowing full well who it was without even looking, Sam moaned and tried to lift his head. He swallowed around a mouth that felt as if it were filled with cotton and tasted like the bottom of a garbage pail. “Go. Away.”

“You keep saying that.” The low voice was laced with amusement. “Don’t you know by now it’s not going to work?”

Realizing the only way to get rid of the busybody was to face her, Sam grimaced and lifted his head as far as he could—which turned out to be several inches above the desk. Feeling as if he were going to throw up at any moment if he moved even the slightest bit in any direction, he struggled to open his eyes. Kate Marten was standing beside him, dressed much the same as she had been the night before, in some sort of dress-for-success business suit. Her hair fell in a gentle curve of silk to her shoulders, before flipping out and up at the ends. Her fair skin glowed with good health and just a hint of summer sun. Worse, unlike him, she looked and smelled like a million bucks.

“Do you know what time it is?” she asked with a sweet, condescending smile that made him want to throttle her all the more. Not waiting for him to answer, she replied for him. “Seven-thirty.”

Sam groaned again, even louder and, using his hands as levers, pushed his head up a little more. The last thing he wanted to be doing in his hungover state was noticing what a pretty face Kate Marten had.

“Do you know what time John and Lilah are due to bring your boys back this morning?” Kate Marten continued in a bright cheery voice that grated on his nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. Her long-lashed light blue eyes arrowed in on his. “Eight-thirty. That gives you an hour to look halfway sober. Unless of course you want your boys to see you this way.”

Sam regarded her with unchecked hostility. Damn her not just for seeing him this way but for coming back…after what he’d done. He turned his glance away from the determined tilt of her chin. “I thought you would have learned your lesson last night,” he mumbled, cradling his pounding skull between his hands. Hell, if putting the moves on her as crudely and rudely as possible hadn’t chased Miss Respectability of Laramie, Texas, away, he didn’t know what would. He’d been damn sure his actions would send her running as fast and far away from him as possible, never to return again, or he sure as shooting wouldn’t have grabbed her and kissed her in a way neither of them was ever likely to forget.

“That works both ways,” Kate retorted. “How’s your shin?”

It still hurt like the dickens where she’d bruised it. But he wasn’t telling her that! “None of your damn business.” With a groan, Sam sat up all the way.

“I’m not afraid of some bad behavior, Sam. In my line of work, I see that all the time.”

Sam narrowed his eyes at her skeptically, taking in her finely arched brows, pert, slender nose and nicely curved lips, before returning to her wide-set, light blue eyes. “You get kissed and groped?” Sam didn’t know why, but the idea that Kate might have been manhandled that way by anyone else rankled.

“No, you were the first,” Kate said, crossing her arms against her waist in a way that accentuated the curves of her breasts beneath her sophisticated-yet-oh-so prim-and-proper dress. “No other patient has ever lashed out or acted out his grief and anger in quite that way. Not that I’m all in a tizzy about it, since I know darn well that what happened last night happened only because you were drunk.”

Sam had news for Kate: he hadn’t been that drunk when he’d made the pass. If he had been, he wouldn’t be able to remember it nearly as well as he did. He wouldn’t have had to spend half the night, and another quarter of the bottle of Scotch, trying to obliterate the soft, sexy feel of her lips or the responsiveness of her slender body as it molded sensuously to his. Because the last thing he had wanted last night was to get aroused. The last thing he had wanted was any proof he was still alive. When he had made that pass at her, he had just been angry, and looking for a way to vent.

Sam glared at her, wishing she would just go away. And stop acting as if she had something to do with the mess his life had become since Ellie died. “I’m not your patient.”

Kate looked at him as if she wished he were her patient. “I think before all is said and done I’m going to end up helping you and your boys.”

“That’s going to be hard to do if you never see us.”

“Oh, but I will see you, all of you, all the time, starting tomorrow afternoon.”

Sam tensed. “How do you figure that?”

Kate circled around the desk. She leaned against the edge, arms still folded in front of her. “Because you’re going to let me move in here until you find a suitable housekeeper for the boys.”

Sam blew out a contemptuous breath and tipped back in his swivel chair. “Dream on.”

Ignoring his hostility, Kate crossed her legs at the ankles and continued sweetly, “And you want to know why you’re going to do that…?”

Sam knew the sparring was juvenile. But he couldn’t help himself. Maybe because Kate was the first person in a very long time who wasn’t tiptoeing around him, oozing nauseating amounts of sympathy and pity. He rubbed a palm across the stubble on his face, and drawled in a voice meant to annoy, “I can’t wait to hear.”

“Because if you don’t, I am going to tell Lilah and John about your love affair with the bottle as well as the very un-called-for kiss and grope last night.”

Sam glared at her menacingly. He didn’t want to think about the way he’d tried to scare her off, his reaction to her soft body and softer lips—the fact he’d gotten turned on for the first time since Ellie’s death.

“And you know what they’ll do if that happens, don’t you?” Kate continued, oblivious to his pain. “They’ll cancel their trip to South America, and lose this chance to do medical missionary work.”

Sam knew how long his uncle John and aunt Lilah had been looking forward to that. This had been several years in the planning and was the culmination of a lifelong dream. He couldn’t do that to them. They deserved better.

“Not to mention,” Kate continued, “their month-long second honeymoon trip to New England in October to see the fall colors. It would be a lousy thing to do, depriving them of those two trips. And even in as bad a shape as you evidently are, you wouldn’t want to do that. Now would you?”

Sam didn’t need Kate reminding him how much John and Lilah had done for him and his family. For the past ten years or so, they had filled the void left by the deaths of first his and then Ellie’s parents. They had been “parents” to him and “grandparents” to his boys.

“I’m not asking my aunt and uncle to cancel anything,” Sam snapped.

“You and I both know John and Lilah won’t leave town unless they are sure you and the boys are going to be taken care of in their absence. And right now, for that, I’m your only option.”

Unfortunately, that was true, Sam thought. His cousins were all busy with their own lives, careers, families. As for housekeepers, they’d already run through quite a few. Finding another one was not going to be easy, given the bad rep in the state his boys had conjured up for the family. None of that, however, meant Sam wanted Kate’s help. He glared at her, resenting the position she’d put him in. “I know you mean well, Kate. But you living here will never work.”

“We’ll never know until we try,” she said practically, at that moment looking every inch the determined grief counselor she was. “So what’s it going to be, Sam?” Her fingertips curled impatiently around the edge of his desk. “Are you going to give me a chance to help you and your kids before this turns into the kind of crisis you can’t come back from, or do I call John and Lilah now and tell them you are in worse shape than even they realize?”

SAM DIDN’T ANSWER THAT. He didn’t have to. No one, not even the busybody Kate Marten, needed to tell Sam how important it was to shield his family from the way he’d given in to the pain and frustration and bottomed out the night before. Bad enough that Kate had been there to witness his behavior firsthand. Fortunately, he thought wearily, his kids hadn’t been around to see it. And by the time they got back from John and Lilah’s, there would be no evidence that anything had happened any differently than any other night.

He met Kate’s stare head-on, his anger under tight control. “I’m going to take a shower.” He gave her a hard look, making it clear he expected her to be gone when he returned. Then he dragged himself out of his chair, up the stairs, and into the privacy of the master bedroom suite he’d shared with Ellie on trips back to Laramie. Sam’s throat ached as he glanced at the huge four-poster where he and Ellie’d made love many times and he still slept. I love you, Sam, Ellie had whispered every night before they went to sleep as she cuddled close. I love you so much. He would murmur the words back without really thinking about what they meant, what she meant to him. Scowling, Sam shook his head. He’d had so much, for so long, and he’d taken it all for granted.

In the hierarchy of things to be done, Ellie rarely if ever took the time to see to her own needs. She was always busy seeing to everyone else’s. Had he just paid attention to those first signs, her sluggishness and unexplained weight loss. If he’d just insisted she go in for a physical, instead of letting her put it off… Instead, he had believed her when she said it was probably nothing. And by the time they discovered the tumor on her ovary, the cancer had spread. He’d known it was bad, but he still hadn’t believed she was going to die. Nor, when it came down to it, had she. After all, she was so young…just thirty-two when her illness was discovered. She had her whole life ahead of her, a husband to love and sons to raise. She’d been as certain as he that she would beat the disease. Realizing now how foolish and naive they had been, Sam shook his head and stripped down to his shorts. Leaving his clothes on the floor where they lay, he headed into the bathroom to shave. A glance in the mirror did nothing to lift his spirits. He looked even worse than Kate had indicated or he’d expected. His face was haggard beneath the stubble of his beard, his eyes puffy and red, the corners of his mouth drawn in an expression that revealed just how miserable he felt inside. There were harsh lines on his face; a grim look in his eyes. He hadn’t slept more than three or four hours a night in months and the strain showed in his gaunt, tired appearance. Kate Marten was right about one thing, Sam thought as his lips twisted in bitter gallows humor. He was a hell of a role model for his sons.

The regret inside him mounting, for all the times and ways he had failed his family, Sam picked up the can of shaving cream. Scowling, he spread the foam over his face and began to shave. He needed to start eating right and to get a decent amount of rest every night. But even as he thought it he knew: even if he hadn’t been drinking last night, he probably wouldn’t have slept. The insomnia was just one more thing he didn’t know how to deal with. It had started during the first days of Ellie’s illness, when their days and nights were filled with worry. This couldn’t be happening to them…her tumor wasn’t really malignant…her cancer hadn’t really metastasized. And even if it had, nothing was going to happen to her. Not with all the specialists he had flown in, the strings he and his uncle John McCabe—one of the most respected and well-connected family doctors in Texas—had pulled to get her the very best of care possible, the most up-to-date, comprehensive treatment.

After all, their lives had been charmed up to that point. Sam had professional success beyond his wildest dreams, he and Ellie had a lively, loving family that was the envy of all their friends. They had money and clout. And Sam hadn’t been afraid to use it to help his wife. But none of it had done any good in the end. Through endless rounds of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, Ellie’s cancer had continued to grow and spread. She’d gotten weaker and thinner by the day. And all Sam could do was be strong for her and the boys. Behave as if everything was going to be fine, even when he and Ellie had been told by the doctors that she had very little time left. He’d wanted to level with the kids immediately. Prepare them for what was to come. Ellie had resisted—vigorously. “I don’t want them grieving while I’m still here,” she’d told him emotionally. “I want our last days together to be full of love and laughter and joy. Not weighed down with unbearable sadness.”

So Sam had prayed hard for a miracle and pretended she would survive, even when he knew her lungs ached with every breath and her pain required larger and larger doses of pain-killers to keep it manageable. When the boys had entered her sickroom she had smiled and been the mom they needed and depended on. Only with Sam, in the last few days of her life, had she let down her guard and told him the truth, that the suffering she felt was getting to be too much. She felt so unbearably weary. Weak. Sick. It was time to move on, Ellie had whispered tearfully as he’d held her in his arms, crying, too. She was beginning to want to move on. And quickly after that, she did. Slipping away from them peacefully in her sleep. Leaving him to face their boys’ wrath—at having been misled about the terminal nature of her illness—alone.

It wasn’t easy seeing the disillusionment and disappointment every time he looked into his sons’ eyes, Sam thought as a single tear slid down his cheek. Harder yet realizing just how much of their family’s happiness had centered around Ellie. His family and friends kept telling him the numbness, the disorientation, the relentless anger over Ellie’s fate would go away with time. But it hadn’t, Sam realized as the spasms shook his body and a harsh racking sob rose in his throat. Instead it seemed to get worse, Sam thought as he sank helplessly down onto the cool tile floor, buried his head in his arms, and wept the way he hadn’t, even on the day of her funeral. He’d loved Ellie so long and so much, he wasn’t ever going to get over this.