Page 2 of But For You

“No reason.”

“Spit it out.”

He cleared his throat. “I just think that perhaps you being home during the day is giving you cabin fever, and maybe you need to get back out in the real world and talk to some grown-ups.”

I huffed out an exasperated breath. “Sam, just because I don’t go to the office doesn’t mean I’m starved for adult contact. I talk to Dylan every day; I talk to Fallon every day. They’re my business partners; they need me, and they keep me involved with what’s going on at the office.”

“Okay.”

“I send out more emails than both of them combined!”

“I’m sure you do,” he said, sliding his hand around the back of my neck, then squeezing gently, massaging, and easing me closer. “I just think that maybe you getting out of this house during the day would do you some good.”

I batted his hand away, whirling on him. “I go to the store, to the park, drop kids off at school, pick them up … when do I not see people?”

He grunted, rolled his eyes, and put his coffee cup down in the sink before his dark smoky-blue eyes flicked to mine.

“No,” I almost squeaked, turning to run. So not fast enough.

You would think that a big man could not move like that, with so much speed, but Sam Kage’s athleticism and strength were never to be underestimated. At forty-three, he was just as powerful as he’d been when I first met him, and I finally understood the whole getting better with age thing. The man looked the best he ever had, and he lived well in his skin, content and happy, both personally and professionally.

I was proud of him and told him often. He was an amazing father, a wonderful husband, a great son, and the kind of friend anyone would be happy to claim. I was biased because I loved him, but still, I saw people look at him and knew the truth. Four years after beginning his new job as a marshal, he was now the supervisor of the Chicago field office, overseeing five other deputies and three clerks. I had thought once he moved up, he’d become a sheriff, but apparently, all they did was add the “supervisor” in there. A sheriff was a totally different thing. It made no sense from a Western standpoint. In every movie I had ever seen, the deputy got moved up to sheriff. As usual, Sam had just shaken his head at me when I had mentioned that to him.

As I ducked around the island in the middle of the kitchen, I thought for half a second that I would get away from him, but as he grabbed, yanked, and pinned me against the refrigerator, I realized how wrong I had been.

“All I meant to imply,” he began, tilting my head up with a hand on my chin, “was that since you have a five-and-three-quarter-year-old, and a three-year-old—soon-to-be four—now, you can do a half day at the office instead of working full-time from home. After you drop them off, it might be nice to pick up a fancy cup of coffee and go to your office and actually see Dylan and Fallon and talk to them face-to-face.”

“Did Kola tell you to make sure you said five and three-quarters?”

“Yes, he did. I was informed that, as he will be six later this month, calling him simply five was no longer applicable.”

“Did he say applicable?”

“Yes. I blame your brother for teaching him big words.”

I smiled at him, no longer interested in talking to him, far too entranced with his mouth. He had the kind of lips made for kissing, plump and full, and when he smiled, there was this curve in the corner that could break your heart. Not that the rest of his rugged features were without appeal. His dark smoky-blue-gray eyes with the deep laugh lines at the corners; his long, straight nose; the hard square jaw. And the thick copper-gold eyebrows were a treat too. His voice, over the phone or in person—low and husky, edged with a growl—could send rippling heat through my entire body. But the man’s mouth, the shape of it, the feel of it … really, I was a fan.

“Are you listening to me?”

I lifted up from my height of five-nine to his of six-four, and he bent down at the same time. Our lips met and parted, and his tongue slid inside to taste me.

The sounds from the peanut gallery—choking and retching—and the tug on my robe instantly drained the heat from the encounter. Sam snorted out a laugh as he broke the kiss, both of us eyeing the short people standing close to us.

“That’s disgusting,” Kola assured me with a glare that a five-and-three-quarter-year-old shouldn’t have—full of judgment and revulsion.

“Why?” I asked snidely.

“Your mouth has germs,” he informed me haughtily. “That’s why you told Hannah not to lick Chilly.”

“No, I told her not to lick Chilly because the cat doesn’t like to be licked by her.”

“He licks his body.”

“He does,” Hannah, our three-year-old, agreed with a nod. “Kola’s right.”

“But he doesn’t want you to do it,” I assured my daughter.

“How do you know?” Kola questioned.