Chapter 17

Josh

Cocking a brow at Samantha, he watched her study the red bell peppers like it was a calculus textbook. Josh was sure he’d seen people taking their Finals focus less on their papers than she was on the produce in her hands.

“What are you doing?” he asked her quietly.

“Getting the good ones.” She spoke so absentmindedly that he couldn’t help but be amused.

“They all look good to me.”

“Ah, but I want perfection,” she teased.

Having seen her inspect the tomatoes, lettuce, and watermelon in the same way, he could attest to her high standards.

Clucking his tongue as he leaned against the cart, he asked himself what the hell he was doing in a grocery store.

Normally, Josh paid people to come to places like this for him, but, for whatever reason, Samantha had insisted.

He wasn’t sure why she’d wanted him to come along, but he found himself in the unmistakable position of wanting to please her, so even though it bewildered him to be here, he was in the store nonetheless.

What did surprise him was that he wasn’t bored, if anything, he was just perplexed.

“Why did you want to come here with me?” he asked her quietly, head tilting to the side as she tapped another melon—a cantaloupe this time.

He wrinkled his nose at the sight and she cocked a brow at him, her gaze catching his expression. “What’s wrong?”

“I hate cantaloupe.”

She grinned. “Then, I won’t buy one. You only had to say.”

He snorted. “If only life were as simple as that.”

“It can be. When you’re a billionaire.” She winked. “I thought it would be good for you to come here.”

“Good for me?” he repeated. “Why would it be good for me?”

“Keep you grounded,” she told him, definitely tongue-in-cheek as she gathered some apples into a brown paper bag.

“Who said I wanted to be grounded?”

“I did.”

Despite himself, he had to laugh. “Already trying to change me, woman.”

She winked. “No. Keeping you perfect that’s all.”

He snorted again. “The last thing I am is perfect.”

She cocked a shoulder. “Maybe not to everyone’s tastes, but you are to me.”

That had him blinking, touched despite himself. “That’s probably the sweetest thing a woman has ever said to me.”

It was her turn for her nose to crinkle. “Because ‘sweet’ is exactly how I want you to think of me.”

He reached over and caught her hand. “It’s exactly how I think of you. As well as a million other ways.”

That had her peeping a glimpse at him through her lashes. “Oh? How?”

“I think of you as a minx, as a tease, and as a joker.”

Her breath caught, and she slowly licked her lips. His eyes were glued to her tongue, and for a second, his heart stopped, his brain unable to focus on anything else, not even breathing, as he watched the passage of her tongue around the decadent curve of her mouth.

Then, she shattered his calm by whispering, “What about as a victim?”

“Huh?” he asked, blinking and utterly taken aback by her question.

She shrugged. “Do you think of me as a victim?”

He scowled, sensing the depths that question plunged to. That bastard best friend of his. “No,” he said gruffly. “The last thing you are, Samantha, is a victim. You’re a fighter.”

She bit her lip. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“I’d most likely still be with Jamie if he were alive. That doesn’t make me a fighter. It doesn’t even make me a victim. It just makes me stupid.”

He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t.”

Her jaw clenched. “I was thinking about it the other night. It does.”

“Why were you thinking about him?” Even though it was ridiculous, he found that he felt jealous.

Not of Jamie, but that her thoughts were of the bastard when Josh didn’t want any part of her focused on that hideous past. And he hated himself for feeling that way because the last thing she could control were her thoughts and feelings. As if things weren’t tough enough for Samantha, the last thing he needed was for her to fear talking about that once best friend.

Before she could answer, he reached for her hand. It amazed him that she’d raised this topic over cantaloupes and other fresh produce, when they could have easily discussed it back at her house.

Women, he thought amusedly, could pick the damnedest places to talk about the important stuff.

“Don’t answer that. I have no right to ask.”

Her voice was husky as she said, “Of course you do. You’re important to me, Josh. If anyone can ask me something, even if it’s painful, it’s you.”

He blinked at that, taken aback, but he shook his head. “Maybe, but I have no right to make you feel badly about thinking over what Jamie was like.” He cleared his throat. “If you ever need to talk about it, I’m here for you.” He didn’t tell her that sometimes, on the occasions when he’d slept over, he heard her whimper in her sleep and his mind always traversed to a dark place. A place where he wondered if she was dreaming about Jamie.

Did she have nightmares about him, he asked himself? Did she remember the dark days when her husband had abused her? And did they haunt her sleep?

She peeped at him again, tugging a lock of hair behind her ear. It astonished him how she could look so beautiful to him with such lack of artifice.

She wore simple cut-offs, a white T-shirt, and her hair was half-up and half-down in a topknot. That was it. A bit of gloss on her lips, and he thought he saw a faint darkening of mascara on her lashes, nothing more, nothing less. Yet Josh wasn’t sure if he’d seen a more beautiful woman all day. More like, all week.

She had him in knots, he knew, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be upset by that. Maybe she was meant to, he was starting to believe.

“I don’t want to think about him at all, but then…”

When she broke off, he cupped her cheek. As his thumb swept over the curve of her chin, she sighed and tilted her head, letting him take the weight. “Then, what?”

“Then Erin will do something that reminds me of him and I can’t stop myself,” she blurted out in a rush. Then, her hand came up and she clapped it over her mouth. “I shouldn’t say this to you. I don’t want you to think…”

“Stop worrying about what I think. My thoughts are my own.”

“Yeah, because you really want to be dating someone who’s fixated on another man.”

Samantha’s bitter tones hurt him. “Stop it,” he chided her. “I’m well aware of what Jamie did, and maybe I’d be jealous if you were thinking about sex or even if you were missing him, I guess. And that makes me sound like a horrendous person because if he’d been a good husband, you would be well within your rights to miss him if he’d passed on, even if you were dating someone else. Grief doesn’t have an expiration date.”

“But that’s it, Josh. I’m glad he’s dead,” she whispered. “I’m glad, so glad, and I hate myself for that. How can I be happy when he was Erin’s father?”

“Because he was a terrible father and a terrible husband,” Josh countered. “You didn’t make him take drugs, did you?”

“No, but he said I drove him to it sometimes.” She gnawed at her bottom lip. “But I didn’t. I tried to be a good wife, only, nothing I did was ever good enough for him.”

He hushed her, gently shushing her as he murmured, “Stop it, Samantha. Stop it. You’d be strange if you weren’t glad—you’re not celebrating the fact he’s dead, you’re celebrating the fact you’re no longer under his thumb. That you’re free from his clutches.” Josh stroked her cheek again. “That’s perfectly natural.”

She clenched her eyes shut. “It is?”

He sighed. “Yes. It is.” When her lashes opened and he saw the crystalline gleam of her eyes, he murmured, “Maybe you should talk to a therapist. Someone who can help you get through what happened. God knows, I’m not trained. I’ve already put my foot in it.”

She shook her head, then shoved the cart out the way and wrapped her arms around his waist.

It was a damn odd place to hug him, but he found he didn’t care. He didn’t even care if someone snapped a picture of him and it ended up on social media.

Fuck them all.

Because at that moment, there was nowhere else he wanted to be but in this woman’s arms.

Slowly, he reached around and settled his hands on her lower back. He moved carefully, not wanting to jolt her. She was still jerky sometimes, and he knew that was because of how Jamie had behaved around her.

A part of him vowed to himself, and to her, that he’d do whatever he could to undo Jamie’s conditioning. And some days, it was easy to forget his best friend had been a wifebeater, an abusive asshole, because Samantha could be so bright and sunny, so happy and light…

“What did Erin do that reminded you of Jamie?” he asked quietly, trying to help and hoping he wasn’t making more of a mess of it.

She immediately stiffened though, which didn’t give him much hope. “It’s just this little smile he has.”

“When?”

“When he’s pleased with himself.” Her words grew thick. “Jamie used to smile like that when I was on the floor and he’d thrown me there. Or if…” Her words cut off, and she sucked in a sharp breath. “But that’s the past. I shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff.”

“Why? Why shouldn’t you?” he asked her quietly.

“What do you mean?” she questioned, pulling back to frown up at him.

“I mean, it happened to you, didn’t it? Why shouldn’t you hash over it? I know I do. When I have a meeting, I can be hashing over it for days. And then, next year, if I deal with the same people, I think back to that other meeting… Why shouldn’t you? Those events happened, they’re memories. You can’t just erase them because they’re horrible.”

She blinked at him. “You don’t think I should just pretend…”

“What? Pretend it didn’t happen?” He shook his head, and as he sighed, he tucked another stray lock behind her ear. “No. I don’t. It happened, accept it, accept that you can’t change what happened, but you very much have a say in the future.”

Her eyes were glassy as she stared up at him. “Thank you, Josh.”

He grimaced. “For what? I’m the Ice King, Samantha. I’m not the best person to be talking about these things to.”

She scowled at that. “No. I won’t have that. You’re exactly who I need to be talking to about these things.” Then, sucking in a sharp breath, she squeezed him harder, then released him. “Thank you.”

He shook his head. “There’s no need to thank me.”

She turned to face him, a smile, though sad, curving her lips.

“What?” he asked, unable to stop himself.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him, but that smile was still there when she returned to the fresh produce.

“Sam,” he said with a growl.

Her smile widened. “Do you know that’s the first time you’ve called me Sam?”

He sighed. “You’re being difficult on purpose.”

“You love me for it,” she teased, tapping a coconut this time, and though he knew she was only joking, he feared she was right.

He did love her for it.

It being the myriad ways in which she’d grabbed a hold of his heart and his head and made them both hers.

Wincing at the sappy thought, he decided a change of subject was imperative. “You really love all this, don’t you?”

She cocked a brow at him. “All this? Being, what? Eating?” She let out a little laugh, and it was in such contrast to her sadness of mere moments before that relief swilled through him. “Yeah, I’m rather fond of not starving.”

He smirked at her. “You know exactly what I mean. Cooking. You don’t have to cook and yet you do. A lot.” He was astonished by how much she cooked if he was being honest. He paid people to cook for him and they made less food than she did.

“It relaxes me,” she said with a shrug. “Plus, I get a kick out of knowing where everything comes from.”

“Hence the organic store?”

A militant gleam appeared in her eye. “Do you know the carbon footprint of food from the big chains?”

His lips twitched. “No, I don’t, but feel free to tell me. Or I’ll get my PA to clue me in.”

She squinted at him. “You’re mocking me.”

“Maybe. Just a tad.” He laughed when she stuck out her tongue.

“It’s important, and I enjoy it.”

“Have you ever thought about opening a café or something like that? I’ve tasted your cookies. They deserve more attention than I or Erin can give them.”

Her cheeks burned hotly. “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly,” he told her easily. “You should consider it. I can tell…” He broke off, unsure if now was the time to mention something like this when they’d just been discussing Jamie. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was judging her way of life or her choices.

“What?” Samantha tilted her head as she stared up at him. “What can you tell?”

He shrugged. “That you’re bored. Especially when Erin’s at pre-school.”

She winced, and just when he’d thought he’d hurt her, she grimaced. “I know. When he’s at school, who knows what I’ll do with my days.”

“Well, why not do something you love?”

“I don’t know. My friend, Jessica, has a café. Well, she owns a part of it. It’s hard work.”

“You can afford to hire staff to help out.”

“It’s Erin’s money,” she countered.

“Then I’ll help out.”

“Josh!” she declared, astonished. “Don’t even joke about that.”

At that moment, the feelings he felt for her almost overwhelmed him. Not by one ounce had she expected his offer. She didn’t want his money, and though he’d known that, having it confirmed and so obviously settled something in his soul.

He shrugged. “The offer’s there.”

“No. I don’t want money from you.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about doing something different. Something that you love.” He peered at the passion fruits she was studying. “And let’s face it, you love all this.”

“All this,” she repeated with a laugh, then she peered up at him, rocked onto tiptoe and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

He just laughed, because she was the only person in the world who’d ever dare to say that.

And she was the only one who’d get away with it too.