No.
Gitte was out.
“I’m glad,” I told her.
“He’s still relieved,” she told me. “We both are.” She looked to the yard again and shared, “I think half of why he was so intent on driving up was that he was concerned you were with another man, even one like Sam who he admired.” Her eyes came back to me. “But anyone can be something for the public and something else privately. We were both very happy to know Sam is who Sam really is.”
Yep. I had done a number on my family.
“He is,” I assured her even though I wasn’t feeling so assured. Still, one thing I did know was that he was far better than Cooter. Far, far better.
“You need to believe in this,” she told me softly.
“Sorry?”
“In you. In Sam.” She smiled at me. “I see good things.”
I did too.
Until last night.
She continued, “You don’t believe in it, do you?”
“We’ve known each other a month.”
“You go to bed beside him; he goes to bed beside you. How long has that been going on?”
I pressed my lips together and tried to calculate it.
Then I gave up and admitted, “Well, most of that month.”
Gitte smiled again. “I believe this.”
“Sam didn’t waste a lot of time,” I pointed out the obvious.
Her smile got bigger. “I believe this too. You, an American on vacation in Italy, he wouldn’t wish to let you slip through his fingers.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Or,” she kept going, “it’s clear he didn’t wish to let you slip through his fingers because here you both are.”
“Yep,” I looked away, “here we both are.”
She took my hand and I looked back as she whispered, “Believe, Kiakee.”
I stared into her eyes. Then I nodded.
Celeste and Thomas. Luci. Now Gitte. They all wanted me to believe.
Maybe they saw something I did not. Maybe Sam just needed more time.
Maybe I should just let my mental bullshit go and believe.
We’d only been together a month. Only a month. And he’d been screwed over repeatedly.
I needed to cut him some slack and believe.
So to my nod, I added a smile.
She smiled back and let my hand go.
I took a sip of lemonade and in my head whispered, fearless.
I said it, I wanted to feel it and I tried. But my headache was not going away.
Whatever.
It was just a headache. Eventually it would fade.
Onward.
I made a decision.
“All right, sweetie, let’s call an end to this. Load up the dregs in Dad’s truck, get to Paula and Rudy’s and start the party.”
“Sounds good to me,” Gitte muttered, rolling gracefully to her feet, I followed and moved toward the remaining boxes.
*
“You okay?”
Sam and I (and Memphis) were in our room at the Hyatt and he’d just tipped the bellman for bringing up our bags on a trolley.
I’d let Memphis out of her doggie carrier. She was exploring.
I was staring out the window at the amazing view of the Capitol and the lights of Indy and I didn’t look at him when I answered, “I can’t shake this headache.”
This was true. Missy had given me aspirin and a couple of hours later Paula had given me ibuprofen. Neither worked.
And I had a feeling I knew why.
Deciding to believe in Sam and in us, being the dork I was, lasted around five minutes and started to melt away when Sam walked out of the house with Lee and Tanner.
I was right. Those men were his hunters, Lee Nightingale and Tanner Layne. He introduced them to me, my family, my friends and then they helped load up the remaining boxes of stuff in Dad’s truck. Then they politely declined invites to Paula’s barbeque doing so with hot guy smiles that left all the females staring (and Teri nearly drooling) and took off.
Since there wasn’t a lot of stuff, Sam and Kyle didn’t have to haul any in Sam’s rental SUV or Kyle’s car, only Dad had to make the trip. So Sam loaded up our suitcases, I grabbed Memphis and we went right to Paula and Rudy’s. My car was already stowed in Mom and Dad’s back shed so I went with Sam.
In the SUV, I’d asked, “So, what was with the powwow?”
Sam’s reply?
“Later, baby.”
It was said gentle, sweet but still, it upset me. As far as I knew, he hadn’t had a face-to-face with them since we got there but I wouldn’t really know since he never told me anything. They’d talked on the phone often but one thing I did know was they had not approached the house. Not to mention, it wasn’t one of them, it was both.
This made me think they had something important to say.
And when Dad got to Paula and Rudy’s, I knew they did because Sam left it for approximately two point five minutes before he negotiated a private huddle with Dad and Kyle, sans me.