He shook his head. “I’m not like a lot of ballplayers out there, Cupcake. I can accept the fact that I’m aging, that I’m not as fast as I used to be, that my injuries take longer to heal than they did even two or three years ago.”
“You can accept retiring at thirty-one?”
“Now hold on!” Sam grinned. “I just signed another four year contract, if you will recall. Make that thirty-five, Cupcake. Thirty-five.”
Gwenyth laughed. “Okay, thirty-five. And then what will you do?” Thinking better of it, she held up a hand to forestall his answering that question. “Never mind. I suspect I know what you’ll do.”
“You know me so well, do you now?”
“Uh huh.”
Sam inclined his head toward Gwen in a teasing gesture of faux mockery. “Then by all means, Gwenyth Marie, tell me.”
Gwenyth nibbled on her bottom lip briefly. Finally, she looked up at him with a shrug and chuckled. “Whatever it is, it will have to do with anthropology or archeology.”
Damn. She did know him so well. Sam felt something in the vicinity of his heart turn over. “Yeah well…” He swallowed faintly. “I think maybe you’re right.”
Harry wandered in a few minutes later, announcing that he had to go home to work on his speech for the campaign dinner, but would pick Sam up for breakfast the following morning. He offered to let his old pal crash at his apartment, but Sam declined, genuinely looking forward to spending some time catching up with Willy and Verlene.
Harry stayed and chatted for a while, distracted from his plans by a shared sense of nostalgia. The reminiscing felt amazingly good to all of them.
Twenty minutes later, however reluctantly, Harry clapped Sam affectionately on the back. “I’ll see you tomorrow, old man.” With that departing potshot, he kissed Gwenyth on the cheek, made his good-byes to his retiring grandparents, and strolled out the back door whistling.
Sam and Gwenyth were alone again.
Both of them felt the awkward silence caused by Harry’s abrupt leave-taking fall between them like a thick cloud of awareness. It was as tense as it had been when she’d first come upon Sam in the kitchen after supper. Only this time it was interwoven with a sexual awareness. Gwenyth cleared her throat and grinned at Sam. He shuffled nervously and grinned back.
Gwenyth placed her hands in the back pockets of her cutoffs and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Sam, I…” She blew out a breath and shrugged her shoulders in a gesture meant to be cavalier, but she knew it wasn’t.
Sam arched an inquisitive brow. He inclined his head down to Gwenyth, prodding her to finish her thought. “Go on Gwen. What were you about to say?”
Gwenyth took a deep breath and expelled it daintily. “I just wanted to say that I’m really glad you came back.” She shrugged her hands out of her back pockets and splayed them at her sides. “We’ve all missed you a lot, Sam.”
Sam swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Maybe things weren’t as hopeless as he’d first thought. Maybe he’d have Gwen yet. “Cupcake, I…”
The phone rang, breaking both of them out of the fleeting experience of intimacy they’d just shared. Gwenyth threw him an apologetic look and swung around to answer the phone. Sam studied her sweet backside as she padded away from him and toward the wall where the only non-portable phone left in the house had resided for at least twenty years. “Hello? Oh hi, Trevor.”
Trevor? Who the hell is Trevor?
“No, I haven’t forgotten. I’m sorry I haven’t called you back, but I’ve been real busy.”
Who the hell is Trevor?
“Yeah. That will be fine. Reservations are for eight o’clock? Okay, pick me up around seven-thirty then.”
Pick her up? I. Don’t. Think. So.
“Great. I’ll see you then.”
Over my dead, mutilated, decapitated body.
“Okay. Take care now. Goodbye, Trevor.”
I’m losing it here. I’m losing it big time!
“Who is Trevor?” Sam grimaced at his own words, knowing at once that his tone of voice had betrayed him. He’d asked that question far from nonchalantly. He’d sounded more like a possessive husband acting as though he’d caught his wife in the act of cheating on him. Struggling to maintain his dignity, he asked in a calmer voice, “who is Trevor, Gwen?”
Gwenyth threw him a wide-eyed look, as though she had forgotten he was standing there. Sam released a mental sigh. Perhaps she hadn’t picked up on his telltale jealousy after all. “He’s the guy I’ve been dating.”
