La Fleur de Love: The Series: Books 1 - 4 Read online

  “And you’re inconsiderate. Despite what your mommy must have raised you to believe, the world does not revolve around you.”

  “Maybe it should,” he added, grinning down at her.

  She straightened her shoulders and closed the distance between them. “You’re like one of those bullies in elementary school. Just because you’re the biggest kid on the playground, you think you can get away with anything.”

  From her desk in the corner of the room, Roxie threw her head back in laughter. “Boy, does she have you pegged.”

  “I’m not a bully.”

  Carrie dismissed his denial with a flippant wave of her hand. “I say you are.”

  It didn’t take long for Sam to retaliate. “You don’t know a damn thing about me, lady. I am not a bully.”

  She turned away, giving him an insignificant shrug, and climbed back on her stool. “I bet you were a spoiled brat.”

  Members of his crew doubled over with laughter, until Sam aimed a glare in their direction and pointed to the back exit. “We have five miles of roadway to survey by the end of the day. Your asses better be in that truck by the time I walk out of here.”

  The men attempted to wipe the grins from their faces as they grabbed equipment and headed for the door.

  Carrie clucked her tongue. “Aw, Sammy, don’t take it out on the guys just because you lost an argument with a woman.”

  Roxanne snorted from her desk. “Yeah, Baby Sam. You know he’s the baby of the family and the only boy.”

  Carrie chuckled at the tidbit of information. “Now that explains a lot. Do they still call you that?” Her gaze followed Sam as he exited his office with a clipboard tucked under one arm.

  He stopped in front of her desk. “Didn’t I hear you tell Roxie you have seven brothers and sisters?”

  “I sure do,” she admitted.

  “Then I guess you can’t help being jealous of the way I was raised. You being from of a litter of eight and all.”

  Her eyebrows arched in shock. “Oh, my God, they still call you that, don’t they, Baby Sam?” She slapped her hand on her book. “Of course they do. By the way, I’m glad I came from a large family. At least I wasn’t spoiled rotten.”

  From her desk in the corner, Roxie snorted with laughter again.

  Sam threw a glare in her direction. “Hey, Rox, just sit there with your little crossword and be quiet.”

  Carrie watched as Roxie waved off Sam’s comment in silence. “You’re not going to let him get away with that, are you?”

  Roxie gave her a brief nod. “I just ignore him. He’s been useless around here for the last year anyway.”

  Sam gave a grunt of dismissal before he turned to walk away. He had no idea his comment had put the challenge back into her cause. “Sam, I think you owe her an apology.”

  “She called me useless. I don’t owe her anything.”

  “I think you’re an inconsiderate, spoiled, bully and you owe her an apology.”

  Sam scowled and settled back on his heels, arms crossed defiantly.

  His stubborn display had her recalling Roxie’s first comment to her about Sam. “He’s been cranky since his wife left him.” Maybe she’d get better results from her grumpy co-worker if she showed some empathy for his situation. Suddenly, she remembered her mother’s advice on handling an annoying classmate in high school. You’ll always attract more flies with honey than vinegar. Maybe this plan called for a revision.

  She made a slight adjustment and tilted her head to scrutinize the man who stood well over six feet tall. She’d always been attracted to big men, and Sam made quite an attractive package with his blondish hair and crystal blue eyes. Her gaze lowered to encompass long legs covered in work-faded denim that fit snugly across slim hips and lean thighs. He filled out a pair of jeans nicely, that’s for sure. The jeans ended at a pair of scuffed but clean work boots—at least three sizes larger than anything that had ever graced Dave’s size ten.

  Her brows lifted curiously. Big boots for a big man. She couldn’t help but wonder if the size of a man’s foot really had anything to do with the size of other parts of his anatomy?

  She shook off the thought. The last thing she needed was the complication of a man in her life.

  He stood stock still, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His tone reeked of smugness. “Like what you see?”

  As she watched Sam’s cheek tighten to form a hint of a half dimple, one corner of Carrie’s cheek lifted in a partial smile. Adorable. She found herself wondering again how someone so attracted to tall men with blue eyes had ended up married to a man with Dave’s dark looks and short, compact stature. She shrugged off the internal interrogation and gave her shoulder length waves a quick flip with her hand. “Curious, I guess.”

  He stared down his nose at her. “About what?”

  “My daddy always said it takes a big man to admit he’s wrong. I’m just wandering if you’re big enough.” She paused when their gazes clashed. “Are you, Sam?”

  Sam stared into the gorgeous, multi-hued eyes that sparkled with curiosity as well as the slightest hint of devilish amusement. He swallowed hard, wondering if that brazen curiosity of hers would extend to the bedroom as well. Sleeping alone for over a year made a man entertain some crazy thoughts.

  His affinity for his Cajun roots had him labeling her tracas, with a capital T. Regardless of whatever qualities she possessed, he didn’t need her kind of Trouble.

  Sam sensed the occupants in the room holding their collective breath and made a strategically sound decision to surrender with dignity. He’d already given his traitorous co-workers enough to fuel the gossip fires for months.

  Sam took a deep breath and released it before turning toward Roxie. “Sorry.”

  Carrie’s brow furrowed as though she strained to hear. “What was that?”

  Sam clenched his jaw with a snap. She sure liked to push it. He faced his co-worker, placing his right hand over his chest and bowed from the waist. “From the bottom of my heart, Roxie, I apologize.”

  Roxie’s eyes widened. “You do?”

  “Yes, I do.” Sam turned toward Carrie. “And I’m sorry I made you late the other day. I was w-wrong and I won’t do it again.” He chanced a look into her eyes, and nearly lost his breath at the sight of her dimpled smile directed solely at him. That was lagniappe – a little something extra.

  “Thanks, Sam. I appreciate that.”

  “And you should start riding with us in the mornings again.” It was high time he started coming to work on time. Time to stop using depression as an excuse for being a lousy role model for his crew.

  Carrie nodded. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

  The crowd dispersed, and Sam took a few moments to watch Carrie as she stared at an empty spot on her desktop. She looked lost in thought—totally focused on something, or someone, far removed from this office.

  He paused to lower the timbre of his voice before he spoke. “Satisfied now?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “Oh?”

  His one-word comeback seemed to snap her from her musings. Her eyes widened, and a slow blush crept up from the base of her neck, infusing her fair skin with the most becoming shade of pink he’d seen on a woman in a long time. He thought of the approaching winter nights he dreaded so much. Long, lonely nights filled with emptiness. He wondered, for the first time, what it would be like to have a woman like this—Holy Hell, he may as well admit it—to have this woman warm his bed at night.

  Determined to push the thought from his mind, he clamped down on his jaw and, once more, paid for his rashness by biting down on the side of tongue. His breath rushed out in a hiss of pain. Sam winced, slapping his hand over his cheek and jaw. He barely managed to suppress the string of curses his crew called his OSHA orange streak, in honor of their bright orange safety equipment.

  Served him right for dreaming.

  Sam positioned himself so he could watch her, unobserved. Everything about
the woman screamed difficult, from her outspoken ways to her eagerness for confrontation. After today’s confrontation, he expected she’d be even more blatant with her comments and opinions. He liked things neat, simple, and uncomplicated.

  Touche pas, old boy. Don’t touch. Even as the command bounced around in his brain, he found himself wanting to do exactly opposite of that—to touch her, to study her, to examine every inch of her.

  Sam smiled as Carrie mumbled something incoherent and retreated to the women’s restroom, still blushing in a way that beckoned him to get up close and personal.

  He sauntered over to the back exit, wondering how he could so obviously lose an argument but still walk away feeling like a winner.

  Early November

  Carrie sat at her desk, staring into her compact at the dark circles under her eyes. She’d just applied a touch more concealer when Sam appeared next to her.

  “Damn, girl. You look dog-tired.”

  She snapped the compact closed. “Thanks, Sam. You always know just what to say to make a girl feel special.”

  “You know what I mean. You’ve been tense and short-tempered lately. Anything you want to talk about?”

  “Nope.” Raw with on-the-edge emotional baggage, she grabbed her coffee mug and escaped to the kitchen. If he didn’t follow her, maybe she could avoid the display of waterworks about to erupt at any moment. The latest in a long line of two a.m. anonymous phone calls she’d received over the last two months had left her exhausted and edgy. She filled her cup with hot, steaming, dark roast as she revisited the terror of the latest call. Too little money, a new job, and the responsibility of three teenagers wasn’t enough to deal with. Throw in a series of phone calls from what may or may not be a crazy ex, and she had more trouble than your average newly-divorced, single mom could handle.

  Carrie jumped at the sound of Sam’s voice and turned to see him staring at her, his mouth tight with concern.

  “You’ll feel better if you talk about it, you know.”

  “I did some tossing and turning instead of sleeping last night, that’s all.”

  “Is it your ex? Because you’re one of us now, and we’re touchy when it comes to people messing with one of our own.”

  She leaned her hips against the kitchen’s base cabinets and hugged her mug of coffee with both hands. It seemed easier to discuss her failed marriage with someone who’d been through it recently. “My divorce came through yesterday.” She glanced up at him, then shifted her gaze down to her mug. “I wanted the divorce, and I’m glad it’s over, don’t get me wrong.” She paused to wipe the corner of her eye and took a deep breath. “It doesn’t stop me from feeling like a failure. I’m just another statistic.”

  Sam’s mouth tightened in a grim line. “Hmm-boy, I remember well. How’d old Dave take it?”

  Carrie shook her head and gave him a half laugh. “He was shocked, of course. He’s been sleeping with any woman who’d have him since the day we separated and long before, if truth be told. He couldn’t believe I went through with it. I swear, what that man lacks in size, he makes up for in nerve.”

  Sam chuckled. “He’s not a big man, is he? He can’t be more than five-foot-eight or so.”

  Her gaze met his above the rim of her coffee mug. “When have you ever seen him?”

  “I saw him the day he came to switch out your car for that diesel truck of his.”

  “He always told me he was five nine.”

  “Yeah, right. He’s got a serious case of ‘Little Man Syndrome’, or what I like to call the ‘Tee-Boy Blues’.”

  Carrie broke into a wide grin. “Yeah, when he’d complain about my weight, I told him I could lose weight, but he’d always be too damn short.”

  Sam guffawed loudly. “Double or nothing he wasn’t happy with that.”

  “Nope.” That argument had led to Dave spending two nights with another woman to “get his head straight”.

  “How are your kids taking the divorce?”

  “Grant and Gretchen are okay, but Lauren’s having a rough time of it.” She smiled as she pictured Grant and the twins, Gretchen and Lauren. “At least I’ll walk away with something good from that marriage.”

  “That and your house, I’m sure.”

  Her mouth tightened. “My kids will always have a place there with Dave, but it’s part of his family’s estate. I’m only there until I save up enough money for three months of rent and deposits by January. That’s when my rent house will be vacant.” She raised her mug to her lips, then paused. “Not as easy as I thought it’d be.”

  Since their confrontation back in August, Sam and Carrie’s truce had evolved into an unexpected camaraderie. She’d been surprised to discover his wicked sense of humor, had been reduced by it to helpless fits of laughter on several occasions. He was intelligent—Carrie had tagged him “the walking encyclopedia of useless information”—and easy to talk to. She still didn’t know much about his personal life, had been reluctant to ask more than he volunteered. Roxie had mentioned he liked to keep private matters private, but considering their latest direction of dialogue, she couldn’t stop her curiosity from taking control of her tongue.

  “You can tell me to mind my own business if you want, Sam, but I’d like to know what brought on your divorce. Did you sleep around on your wife? Did you hit on her or drink too much?”

  He settled slim hips against the counter and crossed his arms. “Now, why would you assume I’m to blame?”

  She shrugged, not bothering to apologize. “Just drawing from my own well of experience with men, I guess.”

  “Well then, no, no, and no. Look, just because Dave was a dog, you shouldn’t assume all men are like him.” He crossed one booted ankle over the other in a relaxed manner. “But I’ll admit I made my share of mistakes.”

  Carrie’s gaze never wavered from his as she waited for him to continue.

  “Linda, my wife, accused me of being controlling. And I was a little.”

  Her breath hissed as she sucked it in. “That can be a death sentence for a marriage.”

  “I know that now,” he agreed. “I’ve learned from my mistakes, and believe me when I tell you she made several of her own.”

  “Any chance of reconciliation?”

  “Nope.” He held up his left hand. “I didn’t take off my wedding ring until the divorce finalized. Then I chucked that son of a gun.” He leaned his elbow against the counter top. “It came through September eighth—on a Friday.”

  “I started here three days later, on the eleventh.”

  “Yep. I came in to work late on Monday, and you were here already.”

  “No!” Her gaze widened in mock astonishment. “You came in late? I don’t believe it.”

  “Okay, smart ass. I was depressed. I’d had a hell of a year, you know.”

  His pained expression made her swallow the sharp comeback simmering just out of reach. She wasn’t the only one with problems. “I understand, and I’m sorry.” He nodded in mute agreement, making her hate being the one to make his painful memories resurface. “We could always exchange horror stories.”

  “Or compare our divorce documents,” he pitched in.

  “Or settlement options.”

  He grinned down at her. “Did you make out okay? Will you get compensated for losing your home?”

  Carrie’s brow creased in concentration. “At first, I wanted to prove to Dave I could do it on my own without any help from him. But my lawyer convinced me not to let my independent spirit get in the way of common sense.”

  “Smart, for a lawyer, I mean.”

  “I expected nothing less. She’s the best around.”

  “Well, that explains it then.”

  She gave him a nod and a half smile, thinking they’d come a long way. “I just wish I hadn’t wasted my best years on a man who never wanted me. I don’t think he’d ever been happy with me as his wife.”

  Sam grunted his disapproval. “It always amazes me how some people have every
thing they need to be happy and aren’t, while others can have nothing and be perfectly satisfied. I’ve heard some of your horror stories, Carrie. I don’t know how you put up with it.”

  She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Do you think I got what I deserved for staying?”

  “Nobody deserves that.”

  Carrie gathered her thoughts while the kitchen’s electric wall clock droned with a low hum. “For years, when Dave would leave us, I’d be stuck alone with the kids. I’d always end up terrified and lonely, and I’d start to think anything was better than being alone. At some point, I realized it wasn’t so bad. I guess I had to learn to like myself enough to be alone with me. That’s when he’d come crawling home.” She raised her mug. “Not sure how I’ll like being alone for the rest of my life, though.”

  Sam shifted, rearranging his long legs. “Just because you’re alone now doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way.”

  Carrie chuckled in disagreement. “Come on, Sam. I’ll be thirty-six years old in two seconds, and I have three teenagers. If my body were a roadway, I’d have to post WATCH FOR POTHOLES signs on my midsection and butt. I’m not exactly what guys are looking for.”

  Sam straightened to his full height. “You’re kidding, right? You’re a kind, decent lady—”

  “And one day someone will come along who’ll really appreciate my qualities,” she interrupted. “That’s a classic ‘throw-the-dog-a-bone’ line if I ever heard one.”

  Sam raised his hand and spoke firmly. “I wasn’t finished—and you’re a good looking woman, as well.”

  Carrie rolled her eyes and turned to stare at the dismally depressing morning outside the kitchen’s single window. Gloomy, rainy, and cool, it felt like an anchor, weighing down her spirit. “You’re only saying that to be nice.”

  J.C. stepped into the kitchen with his usual flair for making an entrance and headed for the coffee pot. “Dat’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard. Sam Langley never says anything just to be nice.”

  “You tell her, JC.” Sam encouraged.

  “He might say somethin’ to piss you off, or prove what a monumental jack ass he is, but he won’t ever say it just to be nice.”