He heard Samara stirring and poured a second cup of coffee. A few minutes later, she padded out of the bedroom, wearing a short robe that left her long legs bare. “Morning.” She yawned.
“Morning.” He set his phone down and watched her cradle her mug in both hands and inhale deeply. God, this woman kills me. “Samara.”
Her eyes flew open. “Oh, no. What else happened?”
“What?”
“You have a serious tone and it’s not even six thirty in the morning. That means something horrible happened.”
He grinned despite everything. “I love you.”
“You…” She gaped at him. “You can’t just say things like that. This is…I’m not…Damn it, Beckett! I love your contrary ass, too.”
His heart leaped in his chest. It was one thing to make the declaration himself, to see evidence of her feelings in how she treated him and did her best to offer comfort in what was both the shittiest and the single best week of his fucking life. It was entirely another to hear her say the words aloud. He took a slow sip of his coffee to center himself. “Should I have waited for a romantic dinner and bought you a dozen roses beforehand?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t even like roses. They’re bitchy little flowers. Lilies are better. Or even daisies.”
“Noted.”
She glared into her coffee mug. “It’s so damn early in the morning and I’m not even fully awake and you just spring it on me. It’s rude. Thirty minutes from now would have been appropriate.” Samara finally looked up and grinned. “But I do love you, Beckett. It’s too soon and it’s crazy and I don’t know how this is going to work. It’ll probably blow up in both our faces.”
He couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. “You kill me.”
“No one needs to be killing anyone. You can’t joke like that given your current predicament.”
That sobered him when nothing else would have. Samara loves me…and my aunt likely wants me six feet under. “Life’s complicated.”
“You can say that again.” She touched her hair and grimaced. “I need another shower and a small vat of coffee after last night. What’s the plan for today?”
He held up his phone. “Frank found Walter. He’s holed up in a little hotel just outside of town. I figured we’d go have a nice conversation with him and then see where the day goes from there.” Beckett wasn’t too keen to haul Samara around with him, if only because he couldn’t guarantee her safety, but he couldn’t guarantee it across the board without knowing Lydia’s exact plans. But if she wasn’t with him…
She scrolled through her phone, a frown appearing. “Actually, I’m being called into the office for an emergency meeting.”
Alarm bells rang through his head. “Is that normal?”
“It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Considering Lydia sent me off on a fake vacation to get me out of the way and is now summoning me back to the office…” She shrugged. “She’s always operated under her own set of rules. I don’t see why this would be any different.”
“Don’t go.” The words were out before he could think better of them, about what they would mean in the current situation.
“I have to.”
“Fuck that.” Again, he spoke without thinking, but the stubborn lift of her chin told him everything he needed to know about how this conversation would go. “You can’t honestly tell me that you think Lydia is innocent.”
“I don’t think she’s innocent. If I did, I wouldn’t have snuck into her office and photographed her calendar.”
Frustration grabbed him by the throat and he set his mug down hard enough on the counter to make them both flinch. “Why go, then?”
“Because it’s my job.” She held up a hand before he could say something more. “This isn’t a debate. I’m telling you that I’m going, because that’s what I’m doing.”
He didn’t care why she was going, only that she was putting herself in the path of potential harm for a set of principles that didn’t make any damn sense. “You know, you’re not reenacting your mother and father if you just listen to me for once. You joked about Lydia throwing you out a window, but what’s to stop her from doing exactly that when she realizes that I love you?”
Samara stared at him and then slowly shook her head. “I’m fully aware that I’m not my mother and you’re hardly my father. But while that might be the case, I’m also my own person, Beckett. Lydia hasn’t struck you directly yet—and she won’t. She’s too crafty for that. She also won’t threaten me directly just because we’re sleeping together.”
She might say that, but she didn’t know for sure. If I lose you right when I found you… He crossed his arms over his chest, fighting against the words that would drive the wedge deeper between them. He gritted his teeth. “Please don’t go.”
Something like sympathy appeared in her dark eyes. “Beckett, I know this is coming from a place of caring, but you can’t bottle me up and stick me on some shelf to take out at your convenience. I have to live my own life, even if it’s a life I’m potentially sharing with you. That’s not going to change, no matter what else does. If you can’t handle that…” Another shrug, this one stiffer. “I don’t see how this could possibly work.”
“I don’t like ultimatums, Samara.”
“Neither do I.” She turned and walked through her bedroom door, shutting it softly behind her. He stared hard at the pale wood, as if he could will her into understanding that he wasn’t trying to be an overbearing ass, but taking foolish risks just to prove she was independent was stupid. Not a fight I’m going to win. Not right now.
Instead, Beckett changed and wrote a quick note to Samara. He didn’t trust himself not to say something to make their current standoff worse, but he didn’t want to leave without some kind of good-bye. That done, he headed
