Free Wanting Forever (A Nelson Island Novel) by Diana Gardin Page A

fact that he was protecting someone else. She knew it had to be the girlfriend he’d left back home. She wondered angrily if that girl was worthy of Sam’s love. He’d given up so much for her. Was she doing the same for him?
    Aston’s legs wobbled dangerously and she quickly pulled out a chair to sit down. She’d never felt such a tumult of clashing emotions pulling her in all directions at once. She thought she’d been emotional when she’d found out about her mother’s affair.
    At that time in her life, she’d just down her emotions before they could bury her. Her father had needed her. She had refused to crumble to pieces because of her own heartbreak and disappointment in the woman who’d birthed her. The way she was feeling about Sam was different. She could try to turn it off, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t be able to if she tried. The ocean of feelings crashing over her in regards to Sam Waters and his mysterious secret was devastatingly big.
    “Aston?” Sam’s voice wafted through the kitchen from his place just outside the door.
     She looked up and saw him filling the entrance.
    “Yeah?”
    Ashley’s curious stare flickered between the two of them. “Are you okay, A?” she asked again. “You look…”
    “Are you sick?” Sam moved briskly into the kitchen to stand next to Aston’s chair. “Can I get you something?”
    He stared at her with concern, his head tilted to one side as he gripped the back of her chair.
    “No, I’m fine,” she told them both. “I just…I’m fine. Do you need something, Sam?”
    She steeled herself and rose from her chair, looking up into his eyes.
    “Well, actually…I was going to ask you to come shopping with me.”
    She must have missed that part. She’d been reeling about the revelations they’d made in the office; she hadn’t even heard the end of their conversation.
    “Shopping?” she asked faintly.
    “Yeah,” Sam answered, shifting his feet uncomfortably. “Your dad wants me to start interning for him, you know…and he thinks maybe I should, uh, restock my wardrobe a bit. Buy some more formal clothes for work. He gave me the expense card. Can you help me?”
    The plaintive tone in his voice and those lost little boy eyes…she couldn’t say no. Just thinking about helping him out of the clothes he was wearing…a bead of sweat trickled slowly down her back. She wasn’t going to be doing that. She was only taking him shopping.
    “Of course,” she answered. “Let me go upstairs and change. Give me fifteen minutes.”
    She wasted no time practically flying from the room.
    Closing her bedroom door behind her, she closed her eyes and leaned against it. She could do this. She could spend time with Sam Waters. It was shopping. Granted, it was shopping for an internship she didn’t necessarily want him to have, but she loved shopping. And the more time she spent around Sam, the more she realized he didn’t have designs on moving up in her father’s company. Maybe he had just been in the right place at the right time and he deserved a shot at something good.
    Maybe.
    Actually, she’d been itching to get her hands on his wardrobe since she met him. Not that the clothes he wore weren’t sexy, in a country boy kind of way. He had simple tastes. But holy hell…how delectable he could be if she could sink her stylish teeth into him?
    Okay. Thinking like that wasn’t helping. The heat that had been building in her center since he’d approached her in the kitchen was only getting hotter. He’d been so genuinely concerned about her, and the nurturing reaction from him made her want to curl up into his body and just let him hold her.
    This line of thought wasn’t helping her calm down at all. Not a bit.
    She took a cool shower, dressed quickly in short white shorts and a low-cut red tank top, and topped the outfit off with wedge-heeled sandals. Sam wasn’t blind. If he was elevating her blood pressure like this, then she sure as hell was