with all the anger and fear of a child who’d lost the mother she loved.
By meeting two people who might paint a negative picture of her mother, Sam obviously feared those good memories being erased and her mother being taken from her again in a different way than before.
Ryan stood and walked out from behind the desk. As grateful as he was that Zoe would put herself in Sam’s line of fire to protect him, he couldn’t let her shoulder this burden.
“Zoe isn’t the one who asked for this dinner. I did. It’s time you meet your family.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “Don’t go defending her. She probably figures that she can dump me in that big old mausoleum I saw pictures of and go back home without me.”
The tears in Sam’s eyes and quiver in her voice excused anything she said to him, Ryan thought. Still, Zoe deserved better. “Zoe and her family took you in when you had no one. They’ve treated you like you were one of them.”
Sam sniffed and turned away so she could wipe her arm across her face. “So?”
“So she deserves an apology now.”
Sam hiccupped and then she ran straight into Zoe’s arms, shaking and sobbing, her muffled words tearing his heart in two. “I love you. I want to be with you and Elena and Nicholas and Ari and…” She rhymed off the names of the Costas clan while Zoe stroked her long hair hanging down her back.
“I love you, too,” she said to Sam. But her eyes were on Ryan, both of them painfully aware that Zoe couldn’t offer Sam the reassurance she wanted most. She couldn’t promise that Sam could go back to the house she called home. Not as long as Ryan was in the picture, wanting something from this child, too.
They talked in hushed tones. Zoe handed Sam a tissue and helped her pat her cheeks and dry her tears, which had quickly turned embarrassing to the teenager.
Watching Zoe comfort Sam, Ryan’s chest squeezed tight, and he had trouble catching his breath. The realization hit him out of the blue. Not only was he fascinated with this woman, but he was falling for her, too. Enough that he needed time to learn even more about the raven-haired woman whose life he had turned upside down.
Zoe closed herself in her guest room at Ryan’s and called Quinn as soon as they returned home. He cursed and muttered a few choice words about his own stupidity for not considering the possibility that whoever seemed to be after Sam would follow them to Boston. Until now, the notion that the guy was after Sam had been pure conjecture. He could have been after something in the house. Now it seemed clear he was specifically after Sam. Unless of course, he was looking to scare or punish the family and was using Sam to accomplish his goal. Until they caught the guy, they were in the dark as to his motives or what he actually wanted.
Zoe shivered. Quinn promised to call a friend of his to arrange covert protection for Sam while they were in town.
In the afternoon, she and Sam watched television, relaxing together and avoiding the topic of what had occurred earlier in the day.
Later that evening, they dressed and headed to Ryan’s parents’ home where Zoe and Sam suffered through stiff hellos and predinner drinks. She took in the mausoleum in which he’d grown up and realized the difference between her parents’ small Jersey Shore home and this mansion couldn’t be more extreme. Small versus big. Warm versus cold. She shuddered, grateful they’d finally ended up in the dining room for dinner because it meant the evening was progressing, however slowly.
Sam had been quiet during the introductions, and Zoe had stayed by her side, offering silent security. Now she discovered that dinner at the Baldwins’ was a formal affair, complete with too many plates, forks, knives and spoons for Zoe to handle, never mind a young girl like Sam. Zoe wondered if the place settings were so intricate on purpose, to test Zoe’s breeding and Sam’s place within this family. She chided herself for thinking the worst and plastered a smile on her face for Sam’s sake.
“Zoe’s an unusual name,” Vivian, Ryan’s mother said.
Zoe waited for the help to serve their salads before replying. “It’s Greek,” she explained.
“Her sister’s name is Ariana,” Uncle Russ said, surprising Zoe.
That he remembered her sister’s name was a shock. A sign that he’d been interested