More to Give by Terri Osburn Page B

her Mother?” Callie asked, her blue eyes sparkling like icicles in the sunlight.
    With a grin, Sam leaned toward her. “Not always.”
    Callie choked on a giggle as she reached for her door handle again. “Thank you,” she said. “For enduring lunch with my mother, and for trying to make me feel better.” One heel hit the gravel before she turned back his way. “And about thanking your mother? You’d still be the successful man you are today, Sam, no matter what she was like. I don’t doubt that for a second.”
    Sam watched Callie climb out of his car with a mixture of feelings—protectiveness and a sense of peace—two things he hadn’t felt in many years. As he watched her walk away, a feeling of unease came over him.
    The return of Callie Henderson into his life was turning out to be more dangerous than Sam had first suspected. He’d worried she’d churn up old memories. Open old wounds. But if he wasn’t careful, she might inflict some new ones.

    “You need to land that fish, young lady,” Evelyn yelled through Callie’s bathroom door. “While you still have the looks to do it.”
    Standing at the sink in nothing but jeans and a bra, Callie fought the urge to smack her forehead against the porcelain. Maybe she could knock herself unconscious and not wake up until after her mother had left the island.
    “I know you can hear me in there.”
    “Of course I can hear you, Mother. They can probably hear you in China.”
    “Don’t you sass me, Calliope Mabel.”
    What kind of name was that? Calliope Mabel. She’d come to terms with the Calliope part years ago, but Mabel? The two names didn’t even sound right together. If she ever had a daughter, Callie would name her something pretty. Like Olivia Jane or Isabelle Marie. No Mabels.
    “And hurry up,” Evelyn snapped. “We’re going to be late for dinner.”
    Saturday morning could not come soon enough.
    Out of spite, Callie took another fifteen minutes. She spent most of that time reading a magazine article about the newest trends in interior design. When she emerged from her private powder room, she found Henri sitting on her bed, reading a magazine of her own.
    “You abandoned me today,” Callie said, not yet ready to forgive her cousin for leaving her and Sam in Evelyn’s clutches.
    “If you think I can in any way control your mother, I’m going to suggest you cut back on the crack.”
    “At least with you around she has someone other than me to criticize.” Expecting anyone to volunteer to spend more time with her mother was mean, but Callie was feeling too bitter and embarrassed to care.
    “And I have to endure that criticism for nine hours tomorrow.” Henri snapped the magazine shut. “Whatever she did must have been bad, to get you this pissed. Do I even want to know?”
    Callie gave Henri a droll look. “She insisted Sam come to lunch with us.”
    Henri gasped. “No. And he went?”
    “She didn’t give him much choice.”
    “The poor guy.” At Callie’s glare, she added, “And you. Poor you.”
    Callie tossed her work clothes into the hamper. “When she wasn’t hitting on him, she was suggesting that he and I would make beautiful babies together. She kept asking about his vast holdings of hotels and all but demanded to know his net worth.”
    Henri cringed. “That sounds like Evelyn.”
    “And then . . .” Callie hesitated, steeling herself against the image playing on a loop in her mind. “She grabbed his ass on the way to the car.”
    Her cousin had the gall to collapse into fits of laughter on the bed.
    “I’m glad you find this amusing.”
    “Come on,” Henri said, returning to a sitting position. “That’s cheeky even for Aunt Evelyn. How did Sam take it?”
    Dropping onto the bed, Callie smiled. “Oddly enough, he found it hysterical.”
    “He is the perfect man,” Henri murmured.
    “Not at first, of course,” Callie said. “But after we dropped her off, we were sitting in his SUV and he started