Park Avenue Prince(71)

I squeezed her hand. “I’m right here.” Angie would always be in my life, for better or worse. It was just too late to change that. She was family. “I’m so sorry for disappearing.”

“I know you are.”

Just like that, I was forgiven. We were Sam and Angie again.

“So, you ready to be an uncle to this kid?”

“Not even a little bit.” I smiled at her.

“All you have to do is love her. That’s all I ask.”

“I think you’re asking the wrong man.” I wasn’t capable of doing things other people took for granted—things like loving people. It just wasn’t that easy.

“You can’t live without love, Sam. If you try, you might as well have died in that car right alongside your parents.”

I tried to twist my hand free from hers, but she wouldn’t let me. “Don’t say stuff like that.” I knew how lucky I’d been.

“I know you don’t like to talk about them, but I also know the man you are. Not the guy people see from the outside—not what your parents’ deaths did to you—the man who’s left when everyone else except me is gone.” She leaned over and poked me in the chest. “I know what’s in here. I know who your parents created while they were alive. A man who would lay down his life for me. Loyal. Determined. Fierce. Someone who’s capable of giving great love.”

Even though they’d left me so early in life, I was my parents’ legacy. Angie was right—all the good inside me was them. “You’re going to be an amazing mother.”

“If I’m not, it’s all your fault. You convinced me I could do this. And I’m determined I’m going to do my best by this kid. I owe it to my daughter, to Chas, but most of all to me. You told me I shouldn’t let my past determine my future. But neither should you, my friend. You deserve Grace.”

I rested my head back on the cushion and closed my eyes.

“That’s what your parents would want for you, Sam. A great love. Someone who deserves you. Someone like Grace. I think they would have loved the way she loves you.”

I was sure they would have loved Grace. And she them. The inside of my nose burned as images of what might have been formed in my imagination.

“She doesn’t love me. Not anymore.” The thought hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. “And that’s the way it should be.”

“No, Sam, that’s not how it should be at all. What you and Grace have doesn’t come along that often.”

As much as I might want to deny it, I couldn’t. What Grace and I had was special. But it wasn’t enough to protect me if the worst happened. I stared up at the cracked ceiling. “What if something happened to her, if she left me somewhere down the line? I just wouldn’t handle it.”

“Be the guy she’s never going to want to leave and let the universe decide the rest.”

“The universe? That’s your answer? That’s no guarantee. I wouldn’t survive losing her. I know I wouldn’t.” Even now, after not seeing Grace for weeks, if I heard something had happened to her, it would kill me.

“I think you’re the strongest guy I know. You can survive anything. Let your parents’ deaths teach you that. Let it have been a demonstration of your strength. Don’t let their deaths make you live in fear. Honor your mom and dad by living your best life, and loving as hard as you can.”

I leaned forward, putting my head in my hands.

I knew my parents would want me to be happy. But they’d understand how I had to protect myself. Wasn’t surviving enough?

“I don’t think I can.”

“Let me ask you this: would you have preferred not having those first twelve years with your parents? Never to have known them at all?”

I groaned in response to the pain that ripped across my chest. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than never having known my parents. Those years had been worth all the pain and suffering that came later. I would have endured anything to have had them in my life, even for a shortened time.

And then I knew—I had to love Grace for as long as life allowed me to do so.





I watched from across the street as people funneled out the gallery door. The evening was almost over. I’d done my research in the days since Angie’d ambushed me. Tonight Grace was hosting a party for a Wall Street investment bank I happened to do a lot of business with. A brief phone call to a contact there had secured an invitation. It had taken more than a phone call for the next part of my plan to fall into place, but I was nothing if not tenacious. I always got what I wanted. I hoped tonight wouldn’t break my streak.

I grasped the brown paper package I’d brought in both hands and headed across the street.

“Sam Shaw,” I said to the security guy at the door. He swiped his fingers over the screen of an iPad and nodded at me. I waited for a group of four men to leave, then stepped into the gallery.

I scanned the faces of the guests, trying to find Grace. I didn’t want to disrupt her evening, so my plan was to hang around until everyone else had left. In the meantime, I had a delivery to make.

I made my way to the back of the gallery, trying to get to the secret area where she kept her favorite pieces. But something had changed. The layout was different, not as big. She’d put an additional wall down the middle of the gallery and the hidden area had disappeared. Shit. What was I going to do now? That was where I’d wanted to leave my gift.