A/N and Disclaimer: I own nothing from Glee, Carr's story, or any other copyrighted material. I hope you enjoy it. Please as always forgive all of my mistakes. Thanks for all of the reviews. Thank you for those who have already followed or favorite this story. This will be the last update of today. This chapter is Sam's POV.

Chapter 2

Sam couldn't keep the smile off of his face as he pulled up to Mercy's house. JJ was sitting—actually squirming was a better word—on the front porch, waiting for him. The second Sam put the truck in park, JJ picked up a brand-new glove and ran across the yard toward him.

"Hey, JJ." He reached into the truck and pulled out his own well-worn glove and a brand new baseball. Then he looked over his shoulder. "Where's your mom?"

"She's inside, trying to put her bed together."

"Her bed's not set up yet?"

JJ shook his head. "Nah. She just sleeps on a mattress on the floor." He struggled to put his new glove on.

Sam took it from him. "Here." Sam bent the stiff leather a few times, trying to soften it. "I see your mom got you a new glove."

Sam slipped it on JJ's hand. "Now then. How's that feel?"

"Better." JJ gave him a wide gap-toothed grin.

"Hey now. What's going on inside your mouth, pal? It seems to me that you're missing a tooth."

JJ put his finger in the empty space. "Yes sir, the Tooth Fairy gave me two dollars for it."

"Not too bad when I was your age I got fifty cents per tooth. Wonder what she'd give me for mine now."

JJ giggled. "I think you are too old to lose your teeth."

Sam gave him a wink, then tossed the ball to him, impressed when JJ caught it with ease.

JJ threw it back at him and he whistled. "You got a great arm there, JJ You'd make a great shortstop."

"JJ!"

They both turned at the sound of Mercy's voice as she stepped onto the porch, looking for her son. Her pretty brown eyes widened when she saw Sam.

"Oh, Sam. I didn't know you were here."

"Just pulled up. JJ had his glove on and greeted me ready to roll."

She smiled as she looked at her son. "He's been waiting on the porch. For almost two hours. I told him you wouldn't be here until three."

"Wish I'd known. I could have come over earlier. He said you were having a hard time putting your bed together," he said, watching her squirm. "I could have helped you with that, Mrs. Jones."

His comment got the desired result. She narrowed her eyes even as she tried to hide her attraction to him. Sam wasn't sure what it was about Mercy Jones that had him going rock hard every time he saw her face and her amazing curves, but it was happening again so he knew it was not a fluke. He tried to covertly adjust his jeans.

She followed the movement of his hand. Nothing got by the cute kindergarten teacher. Mercy was a million miles away from his usual type of woman, something he'd told himself at least twenty times in the past few days when his mind kept wandering back to her.

In the past, he avoided women like her like Covid-19. Mercy had her heart set on some uptight, serious dude in a suit with a nine-to-five job, who'd come home and play house with her and JJ. They'd set a Saturday morning date—locking the bedroom door—for missionary position sex, then go on with their boring lives.

On top of her preference, Mercy was too sweet for a guy like him. While she was looking for love and commitment and forever, he was happy with his own status quo—footloose and fancy-free. So they were a mismatch from the word go.

And while he'd repeated those same words over and over since the field trip, they weren't sinking in.

Because all the logic in the world didn't change one simple fact.

Sam wanted her.

Even though he had only seen her in a loose-fitting, completely virginal wardrobe.

He looked her over. Man, he'd thought the field trip outfit was bad with that big dress that hung all the way to the ground and high-necked sweater she wore on top of it.

Today's attire was much worse. She wore a man's T-shirt, the godawful thing three times too big, and sweatpants. Her hair was up in the same style she'd worn the other day—a tight single curly braid that came to her shoulder.

She glanced at his truck, then sighed. "Do you have any tools with you? I bought a screwdriver and hammer at the hardware store, but I think I need something else. Maybe a wrench or pliers."

Sam laughed at her unwillingness to admit defeat and let him into her bedroom. "Regular do-it-yourself gal, huh? Which is it? A wrench or pliers?"

She bit her lower lip, drawing his attention to her pretty lush mouth. He wouldn't mind pushing his tongue between those plump DSL lips. He'd bet she tasted like sugar, rather than vodka, like most of the women he kissed.

He probably needed to stop picking women up at bars.

Oh hell no.

Sam suddenly felt the need to kick his own ass again. He should be anywhere but here, flirting with the sweet schoolteacher. She seemed like the type who'd fall in love fast and get super clingy.

He did not go for that.

Finally, she sighed and threw in the towel. "I have no idea what I'm doing with that bed frame."

Sam ran his hand over his jaw, trying to hide his grin. "Give JJ and me a little while to play catch, and then I'll come in and help you with it."

She didn't want him in her bedroom—that much was evident from her grimace—but it appeared she was even more tired of sleeping on the floor. "Okay. Why don't I make you guys some lemonade?"

"That would be really nice."

Sam watched as she walked back to the house, trying to get some glimpse of her figure or even just her ass. Her damn clothes were an effective shield, no doubt something she'd picked out just for him.

Sam played catch with JJ for the better part of an hour, stopping for a few minutes to drink the lemonade Mercy had brought out for them. The kid was tireless when it came to playing ball, but he was cool and easy to hang out with, not whiny or demanding. Sam figured he'd been raised right.

Speaking of…

"Hey, JJ. Do you want to help me put your mom's bed together for her?"

He thought the young boy might complain about stopping, but JJ was obviously up for anything. "Sure."

Sam opened his truck's passenger door, tossed his glove inside, and reached into the back seat for the toolbox he always kept there. In addition to his position as the only full-time, salaried firefighter in Lima, he was also sort of known as Mr. Fix-it among the single ladies in town. Difference was most of those women came up with a million lame excuses to get him into their bedroom with his tool…er, tools, while Mercy clearly wanted him a hundred miles from hers.

"Can I carry that?" Jake asked.

"It's kind of heavy," Sam warned as he handed the boy the toolbox. Sam didn't let go immediately, making sure JJ wouldn't drop it.

"I can do it." He struggled a bit, but JJ was determined not to let anything stop him from being his assistant.

Sam followed him into the house, enjoying the five-year-old's version of a house tour. "That's going to be the dining room. Nothing in there yet," he said as he nodded his head to an empty room. "Back there is the family room. We got a couch and TV, but Mommy said we can't get channels until she gets paid."

Sam assumed channels meant cable.

Mercy had all the windows open and there was a nice breeze blowing, so the house was cool, the air fresh.

He didn't mention to JJ that he'd been in this house countless times before. His great aunt had lived here up until she died and his Uncle Luke had inherited it. Luke had been renting it out ever since.

"Dammit."

Sam and JJ took off in the direction of Mercy's voice. JJ rolled his eyes at him. "Mommy isn't supposed to cuss."

His tone told him there was a big difference between Mercy doing what she was supposed to and what she actually did. Sam had gotten a kick out of some of her near-misses during the field trip.

When they got to the kitchen, Mercy was standing on a wobbly stool, trying to change the battery in the smoke detector. It looked like the old one was corroded to hell.

"Pretty sure you're going to need a whole new detector," Sam said.

She jerked in surprise. They should have announced their arrival. She threw her hands out, flailing to try to keep from falling off the stool.

Sam's mother hadn't raised a fool, so he stepped behind her and placed his hands on her hips to steady her. His thumbs landed on the fleshy part of her ass and he gave it a little stroke.

She let him steal a touch without giving him shit—probably because her son was standing there—but once she was steady, she twisted around so Sam had no choice but to drop his hands.

He lifted one hand up to help her. "You better get down from there, Mrs. Jones, or you'll break your neck. Or bruise that sweet little—"

"I'm fine now, Sam." Even as she said it, she took his hand and let him help her down. "You don't need to worry about my neck. Or my sweet little anything. And it's Mercy."

"I'm just glad to discover you've got something interesting under that T-shirt. Is there any reason you're shopping in the Big and Tall section?"

She tugged the hand Sam had refused to let go of out of his grip and narrowed her eyes.

He wasn't sure why he found her annoyance so attractive, but the truth was whenever Mercy Jones gave Sam that self-righteous look or impatient sniff, it turned him on instead of turning him off as she intended..

She looked up at the smoke detector. "I'll grab a new one from the store tomorrow."

"Let me know when you get it. I'll come over and install it for you."

"That's—"

"Nonnegotiable," Sam finished for her. He was getting pretty good at anticipating her rejections. "Let me tell you how this is going to play out. You're going to keep saying no and I'm going to keep showing up here to help anyway. So save your breath."

"Listen, Sam," she started as she placed her hands on hips.

"Where's your bedroom, Mrs. Jones?" he murmured suggestively, even though he was perfectly aware of where the bedrooms were in this house. He chose to keep that tidbit to himself.

She glanced in JJ's direction. "I don't think—"

"We're putting your bed together." Sam pointed to the toolbox JJ was carrying. "Remember?"

"Oh. Yeah."

There it was again. Those teeth coming out and biting her lip.

He was glad his T-shirt was untucked and shielding the view of her effect on him. He didn't mind her seeing it, but JJ was another story.

"Lead the way, JJ," Sam said, grinning as the little boy took off in the direction of her bedroom. As they walked, Sam glanced around and noticed Mercy hadn't lied about needing to unpack. There was precious little done in the house.

She noticed him looking around. "It's my first year of teaching. Planning lessons take a lot more time than I realized. By the time I'm ready for the next day, it's usually late and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open."

"It's okay. I wasn't kidding about helping out."

She smiled at him, but he wasn't blind to the suspicion in her eyes. She thought he was going to expect to be paid—and not monetarily—for his work.

She hadn't been here more than a month and the local gossips had clearly managed to fill her in on his sexual exploits. Not that he was surprised.

Hell, even though most of those stories were lies. Sam had lived in Lima his whole life, and living in a little town; where there were not a lot of people his age meant that his choices in dating and screwing had been limited. In high school, he had a girlfriend who had cheated on him with the quarterback on the football team while refusing to even let him go to third place. His second girlfriend had been closeted gay and only let him please her orally. It was only until he was a senior in high school and done with trying to be a perfect boyfriend that he finally lost his virginity to the only person in school who would not say no to anyone. They faked being in a relationship, so his parents would let him see her, but he was only with her because of the sex.

When they graduated, she moved away to be with his ex, the closeted gay one, and he stayed in Lima going to community college, and he slept with anyone who he found attractive. He always wore a condom, always got tested, and when the women he slept with would brag about his sexual prowess, he developed a reputation. A reputation that he earned as being a love em and leave em type of guy, but some of the women especially the older women began to lie. He never corrected anyone on his body count even though it was less than fifteen. People in the town believed he slept with anyone who was willing no matter if they were his type or not.

It made him a legend in Lima. And he wasn't considered a Lima Loser because he wanted to stay in his hometown. But lately, as he was getting older, his status had stopped feeling cool. As his reputation grew, so did the invitations. He liked women and he liked sex, but recently he'd started feeling more like some freak show attraction than a flesh and blood man.

The women, some who were even married, who'd been inviting him to their beds the past few months wanted bragging rights, a chance to say they had sex with him. Sam was tired of that game. He never slept with married women. He remembered how crushed his teenage heart had been when his high school girlfriend cheated on him. In all of his early relationships, the girls all dumped him or cheated on him. He was conditioned to not ever get emotionally involved because he didn't want to deal with catching feelings and being the joke of the town instead of the town's legendary lover.

As for the nice girls like Mercy…well, he just made sure they stayed far away from him.

So, for the first time in his life since being a virgin, he'd become celibate. He hadn't slept with a woman in nearly two years—a record for him since he'd lost his virginity.

While this current hiatus hadn't been intentional at first, there wasn't a single woman in town who'd tempted Sam enough to break the streak.

Until Mrs. Mercy Jones.

He followed JJ into her bedroom, Mercy right behind them. The first thing he noticed was she wasn't kidding about the bed frame defeating her. Pieces of it were strewn all over the room, nuts and bolts scattered as well.

That was the first thing he saw.

The second—and more interesting—was the nice-sized cucumber lying on the floor next to her mattress.

"Late night snack?" he joked.

She bent over, picked up the cucumber, and tossed it into the small trash can by the bedroom door.

"Seems like a waste of good food," he murmured.

Before she could reply, a siren sounded in the distance.

Mercy heard it as well. "Shouldn't you go?"

"What?" he asked, confused by her question, wondering if he'd really pissed her off about the cucumber.

"Isn't that a fire alarm?"

"Oh. No. That's a tornado alarm."

"What?" She dropped to her hands and knees, scrambling across the room to JJ. "Oh my Lord. A Freaking Tornado."

When she reached her son, she tugged him down as well, her reaction scaring the kid.

"What are you doing?" Sam watched as she frantically started crawling around the room, trying to find somewhere to hide.

"Holy shh-ugar cubes. What the fuu-dge was I thinking about moving to a place with tornadoes?"

"What's a tornado, Mommy?" JJ's brown eyes were wide as he crouched on the floor.

"Come on," Sam said, reaching for JJ's hand. "Both of you need to stand up."

JJ seemed to find comfort in his lack of panic, while Mercy was still behaving frantically.

"Mercy," Sam said, using her name for the first time, as he wrapped his hand around her upper arm and dragged her from the floor. "It's going to be okay, sweetheart."

The fact she let him get away with calling her sweetheart proved just how scared the poor little woman was.

"Come with me." He held JJ's hand with his right, Mercy's with his left, as he guided them to the basement. "Down here."

The three of them trudged downstairs as he fumbled around for the string to turn on the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling. Sam led them to the spot under the stairs and urged them to sit down. The concrete floor was cool but clean.

The hiding place didn't seem to help ease Mercy's fears. "How could I not think about the possibility of tornadoes even though having them in Atlanta was rare, most of the state that was rural were affected by them, and Lima, Ohio out in the middle of nowhere is a perfect place for a twister, I would think."

Sam tried not to laugh, then it became clear her freak-out was starting to impact JJ, who looked ready to cry.

"What's a tornado?" the small boy asked again.

"Mercy." Sam tried to get her attention, thinking she might calm down if she saw what she was doing to her son. Her eyes darted around the room and her hands shook violently.

Nope. There was no help from that front, which meant it was up to him to console her son.

"A tornado is a storm with a lot of wind. Hey, JJ, listen," he said, deciding it was time to take control of the situation. "It's pretty clear you're going to have to be the man of the house whenever that alarm goes off, okay?"

JJ nodded fervently. He obviously liked the idea of being called a man. "Okay. I will."

"So here's what you do. Whenever you hear that alarm, you find your mom, grab her hand, and bring her down here. This is the safest spot in the house."

Mercy was listening to Sam, her hands still visibly shaking, a slight sheen of tears in her eyes. He hated seeing her so shaken up, so he reached for her, tugging her next to him and putting his arm around her shoulder.

She didn't try to pull away. In fact, she nestled closer.

"When you get down here, you should probably hold her hand or say something like 'it's going to be alright' to keep her calm."

She breathed out a soft laugh as Sam continued giving JJ instructions.

"Tell her stuff like the city official in town who's in charge of that siren is trigger happy, and if I'm not there to talk him down, he tends to set it off a little more often than is probably necessary. Tell her to take some deep breaths and try not to panic. You know what panic is, JJ?" he asked.

He pointed to Mercy. "What my mommy is doing right now."

Sam laughed and JJ joined in, even though he was pretty sure he didn't have a clue what he'd said that was so funny. Jake Jones was one cool kid.

Mercy tried to push away from him, but he tightened his grip. "Just stay still a minute. Catch your breath. We're all going to be fine."

"I can't hear the alarm down here," she said. "How will we know when it stops?"

Sam used his free hand to pull his cell out of his back pocket and fired up Facebook. "There's an official Lima page. You should join it. As soon as the threat is gone, they'll turn the siren off and tell folks it's okay to come out. Oh hey, look at that. Coast is already clear."

Sam released Mercy, even though he'd been hoping for a few more minutes of holding her close. She smelled good and they fit together really good.

"Can you remember everything I told you, JJ?" he asked once they were all back upstairs in the kitchen.

"Yeah. Grab Mommy, go to the basement, sit under the stairs, and talk to her real nice so she doesn't cry."

"My clever boy." Mercy picked up her son and gave him a kiss on the cheek, rolling her eyes when he wiggled to get down, insisting, "I'm not a baby, Mommy. I'm the man of the house."

"You're a terrible influence," she said to Sam, though her bright smile belied those words.

Sam grabbed her hand. "Come on. Let's finish putting that bed together."

Two hours later, her bed was assembled and made up with clean sheets and a fluffy light green comforter set. Sam had also taken care of a half dozen other tasks that had required the use of his tools.

JJ, bored with helping, had started watching a movie an hour earlier, so Mercy walked Sam to his truck alone.

"I can't thank you enough for everything you did today."

Over the course of the past couple of hours, her wariness of him had grown less and he liked the way she was looking at him as they stood outside, the sun setting behind her house.

"Just saying the words is enough." As soon as he said it, he realized he didn't even need that much. He had enjoyed spending time with Mercy and JJ. They were fun and easy to be with, genuinely appreciative of even the smallest gestures of kindness.

"Even so, I hope you'll let me try. How about supper one night this week? Do you have a night off?"

Sam nodded. "Tuesday."

"Perfect. Come by Tuesday around six, and I'll cook us a feast."

"A feast, huh?" He lived in the apartment above the fire station, and while he had a kitchen, there was also a restaurant across the street. That always felt like the easier answer to mealtimes. "No way I can turn down an offer like that."

She raised one finger at him that Sam assumed was meant to be a warning. However, coming from her, it looked more adorable than threatening.

"Just as friends. It's not a date," she stressed.

He chuckled and tossed his toolbox in the back of his truck, then he turned to look at her. Sam wanted to kiss her. More than he'd wanted to kiss a woman in a long time.

He also knew that would be a bad idea. It had taken him the better part of the afternoon to convince Mercy he wasn't being nice just to get into her pants.

That realization took him aback because he did want to sleep with her. He wanted it badly. His body actually ached with that desire.

Sam took a deep breath and nodded. "Just friends," he said, wondering why he'd agreed to that so easily.

There was something about Mercy Jones.

Something he couldn't quite put his finger on.

All he knew for sure was that she was special.

And for the first time in his life, he was afraid of his history and reputation. The status that had always gotten him what he wanted, might chase away the only thing he now needed.

Mrs. Mercy Jones.