That surprised her. And yet, deep down, it didn’t. Of course he’d be looking for her. He’d be looking for anything or anyone he thought might be a threat to his sister.
“You mentioned, that first night, that you thought Tammy might be behind Tatum’s problems. I just think it’s best to cover all the bases.”
The sharpness with which his head turned told its own story. “Has Tatum said something about her mother? Has Tammy talked to her?”
“Tatum hasn’t mentioned her mother at all to my knowledge, except to allude to herself as a loser because of who and what her parents are.”
“She said that?” His tone had changed. “She called herself a loser?”
She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Didn’t want to hurt him. “Yeah.”
Tanner drove silently after that. Until, out of the blue, he asked, “What did you tell your parents about us?”
The long glance he gave her had her shuffling in her seat, as if he was asking some intimate, personal question. “Just that you’re a friend.” He’d called her almost every night for the past week, wanting a report on Tatum’s progress with Sara, and a rundown of every breath his sister took while she was at The Stand. He’d even asked what Tatum ate for dinner, as if Sedona would know the answer to that.
Of course, every night after the first time he’d asked, she’d had the answer for him. It was a small enough thing, and if it gave him some measure of comfort...
“So they’re used to you bringing men they’ve never met to dinner?”
He was looking straight ahead now, but his right elbow rested on the console between them, bringing him closer to her side of the car.
They’d talked about other things, too, in those nightly chats. Casual comments that led to another minute or two of conversation. He hadn’t seemed any more eager to hang up than she was.
His fresh-air smell filled his cab. Residue from the grapes he spent his days with? Some kind of aftershave?
She couldn’t look at his hands on the steering wheel. Every time she did, she wondered how they’d feel on a woman’s body. Her body.
“No, my parents aren’t used to me bringing men to dinner,” she had to admit. Because he’d know soon enough as it was. “I haven’t brought a man with me to a single family event since I was an undergrad.”
His eyes widened. She thought maybe he smiled, but looked away. She didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. Her parents were going to be bad enough.
She’d known asking him to come tonight was wrong. A risk. Messy. But she needed to spend time with him, because of their agreement. And she needed their opinion of him.
He’d accepted the invitation so readily... As if he really wanted to meet her parents.
“Between my work, my regular volunteering and my extra time at The Stand with Tatum and Sara, I haven’t seen my folks in over a week. If I canceled on them again, they were going to be hurt.”
She wanted to know what her folks thought of him. Because she’d invested far too much of herself in the Malones and didn’t know why. She didn’t trust her judgment. And couldn’t walk away.
All firsts for her.
“Why haven’t you brought anyone home since college? Something happen?”
“Yeah, my folks embarrassed the heck out of me, hinting about marriage. And the guy made fun of them. He was history and so was introducing my male friends to my family.”
“They want you married, and if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile.”
Sedona glanced at him. Was he guessing? Reading her mind?
“Something like that.”
Taking his eye off the crowded highway for a second, he looked at her and back to the road. “You’re, what, twenty-eight, twenty-nine?”
It was none of his business. “Twenty-nine.”
“You have no significant other, at least not that your folks know about, and haven’t had since college?”
She had no reason to feel defensive. He wasn’t married, either. “That’s right.”
“How come?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re gorgeous.” The words sounded both complimentary and commonplace at once. As if they were discussing accepted fact. “And smart and successful. Surely you’ve had offers.”
Not as many as he’d think. None, actually. She’d never been close enough to a guy to get that far. Her nipples were tingling. Not appropriate under the circumstances.
“I’m...” She started to fill in the blank with her standard “picky” or “choosy” or “not ready” comments, and said, instead, “Not willing to settle.”
“I’d guess it would be hard for someone like you to find a guy who met your standards.”
He didn’t sound judgmental. Or critical.
She almost let it go at that. Watched him drive with that bland, satisfied-with-life look on his face when she knew his life had been hard, horrible in some ways, and was currently challenging him, as well.
But where she usually felt compelled to stay quiet, she suddenly wanted to talk.
“My folks were high school sweethearts,” she said. They had another twenty minutes to fill before they got to the restaurant. Where Millie and Chuck Campbell would already be stationed at the best table in the house, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with cloth napkins on their laps and an opened bottle of pinot grigio between them.
They’d be quietly sipping, talking about the stock market, discussing odds. Disagreeing about some. And that night, even though they were both retired, they’d go home to their separate computers and make some changes to the few portfolios they still managed.
“My dad is the only man my mother ever kissed. They both went to UC, majored in business and opened a stock brokerage together, which they ran successfully for thirty years. They had my brother and me, took adventurous family vacations and basically taught us that we could be whoever we wanted to be, do whatever we wanted to do, as long as we were honest, worked hard and listened as much to our hearts as to our heads.”
She paused, but he didn’t respond. She wasn’t even sure he was listening anymore.
“They’ve been in love for more than forty years, and while they disagree on a regular basis, it’s obvious to anyone who knows them that they never lost the spark that first drew them together.”
Still nothing. Tanner drove as though he was alone in the car. Because he couldn’t relate at all to what she was saying? Because he didn’t really care?
She was giving him a real part of herself and he’d probably just been making conversation. How did this man constantly make her feel so stupid? And yet...so alive.
“You’re not going to settle for less than that.” His words, as softly spoken as always, fell like a cannonball into the truck.
She stared some more. Who was this guy? And what was he doing in her life?
He glanced over at her. “Am I right?”
“Yes.”
With a slight nod, he drove on.
Not sure what had just happened, why Tanner Malone, a man with a traumatized sister and no answers, seemed in tune with her psyche in a way that felt like an invasion of privacy, Sedona watched the side of the road, the trees, the greenery, the occasional glimpses of high cliff and ocean below. And then asked, “What about you? You ever bring women home?”
“Never.”
“You’re thirty-three,” Sedona said, kind of hoping to get into his skin just as he’d done hers. Even while knowing that she couldn’t be there. Shouldn’t even want to be there. “You haven’t ever had a date?”
“I didn’t say I don’t date. Just that I don’t bring women home.”
“Why not?”
But she thought she knew. And had her supposition confirmed as he said, “Because Tatum’s home life already had enough inconsistencies.
I wasn’t going to bring her any more emotional confusion.”
“You’re giving up your own family-making years to raise her.”
“A choice I made willingly.”
“And these women you date, they’re okay with that?” She should just let it go. Couldn’t. And was uncomfortable about that, too.
“I don’t date anyone enough for her to get attached. Tatum’s always been emotionally vulnerable. Needy. Like this little puppy that only wants to please and is so afraid of displeasing she always has to check out a room before she enters it.”
Sedona sat up straight. This was why she was spending time with him. Because he’d asked her to get to know him and Tatum. So she could help them.
His being with her had nothing to do with her.
The man was diabolically smart. Was he also as pure-hearted as he seemed to be? As black-and-white as she was?
She’d never been so precariously balanced on the line between right and wrong. Never been so confused.
“I’ve always feared that if I brought a woman home, even casually, just for dinner, Tatum would get attached to her and be broken-hearted if things didn’t work out. And in my experience―” he sent her a pointed look “—in the end, it never works out.”
Maybe purposefully, maybe not, he’d just handed her pieces to the Malone puzzle she had to solve. Not sure where to place them, Sedona filed them in her memory and said, “That’s because you haven’t met my parents yet, but you’re going to―” they were pulling into the restaurant “―in about two and a half minutes.” Unless she missed her guess.
She’d told her mom that Tanner drove a dark blue Ford truck. They’d be sipping wine and watching...surreptitiously, of course. Both watching, neither mentioning the watching to the other, but both knowing that they were doing it.
And...yes...just as she stepped down from the truck, even before Tanner had come around the hood to join her, she saw her mother and father walking together, hand in hand, out to the parking lot to greet them.
For a second, noticing the unconcerned expression on Tanner’s face, she felt sorry for him.
He had no idea what he was getting into.
And no idea how much love and happiness he’d been denied, growing up as he had.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’VE CROSS-HARVESTED a couple of varietals that have proven to do well with our central coast weather and am experimenting with various soil sections on my land. On most of my acreage, I’ve got French pinot plants on American stems and am currently running them at one hundred percent. I’ve had eight good harvests. I handpick, leaving behind any clusters that aren’t ripe or have bunch rot, and I destem before crushing to lower the developments of tannins and vegetal flavors. Last year I produced small batches of both pinot grigio and pinot noir. I’m most pleased with the grigio but consider that an easier, more novice wine to perfect as I don’t have to factor the skins into the process....”
Chewing slowly, barely conscious of the seafood fettuccine she’d ordered, a personal favorite and only ordered on special occasions, Sedona listened while Tanner held court at a dinner that was giving her insight into the man—and giving her an opportunity to know him, which was so much more than their original deal had specified. She was supposed to be checking him out for Tatum’s sake. Not her own.
“So your white juice never touches the skins?” Sedona’s mother, Millie, was asking.
“I crushed them with skin contact for six hours. I wanted to extract tannin from the skins to encourage protein precipitation and also to increase the pH of the juice. I harvested on the modest pH side and was concerned that the juice might be a bit too acidic.”
He’d ordered the spaghetti with meat sauce and had nearly finished his meal. The glass of pinot he’d had from her parents’ bottle was half-gone. Sedona was ready to finish off the bottle and order another.
In twenty-nine years of living she’d never felt so off-kilter. Or unsure.
* * *
TANNER WAS EARLY the next morning, sitting outside the public day care owned and run by The Lemonade Stand, waiting for Tatum.
“My parents really liked you,” Tatum’s attorney had told him the night before during their drive home.
For a second, he’d wanted her to really like him, too. And had stopped the old yearning immediately. He’d learned early not to want things from others.
“You fit right in.”
He’d learned to adapt.
To be happy where he was.
And still, all the way back to her car, he’d been aware of Sedona Campbell, his sister’s beautiful, well-read, wine connoisseur, compassionate attorney, sitting in his truck, so far away and far too close. In the dark of the cab, with her scent filling his lungs and the obvious approval of her parents ringing in his ears—as they’d told him he was welcome at their home anytime, hinting that perhaps the upcoming Sunday dinner wouldn’t be too soon—he’d wanted their date to have been just that. A date.
She couldn’t tell them that he was supposed to be no more than a job to her. Naturally they’d assumed he and Sedona were friends.
He hadn’t expected to care what they thought.
He’d wanted to take her home, to his bed, and make love to her. Absurd. He’d had sex many times. In many beds. He’d never once had a woman in his own bed.
He spent every night at home. Alone.
Because that was where Tatum needed him.
When she was home and when she wasn’t. She needed to know he was there. Always. For as long as she needed him.
The door to the day care opened, and he saw Tatum step out.
She was a beauty, that little girl in a young woman’s body. Too pretty for her own good. Every day she looked more and more like their mother, and Tanner’s fear escalated. With her naturally tanned skin, a gift from the biracial father who’d been supplying their mother’s drugs in exchange for sex, that long blond hair and perfect figure, she was a walking temptation for men. Men who might hurt her.
He’d be damned if he’d let that happen. He waited for her to look at him. To give him any kind of recognition. God help him, he needed her this morning. Needed to know that he had someone.
“Hey,” he said when she climbed in without so much as a glance in his direction.
What had he done to her? Why did she suddenly hate him so much? The questions raged in his mind during the far too short trip to school, as he ran through past conversations with her, wishing he could find the key to bring her back to him.
“I had dinner with your attorney and her parents last night.”
It was Thursday. She’d been at the shelter for a week and two days. A week and two days without saying a word to him. They’d never gone twenty-four hours without speaking before. Even the summer he’d made her go away to camp, she’d called him every night. He’d made special arrangements with the camp director to allow her to do so because it was the only way she’d agree to go.
“You’d like them. Their friends own this Italian restaurant down the coast, the bread sticks were just as you like them, butter but no garlic, and the whole time I was eating I was thinking about how much you’d love the fettuccine.”
He was dying to ask about her homework. To know if she’d done any studying for the October exam. She was taking it for the first time in the fall of her junior year as recommended—so she could re-take it several times to better her score. Her future rested on those scores.
“I just want you to know that I take full responsibility for whatever has gone wrong between us, Tay. I raised you to be as you are, and whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever it takes to make it right. Go to counseling. Whatever.”
He wasn’t great at begging. Detested the thought of it. But for Tatum...
He pulled into school and she was go
ing to leave him to another long day alone at the vineyard worrying about what was going on with her. Trying to figure out a way to make things right again.
Something that didn’t involve Harcourt. He loved Tatum too much to let that screwed-up boyfriend ruin her life just so Tanner could have her back in his.
Every day that he’d dropped her off, the last thing he told Tatum was that he loved her. People needed that. To know that they were loved. To be told. Often.
Today the words clogged in his throat. She didn’t want his love. Maybe she’d outgrown him. Didn’t need him anymore. He’d known the day would come.
But not at fifteen. They had three more years to get her all grown up.
She opened the door, hitching her backpack on her shoulder in one movement.
“Bye,” he said, and waited for her to leave him.
She jumped down. Turned to slam the door. Just like always. “Bye.”
At first he thought he’d imagined the word.
But it rang in his ears.
A glorious chorus.
Tatum was speaking to him again.
* * *
“YOU TASTE SO GOOD....” Del’s lips covered Tatum’s again and she leaned into him in the backseat of his car, wishing they could just be together forever. In their own home. Where no one could ever again tell them they weren’t allowed to see each other.
He stuck his tongue into her mouth—something that had excited her beyond belief the first time he’d done it.
She liked it now, too. A lot. But she needed to talk to him and they didn’t have much time.
Breaking away from him, but not so far that his hand fell away from her breast underneath her short-sleeved cotton shirt, she said, “I think I’m going to be at the place where I am for a while.”
Del still didn’t know where she was. She’d told him it was for his own good. But really it was for her own. Sara told her that she had to learn to look to herself for her happiness before she looked to someone else. And the only thing that made her feel happy at the moment was living at The Lemonade Stand.
Once a Family Page 11
