Waking Savannah

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “How so?”

  Adelmo tugged at his lower lip, gaze on the tablecloth. “I think,” he said, looking up, “I have been on the wrong path, Savannah. It is something that has been trying to free itself from my mind for a long time. Today, walking the fields with Taytay and Tío, riding in the coot with you, it all just…clicked.”

  Savannah blushed. She dabbed nonexistent wine from her lips. “I imagine your life has been…urbane.”

  “It has. And I assure you, I am ready for a change.”

  “I understand that all too well, sugar,” she murmured.

  “There it is again,” he burst, banishing the solemnity. “Sugar. I knew that’s what you were saying. You’ve called me that several times today.”

  Covering her face with her napkin, she laughed into it. “It’s a habit. I call everyone sugar.”

  “I like it.” He winked. “It tells me much about you.”

  “It does?”

  “First, it tells me you are from the south—”

  “My accent does a good job of that.”

  “Ah, you’ve caught me. I know nothing of dialects and colloquialisms. I was trying to impress you.”

  “As if being an expert in sustainable cultivation processes wasn’t enough.”

  “I write, too.”

  “You do? Anything I can read?”

  “I am about to disappoint you again. I’ve not finished my masterpiece, though I have spent at least a decade researching it. It is my hope to work on it this winter, and the main reason I plan to stay here in Bitterly instead of going home with Taytay and Tío…”

  Savannah wasn’t fooled. The conversation shifted too quickly, his manner too purposefully, and she let it. He’d been honest with her, and she had no right to pry. It felt good to go back to casual. Flirty. Amusing. Safe.

  The front door opened, letting in warm, summer air. Savannah turned to it, and her heart thumped into her stomach. In came the family McCallan. Some of them, at any rate. While Charlie and the twins took boxes straight into the kitchen, Johanna made a beeline for their table. An infant on her hip, a toddler by the hand, she sidled up to them, her sly grin perched, as ever, on her lips. She kissed Savannah’s cheek as Adelmo rose to his feet.

  “Sit, sit.” Johanna waved him back down, and said to her little one, “No, Valentine, not you. Savvy and this nice man are having dinner.” Then to Adelmo, “You must be Edgardo’s son.”

  “Adelmo, yes.”

  “I’m Johanna. I own CC’s, the bakery here in town. My husband and I just stopped in to deliver a few cakes. I’m glad I tagged along. It’s so nice to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine.”

  Her gaze shifted to Savannah. She waggled her eyebrows. “Benny was right. Handsome. And a sexy accent to boot.”

  Savannah quelled the groan. The things Johanna said without even blinking. “How would Benny know anything about anyone? She’s up in Maine, camping,”

  “She was,” Johanna said. “The flies were too much for her.”

  “Benny and her flies.” Savannah shook her head. How had Benny even met this man? The answer was, she hadn’t. Word got around fast in Bitterly. “Anyhow, I suppose I don’t have to tell you that Adelmo is my foreman.”

  “I know who he is.” Johanna turned to Adelmo. “You look nothing like your dad.”

  “I look like my mother.”

  “She must be beautiful.”

  Savannah didn’t manage to quell the groan this time. “Johanna, please.”

  She only laughed, startling the baby in his sling. “Don’t mind me,” she told Adelmo. “It’s summer. I’m a little nutty in the summer.”

  “You’re a little nutty all the time, Jo.”

  “True enough, I suppose. So did Charlotte tell you about the barbeque?”

  “She did. She asked me to bring watermelon and tomato salad.”

  “She did what?”

  “I offered,” Savannah amended. “It’s so good to see her.”

  “It always is,” Johanna sighed. “She makes me miss Cape May.”

  “Lovely little town,” Adelmo interjected. “Winter and summer.”

  “It is. I used to have a bakery there. Well, I still do, but Charlie’s daughter runs it these days.”

  “Is it also called CC’s?”

  “It is. You’ve been there?”

  “Just once.” Adelmo smiled that expensive smile. “But it was memorable. There was a cookie, a chocolate one—”

  “Chocolate mud cookies.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly the one. Extraordinary.”

  “Well, I bake them here too. If I had any left, I’d go get one for you. No matter how many I make, they sell out daily. But I just brought Almond Joyful cake. Save room for dessert. You’ll love it.”

  “Almond Joyful?” Adelmo asked.

  “Almond cake, chocolate frosting and coconut flakes.”

  “Oh, I see, Almond Joy—”

  “—ful. Copyright infringement and all.” She turned to Savannah. “Your favorite, isn’t it, Savvy?”

  “I might have to hate you, Jo.”

  “I can’t help it I work my art in delicious calories.”

  Charlie came through the swinging kitchen door with his kids. Johanna waved him over.

  “Hey, Savvy.”

  “Hey, Charlie. This is Adelmo, Edgardo’s son and my new foreman come next spring. He’s here learning the lay of things this season.”

  Adelmo rose, shook Charlie’s hand.

  “Charlie McCallan. Welcome to Bitterly.”

  “Adelmo Gallegos. Thank you.”

  “You’ve just been welcomed by the mayor himself,” Johanna told him. “New in town and already moving in the highest circles.”

  “I’m not mayor,” Charlie said. “Not yet, anyway. The election isn’t until November.”

  “Hot food, coming through.” Brian arrived with two plates of steaming, aromatic food. Charlie and Johanna stepped back to let him through, making apologies for disturbing their dinner.

  “I’ll see you on Friday at six o’clock,” Johanna called as she and her family headed for the door. “And, Adelmo, you come too.”

  After Brian left them with their food, Ade leaned in, spoke softly. “That was…something.”

  “To say the least. That’s Johanna for you. Never a dull moment.”

  Savannah struggled to find the right words. Dinner with a colleague was one thing. A barbeque at the McCallan’s smacked of a date. Not even a day since his arrival, and already Bitterly was talking.

  “I’m sorry Johanna put you on the spot like that,” she said at last. “You don’t have to come to the barbeque. I’ll make excuses for you.”

  “Would you rather I not come?”

  Savannah’s gaze moved from his eyes, to his lips, to his eyes again. Was he amused? Flustered? Peeved? For her life, she couldn’t say. “Do you…want to?”

  “I would. Unless that makes you uncomfortable.”

  “No, no. Don’t be silly.” Oh, yes. Yes it does, but, fiddle-dee-dee, such lovely discomfort. “It’ll give you the opportunity to meet Benny and Dan.”

  “Benny, your full-timer who said I am handsome and sexy, yes?”

  Savannah blushed. “She said your accent is sexy, but yes, that would be her.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “You’ll like her. You’ll like all of them. You won’t be able to help yourself.”

  “I’m certain I will.”

  “I’m blabbering.” Savannah pressed her palms to her cheeks. “Sorry.”

  Adelmo laughed softly. He pointed to her plate of food. “That looks delicious.”

  Savannah let her hands fall. “So does yours. I don’t think I’ve ever ordered that, myself.”

  “Shall we share?” Eyebrow quirked, grin working its magic, Adelmo waited.

  Savannah gave up trying to subdue the warm sensation pooling in her middle.
Attempting to tame the idiotic smile trembling her lips, she twirled the linguine, speared a tender clam from its shell and held it out to Adelmo. “Food is meant to be shared. Sugar.”

  * * * *

  Ade finished everything on his plate and a whole slice of Johanna’s Almond Joyful cake, minus the bite Savannah managed to eat after finishing her own meal. He insisted she take a piece home. “For a midnight snack,” he said, and though she demurred, she thanked him instead of insisting otherwise.

  The drive home was quiet, but companionably so. Ade rested his head against the headrest, closing his eyes to the cool air coming in through the window. Boston had never been so quiet, its air never so fresh. The earthy scent reminded him of Ecuador in a way other rural environments never had. A trick of the mind, perhaps. He had not lived with his father and uncle outside of visits to the family farm in decades. That surely had to account for the comforting sensations of home.

  Savannah pulled her car around to the back of her house and switched off the engine. Ade pulled himself out of the doze he had succumbed to. He sat straighter, tried to pretend he had not been dozing. He glanced at the dash just as the clock blinked out.

  Ten after ten?

  Ade shifted in his seat. Three hours had gone swiftly. Easily. Pleasantly. In Boston, time speeding along came with an adrenaline rush, barely contained fervor and polite aggression. Not so in Bitterly. Not so with Savannah. “I am surprised by your little town,” he said. “That was an extraordinary meal.”

  She chuckled softly. “We country bumpkins like to eat too.”

  “Bumpkin,” he repeated. “I am not sure I know this word.”

  “Local yokel?”

  “That one, I have heard.”

  “Well, then.” Savannah tapped the wheel. “Much as I hate for the evening to end, I have to be up early tomorrow.”

  The absolute dark of a country night of no moon made watching her easy. No calculating purr accompanied the glance through her lashes. No seduction masked in innocence. A woman like her, one without a cunning pore on her delicious skin, was easy to manipulate. And yet Ade could find no reason to, no desire to. Perhaps that was the reason his carefully rehearsed honesty had become spontaneous garble about being on the wrong path. It had startled him, speaking the words he recognized as the embarrassing truth the moment he said them. But he was back on his game now. Mostly.

  “I, too, must be up with the sun. My boss is a cruel taskmistress.”

  “You should report her.” A smile came and went just as quickly. Instead of getting out of the car, she picked at the stitching of her steering wheel. “If I get to the clinic an hour early, I can go over the charts before patients start arriving.”

  “Then by all means, you should get some sleep.” Ade got out of the car, grabbed her slice of cake from the back seat, and went to her side. He opened her door, offered his hand to Savannah.

  She hesitated, but she took it. “Aren’t you going to ask what I do there?”

  Heat rushed to his cheeks. She was a doctor. An OB/GYN. His Internet search had given him that detail, along with the rest. “I did not feel it was my place to pry,” he covered. “You are my cruel taskmistress, after all.”

  Savannah shoved him playfully. “I’m a doctor. Obstetrics and gynecology.”

  “Ah, so I am not the only doctor posing as a farmhand.”

  “I suppose not.” She averted her gaze. “I don’t really broadcast it, but it’s not a secret or anything. I just thought I owed you the truth, seeing as how you…well, we seem to have a lot in common.”

  Much, and nothing at all. Ade offered his arm, like the gentleman he promised Taytay he would be. Savannah took it.

  “Does it surprise you?” she asked. “That I’m a doctor?”

  “Why should it?”

  “I was surprised to find out you’re not only a grown man, but a highly educated professional. Aren’t you wondering what an OB/GYN is doing on a farm in Bitterly?”

  “I didn’t know,” he lied, “until a moment ago.”

  Something bad happened in Georgia, Taytay had said. Very bad. Savvy’s heart is old. Very old and fragile.

  Ade had been too wrapped up in his own drama to pay close attention to the promise his father demanded. Only once he decided to discover all there was to know about his soon-to-be employer had he remembered his father’s words, and understood the promise he extracted. And only now that she was no longer an abstract means to an end did Ade regret prying into the horror of her life.

  He motioned her to precede him up the steps. Savannah went inside and flipped on the lights that flickered, went out, and flickered back on again. She grimaced up at the fixture.

  “Bet that bulb is loose again. You’d think I had elephants tromping around, loosening all the bulbs and sockets in this house.”

  “I can look at that if you’d like.”

  “Are you an electrician too?”

  “Hardly, but I did grow up on a farm that ran mostly on generators and outdoor plumbing. Allow me to take a look.”

  “Well, all right. Thank you.”

  Savannah took the boxed cake from him and set it into the refrigerator, leaned protectively against the door. “Don’t you go snitching my cake.”

  “I can’t make any promises.”

  She wagged a finger at him, but laughed softly. “This was a really nice evening. Thanks.”

  “Then I am hired?”

  Her smile faltered, but didn’t fail. “Ah, I forgot. This was an interview.” She pushed off the door. “I’m getting the bargain of a lifetime, Adelmo. If you still want to be here, I want you.”

  The grin happened before he could squelch it.

  “Here,” she amended quickly. “I want you here. On the farm. That came out—I didn’t mean—Oh, forget it. I’ll just say good-night before I start blabbering again.”

  “Good-night, Savannah,” he said more softly than he should have, than he meant to. “I look forward to working with you.”

  “Me too.”

  “Sleep well.”

  “I’ll do my darndest to.” Savannah stopped in her tracks, tilted her head from side to side.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No. It’s just that…my headache’s gone.”

  “I was not aware you were feeling ill. You should have said something. We could have waited—”

  “If we waited until my headache went away, it might have been months.”

  “Months?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not, but I’ve been getting them for a long time. I’m used to it. Something about tonight made this one go away, though. I wish I knew what it was.”

  “It must have been the cake,” he said. “Johanna’s Almond Joyful cake can cure all the world’s ills, I am certain of it.”

  “I did have the one bite.” Her dimples deepened.

  His heart stitched. Ade pretended to have an itch. “I think it was two bites.”

  “That must be it, then.” Walking past him, she wagged her finger again. “Stay away from my cake now, you hear?”

  “Yes, cruel taskmistress,” Ade called after her that one beat beyond the tease he imagined, and fumbled into schoolboy flirtation. Hallway shadows swallowed her bit by bit, until she was a hint of light cloth vanishing around the stair rail. Her tread shuffled up the steps. Water in the bathroom. Creaks across the floorboards above. Only after her door clicked closed and all sound ceased did Ade realize he still stood rooted to the spot where she had left him.

  He half-heartedly contemplated snitching a piece of her cake, just to make her laugh when she saw it. Instead, he took out the pitcher of sweet tea and poured himself a glass.

  Savannah was a woman. He was an expert in that field. What was it about her that brought forth honesty he didn’t know he possessed anymore? Why did he fumble like a schoolboy because of a dimple?

/>   Because he was tired. Defeated. Just back from too much time home with la jefa. Savannah was a woman, an attractive, intelligent woman. Despite his body’s pulls and jolts responding to her as such, he had promised Taytay he would be in all ways a gentleman. His time on this farm was to heal him, provide solace after so hard a fall from grace.

  Inhaling deeply, exhaling long, Ade leaned against the counter in Savannah’s kitchen. He reached a hand into his pocket. His fingers slicked along the phone’s smooth, glassy face. Cold. Comforting. He pulled it out. He switched it on. It vibrated, lighting up with texts:

  Call me.

  Call me.

  Where are you?

  You can’t hide anywhere I can’t find you.

  Make this easier on both of us. Call me.

  Call me!

  I’ll find you, you bastard. Don’t think I won’t.

  The voicemails waiting for him would say the same. Ade had no intention of listening to them, or calling her back. She wasn’t even getting a text. The woman was a viper and a liar. An adulteress. Even that, he might have forgiven to preserve his position, status, wealth. He’d forgiven worse for less. Adelmo Gallegos was not beyond deceiving a colleague without qualm, or a woman without guilt. They were players, just like he was, in a game necessitating such things. But there were some things he would not do, and deceiving an innocent child was at the top of that list.

  * * * *

  I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t. He’s just so foreign and dreamy. I was hoping to see them kiss, otherwise I would’ve stayed outside this time and never seen what I did. Oh, I wish I hadn’t. Good golly, I wish I hadn’t. That thing squished into an angry ball wanted at Savannah so bad, but it stayed back, getting madder by the minute.

  What is that thing? Like some kind of monster under the bed waiting for a stray hand or foot to show over the side? I get all jittery, but I’m just so curious. What is it? Why does it hate Savvy so much? Those little girls know, I betcha. I can try asking them, but they never say anything. They just stand guard, always ready and waiting.