by Nora Roberts
She should never had let herself get caught up in the idea of painting for Jared, or selling him work that she had done for herself.
The sound of a car had her bracing and fighting to squash a little flutter of hope.
But when she went to the door, she saw Regan MacKade. The two women studied each other coolly. After a long moment, Savannah opened the door and stepped back.
"I don't know what's between you and Jared," Regan said without preamble. "And if you think it's none of my business, you're wrong. He's family. But I'd like to know why you've decided you can't stand me to the point where you won't even take a potentially lucrative job just because we'd rub elbows occasionally."
"I don't want the job."
"That's a lie."
Savannah's eyes went molten. "Now look, sister—"
"No, you look." Revved, Regan jabbed a finger at Savannah's chest. "We don't have to be friends. I've got friends. Though I'm baffled at how we could both manage to be friends with someone as sweet as Cassie Dolin. She finds you admirable, and it's not my place to tell her you're just plain rude. You were interested in the job when Jared suggested it. Interested enough to come to the house. And according to Rafe, everything was just dandy until I walked in. Now what's your problem? Sister."
Savannah found her temper warring with amusement, and reluctant admiration. Didn't the woman realize Savannah was big enough to break her in half? "I guess you told me."
"So why don't you tell me?" Regan shot back.
"I don't like the way you look."
"You—I beg your pardon?"
"Or the way you talk." Pleased with herself, Savannah smiled. "Let me guess—private education, dances at the country club, debutante ball."
"I was never a debutante." If she hadn't been so baffled, Regan would have been insulted. "And what's that got to do with anything?"
"You look like you just stepped out of one of those classy women's magazines."
Regan threw up her hands. "That's it?"
"Yeah, that's it."
"Well, you look like one of those statues men sacrificed virgins to. I don't hold it against you. Exactly."
They frowned at each other for a minute. Then Savannah sighed, shrugged. "I've got some ice tea."
"I'd love some."
By the time she was sipping her second glass, Regan was up and wandering the front room. She stopped by a landscape, all rocky hills and trees gone violent with autumn.
"This one," she decided. "He needs this one where that horrible white-orchid still life is hanging."
"I'd have thought you'd go for the orchids." When Regan turned, her eyes narrowed blandly, Savannah smiled fully for the first time. "Yeah, I can see I'd have been wrong."
"Greens and mauves," Regan announced. "Deep greens. And those chairs in the outer office have got to go. I've got a couple of library chairs in mind. Deep-cushioned, high-backed. Leather. And I figure hardwood with area rugs, instead of that gray sea of wall-to-wall."
Yes, of course. Savannah could already see it. Regan MacKade was obviously a woman who knew what she wanted. "Look, I'm not a humble person, but can you actually see my paintings jibing with your taste... or Jared's?"
"Yes. And I think, all things considered, that you and I will work together very well." Regan held out a hand, waited. "Well, are we going to give Jared a break and get him out of that tomb?"
"Yeah." Savannah took the pretty hand, with its glittering rings, in hers. "Why the hell not?"
Later, Savannah walked toward the woods. She had to admit she'd done something she detested in others. She had looked at the surface and made a decision. All she had seen—maybe all she'd wanted to see when she looked at Regan MacKade—was elegance, privilege and class.
But who could have guessed there'd be such grit under all that polish?
She should have, Savannah realized.
And when she saw Jared sitting on a rock smoking quietly, she realized she had known she'd find him here.
He said nothing when she sat down beside him and took the cigar. The silence was lovely, filled with birdsong and breezes.
"I owe you an apology." It didn't quite stick in her throat, but she handed him back the cigar. "I was... You caught me at a bad time the other day."
"Did I?"
"Don't make it easy, MacKade."
"I won't."
With a quick, bad-tempered shrug, she swung her legs up, crossed them under her. "I wasn't completely truthful with you. There are a lot of things I don't mind doing, but lies don't sit well with me. I wanted the job. I can use it. But I felt...intimidated," she muttered as the word sat distastefully on her tongue.
"Intimidated?" It was the last reason or excuse he'd have expected to hear out of her. "By what?"
"Your sister-in-law, to start."
"Regan?" Sheer astonishment ran up hard against the foul mood he'd been mired in for twenty-four hours. "Give me a break."
It was his quick, dismissive laugh that snapped it. Temper soaring, Savannah bolted up from the rock and whirled on him. "I've got a right to be intimidated by whatever I please. I've got a right to feel exactly how I chose to feel. Don't you laugh at me."
"Sorry." Wisely Jared cleared his throat, then looked up at her. "Why would Regan intimidate you?"
"Because she's...she's classy and lovely and smart and successful. She's everything I'm not. I'm comfortable with who I am, what I am, but when you come up against someone like that, it's a kick-in-the-butt reminder of what you're never going to be, never going to have. I don't like feeling inadequate or stupid."
Disgusted with herself, Savannah jammed her hands in her pockets. "And I didn't expect to like her so much. She came by to see me a little while ago."
"I thought she might. Regan likes to confront things head-on." Thoughtful, he studied the tip of his cigar. "Ask her sometime about the night she waltzed into Duff's Tavern in a tight red miniskirt and had Rafe gnawing his pool cue into toothpicks."
Fascinated by the image, Savannah nearly smiled. "I'll have to do that. I'd like to handle the art for your office, Jared, if you're still interested."
"I'm interested." He turned the cigar around, offering it. When she shook her head, he took a last puff and carefully tamped it out on the rock.
"I wasn't completely truthful about a couple of other things." The situation was a first, and she wasn't quite sure how to phrase things, so she decided to keep it simple. "I have feelings for you, Jared. They just sort of popped up. They worried me."
He was watching her now, his wonderful eyes very focused, very cool. She wondered how many witnesses had broken apart on the stand under that strong gaze.
"Men are a lot easier to deal with when feelings aren't involved," she continued. "I could be reading this wrong, but I got the idea you were aiming for a relationship kind of deal, and I've had lousy luck with relationships. So I started thinking about that, and some other things, and figured it was best all around to bail."
When he said nothing—absolutely nothing—she gave in and kicked at the dirt on the path. "Are you just going to sit there?"
"I'm listening," he said mildly.
"Okay, look, I've got a kid to worry about. I can't afford to get involved with someone who might start to mean something to him that's not realistic. I know how to be careful about that, how to keep things in line."
He stood now, his eyes never leaving his. "You're going to keep me in line, Savannah?"
If he touched her, she was very much afraid she'd go off like a rocket. "I don't think so. That's the thing. I've got these feelings for you."
"That's interesting." He hadn't known she could look so vulnerable. "Because I have these feelings for you."
"You do?" Her hands stayed balled in her pockets. "Well."
"Well," he repeated, and stepped forward. He put his hand on her cheek, and his mouth on hers.
She wasn't used to being kissed this way. As if that were all—as if she were all—that mattered. It made her weak and
woozy. Those tensed fingers went limp. And her heart surrendered.
"Are we straight now?" he murmured.
She nodded and found that feeling of pleasure could be huge, just having a man's shoulder ready to cradle your head. "I hate feeling stupid."
"So you said."
"I don't want to feel stupid about this."
His lips curved as he brushed them over her hair. "Neither do I."
"So we'll make a pact. Whatever happens, neither of us will make the other feel stupid."
"I can agree to that." He lifted her chin for another kiss. "Why don't I walk home with you?"
"All right."
She couldn't help it. She felt stupid and sentimental walking hand in hand with him through the woods, aware of every beam of sunlight, every scent, every sound. She would have sworn that she could hear the leaves growing overhead and the wildflowers struggling toward the sun.
Love, she mused, honed the senses.
"I have to pick up Bryan in a little while." She glanced over. "I can call Cassie and rearrange things."
He knew what she was offering, and could feel the blood humming under his skin. When he brought their joined hands to his lips, he saw the flash of surprised pleasure in her eyes. Not yet, he told himself. Not quite yet.
"We'll both pick him up. What do you say to an early movie, and pizza after?"
She couldn't look at him now, not the way her throat was aching. She knew what he was offering. "I'd say great," she managed. "Thanks."
"Jared's cool." Bryan bounced into the top bunk of his bed, his mind full of scenes from the action flick, his belly stuffed with pepperoni pizza. "I mean, man, he knows everything about baseball, and stuff about the farm and the battlefield. He's even smarter than Connor."
"You're no slouch, Ace." She tousled his hair.
"Jared says everybody's got a special talent."
Interested, Savannah leaned on the edge of the bed so that her face was level with her son's. "He did?"
"Yeah, when we went to get popcorn. He said how everybody's got something inside than makes them different. He knows on account of he has three brothers and they're a lot alike, but they're different, too. He said I'm a natural."
She grinned. "A natural what?"
"Mom." Rolling his eyes, Bryan sat up in bed. "At baseball. And you know what else he said?"
"No. What else did he say?"
"He said how even if I decided not to be a major-leaguer I could use the stuff I know in other things. Of course, I'm going to be a major-leaguer, but maybe I'd be like a lawyer, too."
"A lawyer?" She felt a little flutter of panic. Her son was falling in love as quickly as she was.
"Yeah, 'cause you get to go to court and argue with people and put criminals in jail. But you have to go to school forever, I mean until you're old. Jared went to college and to law school and everything."
"So can you, if that's what you want."
"Well, I'm going to think about it."
He flopped back down, curled into his pillow in a way that comforted her as much as him. It was the gesture of a child. He was still her little boy.
"Night."
"Good night, Bry." She pressed her lips to his temple and lingered over it a moment or two longer than usual. Long enough to make him squirm sleepily.
She rose, turned off his light, then closed his door, because he liked his privacy.
Her son the lawyer, she thought, and rubbed her hands over her face. With a mother who'd never finished high school.
Then, as the panic gave way to a warm glow of pride for what her son might one day achieve, she smiled.
She walked quietly to her own room and moved to the window to look out at the woods. Through them, she could see the lights of the MacKade farm. And there, she thought, was the man she'd fallen in love with.
She smiled again and laid a hand on the cool glass of the window. All in all, she decided, it had been pretty smart of her to wait to fall until she'd found Jared MacKade.
Chapter Seven
He sent her yellow tulips, and she was dreamy-eyed for an hour after she slipped them, stem by stem, into numerous old bottles.
He took her and Bryan to a minor-league ball game in the neighboring county, where the stands were hard as iron and the crowd was rowdy, and won her son's heart absolutely by snagging a foul.
They had pizza at a place with worn wooden booths, a loud jukebox and a pinball machine. The three of them ate sloppily, shouted over the music and competed like fiends over the speeding silver balls.
He took her to dinner at a restaurant where there was candlelight and champagne fizzing in crystal flutes and held her hand on the snowy-white tablecloth.
He brought her a truckload of mulch for her garden, and she was lost.
"You're being courted," Cassie told her over lemonade and paint samples at Savannah's kitchen table.
"What?"
"Courted." Cassie sighed over it. The misery of her years with Joe Dolin hadn't quashed her romantic nature. Not when it concerned someone else. "Isn't she, Regan?"
"Big-time. Yellow tulips," Regan added, glancing up from her samples to the flowers that marched down the center of the table. "It's a dead giveaway."
"We're developing a relationship." Voice casual, Savannah rubbed her suddenly damp palms on her jeans. "That's all."
"He brought you mulch and helped you spread it, didn't he?" Cassie pointed out reasonably.
"Yeah." It made Savannah smile foolishly to remember it. And to remember the way he'd kissed her senseless when the two of them were grimy with dirt and sweat and chipped bark.
"She's got it bad," Regan commented.
"Maybe I do." Damping the smile, Savannah snatched up her lemonade. "So what?"
"So nothing. What do you think of this shade?"
"Too yellow."
Regan blew out a breath. "You're right."
Filled with admiration, Cassie watched the way her two friends chose and discarded colors. She hoped when she had just a little more put aside, Regan would help her pick out new paint for her living room. She'd washed those white walls so often, scrubbed till her shoulders sang, but she couldn't make them bright again.
Then, if Savannah could help her pick the right material, she could make new curtains for Emma's room. Something cheerful, something special for a little girl.
It was hard, harder than she could admit to anyone, to take on these little challenges. To accomplish things that she imagined were just everyday things to some women. How could she explain that for the first time in her life—her entire life—there was no one to tell her yes or no? No one to complain or criticize or humiliate her?
Constantly she had to remind herself that she was in charge, and that if she tried, if she kept at it step by step, she could change the tiny rented house into a home. A real home, where her kids wouldn't remember the shouting and the beatings and the smell of soured beer.
Wistfully she looked around Savannah's cabin. It was no larger than the house where Cassie lived with her children, but it was so much more. Bright colors, carelessly tossed cushions. Dust.
She still attacked dust like a maniac, afraid Joe would walk in the door and pounce on her for forgetting. No matter how often she told herself he wouldn't, couldn't, because he was locked up, she still lay awake at night, shuddering at every creak.
And woke up every morning relieved. And ashamed.
Her ears pricked. "The kids are coming back," she announced, and pushed all those old fears aside. "Is it all right if I make more lemonade?"
Savannah merely grunted and studied the colors Regan had selected for Jared's law library.
Then the kids burst in like rockets.
"Only three more weeks," Bryan shouted, and waved both fists in triumph. "The kittens can come in three more weeks."
"Happy days," Savannah murmured, but she smiled when Emma darted over to wrap an arm around Cassie's leg. "Hi, angel face."
"Hello. Bryan let me pet his kittens
. They're soft."
"She wants one." Shyness had never been a problem for Bryan. He scooped a hand into the cookie jar and hauled out a fistful. "Can she have one, Mrs. Dolin?"
"What?"
He stuffed a cookie into his mouth and eyed the lemonade Cassie was making. "Can Emma have one of the kittens? Shane's got extra."
"A kitten." Automatically Cassie put a protective hand on Emma's head. "We can't have animals in the house, because—" She broke off, her gaze darting to Connor's, even as her son dropped his head to stare at his feet.
Because Joe doesn't like them. She'd nearly said it, so ingrained was the habit. A habit, she realized, that had prevented her from seeing how longingly Connor spoke of Bryan's expected pets. How much Emma liked to play with the neighbor's little brown dog.
"I don't see why we couldn't."
Her reward was a brilliant and grateful look from her son. "Really?" The disbelief and hope in his voice almost made her weep. "Can we really?"
"Sure we can." She scooped Emma into her arms and nuzzled. "You want one of Shane's kittens, Emma?"
"They're soft," Emma said again.
"So are you." It was time she did this, Cassie told herself. Made simple decisions without worrying about what Joe would do. "Tell Shane you'd like one, Connor."
"Cool." Unaware of the drama, Bryan chomped down another cookie. "Then you can bring him over sometimes so he can play with his brothers. Let's go work on your pitching arm, Con."
"Okay." Connor darted after his friend, skidded to a halt. "Thanks, Mama."
"Whoa." At the door, Rafe barely avoided a head-on collision with Connor. He pretended he didn't see the way the boy stiffened and paled, and patted his shoulder, very casually. "You guys are quick. Jared and I lost you in the woods."
"I'm sorry."
"Next year you'll have to try running bases with that speed." He stepped inside, grinned at the ladies. "This was worth a tramp through the woods."
"We're nearly done," Regan told him, and tilted her face up for a kiss.
"No hurry. Hey, gorgeous."
"Hello, handsome." Savannah picked up one of her son's forgotten cookies and offered it.
