by Natalie Love
“Here you go,” the waiter said, discreetly putting the bill down on the table. Cason handed him a credit card quickly and the man disappeared again.
Val took a breath. “I...I’ll wait for you outside.”
Once she was out from under the prying gazes of the customers, she leaned against his truck and tried to catch her breath. He loved her? He loved her! She pressed her hands to her cheeks. No. This wasn’t what their relationship was about. He was never supposed to feel this way about her.
She watched him walk out of the restaurant and scan the parking lot for her. She raised a hand so that he’d see her and he walked over, opening the door and boosting her into the truck. He didn’t close the door as she’d expected though. Instead he looked at her in that unwavering way he had.
“So, I’m gonna assume that you don’t feel the same way,” he said, his voice soft and rough.
She couldn’t bring herself to speak for a moment. Then she gathered what was left of her resolve, bolstering it with memories of what her father had clearly wanted for her and said, “I’m sorry, Cason. But no. I’m not in love with you. I thought you understood that this was never serious for me.”
She waited for her to yell at her, to accuse her of leading him on, to call her the things men had called her in the past. Instead he reached out and cupped her face in his hand, drawing his thumb down her cheek as he scanned her features carefully.
“Couldn’t help feeling what I feel for you, Blondie,” he said honestly. “You mind telling me just why you don’t think that this can work out?”
Val took a breath in frustration. Had he not listened to her at all? “I don’t see why you want me to go over it all again.”
“Because, and correct me if I’m wrong, you’re saying that we can’t be together because of your job, right?”
“Right.”
“You’ve been working this whole time,” he pointed out. “It hasn’t gotten in the way yet.”
She felt like he’d rubbed salt in the wound. “That’s because I’m not doing what I should be doing,” she said tightly. “I should be on the anchor desk. I should be out doing foreign correspondence, bringing people news that actually matters. Once I have to start doing that, I won’t have time for us anymore.”
“Once you have to?” Cason questioned.
“What?”
“You said once you “have to” start doing that kind of news. I have to tell you, it doesn’t seem like you even want it.”
“Of course I want it! This is what I’ve been planning for my whole life!”
Cason nodded, keeping his gaze level on her. “I know you have. But have you ever stopped to think about why?”
Val threw her hands up. “Why do you care?”
“Because I’ve seen you do what you call fluff pieces and your face lights up. Because I’ve heard you talk about the people you get to see when you visit new businesses or when you get to go down and work at new volunteer locations. You’re happy, you’re energetic, you’re glowing and I can’t get you to wind down. This is what you love doing and I don’t see why you can’t admit it. You’re telling stories that make people happy!”
She stood there for a second in silence. “It’s not about enjoying my job,” she said finally. “It’s about doing something that matters.”
“The news is about war and death and shady business deals and crime and loss,” Cason said. “Val, what you do, they way you bring people the good news, the stuff that makes them see that this whole world isn’t a God-forsaken hell hole, that is the news that matters. And I can tell you this for damn sure, Blondie. There is nothing wrong with loving what you do.”
He stepped back and closed the door and they drove to her apartment in silence. Once he’d let her out of the truck and had driven away, Val raised her hand to her face, tracing the path his thumb had taken as she remembered the look in his eyes. No one had ever been that gentle with her before. She had the sinking feeling that no one ever would be again.
Chapter Eleven
Two mornings later, she didn’t feel any better about how things had ended with Cason. Val sighed and rested her chin in her hands. Why did he have to go and ruin their perfect relationship by telling her he loved her? A sudden picture came unbidden to her mind, of herself waking up every day in that beautiful bedroom, the light pouring in through the bay windows awakening the reddish lights in Cason’s light brown hair as she wrote in bed. That would be perfect.
She stood up, determined. No. She knew what she wanted out of life and Cason didn’t fit into it. She opened the hall closet, tugged down her white sneakers and laced them up tightly before grabbing her keys and cell phone and heading out the door.
She did a few stretches and started off at an easy pace. She wasn’t the world’s fastest jogger, but it always made her feel better to get out and get moving. She looked at the changing leaves and took a deep breath of the cooling fall air. She waved at one of her neighbors as she passed the park, and dodged a small dog that had escaped its collar to come and greet her.
She also realized that she wasn’t feeling better. As a matter of fact, her tension was increasing. She was concentrating on the weight of her cell phone in the pocket of her jogging pants, hoping with all of her being that it would ring with the ringtone she’d assigned Cason, but it was remaining stubbornly silent.
Val let out her breath in frustration. There was no reason to hope for a call! He did not fit into her life! She was tempted to say it out loud to help her heart understand her mind, but she didn’t want anyone thinking that she was crazy.
She needed to focus on her career or she’d be doing fluff news forever. Eventually she’d end up doing the weather and that would be the end of her career altogether. She didn’t want that. She wanted a career like her father’s.
Aaron Turner hadn’t done a piece of fluff news in his whole career. He’d traveled the world, bringing viewers thought provoking, hard hitting, meaningful news that people talked about at work the next day. He’d made a difference in the world. She...she talked about baby animals and pie eating contests. He...hadn’t even been home for her birthday most of the time.
Val’s steps slowed down significantly. He’d missed Christmas more than a few times too. And her high school graduation. And dinner every night.
Once when she was around fourteen, she’d added up the total consecutive days she’d seen her father in her life. It added up to a little less than two years. She hadn’t mentioned that to either of her parents and she’d done her best to push it to the back of her mind.
Was that the life she was striving for? She knew deep down that, although she wasn’t ready now, she wanted children. Now she wondered who would watch them. If she was a traveling correspondent, it certainly wouldn’t be her. And even if she found the best nanny in the entire world, would she really want to miss so much of her child’s life? She tried to remember her father playing with her and came up blank. She’d never been able to run to him with any of the coloring book pages she’d crayoned so meticulously. He’d never sat down with her at one of the tea parties she’d arranged frequently.
Her father had usually been gone before breakfast and, if he wasn’t traveling, he still wasn’t home before she went to bed. She’d practically worshipped the man though, and the few minutes a week they spent together had only increased her awe. He was so important to so many people, and he was her Daddy! It had amazed her.
Now, however, for the first time Val thought about what it must have been like for her mother. Even though Aaron supported the house financially, Margaret had essentially been a single mom since he was gone so much. Once Val had entered school, Margaret had taken a job as a receptionist at a local doctor’s office so that she could, as she’d put it on the phone to one of her friends, “finally have some people to talk to.” Val, who had been seven at the time, remembered feeling hurt by the words, but now she understood. Her mother was often in bed by the time her father got home. She had married a s
hadow.
Val found herself understanding why so many of the people she worked with were unmarried or divorced. She couldn’t imagine having a husband who was never home. Of course, it wouldn’t be her husband who was never home. It would be her, Valerie, who never got to see the daylight in her own living room, who never got to wake up beside her spouse or have breakfast with him. She suddenly felt unaccountably lonely.
It wouldn’t be like that with Cason. He would be on the ranch. She could go outside and talk to him, or have lunch with him in the field. They could go to bed together every night and...and nothing. She’d told him that she didn’t love him. She’d hurt him deeply and she was only now beginning to see just how much she’d lost.
All of her energy seeped away and Val turned slowly, walking back home, fighting back tears. For the first time in her life, she was unsure of herself and what she wanted. Since she’d made all of her career decisions at the age of eight, it was probably a long time coming, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt.
She heated up a can of soup when she got home and put it on the table in front of her.
She stirred the soup, absentmindedly watching as the silver spoon vanished under the thick red of the tomato soup. She stirred for nearly ten minutes before she realized that this was pointless. She didn’t want soup. She wanted Cason. She reached out, and her fingers were halfway over to her cell phone, diligently plugged into the charger on the counter, before she snatched her hand back. What could she say anyway?
“Oh good God, Val!” Becky said when she dropped by for their traditional movie night. “Call him!”
“I can’t call him,” Valarie said in shock. “What kind of a woman would I be then?” She formed her fingers into a mock telephone and said, “Hey, Cason! Yeah, I decided that I love you after all! Let’s start planning the big day!” She let her hand drop and shook her head. “Can you imagine what he’s told everyone about me? I’ll always be the woman who turned him down. The flight risk. The career woman. The one who broke his heart.”
“Look,” Becky said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but...well, get over yourself.”
“What?” Val asked in confusion.
“You’re always so busy being worried about what everyone else thinks. You only pursued this hardnosed career woman stuff because you felt like it’s what people expected. You like being the part of the news that makes people feel good, but you can’t admit it because you’re afraid of what people might think. The same thing for the clothes you wear and even how you spend your free time. Before you started getting serious with Cason-”
“I was never serious with Cason,” Val hedged.
“Oh please. You were serious whether you wanted to admit it or not. Anyway, before that, the only time I saw you relax and have fun was during our movie nights. The point is that you’re afraid to be happy. You’re afraid to be yourself.”
Val didn’t know what to say. Becky had pretty much hit the nail on the head with her assessment, and she’d never heard herself described so truthfully. Most people called her fearless, a ball buster, a woman to be reckoned with. And what she really was, was a woman who couldn’t even leave the house in jeans and a tee shirt for fear of what people would think. And she might have just alienated the man she was meant to be with because of it.
“Oh honey, please don’t cry!” Becky said in alarm. “I’m really sorry! I shouldn’t have--”
But Val shook her head and dashed the tears off of her cheeks. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just feeling like an idiot.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to do that,” Becky said sincerely. “I just wanted to shake you out of this. You only get one life and you’ve got to live it the way you need to live it.”
“I guess you’re right,” Val admitted. “But now I have to go and beg. I hate begging.”
“Begging?” Becky said with a raised eyebrow. “When did I say that? You march over to that ranch and you say your piece. If he doesn’t like it, well then, he can be a lonely cowboy. But you don’t beg.”
For the first time since Cason had told her how he felt, Val laughed.
Chapter Twelve
Cason looked out across his field and sighed. Blondie was proving harder to forget about than he’d hoped. Of course, he’d meant everything he’d said to her that night. It hurt to think that she’d meant what she’d said too. He shook her out of his mind for the fifteenth time that day and then did it a little harder, because he would have sworn he saw her at the edge of his fence. The second shake was no better than the first.
She raised her hand in a wave, and he returned it. He had to swallow hard as he started toward her. It seemed like his heart was climbing steadily higher and higher into his throat. On his way to meet her, every possible scenario ran through his head. She’d left something here and come to collect it. She’d thought of more things that she’d left unsaid. She’d already met someone else and she was headed to Vegas to get married by some Elvis impersonator. Well, probably not that last one.
“Hello,” she said, rubbing her arms with a shiver.
“Always forgetting your jacket,” he said as he shrugged his over shirt off and draped it around her.
She tugged it close and took a deep breath. It didn’t help. In fact it made the situation worse because the wind was chilly and dry. Val coughed. Cason pulled a bottle of water from his back pocket and handed it to her when the coughing didn’t stop.
“Thank you,” she gasped before taking a long sip of the slightly lukewarm water.
His nerves got tighter and tighter as she drank and then spun the cap back onto the bottle. He couldn’t stand not knowing any longer. He needed her to speak her mind before he gave in and tossed her over shoulder and carried her (probably kicking and screaming) into his house.
“What do you want?” he asked bluntly as he shoved the bottle back into his back pocket.
“I...I think I...” she took another breath, slower this time so she didn’t cause history to repeat itself. “I made a mistake,” she said finally.
“Say what?” Cason asked, positive that his mind was playing tricks on him. Hell, at this point he was afraid he was imagining the whole thing.
“I made a mistake when I never told you that I loved you,” she repeated, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “I made a mistake when I walked out of that restaurant. I made a mistake when I--”
That was as far as she got. Cason reached out and pulled her close. She expected him to kiss her, but he didn’t. All he did was tug her into the best bear hug she’d ever received. She felt his rough palm on the back of her head as she snuggled in against his strong chest. She could hear his heart racing to match hers.
“I’m still not ready to be engaged or anything like that,” she said in a muffled voice. “We really haven’t known each other very lo--” His sudden chuckle cut off her words.
“Hell darlin’,” he said and she could hear the smile in his words, even though his voice was a little rough with emotion. “We can shack up for the next ten years as long as I can say you’re mine.”
“You can,” she said, tilting her chin and looking into the face of the man she loved. “I’m yours, Cason McDaniel.”
“Good,” he said, “because you’ve had me wrapped around your little finger since that first smile, Blondie.”
This time he kissed her and it was a kiss filled with the promise of all the happiness Valerie Turner had never dared to hope for.
-- Natalie Love
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
