Last Chance Book Club

by Hope Ramsay

  So she sucked it up and answered the call. “Hey.”

  “My God, you’ve been there for two weeks and already you sound like a hick.” Claire White’s clipped voice came over the line. Claire would never sound like a hick. She had proper diction. Claire had gone to the best finishing schools and then to Barnard College. She had married Daniel White, a Harvard grad and a high-powered attorney.

  Savannah’s defensiveness climbed like the mercury on the porch thermometer on a hot day. The Whites had always looked down on her. They had challenged her abilities as a wife, a mother, and a human being. She wiped her suddenly sweaty palms on her jeans. “Hello, Claire. What can I do for you today?”

  “You can come back where you belong.”

  She cast her gaze over Granny’s wonderful kitchen. She felt more at home in this room than she had ever felt anywhere.

  “I’ve decided to stay here to look after my aunt. She’s getting up in years. You and Daniel are welcome to visit anytime.” There, she had spoken in a cool and calm voice even though Todd was staring at her as if she were the worst mommy in the entire universe.

  “Now, Savannah, you can’t be serious. We’re expecting you home next week. Remember, Todd has an interview with the Gilman School. You don’t want to deprive your son of something like that, now, do you?”

  Savannah gripped the phone a little tighter and counted to three. “Todd isn’t going to the Gilman School next year.”

  “But it’s the best school in Baltimore.”

  “Todd won’t be living in Baltimore.”

  Todd slammed his book closed and stood up, knocking over the kitchen chair in the process. He gave Savannah one of those dramatic preteen looks and then marched out of the room. A moment later she heard the screen door slam.

  “Now, Savannah, see here. Greg went to Gilman. Daniel went to Gilman. Your son is going to go to Gilman. There is no debate on this topic.”

  “Well, he can’t go to Gilman if he’s living in South Carolina.”

  “Greg is not going to be pleased about this.”

  Ha! Greg wouldn’t give a rat’s behind about any of this. Greg had hated every minute at Gilman and had rebelled when his father wanted him to go to Harvard. Greg had wanted to play football, and he’d eventually ended up at University of Maryland on a football scholarship, thereby depriving his parents of the ability to control him.

  When Savannah had first met him, he’d been a barrel of fun. But that hadn’t lasted, had it? He’d gotten sullen when he didn’t make it all the way to the NFL. He’d eventually gone to law school, and now her ex was too busy screwing his twenty-two-year-old paralegal to care about anything his parents or his ex-wife wanted.

  “Savannah, are you listening to me?” Claire said after several beats of silence. “You cannot be seriously thinking of enrolling Todd in public school.”

  “I’ve already done it.”

  “In rural South Carolina?”

  “Well, that’s the general idea, Claire. I’m going to settle here, and Todd is going to live with me and go to school. You tell Greg that, if he wants a relationship with Todd, I’m more than willing to speak with him. But Claire, your son has not even spoken to Todd in more than three months.” Savannah’s heart rate spiked, and every muscle tensed. She was suddenly very angry, and she hated the way it felt.

  The silence stretched into what seemed like an eternity. “There is no need to be tart with me, young lady. Your mother and I are in total agreement. You can’t deny Todd this opportunity. He’s a bright boy. Just think of the connections he will make. Gilman is one of the best schools in the nation.”

  Savannah’s stomach churned as the anger turned to anxiety. She looked down at the legal pad where she was struggling to put together a business plan. She had to be crazy. Maybe she was being selfish for no reason at all. Gilman was a great school. Todd would be accepted regardless of his grades because he had a family tree filled with alums. Maybe she should reconsider.

  She stood up, righted the overturned chair, and then moved to the window. She pulled aside the curtain. What met her gaze changed everything in an instant.

  Todd was in the back yard throwing a Frisbee for Champ to chase. He didn’t look angry anymore. He was smiling. He was happy. And then to her surprise, the Frisbee came flying back at Todd. He had to jump up to catch it. His cheeks were red, but there was a spark in his eye that hadn’t been there before.

  A second later, Dash came into view. He was carrying a football under his arm.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” Claire said. It was amazing that the woman had remained so quiet for so many moments. No doubt Claire thought she’d scored a bunch of points.

  “Yes, Claire, I do have something to say. There are more important things than getting my son into the best school in the mid-Atlantic. There are lessons he can learn here that are just as important.” Her heart dropped back into its proper place, and a deep sense of rightness settled over her.

  “Savannah, don’t be stupid. You know good and well that you and Greg have a custody arrangement. He could demand that you bring Todd back.”

  Boy, that would be the day. Savannah refrained from saying that out loud. Instead she took a big breath and spoke in the calmest voice she could muster. “Claire, I have no desire to keep you away from your grandson. You’re welcome to visit him here if you like. But I’m not coming back to Baltimore. If Greg wants time with Todd, he needs to call me and we can work something out.”

  “Well,” came Claire’s clipped voice on the other end of the line, “we’ll see about this. Savannah, you don’t want to cross me.”

  “You can’t scare me, Claire. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “You’ll be sorry.” The line clicked dead.

  Claire wasn’t finished making threats and stirring up trouble, but Savannah refused to worry about it.

  Because right now Savannah’s kissing cousin was doing something Todd’s father had never, ever, done for him.

  He was playing catch in the backyard.

  Dash leaned back against the porch rocker and glanced at his watch. It was just after nine o’clock. Before Dottie had banished him, this was the time he usually headed down to The Spot to drown his sorrows. Of course, a man could hardly drown much in a glass of Coca-Cola, but hanging out at Dot’s and listening to the Wild Horses on a Friday night seemed safer than hanging out here where he was likely to bump into Savannah and her long-stemmed legs.

  He’d been noticing those legs a whole lot more these last few days, since his meeting with the girls on Monday at the Pig Place. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but he’d burned a bridge that night. He’d even talked about it yesterday at the AA meeting. He’d sworn off Hettie like he’d sworn off booze. And he felt much better. Hettie had been an addiction, too.

  This realization should have underscored the danger of feeling any kind of attraction for any woman. It should have made him comfortable with the advice they always gave newly recovered alcoholics—to stay away from romantic entanglements.

  It was good advice because Dash was starting to feel as if he might have swapped one addiction for another.

  The warning signs were clear. He had carefully timed Savannah’s morning routine and rearranged his own to ensure that he’d meet her at the bathroom door every morning.

  And then he would race through his shower and shave so he could have a few minutes alone with Savannah drinking the magic elixir she made in Aunt Mim’s coffeemaker.

  Boy howdy, she could make a good cup of coffee. Every morning, she filled up a thermos for him to take up to the stable.

  Savannah wasn’t supposed to be nice like that. She wasn’t supposed to be thoughtful or take care of people. She was supposed to be a spoiled and self-centered brat of a princess.

  The fact that she was genuinely sweet and could also cook like nobody’s business explained why Bill Ellis showed up for supper on alternate weekdays. And that made Dash grumpy as hell. Especially since Aunt Mim insiste
d that Bill and Savannah were a match made in Heaven.

  Dash rocked a little harder as the rumble of distant thunder rolled across the humid night. Aunt Mim was never wrong about who belonged with whom. Hettie was not for him. And Savannah wasn’t for him either.

  There was nothing worse than being addicted to something you couldn’t have. But that was the theme of Dash’s life.

  He needed to fight this thing with all his might. He owed it to Aunt Mim and Uncle Earnest.

  Savannah took a giant breath and told her heart to stop racing and her hands to quit sweating. Neither heart nor palms listened.

  Is this fear of rejection, or something else?

  Definitely something else. Like the jolt of female reaction she felt every morning when she bumped into Dash at the bathroom door. At least he had taken to wearing a robe in the mornings instead of parading around in his skivvies. Still, the robe only came down to his knees, and she found his calves and long toes utterly fascinating. Not to mention the dark shadow of beard on his cheeks, or his sleep-tousled hair, or the little V of chest the robe revealed.

  She gripped her twenty-three-page business plan with its charts and estimate of costs and told herself that Dash was her annoying cousin. Not anything else, except a man with money who might help her realize her dream.

  If she asked nicely.

  She shoved that thought aside. She didn’t want his money. She just wanted his advice. Then she would go get her own money.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and prayed to the Lord that He would give her strength to see this through. Then she added a plea for a well-heeled angel, or maybe just a sympathetic mortgage broker.

  Dash was pushing up from his rocker when she finally came through the door. Clouds obscured the moon, and the only illumination came from the yellow porch light that made his eyes look green.

  “Hey,” he said in that southern drawl that sounded like it came from deep within the earth.

  “Hi. I, um… you got a minute?”

  His mouth quirked; he didn’t want to give her any time at all. He didn’t like her, and she was willing to admit that she had given him ample reason for feeling that way.

  “Sure, princess, what’s up?”

  She hated it when he called her that. It reminded her of the mean things she’d done when they were kids. And besides, she didn’t want to be a princess. She wanted to be a businesswoman. That single word seemed to sum up all the barriers she faced. With him, and herself.

  She forced her hands to stop shaking. If she wanted him to respect her, she needed to respect him. It was pretty simple.

  “Well, first of all, I’d like to thank you for what you’ve been doing for Todd.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your opinion of me. I could have sworn that, just a few days ago, you thought I was a terrible role model for the boy.”

  Touché. The man sure knew how to cut right to the heart. “I’m sorry, Dash. You’re right. I wasn’t so sure about you. But thank you for getting him the football. He can be so difficult about exercise and, well… thanks. If you let me know how much—”

  “Shoot, Savannah, you don’t have to pay me back for the football. The way I see it, I’m doing Davis High a favor. That kid has talent he doesn’t even know about.” He grinned.

  She felt the corners of her own mouth turning up. What was it about his smile that was so infectious? She cleared her throat and started again. “Well, anyway, thanks, and thanks for playing catch with him and for goading him into doing his chores.”

  “Shoot, Savannah, that stuff isn’t any different from what Uncle Earnest did for me when I first got here. I was twelve, too. And mighty unhappy.”

  Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled, as a knot of emotion seized Savannah by the throat. A princess-sized load of guilt spilled through her. She had resented his appearance in her special world. She had been jealous of every moment Granddaddy spent with him.

  She looked up into his eyes, noticing the sadness in them. A rush of maternal feeling coursed through her. Would a hug be so bad? The man needed a big hug. He needed someone to fix the hurts that he still carried around with him.

  She stopped herself just in the nick of time. Throwing herself at Dash would be a huge mistake. Physical contact of any kind—even an innocent and well-deserved hug between kissing cousins—was likely to lead to places neither one of them wanted to go.

  “I… I’m sorry about what happened when we were kids,” she said.

  He shrugged. “Apology accepted.” He pushed away from the railing. “Now, if you don’t mind, I was on my way to Dottie’s for a long, cool one.” He looked up at the sky. “Looks like we’re in for a spring storm.”

  He headed toward the porch steps and was halfway to the garage before she remembered her business plan. She followed after him, the wind whipping her ponytail as she left the protection of the porch.

  “Hey, Dash,” she yelled to his retreating back.

  He stopped and turned around, the flare of lightning illuminating his craggy face. “Darlin’, it looks like it’s about to pour down buckets. Get on back to the porch.”

  She rushed up to him, a little breathless. “I, uh.” She took a couple of deep breaths.

  “What?”

  She held out the bound papers. “I finished my plan,” she announced, feeling a rush of joy that seemed out of proportion to the moment.

  He smiled and took the document just as the skies opened up.

  “Oh, crap,” he said as he put the precious document over his head as a shield. They turned and ran back to the porch, but by the time they reached its shelter, the rain had soaked them both.

  “I told you we were about to get a gully washer,” Dash said as he ran his long fingers through his hair, “but you never did listen to me, princess.” He turned away from his contemplation of the storm and backed into the post. The porch light sparked in his eyes as he looked down at the soaked business plan and then up at her. “I hope you had this on a computer,” he said.

  She nodded as he tossed the soggy document to the seat of a nearby rocker. “I’ll print up another one and have it for you in the morning,” she said. “I would appreciate your thoughts on what I did right and what I screwed up.”

  One of his dark brows arched just a little. It balanced out the little curl at the corner of his mouth. “Okay.”

  And suddenly there wasn’t much else to say. They stood like frozen statues listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof above them, the rumble of thunder, and the hiss of lightning.

  The self-conscious silence lengthened as Savannah’s gaze journeyed from his eyes with their water-spiked lashes, to his tangled damp hair, to the small drop of water that poised on his earlobe. And then farther down, to the shirt that clung to his chest.

  When her gaze returned to his face, the muscles along his jaw were bunching. His eyes darkened, but she told herself it was just a trick of the moonless night.

  Her womanly core knew different. Quivery feelings like Saint Elmo’s fire danced along her skin. Deep muscles tensed, and her heart rate quickened as it tried to push suddenly hot and thick blood through her system. Her head roared, but not from the sound of the tempest. Every atom of her body coiled and tensed.

  Without thinking, she responded to these inner demands. She reached up and touched the cleft in his chin where the stubble grew in a little swirl. She never imagined that such a small touch could unleash such a cascade of sensations. His skin was warm and the whiskers sandpapery. One touch led to another as the rest of her fingers joined in, exploring their way up his cheeks and over his ears and up into the silky damp curls of his hair.

  To her utter surprise and infinite delight, Dash stretched himself into her touch like a cat looking for a good scratch behind the ears. A little groan escaped him, and his eyes closed. The tension eased from his jawline.

  She pulled his head down toward her. He came willingly, big hands settling on her shoulders as she pressed her mou
th against his.

  The last rational thought that crossed her mind was that this was not a friendly hug.

  Desire flooded through her. Her tongue assaulted his lower lip, and he opened his mouth. She licked into the soft warmth of him, meeting tongue-to-tongue as her hands finished their journey over his scalp and came to rest at his nape. Excitement roared through her body like the storm around them.

  Dash’s passivity evaporated. He drove his tongue into her mouth, matching her thrust for thrust. His hands slid erotically down over the bumps in her spine, coming to rest on her hips where he pulled her against the hard contours of his thighs.

  But when she tried to back him up against the railing and climb right up onto his hips, she hit a dark and forbidding wall. She found herself suddenly at arm’s length, looking up into his craggy face with its kiss-swollen lips. He looked dangerous and aroused. But his gaze was utterly sober.

  “This is crazy,” he said. “We can’t do this. We have to think about Miriam and Todd, not to mention Bill and everyone else. And I’m supposed to stay away from women. I mean, it’s part of my recovery.”

  Heat flowed up her cheeks. What on earth had she been thinking? This was Cousin Dash. Bad boy. Recovering alcoholic. A major-league screwup, quite literally.

  “Uh. I’m sorry,” she muttered, then turned on her heel and ran like a raccoon with a hound on her tail.

  CHAPTER 10

  On Saturday morning, Savannah allowed Dash to take Todd with him up to Painted Corner Stables. She could hardly refuse, seeing as her son had expressed an interest in learning how to ride a horse.

  It was the first time he’d ever expressed any interest in doing something physical. And hadn’t she brought him here for the fresh air?

  She found herself thanking Dash again in the morning, but barely able to look him in the eye this time. Their kiss kept playing in her mind like a movie.

  A really hot movie.

  With Dash and Todd out of the way, Savannah took Aunt Miriam to town for a girl’s day out, with the notion of lulling her into complacency and then springing a trip to Doc Cooper’s on her. The doctor was in on the plan. He was well aware that Miriam hated doctor visits.