He didn’t want to admit it, but Savanna had done that for him. She wasn’t just a secretary anymore. She was becoming a very real part of his life and he didn’t see any way to stop it.
“Come on, Daddy, the water feels great!” Megan shouted.
“I’m coming,” he called as he jogged down the grass-topped dunes, then across the warm, wet sand. “Don’t chase away all the sharks. Leave one for me.”
For the next hour they played in the salty waves. Much to Joe’s surprise he discovered his daughter was a strong swimmer. So was Savanna. Several times he raced them both to shore. Though they never beat him, they stayed close on his heels.
Eventually all three waded ashore and spread the picnic out on a brightly striped beach towel. Savanna didn’t think she’d be hungry after eating a large breakfast, but the exercise and fresh air had brought her appetite to life. She enjoyed every bite of the potato salad and cold fried chicken on her plate.
“I wish we could come back here for a vacation,” Megan said wistfully. “Do you think we could? Sometime when you’re not so busy with the company?”
Savanna set her can of soda aside and reached for a bottle of sunblock. As she rubbed it into her legs, she cut her gaze over to Joe, who was sitting to her left on the sand. She couldn’t believe this was the same man who’d almost fired her for having a flat. He looked relaxed, almost happy.
Joe glanced over at his daughter. She looked like a typical, happy kid as she chewed on a chicken leg and dug her toes into the warm sand. He could see parts of himself in Megan. Her blue eyes, her stubborn dimpled chin and long gangly legs. Yet she was very unlike him when he’d been thirteen years old. But then, maybe Joe would’ve had his daughter’s zest for living if Joseph had taken him to the beach once in a while. But Joseph hadn’t taken him anywhere other than a rig site.
“Maybe we can this fall,” he suggested. “Before school starts.”
Well, that left her out of the picture, Savanna thought. Her job at McCann’s would be over by then and she’d be out of their lives. The idea shouldn’t make her feel sad. She had her career to think about. Whether Joe and his daughter went on a vacation or decided to stay home shouldn’t matter to Savanna. But it did.
A few minutes later Megan finished her chicken, then left the two adults to hunt for shells on the beach. Once she was out of earshot, Savanna said, “Your daughter is enjoying herself.”
Propping his arms on his raised knees, Joe turned his attention away from his daughter to Savanna. The stiff gulf breeze was whipping her hair, tousling her blond bangs away from her face. The saltwater had washed away her makeup. Yet she was beautiful barefaced, her brown eyes and fair skin glowing with life. Just looking at her made her feel good. “I hope this trip hasn’t spoiled her. I don’t want her to expect this sort of thing all the time.”
“Give her a little credit, Joe. She’s grown up enough to know life can’t be a party seven days a week.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. You didn’t see her the first few days after Deirdre had left her with me. She was either crying, whining or defiant.”
Savanna recapped the bottle of sunblock and tossed it down by her bare feet. “I expect at that time she was feeling a little deserted by her mother and maybe even a bit afraid of you.”
His expression turned incredulous. “Afraid of me? Why, I’ve never laid a harsh hand on her! There wouldn’t be any reason for her to be afraid of her own father!”
Resting her cheek on her knee, she looked at him. “From what you told me, you and Megan had spent very little time together. She didn’t know what to expect from you, or what kind of life she was going to have with you as her parent. That’s enough to make any little girl afraid.”
He grimaced. “If that was the case, I think she’s gotten over it. At least, she seems to have changed for the better.”
Savanna laughed softly, and the sound drew his eyes to her lips. All day he’d relived their kiss in his mind, and now as he looked at the full, smooth texture of her lips he wanted more than anything to bend his head and taste them again.
Doing his best to shake away the thought, he asked, “Why are you laughing?”
“Because…well, Megan would probably say that you’ve changed.”
Had he? Joe asked himself. He didn’t think so. He was still Joe McCann, owner of McCann Drilling. He was still Joseph’s son. Maybe he had taken time off today to relax on the beach, but that didn’t mean his priorities had changed. Tomorrow he’d be back in the office, trying his best to make McCann’s the success it once was. That’s the way it had to be. The way it would always be. If he could just get Savanna out of his head.
“Just because I let Megan talk me into this beach thing doesn’t mean I’m getting soft,” he said, his voice a little gruff.
Savanna laughed again. “I can’t see you getting soft over anything,” she told him, then stretched out on her back.
Thankfully, clouds had gathered earlier in the day, blocking out most of the blistering rays. Crossing her arms behind her head, she closed her eyes and breathed in the salty, damp breeze.
From the moment Savanna had stripped off her cover-up Joe had been trying his best not to notice her body. But he was failing miserably. With her lying beside him on the sand, it was impossible not to let his eyes glide over her smooth skin and ripe curves.
Her swimming suit was deep teal green and although it was one piece, it was far from modest. The legs were cut up high on her hips, while the neckline dipped deeply between her breasts. Joe swallowed convulsively as his eyes rested on the faint outline of her nipples beneath the stretchy fabric.
“Joe?”
“Hmmm?”
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, his eyes narrowed against the wind and glare. He was a handsome man. She’d thought that many times before. Even the very first time she’d seen him. But today she was seeing more than just the pleasing, masculine lines of his face, the striking blue of his eyes and thick tawny wave of hair falling over his forehead. She was seeing a softer, gentler side of him and it drew her to him in a way that nothing had yet.
“What did you do when you were a kid?”
Frowning, he reached for a bag of chocolate cookies. “What do you mean? I guess I did what most every kid does. I went to school.”
“Did you play sports?”
He shrugged and pulled a cookie from the bag. “Very little.”
“Why very little? You look like you would have made a perfect baseball player.”
Funny that Savanna should say that. Every spring and summer he’d yearned to play baseball, but he’d never gotten to join in with the other boys. He’d either been studying science or accompanying his father to potential rig sites. He’d never got the chance to find out if he could catch a line drive or hit a home run. But he’d learned all about drilling for petroleum.
“I didn’t have time for baseball. I had other things to do.”
“Other things to do?” she asked. “What sort of things? You mean things like riding bikes, fishing in the creek or running a paper route?”
Suddenly he was laughing, but to Savanna disappointment the sound was full of bitterness.
“Joseph McCann would never have allowed his son to run a paper route. That sort of thing was for poor kids. Besides, I was always in training.”
Intrigued by his strange confession, Savanna turned on her side and propped her head on her palm. “That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. What sort of training were you doing?”
He bit into the cookie, then, looking out to where Megan played at the water’s edge, he said, “Training to be an oilman. What else?”
Savanna shook her head. “Joe, I’m not talking about when you were an older teenager. I meant when you were younger, like eight, nine and twelve. You couldn’t have been training to be an oilman then,” she argued.
With a snort he popped the rest of the cookie into his mouth. “You didn’t know my father, Savanna. From the tim
e I was old enough to understand that oil came out of the ground and gasoline was made from that oil…well, that was it. My life was planned for me.”
Savanna was stunned. “But that’s—it’s unbelievable. Didn’t you ever speak up? Tell your father what you wanted?”
He shrugged as though that part of his life hadn’t really affected him that much, but the bitterness Savanna saw in his eyes told her otherwise.
“No one told Joseph McCann anything. They listened.” He shifted around on the sand so that he was facing her. “Anyway,” he went on, “I honestly did like science, so spending my summers at science camp really wasn’t all that bad.”
“What did your mother think about all this?”
“She didn’t like it. Mother resented all the time and money Joseph spent on the company. She wanted other, simpler things for me. But she never had that much influence with her husband and finally she gave up trying.”
Savanna had always thought of her childhood as being difficult. She’d never had a permanent home, or friends that she could pal with for more than six months at a time. But compared to Joe’s, her adolescent years had been wonderful.
“I don’t understand, Joe. What about all those things I talked about? Like riding bikes, fishing, playing baseball. Didn’t you want to do those things?”
He turned his head to look down the beach at Megan. Savanna watched the wind lift and play with his hair, before her gaze slipped downward to glide slowly over his roughly hewn profile. She’d been wrong about Joe all along, she thought sadly. He wasn’t a man who’d forgotten how to laugh and love. He was a man who’d never learned how.
“Of course I wanted to do those things,” he answered as he turned his eyes back on Savanna. “But I couldn’t refuse my father. Perhaps Megan wasn’t so far off the other night when she likened her grandfather to J. R. Ewing. He was flamboyant, successful, simply larger than life. Everything he touched turned to money. And he’d achieved all that without a high school diploma. To me, he was almost godlike and I would have done anything to please him. Even give up my whole childhood.”
And he was still giving up for his father, she concluded. Could he not see that? Or was that the way he wanted it to be?
“Did you ever think your father might be wrong about things?” she asked after a few moments had passed.
Joe never talked to anyone about his relationship with his father. Even his mother had stopped broaching the subject because that’s the way Joe wanted it. But it was different with Savanna. He wanted to tell her these things. He wanted her to understand why he felt so compelled to push himself to succeed in his father’s footsteps.
“Oh yeah. Many times. Like Megan mentioned, I had my rebellious streaks at times. I married Deirdre despite my father’s warnings. The marriage didn’t last. Then when my father started pulling me out of the field and putting me behind a desk, I quit and went to work for Red Man Oil Company as their head exploration man.”
“Was he furious over that?” Savanna asked.
He let out a mocking snort. “Furious? No. Joseph McCann didn’t get furious over anything. He was too confident for that. He knew I’d be back and he was right. Two years later Red Man folded and I was forced to go back to McCann’s.” He chuckled, but it was a hard, cynical sound, full of self-recriminations.
“It’s like the old television show, Savanna. Father knows best.”
Savanna sat up and reached for his hands. He gave them to her and she curled her fingers firmly around his. “You didn’t cause Red Man to fold, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, it went under because of a bad business decision. But I can’t put the blame for my broken marriage on someone else.”
“Maybe not. But if Joseph McCann had left you alone and allowed you to grow and be your own man, you and your marriage would have been a lot happier. Can’t you see that?”
Joe had never thought so before. And he didn’t want to think so now. He liked to believe he was a strong man. Strong enough to accept the blame for his failures. Maybe Joseph had demanded a lot from him, and maybe he hadn’t been a normal father, but he’d loved him in his own way. And in the end that’s all Joe had ever really wanted from him. Simply to be loved.
Tightening his hold on her hands, he stood, drawing Savanna to her feet along with him. “You know,” he said gently, “you’re like that blonde in the musical South Pacific. A cockeyed optimist.”
A smile spread across her face. He was beginning to know her after all. “I believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me.”
A grin lifted one corner of his mouth. “I can be nice. Sometimes. When the mood hits me.”
And what sort of mood was hitting him now? Savanna wondered as her brown eyes met his. There was something provocative, even daring in the look he was giving her, and every cell in her body responded to it.
Leaning closer, she touched her fingers to his cheek, his chin and finally his bottom lip. “I think you can be more than nice, Joe McCann. I think you can be anything you want to be. If you want it badly enough,” she murmured.
At this moment there was no doubt in Joe’s mind as to what he wanted. He wanted Savanna. In some secluded place, her arms around his neck, her bare, warm body pressed against his. He wanted to taste her lips until he was drunk on their sweetness, he wanted to fill himself with her joy and laughter. He wanted to make love to her. The kind of passionate love that made the sky dip down to touch the earth.
But they weren’t alone, he silently argued with himself. And even if they were, he couldn’t lose his head and make the same sort of mistake with Savanna that he had with Deirdre. No, he thought grimly. His heart just wasn’t capable of handling that sort of pain again.
Breathing in deeply, he drew her hand from his face and held it tightly against his chest. “You’re a tempting woman, Savanna. In more ways than one.”
Suddenly Savanna’s heart was beating in her throat. Joe wasn’t her boss anymore. He was a hot-blooded male and she was in imminent danger of getting scorched.
“Well, that’s a lot better than being nosy,” she said with a breathless laugh, then tugged on his hand. “Let’s go look for shells. We might find one to take back with us. So then when we look at it, we’ll remember this trip.”
Joe allowed her to lead him toward the wet strip of beach in front of them. Sea gulls screeched above their heads and strutted across the sand. Savanna’s hand was warm and soft, her fingers curled invitingly around his. In the distance his daughter was waving happily at them.
He wouldn’t need a shell to remind him of this trip, he realized. This was a day he would never forget.
Chapter Nine
Savanna shifted her shopping bag to the other arm and followed her friend Jenny across the mall to a small dress shop.
“I don’t know why I agreed to come to the mall with you tonight,” the redhead said. “I don’t need a thing. But when I get in here all I want to do is spend money.”
Savanna stood beside her friend as she peered into the plate glass at a silk broomstick skirt. “I don’t like to shop by myself,” she explained. “And I didn’t have a pair of panty hose left without a run.”
“You could have worn slacks to work tomorrow,” Jenny suggested.
Savanna supposed that would have been the easy thing to do instead of driving halfway across the city to the mall. But she’d been unusually restless all day, and coming home to her empty apartment this evening hadn’t helped matters. The need for panty hose had given her a good excuse to get Jenny to go out shopping.
“It’s too hot for slacks,” Savanna reasoned.
“Just wait until July and August. It gets as hot as a firecracker in this part of the country. Think you’ll still want to hang around?”
Jenny turned away from the window and the two women moved slowly away from the dress and on down the wide, busy corridor of the mall.
“I’m positive,” Savanna assured her. “But I think I’m going to need a car with air
conditioner. My dress was wet by the time I made it to work this morning.”
“Speaking of work,” Jenny said as she bumped into Savanna in order to miss a group of giggling teenaged girls. “I’m ready to hear all about your trip. How did it go?”
Savanna shrugged, but inwardly she was feeling anything but nonchalant. While they’d been away, something had happened between her and Joe. And it went beyond the kiss they’d shared on the hotel balcony.
Today at work nothing had seemed the same. Each time she’d looked at Joe she’d wanted to go to him, touch him, talk to him about things that had nothing to do with the letters she was typing or the entries she’d made into the ledger.
“It was successful. Joe agreed to sign a contract to drill two new wells in the Southeastern part of the state.”
Jenny made an impatient sound. “I’m not talking about business. I’m talking about you and him. Did anything happen between the two of you?”
Savanna groaned. “Jenny, I told you before, Joe’s got other things on his mind besides women.”
Jenny paused beside a display of shoes outside a shoe store. Picking up a pair of leather sandals, she said thoughtfully, “Then I guess you had a boring business trip.”
Savanna couldn’t prevent the flush of heat coloring her cheeks. “Well, we did drive down to Galveston Island before we flew home. His daughter wanted to visit the beach.”
Jenny looked at her with raised brows. “Well, now,” she said suggestively, “if my sergeant took me to Galveston Island, I’d think he had other things on his mind than talking police work.”
Savanna could feel the blush on her face deepen. “It wasn’t like that. Megan was with us.”
“And if she hadn’t been?”
Daddy Lessons Page 11
