The Pride of Jared MacKade

by Nora Roberts

  She drew back, stared at him. “Dinner?”

  “Yes.” Almost certain his legs would support him, Jared stood, before he could give in to the urge to tear off her clothes, drag her to the floor and have her. “I’d like to take you to dinner.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’d enjoy spending an hour or two with you.” On top of you, he thought. Inside you. God. With every appearance of calm, he skirted the desk and flipped through his address file. “Here’s Cassie’s number.”

  “I know Cassie’s number.” It was demoralizing to realize she had to take a good, deep breath to steady herself, when he was just standing there, so coolly, so easily. “What’s going on here, Jared? We both know dinner isn’t necessary.”

  His stomach twisted into tight slick knots. He could take her. Right here, right now. It was just that simple. And anything too simple was suspect.

  “I’d like to have dinner with you, Savannah. And conversation.” Picking up the phone, he dialed Cassie’s number himself, held out the receiver. “All right?”

  Filled with mistrust, she hesitated. With a shrug, she took the phone. “All right.”

  The restaurant was casual, the menu basic American grill. Savannah toyed with her drink and waited for Jared’s next move.

  “So, you make clothes.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Smiling, he leaned back in the wooden booth. “Sometimes?” he repeated, looking at her expectantly.

  He wanted to make conversation, she determined. She could make conversation. “I learned because homemade is cheaper than store-bought, and I didn’t want to be naked. Now I make something now and again because I enjoy it.”

  “But you make your living as an illustrator, not as a seamstress.”

  “I like to work with color, and design. I got lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  Wary of the friendly probing, she moved her shoulders. “You don’t want the story of my life, Jared.”

  “But I do.” He smiled at the waitress who set their meals in front of them. “Start anywhere,” he said invitingly.

  She shook her head, cut into the spicy blackened chicken he’d recommended. “You’ve lived here all your life, haven’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Big family, old friends and neighbors. Roots.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m going to give my son roots. Not just a roof over his head, but roots.”

  He was silent for a moment. There had been a fierceness in her voice, a fiery determination, that he had to admire, even as he wondered at it. “Why here?”

  “Because it’s not the West. That’s first. I wanted to get away from the dust, the plains, and all those sunbaked little towns. That was for me,” she admitted. “I’ve been moving east for ten years. This seemed far enough.”

  When he said nothing, she relaxed a little. It was difficult to combat that quiet way he had of listening. “I didn’t want the city for Bryan. But I wanted to give him a sense of belonging, of…”

  “Community?”

  “Yeah. Small town, kids, people who’d get to know him by name. But I still wanted a little distance. That was for me again. And…”

  “And?”

  “I was drawn here,” she said at length. “Maybe it’s the mysticism in my blood and my heritage, but I felt— I knew that this would be home. The land, the hills. The woods. Your woods called to me.” Amused at herself, she smiled. “How’s that for weird?”

  “They’ve called to me all my life,” Jared said, so simply her smile faded. “I could never be happy anywhere else. I moved to the city because it seemed practical. And small towns and long walks through the woods weren’t my ex-wife’s style.”

  If he could probe, so could she. “Why did you marry her?”

  “Because it seemed practical.” Now it was his turn to wince. “Which doesn’t say much for either of us. We were reasonably attracted, respected each other, and entered into a very civilized, intelligent and totally passionless contract of marriage. Two years later, we had a very civilized, intelligent and totally passionless divorce.”

  It was difficult, all but impossible, to visualize the man who had kissed her being passionless about anything. “No blood spilled?”

  “Absolutely not. We were both much too reasonable for combat. There were no children.” Her choice, he remembered, only slightly bitter. “She’d kept her own name.”

  “A modern professional marriage.”

  “You’ve got it. We split everything down the middle and went our separate ways. No harm, no foul.”

  Curious, Savannah tilted her head. “It bothered you that she didn’t take your name.”

  He started to correct her, then shrugged. “Yeah, it bothered me. Not very modern or professional of me. Just one of those things that would have made the commitment emotional instead of reasonable. That’s just pride.”

  “Partly,” Savannah agreed. “But part of you wanted to give her that piece of you that you were most proud of, that had been passed to you, and that you wanted to pass to your children.”

  “You’re astute,” he murmured.

  “Lawyers aren’t the only ones who can read people. And I understand the importance of names. When Bryan was born, I stared at the form they give you. For names. And I thought, what do I put where it says Father? If I put the name down, then I’m giving that name to my son. My son,” she repeated quietly.

  “What did you put down?”

  She brought herself back from that moment, when she’d been barely seventeen, and alone. Completely alone. “Unknown,” she said. “Because he’d stopped being important. My name was enough.”

  “He’s never seen Bryan?”

  “No. He packed up his gear and lit out like a rocket the day I told him I was pregnant. Don’t say you’re sorry,” she said, anticipating him. “He did me a favor. It’s easy for a sixteen-year-old girl to be dreamy-eyed and hot-blooded over a good-looking cowboy, but it isn’t easy to live with one.”

  “What have you told Bryan?”

  “The truth. I always tell him the truth—or as close to it as I can without hurting him. I’m not ashamed that I was once foolish enough to imagine myself in love. And I’m grateful that sometimes foolishness is rewarded by something as spectacular as Bryan.”

  “You’re a remarkable woman.”

  It touched and embarrassed her that he should think so. “No, I’m a lucky one.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy.”

  “I don’t need things to be easy.”

  He considered that, and thought it was more that she didn’t care for things to be easy. That he understood.

  “What did you do when you left home?”

  “When I got kicked out,” she said. “You don’t have to pretty it up. My father gave me the back of his hand, called me…all sorts of things it’s impolite to repeat to a man wearing such a nice suit—and showed me the door. Wasn’t much of a door,” she remembered, surprised to see that Jared had reached out to link his fingers with hers. “We were living in a trailer at the time.”

  He was appalled. Probably shouldn’t be, he realized. He’d heard stories as bad, and worse, in his own office. But he was appalled at the image of Savannah at sixteen, pregnant and facing the world alone.

  “Didn’t you have anyone you could go to?”

  “No, there was no one. I didn’t know my mother’s family. He’d have probably changed his mind in a day or two. He was like that. But the things he’d called me had hurt a lot more than the slap, so I put on my backpack, stuck out my thumb, and didn’t look back. Got a job waiting tables in Oklahoma City.” She picked up her drink. “That’s probably why Cassie and I hit it off. We both know what it’s like to stand on your feet all day and serve people. But she does a better job of it.”

  Oh, there was plenty she was skimming over, Jared thought. Miles of road she wasn’t taking him over. “How did you get from waiting tables in Oklahoma City to illustrating chi
ldren’s books?”

  “By taking a lot of detours.” Well fed, she leaned back and smiled at him. “You’d be surprised at some of the things I’ve done.” Her smile widened at his bland look. “Oh, yes, you would.”

  “Name some.”

  “Served drinks to drunks in a dive in Wichita.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that, if you want to shock me.”

  “Worked a strip joint in Abilene. There.” She chuckled and plucked the thin cigar he’d just taken out of his pocket from his fingers. “That’s got you thinking.”

  Determined not to goggle, he struck a match, held it to the tip of the cigar when she leaned over. “You were a stripper.”

  “Exotic dancer.” She blew out smoke and grinned. “You are shocked.”

  “I’m…intrigued.”

  “Mm-hmm… To pop the fantasy a bit, I never got down to the bare essentials. You’d see women on the beach wearing about as much as I shook down to—only I got paid for it. Not terribly well.” Casually she handed him back the cigar. “I made more money designing and sewing costumes for the other girls than I did peeling out of them. So I retired from the stage.”

  “You’re leaving out chunks, Savannah.”

  “That’s right.” They were her business. “Let’s say I didn’t like the hours. I worked a dog and pony show for a while.”

  “A dog and pony show.”

  “A poor man’s circus. Took a breather in New Orleans selling paintings of bayous and street scenes, and doing charcoal sketches of tourists. I liked it. Great food, great music.”

  “But you didn’t stay,” he pointed out.

  “I never stayed long in one place. Habit. Just about the time I was getting restless, I got lucky. One of the tourists who sat for me was a writer. Kids’ books. She’d just ditched her illustrator. Creative differences, she said. She liked my work and offered me a deal. I’d read her manuscript and do a few illustrations. If her publisher went for it, I’d have a job. If not, she’d pay me a hundred for my time. How could I lose?”

  “You got the job.”

  “I got a life,” she told him. “The kind where I didn’t have to leave Bryan with sitters, worry about how I was going to pay the rent that month, or if the social workers were going to come knocking to check me out and decide if I was a fit mother. The kind where cops don’t roust you to see if you’re selling paintings or yourself. After a while, I had enough put together that I could buy my son a yard, a nice school, Little League games. A community.” She tipped back her glass again. “And here we are.”

  “And here we are,” he repeated. “Where do you suppose we’re going?”

  “That’s a question I’ll have to ask you. Why are we having dinner and conversation instead of sex?”

  To his credit, he didn’t choke, but blew out smoke smoothly. “That’s blunt.”

  “Lawyers like to use twenty words when one will do,” she countered. “I don’t.”

  “Then let’s just say you expected sex. I don’t like being predictable.” Behind the haze of smoke, his eyes flashed on hers with a power that jarred. “When we get around to sex, Savannah, it won’t be predictable. You’ll know exactly who you’re with, and you’ll remember it.”

  In that moment, she didn’t have the slightest doubt. Perhaps that was what worried her. “All your moves, Lawyer MacKade? Your time and place?”

  “That’s right.” His eyes changed, lightened with a humor that was hard to resist. “I’m a traditional kind of guy.”

  Chapter 5

  Atraditional kind of guy, Savannah mused. One day after her impromptu dinner with Jared, and she was standing in her kitchen, her hands on her hips, staring at the florist’s box.

  He’d sent her roses. A dozen long-stemmed red beauties.

  Traditional, certainly. Even predictable, in their way, she supposed. Unless you factored in that no one in her life had ever sent her a long, glossy white box filled with red roses.

  She was certain he knew it.

  Then there was the card.

  Until your garden blooms

  How did he know flowers were one of her biggest weaknesses, that she had pined for bright, fragrant blooms in those years when she was living in tiny, cramped rooms in noisy, crowded cities? That she’d promised herself that one day she would have a garden of her own, planted and tended by her own hands?

  Because he saw too much, she decided, and circled the flowers as warily as a dog circling a stranger. She was so intent on them, she actually jumped when the phone rang. Cursing herself she yanked up the receiver.

  “Yes. Hello.”

  “Bad time?” Jared asked.

  She scowled at the flowers lying beautifully against the green protective paper. “I’m busy, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then I won’t keep you. I thought you might like to bring Bryan over to the farm for dinner tonight.”

  Still frowning, she reached into the box, took out a single rose. It didn’t bite. “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  “For starters, I’ve already got sauce on for spaghetti.” She waited a beat. So did he. “I suppose you expect me to ask you to come here to dinner.”

  “Yep.”

  Twirling the rose, she tried to think of a good reason not to. “All right. But Bryan has baseball practice after school. I have to pick him up at six, so—”

  “I’ll pick him up. It’s on my way. See you tonight, then.”

  Something seemed to be slipping out of her hands. “I told you all of this wasn’t necessary,” she muttered. “The flowers.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “Sure, they’re beautiful.”

  “Well, then.” That seemed to settle the matter. “I’ll see you a bit after six.”

  Befuddled, she hung up. After another long stare at the roses, she decided she’d better dig up a vase.

  At six-fifteen she heard the sound of a car coming up her lane. Carefully she finished a detail on the illustration of her wicked queen for a reissue of traditional fairy tales, then turned away from her worktable. Bryan was already clattering up the steps by the time she walked from her small studio into the kitchen.

  “…then he popped up, and that klutzoid Tommy couldn’t get his glove under it. His mom had two cows when the ball came down and smacked him in the face. Blood was spurting out of his nose. It was so cool. Hi, Mom.”

  “Bryan.” She lifted a brow at the state of his clothes. Red dirt streaked every inch. “Do some sliding today?”

  “Yeah.” He headed straight to the refrigerator for a jug of juice.

  “Tommy Mardson got a bloody nose,” Jared put in.

  “So I hear.”

  “His mom was really screaming.” Excited by the memory, Bryan nearly forgot to bother with a glass—until he caught his own mother’s steely eye. “It wasn’t broke. Just smashed real good.”

  “We’re going to work on that grammar tonight, Ace.”

  Bryan rolled his eyes. “Nobody talks like the books say. Anyway, I got a B on the spelling test.”

  “Drinks are on the house. Math?”

  Bryan swallowed juice in a hurry. “Hey, I gotta clean up,” he declared, and dashed for the stairs in a strategic retreat.

  Recognizing evasive action, Savannah winced. “We hate long division.”

  “Who doesn’t?” Jared handed her a bottle of wine. “But a B in spelling’s not chump change.”

  Neither, she thought, was the fancy French label on the bottle. “This is going to humble my spaghetti.”

  Jared took a deep, appreciative sniff of the air. It was all spice and bubbling red sauce. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, at least take off that tie.” She turned to root out a corkscrew. “It’s intimidating. You can—”

  He turned her by the shoulders, lowered his head slowly and covered her mouth with his. The top of her head lifted gently away.

  “Kiss,” she finished on a long breath. “You can sure as hell k
iss.” After picking up the corkscrew that had clattered to the counter, she opened the wine with the quick, competent moves of a veteran bartender. “Fancy wine and fancy flowers, all in one day. You’re going to turn my head.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  She stretched for the wineglasses on the top shelf. “I’d have thought, after the condensed version of The Life and Times of Savannah Morningstar, you’d have gotten the picture that I’m not the wine-and-flowers type.”

  He brushed a finger over the petals of the roses she’d set in the center of the table. “They seem to suit you.”

  As he folded his tie into his pocket, loosened the collar of his shirt, she poured the wine. “It was rude of me not to thank you for them. So…” She handed him a glass. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Bryan’s going to hide out until he thinks I’ve for gotten about the math. More fool he. If you’re hungry, I can call him down.”

  “No hurry.” Sipping wine, he wandered into the front room. He wanted a better look at the paintings.

  The colors were bold, often just on the edge of clashing. The brush strokes struck him as the same—bold sweeps, temperamental lines. The subject matter varied, from still lifes of flowers in full riotous bloom, to portraits of vivid, lived-in faces, to landscapes of gnarled trees, rocky hills and stormy skies.

  Not quiet parlor material, he mused. And not some thing it was easy to look away from. Like the artist, he decided, the work made a full-throttle impression.

  “No wonder you turned your nose up at what’s hanging in my office,” he murmured.

  “I’ve never thought art was supposed to be cool.” She moved a shoulder. “But that’s just my opinion.”

  “What’s it supposed to be? In your opinion?”

  “Alive.”

  “Then you’ve certainly succeeded.” He turned back to her. “Do you still sell?”

  “If the price is right.”

  “I’ve been thinking about having Regan do some thing about my office. My sister-in-law,” he reminded her. “She’s done an incredible job with the inn she and my brother are rehabing. Would you be willing to handle the art?”

  She took it slow, watching him, sipping wine. The idea had an old, deeply buried longing battling for air. Painting was just a hobby, she reminded herself. What else could it be, for a woman with no formal training?

  “I’ve already told you I’d sleep with you.”

  He managed a laugh, though it nearly stuck in his suddenly dry throat. “Yes, you have. But we’re talking about your painting. Are you interested in selling some?”