“No,” he returned coldly, “it all started with the wedding vows. No two people should be expected to live up to that ideal. It isn’t humanly possible.”
“You’re wrong, Nash. People live up to those vows each and every day, in small ways and in large ones.”
Nash jabbed his finger against the stack of folders. “This says otherwise. Love isn’t meant to last. Couples are kidding themselves if they believe commitment lasts beyond the next morning. Life’s like that, and it’s time the rest of the world woke up and admitted it.”
“Oh, please!” Savannah cried, standing. She walked over to the window, her back to him, clenching and unclenching her fists. Nash wondered if she was aware of it, and doubted she was.
“Be honest, Savannah. Marriage doesn’t work anymore. Hasn’t in years. The institution is outdated. If you want to stick your head in the sand, then fine. But when others risk getting hurt, someone needs to tell the truth.” His voice rose with the heat of his argument.
Slowly she turned again and stared at him. An almost pitying look came over her.
“She must have hurt you very badly.” Savannah’s voice was so low, he had to strain to hear.
“Hurt me? What are you talking about?”
She shook her head as though she hadn’t realized she’d spoken out loud. “Your ex-wife.”
The anger that burned through Nash was like acid. “Who told you about Denise?” he demanded.
“No one,” she returned quickly.
He slammed the top file shut and stuffed the stack of folders back inside the drawer with little care and less concern. “How’d you know I was married?”
“I’m sorry, Nash, I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Who told you?” The answer was obvious but he wanted her to say it.
“Susan mentioned it….”
“How much did she tell you?”
“Just that it happened years ago.” Each word revealed her reluctance to drag his sister into the conversation. “She wasn’t breaking any confidences, if that’s what you think. I’m sure the only reason she brought it up was to explain your—”
“I know why she brought it up.”
“I apologize, Nash. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Why not? My file’s in another attorney’s cabinet, along with those of a thousand other fools just like me who were stupid enough to think love lasts.”
Savannah continued to stare at him. “You loved her, didn’t you?”
“As much as any foolish twenty-four-year-old loves anyone. Would you mind if we change the subject?”
“Susan’s twenty-four.”
“Exactly,” he said, slapping his hand against the top of his desk. “And she’s about to make the same foolish choice I did.”
“But, Nash…”
“Have you heard enough, or do you need to listen to a few more cases?”
“I’ve heard enough.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.” The atmosphere in the office was stifling. It was as though each and every client he’d represented over the years was there to remind him of the pain he’d lived through himself—only he’d come away smarter than most.
“Do you want me to drive you back to the office or would you prefer I take you home?” he asked.
“No,” Savannah said as they walked out of the office. He purposely adjusted his steps to match her slower gait. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to have our, uh, wager settled this evening.”
“Fine with me.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to head for my parents’ home. I want you to meet them.”
“Sure, why not?” he asked flippantly. His anger simmered just below the surface. Maybe this wasn’t such a brilliant idea after all….
Savannah gave him the address and directions. The drive on the freeway was slowed by heavy traffic, which frustrated him even more. By the time they reached the exit, his nerves were frayed. He was about to suggest they do this another evening when she instructed him to take a left at the next light. They turned the corner, drove a block and a half down and were there.
They were walking toward the house when a tall, burly man with a thinning hairline hurried out the front door. “Savannah, sweetheart,” he greeted them with a huge grin. “So this is the young man you’re going to marry.”
Three
“Dad!” Savannah was mortified. The heat rose from her neck to her cheeks, and she knew her face had to be bright red.
Marcus Charles raised his hands. “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?” But there was still a smile on his face.
“I’m Nash Davenport,” Nash said, offering Marcus his hand. Considering how her father had chosen to welcome Nash, his gesture was a generous one. She chanced a look in the attorney’s direction and was relieved to see he was smiling, too.
“You’ll have to forgive me for speaking out of turn,” her father said, “but Savannah’s never brought home a young man she wants us to meet, so I assumed you’re the—”
“Daddy, that’s not true!”
“Name one,” he said. “And while you’re inventing a beau, I’ll take Nash in and introduce him to your mother.”
“Dad!”
“Hush now or you’ll give Nash the wrong impression.”
The wrong impression! If only he knew. This meeting couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start, especially with Nash’s present mood. She’d made a drastic mistake mentioning his marriage. It was more than obvious that he’d been badly hurt and was trying to put the memory behind him.
Nash had built a strong case against marriage. The more clients he described, the harder his voice became. The grief of his own experience echoed in his voice as he listed the nightmares of the cases he’d represented.
Nash and her father were already in the house by the time Savannah walked up the steps and into the living room. Her mother had redecorated the room in a Southwestern motif, with painted clay pots and Navajo-style rugs. A recent addition was a wooden folk art coyote with his head thrown back, howling at the moon.
Every time she entered this room, Savannah felt a twinge of sadness. Her mother loved the Southwest and her parents had visited there often. Savannah knew her parents had once looked forward to moving south. She also knew she was the reason they hadn’t. As an only child, and one who’d sustained a serious injury—even if it’d happened years before—they worried about her constantly. And with no other immediate family in the Seattle area, they were uncomfortable leaving their daughter alone in the big city.
A hundred times in the past few years, Savannah had tried to convince them to pursue their dreams, but they’d continually made excuses. They never came right out and said they’d stayed in Seattle because of her. They didn’t need to; in her heart she knew.
“Hi, Mom,” Savannah said as she walked into the kitchen. Her mother was standing at the sink, slicing tomatoes fresh from her garden. “Can I do anything to help?”
Joyce Charles set aside the knife and turned to give her a firm hug. “Savannah, let me look at you,” she said, studying her. “You’re working too hard, aren’t you?”
“Mom, I’m fine.”
“Good. Now sit down here and have something cold to drink and tell me all about Nash.”
This was worse than Savannah had first believed. She should have explained her purpose in bringing him to meet her family at the very beginning, before introducing him. Giving them a misleading impression was bad enough, but she could only imagine what Nash was thinking.
When Savannah didn’t immediately answer her question, Joyce supplied what information she already knew. “You’re coordinating his sister’s wedding and that’s how you two met.”
“Yes, but—”
“He really is handsome. What does he do?”
“He’s an attorney,” Savannah said. “But, Mom—”
“Just look at your dad.” Laughing, Joyce motioned toward the kitchen window that looked out over the freshly mowed bac
kyard. The barbecue was heating on the brick patio and her father was showing Nash his prize fishing flies. He’d been tying his own for years and took real pride in the craft; now that he’d retired, it was his favorite hobby.
After glancing out at them, Savannah sank into a kitchen chair. Her mother had poured her a glass of lemonade. Her father displayed his fishing flies only when the guest was someone important, someone he was hoping to impress. Savannah should have realized when she first mentioned Nash that her father had made completely the wrong assumption about this meeting.
“Mom,” she said, clenching the ice-cold glass. “I think you should know Nash and I are friends. Nothing more.”
“We know that, dear. Do you think he’ll like my pasta salad? I added jumbo shrimp this time. I hope he’s not a fussy eater.”
Jumbo shrimp! So they were rolling out the red carpet. With her dad it was the fishing flies, with her mother it was pasta salad. She sighed. What had she let herself in for now?
“I’m sure he’ll enjoy your salad.” And if his anti-marriage argument—his evidence—was stronger than hers, he’d be eating seven more meals with a member of the Charles family. Her. She could only hope her parents conveyed the success of their relationship to this cynical lawyer.
“Your father’s barbecuing steaks.”
“T-bone,” Savannah guessed.
“Probably. I forget what he told me when he took them out of the freezer.”
Savannah managed a smile.
“I thought we’d eat outside,” her mother went on. “You don’t mind, do you, dear?”
“No, Mom, that’ll be great.” Maybe a little sunshine would lift her spirits.
“Let’s go outside, then, shall we?” her mother said, carrying the large wooden bowl with the shrimp pasta salad.
The early-evening weather was perfect. Warm, with a subtle breeze and slanting sunlight. Her mother’s prize roses bloomed against the fence line. The bright red ones were Savannah’s favorite. The flowering rhododendron tree spread out its pink limbs in opulent welcome. Robins chatted back and forth like long-lost friends.
Nash looked up from the fishing rod he was holding and smiled. At least he was enjoying himself. Or seemed to be, anyway. Perhaps her embarrassment was what entertained him. Somehow, Savannah vowed, she’d find a way to clarify the situation to her parents without complicating things with Nash.
A cold bottle of beer in one hand, Nash joined her, grinning as though he’d just won the lottery.
“Wipe that smug look off your face,” she muttered under her breath, not wanting her parents to hear. It was unlikely they would, busy as they were with the barbecue.
“You should’ve said something earlier.” His smile was wider than ever. “I had no idea you were so taken with me.”
“Nash, please. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”
“But why?”
“Don’t play dumb.” She was fast losing her patience with him. The misunderstanding delighted him and mortified her. “I’m going to have to tell them,” she said, more for her own benefit than his.
“Don’t. Your father might decide to barbecue hamburgers instead. It isn’t every day his only daughter brings home a potential husband.”
“Stop it,” she whispered forcefully. “We both know how you feel about marriage.”
“I wouldn’t object if you wanted to live with me.”
Savannah glared at him so hard, her eyes ached.
“Just joking.” He took a swig of beer and held the bottle in front of his lips, his look thoughtful. “Then again, maybe I wasn’t.”
Savannah was so furious she had to walk away. To her dismay, Nash followed her to the back of the yard. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of her parents talking.
“You’re making this impossible,” she told him furiously.
“How’s that?” His eyes fairly sparkled.
“Don’t, please don’t.” She didn’t often plead, but she did now, struggling to keep her voice from quavering.
He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She bit her lower lip so hard, she was afraid she’d drawn blood. “My parents would like to see me settled down and married. They…they believe I’m like every other woman and—”
“You aren’t?”
Savannah wondered if his question was sincere. “I’m handicapped,” she said bluntly. “In my experience, men want a woman who’s whole and perfect. Their egos ride on that, and I’m flawed. Defective merchandise doesn’t do much for the ego.”
“Savannah—”
She placed her hand against his chest. “Please don’t say it. Spare me the speech. I’ve accepted what’s wrong with me. I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll never run or jump or marry or—”
Nash stepped back from her, his gaze pinning hers. “You’re right, Savannah,” he broke in. “You are handicapped and you will be until you view yourself otherwise.” Having said that, he turned and walked away.
Savannah went in the opposite direction, needing a few moments to compose herself before rejoining the others. She heard her mother’s laughter and turned to see her father with his arms around Joyce’s waist, nuzzling her neck. From a distance they looked twenty years younger. Their love was as alive now as it had been years earlier…and demonstrating that was the purpose of this visit.
She scanned the yard, looking for Nash, wanting him to witness the happy exchange between her parents, but he was busy studying the fishing flies her father had left out for his inspection.
Her father’s shout alerted Savannah that dinner was ready. Reluctantly she joined Nash and her parents at the round picnic table. She wasn’t given any choice but to share the crescent-shaped bench with him.
He was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his body. Close enough that she yearned to be closer yet. That was what surprised her, but more profoundly it terrified her. From the first moment she’d met him, Savannah suspected there was something different about him, about her reactions to him. In the beginning she’d attributed it to their disagreement, his heated argument against marriage, the challenge he represented, the promise of satisfaction if she could change his mind.
Dinner was delicious and Nash went out of his way to compliment Joyce until her mother blushed with pleasure.
“So,” her father said, glancing purposefully toward Savannah and Nash, “what are your plans?”
“For what?” Nash asked.
Savannah already knew the question almost as well as she knew the answer. Her father was asking about her future with Nash, and she had none.
“Why don’t you tell Nash how you and Mom met,” Savannah asked, interrupting her father before he could respond to Nash’s question.
“Oh, Savannah,” her mother protested, “that was years and years ago.” She glanced at her husband of thirty-seven years and her clear eyes lit up with a love so strong, it couldn’t be disguised. “But it was terribly romantic.”
“You want to hear this?” Marcus’s question was directed to Nash.
“By all means.”
In that moment, Savannah could have kissed Nash, she was so grateful. “I was in the service,” her father explained. “An Airborne Ranger. A few days before I met Joyce, I received my orders and learned I was about to be stationed in Germany.”
“He’d come up from California and was at Fort Lewis,” her mother added.
“There’s not much to tell. Two weeks before I was scheduled to leave, I met Joyce at a dance.”
“Daddy, you left out the best part,” Savannah complained. “It wasn’t like the band was playing a number you enjoyed and you needed a partner.”
Her father chuckled. “You’re right about that. I’d gone to the dance with a couple of buddies. The evening hadn’t been going well.”
“I remember you’d been stood up,” Savannah inserted, eager to get to the details of their romance.
“No, dear,” her mother intervened, picking up the story, “that was me. S
o I was in no mood to be at any social function. The only reason I decided to go was to make sure Lenny Walton knew I hadn’t sat home mooning over him, but in reality I was at the dance mooning over him.”
“I wasn’t particularly keen on being at this dance, either,” Marcus added. “I thought, mistakenly, that we were going to play pool at a local hall. I’ve never been much of a dancer, but my buddies were. They disappeared onto the dance floor almost immediately. I was bored and wandered around the hall for a while. I kept looking at my watch, eager to be on my way.”
“As you can imagine, I wasn’t dancing much myself,” Joyce said.
“Then it happened.” Savannah pressed her palms together and leaned forward. “This is my favorite part,” she told Nash.
“I saw Joyce.” Her father’s voice dropped slightly. “When I first caught sight of her, my heart seized. I thought I might be having a reaction to the shots we’d been given earlier in the day. I swear I’d never seen a more beautiful woman. She wore this white dress and she looked like an angel. For a moment I was convinced she was.” He reached for her mother’s hand.
“I saw Marcus at that precise second, as well,” Joyce whispered. “My friends were chatting and their voices faded until the only sound I heard was the pounding of my own heart. I don’t remember walking toward him and yet I must have, because when I looked up Marcus was standing there.”
“The funny part is, I don’t remember moving, either.”
Savannah propped her elbows on the table, her dinner forgotten. This story never failed to move her, although she’d heard it dozens of times over the years.
“We danced,” her mother continued.
“All night.”
“We didn’t say a word. I think we must’ve been afraid the other would vanish if we spoke.”
“While we were on the dance floor I kept pinching myself to be sure this was real, that Joyce was real. It was like we were both in a dream. These sorts of things only happen in the movies.
“When the music stopped, I looked around and realized my buddies were gone. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but Joyce.”