The Vixen and the Vet (24 page)

“Lance all but admitted it, Savannah … while he was under anesthesia at the hospital when they reset his nose.” Trent’s uneasy gaze flicked to Asher before returning to Savannah. “He said he’d been fresh with you and gotten what he deserved.”

Asher felt Savannah tense beside him, and he could read her reaction like a book:
fresh
and
assault
weren’t the same thing. She surprised him by taking a deep breath before correcting Trent.

“He was more than fresh, Trent.”

“I’m sure he was,” said Trent. “He’s my brother, Savannah. That doesn’t mean I don’t see him for what he is.”

“But,
Vanna, he’s gone now. He said it was too humiliating to stay here after getting beat by a—well, he just decided it was time to move on. He has a … a frat brother out in San Francisco. I think it’ll be a better fit for him than here.”

“I told him he’s not welcome at the wedding,” said Trent, “unless he comes by to apologize to you for how it all happened, but he said he didn’t think he could be back in two weeks anyway.” He looked down as his cheeks colored. “I’m sorry, Savannah. On behalf of my family, I’m terribly sorry that Lance frightened you and split your lip. Lance has always had a mean streak. Believe me, I know
better’n anyone.”

Asher had suspected as much when he caught Trent’s expression on the day he paid Lance a visit. Trent gave the older man a slow, respectful nod. Asher nodded back, then turned to Savannah.

“Darlin’, I’m going to leave you and your sister to some girl talk, and take Trent out to the pantry for a bourbon.”

Savannah turned to him, a surprised smile on her face. He rarely turned on the full-court Southern charm for her, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t do it if he wanted to. He winked at her, gesturing to Trent to follow him. As they left the room, he peeked back in time to see Scarlet leap from her chair to sit beside Savannah, and watched as Savannah opened her arms to her little sister.

He put a hand on Trent’s shoulder, guiding him in the right direction. “Two and a half weeks, huh? Till your weddin’ day?”

“Yes, sir. Scarlet and I would sure be honored if you’d agree to attend with
Vanna.”

Asher led the way to the small den adjacent to the butler’s pantry. He gestured to the left of two chairs. “Take a seat. I’ll get us some refreshment.”

He had never actually entertained another man in his parents’ house, though he’d seen his parents welcome friends many times and remembered the way his father would offer bourbon in the den while the ladies strolled the gardens or visited in the parlor.

He filled two crystal tumblers with ice and poured the bourbon, swirling the amber liquid in each glass before joining Trent at one of two leather chairs set in front of a fireplace that hadn’t been lit in years.

“So what do you say?” asked Trent. “Can we count you in?”

“I appreciate your invitation,” said Asher, “and I’d sure be honored to attend with Savannah, but I won’t be here. I’m headed to Maryland for the next few months. I leave on the sixth.”

Trent took a sip of his bourbon and whistled low. “Damn, that’s good.”

“It was my daddy’s.”

“Can I ask you a question, sir?”

“Only if you stop
callin’ me sir,” said Asher.

“Sorry, Mr.—uh, Asher. I was
wonderin’ … did it feel flippin’ awesome to beat Lance’s face in?”

Asher was surprised to see that Trent Hamilton was entirely serious. “Yes, it did. I know he’s your brother, but as long as Savannah belongs to me, no one’s going to lay a hand on her without a
reckonin’.” He shrugged. “It’s our way.”

Trent nodded in agreement. “I underestimated you.”

Asher took a sip of bourbon. “It’s my face. It throws people off. That’s why I’m going away, actually. Uncle Sam’s offered to work on it a little bit, fix it up.”

“I’ll look after Savannah while you’re gone.”

“I appreciate that, but I doubt she’ll be here. She’s headed to Phoenix.”

Trent grimaced. “But you two …”

“We’ll make it,” said Asher with conviction, remembering the way Savannah had fallen apart in his arms a few hours ago, the way they fit together, the crazy way that he loved her more than he’d ever loved another living soul. “In fact, if I have my way … I think you and I might be brothers someday.”

Trent’s eyes widened, and he lifted his glass. “To the Carmichael girls.”

Asher clinked his glass lightly. “To
our
Carmichael girls. To Savannah and Scarlet.”

***

“So you’ll come home, honey?”

“I will,” said Savannah. “On Monday morning.”

“Not before?”
“Asher’s moving to Maryland on Monday. I’m staying with him until he leaves.”

“That reminds me. Mama’s having a family barbecue on Sunday for the Fourth. Family only. She wants Asher to come.” Scarlet took a deep breath, grimacing at her sister. “Savannah, you’re not … I mean, you’re not in
love
with him, are you?”

“Totally,” she answered without hesitation.

“Oh. Oh, you are? But he’s … he’s deformed, and he’s a hermit. How do you, I mean, how do you build a future?”

“He’s not deformed, Scarlet; he’s disfigured, not that I give a damn. And a hermit? Well, he’s been to Mama and Daddy’s house how many times? And we took a trip to Maryland last weekend. And there was a rumor that he was in town just last week paying a visit
to Lance Hamilton. Doesn’t sound like much of a hermit to me.”

“You know what I mean, Savannah. You don’t have a plan. You’re heading to Phoenix and he’s … he’s Asher Lee.”

“He’s mine,” said Savannah, a warning infusing her tone.

“Come on now, honey, how’s it
goin’ to work?”

“I don’t have all the answers!” Savannah bit out. When she thought of the mind-blowing sex she and Asher had just shared, the intimacy of it, the love, her heart swelled painfully. She looked up at Scarlet, who was simply asking the questions Savannah would ask if the tables were turned. “Remember that article you were reading to me? The day Derby Jones called me? ‘The Twelve Most Important Milestones in Any Relationship’?”

“I remember. I’m surprised
you
do. Not exactly your thing.”

Savannah grinned. “You asked me that afternoon, ‘Don’t you want to be one of those career women who has it all? Exciting career, hot husband waiting for you at night?’”

“Yes. And you told me marriage wasn’t on your radar.”

Savannah sighed. “I did. I said that.”

“And now? Is it on your radar now, Vanna?”

She looked up at Scarlet, her chest tight and her eyes glistening, because it was. It was bright and blaring and beeping in her ear. It was just about the only thing on her radar. No trace of New York. No glimpse of Phoenix. Just Asher, and it scared her, because being someone’s sweet little wife had never been her plan. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Aw, honey.” Scarlet put her arm around Savannah, stroking her shoulder lightly. “I think you’ve been sideswiped.”

“I can’t leave him. And I can’t stay.” She raised her eyes to her sister’s photo-ready face. “What do I do, Scarlet?”

When she finally spoke, Scarlet’s advice was delivered in a calm, clear voice, and Savannah realized that her little sister was much wiser in matters of the heart than she.

“I think you follow your heart. If your career owns your heart, you go to Phoenix. And if Asher Lee owns your heart, you go to Maryland.”

“What if they both own half?”

“Can’t ride two horses with one ass, honey. Try it and you’ll get hurt.”

Scarlet never cursed. Never. Savannah stared at her sister, dumbstruck, for a full ten seconds before bursting into giggles. Scarlet, who’d covered her mouth with her hand in shock over her outburst, joined her.

But the question remained, and long after Scarlet and Trent had left, it clung to Savannah. Her career or her heart? She was going to have to make a choice.

And whatever it was, she was going to lose.

And whatever it was, she was going to have to live with it.

The first big blowup fight

Sunday bloomed bright, the morning sun shining on Asher’s face as he turned to look at Savannah sleeping beside him. Tonight would be their last night together. Tomorrow he left for Maryland, and they started their half year apart.

A real estate agent recommended by the hospital liaison had found him a nice furnished place a stone’s throw from the hospital, and Asher had signed all the necessary paperwork for a six-month lease. Ten boxes of clothes, books, and other personal items had been picked up by UPS on Friday morning, and he was almost completely packed. Two suitcases were lined up neatly by his bedroom door, while another lay open on the window seat.

Without waking up Savannah, he grabbed his boxer shorts from the floor and pulled them on, then went to go sit by the window, gazing out at the woods behind the house and the grove beyond. Despite wanting nothing more than to leave it for so long, he knew he would miss home. And it surprised him a little.

But more than home, he would miss Savannah,
which didn’t surprise him at all, and while he’d mostly made peace with their separation—they’d promised to send daily texts and talk frequently on the phone—a part of him still wondered if he was selfish for his choices, for prioritizing anything over her.
It’s not too late
, whispered a voice in his head, but he hushed it because it
was
too late. Anyway, it’d be pure weakness to follow her to Phoenix, when he had a journey of his own to make before they could be together.

He made his way back to the bed, sitting down gingerly in the curve of her body. He’d meant what he said to Trent last night. He looked at the rose on her cheek and held himself back from bending down to kiss her, knowing his morning beard would scratch a little and wake her up.

“I’m going to marry you someday,” he whispered.

“Hmmm?” she murmured, her voice husky and sleep-drunk.

“Nothing, baby,” he said, gently stroking her hair. “I’m going for a walk in the woods.”

“I’ll come,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.

“You sleep.”

“I can sleep when you’re gone,” she said, and a tear escaped through the crack of her closed eye to roll over her nose and plop soundlessly on her pillow.

His heart twisted, and he leaned down to press his lips to her temple. “Go back to sleep, darlin’. It’s only eight-thirty. I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Okay,” she said, still half asleep, and rolled over.

She woke up crying. She woke up crying when all he wanted in the world was to make her happy. He wished there was some way to reassure her that they were only at the beginning of something wonderful, that they both recognized their relationship for the special gift it was, and as long as they stayed strong and honest and true during their time apart, they’d be together at the end.

He pulled on some running shorts and a T-shirt, then fished his trainers out of the closet. Sprinting was a no-no with his bad leg, but a nice morning walk was good for him.

He found Miss Potts at the foot of the stairs. They’d been avoiding each other to some extent since Savannah’s arrival on Sunday. She disapproved of Savannah staying in Asher’s bed, though, to her credit, she’d kept her opinion to herself after voicing it respectfully the first day.

“Morning, Miss Potts,” said Asher.

“Asher.” She smiled at him, the wrinkles on her weathered face crashing together. “Don’t know what I’ll do in this big old house without you until Christmas. Sure you don’t need me to come to Maryland?”

He shook his head, reaching out to put his arm around her shoulders and pull her against his body affectionately. For so long there had been only Miss Potts in his life. He hadn’t considered much how Savannah’s arrival had somewhat displaced the older woman.

“You’ve been good to me,” he said, squeezing her shoulder.

She sniffled once. “You’re like a grandson to me. You gave me something that life hadn’t seen fit to bless me with.”

“We’ll always be family,” he said, leaning back to grin at her. “No one else can give me what-for like you, Miss Potts.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, glancing upstairs. “I think that girl could keep you in line.” She sniffled again before beaming at him. “Wouldn’t mind a great-grandchild, you know. While I’m still young enough to enjoy ’
em.”

“No pressure now, Miss Potts. And here I thought you didn’t like Savannah sleeping in my bed.”

“I don’t like your
girlfriend
sleepin’ in your bed. Now, if she was your
wife
…” Her eyes sparkled, and she touched his arm lightly. “She’s good for you, Asher.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She is.”

***

Savannah finally admitted defeat by the third buzz on her phone in a matter of minutes. She yawned, opening her eyes slowly as a fourth and fifth buzz followed in quick succession. She looked around for the damned thing. At one point, her Twitter account had been set up to alert her to scores of trends, but the only alert she’d kept after her New York debacle was her name. Buzz. Buzz, buzz.

“Damn, what’s wrong with you?” she asked groggily, fishing her phone off the bedside table. She leaned back on the pillow, letting her sleepy eyes adjust to the bright light of the screen. She was greeted first by the time—9:12 a.m.—and second by the alert messages that were popping up one after the other on her newsfeed.

She sat up against the headboard and punched in her password. Her heart kicked up with a sudden burst of adrenaline at the tiny red alert dots that practically covered her home screen. Nineteen new e-mails, fifty-six new Twitter notifications, and thirty-one—no , thirty-two—no, thirty-
three
—Facebook notifications. Something was going viral, but the only alert she had programmed was her own name. What was going on? Could she have forgotten to delete another alert that had suddenly hit the news this morning?

Her neck jerked up as she heard the sound of Asher’s house phone ringing. Since the day she’d arrived for their very first interview, she couldn’t remember the phone ringing more than once or twice, and it was almost always in the late
-afternoon when Sophia called to gossip with Miss Potts. It was ringing
now
? At a little after nine o’clock on a Sunday morning? On a
holiday
morning? No one in Danvers would bother to call someone’s home during church hours, and no businesses were open to make their annoying solicitation calls. Who was calling at such an unusual hour?

Her skin prickled uncomfortably, and she turned to her phone. She clicked on the Twitter icon and swiped over Notifications. Sixty-two notifications? She hadn’t had more than five during the entire month of June. The house phone rang again as she scrolled through the messages.

OMG. #GodBlessAmerica #ReadThisArticleNOW #SavannahCarmichael #PhoenixTimes Love story of the century!

#
BeautyAndTheBestLoveStoryEver Twitterverse, you HAVE to read this!! #SemperFi #SavannahCarmichael

#
VetReporterRomance Check out the newest Lifestyles piece at the #PhoenixTimes and God bless #SavannahCarmichaelAsherLee

“
Wh-what? Wait!”

Her mouth dropped open as she read and reread that last tweet. Why was Asher’s name showing up on Twitter? Her heart was thumping out of her chest as the house phone rang again and her phone buzzed to alert her of more messages.

She swiped at her e-mail, looking through the subjects:
Great article
,
Loved the new piece, Congrats
… There was no word from Maddox, so she opened an Internet session on her phone and typed i
n
www.phoenixtimes.ne
t
.

“Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered, swinging her legs out of the bed to slip on her panties and T-shirt. Where was Asher? Downstairs?

No. Somehow she knew he was walking in the woods. He must have kissed her good-bye before he left, though she had no solid memory of it.

“Come on, you cow,” she said as the little cursor cycled, trying to load up the page. She threw the shirt on over her head, then held her phone, pacing the room
, panic making her jittery and sweaty and cold.

“Breathe, Savannah,” she told herself, clenching and unclenching her phone in a sweaty death grip. How in the hell had this happened? She told herself to take deep breaths, desperate to believe that despite the alerts pouring in, there was some mistake.

The front page finally came up, and she clicked on Lifestyles, waiting again as the browser cycled.

“
Goddamnit, come on,” she said, pacing one more time before looking down, and then … then she saw it:

“Savannah & Asher: An All-American Love Story.”

“No!” she cried, swiping at the screen, as the house phone rang again. And under the story title, the name she was dreading to see: Savannah Carmichael.

She sank down onto the window seat, the wind knocked out of her, as she stared at the small screen.

I walked up to Asher Lee’s house on a sunny May afternoon, wearing a sundress borrowed from my sister, holding a plate of fresh
-baked brownies in my trembling fingers. Mr. Lee is the mythical freak of our small town. The outcast. The hermit. The bogeyman. Children egg his house on Halloween, and mothers tell their teenage daughters to be in early, lest Asher Lee find them in the darkness and have his way with them. But the truth? Asher was a man like any other man, just one who’d been hideously wounded in the service of our great country.

Savannah swallowed weakly as she read the heavily edited version of her story. The words
mythical freak
,
bogeyman
, and
hideously
had never figured in her writing, and she hadn’t written that bit about mothers warning their daughters about him.

“Oh my God.”

She scrolled down, barely able to stand what she was reading: her entire article had been chopped, edited and re-written for maximum sensationalism. She’d heard of newspapers doing this, but when Maddox McNabb said “edits,” it never occurred to her—never, ever occurred to her—that he could possibly mean using what she’d submitted as an outline and completely re-writing her piece.

They’d used actual names
and places. They’d hacked up the piece and sensationalized it. They’d given her full credit.

She stopped reading at the halfway point because her stomach was in the sort of knots that weren’t going to untangle themselves. She didn’t need to read further to know that the rest of it would be a shell of its original self. Meanwhile, the buzzing continued as people read “her” article and commented on it.

As shock morphed quickly to fury, she swiped her finger over the phone icon and searched for Maddox McNabb’s number. It rang six times before his voice mail picked up.

“This is Maddox McNabb, editor in chief of the
Phoen—”

She swiped End as a tear snaked down her cheek. She didn’t have his home phone number. But she did have Derby Jones’s number.

“H-hello? Whattimeisit?” asked the groggy voice on the other end of the line, and Savannah realized it was seven-thirty in Phoenix. On a Sunday. On a holiday.

“Derby? Sorry to wake you. It’s Savannah Carmichael.”

“Savannah. Savannah? Sure. Hi. Hey, it’s early.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I’ll get out of your hair quick. Do you have a cell phone number for Maddox McNabb?”

“Maddox? Yeah. Somewhere. Um. Oh, on this phone that I’m holding. Can I text you?”

Savannah imagined Derby holding the phone with closed eyes, ready to roll over and go back to sleep.

“It’s really important, Derby.”

“No. Right. I’ll text right away.” Savannah heard lucidity enter her friend’s voice. “As soon as we hang up.”

“Thanks. Sorry for waking you up.”

“
S’okay. Hey … is everything okay?”

Looking out the window, Savannah saw Asher walking in from the woods, tall and proud, the sun catching the auburn highlights in his dark hair. He walked in thought, a light smile on his lips, as if pondering something pleasing. Suddenly, as if he knew she’d be watching, he looked up at the windows to his room, and finding her face in the glass, raised his hand in greeting. Her heart clutched, and tears sprang to her eyes as she lifted her trembling hand and laid it on the glass between them.

“No,” she said. “Everything’s definitely not okay. Bye, Derby.”

She hit the End button without taking her eyes off Asher. He grinned at her, unable to see her broken expression from that distance. He touched his finger to his lips and blew her a kiss before continuing toward the house.

Savannah’s fingers lingered on the window in despair. Without meaning to, she’d betrayed the privacy of the most private man she’d ever met. How would he ever forgive her?

First things first
. Ding.
She looked down to see a text from Derby. She needed to talk to Maddox McNabb.