The Pride of Jared MacKade (5 page)

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, sur
prised 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 children’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.”

A
traditional 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 kiss.” 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?”

“You want to put my art in your office?”

“I believe I’ve established that.”

One step at a time, Savannah reminded herself. Don’t let him see just how much it would mean. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with some nice pastels?”

“You have a nasty streak, Savannah. I like it.”

She laughed, enjoying him. “Let’s see what your sister-in-law comes up with first. Then we’ll talk.” She walked back into the kitchen to put on water for the pasta.

“Fair enough. Why don’t you drop by the inn, see what she and Rafe have done there?”

“I’d love to get a look at the place,” she admitted.

“I could drive you over after dinner.”

“Homework.” She shook her head with real regret. “I have a feeling I’m going to be doing long division.”

“In that case—” he picked up the wine and topped off both their glasses “—let me offer a little Dutch courage.”

She hadn’t expected him to stay after the meal was over. Certainly hadn’t been prepared for him to wind things around so that he was sitting beside her son at the
kitchen table, poring over the problems in an open arithmetic book.

She served him coffee as he translated the problems into baseball statistics. And why, Savannah wondered, as her son leaped at the ploy and ran with it, hadn’t she thought of that?

Because, she admitted, figures terrified her. Schooling terrified her. The knowledge that her son would one day soon go beyond what she had learned was both thrilling and shaming.

Not even Bryan knew about the nights she stayed up late, long after he slept, and studied his books, determined that she would be able to give help whenever he asked her for it.

“So, you divide the total score by the number of times at bat,” Jared suggested, adjusting his horn-rims in a way that made Savannah’s libido hitch.

“Yeah, yeah!” The lights of knowledge were bursting in Bryan’s head. “This is cool.” With his tongue caught between his teeth, he wrote the numbers carefully, almost reverently. After all, they were ball players now. “Check this out, Mom.”

When she did, laboriously going over the steps of the problem, her smile bloomed. “Good job.” She brushed a kiss over Bryan’s tousled hair. “Both of you.”

“How come I didn’t get a kiss?” Jared wanted to know.

She obliged him, chastely enough, but Bryan still made gagging noises. “Man, do you have to do that at the dinner table?”

“Close your eyes,” Jared suggested, and kissed Savannah again.

“I’m out of here.” Bryan shut his book with a snap.

“Out of here, and into the tub,” Savannah finished.

“Aw, come on.” He looked beseechingly at Jared.

“Actually,” Jared began, “I believe my client is entitled to a short recess.”

“Oh, really?” But Savannah’s dry comment was drowned out by Bryan’s whoop of delight.

“Yeah, a recess. Like an hour’s TV.”

“With the court’s indulgence.” Jared shot Bryan a warning look, laid a hand on his shoulder. “What my client means is, thirty minutes of recreational television viewing is appropriate after serving his previous sentence and taking steps toward rehabilitation. After which he will, voluntarily and without incident, accept the court’s decision.”

Savannah hissed a breath through her teeth. “Lights out at nine-thirty,” she muttered.

“All right!” Bryan pumped his fist in the air. “You should have gone for the hour,” he told Jared.

“This was your best deal. Trust me, I’m your lawyer.”

A grin split Bryan’s face. “Cool. Thanks, Mr. MacKade. ’Night, Mom.”

“Very fast, fancy talking,” Savannah said under her breath as her son dashed upstairs to the little portable in her bedroom.

“I couldn’t help myself.” Feeling a little sheepish, Jared tucked his hands in his pockets. “He reminded me of what it was like to be a nine-year-old boy and desperate for another hour. Are you going to hold me in contempt?”

She sighed, picked up the empty coffee cups, took them to the sink. “No. It was nice of you to stand up for
him. Besides, he’d have wrangled the half hour out of me anyway.”

“He deserved it.” Jared grinned when she glanced over her shoulder. “So do I. After all, we slogged straight through that math assignment.”

“You want thirty minutes of—what was it, recreational television viewing?”

“No.” He took his glasses off, slipped them into the pocket of his shirt. “I want you to walk in the woods with me.” When her brow creased and she glanced toward the stairs, Jared took her hand. “We won’t go far. Hey, Bry!” he called out. “Your mom and I are going for a walk.”

“Cool,” came the absent, obviously uninterested answer. Jared took her denim jacket from a hook by the kitchen door. “It gets chilly after sundown.”

“Just to the woods,” she insisted as she shrugged into the jacket. From there, she could hear Bryan if he called her.

“Just to the woods,” Jared agreed, and closed his hand over hers. “Do you get lonely out here during the day, by yourself?”

“No. I like being by myself.” She walked outside with him, where the air had a faint snap and the sky was so clear the stars almost hurt the eyes. “I like the quiet.”

They went down the uneven steps that had been hacked into the bank, then across the narrow lane to where the woods began with shadows.

“I kissed my first girl in here.”

The just-greening trees opened to welcome them in. “Did you?”

“Yep. Cousin Joanie.”

“Cousin?”

“Third cousin,” Jared elaborated. “On my mother’s side. She had long golden curls, eyes the color of the sky in June, and my heart. I was eleven.”

Comfortable with shadows and starlight, she laughed. “A late bloomer.”

“She was twelve.”

“So, you liked older women.”

“Now that you mention it, that might have been part of the attraction. I lured her into the woods one balmy summer evening, when the sun was going down red behind the mountain and the whippoorwills were starting to call.”

“Very romantic.”

“It was an epiphany. I drew together all my sweaty courage and kissed her near the first bend in the creek, when the air was full of summer twilight and the smell of honeysuckle.”

“That’s very sweet.”

“It would have been,” he mused, “if my brothers hadn’t followed us and hidden to watch. They screamed like banshees, Cousin Joanie went tearing back to the farm. Of course, my brothers ragged on me for weeks after, so I had to take on each of them to save my honor. Devin broke my finger, and I lost interest in Cousin Joanie.”

“That’s sweet, too. The rites of passage.”

“I’ve learned a few things since then, about kissing pretty girls in the woods.”

When he turned her into his arms and his mouth moved over hers, she had to admit he was right. He’d learned quite a number of things.

“Where is cousin Joanie now?”

“In a nice split-level in the ’burbs of Virginia, with three kids and a part-time job selling real estate.” With a sigh, he pressed his curved lips to Savannah’s brow. “She still has those gold curls and summer eyes.”

“One more ghost in the MacKade woods.” She looked back through the trees. She could see the lights she’d left on in her cabin. Her son was safe there. “Tell me about the others.”

“The two corporals are the most famous. One wore blue, the other gray. During the Battle of Antietam, they were separated from their companies.”