Waking Savannah

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “Then, Gideon is—”

  “Not mine.”

  Savannah caught her breath. Her head lightened. “Oh, love. I’m so sorry.”

  “It was devastating,” Ade said, “but not unexpected. And perhaps I had a selfish reason for staying in Boston all this time. I got to see what it felt like, for a little while, to be a father.”

  “And now you know.”

  “And now I know.”

  Savannah took him into her arms. She swayed back and forth. “I wanted it to be true, for you,” she said, “even if it meant losing you.”

  “Corazón.” He kissed her. “It has been so difficult, being without you, even if it was the only way to get to the truth in my own heart. The results are, after all, for the best. Anita and I can go our separate ways. She will be a good mother. Not the kind that bakes cookies and bandages skinned knees, but Gideon will be loved. Ferociously.”

  “How did she react to the results?”

  “Not well,” he said. “At first. She was so certain, and she wanted her happily-enough-ever-after. Anita is used to getting what she wants. But then, the strangest thing happened.”

  “Oh?”

  “She let me go. She gave me back my things, unfroze my bank account, and even offered me a position at the university. Not the same offer she made when she was coaxing me back, but a respectable one.”

  “Wow. And you…”

  “Turned it down, of course. My place is here. With you. If you still want me.”

  Savannah pinched him.

  “Ouch!”

  “Was that a real question, Dr. Adelmo Gallegos.”

  “You forgot my middle name. It’s not nearly as intimidating without the middle name.”

  “I don’t know your middle name.”

  “Raul.”

  “Dr. Adelmo Raul Gallegos.”

  “And the confirmation name.”

  Savannah sighed. “And that is?”

  “Cristobal.”

  “All right Dr. Adelmo Raul Crisotbal Gallegos.” Savannah draped her arms around his neck. “What do we do now?”

  Ade kissed her nose, each cheek, her lips. “We harvest the pumpkins, give Taytay and Tío a grand sendoff, and settle in for a long winter, just you, me, and the sheep.”

  “And the tomatoes.”

  “Tomatoes?”

  “Jars and jars of tomatoes.” Savannah laughed softly. The contentment found before he left settled around her again, dug in roots. She slipped out of his arms, took his hand and hauled. “Come on. I’ll show you, when we get home.”

  * * * *

  Benny had still been in the farmstand when Ade arrived. It was she who told him where to find Savannah. Of course, by the time he and she, Taytay and Tío got back to the house on the coot, Benny had already called the sisters Coco in anticipation of celebrating his return.

  “I had no doubts whatsoever,” Benny whispered, hugging him tight. “I knew you’d be back.”

  “Yes, I know. You are sensitive to such things.”

  “Are you going to tease me too?”

  “No,” he said. “I am going to thank you for having faith in me.”

  “No need for—”

  “Make way! This cake is heavy.” Johanna backed through the door, pushing them out of the way to set the massive cake onto the counter. “Tony is going to kill me. This cake was supposed to go to D’Angelo’s. I told him I dropped it. Don’t squeal on me. This just seemed like a better occasion to reveal my newest creation.”

  “What is it?” Ade swiped a finger through the icing near the bottom, stuck it in his mouth before Johanna could slap it away. “Coffee? No, chocolate?”

  “Mocha,” Johanna corrected. “Mocha frosting, chocolate cake soaked in espresso, and chocolate filling. Mochalicious Dreams. What do you think?”

  “I think the name is as hokey as all your others,” Benny cut in. “But it sounds amazing.”

  The Coco sisters arrived one after another, carrying supper offerings. Even Nina was there, having promised Tabitha the weekend in Bitterly that had absolutely, positively nothing whatsoever to do with Caleb’s first weekend home since school started. The husbands and children stayed outside where it was still light enough to toss a football. After setting up tables and chairs, of course. Soon, Emma and Johanna were shooing everyone still lingering out of Savannah’s kitchen, including Savannah herself.

  “I’m going to fetch your father and uncle,” Savannah said as she darted past him. Ade grasped her hand, halting her. Such chaos. Such glorious chaos. And he had a lifetime of it to look forward to. He hoped. “I love you.”

  “To the moon and back, love.” Savannah threw herself into his arms, kissed him, and darted away. Skipped, was more like it.

  Ade’s heart swelled. During the time he’d spent with Anita and Gideon, he was forced to realize just what he was sacrificing. The life he’d worked for. A beautiful, intelligent, powerful woman who could give him the world. Gideon might not be his blood, but he could love him, be his father.

  Anita had shown him just enough of what he could have to entice, always implying how easy it would be to slip into that life, to play the part she’d set up for him. Because love had changed them both, they could even be happy.

  But they were lies. Every one of them. The man he’d become in Bitterly couldn’t survive life within those lies, most especially the one that suggested he could ever be happy without Savannah. He’d said a final good-bye to Anita and Gideon, to Boston, the place of his dreaming. The farther behind he left it all, the less any of it seemed to matter. That was the way of such things. They were tenacious because their bonds were so flimsy.

  “Hey.” A nudge, and a kind hand on his shoulder. Benny smiled down on him. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  “I’ve never seen you cry before.”

  “I’m not crying.”

  “Then what’s that?” She pointed to his cheek. Ade lifted a hand, wiped the trickle of wetness away.

  Benny smiled. “See?”

  Ade let go a long breath, wiped his cheeks dry. “It has been an emotional day. And it’s good to be home.”

  “Always.” Benny wiped her own tear from her cheek, her wedding rings glinting in the setting sunshine. Ade took her hand, turned it this way and that, dotting his shirt and hers with crystalline light. “I never noticed your rings before. They’re quite remarkable.”

  “My husband might seem like a meat and potatoes, handyman kind of guy, but he has a poet’s soul. They’re fire opals, because I set fire to his life. The engagement ring came after the wedding band. We kind of did it backwards. Baby first, then wedding, then engagement.”

  “Beautiful. Where did he get them?”

  “Here in town, I think. There’s a jeweler on the green who specializes in estate…hey.” Benny grabbed his arm, hauled him farther away from the crowd. “What are you thinking?”

  Ade grinned. “Exactly what you think I am. Will you help me?”

  “Absolutely.” Benny bounced on the balls of her feet, clapping like a little girl with a huge secret. “When can we go? Tomorrow? Can we go tomorrow? Oh, wait. I think they’re closed tomorrow.”

  “Before my father and uncle leave,” he said. “Let them go home happy, and with news for my mother.”

  “That gives us time. We’ll have to be sneaky.”

  “What makes me think you’ll have a plan before supper is on?”

  Benny hooked her arm through his, squeezed it. “Because I already do.”

  * * * *

  A crash of thunder woke Savannah in the early hours of the morning. Blinking away slumber and dreams, she came up on her elbows. Ade slept peacefully beside her, flat on his stomach and arms splayed. She could barely see his face for the hair flopped over it. Wild. That’s how he looked. Wild and handsome and extraordinarily hers.

  She settled back into her pillows, lifting her left hand to the scan
t morning light. She didn’t need sunshine to see the ring on her finger, to marvel at the fiery heart of the solitaire ruby set in gold. It blazed even by moonlight. She imagined using it as a torch should all the light go out of the world.

  “Mi diosa fuego,” Ade had said, slipping it onto her finger during dinner at D’Angelo’s the night prior. “I am forever yours. Will you be forever mine?”

  The whole restaurant had waited, breath held. How did they all know? How did anyone know anything in Bitterly? Because secrets simply didn’t stay silent, and Benny had been involved. Savannah learned this only after she’d said yes and the cheering died down. After Johanna emerged from the back with a cake, trailed by her sisters, their husbands, Edgardo and Raul. After the impromptu that wasn’t exactly impromptu engagement party erupted, and after all went home. Benny had hugged her then, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “I hope you don’t mind. It’s just all so…so magical. Isn’t it?”

  “It is, Benny. Of course I don’t mind. Thank you.”

  At home that night, she and Ade planned. Not a wedding, there was time for that, but a future. The homestead in the woods. The renovations to be made. What they would do with the farmhouse once they’d moved up there. And then they’d made slow and passionate love, their own celebration of the forever they promised. Savannah’s body lit with the memory of it all. She snuggled closer to him, kissed his shoulder.

  Another rumble of thunder. Wind whistled through the window screen. The cold had come early. Only halfway through the October and already they could only keep the window open a crack. Rain pelted the glass, came in through the bit that was open. Savannah got carefully out of bed to close it, stopping short with her hands on the sash.

  A teenaged girl stood in her yard, looking up. She was tall and blonde and strangely dry, despite the sudden downpour. No car she might have just stepped out of. Unfamiliar. She was certainly not one of Savannah’s hires. Leaning back to throw open the window, to call out to the girl to come in out of the rain, Savannah startled still when the girl waved once, and vanished.

  She hurried quietly down the stairs. She found no one at the kitchen door. No one in the yard where the girl had been. No one walking away down the drive. Savannah opened the door to get a better look, and saw the shoes.

  Her clogs, the ones Ade brought her from Boston, sat in the rain on the stoop. She bent to retrieve them. They were full of pebbles. In one clog a white feather. In the other, a black one.

  Bringing them inside, Savannah was careful not to spill the pebbles. Eleven years in Bitterly, she knew about the tradition of putting shoes outside on the night of the Hunter’s Moon, but Savannah had not put her clogs on the stoop. Not last night or any other. But the feathers…

  She grabbed a mason jar, once filled with summer tomatoes, from the drying rack on the counter. The pebbles were water-washed and smooth, most likely from the river. The white feather was like down. The black one, sleek. Savannah put them into the jar, pressed them against the sides, and poured the pebbles carefully in around them. Taking the jar into the parlor, she tried to keep her hands from trembling. She wasn’t frightened or sad or even skeptical. Savannah was hopeful. She set the jar onto the mantel, and took a step back.

  Closing her eyes, she breathed in. And out. Wings. Guardians. Broken souls. Who was she to say such things were impossible? Maybe some autumnal spirit called out by the Hunter’s Moon had truly filled her clogs with pebbles. Maybe her girls added the feathers. Maybe there was something as impossible as magic left in the world. Had someone told her last July the Fourth that she’d be blissfully in love, engaged and ethereally happy, she would have said that was impossible too. Yet here she was.

  Arms wrapped around her waist, Savannah let joy tremble through her. She had no answers, and she was fine with that. From sorrow came joy, came sorrow again. That was life. Messy, chaotic and infinitely wonderful.

  Turning away from the jar, Savannah started back for the stairs. The warmth of her bed and Ade’s body beckoned. There were still a couple of dawn hours left to sleep away. Or not sleep at all. She didn’t have to decide until she got there, but she was pretty certain she was wide awake.

  Be sure not to miss book one in Terri-Lynne’s Bitterly Suite Romance

  SEEKING CAROLINA

  Her beloved grandmother’s funeral has brought Johanna Coco home again to Bitterly, Connecticut—only to confront Charlie McCallan, the high school sweetheart who married another, despite his pretty promises. Now divorced and as devastatingly handsome as ever, Charlie seems like a man to lean on as she and her sisters grapple with their grief—as well as the mystery of the family’s missing matriarch, Carolina. But Johanna’s heart is haunted not only by her own demons, but the pain of Charlie’s betrayal…

  Now that Johanna is back, Charlie is determined to make things right. But first he needs to prove to her that the past is past—and they can overcome it, if she’ll let him explain. It’s no easy task when he’s up against the ghosts lingering in her life, trying to convince her that happily-ever-after is not in the cards for any of the catastrophe-prone Coco sisters—least of all Johanna. But her fearless first love is ready to do whatever it takes, demons be damned.

  A Lyrical Shine novel on sale now!

  Learn more about Terri-Lynne DeFino at

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/author.aspx/31624

  Chapter 1

  Twelve Drummers Drumming

  Snowflakes do not fall; they dance. Will-o’-the-wisps in Les Sylphides. White on black. The poet wind scatters them and they twirl amid the tombstones—stately guardians dressed in gray—and fall, at last, to sleep.

  Disturbing that slumber is a sacrilege, I know, she cannot not bring herself to commit.

  No matter the cold.

  No matter the dark.

  No matter she is trespassing after cemetery hours. She will stand perfectly still until she is another guardian among the stones.

  * * * *

  Rough hands chafed warmth back into Johanna’s hands, her arms.

  “Are you crazy?”

  The masculine voice mumbled words she did not care to decipher. He was right. She was crazy. Crazy as a loon. Mad as a hatter, as a Cheshire Cat. Crazy as…

  She closed her eyes, unwilling to finish the unkind, if accurate, thought. Trembling, drifting, all she wanted was to sleep.

  “Oh, no you don’t. Get up. Walk.” He jammed a shoulder under her armpit and hefted her upright.

  Johanna’s feet moved of their own accord, half-dragged, but they moved. “Where am I?”

  “Bitterly Cemetery,” the man answered, “doing your best impression of a snowman…woman.”

  Oh. Right. Farts. She pushed feebly out of his arms. Her knees buckled, and she was grateful he hadn’t let go. “I can walk on my own.”

  “I’m sure you can. Normally. Come on. I’ve got the heat blasting in the truck. Get warm, and I’ll take you home.”

  Johanna let him help her. Bitterly, Connecticut was way too nice a town to allow miscreants. Everyone knew everyone and had most of their lives. This was no one to fear, even if he did frequent cemeteries after hours rescuing would-be popsicles from certain frostbite.

  Her head began to clear. Memory edged around her trembling, the cold, her grief. The man scooted her into the truck, closed the door and came around the driver’s side. “There’s coffee in the thermos next to you.”

  “No, thanks.”

  His cell blipped and he turned a shoulder to answer it. Charlotte someone. She apparently wanted pizza.

  Johanna tuned out, instead warming her hands in the hot air blasting from the heating vent. She thawed. Her trembling eased. Two days trying to get there in time, and she’d failed. Again. Was there no end to the ways she would fail her grandmother? Her sisters? She fought the tears rising up like rebels and failed at that too.

  He handed her a crumpled tissue.

  She snatched it from his ha
nd, relieved it was only crumpled. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “I wasn’t trying to freeze to death or anything. I was just paying my respects. I missed the funeral.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sure the whole town knows.” Johanna yanked off her hat, tried to smooth down static curls. “Well, the snow isn’t my fault. The whole Northeast is covered. My car wouldn’t make it and I couldn’t rent an SUV and I’m damn sure not going to attempt these roads in anything else, so I had to take a train and then no one answered their cell phones. I had to walk from—”

  “Jo.”

  She startled silent. Squinted. He pulled off his snowcap and a flop of auburn hair tumbled out. His beard lit a brighter copper than his hair. Eyelashes and brows arched over hazel eyes. A face she knew, despite the years. Johanna’s heart stuttered. “Charlie McCallan? For real?”

  “Took you long enough.”

  “You…you don’t look…” She pulled at his beard. “You’ve grown up.”

  “It happens to boys when they turn into men.” He laughed. “They get hairy.”

  He wore thick workman’s overalls and a down jacket, but he was obviously and most certainly no longer the bony kid she’d once shoved into the lake.

  She flexed thawing fingers. “It has been way too long, Charlie.”

  “I thought maybe you’d show up for the twentieth reunion.”

  “Twentieth?” Johanna slumped. “Really?”

  “Last Thanksgiving. You should have come. Fifty-eight of the…what was our class? Ninety-something?” He shrugged. “Whatever it was, we had a good turn out.”

  “I don’t remember getting the invite.”

  An eyebrow lifted, but Charlie only shifted into gear.