by Peggy Webb
Never taking his eyes off hers, Daniel set his cup on the table.
“I want you to sing for my father, Skylar.”
Her elbow slipped a little, but she recovered quickly.
“Why? You don’t approve of me and you certainly don’t like me.”
“To answer your question…because your singing is beautiful, and I think it will help him. And now I have one of my own. How did you come to those ridiculous and false conclusions?”
“They’re false?”
“Yes.”
“You like me?”
“Very much.”
“And you approve of me?”
“Yes. Unequivocally.”
She sat upright and gripped her coffee cup. “My God…why?”
“You have such a wonderful spirit, Skylar, such liveliness. How could anyone not approve of you?”
“My fa—” She bit her lower lip, then took a sip of coffee before setting her cup on the table. “That’s not a very preacherly answer.”
“I guess I’m not a very preacherly person.” He smiled at her.
“Good. I’ll sing for your father.”
Her hand looked very small resting on the table between them. Soft. Fragile looking. He wanted to touch it, but resisted.
“I’m glad, Skylar.” He smiled again.
“But that’s all I’ll do for you.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“I won’t linger in your father’s room for chats. I won’t come down here to the lounge to share a cup of coffee. I won’t talk about myself, period. And I certainly won’t give you a chance to convert me.”
“Convert you?”
“Yes. To save me.” She stood up, and every bit of her was on full, glorious display. “Women like me are a preacher’s greatest challenge, Daniel. I won’t be yours.”
He pushed his chair back and stood up, his movements slow and deliberate. His face a mask.
Skylar experienced a moment of panic. Had she gone too far this time? He took a step closer, his eyes blazing.
She’d been wrong about his face being a mask. He had the determined, fiery look of a hunter closing in on his quarry.
He caught her upper arm, his movements smooth and quick. Unexpected. His face…
Lord, he had the face of a man bent on kissing.
“What you are going to do?” she asked.
“Escort you to my father’s room. You said you’d sing.”
“I didn’t say right this very minute.”
“Is this not a good time for you?”
She’d planned to stay at the nursing home all morning. If she said no, she’d have to leave. Just on general principles. And if she left she’d have nothing to do but rattle around in her parents’ house with nothing for company except a sometimes surly cat and all those memories.
“Well, yes. It’s fine. Okay. I’ll sing.”
“Good.”
He led her to the door and down the hall, still holding on to her arm. And it felt good. So good she didn’t tell him to let her go.
She simply wasn’t going to think about that right now. She was going to concentrate on the job at hand. And singing for the patients at Tranquility Manor was a job for her, one she dearly loved. No pay, of course. Not in the traditional manner. But the sense of satisfaction was enormous.
There was Harriet who patted Skylar’s hand and told her she didn’t know how she’d get through her days without those songs. And there was dear little Mrs. Lyons whose first name she didn’t even know, a retired schoolteacher who still got up every morning and dressed as if she were headed to Vicksburg High to teach algebra and trigonometry. She always requested hymns, and while Skylar sang Mrs. Lyons leaned back with her eyes closed and her hands crossed over her flat breasts as if she were praying. Then afterward, she’d hand Skylar a single flower, usually one of the African violets she grew under lights, sometimes a rose she’d stolen from the gardens on the grounds of the manor.
Denton Lovett always requested honky-tonk songs, then sat in his chair laughing till tears rolled down his cheeks, while his roommate, Mr. Crimpton, turned his face to the window and pretended not to be listening. But once Skylar had seen him cup his hand around his ear so he could hear better.
She loved coming here. Meeting the people. Singing to them. Making them smile.
But she’d stop coming in a New York minute if she thought Daniel Westmoreland had any ideas of worming his way into her life. She was satisfied with things exactly the way they were, thank you very much.
Or was she?
“Here we are,” Daniel said, and she realized thankfully they’d finally reached their destination.
Still he held onto her arm. And still she let him.
She didn’t know why. Didn’t want to know why.
“Dad, I’ve brought someone to meet you. Her name is Skylar Tate, and she has the most beautiful voice this side of heaven. She’s going to sing for you.”
He squeezed her arm. Whether it was a conscious gesture she didn’t know. But it felt good. Oh, it felt so good. Intimate somehow. As if the two of them were sharing a beautiful private moment. Some lovely secret.
She wasn’t going to think about that either. About why she felt a sense of longing. Why she felt as if she were melting inside. Melting. Melting.
“Skylar, this is Michael, the world’s best dad and a world-class high-altitude filmmaker. He loves music of all kinds, but most of all he loves the blues.”
“So do I.”
Daniel finally released her and stepped back. But not too far. She could feel his solid presence just behind her, slightly to the left. Body heat. Delicious currents. Sexual charges in small voltages, big enough to sizzle but not ignite.
Not yet.
Now where had that thought come from? She’d have to pay attention here. She’d have to keep her mind on her business.
“Michael.” She spoke his name softly.
The sight of him moved her to compassion. She leaned over the bed, touched his sunken cheek, smoothed his hair back from his forehead. His skin felt dry and papery. The skin of a man no longer inhabiting his body. The skin of a virile outdoorsman who had been too long in the bed.
Was his spirit still intact? Was it somewhere just beneath the layers of deep sleep waiting to be awakened?
And could she do it with her music?
Skylar felt an awesome sense of responsibility and hard on its heels a sort of panic. Is that what Daniel expected of her? Miracles?
She couldn’t deliver. She needed to drag him from the room and explain that to him. She needed to say, I can’t do this. I can’t be your last hope.
That was silly, of course. He was a man of the cloth who depended on a much higher power than she.
He wanted her to sing. That was all.
“I’m going to sing an old, old song from the thirties. It’s one of my favorites. I guess it’s more properly called a torch song, but still it has that nice bluesy feel. Especially the way Bette Midler sings it.”
Without further preamble Skylar started singing “The Glory of Love.” Putting her heart into it. Her soul.
And when it was over the room was so quiet she could hear the beating of her own heart.
And Daniel’s. He’d moved in close enough to touch.
She turned to him, her heart hammering, her cheeks damp.
Slowly he reached up and touched her tears. Wiped them tenderly with the pads of his fingers.
“You’re crying.”
“I always cry when I sing the blues.”
Chapter Five
I hear singing. Is it angels? Am I dead?
I can’t be dead. I have places to go, promises to keep. To Anne. Beautiful, beautiful Anne.
Where are you, Anne? I can’t feel you. Are you there?
Talk to me, my beloved.
There’s so much fog, so much distance. I can’t reach you. I can’t touch you.
I want to. I’m trying.
I’m
trying so hard. So hard.
My eyes…heavy…fog…everywhere. I…can’t…hold…on.
Anne…Annie…
Chapter Six
There are hundreds of ways a man can touch a woman. Perhaps even thousands.
And in that moment, with time suspended and Skylar’s tears fresh on his fingertips, Daniel knew them all. And longed.
What he saw in her shining eyes was a genuine, bone-deep goodness that she couldn’t hide no matter how hard she tried. He saw the kindness of her heart and the generosity of her soul. He saw her fierce will and indomitable spirit. He saw a giving person who had been treated carelessly.
And his heart lifted in spontaneous prayer. Father, don’t ever let me treat this woman carelessly.
Cupping her face as tenderly as if she were a moonbeam, Daniel bent down and kissed her on the cheek. Softly. Briefly.
When he stepped back she flushed the color of a rose, then busied herself patting the covers on Michael’s bed.
“As much as I love singing, I don’t want to tire you with a lengthy concert the first day. Tomorrow I’ll bring my guitar, and, if you’re up to it, I’ll sing two or three songs.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Daniel, then quickly away. He’d never seen her nervous. Should he apologize?
No. That would call attention to her obvious discomfort, and no woman wants to be put in that position. He’d learned that the hard way growing up with two sisters.
Especially Hannah. Lord have mercy, one time with her was enough to teach any man a lesson. She’d lost a foot-race to him after swearing she could beat any boy in Vicksburg, and when he’d called attention to her chagrin she’d socked him in the stomach so hard he’d lost his breath.
“Don’t you dare ever make a woman feel uncomfortable again, Daniel Westmoreland,” she’d said.
“Yes, ma’am,” he’d said, although she was only ten years old at the time and a long way from womanhood.
He couldn’t say the same for Skylar. She was all woman and then some.
And she was getting ready to walk out of the room.
“Thank you for coming here, Skylar. It means a lot to…”
If he said my father, he’d be telling a lie. Michael didn’t seem to know he was in the world. And if he said my family, that would be another falsehood, because he was the only one in his family who knew.
And so he told the barefaced truth. “It means a lot to me,” he said.
“Will you be here tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“Morning, probably. Mom still tries to spend every night here with Dad.”
“In that case, I’ll come in the afternoon.”
In order to avoid him? He didn’t ask. Maybe she was arranging her time that way so she could give his mother something to hold on to. Something new. Music, and the possibility of a miracle.
“That will be great.”
He’d bring plenty of books tomorrow. Enough to last him into the afternoon. He hadn’t spent that much time with his mother, and she needed his company. Didn’t she?
“Are you headed home?” he asked and she nodded. “I’ll walk you to the car,” he added.
“That’s not necessary.”
“I insist.”
He didn’t take her arm. No need to push his luck. From the way she was striding down the hall, he was courting danger if not outright disaster. All in all, it would be best to content himself just to be in the same vicinity as Skylar Tate.
When Daniel pushed open the heavy front doors, the janitor waved at them.
“’Bye, Miss Skylar. Will we see you again tomorrow?”
“If the sun shines and the creek doesn’t rise, Mr. Clements.”
Bob slapped his knee and hooted. “Lord, Preacher, you got a live one there.”
“He doesn’t have me at all, Bob. I’m just tolerating his company.” She gave Daniel an arch look. “For the moment.”
He held the door for her and caught a whiff of her fragrance as she passed through. It was erotic. Designed to give a man all kinds of fantasies.
“I’ll have to remember to mind my p’s and q’s.”
“See that you do that.”
“Which way?”
“Beyond the pond.”
“The T-Bird, right?”
“How did you know?”
Her car was a red Thunderbird convertible, not old enough to be an antique but too old to be called merely used. He could have said, Because it has flash and style and because it’s out of the ordinary.
“It suits you,” he said, instead, then opened her door and tried not to stare at her legs when she climbed inside.
She hung her left hand casually over the door frame, and he could see a chip in the polish on her ring finger. He had a sudden, intense urge to bend down and kiss that tiny imperfection.
He shifted his gaze from her hand to her face, and found himself falling into the enormous blue expanse of her shining eyes. The long, deep look stretched to eternity, and when it curved around and came back to the present, Daniel was short of breath.
And sweating, besides.
“Skylar…”
She downshifted. “Goodbye, Reverend,” she said, and her car shot forward, leaving him in the hot, boiling sun of a September day that was parading around as summer.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked back to the nursing home, whistling.
The song was “The Glory of Love.”
The message light was blinking when Skylar got home, but she ignored it, climbed into the shower and stayed so long the soft white skin on her fingers and toes began to pucker. As if she could wash away her sins. As if she could wash away the seeds of hope that had sprung to life at the nursing home when Daniel kissed her cheek.
“Bull,” she scoffed. And then when that wasn’t enough, she beat the shower walls with her palms and said, “Hell-fire and damnation.”
Then she turned her face up to the water and waited to feel like herself again, that sassy don’t-give-a-damn self who spit in the eye of the world, that carefree woman who scoffed at convention and broke rules and dared anybody to clip her wings, that independent woman who guarded her hard-won peace with fierce resolve.
She didn’t want tenderness. She didn’t need gentleness. She didn’t crave the hands of a good man on her cheek making her feel as if she’d just been crowned princess of the universe.
Did she?
Skylar jerked a towel off the rack and stood on the bathroom floor dripping while Pussy Willow rubbed her arched back against the door frame.
“I just won’t go to the nursing home tomorrow. That’s all.”
Her cat purred her approval, then meowed once and headed to the kitchen in her dainty, mincing gait.
“You’re hungry, are you?”
Skylar poured cat food into Pussy Willow’s blue china dish, then fixed herself a big roast beef sandwich and ate the whole thing, all the while casting a baleful eye toward the blinking red light announcing that she had voice mail and that quite possibly it was urgent.
Finally Skylar gave in. She had a fleeting thought that it might be Daniel before a familiar voice filled her kitchen.
“Hi, Skylar, this is Pete down at Babe’s. I heard you were back in town and just wanted to invite you to come on down here and sing for us. For the forty-’leventh time. Say yes, Sky.”
Pete Sanford was an old buddy of Skylar’s from the early days of the band. A former linebacker with the Saints, he’d taken up music when an injury had forced his retirement. He’d played lead guitar with the New Blues for a year, then decided life on the road wasn’t for him.
He’d returned to his hometown of Vicksburg, married his high-school sweetheart, then bought a nightclub and adopted five children, in that order.
He was big, brash and lovable. A hard man to tell no to.
Every year when he asked her to sing in his club, that’s what Skylar had told him.
She picked up the phon
e and dialed his number.
“Pete…when do you want me to sing?”
After she’d hung up the receiver, she stood in the middle of her kitchen with her hands on her hips still waiting to feel like herself.
The nightclub’s sign was blue and pink neon, the kind some people called gaudy. To Skylar it was lively and festive, and maybe that’s because she knew the owner of Babe’s, knew him to be a big-hearted, fun-loving man who looked like an oversize gorilla but who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Pete was waiting for her. He pulled her into a bear hug then leaned back and said, “Let me look at you…my God, you’re more gorgeous than I remember.”
Cupping his mouth he yelled, “Steffie, come see who I’ve got in here.”
His wife came at a fast trot, her cheeks bright pink and her wild red hair held back from her lovely face with two red combs.
“My goodness, Skylar!” She hugged her hard. “We haven’t seen you since Christmas three years ago. Shame on you for staying away so long.”
“Well, I’m back now. How’re the children?”
“They’re a handful. Just like Pete.”
“They act like their mom. Every one of them with a temper as wild as her red hair,” Pete responded.
Skylar loved the lively give-and-take between Pete and his wife. Envied it, really. Why couldn’t she have what they did? A good marriage, kids to love, a real home?
She knew the answer to that, of course. She didn’t have any of those things because she didn’t know whether they would work for her and she was afraid to find out.
Or maybe she didn’t have them because she was too darned ornery and unconventional and…well, just plain wild.
“But enough about us,” Pete said. “Come on, Skylar. I’ll introduce you to the band, give you a chance to run through some things with them.” He hugged her. “Gosh, I can’t tell you how much this means to me, Sky. I’ve been wanting you here for years. What made you change your mind?”
Skylar could have told him any number of things: that she didn’t like sitting around nights doing nothing, that she liked to keep in practice during the band’s off-season, that she loved singing anywhere, anytime.