by Liz Talley
Her eyes met his straight on. “Yeah. You should have.” She glanced away, running a hand through the top of her hair, sliding the other into a side pocket on her dress.
The outfit was the same she’d had on in Martin’s office. There it’d looked fresh and crisp. Now, it was wrinkled as if she’d been wallowing in it, which, he realized, was probably exactly what she’d been doing. The thought pinched his heart.
“It might not have changed the way things turned out, but I keep wondering if it could have.” The wistfulness in her voice clawed at his insides. “If I’d approached him differently. In my own way. I’m good with people. With students and parents. Even the difficult ones.”
Garrett recalled the conversation with their mutual friend in the States and the guilt in his stomach took on more weight. “Josh told me that.”
“But you didn’t believe him because anybody with my...interesting characteristics...” a bitter note edged into her voice as she held up her half hand “...couldn’t be someone others would trust.”
Her words slammed into him, momentarily shattering his resolve to relinquish the control. He stepped toward her, and she stepped back before he caught himself. He didn’t want her to leave. Things would be okay if he could just keep her talking. “When he told me that, I didn’t know you well. Now I do, and the trust is there. Believe me.”
“That’s the problem, Garrett.” Her voice grew quiet—ominously so—and the hairs on the back of his neck rose. “I don’t know when I can believe you and when I’m being judged on the Angie scale.” Tears cascaded down her cheeks, scalding Garrett’s heart with their honesty. “I love you, but love can’t sustain a relationship. There has to be trust, and we’re just not there yet.”
His heart caught on her last word and pounded it into his brain. “But we’ll get there.”
“We don’t have time.” She shook her head. “Even another three weeks isn’t enough to build anything that can sustain the time and distance we’re up against.” She took a deep breath and he watched it shudder in her chest. The next one he took responded in kind.
“Don’t, Tara.” He held a palm up to make her stop talking. Giving her control was a mistake, and he had to slow this train down and veer it away from the cliff it was hurdling toward. Then she reached out and took his hand, and the gesture came so unexpectedly...so gently and so unlike anything Angie would’ve ever done, it threw his game off and shocked him into silence.
“I’ve decided not to change my ticket,” she went on. “I’m going home on the fifteenth like I originally planned. It’ll be better for everybody this way.”
He found his voice again and opened his mouth to protest, but she countered with her coup de grâce.
“Especially Dylan.”
His heart stalled in his chest, and his head felt like it would explode with the acknowledgment that she was right. This sure as hell felt like the worst that could happen, but devastating Dylan would trump everything.
“I love you, Tara,” he said simply.
She nodded. “Yeah. I think you do.”
Their eyes met for one horrible and tender moment that held all the passion of what they’d had together...and all the regrets of what might have been.
Then she turned and ran back to her door, flipping off the light on the terrace.
Leaving him in the dark.
* * *
TARA WAS STARTLED AWAKE and glanced at her clock.
Six fifty-two. Someone was knocking on her front door.
Garrett. He probably didn’t come across the terrace because he didn’t want Dylan to know he was talking to her. On his way to work? She realized she hadn’t even asked what happened when he returned to the office last night. If he was going in this early, things must not have gone well.
She lay there, listening to him knock a second time, thinking how she didn’t need to begin her day like this. It was going to be difficult enough without hearing his pleas for reconciliation right off the bat.
She blinked, trying to rid her eyes of the two hours of sleep she’d managed, but sandbags had replaced her eyelids. With all the crying she’d done, she probably should be thankful they’d even open.
Garrett knocked again, more persistent this time, and she resigned herself to the fact that he wasn’t going away. She stumbled from the bed still in yesterday’s clothes, grimacing at the achy feeling that suffused her entire body.
She’d caught a bad case of heartbreak flu.
“I’m comin’.” Her voice crackled as if she were ninety.
She stopped at the door and took a deep breath to brace for the onslaught of emotion. Then she swung it open, and her chin hit her chest.
“Dad!”
“Hi, lovebug.”
Sawyer O’Malley didn’t look quite as bad as she did, but he was running a close second. Tired and rumpled and unshaven, he was the most wonderful thing her eyes could’ve beheld at that moment.
He dropped his small bag and held out his arms, and Tara fell into his warm embrace, sobbing her joy and anguish.
“What are...you doing...here?” She jerked her way through the obvious question.
He didn’t let go. Just kept holding her while he spoke, rocking back and forth in a soothing motion. “You sounded so miserable yesterday when I talked to you. I couldn’t stand the thought of you facing all of this alone.”
“But, Dad...this is Paris. It’s...not like driving...from Taylor’s Grove...to Paducah. How’d you get here...so fast?” Her tears were leaving a wet spot on his shirt, but she didn’t care. Her dad was there, holding her, and suddenly her topsy-turvy world had righted a bit.
“I bought a ticket, drove to St. Louis and got on a plane.” He kissed the top of her head. “The seven-hour difference helped. It was still morning at home when I talked to you.”
She loosened her grip so she could lean back and look him in the eye. “You shouldn’t have come. But I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me, too.” He gathered her to his chest in a tight squeeze. “But if I don’t get some coffee soon, I’m going to collapse.”
She pulled away with a smile, the first one she’d felt in what seemed like forever. “I can help with that.”
She showed him around her apartment and let him freshen up while she prepared breakfast. Her appetite still hadn’t returned but she forced down a few bites of bacon, eggs and toast to help ease her splitting headache while she shared all the gruesome details of the visit with Jacques Martin.
Pain radiated from her dad’s eyes as he listened, and every so often he’d shake his head in disgust or sympathy or whatever the appropriate emotion was at the time.
She didn’t say too much about Garrett—only that she’d ended the relationship and how that seemed to be the smart thing to do. And, for the most part, her dad withheld advice.
“It just felt so right, Dad.”
Her tears turned on again, and he took her hand, his touch as gentle as his voice. “Maybe it is right.”
That certainly wasn’t what she’d expected. “But not if the trust isn’t there.”
“No, trust is important.” He swallowed hard. “It has to be earned, and that takes time.”
“Time Garrett and I don’t have.” She shrugged. “I’m leaving Saturday.” She paused, realizing she’d been talking only about herself since he’d arrived. “Are you staying till then?”
He smiled, but sadness darkened his eyes. “No. Actually, my return flight leaves at three, and I have to be back at the airport at one, so I’ll need to leave here by noon.”
“What? It’s seven already! You’re only here for five hours?”
“I have an important meeting at the church tomorrow. I have to be back for it.”
“So you came all this way...?”
“To show
my daughter—” He looked at her then with an intensity she’d rarely seen except when her dad was preaching. He tapped his chest at the place over his heart. “To show my daughter...who is more precious to me than life itself...how much she’s loved and treasured. And that I’ll always be there for her.”
Tara’s heart swelled so large it pushed the air from her lungs and for a moment she couldn’t speak. “I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through, Dad,” she managed, at last. “I’m not sure I deserve you.”
“None of us deserve the blessings we’re given. That’s what makes them special.”
She glanced out the window and saw Garrett and Dylan stirring in their apartment. They’d blessed her life. She could only hope that in some small way she’d blessed them, too. And the best way to assure that she remained a blessing, at least to Dylan, was to leave while things were good between them.
She made her mind up quickly. “I’m going to call the airlines and see if I can move my flight up to today. I want to go home with you.”
Her dad’s eyes widened. “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Her heart, which had grown so large a minute ago, started to wither. She knew if she stayed, it would shrivel up to nothing in no time flat. “I came to Paris to find out who I am, and now I know. I’m Tara O’Malley from Taylor’s Grove, Kentucky...and I’m proud of that,” she said more to herself than to him. “I need to go home, need to get back to my life.”
“But...?”
“No buts.” Resolve brought her to her feet. She had a plan of action. It may not be the best one, but at least she wouldn’t be wallowing in sorrow here for four more lonely days.
She could wallow at home just as easily...surrounded by people who loved her.
“I’m going to shower and pack.”
“Can you be ready by eleven-thirty?” Her dad’s eyes held a strange glint.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I have one thing I want to see during this whirlwind trip to Paris.”
She gave a small laugh. He was so predictable. “Notre-Dame’s not far. I’ll hurry and maybe we’ll even have time to walk there.”
He shooed her in the direction of the bedroom. “Go on. I need to call your mom.”
Tara grabbed her luggage from the hall closet and hurried to her room to begin stuffing it with clothes.
* * *
IT WAS JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT, but Faith wasn’t asleep. She wasn’t even in bed. She’d been staring at the same words on the same page for a long while, debating with herself whether to call the sheriff and report Sawyer as missing.
He’d texted her around five saying he’d talk to her tomorrow. She’d been so hurt and angry he’d gone fishing, she hadn’t texted him back.
But an hour or so ago, she swallowed her pride and called him because he still hadn’t returned from the lake and all sorts of scenarios had started messing with her mind. Most of them centered around him falling out of the boat and being knocked unconscious and drowning.
Of course, he’d specifically texted tomorrow, so he could be ignoring her calls or might even have his phone turned off. He did that sometimes when he needed to think.
She picked up her car keys. She would just drive over to the house. He might’ve taken the boat home since her car wasn’t taking up the extra space in the garage. She could run over there and peek in the garage window....
Her phone rang, shattering her thoughts. The caller ID said it was Sawyer, but what if someone had found his phone in an empty boat?
Panic flooded adrenaline through her system. “Hello?” she practically screamed into the phone.
“Whoa!”
“Don’t whoa me!” she snapped. All of the frustration that had been bottled up since morning came spewing out. “Where are you? It’s after midnight and you haven’t brought the boat back and you haven’t been answering my calls and I’ve been imagining your dead, unconscious body floating around some dark cove on Kentucky Lake.”
He laughed? How dare he?
“Dead and unconscious, huh?”
“You know what I mean. I’ve been scared out of my wits.”
“I’m in Paris, Faith.”
“Well, you could’ve at least told me you were going down there.” She huffed. “Is there a tournament?”
He chuckled again. “Not Paris, Tennessee. Paris, France. I’m with Tara.”
Faith’s knees buckled, and she plopped down on the floor. “You’re in France? With Tara?”
“I couldn’t stand the thought of her being over here alone, dealing with all she’s going through.”
Faith winced at the raw emotion in his voice. “Oh, Sawyer. How’s she doing?”
“Hurting. Depressed.”
Shock began to dissolve her brain matter into a mishmash of relief and worry, releasing a flood of questions into her brain. “How’d you get there so fast? Why didn’t you tell me you were going?”
“I left as soon as I could get the arrangements made, and I didn’t tell you because I knew you would try to talk me out of it.”
She nodded, even though he couldn’t see her. She would most definitely have tried to talk him out of such an extravagant trip, especially with their income on the chopping block... Oh, Lord! “Did you forget the meeting with the Board of Fellowship tomorrow night?” With him not there to defend himself, Sue would ramrod her way through the process in record time.
“I didn’t forget.” The weariness in his tone caught in her chest and squeezed her heart. “I’m booked on a return flight this afternoon. Tara’s decided to come home with me. She’s going to try to change her ticket to that flight.”
“Ah...” A worried gasp escaped from Faith’s lungs. “How are we going to pay for all this, Sawyer? If you lose the church...?”
“Don’t worry about the money. Everything’s already taken care of.” The gentle voice lowered. “Love always finds a way.”
The reality of the situation finally rooted in Faith’s mind, warming her through and through. Sawyer, bless his heart, had gone all the way to Paris, France, to take care of his daughter. His daughter, regardless of the circumstances surrounding her conception. He’d used their savings, no doubt. But that didn’t matter because he was there for Tara, taking care of everything...like he’d always done. And Faith could feel his steadfast love holding her up, too.
“You’re a wonderful man, Sawyer.” Faith hoped her voice could convey a tiny part of the pride she felt. “Tara’s so blessed to have you in her life.”
“I’m the one who’s blessed, Faith.”
She couldn’t stifle the sob that sprang from her lips.
“Hey, don’t cry.” His soothing voice caressed her from across the miles...across an ocean. “I’m going to let you go now. I’ll call you when we get back into St. Louis. But adding in the four-hour drive, it might be late when I get home.”
“I don’t care how late it is. I’ll be up.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” She heard the smile in his voice.
A final question popped into her mind. “But if you drove the truck to St. Louis, what did you do with the boat? It’s not here.”
There was a long pause, and then an even longer breath. “I sold it.”
Faith felt another blow to her system that shook her to the core. “You sold your dad’s bass boat? Why?”
“I used the money to come to Paris.”
“But, Sawyer, you loved that boat.” Faith couldn’t stop the tears now if she wanted to, and her voice started to blubber as her nose and throat clogged.
“No, the boat was nice to have, but I love my family. Trust me, it was a small price to pay for the love I get in return. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up quickly, and Faith understood he didn’t want to hear her cry. But that didn’t stop her
. She cried for Tara, for what she was enduring. And for the bass boat, the family heirloom...gone now.
But, most of all, she cried for the conclusions she had jumped to that morning.
Sawyer loved their children. All three of them.
And he loved her.
He proved it day after day...had proven it as long as she’d known him.
He would get home, and they would work out their problems.
“‘Love always finds a way.’”
She branded his promise on her heart.
* * *
GARRETT FELT THE TENSION as soon as he walked in the door at Soulard.
Far from the usual morning bustle of activity and conversations, people were scurrying around like scared mice, speaking in hushed whispers, eyes wide with alarm or narrowed and tight with agitation.
Through the conference-room window, he saw the same group he’d met with last night, but two others had been added to the group. Adrienne Goffinet, Soulard’s brilliant young attorney, and a middle-aged man he didn’t recognize, but who was speaking and had everyone’s attention. Adrienne’s face was ashen and drawn into a scowl.
It took only a quick glance for the solemn atmosphere in the conference room to creep into Garrett’s gut and chill him to the bone...only another few seconds to know that Jacques Martin was behind it.
He’d barely had time to set his briefcase on his desk before Henri came in and closed the door. His friend held no coffee. This was even worse than he’d thought.
“What’s happened, Henri?”
“C’est mauvais, Garrett. C’est très, très mauvais.”
“Tell me what’s happened, damn it!”
Henri unbuttoned the top button on his shirt and loosened his tie. “An official is here from le CFE.”
An official from the Centre de Formalités des Entreprises was here? Henri was right. This was very bad. “What does he want? Do you know?” Garrett empathized with Henri’s loosening of his tie. His own felt like a noose around his throat now.