He knew what pride meant to his father. And his absence would be noticed by Ryan. Cruz weighed sides. “Does it mean that much to you?”
“Yes,” Ruben replied quietly. “It means that much to me.”
Surrender seemed inevitable. He’d gone head to head with his father before, and even when he won, he felt as if he lost. There seemed no point in this confrontation. A quick grin of affection flashed across his handsome face.
“All right, I’ll go.”
A softer, subtler smile graced Ruben’s features. There was a candle burning in the church he attended regularly. It represented a silent prayer that the parents of his grandchild would find their way into each other’s lives. But being a down to earth, sensible man, Ruben knew that God helped those who helped themselves and he was more than willing to be on God’s team.
“Good.” Sitting down, Ruben made himself comfortable on the worn leather sofa. “I’ll wait while you change and get ready.”
“Yes, I’m sure you will.” With a resigned laugh, Cruz went to get dressed.
He walked in just as Savannah was being embraced by Dallas. The sudden flare of emotion he felt cut through all the lies he’d been telling himself. He hadn’t put her from his mind. On the contrary, she was more entrenched there than ever.
And Cruz had absolutely no idea what he was going to do about it.
It was as if she had radar. Savannah knew the instant Cruz walked into the house, even though there were people between them, blocking the way. She’d already told herself not to expect him, and thought she could deal with his absence calmly. But his presence was another matter. She felt her heart stop, then start again, pounding as if she’d just run a record-breaking mile.
Like an orchestrated scene in a movie, their eyes met across the foyer. Suddenly, it felt as if sunshine had slipped into her body, despite the gray skies outside.
She barely heard Ryan above the roar in her ears.
“Well, now that everyone’s here,” Ryan announced jovially, looking at Ruben, “I believe dinner can finally be served.”
It took her a moment to realize that Dallas was presenting his arm to her. “If you’ll do me the honor, I’d like to escort you to the dining room, milady,” he teased.
She saw Cruz stop abruptly, but there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t very well tell Dallas that she was waiting, hoping that Cruz was coming toward her.
And then an idea came to her from nowhere, like lightning across the clear sky. “Of course—if you promise to let me bend your ear a little. I have a proposition for you.”
“Sounds promising.”
Cruz heard Dallas’s deep laugh and something in his gut tightened in angry response.
As she walked into the dining room with Dallas, she quickly outlined her idea.
He looked at her thoughtfully, then smiled. Clearly Savannah and her idea had taken him by surprise. “I’ll give it some thought,” he promised.
“That’s all I ask.” Mentally, she crossed her fingers.
Dallas helped her with her chair, then glanced down at the place card next to Savannah’s setting. He shook his head as he smiled. “Looks like we won’t be sitting together. I’ll discuss this with you later.”
Before she had a chance to read the name on the setting beside hers, she saw Dallas exchange a few words with Cruz. The next moment, Cruz crossed to her and sat down next to her.
Feeling oddly flustered, her eyes met Vanessa’s across the table. The other woman winked. The seating arrangement suddenly made sense: Vanessa had been in charge.
“If you’d rather sit somewhere else…” Savannah began quietly. She didn’t want him next to her if it made him uncomfortable.
He wondered if she was politely telling him to go elsewhere. Would she have preferred Dallas next to her? Cruz tried to shake himself free of the wave of jealousy that was becoming annoyingly familiar. “This is fine.”
With voices buzzing around them, she and Cruz began their meal in silence.
He could sweep any woman he chose to off her feet with absolutely no effort, he thought, yet he felt tongue-tied and awkward sitting beside Savannah, searching for a way to begin a conversation. Each made conversation with the people sitting on their other side, but not with one another.
It struck Cruz as ironic: she was the only one he wanted to talk to.
Glancing toward her, he noticed that the small portion of food she’d taken had hardly been touched. Was she feeling ill? “You’re not eating.”
His voice, low and gentle, startled her. She offered a quick smile, a fleeting movement of her lips, nothing more. “I nibbled while we were preparing it.”
Ryan had toasted Lily for the meal and his mother for all the meals that graced the Fortunes’ table the other 364 days. Cruz raised a brow. “You cooked this?”
“Some of it.” She down-played her part, though she’d enjoyed helping. “Lily couldn’t have managed preparing the entire meal alone.”
Cruz took a sip of his wine, watching her. She looked nervous, he thought. Was it because of him? Some of his own unease faded. “I just thought Ryan was paying lip service when he toasted Lily for preparing the meal. I thought this was really catered.”
“No, it was made right here in the kitchen.” As she spoke, she became more animated. “Ryan wanted to have it catered, but Lily insisted on making it a home-cooked meal. Vanessa and I volunteered to help her and Hannah.”
“Hannah, but not Maria?” He asked after Lily’s other daughter.
Lily had pretended it didn’t bother her, but Savannah knew it upset the woman a great deal to have Maria refuse to help.
“From what Vanessa tells me, Maria’s behavior is becoming more and more erratic.” It had been, so she’d been told, ever since Bryan’s christening. “Lily asked her to at least attend dinner, but she refused that, too. Maria gave her some excuse about having to be somewhere else.” It hadn’t even been an elaborate lie. Savannah shook her head. “If I had a mother who cared that much about me, I would certainly shown up.”
If. The word echoed in his head. How could your own parents not care about you? Inclining his head, he lowered his voice. “Is that why you’re here instead of home for Thanksgiving?”
She refused to read concern into his question, refused to allow her feelings to soften toward him any more than they already were. “This is my home, at least temporarily.”
“What about your parents?”
Out of habit, her voice became distant. Savannah had made up her mind a long time ago that the only way to excise the hurt from her life was to keep everything that had to do with her childhood and her parents under wraps.
“We don’t speak much. I send cards on their birthdays and the holidays, but…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.
His eyes were kind. “What about them—do they send you cards?”
No, it wasn’t going to hurt, it wasn’t. She had enough to deal with in the present without going back to the past for more.
Savannah pressed her lips together, toying with the dark circle of cranberry jelly on her plate. “My parents are busy leading separate lives.” Raising her head, she looked at Cruz, defying him to offer her pity. “They got divorced as soon as I went off to college. Sold the house, picked up the threads of lives they’d abandoned eighteen years earlier.” Shutting me out. “So you see,” she concluded with forced brightness, lowering her eyes again, “there is no ‘home’ for me to go to. They’ve each started lives that have nothing to do with me whatsoever.”
Cruz couldn’t understand people like that—people who could emotionally abandon their own flesh and blood. He was grateful for the family he had, even though at times he wanted them to butt out of his life.
“Their loss,” he told her quietly.
She raised her eyes to his. This time, the smile began in her eyes. “Thank you.”
He hadn’t said it to be thanked. He’d said it because it was true. Uncomfortable with her gratitude, he in
dicated his plate. The healthy serving he’d helped himself to was all but gone.
“This is very good. You really should eat some.” His eyes skimmed toward her belly, his meaning clear.
She picked up her fork. “All right, I’ll eat for one.”
“One?”
“I’m not hungry,” she explained quickly. “But maybe the baby is.”
Relieved there wasn’t something seriously wrong that she wasn’t telling him, he smiled at her. “Maggie said Travis was born hungry.”
Her eyes strayed toward the boy who was sitting between his mother and grandmother. With his combed-down hair and pint-size suit, he was apparently on his best behavior tonight. She hardly recognized him. “That’s because he’s made out of pure energy.”
The warm look in her eyes did not go unnoticed by Cruz. “Maggie tells me you’re very good with him.” He was summarizing a long speech his sister had delivered on more than one occasion, singing Savannah’s praises and filling his ear with things that she’d done with Travis, like starting to teach him to read despite how young he was. “She thinks you’ll make a good mother.”
Savannah hoped the words were prophetic. “I know I’m going to try. I love children, I always have. Having one of my own will be like holding a miracle in my arms.”
Even as she said it, she couldn’t quite believe it. She was going to be a mother. To have a child of her own. Part of her still wasn’t convinced, despite the ritual of looking at her waist in the mirror and her bouts of morning sickness, that she was actually going to have a baby.
He looked at her. “Yes, I can see how it would feel like that.”
The conversation grew easier, and they spoke as the dinner drew on.
A half hour later, Savannah pushed back her plate with a sigh. “I shouldn’t have had that much.” Once she had gotten started eating, it had been amazingly simple to continue. Now she felt utterly stuffed.
Standing behind her, Cruz helped Savannah with her chair. “I’m sure the baby appreciates the sacrifice you made. Maybe a little fresh air’ll help.” Taking her hand easily in his, Cruz began to lead her to the terrace. But he stopped as they passed Lily. “The meal was delicious, Mrs. Redgrove.”
Lily beamed at the compliment. “Thank you, Cruz. I know I don’t hold a candle to your mother, but it was certainly fun trying.”
She sounded sincere, and he appreciated the tribute she gave his mother. Maybe he’d been too quick to judge everyone so harshly. Maybe he’d do better to be a little more easygoing before labeling those around him, he decided.
The air on the terrace was chilly, quickly erasing any sluggishness that was beginning to take hold because of the large meal. Taking a deep, bracing breath, Cruz glanced toward Savannah. He saw her shiver.
He took off his jacket and slipped it around her shoulders. His hands lingered as he drew the front of the jacket together. Cruz looked down into her face, emotions stirring. “I’ve missed you.”
She couldn’t have kept the smile from her lips if she had tried. The simple words warmed her far more than his jacket did.
Now that he had told her, she didn’t want him feeling guilty about it. “You’ve been busy. How’s the horse coming along? Quicksilver, right?”
He laughed. “Quicksilver reminds me a little of you. Small, proud and stubborn. Lucky for me, she can be bribed with a lump of sugar.”
“So that’s your secret with women. Sugar. And here I thought it was your devastating charm.”
One eyebrow rose higher than the other. “Devastating, huh? Doesn’t seem to have worked on you.”
Her hands were partially hidden beneath his jacket, and she pressed them now against her belly. It was like touching a secret. Except it really wasn’t a secret anymore. “I think it worked all too well on me.”
It amazed him how quickly desire flared in his veins. One minute, it was all under control; the next, it was taking him prisoner and promising no mercy.
“Prove it.”
Without a word, Savannah turned her face up to his, the invitation clear. It was more than he could resist. Desire broke through the final restraint. All the needs he’d been trying to lock away, to unsuccessfully ignore, came to life, rattling cage doors that hadn’t been shut firmly enough.
He’d tried very hard not to think about her. Friday nights would find him going to town with his friends, trying to lose himself amid the anesthesia of inconsequential encounters. Without fail, women would seek him out, asking him to buy them a drink, interested in a night of passion with no strings attached.
He found himself ignoring them the way he wanted to ignore her. The only trouble was, he couldn’t ignore her.
Unable to deny himself, his mouth found hers, and it was as if he’d found his way home again. Cruz took her into his arms before he could think better of it. And then, there was no room to think at all.
Thirteen
Cruz really hadn’t wanted to come to the party in the main house. But once he’d allowed his father to talk him into it, he’d silently vowed that if he saw Savannah, nothing was going to happen between them. He wouldn’t let himself be alone with her, wouldn’t let himself kiss her, and above all, he wouldn’t let himself bring her back to his cabin where either of the above could have dangerous consequences.
From where he stood right now, it looked as if he wasn’t going to be able to keep a single promise.
Cruz wasn’t completely sure just when the decision to return to his cabin had been made, or by whom. Had he suggested it, or had she? Or did it just evolve?
All he knew was that kissing Savannah on the terrace robbed him of his sanity, his ability to remain detached.
Just as it always did.
A man shouldn’t want a woman who messed up his mind, whose very existence threatened to upheave everything in his life, uprooting foundations along the way and making him lose sight of the simplest of things. Like which end was up.
A man shouldn’t want a woman like that.
But he did.
He no longer had any answers. All Cruz knew was the length of time that had gone by since they’d last made love, down to the second. All he knew was that if he couldn’t have her tonight, he wouldn’t live to see the light of dawn.
“Come with me,” he whispered against Savannah’s mouth. The entreaty was pressed between two soul-igniting kisses.
How the word “no” turned into “anywhere” was completely beyond Savannah. She heard it at the same time Cruz did. And knew her fate was sealed. But then, she’d had her suspicions about her fate almost from the start.
They slipped away quickly, leaving the party behind. Cruz took her to the stable where he’d left Hellfire. He didn’t bother saddling another horse. Every second was precious.
The sky they rode beneath was beautiful and dusted with stars now, a sharp contrast to their last night together.
“I saw this once in a western,” Savannah told him after he’d set her on his horse and mounted behind her. His body pressed tantalizingly close to hers as they rode. “And thought it was hopelessly romantic.”
“And?”
She turned as far as she could in the saddle, her face inches from his. Her heart raced just to look at him. “I still do.”
Unable to wait, Cruz bent his head, his lips capturing hers in a quick kiss. He tasted strawberries and a smile.
Savannah’s eyes shone with humor in the moonlight. “At this rate, we’ll get to your cabin by Christmas.”
Cruz kicked his heels into the stallion’s flanks, urging the horse on more quickly. “I can’t wait that long.”
A wildness surged through Savannah’s veins, as she gloried in his confession.
The night was everything she expected.
And more.
Like two kettles heated to the limit and about to boil over, their passions spilled out on one another the moment they were inside the door.
With lips hungrily feasting and hands questing over one another, they shed each o
ther’s clothing, sending it all flying. Garments fell, slipping into shadows—along with the rest of the world.
The only thing that existed was the fire that blazed between them. All that mattered was quenching it.
But it refused to be quenched, or even managed.
The more Cruz kissed her, the more Savannah returned his ardor, the higher the flames rose.
Desire ravaging him, Cruz drew his head back, suddenly aware of how rough he was being. Concerned, he paused. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“Only if you stop,” she breathed.
Framing his face with her hands, Savannah brought his mouth back to hers. And paradise back to her life.
They made love wildly, as if they had never touched before. As if they both knew that when morning came, with its intrusive light, all this would be forever over, nothing more than a dream to be secretly treasured.
They had tonight.
He raked his hands over her body, so warm, so giving, astounded that within this fragile, soft vessel, a child of his was growing. It seemed impossible.
He felt his heart swell, and gave up telling himself that it was the moment, the mood, the madness that was seizing him. It was more, much more.
Cruz had been a passionate lover from the first, but this went beyond anything she’d experienced before in his arms. Savannah struggled just to draw air into her lungs. He seemed determined to pull it all away from her, to leave her gasping, fulfilled and praying for more with her last dying breath.
She arched against him as she felt his mouth on hers again, wrapping her legs around his hips and urging him in. Urging him to take her before she had no strength left to complete the journey with him.
It was a night that would forever be burned into her soul.
Consciousness crept over him in small, fuzzy layers, each a little brighter than the last. And with consciousness came contentment. He smiled before his eyes were opened. Smiled and reached for her.
His hand touched air. The sheets were cool.
Awake now, he looked at the place beside him in the bed where he had last enjoyed her. It was empty.
He didn’t have to get up and look through his rooms to know she wasn’t in the kitchen, or anywhere else in the cabin. She was gone.
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