Only Forever

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Of course,” he finished, casting a nervous glance toward Nick, “we’ll want to discuss your—er—reconciliation with Mr. Lawrence, too.”

  Vanessa beamed, perching behind Parker on the back of one of the two easy chairs he’d left her and ruffling his hair. “It’s a romantic story,” she said, well aware that Nick was seething even though she didn’t dare look at him.

  Parker was obviously baffled, but his tremendous ego served him well in his hour of need. He swelled up like a peacock and then shrugged in that aw-shucks-folks way that had made him such a hit with the fans. “I guess we were just swept away by passion,” he said.

  At last Vanessa risked a glance in Nick’s direction. It was obvious from his grin that he was on to her game, even if Parker and Harold weren’t.

  Vanessa was still looking at Nick when she responded to Parker’s remark. “It was incredible,” she said.

  7

  “It’s Friday night,” Nick said stubbornly, standing in Vanessa’s kitchen with his arms folded. “We had a date, remember?”

  Vanessa sighed. It was dark outside, even though it was still early, and there was a wintry chill in the air. She took her old sweater from the peg inside the pantry door and put it on. “We can’t just go on as though nothing happened, Nick,” she reasoned, wishing they could do exactly that.

  “Because you still don’t trust me,” he ventured to guess.

  She gently bit her lower lip for a moment. “I want to, but you’re so much like Parker….”

  His eyes darkened. “I didn’t come over here to be insulted,” he informed her. “Furthermore, damn it, I’m nothing like that bastard!”

  Vanessa took a can of vegetable-beef soup from the cupboard. Since the argument with Nick, she’d been virtually living on the stuff. “You are,” she insisted. When he started to speak, she held up a hand, palm outward, to silence him. “Besides the pro-athletics aspect, there’s your reputation. Do you deny that you’re known far and wide as a rounder and a ladies’ man?”

  Nick jerked the soup can out of her hand, stuck it up against the can opener and pushed down on the handle so that an angry whir filled the kitchen. “Who the hell told you that?” he demanded. “Parker?”

  Vanessa shook her head, reclaiming the soup, dumping it into a saucepan and adding water. “I’m not sure where I heard it. I just know, that’s all.” She studied him pensively as she put the mixture on the stove to heat. “You know, I think it’s very interesting that Jenna didn’t trust you when she was the one who was fooling around. Was yours an open marriage, Nick?”

  He rolled his eyes, looking more annoyed by the moment. “Not on my end, it wasn’t. As for Jenna, her own guilty conscience made her suspect me.”

  “Want some soup?” Vanessa asked, getting two bowls down from the shelf even as she spoke because she knew he wasn’t about to leave.

  Nick sighed. “No, but I’ll eat it,” he answered. While Vanessa was stirring the broth, he called DeAngelo’s and instructed someone to send over two orders of clam linguine and a bottle of white wine.

  She was grinning when she brought the steaming bowls of soup to the table. “A man of sweeping power and influence,” she commented, as much to keep the conversation moving as anything.

  Nick was frowning as he sat down. “How did your job interview go?” he asked.

  “They’re going to hire me, I think,” she answered, reaching for a basket of saltine crackers she’d set out earlier and squashing a handful into her soup. “Of course, if they see me on national television with Parker, they may change their minds.”

  For a few moments, Nick said nothing. He was busy adding crackers to his soup. When he finally spoke, his tone was serious. “You’re really going to do that? I thought you were just stringing Parker along to get rid of him.”

  Vanessa swallowed. “Yes, I’m really going to do that,” she confirmed. “And I’m pretty sure he’ll stop being a problem from then on.”

  “What about us, Vanessa?” Nick wanted to know, and there was a vulnerability in his voice that made her love him all the more hopelessly. “Where do we go from here?”

  Inside Vanessa ached. She knew there could be no relationship without trust, and as much as she longed for things to be different, she hadn’t reached the point where she could let herself rely on any man’s integrity. She looked away, unable to answer.

  He reached out and took her hand in his. “Okay, babe. So be it. I’ll back off for a while.”

  The prospect made Vanessa’s world seem as dark as deep space. “Don’t you dare leave me here to eat two orders of linguine all by myself,” she warned, on the verge of tears.

  He smiled sadly and stayed, but Vanessa was conscious of the vast distance between them—one that might never be bridged.

  Presently he found another subject, seemingly a safe one, and asked, “How did you get into telemarketing?”

  It was a relief to think about something besides her own mixed-up emotions, doubts and fears. “I majored in broadcast journalism in college,” she said. “Parker insisted that I drop out when we got married. He was traveling all the time, and I didn’t have much to do once the house was clean and everything, so I started looking for work.” She paused and lowered her head for just a moment, then went on. “Janet Harmon has been my friend for a long time. When the Midas Network came to Seattle and Paul was hired as production manager, he gave me a job.”

  “Selling gold chains and answering machines to the masses,” Nick remarked, setting his empty soup bowl aside and regarding Vanessa with puzzled eyes, “is a far cry from broadcast journalism.”

  She was instantly defensive. “Some of us don’t just fall into our dream jobs and become instantly successful,” she pointed out tartly. “I had to take what I could get.”

  The doorbell chimed in the distance like the ringing of the gong between rounds of a boxing match. Nick must have deemed it a good time to retreat to his own corner, for he slid back his chair and disappeared toward the front of the house.

  Vanessa hastily rinsed out their soup bowls and put them into the dishwasher, wondering what would happen between her and Nick and how it would be if he did indeed back off for a while.

  She had a feeling that life would become as dull a chore as cleaning out an oven or stripping years of wax from a linoleum floor.

  When Nick returned he was carrying a sizable white bag and a bottle of wine. Plundering the cupboards and drawers, he brought forth plates, silverware and a pair of dusty wineglasses.

  Vanessa immediately took the glasses from him and carried them to the sink, where she washed them in hot soapy water while Nick set out the meal he’d had sent over from his restaurant.

  “This house reminds me of your life,” he observed when she finally rejoined him at the table and took up her fork to eat linguine. “Lots of empty spaces.”

  She glared at him as she chewed the most exquisite pasta she’d ever tasted.

  He opened the wine bottle and poured chablis into her glass. “Well?” he prompted, arching one dark eyebrow. “Aren’t you even going to fight back?”

  “No,” Vanessa responded after a few moments of tight-jawed deliberation. “If you want to be a jackass, that’s your prerogative. I don’t have to jump on the proverbial bandwagon and become one, too.”

  Nick grinned at her, more in amazement than good humor, and shook his head. “At least you’re not denying that there are some gaps that need filling. I guess that’s progress.”

  Although Vanessa was furious, she managed to keep her temper under control. “Thank you for your analysis. And to think some people actually pay psychiatrists when all they’d need to do is ask the great Nick DeAngelo to tell them how to run their lives!”

  He sighed, and the sound conveyed an infinite sadness. “It isn’t going to work, is it?” he asked, setting down his fork and leaning back in his chair.

  A massive, hurtful lump formed in Vanessa’s throat. She closed her eyes for a moment, then shook he
r head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

  Nick stood, taking his leather jacket from a peg on the wall and shrugging into it. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said hoarsely, keeping his back to her, “but I love you, Vanessa. When and if that ever means anything to you, call me.”

  With that, he opened the back door and went out.

  Vanessa sat still in her chair for a long time, stunned and utterly confused. Then she got up and scraped the remains of their dinner down the garbage disposal, taking grim satisfaction in grinding it up. She just wished that she could throw in her memories of Nick as well to be pulverized and washed down the drain.

  Trying to sleep proved to be a useless effort that night. At the first glimmer of dawn, she called Nick.

  He answered on the second ring, sounding wide awake and quietly desolate.

  “How could you tell me you love me and then just walk out like that?” Vanessa asked.

  “Who is this?” he countered, and she could practically see his wonderful, dark eyes dancing with mischief.

  Vanessa laughed miserably. “Damn it, Nick, don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

  He sighed. “The whole thing is pretty confusing to me, too, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “You made the call, Vanessa,” Nick pointed out. “The ball’s in your court.”

  She shoved a hand through sleep-tangled auburn hair, then bit down on her thumb nail. “I’m in love with you,” she finally admitted.

  “That’s progress,” he conceded, but he still sounded the way Vanessa felt—sad.

  She closed her eyes against an ocean of scalding tears. “What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I need some time.”

  “Fine,” he retorted. “How does a hundred years strike you?”

  “That was mean!”

  Nick was silent for a few moments, and when he went on his voice was low and ragged. “I’ve told you before,” he explained with a slow patience that was patently insulting, “I don’t play games. If I can’t be totally committed to this relationship, I don’t want any part of it.”

  Vanessa felt as though he’d slapped her. “I see,” she said.

  “Should you ever feel ready to take the risk, get in touch with me. If I’m not involved with someone else, we’ll see what happens.”

  Outrage replaced shock. “Of all the arrogant—”

  “I’m through shadowboxing with you, Vanessa. I want a wife and a family and I’m not going to wait forever.”

  “How dare you threaten me that way!”

  “It isn’t a threat,” Nick answered, his words grating together like rusty nails in the bottom of a bucket. “It’s a fact.”

  “Goodbye,” Vanessa said after a brief interval.

  He hung up without returning her farewell.

  Vanessa was determined not to fall apart again. She was a modern woman, she told herself, independent with a career. She didn’t need Nick DeAngelo to be whole.

  Oh, but she wanted him. She wanted him.

  When a few hours had passed and she’d recovered her composure to some degree, she dialed the Harmons’ number. Paul answered.

  Vanessa explained that she had some personal business to take care of and asked for a few days off.

  “Are your grandparents all right?” her employer asked, his voice full of concern.

  At the mere mention of them, Vanessa ached with homesickness. She would have given a lot to be back in Spokane, pouring out her heart to the people who had raised her, but there wasn’t going to be time for that. “They’re fine,” she answered belatedly, feeling strangely tongue-tied. “It’s—it’s something else.”

  Paul sighed. “All right,” he said in his kind and quiet way. “Take as much time as you need.”

  “Thanks,” Vanessa replied. She asked Paul to give her best to Janet and then hung up.

  She had finished packing and was just carrying her suitcase downstairs when Rodney arrived to check up on her.

  “I saw Nick’s car here last night,” he said, standing in the doorway to the kitchen and eying the suitcase. “I guess the two of you are going away together for a few days, huh?”

  Again, Vanessa felt a hollowness inside. “Wishful thinking, Rod,” she answered in resigned tones. “I’m flying to New York with Parker.”

  Seeing Rodney’s mouth fall open was the only fun Vanessa had had in days. “What?” he croaked.

  Vanessa smiled. “He’s been pestering me to tell the world what I think of his book, and that’s what I plan to do,” she said.

  Rodney’s eyes rounded, and a grin broke over his face as her meaning struck him. “Wow,” he breathed. “He’ll kill you.”

  “He’ll want to,” Vanessa agreed, and just then the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it,” Rodney volunteered, loping toward the front door. Even though he was in his second year of chiropractic school, there were times when he was still the gawky boy Vanessa remembered.

  She stood up a little straighter when she heard him talking to Parker. Since there was no love lost between the two men, the exchange was terse.

  Seeing Vanessa, Parker smiled fondly as though there had been no ugly divorce and then kissed her cheek. “You are as lovely as ever,” he said.

  Vanessa thought of something teenagers had said when Rodney was in high school. Gag me with a spoon. “Thank you, Parker,” she said aloud. “So are you.”

  He gave her a bewildered look and then glanced at his Rolex.

  You’d think a man who could afford a watch like that would at least let his ex-wife keep all the furniture, Vanessa reflected.

  “Let’s go,” Parker boomed in sunny, all-hail-the-conquering-hero tones. “We’ve got a plane to catch. Thought we’d have dinner at Tavern on the Green.”

  Why not? Vanessa thought. He’s paying. “Sure,” she enthused. A cloud passed overhead as she considered potential problems. “You did book separate rooms, didn’t you, Parker?”

  He cleared his throat and looked away for a moment. “Thanks to my publisher, we have a penthouse suite. Nothing but the best for you, darlin’.”

  She arched one eyebrow as they started toward the door, but didn’t pursue the point. They could agree on sleeping arrangements later. “You’ll feed Sari until I get home and bring in the mail?” she asked of Rodney, who lingered in the entryway, watching her and Parker with a worried expression in his eyes.

  He nodded. “Sure.”

  Some impulse made her hurry back and plant a kiss on Rodney’s cheek. Don’t worry, she mouthed before turning back to Parker.

  There was a taxi waiting at the curb, and Parker made a great show of squiring Vanessa to it and sweeping open the door. She almost—not quite, but almost—felt guilty for what she was going to do to him.

  They were at the airport, about to board their plane, when Nick suddenly appeared, moving gracefully through the crowds of travelers as he approached. Vanessa felt a lump of dread rise in her throat and averted her eyes momentarily.

  Parker was cocky, shoving his hands into the pockets of his tailored trousers and rocking back on the heels of his Italian leather shoes. “I thought you had more pride than this, DeAngelo,” he dared to say.

  Vanessa gave her ex-husband a wild look and elbowed him, but when she turned her amber eyes to Nick, she was smiling.

  “What is it?” she asked sweetly.

  Nick took her arm in his hand and pulled her around a pillar, his nose an inch from hers. “You’re not actually going through with this, are you?” he demanded in a sandpapery whisper.

  She widened her eyes, well aware that Parker, while feigning arrogant disinterest, was actually listening. “I have to,” she answered. “Thank you for coming to see me off and goodbye!”

  “Goodbye, hell,” Nick rasped. “I have half a mind to buy a ticket on this plane and go to New York with you. Wouldn’t that be romantic—just you, me and your ex-husband.”

  Vanessa drew in a deep
breath, then let it out in a hiss. It was a technique she’d learned once in a relaxation seminar. “Go away.” She smiled. “Please?”

  Nick bent around the pillar to glare at Parker. “Are you going to sleep with that rat?” he demanded.

  “Talk about a lack of trust,” Vanessa pointed out, lifting her chin.

  Nick closed his eyes for a moment. “You’re right,” he admitted at length. “I shouldn’t have asked you that.”

  They were calling for the first-class passengers to board the plane, and Vanessa had to leave.

  She told him the name of the hotel where she would be staying, adding, “I’ll call you as soon as I’m settled.”

  But Nick shook his head. “I’ll be in Portland. We’ll talk when you get home.”

  Vanessa stood on tiptoe to kiss him lightly on the mouth, and Parker took her arm and dragged her away toward the boarding gate.

  She was feeling a confused sort of hope when she and her ex-husband were settled in their seats, the coach passengers trailing past them into the body of the airplane.

  Some of them recognized Parker and clogged the aisles, asking for autographs, but Vanessa paid little attention to them. She was staring out at the terminal, wondering what Nick was thinking.

  For the first time, she allowed herself to hope that things might eventually be all right between them, once she’d dealt with Parker and his book. That would close one chapter of her life, and she’d be able to begin another.

  Parker spent most of the trip flirting with a particularly attractive flight attendant; it was only when they had landed at JFK that he turned his efforts back to Vanessa.

  A long silver limousine had been sent to fetch them, and Vanessa smiled as she settled into the suede-covered seat. She meant to enjoy every possible luxury while she could since she would undoubtedly leave town on a rail, covered in tar and pigeon feathers.

  Twilight was falling as they drove toward the hotel, and Vanessa gazed out through the tinted windows, drinking in the spectacle of light and the cacophony that is New York.