by JoAnn Ross
The Ferris wheel jerked to a halt. Down below, people were getting off, others getting on. “If the scuttlebutt is to be believed, her father never quite forgave her mother for what he considered her carelessness. Plus, the burdens of taking care of a toddler are tough enough without tossing a mental handicap into the mix.”
The wheel began to move again, picking up speed.
“The guy left Mrs. Kellstrom with the chore of teaching their daughter how to walk and talk and do all that other basic stuff again from scratch.”
“That must have been horribly difficult.”
“I suppose it may help that she’s a nurse. Even so, it would have to be a helluva test of strength. But she obviously did a great job, because Cindy Kellstrom’s one of the nicest, most hardworking kids I’ve ever met.”
She sounds a lot like John, Savannah thought. “They look sweet together,” she said as the wheel stopped again, leaving them at the very top, with a bird’s-eye view of John buying his girlfriend a cone of fluffy pink cotton candy.
“They are kind of cute,” he agreed. “Of course I’m not looking forward to dealing with his wounded heart when they break up, which they’re bound to do at their age, but I suppose we all have to learn from experience.”
“I suppose so.” Savannah heard the laughter and shrieks from the Tilt-a-Wheel and watched as it dipped and spun, the riders pressed hard against the side by centrifugal force.
“That’s exactly how I felt when my marriage broke up,” she murmured, surprised when she realized she’d said the words out loud.
He followed her gaze. “Dizzy and sick to your stomach?”
“No.” She watched the floor drop away. The wheel spun faster. The people shrieked louder. Savannah’s hands tightened on the metal bar in front of them as the wheel began its rapid descent.
“Well, the sick-to-the-stomach description pretty much fits.” Or at least it had the morning after she’d left Kevin when she’d awakened at the Beverly Wilshire with a killer hangover. “But mostly I felt as if the bottom had dropped out of my life.”
“Perhaps that’s not so bad.” He pried her hands off the bar and held them between his as they swooshed past the ticket taker and headed back up again. “Maybe the bottom should drop out of all our lives every so often, if for no other reason than to let some fresh air in.”
“That’s a nice philosophy. But the next time I feel my life getting a little stuffy, I believe I’ll just open a window.”
She’d lost track of John and Cindy. But looking out over the park, Savannah could make out her grandmother and Henry. Miracle of miracles, they seemed to be actually getting along as they ate hot dogs and watched men trying to scale towering greased poles. Not far away, Lilith and Amy had moved on to the spinning teacup ride.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked mildly.
“Not particularly.”
“He hurt you.” It was not a question.
“Yes.” So much for fun, Savannah thought.
“Did he hit you?”
“Of course not.” She glanced at Dan in su$$$prise. She was even more surprised to see something new in his eyes. Something da$$$ and dangerous. “It’s not that big a deal.” She shrugged. “Divorce hurts. However it happens.”
“Mine didn’t.”
“Really?”
“I suspected I was making a mistake the day I got married. I think Amanda did, too.”
“Then why did you go through with it?”
“Beats me. Because five hundred of her father’s closest friends were coming to dinner?”
“Don’t joke. Since you brought it up, I’d really like to know.” Surely he couldn’t take what was supposed to be a lifetime commitment so casually?
“Okay.” His expression turned pensive. Unreadable. “I suppose the simplest way to put it is that Amanda and I were unlucky enough to meet at a time when we were both asking ourselves that old song lyric, ‘Is that all there is?’ There was a brief chemical flash, but we were adults who’d admittedly been around the block a few times. Neither of us would have gotten married just for lust.”
Savannah worried when the idea of Dan lusting after some society blond named Amanda caused a stir of something that felt uncomfortably like jealousy.
“The bottom line was that she thought I had something she wanted. And I thought she had something I wanted. By the time we finally called it quits, the only thing either of us wanted from the other was freedom.”
“That’s sad.”
“I’m certainly not a proponent of divorce. But in some cases, like ours, where both parties are financially independent, with no kids, and seemingly unable to do anything but make each other miserable, it might be the best solution all around.”
“I suppose I can understand that.” But she couldn’t really identify. “I was never miserable.”
They’d reached the bottom again. When the ticket taker leaned forward to open the bar, Dan shoved a bill into his hand.
“We’ll be staying a bit longer.” The man looked inclined to argue. He glanced over at the ticket booth, then back toward Dan again. Massive shoulders that appeared to have been carved from oak shrugged. He jammed the money into the pocket of his black T-shirt. “Suit yourself.”
“Now then.” Dan put his arm around Savannah and drew her closer as they slowly climbed back up to the top of the double wheel. “You were saying? About not being miserable?”
“I wasn’t. Really,” she insisted, meeting his openly skeptical look. “In fact, for a long time, I thought I was blissfully happy.”
“Women who are blissful in their marriages don’t usually get divorced.”
“True.” She sighed and wondered how she could possibly explain her behavior to Dan since she was just beginning to understand it herself. “You’d have to know Kevin to understand.”
Dan decided that it would probably be best if he never met the weasel.
Neither of them said anything for an entire revolution. Dan was a patient man. Years of interrogating individuals on the witness stand had taught him to use silence well.
“I met him right after I’d graduated from culinary school. I’d gotten a job as an assistant to the assistant pastry chef at the Whitfield Palace hotel in Paris.”
Dan whistled softly. “When deluxe will no longer do,” he murmured the slogan of the worldwide luxury hotel. “I’m impressed.” He didn’t mention that he and Amanda had stayed at that same hotel on their honeymoon. Had Savannah been working there then? he wondered.
“Kevin had just been hired as assistant manager of customer services. Before that he’d been night manager at the Hôtel de Paris in Monaco. The day he arrived, I ran into him at the end of my shift. He was sitting at a corner table, all alone in the deserted dining room, poring over a tourist guide of popular Paris sights, trying to figure out the way to the Eiffel Tower.”
“Which you promptly offered to show him.”
She looked surprised. “Yes. How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess,” he said dryly.
“Well, anyway,” she forged on, “it was Paris in the spring, I was horribly homesick and lonely, and he was just enough years older to seem so much more worldly than most of the boys I knew. He was also suave and sophisticated and looked incredibly handsome in his Italian suits.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d just as soon skip the roll call of attributes.”
“But that’s just my point,” Savannah said earnestly. “He seemed like every young girl’s romantic fantasy. Like Prince Charming. He even shared my dream of someday owning a little inn together, and he made it seem so wonderfully romantic….
“Even after we eloped, whenever I thought I sensed cracks in the facade of what I wanted to believe was our perfect marriage, he convinced me that I was only imagining things. The hotel business gets a lot of women—about-to-be-divorced women, lonely women, career women on business trips who want a fling away from home. He told me that some of those women may occasionally come o
n to him, but I didn’t need to worry because I was the special one. I was the only woman he could ever want.”
She managed a sad smile. “Unfortunately, I discovered that I wasn’t the only woman he was telling all those pretty words to.
“My ex-husband was manipulative, seductive, and unfortunately without any moral core. After I came home, Ida described his charm as being the oily kind that washes off in the shower.”
“That’s probably one of the few things your grandmother has ever said that I understand.” Dan skimmed his fingers over her shoulder to toy with the ends of her hair. “I’m sorry.”
He honestly was sorry she’d been hurt. But Dan couldn’t really regret her marriage breaking up, because if the husband had been the paragon she’d mistaken him for, Savannah would still be happily whipping up soufflés in Malibu instead of sitting here at the top of Coldwater Cove with him.
“So was I. I was sorry, hurt, and angry, and I’ve recently realized exactly how much of my self-confidence and self-respect he stole while I wasn’t looking.” She fell silent and looked out over the midnight-dark waters of the cove.
The carousel’s cheery calliope drifted up from the midway. The twangy sounds of a country guitar and fiddle band rode on air scented with popcorn, peanuts, fir, and sawdust. Once again Dan waited.
“You know about Lilith,” she said, turning back toward him. “About her life before Cooper. Her marriages.”
“I’ve heard a few stories.”
“I love my mother…. Really,” she insisted when he didn’t immediately respond.
“I believe you.”
“I’ve always loved her. And I was never as angry about her behavior as Raine seemed to be.”
“Perhaps you were too busy bottling your anger up.”
That suggestion hit a little too close for comfort. “All right. I have to admit to wondering recently, now that we’re all home again, if in my need to avoid confrontation, I’d managed to convince myself that Lilith’s behavior didn’t disturb me as much as it did Raine.
“Maybe one of these days I’ll work that out. But what I have realized, since I discovered Kevin making love—”
“Not love.”
“What?” His quiet comment sidetracked her.
“I’ve never met the guy, but from the little you’ve said, and what I’ve inferred from Jack and Raine, I’m guessing the weasel doesn’t know the first thing about love.”
She wondered if becoming an attorney had made him so perceptive, or if he’d chosen the law because of what appeared to be a natural talent for reading people.
“It’s difficult to love someone else when you’re so enamored with yourself,” she responded dryly. “When I discovered he’d been having an affair with the head of the resort’s legal department, I think what really hurt, more than his infidelity, was that deep down inside, I’d known it all along.
“It was as if we had this secret, unspoken contract. Kevin screwed around, and I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. So by overlooking his lapses in monogamy, on some level, so long as he remained discreet and we could both continue to lie about his behavior, I believed that I was keeping my marriage intact.”
“Then he breached the contract by bringing the affair out into the open,” Dan suggested.
“I think I was the last person at Las Casitas to know.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not exactly right. I was the last person to acknowledge it.”
Except for a few general comments to her family, and telling Raine whatever details her sister needed to handle the legal aspects of her divorce, Savannah really hadn’t talked about the breakup of her marriage.
She’d been too embarrassed. Too ashamed. Now she realized that Kevin was the one who should be ashamed.
“The entire time I was growing up, I swore that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes regarding men that Lilith did. I promised myself that when I got married it would be for keeps.”
“Given Lilith’s marital history, I suppose it makes a certain cockeyed sense that you’d stick out a bad relationship longer than you should have. But I still can’t understand why you married a jerk like that in the first place.”
“Neither can I, now. I suppose I read too many fairy tales growing up. I was waiting to get swept off my feet, so when Kevin proposed eloping to Monte Carlo a week after we met, I thought it was what love was supposed to feel like.”
She was looking out over the park again in a way that had Dan suspecting that she was seeing that long-ago day she’d exchanged vows with a guy that was so very wrong for her. Even though he could see how she’d gotten herself in such an impossible situation, he was still surprised that a girl who’d always seemed like the princess of Coldwater Cove could have ended up playing the role of Cinderella.
“Sometimes it’s mutual. Guys can get swept off their feet, too. My folks only knew each other a week when they got married.”
“Really?”
“Really. Dad had just graduated from college, and since the Air Force had paid for his education, he was about to ship out to Vietnam, which, I suppose, admittedly helped move the timetable up a little.
“Mom was the nurse who gave him his inoculations, and he insists that he fell head over heels. Literally. He fainted right after she stuck the needle in.”
A silvery laugh bubbled from between Savannah’s lips. Luscious lips Dan could still taste. Lips he wanted to taste again. “That’s a wonderful story.”
“I’ve always thought so. Dad hates Mom to tell it because he says it makes him sound like a wuss. They’ll celebrate their thirty-seventh anniversary next spring.
“My grandparents didn’t even take that long to get married. Gramps was in the navy. He met Gram when she was handing out doughnuts at a USO during World War II, and they eloped that same night, had eight kids, and are still crazy about each other. In fact, the way they slow dance at family reunions is downright embarrassing.”
She smiled. “It sounds as if war has been very good for your family.”
“They would have all gotten together, anyway,” he said with a shrug. “As Gramps always says, you can’t fight destiny.”
Savannah looked skeptical, but she didn’t argue.
They fell silent. Enjoying the night. Enjoying each other. Music from far below played on. The Ferris wheel continued its revolutions. When they stopped at the top again, Dan cupped her cheek in the hand that had been playing with her hair and turned her face toward him.
“Advance warning, Savannah. I’m going to kiss you. If you don’t want me to, you’d better say so now.”
She didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. Her eyes, two limpid pools of need, gave Dan the answer he needed.
All it took was the taste of her to make him hard. Dan wasn’t gentle this time. Unable to get enough of her, his mouth turned hot and hungry. Needing more, he used his thumb to coax her lips open.
The kiss grew more and more ravenous as he swallowed her soft moans and throaty whimpers.
Dan wanted to touch her. To taste her. Everywhere. He imagined his mouth on her flesh, following the lush curves while his hands played hot licks on her body—that incredible body that he was literally aching to be inside.
“If we’re not careful, we’re going to end up falling into the cove.” He wondered if that would cool them off and decided they’d just set the water to boiling instead.
She drew her head back and blinked slowly. Sometime during the heated kiss, her hand had landed in his lap. Dan ground his teeth as she absently stroked him. “It just might be worth it.”
Because he was on the verge of exploding, he took hold of her hand to keep them both out of trouble. “You keep touching me that way, sweetheart, and you may just end up getting us both arrested for disorderly conduct when I rip off your clothes and ravish you atop a amusement ride in a public park.”
“Ravishing sounds pretty good,” she admitted as the wheel jolted again.
“Maybe later.” With his gaze still on hers, h
e kissed her again, lightly this time, and watched a mingling of pleasure and need rise in her eyes. “When we both have our feet on the ground again.”
Before she could respond, they’d reached the end of Dan’s money. “Time’s up,” the ticket taker said firmly.
Wanting to be alone with Savannah, this time Dan didn’t argue. They’d no sooner started back across the park when John came running up to them.
“I’ve been looking all over for you, Savannah,” he said. He was obviously agitated and out of breath.
Her fingers tightened on Dan’s. He felt her hand turn cold. “Did something happen to my grandmother?”
“No. Dr. Lindstrom’s fine. But she sent me to get you. She said it’s an urgent family problem and you all need to go back to the house right away. She and Henry and Gwen are waiting for you at the car. With Raine and Jack.”
“Gwen’s here?”
John nodded earnestly. “I think she’s what the problem is about.”
Savannah’s gaze cut from John to Dan.
“Perhaps it’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said encouragingly.
“We can always hope.” She did not sound encouraged.
As they headed toward the parking lot, Dan reminded himself that Savannah had made a substantial financial and emotional commitment here in Coldwater Cove. She wouldn’t be going anywhere.
There would be plenty of time to pick up where they’d left off. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
13
“I didn’t say for certain that I wanted her back,” Gwen insisted after they’d gathered in the front parlor of Ida’s home.
To keep Amy out of the discussion, Henry, Jack, and John had taken her upstairs to watch a National Geographic video about whales on Ida’s bedroom television. Since he was the attorney who’d written up the initial adoption agreement, Dan had stayed downstairs with the Lindstrom women and Gwen.
“I said I was thinking about it.” The teenager’s bottom lip thrust out as she turned to Raine. “When I signed the adoption contract, you told me I could change my mind.”