Only Forever (2 page)

He favored her with a scorching look and dropped into the booth’s seat across from her. “I’d forgotten what a little witch you can be, Van.” He paused to square his shoulders. “Darla hasn’t complained.”

Darla, of course, was the girlfriend. “People with IQ’s under twenty rarely do,” Vanessa answered sweetly. Then she added, “Your two minutes are ticking away.”

A waitress came, and Parker ordered two cups of coffee without even consulting Vanessa. It was so typical that she nearly laughed out loud.

“The advance on this book,” Parker began in a low and reluctant voice, “is in the high six figures. I can’t play baseball forever, Van; I need some security.”

Vanessa rolled her eyes. Most oil sheiks didn’t live as well as Parker; he certainly wasn’t facing penury. “I’ll drop you off at the food bank if you’d like,” she offered.

A muscle bunched in his jaw. Vanessa could have lived for years on the money that Parker’s face brought in for beer commercials alone. “You know,” he said, “I really didn’t expect you to be so bitter and frustrated.”

The coffee arrived, and the waitress walked away again.

“Watch it,” Vanessa warned. “You’re trying to get on my good side, remember?”

Parker spread his hands in a gesture of baffled annoyance. “Van, I know the divorce was hard on you, but you have a job now and a life of your own. There’s no reason to torture me like this.”

He sounded so damnably rational that Vanessa wanted to throw her coffee in his face. “Is that what you think I’m doing? I want nothing from you, Parker—no money, no minks, no sports cars—and no lies written up in a book and presented as the truth.”

“So I was a little creative? What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, if you’re writing a novel.” Vanessa could see that the conversation was progressing exactly as she’d expected. “I don’t know why I even came down here,” she said, glancing at her watch and sliding out of the booth.

“Hot date?” Parker asked, giving the words an unsavory inflection.

“Very hot,” Vanessa lied, looking down at Parker. She was meeting her cousin Rodney for dinner and a movie, but what Parker didn’t know
wouldn’t hurt him. She made a
sssssssss
sound, meant to indicate a sizzle, and walked away.

Much to her relief, Parker didn’t follow.

Rodney was waiting in the agreed place when she reached the mall, his hands wedged into his jacket pockets, his white teeth showing in a grin.

“Hi, Van,” he said. “Bad day?”

Vanessa kissed his cheek and linked her arm through his. “I just came from a meeting with Parker,” she replied. “Does that answer your question?”

Rodney frowned. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m afraid it does.”

Vanessa smiled up at the handsome young man with the thick, longish chestnut brown hair and Omar Sharif eyes. Her first cousin—and at twenty-one, five years her junior—Rodney was the only family she had in Seattle, and she loved him. She changed the subject. “Aren’t you going to ask me about the apartment?”

Rodney laughed as they walked into the mall together and approached their favorite fast-food restaurant, a place that sold Chinese cuisine to go. The apartment over Vanessa’s garage was empty since her last tenant had moved out, and Rodney wanted the rooms in the worst way.

“You know I do, Van,” he scolded her good-naturedly.
“Living over a funeral home has its drawbacks. For one thing, it gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘things that go bump in the night.”’

Van laughed and shook her head. “Okay, okay—you can move in in a few weeks. I want to have the place painted first.”

Rodney’s face lighted up. He was a good kid working his way through chiropractic school by means of a very demanding and unconventional job, and Vanessa genuinely enjoyed his company. In fact, they’d always been close. “I’ll do the painting,” he said.

It was late when Vanessa arrived at the large colonial house on Queen Anne Hill and let herself in the front door. She crossed the sparsely furnished living room, kicking off her high heels and rifling through the day’s mail as she moved.

In the kitchen, she flipped on the light and put a cup of water in the microwave to heat for tea. When the brew was steaming on the table, she steeled herself and pressed the button on her answering machine.

The first message was from her boss, Paul Harmon. “Janet and I want you to have dinner with us a week from Friday at DeAngelo’s. Don’t bring a date.”

Vanessa frowned. The Harmons were friends of hers and they were forever trying to fix her up with one of their multitude of unattached male acquaintances. The fact that Paul had specified she shouldn’t bring a date was unsettling.

She missed the next two messages, both of which were from Parker, because the name of the restaurant had rung a distant bell. What was it about DeAngelo’s that made her uncomfortable?

She stirred sweetener into her tea, frowning. Then it came to her—the proprietor of the place was Nick DeAngelo, a former pro football player with a reputation for womanizing exceeded only by Parker’s. Vanessa shuddered. The man was Paul’s best friend. What if he turned out to be the mysterious fourth at dinner?

Vanessa shut off the answering machine and dialed the Harmons’ home number. Janet answered the phone.

“About dinner at DeAngelo’s,” Vanessa said, after saying hi. “Am I being set up to meet Mr. Macho, or what?”

Janet laughed. “I take it you’re referring to Nick?”

“And you’re hedging,” Vanessa accused.

“Okay, yes—we want you to meet Nick. He’s a darling, Vanessa. You’ll love him.”

“That’s what you said about that guy who wanted to take me parking,” Vanessa reminded her friend. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“He’s nothing like Parker,” Janet said gently. She could be very perceptive. “It isn’t fair to write Nick off as a loser without even meeting him.”

The encounter with Parker had inclined her toward saying no to everything, and Vanessa knew it. She sighed. She had to be flexible, willing to meet new people and try new things, or she’d become stagnant. “All right, but if he turns out to be weird, Janet Harmon, you and Paul are off my Christmas-card list for good.”

That damned sixth sense of Janet’s was still evident. “The appointment with Parker and his attorney went badly, huh?”

Vanessa took a steadying sip of her tea. “He’s going to publish that damned book, Janet,” she whispered, feeling real despair. “There isn’t anything I can do to stop him, and I’m sure he knows it, even though he seems to feel some kind of crazy need to win me over to his way of thinking.”

“The bastard,” Janet commiserated.

“I can say goodbye to any hopes I had of ever landing a job as a newscaster. I’ll never be taken seriously.”

“It’s late, and you’re tired,” Janet said firmly. “Take a warm bath, have a glass of wine and get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”

Exhausted, Vanessa promised to take her friend’s advice and went off to bed, stopping only to wash her face and brush her teeth. She collapsed onto the mattress and immediately fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming that Parker was chewing her cash card and spitting the plastic pieces out on the pitcher’s mound.

She awakened the next morning in a terrible mood, and when she reached the studio complex where the Midas Network was housed, her co-host, Mel Potter, looked at her with concern in his eyes.

A middle-aged, ordinary looking man, Potter was known as Markdown Mel in the telemarketing business, and he was a pro’s pro. He had ex-wives all over the country and a gift for selling that was unequaled in the field. Vanessa had seen him move two thousand telephone answering machines in fifteen minutes without even
working up a sweat, and her respect for his skill as a salesman was considerable.

He was, in fact, the one man in the world, besides her grandfather, who could address her as honey without making her hackles rise.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he demanded as Vanessa flopped into a chair in the makeup room. “You look like hell.”

Vanessa smiled. “Thanks a lot, Mel,” she answered. “You’re a sight for sore eyes yourself.”

He laughed as Margie, the makeup girl, slathered Vanessa’s face with cleansing cream. “I see by the papers that that ex-husband of yours is in town to accept an award at his old high school. Think you could get him to stop by the studio before he leaves? We could dump a lot of those baseball cake plates if Parker Lawrence endorsed them.”

Now it was Vanessa who laughed, albeit a little hysterically. “Forget it, Mel. Parker and I aren’t on friendly terms, and I wouldn’t ask him for the proverbial time of day.”

Mel shrugged, but Vanessa had a feeling she hadn’t heard the last of the subject of Parker Lawrence selling baseball cake plates.

Twenty minutes later Vanessa and Mel were on camera, demonstrating a set of golf clubs.
Vanessa loved her job. Somehow, when she was working, she became another person—one who had no problems, no insecurities and no bruises on her soul.

The network had a policy of letting viewers chat with the hosts over the air, and the first caller was Parker.

“Hello, Babe,” he said, after carefully introducing himself to the nation so that there could be no doubt as to who he was. “You look terrific.”

Vanessa’s smile froze on her face. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t.

Mel picked up the ball with admirable aplomb. “Thanks, Parker,” he answered. “You look pretty good yourself.”

Even the cameraman laughed at that.

“Giving up baseball for golf?” Vanessa was emboldened to say.

“Never,” Parker answered confidently. “But I’d take ten of anything you’re selling, Baby.”

Vanessa was seething inside, but she hadn’t forgotten that several million people were watching and listening. She wasn’t about to let Parker throw her in front of a national audience. “Good,” she said, beaming. “We’ll put you down for ten sets of golf clubs.”

Parker laughed, thinking she was joking. Vanessa wished she could see his face when the UPS man delivered his purchases in seven to ten working days.

T
he man was impossibly handsome, Vanessa thought ruefully as she watched Nick DeAngelo approach the table where she and the Harmons had been seated. He was tall, with the kind of shoulders one might expect of a former star football player. His hair was dark and attractively rumpled as though he’d just run his fingers through it. But it was the expression in his eyes that took hold of something deep inside Vanessa and refused to let go.

Suddenly Vanessa’s emotional scars, courtesy of Parker Lawrence, got the best of her. She could have sworn they were as visible as stitch marks across her face and she was positive that Nick DeAngelo could count them. Her first instinct was to run and hide.

Grinning, Paul stood to greet his friend. “You survived the flu,” he remarked. “From the way
you sounded, I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

A half smile curved Nick’s lips, probably in acknowledgment of what Paul had said, but his gaze was fixed on Vanessa. He seemed to be unwrapping her soul, layer by layer, and she didn’t want that. She needed the insulation to feel safe.

She dropped her eyes, color rising to her cheeks, and clasped her hands together in her lap. In a matter of moments, a decade of living, loving and hurting had dropped away. She was as vulnerable as a shy sixteen-year-old.

“Vanessa,” Paul said gently, prodding her with his voice. “This is my friend, Nick De-Angelo.”

She looked up again because she had to, and Nick was smiling at her. A strange sensation washed over her, made up of fear and delight, consolation and challenge. “Hello,” she said, swallowing.

His smile was steady and as warm as winter fire. Vanessa was in over her head, and she knew it. “Hi,” he replied, his voice low and deep.

The sound of it caressed the bruises on Vanessa’s soul like a healing balm. She was frightened by his ability to touch her so intimately and
wondered if anyone would believe her if she said she’d developed a headache and needed to go home to put her feet up. She started to speak, but Janet Harmon cut her off.

“I hear you’re opening another restaurant in Portland next month,” she said to Nick, her foot bumping against Vanessa’s under the table. “Won’t that take you out of town a lot?”

The phenomenal shoulders moved in an easy shrug. Nick DeAngelo was obviously as much at home in a tuxedo as he would be in a football jersey and blue jeans. His brown eyes roamed over Vanessa, revealing an amused approval of the emerald-green silk shirtwaist she was wearing. “I’m used to traveling,” he said finally in response to Janet’s question.

Vanessa devoutly wished that she’d stayed home. She wasn’t ready for an emotional involvement, but it seemed to be happening anyway, without her say-so. She was as helpless as a swimmer going down for the third time. In desperation, she clasped on to the similarities between Parker and Nick.

They were both attractive, although Vanessa had to admit that Parker’s looks had never affected her in quite the same way that Nick’s were doing now. They were both jocks, and, if
the press could be believed, Nick, like Parker, was a veritable legend among the bimbos of the world.

Vanessa felt better and, conversely, worse. She lifted her chin and said, “I don’t think a jock—I mean, professional athlete ever gets the road completely out of his blood.”

Nick sat back in his chair. His look said he could read her as clearly as a floodlighted billboard. “Maybe it’s like selling electric foot massagers on television,” he speculated smoothly. “I don’t see how a person could ever put a thrill like that behind them.”

Vanessa squirmed. How typically male; he knew she was responding to him, and now he meant to make fun of her. “I’m not ashamed of what I do for a living, Mr. DeAngelo,” she said.

Nick bent toward her and, in that moment, it was as though the two of them were alone at the table—indeed, alone in the restaurant. “Neither am I, Ms. Lawrence,” he replied.

A crackling silence followed, which was finally broken by Paul’s diplomatic throat clearing and he said, “Vanessa hopes to anchor one of the local news shows at some point.”

Vanessa winced, sure that Nick would be
amused at such a lofty ambition. Instead he merely nodded.

Dinner that night was delicious, although Vanessa was never able to recall exactly what it was, for she spent every minute longing to run for cover. After the meal, the foursome drifted from the dining room to the crowded cocktail lounge, where a quartet was playing soft music. Vanessa found herself held alarmingly close to Nick as they danced.

He lifted her chin with a curved finger and spoke in a velvety rasp. “Your eyes are the size of satellite dishes. Do I scare you that much?”

Vanessa stiffened. The man certainly had an ego. “You don’t scare me at all,” she lied. “It’s only that I’m—I’m tired.”

He smiled, and the warmth threatened to melt her like a wax statue. “You were married to Parker Lawrence, weren’t you?”

Suddenly it was too hot in the place; Vanessa felt as though she’d suffocate if she couldn’t get some fresh air. “Yes,” she answered, flustered, searching for an avenue of escape.

True to form, Nick read her thoughts precisely. “This way,” he said, and, taking Vanessa by the hand, he led her off the dance floor, down a hallway and into a large, tastefully furnished
office. She was about to protest when she realized there was a terrace beyond the French doors on the far side of the room.

The autumn night was chilly, but Vanessa didn’t mind. The crisp air cleared her head, and she felt better immediately.

The sky was like a great black tent, pierced through in a million places by tiny specks of silver light, and the view of downtown Seattle and the harbor was spectacular. Vanessa rested her folded arms against the stone railing and drew a deep, delicious breath.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, smiling.

Nick was beside her, gazing at the city lights and moonlit water spread out below them. “I never get tired of it,” he said quietly. “The only drawback is that you can’t see the Space Needle from here.”

Vanessa shivered as an icy breeze swept off the water, and Nick immediately draped his tuxedo jacket over her shoulders. She thanked him shyly with a look, and asked, “Have you lived in Seattle all your life?”

He nodded. “I was born here.”

Vanessa marveled that she could be so comfortable with Nick on the terrace when she’d felt threatened inside the restaurant. She sighed. “I
grew up in Spokane, but I guess I’m starting to feel at home.”

“Just starting?” He arched a dark eyebrow.

Vanessa shrugged. “Seattle is Parker’s home-town, not mine.” Too late she realized she’d made a mistake, reopening a part of her life she preferred to keep private.

Nick leaned against the terrace and gazed at the circus of lights below. “I’ve been married before, too,” he confided quietly. “Her name was Jenna.”

Vanessa was practically holding her breath. It was incomprehensible that his answer should mean so much, but it did. “What happened?”

“She left me,” Nick replied without looking at Vanessa.

“I’m sorry,” Vanessa said, and she was sincere because she knew how much it hurt when a marriage died, whether a person was left or did the leaving. “A lot of women can’t handle living with a professional athlete,” she added, and although she’d meant the words as a consolation, she immediately wished she could take them back.

“Jenna bailed out before I got into the pros,” Nick said in tones as cool as the wind rising off
the water. “When I started making big bucks, she wanted to try again.”

Before Vanessa could make any kind of response to that, Nick put an arm around her waist and ushered her back inside. She lifted the tuxedo jacket from her shoulders while he closed the French doors that led out onto the terrace.

“Did you love Jenna?” she asked, and the words were the most involuntary ones she’d ever spoken.

Nick’s expression was unreadable. “Did you love Parker?” he countered.

Vanessa bit her lower lip. “I honestly don’t know,” she answered after a few moments of thought. “I was in college when I met him, and he was already breaking records in baseball. I’d never met anyone like him before. He was—overwhelming.”

Nick grinned somewhat sadly and leaned back against the edge of his desk, his arms folded. “I’d like to know you better,” he said.

Vanessa was aware that such straightforwardness was rare in a man, and she was impressed. She was also terrified by the powerful things this man was making her feel. She placed his jacket carefully over the back of a chair, searching her
mind for a refusal that would not be rude or hurtful.

She was unprepared for Nick’s sudden appearance at her side, and for the way he gently lifted her chin in his hand and said, “It’s time to let go of the pain and move on, Vanessa.”

The low, rumbling words, spoken so close to her mouth, made her lips tingle with a strange sense of anticipation. When Nick kissed her, she swayed slightly, stricken by a sweet malaise that robbed her of all balance.

Nick was holding her upright, though whether by means of the kiss or his gentle grasp on her waist, Vanessa couldn’t be sure. She knew only that she was responding to him with her whole being, that she’d let him take her then and there if he pressed her. Being so vulnerable when she’d been so badly hurt before was almost more than she could bear.

When Nick finally released her, having kissed her more thoroughly than Parker ever had in even the most intimate of moments, she was so dazed that she could only stare up at him in abject amazement. She made up her mind that she absolutely would not see him again, no matter what.

He was too dangerous.

“Are you working tomorrow?” he asked in a sleepy voice, toying with a tendril of titian hair that had slipped from her ivory barrette.

Vanessa struggled to remember, her throat thick, her mind a razzle-dazzle of popping lights. Finally she shook her head.

Nick grinned. “Good. Will you spend the day with me.

No, no, no,
cried Vanessa’s wounded spirit. “Yes,” she choked out.

Nick smiled at her, tracing the curve of her cheek with one index finger, then reached for his jacket and shrugged into it. “We’d better get back out there before Paul and Janet decide we’re doing something in keeping with my image.”

They went back to the dance floor, and Nick held her. It was an innocent intimacy but it stirred Vanessa’s senses, which had been largely dormant for the better part of a year, to an alarming pitch of need.

Every time she dared to meet Nick’s eyes, it was as though he had taken away an item of her clothing, and yet she could not resist looking at him. The dilemma was at once delicious and maddening, and Vanessa was relieved when
Nick didn’t offer to drive her home at the end of the evening.

Paul lingered on the sidewalk for a few minutes, talking with Nick, while Vanessa and Janet settled themselves in the car.

“Well,” Janet demanded the moment she’d snapped her seat belt into place, “what did you think of him?”

Vanessa drew in a deep breath and let it out in an agitated rush. “I think I should have stayed home with my needlepoint,” she said.

Janet turned in the car seat to look back at her. “You’ve got to be kidding. The man is a hunk!”

Only now, when her nostrils weren’t filled with the subtle scent of his cologne and her body wasn’t pressed to his could Vanessa be rational and objective where Nick DeAngelo was concerned. “He’s also a jock,” she said miserably. “Do you have any idea how egotistical those men can be? Not to mention callous and self-serving?”

Janet sighed. “Not every man is like Parker,” she insisted.

The conversation was cut off at that point because Paul came back to the car, whistling cheerfully as he slid behind the wheel. Vanessa shrank
into the corner of the seat, wishing, all in the same moment, that the night would end, that she could go back in time and say no to Nick’s suggestion that they spend the next day together and that tomorrow would hurry up and arrive so she could see him again.

“Thanks,” she said ruefully when Paul saw her to her door a few minutes later.

He smiled as she turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. “Sounds as if you have mixed feelings about Nick,” he commented.

Vanessa kicked off her high heels the moment she’d crossed the threshold. “I have
no
feelings about Nick,” she argued, facing Paul but keeping her eyes averted. “Absolutely none.”

Her boss chuckled. “Good night, Van,” he said, and then he was gone, striding back down the front walk to his car.

Vanessa locked the door, slipped out of her velvet evening coat and bent to pick up her discarded shoes. Her calico cat, Sari, curled around her ankles, meowing.

Sari had already had her supper, and even though she had a weight problem, Vanessa couldn’t turn a deaf ear to her plaintive cries. She set her purse, coat and shoes down on the
deacon’s bench in the hallway and allowed herself to be herded into the kitchen.

Even before she flipped on the lights, she saw the blinking red indicator on the answering machine. Vanessa was in no mood to deal with relationships of any kind that night; she wanted to feed the cat and go to bed. Her own innate sense of responsibility—some calamity could have befallen Rodney or her aging grandparents—made her cross the room and push the play button.

She was opening a can of cat food and scraping it into Sari’s dish when Parker’s voice filled the kitchen.

The first message was relatively polite, but, as the tape progressed, Parker grew more and more irate. Finally he flared, “Don’t you ever stay home? Damn it, call me!”

Vanessa had washed her hands and was about to turn off the machine when Nick’s voice rolled over her like a warm, rumbling wave. “You’re a terrific lady,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing you again tomorrow.”

Vanessa moaned faintly and sank into a chair, propping her chin in both hands. With a few idle words, the man had melted the muscles in her knees.

“Good night,” he said, his voice deep and gentle, and then the tape was silent.

After a few moments of sheer bewilderment, Vanessa got up and checked the locks on both the front and back doors. Then, taking her coat and shoes with her, Sari padding along beside her, she went upstairs.