Only Forever (8 page)

“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.

Twice she had to pull her hand out of Parker’s fingers. She began to regret the act she’d put on a couple of days before.

“This trip is strictly business,” she whispered, hoping the driver wouldn’t hear. “So keep your hands to yourself, Parker Lawrence!”

Parker looked wounded. “How are we going to reconcile if I can’t touch you?” he inquired.

Vanessa was tired and hungry and she was beginning to have serious doubts about the wisdom of this venture. “We’re not going to get back together ever, and you damned well know it,” she said irritably.

She glanced in Parker’s direction and saw that he was watching her with a disturbing sort of shrewdness in his blue eyes. “Then why did you come with me?” he asked.

Vanessa sighed. Maybe she should just forget her plan and go home—by way of Portland. The deception seemed too big to carry off now. “I wanted to come to New York,” she hedged.

Parker didn’t speak to her again until they’d reached their hotel, which overlooked Central Park, and checked in.

The suite was spacious with a breathtaking view of the city and it came equipped with its own bar—and even a glistening black grand piano. There were flowers everywhere, compliments of Parker’s publisher, and a bottle of Dom Perignon was cooling in a bed of ice.

Vanessa made sure there were two bedrooms and that hers had a lock on the door before taking off her coat and unpacking the few clothes she’d brought with her.

She changed into a navy silk shirtwaist for
dinner and saw a familiar light in Parker’s eyes when she returned to the suite’s living room. He was standing by the piano and, grinning, he ran one hand over the keyboard, filling the place with a discordant exclamation.

There was a pop as a waiter opened the champagne. After accepting a tip from Parker, the whip-thin young man—an aspiring dancer, no doubt—slipped out of the suite.

Once again, Vanessa had misgivings. In fact, she wished she’d run after Nick at the airport and made him take her to Portland with him. Her yearning for his voice, his smile, his touch, was an ache deep within her.

“You look troubled,” Parker observed, his eyes discerning. “What is it, Vanessa?”

She wrung her hands together and drew upon all her courage. The idea that had seemed so just and so wise had turned foolish somewhere along the line. Even infantile. “I was going to humiliate you, Parker,” she confessed. “I meant to denounce your book on that talk show tomorrow and tell the whole world what a lie it is.”

To her surprise, Parker threw back his handsome head and laughed. “Your innocence never ceases to amaze me, Vanessa,” he crowed when
he’d recovered a little. “Do you think I didn’t know that from the first?”

Vanessa’s mouth dropped open.

Suavely Parker poured champagne into a crystal glass and extended it to his ex-wife. “Friends?” he said, his voice a throaty rumble.

Vanessa accepted the glass, took an unseemly gulp of its contents and retreated a step, her eyes still wide. She was confused about almost everything in that moment, but one thing was clear as the icicles that lined the eaves of her grandparents’ house every winter: Parker had no interest in being her friend.

“Why are you staring at me that way?” he pressed, tilting his head to one side and looking ingeniously baffled.

She finished off her champagne and ignored the question. “Let’s go to dinner. I’m starved.”

Parker consulted his watch. “Our reservations are for an hour from now, but I guess we could have a few drinks while we wait.” Even though the restaurant was within walking distance, he went to the telephone and summoned the limousine.

Vanessa didn’t question the gesture, reasoning that people didn’t go into Central Park on foot at night if they could avoid it, but her mind and
heart were far away as one of the hotel’s elevators whisked them to the ground floor.

Tavern on the Green was an oasis of lighted windows in the darkness, and Vanessa felt more at ease when she and Parker were settled inside with cocktails and a candle in a jar between them.

“You’re still seeing DeAngelo,” Parker speculated flatly, and Vanessa was amazed to realize that he’d restrained himself from asking that question for most of the day. Patience wasn’t his long suit.

“Yes and no,” Vanessa said, her throat hurting. She wondered what Nick would say if she caught a plane to the west coast, took a cab to the restaurant in Portland and surprised him.

“What do you mean ‘yes and no’?” Parker demanded. “Damn it, I hate it when you do that!”

Vanessa could be charitable, thinking of how Nick would welcome her. They’d probably go somewhere private, right away, and make love for hours. “We’re trying to negotiate some kind of workable agreement,” she said.

“You make it sound like a summit meeting,” Parker grumbled, looking like a disgruntled little boy. “Doesn’t it matter that he was using you?”

Vanessa took a sip of her drink, a fruity mixture that barely tasted of liquor. She was so hungry that she was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. “I’m not sure he was,” she said. She looked at her ex-husband pensively, champagne and the cocktail mingling ominously in her system. “He swears he’s nothing like you, and sometimes I believe him.”

Parker looked roundly insulted. “Am I that terrible?” he demanded.

“You’re not a man I’d want to have a lasting relationship with,” Vanessa answered with a hiccup.

“Good Lord,” Parker grumbled, squinting at her. “You’re drunk!”

“I am not,” Vanessa protested.

Just then a flash went off, blinding her. For one awful moment, she thought the Soviets had pushed the button. Then she realized that some reporter had recognized baseball’s very own bad boy.

For once, Parker didn’t look pleased at being noticed. “Get out of here,” he said to the hapless person-of-the-press, glaring.

The reporter took another picture before two waiters came and discreetly evicted him from the premises.

“We’re very sorry for the annoyance, Mr. Lawrence,” a man in a tuxedo came to say. “Your table is ready.”

Vanessa was wildly grateful at the prospect of eating. Light-headed, she staggered slightly when she rose too quickly from her chair, and Parker had to steady her by putting an arm around her waist.

Dinner must have been delicious, although Vanessa was never able to recall exactly what it was. She knew only that she consumed it with dispatch and then ordered dessert.

When they reached the hotel, there was a party going on in the suite. Vanessa skirted the room full of laughing, smoking, drinking strangers to let herself into her private chamber and lock the door.

The message light was blinking on the telephone, and she smiled as she rang up the desk. Nick had called about an hour before and left a number in Portland.

She punched out the digits with an eager finger, and when Nick said hello, Vanessa replied with a hiccup and a drunken giggle.

“P
ut Parker on the line,” Nick said, sounding irritated.

Vanessa raised three fingertips to her mouth to stifle another hiccup. “You left a message because you wanted to talk to Parker?” she asked, bitterly disappointed.

An exasperated silence followed, and then Nick swore. Completely ignoring her question, he posed one of his own. “How much have you had to drink, Vanessa?”

A hiccup escaped. “Too much,” Vanessa admitted. The noise outside her room seemed to be getting louder with every passing moment, and she was developing a headache. “There’s some kind of party going on in the living room,” she observed out loud.

“Get Parker,” Nick reiterated in an ominously quiet voice.

With a sigh, Vanessa laid the receiver on her
bedside table and ventured into the next room, weaving her way through the happy revelers until she finally came to Parker.

“Nick wants to talk to you on the telephone,” she said.

Parker grinned and touched her cheek, as though she’d brought him good news. “Fine,” he replied, and started off toward the nearest extension.

Nick was speaking when Vanessa got back to her room and picked up the receiver again.

“If you take advantage of her, Lawrence,” he warned, “what happened two years ago will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you this time.”

“The lady made her choice,” Parker replied smoothly, no doubt drawing courage from the fact that Nick was on the opposite coast. “She came to New York with me, and she’s staying in my suite. If you can’t pick up on the meaning of that, maybe you’d better go back to hawking cod at the fish market.”

Vanessa sucked in a breath, horrified and furious. They were discussing her as though she were a half-wit, unable to look after herself or make her own decisions. “Wait a minute, both of you!” she cried, her headache intensifying as
the music and laughter got louder in the living room. “It just so happens that I have a thing or two to say about all this!”

“Whatever, darlin’,” Parker said in a bored tone, and then he hung up. His confidence in his own powers of seduction was an affront Vanessa would not soon forgive.

“Nick,” she said, “don’t you dare hang up.”

“I’m here,” he answered, a sort of broken resignation in his tone.

“None of this is at all the way it sounds. I have my own room, even if it is in Parker’s suite, and there’s no way he and I are going to get back together. Understood?”

Nick gave a ragged sigh. She knew intuitively that he was remembering what she’d told him about her first time with Parker—that she’d had too much wine and woke up in his bed.

“I don’t have any claim on you, Vanessa,” he said at last. “You can do what you want.”

While Nick’s words were perfectly true, they were not the ones Vanessa had hoped to hear. She wished devoutly that she’d listened to him and stayed in Seattle, where she belonged.

Vanessa sat up a little straighter on the edge of the bed, thinking of all the women who probably chased after Nick whenever the opportunity
presented itself. “Are you telling me that you think we should both see other people?”

Nick made a grumbling sound of frustration and weariness. “Is that what you want?” he retorted.

Vanessa closed her eyes. “No,” she admitted.

“Good,” Nick replied. “When are you coming home?”

“Monday,” Vanessa vowed. The door of her room opened, and a woman wearing a leather jumpsuit and a white lamé wig peered in. “I’m sorry, this room is private,” she told the intruder.

The woman mouthed an oops and slipped out, closing the door behind her.

“What the hell was that all about?” Nick demanded.

“You’d never believe it,” Vanessa replied, yawning. “Shall I just go to Seattle, or make it Portland?”

Nick was quiet for a moment. “Portland. But you have the show to tape tomorrow, don’t you?”

Vanessa held her breath briefly in an effort to put down another attack of the hiccups. “I’m not staying for that,” she said. “I realize now that
all my protests will do is make more people rush out and buy the book.”

He chuckled, and the sound was warm and low and so masculine that Vanessa ached to be close to Nick. “Speaking of the book, there are a few things I’d like to know about the incident in Chapter Three,” he said.

Vanessa sighed. “A circus acrobat couldn’t do that,” she replied.

Nick laughed outright. “I love you,” he said.

She hiccuped again.

“Strange that he didn’t write about your drinking problem,” Nick teased.

“Good night, Mr. DeAngelo,” Vanessa said with feigned primness. “I’ll see you in Portland sometime tomorrow.”

“Make sure I know the flight number, and I’ll pick you up.”

Vanessa nodded, her mind fuzzy, and then remembered that Nick couldn’t see her. “Okay. And Nick?”

“What?”

“I love you, too.”

“Good night, sweetheart,” he said, and his voice was a caress.

After hanging up, Vanessa went immediately to her bedroom door and locked it. Then, after
laying out the trim royal blue suit she planned to wear on the flight home the next day, she slipped into her private bathroom and took a long, soothing bath.

When she returned to her room, sleepy and comfortable in her favorite pair of flannel pajamas, Parker was sitting on the end of her bed and the party was still going on full blast in the living room.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded in a furious whisper, pulling on her robe and tying the belt tightly. “How did you get in?”

Parker held up a key. “Relax, Vanessa—for all my sins, I’ve never forced myself on you, have I?”

Vanessa had to admit that he hadn’t though sometimes his methods had been almost that low-down. She shook her head, still keeping her distance.

“You’re not going to do the show tomorrow, are you?” Parker asked, sounding resigned.

“No,” she answered. “Are you angry?”

Parker sighed. “It might be to your advantage to go on and show the world that you’re not a drunk,” he announced.

“A what?” Vanessa demanded, her eyes rounding. With Nick the reference had been a
joke, but Parker was coming from a different place altogether.

“You remember that reporter at the restaurant tonight, I’m sure—the one with the blinding flash attachment on his camera? He’s from the
National Snoop
, and your delightful face will be propped up beside every checkout counter in America within a week to ten days.” He drew in a deep breath and let it out again, his eyes narrowed in speculation. “I can see the headlines now: TOSS-AWAY BRIDE DROWNS HER SORROWS, it will say—or something to that effect.”

Vanessa felt the color drain from her cheeks. She had a career of her own to think about, and she couldn’t afford publicity of that kind. No one would ever take her seriously if she were seen in such an unflattering light.

“Go on the show tomorrow, Van,” Parker said quietly, coming to her and taking her hand in his to pat it. “Show the world who you really are.”

Vanessa wrenched free of his grasp. “You don’t give a damn what the public thinks of me,” she hissed, “so spare me the performance. All you care about is selling that rotten book of yours!”

Parker shrugged. “The choice is yours, Vanessa. Go or stay.”

She thought of Nick waiting for her in Portland and imagined how it would be to be held in his arms again, to lie beside him in the darkness as he quietly set her senses on fire. She closed her eyes for a moment, torn.

“I’ll stay,” she said, averting her eyes.

“Um-hmm,” Parker agreed smugly, and then he tossed Vanessa the key to her room, went out and closed the door.

She promptly locked it, then hurried back to the telephone, planning to call Nick and explain that she’d changed her mind about doing the talk show with Parker.

As it happened, though, Vanessa set the receiver back in its cradle without pushing the sequence of buttons that would connect her with Nick. She couldn’t explain the situation to him when she didn’t completely understand it herself.

There was no time to call the next morning because a limousine arrived to collect Parker and Vanessa at an ungodly hour. She rode to the studio in a daze, sipping bitter coffee from a foam cup.

She promised herself that she would call Nick
as soon as she had a chance, but it seemed that the talk show people had every moment planned. The instant they arrived, Vanessa was whisked away to have her makeup redone and her hair styled.

As the cosmeticians worked their wonders, a production assistant briefed her on the structure of the show and the line the host’s questioning would probably follow.

None of it was anything like Vanessa expected. In fact, when she and Parker were seated before an eager audience and the lights flared on, all her broadcasting experience seemed to slip away into a parallel universe. It was as though she had never appeared before a camera in her life.

To make matters worse, she had slept very badly the night before, and she probably looked like someone who should be sent away for the cure.

The audience, mostly female, was clearly interested in Parker. It was amazing, Vanessa reflected, how the man could flirt with so many women at once.

Numbly Vanessa groped her way through the hour. She answered the questions presented by
the host and the audience as best she could and was grateful when the program ended.

Vanessa fled the studio immediately afterward, caught a cab outside and sped back to the hotel. There, she picked up her suitcase and went straight to the airport.

She had to wait three hours for a flight to Portland, and that was routed through Denver and San Francisco with a long layover at each stop. She called Nick from Colorado and told him that she would be in at six that evening.

He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic, and Vanessa could only assume that he’d watched the show, seen her sitting there as stiff as a wooden Indian, letting Parker display her like a sideshow freak.

A glum, drizzling rain was falling when Vanessa reached Portland, but the moment she saw Nick, her spirits lifted. Although he gave her a rueful look and shook his head at some private marvel, he took her in his arms and held her close, and that made up for a great many things.

“I’ve had a terrible day,” she said, letting her cheek rest against the front of his cool, rain-beaded leather jacket.

He kissed her forehead. “I know,” he replied
gruffly, and then he put an arm around her waist and ushered her toward the baggage claim area.

After reclaiming Vanessa’s suitcase, they went outside and Nick hailed a cab. All the way to his restaurant, they made small talk, avoiding the issues of Parker and her appearance on television. There were long, stiff gaps between their sentences.

“You’re angry with me,” Vanessa said when the cab had stopped in front of a towering Victorian building with a view of the water and an elegantly scripted sign that read,
DeAngelo’s
.

Nick paid the driver and waited until the cab had pulled away before answering, “Does it matter, Vanessa?”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip. “Yes,” she said, after they’d mounted the steps and entered the interior of the restaurant. “Of course it matters.”

Wonderful aromas greeted Vanessa, reawakening her appetite.

Nick gave her a look. “Whatever you say,” he replied, putting his hand to her back and propelling her toward a set of sweeping, carpeted stairs.

Vanessa decided to save the serious issues they needed to talk about for later when she’d
had some aspirin and something to eat. “Do you stay right here at the restaurant when you’re in Portland?” she asked, trying for a smile.

He nodded, opening a pair of double doors to admit her to an office that was the size of some hotel suites. “Sit down and relax,” he ordered, setting down her suitcase and striding toward the telephone on his desk. “I’ll have some dinner sent up. What do you want?”

“Spaghetti,” Vanessa answered without hesitation, thinking of the night in the San Juan Islands.

Nick nodded again and placed the order in clipped, brusque tones. It was obvious that he was distracted.

“I thought you weren’t going to be on the talk show,” he said, when the silence had lengthened to its limits.

So he’d seen the debacle. Vanessa lowered her eyes, embarrassed that she’d been so tongue-tied on the program. Everyone who’d watched—and the producers of
Seattle This Morning
might well have been among them—was probably thinking that she had all the personality of a secondhand dishrag.

“I changed my mind,” she replied almost in a whisper.

Nick sighed. “That was your prerogative,” he replied. “You’re here, and that’s all that matters.”

Vanessa looked at him with wide, weary eyes full of relief. “You were right,” she conceded in a small voice. “I shouldn’t have gone. I only made things worse.”

Nick crossed the room to sit beside her, and the moment he took her into his arms she burst into tears.

He kissed her eyelids and her wet, salty cheeks before taking her mouth and taming it with his own. Vanessa’s exhausted body was captured in an instant and largely involuntary response, and she gave a strangled moan when he lifted one hand to caress her breast.

“The spaghetti will be here in a few minutes,” Nick muttered against the warm flesh of her neck.

Vanessa laughed even as she tilted her head back in pagan enjoyment of his attentions. “You’re so romantic, DeAngelo.”

He drew away from her very reluctantly and shoved one hand through his hair. “You’d better reserve judgment on that, lady,” he warned.

A sweet tingle went through Vanessa, but she
was cool and composed as she arched an eyebrow and queried, “Until when?”

“Until I take you to bed, which will be about sixty seconds after you finish your spaghetti.”

Vanessa looked around. “You have a bed here? This is an office!”

Nick pointed toward a closed door on the other side of the room, but said nothing.

She felt her temper flare. “How convenient,” she said, folding her arms.

Nick sighed, shook his head and grinned at her. “We party animals like to be prepared,” he said.