Let It Go (33 page)

“If it’s alright by you, I’ll meet you in the lobby Willow.” Noah takes Savannah’s arm by the elbow, leading her to the door.

“Perfect.” Willow extends a flirty smile. “That will give me time to freshen up.” She holds a compact in her hand, applying a deep shade of red lipstick to her mouth.

“So she accepted your book proposal?” Noah asks excitedly, walking the office corridor with Savannah.

“Miraculously, yes. Why, you want to cancel your lunch date?” She eyes him acrimoniously.

“No. I’ve been looking forward to it, actually,” the response a bit surprising, even to Noah.

“Could this day get any more strange,” Savannah’s rhetorical question is accompanied by the shake of her head as she rehearses the bizarre chain of events. “You ever get it all figured out? What it is you want. Then you commit to fight for it and it just lies out on the table, right there in front of you. Before you even take the first swing?”

“Can’t say as I have,” Noah cannot identify with the ideal outcome, his military position most unfortunate. “Usually we end up fighting, for years. And at the end of it all, we don’t even know what it is that we’re fighting for.”

“Well, now that puts an entirely different perspective on things,” Savannah says. “Guess I still have a ways to go in just accepting stuff, even good things, without thinking them to death.” She huffs at her compulsion to overanalyze everything.

Noah chuckles. “Be great if we could integrate the two minds, women and men. We over-simplify. You ladies overcomplicate.
Let it go.
I used to tell my Mama that all the time.”

“Have you been talking to Brody?” Savannah giggles with Noah’s prophecy of the divine gym boy’s mantra.

“No. Have you?” he inquires, the same green-eyed pedigree of her and their father glancing at her thoughtfully. “How are things going? He treating you right?”

“As best he can with my jump-to-conclusions, get-to-the-bottom-of-it reporter self,” Savannah scoffs, fed up with her own overzealous mind. “So, you and Willow are going to lunch,” she quickly changes the subject, a teasing smile surfacing on her pouty lips.

“You want to go with?” Noah plays off the intimate outing.

“I have work to do,” she dismisses, knowing Willow would not be enthused in the least with her tagging along.

“Maybe it’s not work that you need to fight for,” Noah says, his brotherly instinct kicking in.

“Maybe not.” Savannah stops walking as they have reached the lobby. The handsome face looking back at her, a younger version of her late father, is a sweet comfort. “I’m so happy to have you in my life,” she says, hugging Noah.

“Ditto, baby sister,” he whispers, his arms embracing her snugly, making up for years of the lost affection.

“You’re coming to Mama’s for Thanksgiving, right,” she says, the inquiry certainly more of an order than a question. “We always go to the tree lighting ceremony downtown afterward. Won’t be the same without you.” She looks at him with hopeful eyes. “You can bring Willow,” she teases, her voice low.

“Wouldn’t miss it.” His wide, becoming smile, so very similar to Jac’s, surfaces. “As for bringing Willow, how about you calm that
overzealous mind,”
he quotes her words, “and let me see how lunch goes.”

“Are we ready?” Willow moves with the finesse of a supermodel into the lobby.

“Yes Ma’am…Willow,” Noah quickly corrects his manners, attentive in attempting to squash any ageism Willow may infer. Taking her hand in his, he tucks it around his elbow, escorting her to the exit.

Savannah watches them, a real dapper couple. Even given their age difference, one would never know, the uber-kempt Willodean Abernathy at fifty-something could surely contend with any pool of thirty and forty-somethings. Doubting Noah is necessarily
fighting
for anything this early in the game, Savannah is nonetheless inspired that he is simply
going
for it.

Chapter Twenty-Two

A tropical Friday Savannah, Georgia, night rolls around. Savannah drives in her Jeep, a fishing pole confiscated from her mother’s outdoor shed rattling off the roll bar, the humid night a perfect excuse to ride around with the top off. Pulling up to a deserted area of the Savannah River, the same place Brody took her fishing in the dark nights prior, she grabs her fishing pole and bait bucket.

The smell of saltwater leads her olfactory in finding a hole, her Burberry plaid rubber boots mucking through the sand and shrub. Her eyes peek out from beneath a do-rag, an old-school bandana tied stylishly around her forehead taming her unruly hair. She greets the moon. Although starting anew at just a sliver, it’s equally intriguing as the full moon she and Brody enjoyed.

The past forty-eight hours were completely torturous waiting for him to call, which he never did.
Don’t blame him. I wouldn’t call me either,
she thinks. Dialing his number countless times, each and every one she failed to actually carry through. Having purposely left the distracting electronic rectangle at home, she aims to retreat to nature. Her first excursion with her dark-haired, brawny companion rather inspiring, she hopes for a solitary repeat.

The lure and hook clank about the end of her fishing rod with each jaunting step. The bucket of worms sloshing about in her unsteady hand as her arm counters her balance. Rounding the brush to a short coastal opening, Savannah screams in surprise, clutching at her chest. Her heart pounding beneath her fluttering ribcage, she finally catches her breath to form words, “You scared the bejeezus out of me.”

“I heard you coming a mile away,” a do-rag wearing, shirtless Brody replies, sporting his signature jeans, form-fitting around his perky derriere giving way to a looser fit along the length of his muscular legs. “You scared all the fish away.” He chuckles, quickly reining in his affectionate smile, remembering he is quite cross with the casually pretty fisherwoman.

“Do you ever wear a shirt?” Savannah quips, forcing her bawdy eyes from the two swollen lumps of flesh resting just beneath his collarbones.

“Didn’t seem to bother you the first night we spent together. You couldn’t peel it off me fast enough,” he spars back.

Savannah ignores his goading, settling in downstream from him at a favorable distance. She grimaces as she pulls a sticky worm from her bait bucket, attempting to finagle the slimy invertebrate onto her fishhook. “Eww,” she mutters.

Brody shakes his head, making his way to her with some fresh live bait. “Any fish worth having can’t be caught with a worm,” he schools, attaching a small, shiny metallic mullet onto her hook. “The only way to catch them is to give them something with substance. Something worth having.” He looks at her, clearly talking about more than fish.

“What does that thing,” Savannah points to the shiny fish on her hook, “have that a worm doesn’t?” She partakes of his colloquial banter, not yet prepared to face the underlying issue.

“The mullet…” he begins, identifying the fish.

“The mullet?” Savannah grins. “I thought that was a bad hairdo. ‘Business in the front. Party in the back,’” she blushingly quotes the catchphrase, anything to hold off from admitting she jumped to conclusions about him and Candida Wooten.

“Are you through?” Brody gives her a devoted yet pressing glance, his lips unwillingly mirror hers, upturning with her timid humor. “The worm dangles itself in front of a predator. It just hangs there in the water, floating around as if it’s worthy. Just waiting to be had.” Savannah picks up on his assimilation of the worm to Candida Wooten. “The mullet is a fighter. Makes the predator work for the bounty.”

“Which would you rather have? Something that was throwing itself at you? Or something you had to work at to conquer?” Savannah cannot help herself from asking.

“I’m all about the conquer. So long as my bounty is willing to fight with me.” Feeling an internal
fight
surfacing at their closeness, the painstaking urge to touch her, he retreats, stepping around beside her, casting his line. “Why did you run?” he asks, looking off after his lure.

“Because I’m a fool,” she finally laments. “I saw you. Then I saw Candida. And I just thought...”

“Even after the weekend we had? With my family and yours. You thought I’d go jump in bed with Candida Wooten?” His tone wounded and offended.

“It happens all the time, Brody. People you think you know. You think you can trust. They disappoint you.”

“Savannah, I understand you may be a little gun-shy. After finding out about your father and Noah. Hell, even Vangie and Payton,” he adds the latest deception. “But this…you and I…it’s never going to work if you can’t trust me. Do you think I slept with that woman?”

Savannah huffs swatting at a circling swarm of gnats. “I thought you did. Until I saw Mr. Wooten at
The Times.
He set me straight,” her voice grows soft with embarrassment. “But do you see how I could think that? Given the circumstances,” she rebukes, the unkind image of him and Candida atop the veranda ambushes her memory.

“No. I don’t,” he says very matter-of-factly. “I may be many things, Savannah. But I’m not a cheat. You want the names and numbers of every woman I’ve ever dated? Call them up,” his voice rises. “I’m sure I disappointed them in other ways, but I never cheated on any of them. I don’t believe in it. What’s the point? If you’re not into the one you’re with, then cut your ties and find someone else. Besides, I love making love to you,” the admission causes his deep voice to settle. “Why would I go anywhere else?”

“I love having sex with you, too,” she affirms, frustratingly casting her line next to his. “This has got to be the most absurd thing to argue about. I guess I’m just doing the same old thing, overanalyzing. If it feels too good, something’s got to be bad. If it seems too right, something’s got to be wrong,” she scolds her learned way of thinking.

“Have you ever cheated on anyone?” he asks, attempting to understand her thought process.

“Well no,” she says, slightly offended. Watching him, she mimes his actions, flicking her wrist and working the line with her other hand.

“Then what’s your obsession with cheating? First you accuse me of being a male gigolo, then I’m a gold digger, and now I’m a cheat?” he replays all of her bizarre insinuations.

“I don’t know. I guess, maybe I think most guys who look like you are players.” She eyes him, standing there shirtless in the moonlight, his chiseled form and unnatural height something out of Grecian god folklore. “Seriously, you could probably have your pick of women,” she mutters.

“Well, there’s a lot more to me than my appearance. I’ve tried to show you that. I can’t help the way God made me. Besides, I
picked
you,” he huffs. “And for a progressive woman, you’re pretty stereotypical, don’t you think?” He glances at her, his brow rising. “You’re blonde and beautiful with curves in all the right places. How would you like it if I insinuated you must be a bimbo?”

“Hmm…” she expels, the touché registering.

“And you’re the one who kept saying we should ‘keep things casual.’ How do I know you weren’t out playing the field?” his inquiry more of a device than a question, to relay the damaging feeling of being accused of cheating.

Savannah stammers, gathering her thoughts. “At first, I thought it wise to at least try and date other people. There’s nothing wrong with keeping things casual, until you figure out where you’re going,” she defends. “But really, after being with you…who the hell could I have possibly found to go up from there?” her question frustratingly complimentary. “Besides, you didn’t necessarily fight me on sleeping together right after we met,” she insinuates a certain promiscuity.

“Oh, and I had to twist your arm.” He chuckles acerbically. “You came to me that night, remember? All I had was your word that you didn’t make a habit of such behavior. I didn’t doubt you, Savannah.”

“I know.” She scrunches up her face, her point completely moot. “It’s just that there were all of these weird little progressions. Finding out your ex had money. And Candida’s circle of cougars. I’m sure she’s not the only one who’s tried to lure you into the den.” She rolls her eyes. “Shoot!” she exhausts, her fishing line crossing over his.

Brody gently stops her from reeling it in making it worse. He simply ducks under her pole, standing to the opposite side, an easy fix.

“The way I see it, anyone can cheat. The temptation is bound to show up, sometime or another. Could you cheat? Sure. Could I cheat? Sure. But I could never make believe it’s right.” Growing tired of defending himself for something he didn’t do, he reels in his line. “If you don’t know that about me or are afraid to trust me, then I don’t know what to tell you.” He begins gathering up his fishing gear. “Apparently I failed my position as a man to make you feel secure with what we have. Or what we’ve started,” he says, knowing their relationship is in its infancy.

Savannah chuckles bitingly. “And here we go with the
man
talk.”

“Go ahead. Laugh. Maybe you think I’m blowing smoke.” He stuffs a travel-sized tackle box into his backpack. “You women wonder where all the good men are. I’m right here in front of you. You’re looking at a man who wants to lead. Who wants to step up and be responsible. Do the things a man should do. Protect what’s mine and ultimately yours. But apparently you think I’m some kind of cheating gigolo clown show.” He manhandles his fishing gear, clearly incapable of packing it up quickly enough.

“What are you doing?” Savannah disapproves of his quitting.

“Oh, you mean you don’t recognize your own response?” he says flippantly. “I’m getting the hell out of dodge. I can’t take it, Savannah.” He continues, his hands busily digging through his backpack in search of something. “The fact that you can’t or are unwilling to trust me. We’re standing here having a conversation about cheating could-haves and might-have-beens. And the look on your face, the other morning, when you thought you had found me out.” He stands upright, his somber eyes leveling with hers in the moonlight. “I never wanted to see that look from you. You completely lost faith in me.” Brody swallows hard, his hand proffering his backpack find, a yellow and black tattered
Terrible Towel.