Only Forever (10 page)

Vanessa refused. She wouldn’t have it said that she couldn’t pull her own weight.

Fifteen minutes later she went on camera and started pitching musical jewelry boxes. Despite Margie’s skill with makeup, a glance at the monitor assured Vanessa that she looked bad enough to scare Boris Karloff.

She was demonstrating the ugliest floor lamp in captivity when Oliver smilingly announced that it was time to take a call from a viewer.

“What’s your name?” Vanessa’s cohost asked, reaching out to touch the lamp fondly.

“Nick DeAngelo,” responded the caller. “What’s yours?”

Vanessa stepped on the base of the lamp at that moment, causing it to wave madly from side to side. She flung both arms around the thing just as it would have toppled to the floor.

“We’ve got to talk,” Nick said. “Will you have dinner with me tonight, Vanessa?”

“No,” Vanessa answered, and it was a struggle to get the word out.

“You’re being stubborn,” Nick insisted.

“Do you want a floor lamp or not?” Vanessa
yelled, wondering when those jerks in the control booth were going to disconnect the call. It was obvious that this was no ordinary viewer.

Nick laughed. “I’ve missed you, too, babe,” he said, and his voice was a brandy-and-cream rumble that brought pink color pulsing to Vanessa’s cheeks.

The floor director seemed delighted. He stood beside one of the cameramen, signaling Vanessa to continue. Her chest swelled as she drew a deep, deliberate breath in an effort to keep her composure. She tried to smile, but the effort was hopeless.

“This is really not the time or place for this,” she said, speaking as pleasantly as she could. “Some of our other viewers are probably anxious to talk to us about these lamps.”

Again the item in question teetered dangerously; again Vanessa caught it just in time.

“Far be it from me to stand in the way of free enterprise,” Nick replied. “I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.”

Vanessa squared her shoulders and looked directly into the camera. “I’ve moved,” she lied, hoping he would take the hint.

“I’ll find you,” Nick replied.

It was all she could do not to stomp her feet
and scream in frustration. “All right, all right. If I agree to see you, will you hang up?”

“Absolutely,” was the generous response.

“Then I’ll see you at seven-thirty,” Vanessa said moderately, seething inside.

The cameramen cheered and, at the end of her segment, Vanessa learned that the switchboard had been lighted up for the entire three hours she was on. It did seem that everybody loved a lover.

Vanessa stepped through her front door at five-fifteen, screamed in a belated release of her temper and hurled her purse across the living room. Her cat gave a terrified meow and fled up the stairs, and Vanessa was instantly contrite.

“I’m sorry,” she called out, but it was no use. Sari would not forgive such a transgression unless Vanessa groveled and made an offering of creamed tuna.

Nick arrived promptly at seven-thirty, wearing the tuxedo he’d had on the first time Vanessa met him. He was as handsome as ever, although there was a hollow expression in his eyes.

He took in Vanessa’s glimmery blue dress with appreciation as she stepped back to admit him. “I half expected that you would have moved out of state before I got here,” he said.

Vanessa averted her eyes. She’d fantasized about seeing Nick again for days but, despite all those mental rehearsals, the reality was nearly overwhelming. She couldn’t help hoping that he was ready to give some ground where their relationship was concerned so that they could forge some kind of future together.

“You look very dapper,” she commented, ignoring his remark. The lapels of his coat were of glistening black satin, and it was difficult not to touch him.

“Thank you,” he replied with a slight inclination of his head.

Vanessa, who earned her living by thinking on her feet, talking for as long as three hours virtually nonstop, was tongue-tied. All the things she longed to say to Nick were caught in her throat, practically choking her.

He seemed to be looking into her soul and reading her most private emotions. “It’s all right,” he said, touching her face briefly with one hand. “We’ll find our way through all this somehow. I promise.”

Vanessa wished she could be so sure. As he laid her velvet evening coat over her shoulders, she fought to hold back tears of confusion and fear.

A lot of people would have said she was crazy, she thought, as she and Nick whisked through the rainy night in his Corvette. Jock or no jock, this was a rare and gentle man, the kind most women would have tackled and hog-tied. And Paul had been right when he’d said that no job was worth the kind of pain the loss of Nick DeAngelo had caused her. As if that weren’t enough, Vanessa knew she loved the man to distraction.

She’d been holding him at arm’s length since the night they met, comparing him to Parker. Down deep, she’d known all along that Nick was as different from her ex-husband as salt was from sugar.

There could be only one reason for her failure to make a commitment, and that was fear—fear of loving and then losing, trusting and being betrayed.

The end of her relationship with Parker had been bitterly painful, even though she’d wanted the divorce and known that she had no other choice. If that happened with Nick, she knew she wouldn’t be able to endure it.

She closed her eyes and let her head rest against the back of the seat.

“Don’t be afraid, Vanessa,” Nick said softly. “Please.”

Vanessa looked at him, drew in the scent of his cologne. “That’s like asking a burn victim not to be be scared of fire,” she replied in a sad voice.

Nick sighed. “I’m not the guy who burned you,” he reminded her. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You have more power over me than Parker ever dreamed of having,” Vanessa admitted, unable to keep the words back. “If you wanted to, you could crush me so badly that I’d never find all the pieces.”

He turned his head and glowered at her. “You’re stronger than you think you are,” he said, clearly annoyed. “Give yourself—and me—a little credit.”

An uncomfortable silence settled over the car after that, and neither Nick nor Vanessa spoke until they’d reached DeAngelo’s and been seated inside a private dining room.

Vanessa had never seen a more elegant room. There was a single table in front of a view of Elliot Bay. The streets were lighted up like a tangle of Christmas tree lights, the colors smudged by the rain that sheeted the windows.
Candles provided the only light, and a violinist serenaded Nick and Vanessa as they sat looking at each other, comfortable with the music.

When the music stopped the first waiter appeared, bringing champagne. He popped the cork and poured the frothy liquid into their glasses, being very careful not to look at either Vanessa or Nick.

Vanessa arched an eyebrow the moment they were alone. “No diet cola?” she joked.

Nick grinned. “I’m trying to get past your defenses here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed,” Vanessa said with a sigh, clinking her glass against Nick’s as he lifted it in a toast.

“To page 72,” he said.

Vanessa laughed and sipped her wine. For the first time in days she felt whole and human. It would be so easy to give herself to Nick body and soul, and that was exactly why she had to keep herself under control.

“I saw a shadow in your eyes just now,” Nick said, reaching across the table to take her hand in his. “What were you thinking about?”

“Guess.”

His jawline tightened then relaxed again.
“The perils of loving Nick DeAngelo?” he ventured.

Vanessa nodded and looked away toward the harbor. “Did Paul and Janet invite you over for Thanksgiving dinner?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject. God knew, the one at hand was a blind alley.

His hand gripped hers for a moment, then moved away. “Yes,” he said. “Vanessa, look at me.”

She hated the fact that her first impulse was always to do exactly what Nick told her. Before she could do anything about it, her gaze had shifted to his face. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is,” she pleaded. “Please.”

“Will you come home with me tonight?”

Vanessa wanted to be flippant. “You move fast,” she said, and immediately felt like a bumbling teenager.

“Vanessa.”

“No,” she said quickly. “No, I won’t sleep with you, Nick.”

“Why not?”

The nerve. “Because pilgrims don’t sleep around, that’s why.”

Nick tilted his head to one side and studied
her. “What?” he asked, looking honestly puzzled.

She smiled, albeit very sadly. “Tomorrow morning I have to get up, put on a pilgrim costume and sell my little heart out. Does that answer your question?”

“Not by a long shot,” Nick grumbled as a second waiter appeared with enormous salads.

Vanessa ate with good appetite, having learned her lesson about too much wine on an empty stomach, and by the time the broiled lobster had been served, she felt almost human.

Dessert made her positively daring. When Nick took her home, she invited him in for a drink.

The living room was dark, but Vanessa didn’t bother to turn on a light since there was virtually no furniture to bump into. She was leading the way toward the kitchen when a crash and groan behind her made her leap for the switch.

Nick was sprawled on the floor on his back, looking for all the world like someone who had fallen off a ten-story building.

Vanessa dropped to her knees beside him. “Are you all right?” she cried.

“My back is out,” he answered, moaning.

There was no time to be wasted. Vanessa went
right to the heart of the matter and panicked. She scrambled for the afghan her grandmother had knitted and covered him with it as if he were a war casualty. His eyes were closed, and he was pale.

“Nick, say something!” she cried.

“I may sue,” he replied.

V
anessa tapped one foot nervously while she waited for Gina to answer the telephone. Finally she heard a breathless “hello” at the other end of the line.

Huddled in her kitchen, speaking in a whisper, Vanessa explained that Nick was lying in the middle of her living room floor, apparently immobilized. “What should I do?” she asked. “Call the paramedics?”

Gina laughed. “It would serve him right if you did. Nick’s faking, Vanessa—he probably wants to spend the night.”

Vanessa sighed. Of course Nick was pretending, indulging his hypochondria. After all this was the man who carried on like a victim of Lizzie Borden’s when he cut himself. “Thank you,” she said.

“See you tomorrow,” Gina responded lightly. “Have fun getting Nick off the floor.”

“
Tomorrow?”

“At Uncle Guido’s dinner, of course,” came the answer.

Vanessa’s hackles rose. Evidently Nick had committed her to a family gathering without so much as consulting her. She said a polite goodbye to Gina and, after gathering her dignity, walked back into the living room.

There, standing beside Nick’s prone body, she folded her arms across her chest and nudged him with one foot. “What’s happening at your Uncle Guido’s place tomorrow, Nick?”

With great and obvious anguish, Nick raised himself to a sitting position. “I could have been killed,” he fretted, avoiding her question.

“That could still happen,” Vanessa allowed.

Laboriously the man who had once struck fear into the heart of every linebacker in the National Football League hauled himself to his feet. He gave the vacuum cleaner he’d tripped over a look that should have melted the plastic handle, and then sighed. “I suppose you’re mad because I told my family you’d come to dinner tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

Vanessa was tapping one foot again. “That kind of high-handed presumption is exactly what keeps me from marrying you, Nick DeAngelo!”

He leaned close to her, and she was filled with the singular scent of him. His dark eyes were snapping with annoyance. “Who asked you to get married, Lawrence?” he countered.

Crimson heat filled Vanessa’s face. No one, not even Parker, could make her as furious, so fast, as Nick could. “You wanted to shack up?” she seethed.

Nick sighed again heavily. “Time out,” he said, making the signal with his hands. “Let’s start over. You’re the one who brought up the subject of marriage.”

Vanessa looked away, her eyes filling with sudden embarrassing tears. She had no idea what to say.

Nick took her arms into his hands and made her look at him. “It’s time we stopped playing games,” he said hoarsely. “I love you, Vanessa, and I’d like nothing better than to marry you. Tonight, tomorrow, whenever you say.”

Vanessa bit into her lower lip. She wanted to say yes so badly that she could barely hold the word back, but fear stopped her. Mortal fear that gripped her mind and spirit like an iron fist, cold and inescapable. She tried to get past it, like a mountain climber working her way around an obstacle by inching along a narrow ledge.

“Maybe I wasn’t so far off a minute ago,” she ventured to say, “when I asked if you wanted to live together.”

Nick stared at her in wounded amazement. “You said ‘shack up,’ if I remember correctly,” he replied.

Vanessa winced at the dry fury in his tone and rushed headlong into her subject. “It seems to me that it would be a good idea for us to live together for a while, just until we could make sure we really love each other.”

Nick’s eyes glowed with dark heat. “Sure,” he mocked, shrugging. “That way you wouldn’t have to make a commitment. If you got a job offer in another city, or decided you wanted a different roommate, you could just bail out!”

“That isn’t what I meant at all!” Vanessa cried, horrified at the picture he was painting.

“Isn’t it?” he demanded. “Tell me, Vanessa—where were we going to set up this romantic little love nest?”

She swallowed. “I thought San Francisco would be nice,” she admitted in a very small voice.

“I’ll bet you did,” Nick retorted, and, unbelievably, he turned and strode toward the door.

Vanessa hurried after him, not wanting to let him go again so soon. “Nick, wait…”

He stopped and turned to face her, but there was a cold distance in his eyes that made her heart ache. “I want a wife and a family, Vanessa—I’ve told you that. If you can’t make a commitment, then for God’s sake let me go.”

“You’re being a prude,” Vanessa accused, as he opened the door to an icy November wind.

“Imagine,” Nick marveled, spreading his hands. “Me—the party animal. Go figure it.”

“Don’t be so stubborn and unreasonable!” Vanessa cried, knowing how lonely her world was without him. “Lots of people are living together these days, and they’re making their relationships work!”

“Good for them,” Nick replied. “As for me, I’m ready for a wife, not a perennial girlfriend. Sleep tight, Vanessa.” With that, he went out, closing the door crisply behind him.

Feeling bereft, Vanessa shot the bolt into place and wandered witlessly back to the kitchen, meaning to console herself with a cup of tea. She’d turned her answering machine off to call Gina earlier, and now, after putting a mug of water into the microwave, she checked for messages.

There was only one, but it might have made all the difference in the world if she’d only heard it a few minutes earlier. The producers of
Seattle This Morning
wanted her to host the show, not with a partner, but on her own.

Vanessa would have jumped for joy at any other time, but she couldn’t forget that Nick had just walked out the front door. She dreaded facing the rest of her life without him.

Thursday was long and it was lonely. Vanessa did her stint on the shopping channel—dressed as a pilgrim—and turned down numerous invitations to friends’ houses opting instead to go home alone and cook a frozen turkey dinner in her microwave.

There were messages on her machine from everyone in the world except Nick DeAngelo. She returned a happy-holiday call to her grandparents and left the others unanswered. All night she lay staring up at the ceiling, trying to imagine herself living with Nick as his wife, bearing his children, sharing his joys and his problems.

The pleasant pictures were all too fleeting. It was easier to imagine him packing to leave her on some rainy afternoon.

All night Vanessa tossed and turned. Long before
morning she knew what she had to do. If she stayed in Seattle, she would keep having destructive encounters with Nick, which would break her heart over and over again.

She had to start over somewhere else.

She called the television station in San Francisco first and told them she was accepting their offer, and then she got in touch with a friend in real estate and arranged to put her house on the market. She hoped the new owners would let Rodney go on living in the garage apartment since he liked it so much.

Nick didn’t try to contact her again, and Vanessa’s feelings about that were mixed. She marveled at her own capacity for conflicting emotions where that man was concerned.

When the fifteenth of December finally arrived, Vanessa’s brief career with the Midas Network was over. That evening Mel and the Harmons shanghaied her, dragging her off to a farewell party at, of all places, DeAngelo’s.

“How could you?” Vanessa demanded of Janet Harmon in a whisper when the crowd of people from the network had finished congratulating her and gone back to enjoying wine and hors d’oeuvres. It would have been easier if Nick had
been away looking after the other restaurant or something, but he was very much in evidence.

“How could I?” Janet echoed. “Vanessa, how could
you
? Leaving the Midas Network is one thing, but leaving Nick is another. Are you out of your mind? The man adores you!”

Vanessa’s gaze went involuntarily to Nick. He was talking to a couple on the far side of the restaurant, laughing at something the woman said as he drew back her chair. Knowing all the while that her reaction was silly, Vanessa ached with jealousy. “Bringing me here was a rotten trick,” she said miserably, forcing her eyes back to her own circle. “Thanks a lot.”

“We were trying to bring you to your senses, that’s all,” argued Mel, leaning forward in his chair. He was accompanied by a woman half his age with bleached hair and whisk-broom eyelashes.

Vanessa sighed. “Even if I wanted to stay, it’s too late. I’ve already given up my job and sold my house.”

Paul, now her former boss, sat back in his chair. “The spot on
Seattle This Morning
is still open,” he said.

Vanessa felt a little leap of hope in a corner of her heart, but it died quickly. She was as
afraid of commitment as she’d ever been, and Nick probably didn’t want her anymore anyway.

She wasn’t about to find out. Going to him with heart in her hands and being rejected would be more than she could bear. She looked down at the glass of chablis a waiter had poured for her moments before and left Paul’s remark hanging unanswered in the air.

Vanessa was in a sort of daze from then on, eating her dinner, sipping her wine, making the proper responses—she hoped—to the things the other people around the large table said to her. She told herself that she had only to get through dessert and a round of goodbyes and then she could escape.

She was coming back from the rest room when she encountered Nick in the hallway. He blocked her way like Italy’s answer to Goliath.

“Hello, Nick,” she managed to choke out, her cheeks coloring. “How are you?”

He gave her a look that said her question was too stupid to rate an answer and sighed. “It would be easier to forget you if you weren’t so damned beautiful,” he said raggedly.

Vanessa didn’t know what to say in response to that. Inwardly she cursed Janet for having her going-away party here where she couldn’t have
escaped seeing Nick. She tried to step around him but he wouldn’t let her pass.

“It’s damn easy for you to walk away, isn’t it?” he asked in a low, wondering voice. “Didn’t any of what happened between us get past that wall of ice you hide behind and touch you?”

Anguish filled Vanessa, but she refused to let her feelings show. She met Nick’s gaze, a feat that nearly brought her to her knees. “It was all a game,” she lied coldly.

Nick grasped her shoulders in his powerful hands. “If it was,” he bit off the words, “we both lost.”

Vanessa was on the verge of tears, but she kept her composure and stepped out of his hold. “Goodbye, Nick,” she said in a soft voice. This time, when she went to walk away, he allowed her to pass.

She didn’t stop at the table and speak to her friends; that was beyond her. She simply kept walking, crossing the dining room, concentrating on holding herself together.

She paused to collect her coat, but she was practically running when she reached the sidewalk.

Snow was drifting down from the sky in great
lacy puffs—an unusual event in Seattle—and the magic eased Vanessa’s tormented spirit just a little. She slowed her pace, allowing the weather to remind her of Spokane, of childhood and innocence.

Pike Place Market, with its noise and bustle, reminded her that she was in Seattle. She went inside, making her way through hordes of happy Christmas shoppers, pausing in front of a fish market, watching and listening as salmon and cod and red snapper were weighed and tossed on the counter to be wrapped. Vanessa stepped closer.

“Help you, lady?” asked a young boy with dark hair and eyes. He was wearing a white apron over jeans and a sweatshirt, and Vanessa wondered if he was a part of Nick’s vast family.

Vanessa stepped closer, feeling self-conscious in her glittering blue dress, strappy shoes and evening coat. She opened her evening bag to make sure that she had money. “I-I’ll take a pound of—of red snapper, please.”

“Red snapper, a pound!” the boy yelled toward the back of the market, and the weighing and tossing process started all over again.

“What’s your name?” Vanessa asked.

The young man gave her an odd look. “Mark,” he said. “Mark DeAngelo.”

She smiled. Nick had told her about working in his uncle’s fish market when he was about Mark’s age. For Vanessa, it was like looking into the past, seeing Nick as he must have been. “You’re Gina’s cousin?”

Mark nodded, taking Vanessa’s money and making change, still looking puzzled.

Vanessa felt foolish. She put her change back into her purse and reached out for the red snapper, now snug in its white package.

“You a friend of Gina’s?” Mark asked just as Vanessa would have turned and walked away.

“Nick’s,” she confessed.

His wonderful dark eyes narrowed. “So you’re the one,” he said, and any friendliness he might have shown earlier had faded away.

Vanessa swallowed, wondering what had brought her to this market in the dark of night, what had made her mention Nick in the first place.

“Uncle Guido,” the boy said to a heavyset man who had materialized beside him. “This is her—Nick’s lady.”

Guido DeAngelo gave his nephew a quelling look, then smiled at Vanessa and extended one
hand over the counter where crab legs and salmon steaks lay on a bed of ice. “You forgive Mark,” he pleaded, beaming. “He got no manners. No good manners at all.”

Vanessa shifted her bag and her package of fish so that she could shake Guido’s hand. “How do you do?” she murmured, completely at a loss for anything more imaginative to say.

Guido’s bright dark eyes took in her evening clothes and her special hairstyle. “You have new fight with Nicky?” he demanded. Despite his stern manner, Vanessa doubted that he had a trace of malice in him.

The tears came back. “I’m afraid it’s an old fight,” she answered.

Guido rounded the counter and hugged her. “That Nicky. He’s a stubborn one. You tell him his Uncle Guido said to quit it out right now!”

“Quit it out?” Vanessa echoed.

“Cut it out,” Mark translated from his position at the cash register.

Vanessa smiled and nodded. “I’ll tell him,” she promised.
If I ever see him again.

Outside the market, Vanessa hailed a cab. She half hoped to find Nick’s Corvette waiting in her driveway, but the only car in evidence was her
own. She paid the driver and hurried around to the back door.