Only Forever (6 page)

For a long time afterward there were no sounds in the room except for their breathing and the popping of the fire. Then inexplicably, uncontrollably, Vanessa began to weep.

Nick groaned and rolled over to look down into her face. “Don’t do this to me, Van,” he pleaded, wiping away a tear with one thumb. “Please, don’t be sorry for what we did.”

She shook her head. “I’m not,” she managed to say. “It’s just that—”

He kissed her briefly on the mouth. “It’s just that we don’t know each other well enough, right?”

She nodded. “Right.”

He leered at her and wriggled his eyebrows. “Okay, I’m an eighties guy, I can relate. What’s your sign, Baby?”

Vanessa gave a shout of laughter through her tears. “Stop,” she pleaded. “This is a sensitive moment.”

Nick squinted at the clock on the bedside stand. “It’s also dinnertime, and I’m hungry as hell. Let’s make spaghetti.”

Vanessa was too relaxed to contemplate getting up and doing any kind of work. “Make spaghetti? I
am
spaghetti.”

“I have a hot tub,” Nick wheedled, sliding downward and beginning to kiss her neck again.

Vanessa knew where that would lead. She twisted free and sat up. “You have a hot tub,” she mused, looking at Nick with shining eyes. “What the devil does that have to do with cooking spaghetti?”

Nick declined to answer that and said instead, “On second thought, let’s go out to dinner. I don’t want you to get the idea that I’m a cheap date.”

They took a shower, this time sharing the same stall, and dressed in the clothes that had been strewn from one side of the bedroom to the other. Vanessa reapplied her makeup and styled her hair.

“I hope this place is casual,” she said, giving Nick’s jeans and flannel shirt a look.

The restaurant was a few miles away on the edge of the only town the small island boasted, and the spaghetti there was good.

“The owner must be Italian,” Vanessa guessed, stabbing a meatball with her fork and lifting it to her mouth.

“Paddy O’Shaughnessy?” Nick teased. “Definitely. He probably grew up in Naples, or maybe Verona.”

It was a night full of nonsense, restorative and precious, and Vanessa didn’t want it to end. She knew, of course, that it would, and that the morning would bring painful regrets. She concentrated on enjoying Nick, the spaghetti and, later, the hot tub.

There were plants in the glass-walled room where the hot tub bubbled and churned, and Vanessa wrapped herself in the night sky with its glittering mantle of stars. “This must be what it’s like when you’re on safari,” she said after swallowing a sip of wine. “I can just imagine that we’re camped alongside a steaming river with crocodiles slipping by, unseen, unheard…”

“Now that’s a romantic thought,” Nick observed.

Vanessa hiccuped and looked accusingly at her wine. “I’ve had too much
vino
,” she told Nick seriously. “I’d better sleep in Gina’s bed tonight.”

If Nick was disappointed, he didn’t show it. “Whatever you say, princess,” he said quietly, taking the glass from her hand and setting it on the tiled edge of the large square tub. “I don’t
want you to have any regrets when you look back on today.”

“I won’t,” Vanessa said, even though she knew she would. The wounds Parker had left were only partially healed, and she wouldn’t be able to disregard the similarities between him and Nick forever.

When she yawned, Nick lifted her out of the tub. “Time for bed,” he said. “We have to get up early.”

Vanessa scrambled for a towel, not because she was naked, but because she was chilled, and she watched unabashedly while Nick got out of the tub and switched off the jets. He was so incredibly secure in his masculinity that he didn’t reveal the slightest qualm about being nude.

When he pulled on a blue terrycloth robe, it was an unhurried action, meant for comfort and not modesty. In fact, when Vanessa came to him he opened the garment long enough to enfold her inside, against his ribs.

They walked upstairs that way, talking idly of spaghetti and hot tubs, and parted after a brief kiss in the doorway of Gina’s room.

The sheets were cold. The moon and stars must have all gathered on the other side of the house, for there was no light for Vanessa to
dream by. She missed Nick, even though they had parted only a few minutes before and he was just one room away.

Snuggling down determinedly, she closed her eyes and commanded herself to sleep. Despite her utter weariness, oblivion eluded her. She tossed, turned and tossed again.

Finally she got out of bed, put a robe on over her striped silk pajamas and padded across the hall.

“Nick?” she questioned softly from the doorway of his room.

He sounded sleepy. “What?”

“I think I heard something.”

A motion in the moon-shadowed bed and a throaty groan of contentment told her he was stretching like some cocky panther. “Like what?” he asked innocently.

Vanessa shrugged. “You said there were ghosts….”

“Yup,” Nick agreed, “I did.” He threw back the covers to make a place for her beside him. “There’s only one thing to do, Tonto. Circle up the wagons and share a bunk.”

Vanessa was across the room and between Nick’s satin sheets in a wink. She snuggled up against him, reveling in his warmth and his
strength. “I’m going to hate myself when I wake up in the morning,” she confessed with a contented sigh.

Nick kissed her forehead. “I know,” he answered sadly. “And me, too, probably.”

Vanessa rested her head on his shoulder. “Probably,” she said, and then she dropped off to sleep.

When she awakened at dawn, Nick was gone. She knew he was probably out running, and she was grateful for the time to sort out where she was and what she’d done the night before.

She’d had her shower and dressed for work by the time Nick returned. Clad in running shorts, a tank top and a jacket, despite the fact that November was fast approaching, he looked at Van warily as he crossed the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and took out the milk he and Vanessa had stopped for on the way home from O’Shaughnessy’s the night before.

“Let’s hear it,” he started. “You hate me, you had too much wine last night and waking up the morning in my bed was an instant replay of the first time with Parker. Right?”

Vanessa was eating a slice of whole wheat toast slathered with honey. “Do I look traumatized?” she asked, chewing.

He cocked his head to one side, frowning. “No,” he said, sounding surprised. “Are you saying you don’t regret letting me make love to you?”

“Excuse me,” Vanessa said, pouring herself a cup of the coffee that had been waiting when she came downstairs, “but you didn’t do everything, you know. I was half of that little encounter.” She paused and drew a deep breath, then let it out. “To answer your question, yes and no.”

Nick gave her a wry look. “Yes and no. I like a decisive woman.”

“It was too soon,” she said. “I probably wasn’t ready.”

He set the milk back in the refrigerator and put his hands on his hips. “You seemed ready to me,” he replied.

Vanessa blushed at the good-natured jibe and sipped her coffee to avoid having to say something.

“That takes care of the yes. What about the no? What don’t you regret, Vanessa?”

Vanessa dropped her eyes. “The passion,” she answered after a long time. “You brought me back into the world, Nick, and I’m grateful.”

“Gratitude isn’t exactly what I had in mind,
but it’ll do for now,” he answered, and then he disappeared up the stairs. When he came back, he was wearing tan corduroy slacks, gleaming leather boots and a green turtleneck sweater.

Vanessa assessed him appreciatively. “How much time have we got before the ferry leaves?”

Nick took in her blue suede dress and sighed heavily. “Not enough,” he lamented. He took her in his arms and kissed her with knee-weakening thoroughness before whispering hoarsely, “I wish we could stay here forever.”

Vanessa laid her head against his chest. “Me, too,” she said, but she knew the magic was already slipping away.

It seemed sadly fitting that, when they drove aboard the ferry to return to Seattle, dark clouds were gathering in the northern sky.

The storm Nick had predicted was almost upon them.

W
hen Vanessa finished her segment that morning, Parker was waiting at the door of the women’s dressing room. His arms were folded across his chest, and his features were set in a sour scowl.

“Where were you last night?” he demanded in a furious whisper.

Vanessa sighed. “We’re divorced, Parker, and that’s all I’m going to say about last night or anything else.” She started to walk around him, but he reached out and took her arm in a painful grasp.

His nose was an inch from Vanessa’s as he rasped, “You slept with him, didn’t you?”

Vanessa wrenched free of his hold, her face hot with color. A receptionist was approaching with a folded piece of paper in her hand, looking scared.

“Sh-should I call security, Ms. Lawrence?”

Vanessa saw nothing to fear and everything to pity in Parker’s eyes at that moment, and she shook her head as he made a visible effort to control himself. “Everything is fine, Karen,” she lied.

Karen darted an uneasy glance at Parker and held out the paper to Vanessa. “Mr. DeAngelo called while you were on the air,” she explained.

Vanessa scanned the note and suppressed a sigh. There was some kind of problem at the new restaurant in Portland, and Nick would be away until Friday. She bit her lower lip and crumpled the message into a ball. “Thank you,” she said to the receptionist, who promptly hurried away.

“Have lunch with me,” Parker said.

Vanessa stared at him. “You must be insane.”

He treated her to his most endearing smile. “Look at it this way—if you don’t, I’ll just follow you home and you’ll have to feed me anyway.”

“I’d be more likely to call the police,” Vanessa said.

Parker shrugged. “Whereas a restaurant would be a safe, neutral place—very public.”

Vanessa sighed. She was in a glum mood and Parker was the last person she wanted to spend time with, especially when she knew he was going to tell her something she didn’t want to know, but she finally nodded. She couldn’t hide forever.

While her ex-husband waited, she toned down her makeup, gathered up the list of times she would be selling the next day and braced herself for the worst.

A soft rain was falling as Parker and Vanessa hurried across the employee parking lot to her car. Parker had arrived in a cab, which said a lot about his confidence in his powers of persuasion.

Unable to stand it any longer, Vanessa looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she snapped her seat belt into place. “You’re going to tell me something about Nick, aren’t you? Something awful.”

Parker’s expression was one of regretful gallantry. “This thing between you and him is getting serious, and I can’t let it go any further.”

“What?” Vanessa cried, frustrated beyond all bearing. “What’s so terrible about Nick?”

Parker sighed. “All I’m going to say for right now is that he’s not husband material. DeAngelo is ten times the bastard I ever was.”

Vanessa offered no comment on that, and as she drove out of the studio compound, she gnawed nervously at her lower lip. Normally she wouldn’t have given Parker’s words any credence—he was, after all, a lying, manipulative cheat. But she had a spooky, gut-level feeling that this time he had something valid to say.

“Where do you want to go for lunch?” she asked even though every trace of her appetite was gone.

He named a nearby bar and grill, and Vanessa drove toward it.

They were settled in a booth with cushioned leather seats and roast beef sandwiches and glasses of beer in front of them, when Parker grinned at her and said, “Just like old times, huh, Van?”

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Stop it, Parker. Too much has happened for us to be sitting here pretending to have fond memories.”

Parker looked hurt. “You don’t have any happy memories of us? Not even one?”

Vanessa thought of the early part of their marriage when she’d adored Parker, when everything he said had made her either laugh or cry. She’d lived on an emotional seesaw in those days, believing herself to be happy. In retrospect,
she knew she had suffered. “Don’t push, okay?” she said, averting her eyes. She hadn’t been able to touch her sandwich, but she reached for the glass of beer with a trembling hand.

“You’re really nervous, aren’t you?” Parker’s features darkened, indicating an approaching storm. “Are you that crazy about De-Angelo?”

Vanessa saw no point in lying. “Yes,” she said straight out. “I am.”

“Why?” Parker demanded, and some of the shaved beef slid out of his sandwich because he was squeezing it so hard.

Vanessa shrugged, trying to look nonchalant even though her stomach was roiling and her throat was closed tight. It wasn’t fair of her to try to convict the man she loved on whatever it was Parker was going to say, especially when Nick wasn’t there to defend himself.

“This is a mistake,” she blurted, sliding across the bench to stand and shrug into her coat. “I shouldn’t have come here—”

“Vanessa, sit down,” Parker said, and something in his tone made her meet his gaze.

Her courage failed at what she saw there, and she dropped back into the seat, covering her face with both hands for a moment and sighing.

“Tell me, Parker. Stop playing games and say it.”

“He’s using you to repay me for something that happened a couple of years ago.”

The statement sounded so preposterous that Vanessa almost laughed out loud. Almost. “Like what?”

Parker sighed heavily and, for just a second or so, he looked honestly reluctant. “Did he mention Jenna—his ex-wife?”

Vanessa nodded. “Yes.”

The expression in Parker’s blue eyes was distant and vaguely arrogant. “What did he tell you about the divorce?”

Powerful forces battled within Vanessa, one faction wanting to stay and hear Parker out, the other clamoring for escape. “He said she had a problem with trusting him, and that she didn’t want to have children.”

Parker shook his head, as though marveling at some tacky wonder. Then, without further ado, he dropped the bomb. “She and I had an affair, Vanessa. Nick caught us together and he’s been out to get me ever since.”

For a moment the words just loomed between Vanessa and Parker, quivering with portent. Then they exploded in Vanessa’s spirit, and tears
of pain filled her eyes. She put a hand to her throat and rose shakily to her feet.

“Tell me it’s a lie, Parker.”

He shrugged and, incredibly, reached for his sandwich. “I’d like to, babe, but I can’t. The truth will out, and all that.”

Vanessa turned and stumbled toward the door. The storm had come and rain was pounding on the sidewalk as she stood in the cold wind, heedless and broken. She walked slowly to the car, her hands trembling so that it took several attempts to get the key into the lock and open the door.

When she was inside, she let her forehead rest against the steering wheel and drew deep breaths until the desire to scream had abated a little. She was just fitting the key into the ignition when the door on the passenger side opened, and Parker flopped into the seat, sopping wet.

“You shouldn’t be alone right now,” he said somehow managing to look as though he really gave a damn.

“Get out,” Vanessa said. She was soaked to the skin, her hair was dripping rainwater and she knew her mascara was running down her face in dark streaks. She didn’t care about any of those things. She wanted to be alone; she needed it.

Parker actually had the gall to reach out and grip her hand. “It’s okay, Van—I’m going to take care of you. You’ll forget about DeAngelo in no time.”

Vanessa was cold and her teeth were beginning to chatter. “Get out,” she said again, and after a second’s hesitation Parker left the car, slamming the door behind him.

She drove home by rote, tears streaming down her face, and she hadn’t had time to pull herself together before Rodney appeared. He let himself in through the kitchen door, took Vanessa by the shoulders and pressed her into a chair.

“Good God,” he breathed, “you look awful! What happened? Did somebody die?”

Vanessa nodded. “Me,” she answered. “I died, Rodney—fifteen minutes ago in Toddy’s Bar and Grill.”

Rodney put a hand to her forehead and then went to the cupboard for a mug. He promptly filled it with water and shoved it into the microwave. While it was heating, he plundered the cabinets until he found Vanessa’s fruitcake brandy.

When he’d made a cup of instant coffee liberally laced with brandy, he set it on the table
in front of Vanessa and sat down in the chair beside hers. “Talk to me,” he said quietly.

Vanessa reached for the mug, holding it in both hands, letting it warm her fingers. “I can’t,” she said. “Not yet.”

The door opened, and Gina slipped in. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

Vanessa averted her eyes, humiliated. She didn’t want Gina to go to her brother and report that he’d broken her. His plan of revenge had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

“It’s got to be about Nick,” Rodney mused.

A strangled sob escaped Vanessa.

Gina spoke softly to Rodney. “I’d better go. I’ll call you later.”

“Sure,” Rodney replied with affection, and he kissed Gina’s forehead before she left the house.

Vanessa took a steadying sip of the brandied coffee.

“So,” Rodney said, dropping back into his chair at the table, “tell me about the murder of Vanessa Lawrence back there at Toddy’s Bar and Grill.”

Vanessa shook her head. “Not now.”

“Okay,” her cousin said, “if you won’t talk,
at least go upstairs and get out of those wet clothes before you catch pneumonia.”

Thinking of the important interview scheduled for Friday, Vanessa nodded woodenly. “Okay.” She got up and walked up the stairs, stiff and slow of movement, carrying her coffee with her. She took a brief hot shower, then put on flannel pajamas and collapsed on her bed.

“You love Nick that much, huh?” Rodney asked from the doorway. He’d brought another cup of coffee, probably doctored, and he proceeded toward Vanessa’s bedside.

She took the cup. “That’s ridiculous. I’ve only known him a few days.” And in that short length of time he had recreated her world.

Rodney sat down on the foot of the bed since Parker hadn’t left any of the chairs when he moved out. “Why do I get the feeling that your ex-husband had something to do with this?”

Vanessa set her coffee on the bedside table and wriggled under the covers. “Nick’s been using me,” she said, ignoring her cousin’s question. “God, Rodney, what an actor he is—you should have seen him!”

“What did Parker tell you?” Rodney persisted.

“That he had an affair with Jenna DeAngelo
and Nick caught them together,” she said, and a new wave of pain washed over her as she said the words out loud.

“And you bought that?” Rodney bit off each word, clearly annoyed. “Van, you know Parker would rather climb the tallest tree and lie than stand flat-footed on the ground and tell the truth!”

Their grandfather had said those very words right after Van had introduced Parker to him. She wished she could be in Spokane now and be held in the old man’s strong, gentle arms. “What Parker said was true,” she said sadly. “I can’t explain how I know, but I do.”

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Great. You’re not even going to give Nick a chance to tell his side of the story, are you?”

The mention of his name went through her like a lance. As soon as Rodney left, she would roll herself into a fetal ball and die. “He used me to get back at Parker,” she said miserably. “Now go away and leave me alone. I’m terminal.”

Rodney gave the telephone beside her bed a pointed glance. “I’ll be in my apartment if you need me,” he told her, and then he was gone.

Vanessa drank the rest of her coffee with
brandy and slipped under the covers to wait for the hurting to stop. It followed her relentlessly, even into her sleep.

She awakened hours later, when the room was glowing with moonlight, to find Nick sitting on the side of the bed, looking down at her. She started to pull the covers over her head, but he caught her wrists in an inescapable grasp and held them on either side of the pillow.

“What are you doing in my house?” she spat, struggling, to no real avail, against the hands that imprisoned her with such gentle effectiveness. “Get out, and don’t ever come back!”

Even in the half darkness she saw the pain in Nick’s eyes. God, how calm and collected he was. He should have been the one to work in the broadcasting business, not her.

He spoke in a steady, though hoarse, voice. “I’m here because Gina called me and told me you were in pieces. Rodney filled me in on the rest.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Vanessa ventured to ask, looking at him with wide eyes.

Nick sighed and released her hands. He shoved splayed fingers through his rain-dampened hair. “Part of it. I did come home one night and found Jenna and Parker together.”

Vanessa felt herself breaking apart inside. “And you swore revenge?”

“Hardly. I beat the hell out of him and left. He didn’t tell you that part of the story, though, did he?”

“You lied to me,” Vanessa accused. “You used me to get back at him!”

“I didn’t care enough about Jenna to do that, Vanessa,” Nick replied, still avoiding her eyes. “In one sense, I was actually relieved that it was finally over between us.”

“You’re glossing over the fact that you wanted revenge.”

“I told you,” Nick said with cold patience, “I had all the vengeance I wanted that night. Can you say you don’t remember a night when your devoted husband came home with a few cuts and bruises?”

Vanessa shuddered. She remembered all right. Parker had claimed he’d been mugged, but refused to report the incident to the police. He and Vanessa had been married a little over six months at the time. “My God,” she whispered.

Nick reached out to touch her face, and she slapped his hand away.

With a sigh, he got up and walked over to one of the windows that overlooked the street. “I
think we’d better stop seeing each other for a while,” he said after a long time.

Vanessa was stunned and infuriated. If anybody was going to break off this relationship, it was going to be her. She was the one who had been wronged!