Only Forever (7 page)

She threw back the covers and struggled out of bed. “Wait just a minute, Nick DeAngelo!” she shouted, waving her finger at him.

Instantly he was facing her, and his face was taut with fury. “Listen to me,” he ground out. “I won’t play these games, Vanessa. I’ll be damned if I’ll involve myself with another woman who refuses to trust me!”

Vanessa’s mouth dropped open.

“Goodbye,” Nick said bluntly, and then he walked out, leaving her standing there, in the middle of her bedroom, feeling even worse than she had before.

Throughout the rest of the week, Vanessa functioned like an automaton. She got up in the mornings, fed the cat, got dressed and went to work. When that was done, she went home, fed the cat again and crawled into bed, usually without supper.

By Friday, the day of her interview, she looked less than her best. Wearing some compound
Margie had given her to cover the shadows under her eyes, she presented herself at WTBE-TV in her new raw silk suit.

The front she put on must have been effective because the interview went very well. Although the program wouldn’t actually go into production until after the first of the year, she was informed, the final decision would be made before Thanksgiving. Would she be able to leave Midas Network by the middle of December?

Vanessa answered yes, thanked the woman who had interviewed her and left. Some fundamental instinct told her she was going to get the job. She still wanted it very much, but the excitement was gone.

Since Nick had walked out of her bedroom three days before, so many things had stopped mattering.

She glanced at her watch and saw that it was three-fifteen. She’d promised to meet Janet Harmon for a drink, so she set out for the Olympic Four Seasons at a very reluctant pace.

Janet would probably grill her about the breakup with Nick, and Vanessa didn’t want to burst into tears in the bar of a swanky hotel.

Sure enough, her friend looked grimly determined
when Vanessa met her in the elegant lobby.

“Paul and I stayed here on our wedding night,” she said to make conversation, but it was plain that Janet’s mind wasn’t on her own relationship. “How did the job interview go?”

“I think they’re going to hire me,” Vanessa answered dispiritedly as they entered the cocktail lounge and seated themselves.

“Paul will be beside himself,” Janet answered, “and not with joy, either.”

Vanessa sighed and averted her eyes for a moment. “Stop pretending you didn’t ask me here to find out what happened between Nick and me,” she said.

Janet, a pretty woman with shoulder-length dark hair and blue eyes, folded her arms on the table top and leaned forward slightly. “I don’t have to ask, Vanessa—I already know. Paul is Nick’s best friend, remember?”

A waitress came, took their orders and left again.

“I’d be very interested to hear Nick’s side of the story,” Vanessa said stiffly.

“Then why don’t you go over to DeAngelo’s after you leave here and ask him to tell it to you?” Janet replied in clipped tones.

“Oh, great,” Vanessa complained. “You’re mad at me, too!”

“I’m furious. Nick DeAngelo is the best thing that’s ever happened to you, and you’re not even going to fight for him.”

The waitress returned, setting a glass of white chablis in front of Vanessa. Janet was having a martini, and she made a small ceremony of eating the olive.

At any other time Vanessa would have been amused. As it was, she just wanted to go home, feed the cat and slink back into bed. To get it over with, she said, “I admit it. I was going to break off with Nick, and he beat me to the punch.”

“He’s a wreck,” Janet informed her. “Paul says he’s never seen Nick so low.”

Vanessa took a certain satisfaction in knowing she wasn’t the only one suffering. She lifted her wineglass to her mouth and sipped the chablis before answering, “He’ll get over it, and so will I.”

“I don’t understand this,” Janet pressed. “You fell in love with Nick the first night you met him—I know because I was there and I saw it happen. And now you’re just going to walk away without looking back?”

“I’m not going to crawl to him,” Vanessa said firmly. “I still think he used me to get back at Parker and I despise him for it.”

“You don’t know Nick very well.” Janet sighed, sounding resigned at last. “He’d never do a thing like that. He’s too open, and he hates games and little intrigues.”

“He also hates me,” Vanessa said, remembering the look in his eyes when he’d told her goodbye. “Let’s drop the subject, please, because if we don’t, I’m going to fall apart right here.”

Janet must have believed her because she didn’t mention Nick’s name again. The two women finished their drinks and parted, vowing to meet for lunch before the holidays got into full swing and there was no time.

It was four-thirty when Vanessa got home—too early to go to bed and hide from her depression. She changed into jeans and a Seahawks T-shirt, fed Sari and proceeded to the living room, which was still choked with Parker’s flowers.

She dropped one fading bouquet after another into a large plastic garbage bag and carried it out to the curb, where Rodney had already set the trash for morning pickup. She was stuffing
the bag into one of the plastic cans when an ice-blue Corvette slipped sleekly into her driveway and Nick got out.

He looked as bad as she felt.

“Hi,” he said, rounding the car to stand beside Vanessa and effectively block any retreat to the house.

Even though she’d rehearsed this moment through a thousand varying versions, she wasn’t prepared to face Nick. She averted her eyes and said nothing at all.

Nick sighed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him wedge his hands into the hip pockets of his jeans. “Damn it, Van, will you at least listen to me? I’m willing to admit I was wrong—I should have told you about Parker and Jenna.”

“Why didn’t you?” Vanessa asked, raising wary, pain-filled eyes to his face.

His formidable shoulders moved in a shrug. “It was water under the bridge to me. I didn’t think it mattered.”

Vanessa bit her lower lip. “You don’t want to be involved with a woman who doesn’t trust you—remember?”

Nick swore under his breath. “And you still don’t, right?”

Vanessa sighed. “When you’ve been married to a man like Parker, it doesn’t come easy.”

“Speak of the devil,” Nick marveled as a cab swept up to the curb and Parker got out.

He probably wouldn’t have been so brave if he hadn’t had another man with him. “That’s the idea, Van,” her ex-husband said, smiling as he approached, “Toss DeAngelo out with the trash and get on with your life.”

Parker’s friend, a yuppie-type wearing a three-piece suit, looked at him as though he’d gone mad.

Nick favored Parker with a slow, leisurely grin. “Keep talking,” he said. “Right now I’d like nothing better than stuffing you into one of these cans and stomping you down like a milk carton.”

Parker paled a little beneath his health-club tan, but he recovered his aplomb quickly enough. “Vanessa,” he said, evidently choosing to pretend that Nick wasn’t there, “this is Harold Barker. You’re getting a second chance, baby.”

Vanessa folded her arms, unconsciously protecting herself. “At what?” she asked in suspicious tones.

Parker looked enormously pleased with himself as he explained that Harold was the executive
producer of yet another nationally syndicated talk show. “They want you to go on with me next week and help pitch the book.”

The idea was born in a rebellious area of Vanessa’s mind. She cast a sidelong look at Nick before saying expansively to Parker and Harold, “Come in, come in. This sounds like an interesting proposition.”

Nick muttered another swearword, joining them even though Vanessa had made a point of not inviting him.

“Did you want something, Mr. DeAngelo?” she asked coolly when the four of them were standing in her half-furnished living room.

Nick gave her a look that would have made a vampire cower, planted himself in front of the fireplace and folded his arms across his chest. He was clearly staying for the duration, and that pleased Vanessa, even though she felt a conflicting desire to march over there and kick him in the shins.

Over a drink, solicitously served by a doting hostess, Harold explained his concept of a show including both Parker and Vanessa. He was sure the viewing audience would enjoy hearing her reactions to the things her ex-husband had written about her.

“Of course,” he finished, casting a nervous glance toward Nick, “we’ll want to discuss your—er—reconciliation with Mr. Lawrence, too.”

Vanessa beamed, perching behind Parker on the back of one of the two easy chairs he’d left her and ruffling his hair. “It’s a romantic story,” she said, well aware that Nick was seething even though she didn’t dare look at him.

Parker was obviously baffled, but his tremendous ego served him well in his hour of need. He swelled up like a peacock and then shrugged in that aw-shucks-folks way that had made him such a hit with the fans. “I guess we were just swept away by passion,” he said.

At last Vanessa risked a glance in Nick’s direction. It was obvious from his grin that he was on to her game, even if Parker and Harold weren’t.

Vanessa was still looking at Nick when she responded to Parker’s remark. “It was incredible,” she said.

“I
t’s Friday night,” Nick said stubbornly, standing in Vanessa’s kitchen with his arms folded. “We had a date, remember?”

Vanessa sighed. It was dark outside, even though it was still early, and there was a wintry chill in the air. She took her old sweater from the peg inside the pantry door and put it on. “We can’t just go on as though nothing happened, Nick,” she reasoned, wishing they could do exactly that.

“Because you still don’t trust me,” he ventured to guess.

She gently bit her lower lip for a moment. “I want to, but you’re so much like Parker….”

His eyes darkened. “I didn’t come over here to be insulted,” he informed her. “Furthermore, damn it, I’m nothing like that bastard!”

Vanessa took a can of vegetable-beef soup from the cupboard. Since the argument with
Nick, she’d been virtually living on the stuff. “You are,” she insisted. When he started to speak, she held up a hand, palm outward, to silence him. “Besides the pro-athletics aspect, there’s your reputation. Do you deny that you’re known far and wide as a rounder and a ladies’ man?”

Nick jerked the soup can out of her hand, stuck it up against the can opener and pushed down on the handle so that an angry whir filled the kitchen. “Who the hell told you that?” he demanded. “Parker?”

Vanessa shook her head, reclaiming the soup, dumping it into a saucepan and adding water. “I’m not sure where I heard it. I just know, that’s all.” She studied him pensively as she put the mixture on the stove to heat. “You know, I think it’s very interesting that Jenna didn’t trust you when she was the one who was fooling around. Was yours an open marriage, Nick?”

He rolled his eyes, looking more annoyed by the moment. “Not on my end, it wasn’t. As for Jenna, her own guilty conscience made her suspect me.”

“Want some soup?” Vanessa asked, getting two bowls down from the shelf even as she
spoke because she knew he wasn’t about to leave.

Nick sighed. “No, but I’ll eat it,” he answered. While Vanessa was stirring the broth, he called DeAngelo’s and instructed someone to send over two orders of clam linguine and a bottle of white wine.

She was grinning when she brought the steaming bowls of soup to the table. “A man of sweeping power and influence,” she commented, as much to keep the conversation moving as anything.

Nick was frowning as he sat down. “How did your job interview go?” he asked.

“They’re going to hire me, I think,” she answered, reaching for a basket of saltine crackers she’d set out earlier and squashing a handful into her soup. “Of course, if they see me on national television with Parker, they may change their minds.”

For a few moments, Nick said nothing. He was busy adding crackers to his soup. When he finally spoke, his tone was serious. “You’re really going to do that? I thought you were just stringing Parker along to get rid of him.”

Vanessa swallowed. “Yes, I’m really going to
do that,” she confirmed. “And I’m pretty sure he’ll stop being a problem from then on.”

“What about us, Vanessa?” Nick wanted to know, and there was a vulnerability in his voice that made her love him all the more hopelessly. “Where do we go from here?”

Inside Vanessa ached. She knew there could be no relationship without trust, and as much as she longed for things to be different, she hadn’t reached the point where she could let herself rely on any man’s integrity. She looked away, unable to answer.

He reached out and took her hand in his. “Okay, babe. So be it. I’ll back off for a while.”

The prospect made Vanessa’s world seem as dark as deep space. “Don’t you dare leave me here to eat two orders of linguine all by myself,” she warned, on the verge of tears.

He smiled sadly and stayed, but Vanessa was conscious of the vast distance between them—one that might never be bridged.

Presently he found another subject, seemingly a safe one, and asked, “How did you get into tele-marketing?”

It was a relief to think about something besides her own mixed-up emotions, doubts and fears. “I majored in broadcast journalism in college,”
she said. “Parker insisted that I drop out when we got married. He was traveling all the time, and I didn’t have much to do once the house was clean and everything, so I started looking for work.” She paused and lowered her head for just a moment, then went on. “Janet Harmon has been my friend for a long time. When the Midas Network came to Seattle and Paul was hired as production manager, he gave me a job.”

“Selling gold chains and answering machines to the masses,” Nick remarked, setting his empty soup bowl aside and regarding Vanessa with puzzled eyes, “is a far cry from broadcast journalism.”

She was instantly defensive. “Some of us don’t just fall into our dream jobs and become instantly successful,” she pointed out tartly. “I had to take what I could get.”

The doorbell chimed in the distance like the ringing of the gong between rounds of a boxing match. Nick must have deemed it a good time to retreat to his own corner, for he slid back his chair and disappeared toward the front of the house.

Vanessa hastily rinsed out their soup bowls and put them into the dishwasher, wondering
what would happen between her and Nick and how it would be if he did indeed back off for a while.

She had a feeling that life would become as dull a chore as cleaning out an oven or stripping years of wax from a linoleum floor.

When Nick returned he was carrying a sizable white bag and a bottle of wine. Plundering the cupboards and drawers, he brought forth plates, silverware and a pair of dusty wineglasses.

Vanessa immediately took the glasses from him and carried them to the sink, where she washed them in hot soapy water while Nick set out the meal he’d had sent over from his restaurant.

“This house reminds me of your life,” he observed when she finally rejoined him at the table and took up her fork to eat linguine. “Lots of empty spaces.”

She glared at him as she chewed the most exquisite pasta she’d ever tasted.

He opened the wine bottle and poured chablis into her glass. “Well?” he prompted, arching one dark eyebrow. “Aren’t you even going to fight back?”

“No,” Vanessa responded after a few moments of tight-jawed deliberation. “If you want
to be a jackass, that’s your prerogative. I don’t have to jump on the proverbial bandwagon and become one, too.”

Nick grinned at her, more in amazement than good humor, and shook his head. “At least you’re not denying that there are some gaps that need filling. I guess that’s progress.”

Although Vanessa was furious, she managed to keep her temper under control. “Thank you for your analysis. And to think some people actually pay psychiatrists when all they’d need to do is ask the great Nick DeAngelo to tell them how to run their lives!”

He sighed, and the sound conveyed an infinite sadness. “It isn’t going to work, is it?” he asked, setting down his fork and leaning back in his chair.

A massive, hurtful lump formed in Vanessa’s throat. She closed her eyes for a moment, then shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

Nick stood, taking his leather jacket from a peg on the wall and shrugging into it. “I know it sounds crazy,” he said hoarsely, keeping his back to her, “but I love you, Vanessa. When and if that ever means anything to you, call me.”

With that, he opened the back door and went out.

Vanessa sat still in her chair for a long time, stunned and utterly confused. Then she got up and scraped the remains of their dinner down the garbage disposal, taking grim satisfaction in grinding it up. She just wished that she could throw in her memories of Nick as well to be pulverized and washed down the drain.

Trying to sleep proved to be a useless effort that night. At the first glimmer of dawn, she called Nick.

He answered on the second ring, sounding wide awake and quietly desolate.

“How could you tell me you love me and then just walk out like that?” Vanessa asked.

“Who is this?” he countered, and she could practically see his wonderful, dark eyes dancing with mischief.

Vanessa laughed miserably. “Damn it, Nick, don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

He sighed. “The whole thing is pretty confusing to me, too, if that makes you feel any better.”

“It doesn’t.”

“You made the call, Vanessa,” Nick pointed out. “The ball’s in your court.”

She shoved a hand through sleep-tangled auburn
hair, then bit down on her thumb nail. “I’m in love with you,” she finally admitted.

“That’s progress,” he conceded, but he still sounded the way Vanessa felt—sad.

She closed her eyes against an ocean of scalding tears. “What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I need some time.”

“Fine,” he retorted. “How does a hundred years strike you?”

“That was mean!”

Nick was silent for a few moments, and when he went on his voice was low and ragged. “I’ve told you before,” he explained with a slow patience that was patently insulting, “I don’t play games. If I can’t be totally committed to this relationship, I don’t want any part of it.”

Vanessa felt as though he’d slapped her. “I see,” she said.

“Should you ever feel ready to take the risk, get in touch with me. If I’m not involved with someone else, we’ll see what happens.”

Outrage replaced shock. “Of all the arrogant—”

“I’m through shadowboxing with you, Vanessa. I want a wife and a family and I’m not going to wait forever.”

“How dare you threaten me that way!”

“It isn’t a threat,” Nick answered, his words grating together like rusty nails in the bottom of a bucket. “It’s a fact.”

“Goodbye,” Vanessa said after a brief interval.

He hung up without returning her farewell.

Vanessa was determined not to fall apart again. She was a modern woman, she told herself, independent with a career. She didn’t need Nick DeAngelo to be whole.

Oh, but she wanted him. She wanted him.

When a few hours had passed and she’d recovered her composure to some degree, she dialed the Harmons’ number. Paul answered.

Vanessa explained that she had some personal business to take care of and asked for a few days off.

“Are your grandparents all right?” her employer asked, his voice full of concern.

At the mere mention of them, Vanessa ached with homesickness. She would have given a lot to be back in Spokane, pouring out her heart to the people who had raised her, but there wasn’t going to be time for that. “They’re fine,” she answered belatedly, feeling strangely tongue-tied. “It’s—it’s something else.”

Paul sighed. “All right,” he said in his kind
and quiet way. “Take as much time as you need.”

“Thanks,” Vanessa replied. She asked Paul to give her best to Janet and then hung up.

She had finished packing and was just carrying her suitcase downstairs when Rodney arrived to check up on her.

“I saw Nick’s car here last night,” he said, standing in the doorway to the kitchen and eying the suitcase. “I guess the two of you are going away together for a few days, huh?”

Again, Vanessa felt a hollowness inside. “Wishful thinking, Rod,” she answered in resigned tones. “I’m flying to New York with Parker.”

Seeing Rodney’s mouth fall open was the only fun Vanessa had had in days. “What?” he croaked.

Vanessa smiled. “He’s been pestering me to tell the world what I think of his book, and that’s what I plan to do,” she said.

Rodney’s eyes rounded, and a grin broke over his face as her meaning struck him. “Wow,” he breathed. “He’ll kill you.”

“He’ll want to,” Vanessa agreed, and just then the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Rodney volunteered, loping toward
the front door. Even though he was in his second year of chiropractic school, there were times when he was still the gawky boy Vanessa remembered.

She stood up a little straighter when she heard him talking to Parker. Since there was no love lost between the two men, the exchange was terse.

Seeing Vanessa, Parker smiled fondly as though there had been no ugly divorce and then kissed her cheek. “You are as lovely as ever,” he said.

Vanessa thought of something teenagers had said when Rodney was in high school.
Gag me with a spoon.
“Thank you, Parker,” she said aloud. “So are you.”

He gave her a bewildered look and then glanced at his Rolex.

You’d think a man who could afford a watch like that would at least let his ex-wife keep all the furniture,
Vanessa reflected.

“Let’s go,” Parker boomed in sunny, all-hail-the-conquering-hero tones. “We’ve got a plane to catch. Thought we’d have dinner at Tavern on the Green.”

Why not?
Vanessa thought.
He’s paying.
“Sure,” she enthused. A cloud passed overhead
as she considered potential problems. “You did book separate rooms, didn’t you, Parker?”

He cleared his throat and looked away for a moment. “Thanks to my publisher, we have a penthouse suite. Nothing but the best for you, darlin’.”

She arched one eyebrow as they started toward the door, but didn’t pursue the point. They could agree on sleeping arrangements later. “You’ll feed Sari until I get home and bring in the mail?” she asked of Rodney, who lingered in the entryway, watching her and Parker with a worried expression in his eyes.

He nodded. “Sure.”

Some impulse made her hurry back and plant a kiss on Rodney’s cheek.
Don’t worry,
she mouthed before turning back to Parker.

There was a taxi waiting at the curb, and Parker made a great show of squiring Vanessa to it and sweeping open the door. She almost—not quite, but almost—felt guilty for what she was going to do to him.

They were at the airport, about to board their plane, when Nick suddenly appeared, moving gracefully through the crowds of travelers as he approached. Vanessa felt a lump of dread rise in her throat and averted her eyes momentarily.

Parker was cocky, shoving his hands into the pockets of his tailored trousers and rocking back on the heels of his Italian leather shoes. “I thought you had more pride than this, De-Angelo,” he dared to say.

Vanessa gave her ex-husband a wild look and elbowed him, but when she turned her amber eyes to Nick, she was smiling.