The Pride of Jared MacKade

  “My point is that you also like to complicate things.” She touched a hand to his cheek. “What are you complicating now, Jared?”

  “Nothing.” Because he needed to, he took her wrist and pressed his lips into her palm. “I’m not complicating a thing. I liked having you at the farm, you and Bryan. Crowded around the kitchen table, with too many people talking at once.”

  “And throwing biscuits.”

  “And throwing biscuits. I liked hearing you and Regan and Cassie clattering around the kitchen while we were playing ball outside.”

  “Typical.” She smiled a little. “You’d say traditional male-female placement.”

  “Sue me.” He gathered her close. And there, in the quiet, he thought he could hear the struggle. Stranger against stranger, hand to hand, eternally. Right, perhaps, against right. “Feel it?” he murmured.

  “Yes.” Fear, she thought, closing her eyes. Desperation. And constant bleeding hope. Perhaps she could feel the echoes of it in the woods because she’d known all those emotions so well. “Have you ever asked yourself why they’re still here? What they might have left to say or do?”

  “The fight’s not over. It never is.”

  She shook her head. “The need’s not over. The need to find home. To find peace, I suppose. It never is. But I’m finding it here.”

  When she started to draw back, he tightened his grip. “I listened outside the door to the three of you talking in the kitchen. It bothered me, Savannah, hearing about you being alone when you had Bryan. It bothered me imagining that, the way it bothered me when you said you’d been sick all that time.”

  “Morning sickness is pretty common among pregnant women.”

  “Being sixteen, alone, sick and pregnant isn’t common. It sure as hell shouldn’t be.”

  “Feeling sorry for me is a waste of time. It was a long time ago.” Now she did draw back, and she saw his face. “But that’s not exactly what you’re feeling.”

  “I don’t know what I’m feeling.” Nothing frustrated him more than not being able to see inside himself for the answers. “I’ve got questions I haven’t figured out yet how to ask. You make me ask, because you don’t tell. And yes, I do feel sorry for you, for the kid who was left to fend for herself, and make choices for herself that no child should have to make.”

  “I wasn’t a child.” Her voice was measured, her shoulders were suddenly stiff. “I was old enough to get pregnant, so I was old enough to face the consequences. And the choice I made was mine alone. No one else could have made it for me. Having Bryan was one of the few right decisions I made.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean Bryan.” Seeing the heat in her eyes, he gave her a quick shake. “I meant where to go, what to do, how to live. God, how to eat. And, damn it, Savannah, you were a child. You deserved better than what you got.”

  “I got Bryan,” she said simply. “I got better than I deserved.”

  He couldn’t make her see what he wanted her to see. For once, he simply didn’t have the words. Perhaps they were too simple. “I wonder what it would be like to create something like that boy, and to love without restriction. Without ego.”

  She could smile now. “Wonderful. Just wonderful. Are you coming home with me?”

  “Yeah.” He took her hand. “I’m coming home with you.”

  He thought about that kind of love, and her kind of life, as she slept beside him. He would never have gone out and searched for a woman like her. It bothered him a great deal to admit it, even to himself.

  She wasn’t polished, or cultured, had no sheen of the sophistication he usually looked for in a woman.

  That he had looked for, Jared reminded himself, once. And that had certainly been a pathetic mistake. And yet didn’t a man need a woman he understood, a woman he knew? There were huge pockets in Savannah’s life he neither understood nor knew. Large pieces of her that were separate from him, tucked away in her memories.

  A young girl, pregnant and alone, deserted by everyone she should have been able to count on. He felt pity for that girl, as well as—and it scalded him to realize it—a vague distrust.

  Where had she gone, what had she done, who had she been? As much as he wanted to get beyond that, his pride held him fast. She’d borne another man’s child, been other men’s fantasies.

  That thought stuck in the pride, in the ego, and refused to be shaken free.

  His problem. He knew it, rationalized it, debated it. As she shifted beside him, turning away rather than towards him, he worried over it.

  How many other men had she loved? How many had lain beside her, each wishing he was the only one?

  Yet, even as he thought it, he reached out to hold, to possess her. Her body curled warm against his, and he could smell her skin, that earthy, sensual fragrance she carried without the aid of perfumes.

  He knew her routine now. In the morning she would wake early, but slowly, as if sleep were something to be eased out of, like a warm bath. She would touch him, long strokes over the shoulders, the back, the arms. And just when he began to tingle and heat, she would rise out of bed. She would arch her back with a lazy, feline movement. Lift that long, thick black hair up, let it fall.

  Then, as if there were no difference between a sleepy siren and a sleepy mother, she would slip into a faded blue cotton robe and go out to wake Bryan for school.

  And often, very often, Jared would lie in bed for long, long moments after she padded across the hall. Aching.

  He almost wanted to believe she’d woven some sort of spell over him with her gypsy eyes and sultry smile and that go-to-hell-and-back-again attitude. She knew him better than he knew her. Knew his ghosts, recognized them, felt them. She was the first woman who had walked in what he considered his woods and heard the murmurs of the doomed.

  It linked her with him in a way that went beyond the physical, even the emotional, attraction. It lifted it into the spiritual. It lifted it beyond what he could fight, even if he wanted to fight.

  Whatever it was that bound him to her gave him no choice but to keep moving on the same path toward her.

  So he fell asleep with his arm hooked around her waist, holding her close. And dropped weightlessly into dreams.

  There was pain in his hip where a mortar blast had sent him flying into the air, and hurled him down again. His head was aching, his eyes were tearing. It was so hard to focus, hard to force himself to set one foot in front of the other.

  He didn’t remember entering the woods. Had he crawled to the trees or run into them? All he knew was that he was terribly lost, and terribly afraid. His lieutenant was dead. There were so many dead. The boy from Connecticut with whom he’d shared last night’s dinner, with whom he’d whispered long after the fires burned out, was in pieces in a shallow ditch where the fighting had been so fierce that hell would have been a relief.

  Now he was alone. He knew he had to find somewhere to rest, someplace safe. Just for a while. Just for a little while. His home wasn’t so very far away. Just north into Pennsylvania. The Maryland woods weren’t so very different from those near his farm.

  Maybe he could be safe here until he could find his way home again. Until this war that was supposed to have been an adventure and had become a thousand nightmares was over.

  He had turned seventeen the month before, and he had never tasted a woman’s lips.

  Unbearably weary, he stopped to lean against a tree, drew in ragged breath after ragged breath. How could the woods be so beautiful, so full of color and the smells of autumn? How could that horrible noise keep going? Why wouldn’t the guns stop blasting, the men stop screaming?

  When were they going to let him go home?

  With a shuddering sigh, he pushed off the tree. He skirted a rock and, with a burst of relief, spotted a path. Just as he stepped toward it, he saw the Confederate gray.

  He hesitated only a moment, but whole worlds revolved inside him. This was the enemy. This was death. This was the obstacle in the path leadi
ng to what he wanted most.

  He shouldered his rifle even as the boy facing him mirrored the movement.

  They shot poorly, both of them, but he heard the whine of the shell close enough to his ear to stop his heart for a full beat. Then he was charging, even as his mirror image charged.

  Their terrified war cries echoed each other. Bayonets clashed.

  The enemy’s eyes were blue, like the sky. That thought intruded as he felt the first agony of blade in flesh. The enemy’s eyes were young and full of fear.

  They fought each other like wild dogs. Even in the short time he had left, he would remember little of it. He remembered the smell of his own blood, the feel of it as it poured out of his wounds. He remembered waking alone, alone in those beautiful autumn woods.

  And then stumbling down the path. Crawling, crying.

  He would remember, for all of the hours he had left, he would remember the sight of the farmhouse just beyond the clearing. The color and glint of the stone, the slope of the roofline, the smell of animals and growing things.

  And he wept again, for home.

  Someone was with him. The face was older, weathered, set in a frown under a soft-brimmed hat. He thought of his father, tried to speak, but the pain as he was lifted was worse than death.

  There were women around him, shouts, then whispers. Soft hands and firelight. Cool cloths, and the pain slipped into numbness.

  Every word he spoke was a searing flame in his throat. But he had so much to say. And someone listened. Someone who smelled like lilacs and held his hand.

  He needed to tell her he’d been proud to be a soldier, proud to serve and to fight. He was trying to be proud to die, even though the longing for home was fiercer than any of his wounds.

  When he died, Jared woke, his heart stuttering. Savannah stirred beside him. And this time, this time, turned to him. In sleep, her arms came around him.

  For tonight, it was enough.

  Chapter 10

  With a stack of three paintings balanced in her arms, Savannah muscled open the door to Jared’s offices. Rain dripped from the bill of one of Bryan’s baseball caps, which she’d slapped on before making the drive to Hagerstown. Sissy glanced over, then hopped up from her keyboard.

  “Let me give you a hand with those.”

  “Thanks.” Grateful, Savannah passed the three wrapped bundles over. “I’ve got more in the car.”

  “I’ll just put these down and help you bring them in.”

  “No. No use both of us getting wet.” She took a quick scan of the freshly painted teal-colored walls, the deep mauve settee and the leather library chairs. “Coming along.”

  “You’re telling me.” Sissy set the paintings down on the coffee table. “I feel like I’ve been working in a box and someone just opened the lid and let in air. Let me get you an umbrella, at least.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to hold it. Besides, I’m already wet. Be right back.”

  Savannah dashed out and sprinted the half block to her car. It was a hard, driving rain, but at least it was warm. No one seemed to be worried about a spring drought anymore—as Mrs. Metz had been happy to inform her when they ran into each other at the post office this morning.

  The weather, however inconvenient at the moment, was causing Savannah’s flowers to thrive.

  By the time she got back in with the last of the paintings, she was soaked to the skin and squishing in her shoes.

  “Is the boss in?” She set the paintings down, then took off the cap to run her fingers through her damp hair. “He might want to take a look before I hang these.”

  “He’s with a client.” Sissy flashed a smile. “But I’m dying to take a look.” She snatched scissors off her desk. “Okay?”

  “Sure. You’ve got to live with them, too.”

  “I can’t believe how fast all this has moved.” Quickly she cut the twine on the top bundle. “Once the boss makes up his mind, he moves. No fiddle, no faddle, no— I love this!” She ended on a high tone of enthusiasm as she pulled back the heavy paper.

  It was a street scene, and the people in it were splashes of vivid color and movement. The buildings were jumbled, giving it a carelessly cheerful theme, and they were awash with lacy balconies, alive with trailing and spreading flowers. On closer inspection, Sissy picked out a toe-tapping fiddler, an enormous black woman in a flowing red caftan, three small boys racing after a yellow dog. She could almost hear the shouts and the music.

  “It’s wonderful. Tell me this one’s going out here.”

  “That was the idea.” Surprised and flattered by the reaction, Savannah dragged a hand through her hair again. “It’s New Orleans. The French Quarter. I thought it would liven things up a bit in the waiting area.”

  “I can’t tell you how tired I was of looking at pale pink flowers in a gray vase. I kept hoping I’d come in one morning and they’d have died during the night.” Sissy chuckled to herself. “Now this I could look at forever. Did you take art in college?”

  The innocent question had Savannah’s smile freezing. “No. No, I didn’t go to college.”

  “I had one semester of art,” Sissy went on cheerfully, holding up the painting. “And was told I had absolutely no sense of perspective. Squeaked by with a C.”

  When the phone rang, she huffed a bit, then tilted the painting against the table and went back to her desk to answer it.

  Foolish, foolish, Savannah told herself, to feel inadequate. No, she hadn’t gone to college, but she knew how to paint. Hadn’t Sissy’s reaction just proven it?

  Odd, Savannah thought, that she should still be nervous after her work had been viewed and appreciated. For most of her life she’d had to convince herself that painting was—could be—nothing more than a hobby. A personal indulgence, those times when she’d had to choose between buying paints and having lunch.

  Paints had usually won.

  Those days were over. Long over. She’d been incredibly lucky with her illustrations, and enjoyed doing them, intended to continue. But the paintings were her.

  Selling bayou scenes and charcoal sketches to tourists was a far cry from selling something that had meant something to her when she saw it, when she painted it.

  Smiling and damp-palmed, she dug through the tote she’d brought along for her hammer and measuring tape. She’d already measured the wall on an earlier trip, and now she found the center, marked her spot lightly with a pencil. And waited for Sissy to hang up the phone.

  “Should I wait, or can I pound this in there now?” She held up a hanger.

  “Now. I’m dying to see it up.”

  With brisk efficiency, Savannah hammered in the support. The frame was a simple natural cherry— Regan’s choice. Savannah had to admit, as she adjusted the painting on the wall, that it had been a good one.

  “Bring the left corner up just a tad… Yeah, good.” Hands on hips, Sissy nodded. “Good. Perfect. It’s about time this place started looking more like the boss and less like…”

  “His ex-wife?” Savannah finished, with a glance over her shoulder.

  Sissy wrinkled her nose. “Let’s just say she was very low-key. The kind of woman who never has a hair out of place, never raises her voice, never chips a nail.”

  “She must have had something to have attracted Jared.”

  Cautious, Sissy cast a look up the steps. “She was beautiful, in that don’t-touch-me-I’ve-just-been-polished sort of way. Very classic, sort of Grace Kelly without the warmth and humor. And she was brilliant. Really. Not only in her profession, but she spoke perfect French, and played the piano beautifully. She read Kafka.”

  “Oh.” Savannah struggled not to frown. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew who or what Kafka was, but she was sure she’d never read it.

  “In her way, she was admirable. But about as entertaining as a dead frog in a millpond.” Sissy beamed at Savannah. “No one can accuse you of that,” she said, and, with a quick laugh, picked up the ringing phone.

  No, Sav
annah mused. No one could accuse her of that. Not of being polished or brilliant, or of reading Kafka. She could speak a little French—if you counted the Cajun variety.

  Refusing to be intimidated by the image of the woman Jared had once chosen for his wife, she unwrapped the next painting.

  She hung a trio of small still lifes in the entranceway while Sissy went back to work. While the rain pounded outside and Sissy’s keyboard clattered, Savannah began to enjoy the simple pleasure of decorating, of choosing a space and bringing it to life. By the time she’d gotten to the second floor, she was humming under her breath.

  Unwilling to hammer there while Jared was with a client, she leaned paintings against the walls she’d chosen for them, moving down the hallway and eventually into the office across from Jared’s.

  The former office, she thought, of the former Mrs. MacKade. No, she remembered. Not Mrs. MacKade. Jared had said she hadn’t taken his name.

  The walls here were a deep rose, the trim almost a jade, reversing the theme from the lower office. Regan had turned it into a comfortable and efficient sitting room. There was a desk, of course, but there were cozy chairs, tables, books. And, when she poked into a cabinet, a coffeemaker, cups.

  Here, Savannah supposed, Jared could entertain or interview clients in a less formal atmosphere. Or perhaps he could use it to relax, unwind. Or maybe he was considering taking on an associate.

  It occurred to her then that she knew very little about his work, or his plans, or what his workday was like.

  She’d never asked, Savannah reminded herself—and why should he discuss cases with her? She knew nothing about the law except the problems she’d had with it, fighting to stay one step ahead of the system and keep her child.

  He would have discussed them with his wife, she thought, then cursed herself for falling into that typical and pathetic mind-set.

  Setting her thoughts on the job at hand again, she stepped out into the hall just as Jared’s door opened.

  “I’ll have a draft of the contract sent out to you in a couple of days,” Jared was saying. Then stopped, looked, and smiled. “Hello, Savannah.”

  “Hello. I’m sorry. I was arranging the paintings.”

  “You going to introduce me to this beautiful young woman, Jared, or do I have to make my own moves?”

  “Savannah Morningstar, Howard Beels.”

  “Savannah Morningstar. That’s a name that suits you.” The big, barrel chested man of about fifty shot out a hand the size of a small ham and gripped Savannah’s. His eyes, a twinkling blue set in pockets and folds of creased skin, were alight with male admiration. “You working for this shyster?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Savannah recognized the look, the squeeze. She’d seen and felt it hundreds of times before, and after a quick survey she judged Howard Beels as harmless. She let her smile warm, because she knew he would take it home with him and sigh. “You hire this shyster, Howard?”

  He gave a gut-rattling laugh. “A man needs a clever lawyer in this dirty old world,” Howard told her. “Jared here’s been mine for, what is it now? Five years?”

  “Just about,” Jared murmured, intrigued by the easy way Savannah handled, and entertained, one of his top clients.

  “What do you do, Howard?”

  “Oh, a little of this, a little of that.” He had yet to let go of her hand. And he winked. “I’m a dabbler. How about you?”

  “I’m a dabbler myself,” Savannah told him, and made him laugh again.

  “Savannah’s an artist,” Jared put in. “The next time you come in, Howard, you’ll see her work on the walls.”

  “Is that so?” His sharp eyes homed in on the painting leaning against the wall behind her. “That your work there?”

  “Yes.”

  He released her hand to cross to it. Despite his size, he hunkered down easily to study it. “It’s right nice,” he decided, liking the way the colors flowed and the way the flowers she’d chosen to paint seemed crowded together, more alive than perfect. “How much something like this go for?”

  Savannah shifted her weight to one hip. “As much as I think I can get,” she said dryly.

  Howard slapped his knee appreciatively before he straightened. “I like this girl, Jared. I’m going to give you my card, honey.” He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled one out. “You give me a call, hear? I think we could have ourselves a negotiation over a picture or two.”