The restlessness in Emily’s voice was something Savannah had never heard before. She couldn’t remember if it had been there when they’d been together less than three months ago, after the funeral of Emily’s father.
“Emily? Is something wrong?”
“No,” her cousin answered just a bit too shortly. “I’m fine. I just don’t think you should pass up what could be a wonderful opportunity just because you’ve hardly ever been out of Georgia. It’s not as if small town life has been all that great for either of us.”
Emily had probably suffered most from the scandalmongers in Honoria, Savannah mused. Emily’s mother—her father’s second wife—had run off with the married son of a locally prominent family when Emily was just a toddler. And then, fifteen years ago—less than a month after Savannah, Tara and Emily had whimsically buried their “time capsule”—Emily’s adored, older half-brother, Lucas, had left town under suspicion of murder. There had never been enough evidence to formally charge him, but he had been tried and convicted in the beauty shops and living rooms of Honoria. Leaving the way he had, without explanation, had only served to further indict him, as far as the locals were concerned.
Despite Emily’s steadfast belief in his innocence, Lucas McBride was remembered in his hometown as a man who’d gotten away with murder.
It had been no big surprise to anyone when Savannah, with her reputation for being reckless and snooty, had turned up pregnant in her senior year of high school, or when half the football team claimed to have nailed her. Few had believed Savannah’s insistence that she had only been with one boy, Vince Hankins. He was a Hankins, after all, the son of a church deacon, a member of a long-respected family in Honoria.
Savannah was a McBride.
“You can’t blame everyone for the ugly rumors spread by some,” Savannah reminded Emily. “On the whole, I like living in a small town. It’s a safe place to raise my children, and in a real emergency, I know there are people I can turn to.”
Despite their flaws and foibles, Savannah knew small town people. She understood them. She was one of them.
Kit was not.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind trying something different for a change,” Emily said resolutely. “And, someday, I just might.”
They didn’t talk much longer. Emily encouraged Savannah to follow her heart where Kit was concerned, and not worry about what the neighbors said. Savannah suggested that Emily follow her own advice and pursue her own happiness.
Without deliberately realizing what she was doing, Savannah found herself standing at her open closet after hanging up her phone. She pulled a shoe-box-sized plastic container from a back corner of the top shelf. And then she sat on the bed again and unsealed the lid, staring pensively inside at the bits of glitter and memorabilia that encapsulated her adolescence. And the letter she hadn’t had the courage to open when she and her cousins had dug up the chest
Something made her turn the envelope over in her hand and pry it open. She winced at the sight of the cutesy, curlicued handwriting, the purple ink, which had faded to a sickly blue. And in arrogantly naive detail, she’d spelled out her view of her future. The fame. The adoring fans. The photographs in every fashion magazine. The leading roles in blockbuster films.
The money.
She tossed the letter aside in disgust. “God, I was such a twit.”
That materialistic young Savannah would have been thrilled at the prospect of an affair with “the rich, famous, gorgeous Christopher Pace.” She would have found his money as attractive as his beautiful face, his celebrity as seductive as his pirate’s smile.
Yet none of those things were what had made the adult Savannah fall in love with him.
She had fallen for a man who liked flowers and moonlight and romantic music. A man who was kind to her children, who played baseball and piano, who made love to her with a generosity and tenderness that she’d only fantasized about before.
She’d never even seen him in that other world, she realized in dismay. He had friends, family, a home, a job—an entire life without her. That Christopher Pace was a stranger to her. How could she know if she would love him as much as she loved Kit?
She returned the box to the closet shelf. An old maxim echoed annoyingly in her mind.
Be careful what you wish for—you just might get it.
11
SAVANNAH CAME HOME from work Friday evening to find Kit already there, in her living room, her children competing eagerly for his attention. Ernestine was nowhere to be seen.
The intense pleasure that flooded through Savannah when she saw Kit told her she hadn’t been even partially successful in getting her feelings for him under control. And to see him here with her children, waiting to welcome her home…well, that only strengthened the foolish longings she’d been fighting.
“Hi, Mom. Look who’s here,” Miranda announced exuberantly. A thin gold chain that Savannah didn’t remember seeing before glittered on Miranda’s flailing wrist.
“Hi—Mom,” Michael echoed, looking more content than he had in days as he cradled what looked suspiciously like a new baseball mitt in his hands.
Apparently, Kit had brought gifts.
While she was still dealing with that disturbing realization, Kit smiled broadly, crossed the room in three long strides and planted a firm, enthusiastic kiss right on her mouth. It was all Savannah could do not to grab him and kiss him back.
/> She’d missed him so badly.