Luke echoed. He tugged at the packaging, eager to get at his prize. Vanessa helped him. Freed of their plastic prison, the two figures popped up into the air.
Savannah shook her head. “You’re spoiling him, Vanessa.”
Luke sat down and was soon happily immersed in a fantasy reenactment of a battle royal between the hero and the monster, apparently oblivious to his mother and her friend.
Watching him, Vanessa smiled broadly. “Hey, I like roaming through toy stores. Shopping for Luke gives me an excuse to be there.” After her miscarriage, she wanted a baby more than ever. Now that her husband, Devin’s, desk job at the FBI only took him away occasionally, there was a better chance to make that happen.
She ruffled the boy’s jet-black hair, then walked over to Savannah, taking a seat beside her on the wide, cream-colored leather sofa. Savannah was huddled to one side, leaning against the upholstered arm as if she intended to use it to help keep her up.
Concern flitted through Vanessa as she sat down. Savannah hadn’t sounded quite like herself on the telephone when she’d asked to come over.
Seeing her didn’t alter that impression.
Vanessa grew serious. “What did you mean when you said I wouldn’t be the first?”
Savannah looked from her son to her friend. “What?”
Vanessa had a pitcher of iced tea standing at the ready on a tray on the coffee table. Without bothering to extend an invitation, she poured a tall glass for Savannah and one for herself. Two bottles of chilled soda waited on Luke’s pleasure.
“When you walked in,” she reminded Savannah, handing her a glass. “I said I’d given up on you two, and you said I wouldn’t be the first. What did you mean by that?”
Wrapping her hands around the glass, Savannah shrugged carelessly. It was a subject she’d just as soon dismiss. But she knew better. Vanessa had a way of hanging on to something once she’d gotten her teeth into it.
Savannah took a long sip of the cool liquid before offering a vague answer. “Just me, feeling sorry for myself, that’s all.”
Vanessa gave her a long, penetrating look. This wasn’t just a passing mood, she thought. This was something more. Was there trouble on Paradise Island? “Want to talk about it?”
Savannah stared at the amber liquid. In the background, Luke’s monster gave a bloodcurdling yell as Jake killed him. “No.”
Vanessa glanced in Luke’s direction to make sure everything was all right. The boy had started a new scenario. She looked back at Savannah.
“Yes, you do,” Vanessa said firmly. Savannah began to protest, but the words never left her mouth, halted by Vanessa’s knowing look. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. You know I won’t leave it alone until you tell me. When you walk in here—” she gestured around the house with her free hand “—or anywhere near me, you do not have the right to remain silent.” She leaned closer, lowering her voice even though she doubted that Luke could hear. He was too busy being Jake and the monster. “Now, what’s wrong?”
Feeling empty, weary beyond her years and lonelier than she could remember being in a very long time, Savannah murmured, “It’s nothing.” She stared again at her tall, frosted glass, noting the tiny rivulets of water had begun to run along the sides.
Like tears, Savannah thought. Just like my tears.
Vanessa frowned. “‘Nothing’ wouldn’t have you looking like a wilted flower.” Her eyes swept over her friend’s form. Five months pregnant and barely a discernible clue from her body. How did she do it? “You’re supposed to be glowing by now.”
Glowing, ha. Most mornings Savannah felt like ashes from a day-old campfire. With a shake of her head, she laughed dryly. “Whoever made that assessment of motherhood was obviously a man. On my best day, I don’t ‘glow.’ I manage.”
And just barely, she added silently. Between doing the bookkeeping for the ranch, handling Luke, morning sickness and the housekeeping, she was coming perilously close to losing it on all fronts. The faster she juggled, the more certain she was that she was going to drop something. Or everything.
But in her heart she knew that if she just had a little support, she could do it.
She might as well be wishing for the moon, she thought sadly.
Savannah could feel her friend studying her. Vanessa always seemed to know just what she was thinking. Now was no exception.
“But it’s not just the pregnancy getting you down, is it?” she asked.
“No, it’s not.” Taking another sip of her iced tea, Savannah put the glass back on the tray. “You know, the police force could use your clairvoyance. You’re going to waste here.”
Vanessa put her hand on top of Savannah’s, forcing her friend to look at her instead of avoiding her eyes. “Stop trying to change the subject. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Savannah knotted her fingers together in her lap, staring down at them.
“Everything,” she finally whispered, so quietly that, even sitting next to her, Vanessa had to strain to hear.
Tears suddenly filled Savannah’s eyes, spilling out. Annoyed, she wiped them away with the back of her hand. “Damn, I still haven’t gotten the hang of riding this emotional roller coaster. You’d think that the second time around would be easier, not harder.” She sighed, feeling as if everything was conspiring against her. But she knew that if only Cruz would love her the way he used to, everything else would fall into place. “There should be a way to put your hormones in cold storage for the duration, get them back after you push out the baby.”
Feeling for her, Vanessa put her arm around Savannah’s small shoulders. “Have you told Cruz what you’re going through?”
Savannah drew back and laughed. The sound had no pleasure in it.
“Cruz?” He was the whole problem, not a solution. Although if he’d only change again… “I’d have to make an appointment to talk to him. And even then he’d probably only break it or, worse, forget to show up altogether.”
Vanessa was very quiet for a moment. There was something in Savannah’s face that had her heart freezing. She tried to read between the lines and hoped fervently that she was wrong. “My God, there’s isn’t another woman, is there?”
Another woman, Savannah thought. If only…
“Well,” she said slowly, “yes, in a manner of speaking there is another woman.”
There might as well have been, for all the time Cruz spent away from the house, Savannah thought. A slight trace of bitterness entered her voice. Who would have thought that the promise of success would do this to them? Money had never meant anything to her. Only love and Cruz had.
“He spends almost all his time with her.” Savannah laughed shortly, recalling the last few months, so awful in their loneliness. “By the time I get him back, he can hardly make conversation, much less act like the man who made my head spin and my pulse race.”
Vanessa
