Swept Away

“All except…uh…his…er request after I turned him down.”

“Wait a minute! Don’t tell me…you—”

She interrupted him, snatching her hand from his as she did so. “You think I’m crazy? The man was a gentleman. He asked. I said no to that, too, and he didn’t press me.”

Schyler let himself breathe. “I would have been surprised if your answer had been different.” He rubbed his chin, reflecting on some of his own temptations. “But when we’re under stress—and you certainly were—we sometime behave out of character.”

A softness seemed to envelop her. He wouldn’t have associated shyness with her, but he sensed it in her changed demeanor and saw it in her lowered gaze. Long lashes, half an inch of them, hid her large, almond-shaped black eyes—so much like his father’s—from him.

“Your eyes must be the most beautiful I’ve ever looked at. It’s a wonder they don’t get you into trouble. Every time you blink, it’s as if you’re flirting.”

She managed to look at something beyond his back. “I’ve been told that.”

Right then he made up his mind to get to know Veronica Overton. He’d seen her regal in her professional armor and arrogant with his father, but the woman before him at that moment was sweet and feminine. If he dug deeper…He stood and it seemed natural to reach for her hand. He did, and she grasped it.

“Come help me set the table for dinner. I can tell from the rattling in the kitchen that he’ll have it ready in five or six minutes.”

Being with her gave him a good feeling, he realized, but he didn’t fool himself. No woman would ever be important to him unless she showed genuine affection for his father. He eyed her as they set the table, and he liked the way she went about it. Unhurried. Self-assured. She might well have been in her own home. At the thought, his belly tightened, and whispers of air skittered through the hairs on his forearms and the backs of his hands, teasing his nerves. Warning him. No you don’t, man, he told himself. Don’t go there! Don’t you even think it. But an image of her in his home, belonging there, and filling it with warmth flitted through his mind.

He shook his head symbolically, getting his mind straight. “You could grow on a guy.”

She whirled around, her face wreathed in the warmest smile he’d ever seen on her. “Think so?”

“Yeah. You think you could handle it?”

Now she was flirting with him. He walked over to the china cabinet where she stood twirling a linen napkin. She grinned at him. “No doubt about it. I can catch anything you can pitch.”

He looked at her hands propped against her hips and couldn’t help laughing. “Anytime you want a demonstration, be glad to oblige you. I like a woman with guts, and you’ve got plenty.”

“Hmmm. You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

So she liked to challenge! Fine with him; he enjoyed a good jostle, and he saw in her a worthy opponent. “I’d better be. A tongue-tied lawyer and an insecure engineer might as well not leave home.”

She worried her bottom lip. “Engineer?”

“Yeah. That’s the other hat I wear.”

He yielded to the temptation to pull the strands of hair dangling in front of her left ear lobe, tugging on them much as he would have on the rope of a bell. “I’m confident. Yes,” he said recalling her comment. “You’re not lacking self-confidence yourself.” He watched her tuck the errant strands behind her ear and marveled at her ability to look over his shoulder at some object past him, but not into his eyes.

“A little boy in my second-grade class used to do that, pull my hair, I mean.” She still didn’t look at him.

He stepped closer to her. “If you don’t look at me, I’ll disappear. Is that what you think? You have to deal with me, Veronica, and I’m here to tell you it won’t be child’s play, either. Believe me!”

She looked at him, her long lashes sweeping up from her cheeks, and her expression was one of mild defiance. Figuring her out could be a full-time job. “I’m equal to the task, Schyler, so let’s not waste time outdoing each other.”

He had to force the smile, because he liked her too much. Or he would, if it wasn’t for her attitude toward his father. Wanting her had never bothered him too much; he could deal with that. But to like a woman who heated your loins every time you looked at her…He let out a harsh breath. Straighten out your head, man.

She might like the truth, and she might not, but anything short of straight talk could take him where he didn’t want to go.

“Look, Veronica,” he said, pronouncing her name slowly to emphasize the importance of his words. “I’ve watched a lot of animals square off, but except for a mother guarding her young, they were never male and female. So don’t count on a big fight between us to cool things off. It isn’t going to happen.”

Her hand went to that unruly hair hanging over her ear, and when she spun it around her index finger, he knew she was stalling for time. Thinking. She had plenty of patience with herself. Good. He liked that, so he waited.

“You know, Schyler,” she said at last, “you’ve been talking out of both sides of your mouth. The right side says maybe, and the other yells, ‘Don’t even think it.’ Doesn’t matter, though, since I probably won’t be around when you get it straightened out.”

Her mocking tone set off the sparks that tripped his ego, but he reeled it in. He made it a point to control his reactions to such deliberate provocations as the one she’d just thrown at him. He was his own man, and if he accepted every gauntlet, he’d get bandied around like a hockey puck.

He smiled as best he could, though he knew it barely touched his lips. “I see you like to fence,” he said, glad for the presence of mind not to say what he was thinking. “Remember that a clever swordsman knows his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses before he agrees to duel.”

“Well, I’m glad to see the two of you getting along,” Richard said as he placed a platter of food on the dining room table, ending their game of taking each other’s measure.

Schyler didn’t want his father to think they’d come to terms, because they hadn’t and probably never would. Only mutual passion united them, and they both had the strength to ignore that.

“We were setting the table, Dad.”

Richard nodded slowly, as one trying to accept the inevitable. “I’ll get the rice and salad. What do you want to drink, Veronica?”

Schyler couldn’t help relaxing when she replied, “Water or white wine with club soda in it,” because his father didn’t hold “drinkerds,” as he called them, in high regard.

Richard returned with the remainder of the meal and lit the huge, five-inch-thick candle that graced the center of the table. He sat between his daughter and his son and held out a hand to each of them. Schyler wondered if the hand Veronica held gave her the same sense of security and well-being that his father’s hand had always given him.

Richard bowed his head. “Heavenly Father, we thank you for this food, and on this special occasion, we thank you for each other. I had decided, Lord, that you weren’t listening to me all these years, but it seems that you were. It’s not exactly as I had hoped and prayed it would be, but she’s here with me. You’ve given us a second chance, an opportunity to erase the hurt and the pain of these thirty years. But with your help and me trying all I know how, I know I can’t miss. I’m accepting this second chance for which I do thank you. Amen.”

Schyler glanced first at his father, who was reaching for the dish of rice, and then at Veronica, who’d glued her gaze to their father. If they could get through the meal in peace, he’d be grateful.

“Have some rice,” Richard said to Veronica, as though he ate with her every day. “You can’t eat shish kebab without rice.”

Schyler thought his heart had stopped beating. Would she accept the dish his father held out to her?

“Nobody has to beg me to eat rice,” she said and held out her plate for him to serve her. “Saffron rice, at that. What kind of meat is it?”

He had to control his heavy release of breath or they would both know he’d feared her response.

Richard served her a large helping and laid two skewers of shish kebabs on it with pleasure so obvious that Schyler ached for him.

“It’s lean, tender pork, slices of sage sausage, mushrooms, onions and green peppers. And I marinated the meat in my special sauce all day.” He watched as she sampled it.

“Hmmm. This is fabulous.” A smile of pure contentment covered her face as she glanced up at her father. “I’m telling you, this is great.”

Schyler said a silent prayer of thanks, and he could see the hope written on his father’s face. He wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t move too fast or hope for too much. But how could he prick that fragile balloon of optimism? Veronica’s behavior was probably nothing more than good manners. The test was yet to come.

Veronica listened to the man she’d learned by age four to dislike say a prayer of thanks that he had been reunited with her, and she heard him express his hope and faith for a future in which she was a part. Her heart constricted at the sound of his words, and she’d never been more torn in her life. But when he passed her the rice, gazing into her eyes with a look that was part challenge and part prayer, he touched her deeply in an indefinable but life-giving spot. From the corner of her eye, she read on Schyler’s face a dread, even a fear that she would refuse the food her father held out to her. I’ve got decent manners, I’m hungry and I love rice, she told herself, handing him her plate.

And she was glad she did. She saw Schyler take a deep breath, close his eyes and let the air pour out of him. And for a second, Richard raised his eyes skyward before looking at her with a smile of delight on his face.

“You’re one terrific cook,” she told him and meant it.

“I like to cook,” he said, savoring morsels of meat and mushrooms. “That’s when I do my best thinking.” He glanced at his watch. “Schyler, it’s still light for another hour or so. Could you give her a tour of our little village? I’ll have the kitchen cleaned by the time you get back, and we can have dessert.”