Only Forever

She smiled acidly. “That’s you, Parker—the two-minute man.”

He favored her with a scorching look and dropped into the booth’s seat across from her. “I’d forgotten what a little witch you can be, Van.” He paused to square his shoulders. “Darla hasn’t complained.”

Darla, of course, was the girlfriend. “People with IQ’s under twenty rarely do,” Vanessa answered sweetly. Then she added, “Your two minutes are ticking away.”

A waitress came, and Parker ordered two cups of coffee without even consulting Vanessa. It was so typical that she nearly laughed out loud.

“The advance on this book,” Parker began in a low and reluctant voice, “is in the high six figures. I can’t play baseball forever, Van; I need some security.”

Vanessa rolled her eyes. Most oil sheiks didn’t live as well as Parker; he certainly wasn’t facing penury. “I’ll drop you off at the food bank if you’d like,” she offered.

A muscle bunched in his jaw. Vanessa could have lived for years on the money that Parker’s face brought in for beer commercials alone. “You know,” he said, “I really didn’t expect you to be so bitter and frustrated.”

The coffee arrived, and the waitress walked away again.

“Watch it,” Vanessa warned. “You’re trying to get on my good side, remember?”

Parker spread his hands in a gesture of baffled annoyance. “Van, I know the divorce was hard on you, but you have a job now and a life of your own. There’s no reason to torture me like this.”

He sounded so damnably rational that Vanessa wanted to throw her coffee in his face. “Is that what you think I’m doing? I want nothing from you, Parker—no money, no minks, no sports cars—and no lies written up in a book and presented as the truth.”

“So I was a little creative? What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, if you’re writing a novel.” Vanessa could see that the conversation was progressing exactly as she’d expected. “I don’t know why I even came down here,” she said, glancing at her watch and sliding out of the booth.

“Hot date?” Parker asked, giving the words an unsavory inflection.

“Very hot,” Vanessa lied, looking down at Parker. She was meeting her cousin Rodney for dinner and a movie, but what Parker didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. She made a sssssssss sound, meant to indicate a sizzle, and walked away.

Much to her relief, Parker didn’t follow.

Rodney was waiting in the agreed place when she reached the mall, his hands wedged into his jacket pockets, his white teeth showing in a grin.

“Hi, Van,” he said. “Bad day?”

Vanessa kissed his cheek and linked her arm through his. “I just came from a meeting with Parker,” she replied. “Does that answer your question?”

Rodney frowned. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m afraid it does.”

Vanessa smiled up at the handsome young man with the thick, longish chestnut brown hair and Omar Sharif eyes. Her first cousin—and at twenty-one, five years her junior—Rodney was the only family she had in Seattle, and she loved him. She changed the subject. “Aren’t you going to ask me about the apartment?”

Rodney laughed as they walked into the mall together and approached their favorite fast-food restaurant, a place that sold Chinese cuisine to go. The apartment over Vanessa’s garage was empty since her last tenant had moved out, and Rodney wanted the rooms in the worst way.

“You know I do, Van,” he scolded her good-naturedly. “Living over a funeral home has its drawbacks. For one thing, it gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘things that go bump in the night.”’

Van laughed and shook her head. “Okay, okay—you can move in in a few weeks. I want to have the place painted first.”

Rodney’s face lighted up. He was a good kid working his way through chiropractic school by means of a very demanding and unconventional job, and Vanessa genuinely enjoyed his company. In fact, they’d always been close. “I’ll do the painting,” he said.

It was late when Vanessa arrived at the large colonial house on Queen Anne Hill and let herself in the front door. She crossed the sparsely furnished living room, kicking off her high heels and rifling through the day’s mail as she moved.

In the kitchen, she flipped on the light and put a cup of water in the microwave to heat for tea. When the brew was steaming on the table, she steeled herself and pressed the button on her answering machine.

The first message was from her boss, Paul Harmon. “Janet and I want you to have dinner with us a week from Friday at DeAngelo’s. Don’t bring a date.”

Vanessa frowned. The Harmons were friends of hers and they were forever trying to fix her up with one of their multitude of unattached male acquaintances. The fact that Paul had specified she shouldn’t bring a date was unsettling.

She missed the next two messages, both of which were from Parker, because the name of the restaurant had rung a distant bell. What was it about DeAngelo’s that made her uncomfortable?

She stirred sweetener into her tea, frowning. Then it came to her—the proprietor of the place was Nick DeAngelo, a former pro football player with a reputation for womanizing exceeded only by Parker’s. Vanessa shuddered. The man was Paul’s best friend. What if he turned out to be the mysterious fourth at dinner?

Vanessa shut off the answering machine and dialed the Harmons’ home number. Janet answered the phone.

“About dinner at DeAngelo’s,” Vanessa said, after saying hi. “Am I being set up to meet Mr. Macho, or what?”

Janet laughed. “I take it you’re referring to Nick?”

“And you’re hedging,” Vanessa accused.

“Okay, yes—we want you to meet Nick. He’s a darling, Vanessa. You’ll love him.”

“That’s what you said about that guy who wanted to take me parking,” Vanessa reminded her friend. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“He’s nothing like Parker,” Janet said gently. She could be very perceptive. “It isn’t fair to write Nick off as a loser without even meeting him.”

The encounter with Parker had inclined her toward saying no to everything, and Vanessa knew it. She sighed. She had to be flexible, willing to meet new people and try new things, or she’d become stagnant. “All right, but if he turns out to be weird, Janet Harmon, you and Paul are off my Christmas-card list for good.”

That damned sixth sense of Janet’s was still evident. “The appointment with Parker and his attorney went badly, huh?”

Vanessa took a steadying sip of her tea. “He’s going to publish that damned book, Janet,” she whispered, feeling real despair. “There isn’t anything I can do to stop him, and I’m sure he knows it, even though he seems to feel some kind of crazy need to win me over to his way of thinking.”

“The bastard,” Janet commiserated.

“I can say goodbye to any hopes I had of ever landing a job as a newscaster. I’ll never be taken seriously.”

“It’s late, and you’re tired,” Janet said firmly. “Take a warm bath, have a glass of wine and get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”

Exhausted, Vanessa promised to take her friend’s advice and went off to bed, stopping only to wash her face and brush her teeth. She collapsed onto the mattress and immediately fell into a troubled sleep, dreaming that Parker was chewing her cash card and spitting the plastic pieces out on the pitcher’s mound.

She awakened the next morning in a terrible mood, and when she reached the studio complex where the Midas Network was housed, her co-host, Mel Potter, looked at her with concern in his eyes.

A middle-aged, ordinary looking man, Potter was known as Markdown Mel in the telemarketing business, and he was a pro’s pro. He had ex-wives all over the country and a gift for selling that was unequaled in the field. Vanessa had seen him move two thousand telephone answering machines in fifteen minutes without even working up a sweat, and her respect for his skill as a salesman was considerable.

He was, in fact, the one man in the world, besides her grandfather, who could address her as honey without making her hackles rise.

“What’s the matter, honey?” he demanded as Vanessa flopped into a chair in the makeup room. “You look like hell.”

Vanessa smiled. “Thanks a lot, Mel,” she answered. “You’re a sight for sore eyes yourself.”