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“I have a couple months’ work to finish up in St. Louis,” I continued. “But then, I can come back. I…” I glanced at Katie, who was staring at us slack-jawed. “I want to come back.”
Savannah’s face was still unreadable, but I felt her hands shake as she pulled them out of mine, small tremors, cracks throughout her foundation. “We don’t have to talk about this right now.”
“Why not?”
Finally, something in her flashed, her eyes got hot. “Because we’ve known each other three weeks, Matt, and half that time you were lying to me. The other half you were killing yourself in my courtyard with guilt over the Elements accident and now, suddenly, you’re over it and ready to move here?”
That pissed me off, summing up our relationship that way so she could dismiss it.
“I’m not a child, Savannah. I know how I feel.”
“Really?” Her scorn stung. “I find that hard to believe.”
I stepped close. Her heat had lit my own fuse.
“Are you so ready to throw away what we’ve got?”
“And what exactly do we have?”
“Don’t try to pretend you don’t feel something, Savannah. You don’t let people close to you, I know that. And yet—” I spread my arms, painfully aware of my eight-year-old audience “—here I am.”
Her eyelids flinched. “I don’t understand why you’re so ready to throw away your life for a woman you’ve known less than a month.”
“Throwing my life away?” That was extreme, but she was reaching for straws. “Hardly, Savannah. Look, I can be an architect anywhere, and St. Louis is no longer my home.”
“And the Manor is?” she asked, her eyes wide. “It’s that easy for you?”
“I’m not saying this is my home,” I snapped. “And I’m not saying that we should get married tomorrow. But I feel something here. Something real and—”
Savannah stepped away as if from a fire that was flaring out of control. “This isn’t the time or place,” she said, every wall, every defense and barrier in place. She was impenetrable. Unknowable.
Katie stood behind her, owl-eyed. Savannah was right. We could talk later.
But, come hell or high water, we would talk.
Savannah, the coward didn’t come down for dinner. She didn’t come to play cards. I played Rachmaninoff again, pounding out the chords, throwing all of my anger into the stormy movements, trying to call her downstairs. Trying desperately to compel her to me.
She didn’t show.
But I could feel her upstairs in her room. A room, in all my sneaking around, I’d never gotten into and now, suddenly, it felt like a mystery. As if there were things hidden there that were far more important than jewels.
I imagined her bedroom, clean and uncluttered. Polished and lovely. Understated, like her.
And I wanted so badly to be in both of them.
“Matt,” Margot said, standing in the doorway. “Not that the music isn’t beautiful, but it’s a little…stirring for the middle of the night.”
I jerked my hands off the keys. Tomorrow could very well be my last day here and I couldn’t believe Savannah wasn’t going to talk to me.
“Go upstairs and get her,” Margot said.
“That easy, huh?” I asked, not believing it for a second.
“No.” Margot laughed. “Not that easy at all. Nothing about Savannah is, but it’s what makes her love all the better.”
“I know that,” I said. “I just don’t know how to convince her.”
Margot stepped into the room and sat in the wing chair, the moonlight pooling in her lap. “When she first came here, after her mother dropped her off,” Margot said, “she was like one of those cats you bring home from the humane society. She hid for about two weeks. For a few days I left out food. Then, once I discovered where she was hiding—in the closet behind all the coats—I opened the door and sat outside in the hall. I didn’t say anything, I just sat there and read. Day after day, trying to let her know that I was here. That I was always going to be here.”
“What happened?”
“One night, I felt a cold little body curled up next to mine in my bed.”
I took a deep ragged breath.
“She’s been left a lot,” Margot said. “Her mother, her brothers, Katie’s father.”
“I want to come back,” I said, defensively. “I want to be with her, but there are—”
Margot held up her hand. “I understand that,” she said. “You need to make her understand that.”
I stood. “I love her.”
“That’s a start,” Margot answered and I took off for the stairs and Savannah’s room.
SAVANNAH
I was one of those stupid women in movies after all. Lying in bed. Staring at the ceiling. Ridiculous.
And I couldn’t seem to stop. My body was so heavy, my head so full of Matt, there wasn’t room for anything else. All of my energy was concentrated on keeping a grip on my heart.
