Page 97 of Save the Date
She gave a rueful laugh. “I’ve asked myself that same question a hundred times. I don’t know. Maybe they were so used to miserable they didn’t know there were any other possibilities.”
Jack squeezed her shoulder.
“In a way, I think maybe that’s why when Leo asked me to marry him, I said yes.”
“Just so you could get away from home?”
“That was part of it. But a big part of it was Leo’s family. They are absolutely the nicest, most normal people you ever met. His parents have been married forever. They ran a business together, and they’re retired now, but they still do everything together. They hold hands in the grocery store, and his dad calls his mom his bride. And he has this sweet grandmother—everybody calls her Grannie Annie. Leo has two younger brothers and a sister, who was like my best friend, until the divorce. I think I convinced myself that if I married Leo, we would have the same kind of marriage his parents had.”
“If he comes from such a great family, how come Leo turned out so bad?”
“I wish I knew. Sometimes, I wonder if things would have been different if we’d stayed up in Ohio, you know, around his family, instead of moving down here to Savannah.”
“No,” Jack said succinctly. “He would have had an affair with an Ohio secretary or an Ohio babysitter. Your ex sounds like a player, darlin’, and a player is always gonna play.”
Cara smiled up at him. “Did you just call me darlin’?”
“I dunno. Did I? Did you like that?”
“Say it again.”
“Maybe later. Something I’ve been wondering. Why were things so bad here for you? Is it the town? Do you hate Savannah?”
“Not really. Well, at first maybe I did. It’s just that—this is pathetic. I still sometimes feel like an alien down here. I guess part of it’s that I sound like a Yankee.”
“Not all the time.”
“You’re just saying that so you can get in my pants,” Cara teased.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“Leo? As soon as we moved down here, he was in his element. He was here a week and he was already saying ‘fixin’ to,’ and ‘hey y’all’ and ‘bless your heart.’ He just fit right in.”
“Like a pig in slop,” Jack said.
“Huh?”
“It’s a Southern thing, darlin’. And you’re saying you didn’t fit in?”
“Not really. After I left Leo, I didn’t even have a girlfriend I could call up to help me move. I only had Bert, who, come to think of it, is my only girlfriend in Savannah.”
Cara sighed deeply. “That’s why I’m so bugged by how he’s been acting lately. He’s apparently got some new boyfriend he won’t talk about. Which is not like Bert at all. Usually, he wants to spill all the tawdry little details of his latest conquest. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just jealous.”
“It sounds like you’ve got good reason to be upset with him, if he’s not doing his job,” Jack pointed out.
“The thing is, if he keeps up this way, I won’t have any other choice but to fire him. And I don’t want that. I want to keep him, as my assistant, and my friend.”
Jack kissed her shoulder and ran his hands down her back, lingering on her butt. “I’ll be your friend.” He pulled her closer and nudged a knee between her thighs. “I’m a really awesome friend.”
“Mmm,” Cara said slowly. “But can you fix flowers?”
39
In the morning, Cara sat up and marveled at the man in bed beside her. Sunlight splashed across his shoulders, so brown against her white sheets. His dark hair was tousled and his cheek was stubbled. His breathing was deep and even. She could have watched him like that all morning, he was that nice to wake up to.
It had rained hard overnight, and with the windows open, there was still somewhat of a cooling breeze.
They’d closed the bedroom door the night before, and now she heard a soft scratching at the door. Poppy? Or Shaz? She swung her legs over the side of the bed, but before she could move, a dark arm snaked around her waist.
