Meant For Her (19 page)

Chapter 36

Sierra couldn’t help but be delighted by Evan’s insistence on taking her out to dinner. He’d even helped her pick out a dress, a black silk Issa jersey gown with a deep V neckline and knee-length skirt that she absolutely loved. Despite her protests, he paid for the dress, as well as a pair of strappy black heels and a matching handbag.

She took the time to straighten her hair and twist it into a sophisticated up-do. Once she had applied her makeup, she left the bathroom and went to retrieve her new shoes.

Evan was sitting on the edge of the bed. They’d managed to find him a pair of khakis, a dark blue button-down dress shirt, and a pair of dress shoes. He looked sexy as hell.

He stood and let out a low whistle when she walked into the room. “You’re stunning.”

“I was just thinking the same thing about you,” she said, walking up to him and running a hand along his chest. “As much as I’m looking forward to dinner, I’m looking forward to taking these clothes off you later even more.”

His mouth curved up. “The feeling is mutual.”

She laughed and sat down to put on her shoes. Then she got up and walked over to the nightstand, where she’d left the only jewelry she’d brought with her. Most of it was far too casual for the outfit, but her silver hoop earrings would suffice.

“I’ve got you covered there,” Evan said.

Turning, she watched him approach with a couple of small, velvet-covered boxes in his hand. Where had those come from? Her eye caught the logo from Dee’s Designs on the lids. Her lips parted into a surprised O.

He opened the lid on the first box and she saw the necklace she’d barely resisted buying on her two previous trips to Dee’s. She’d been crushed earlier when Marlene told her it had been sold. Her eyes stung when she realized he must have collaborated with Marlene to buy the necklace.

He removed it from the box and prepared to clasp it around her neck. She wanted to thank him and let him know how thrilled she was, but she couldn’t get anything past the lump in her throat.

“Speechless, are you?” he murmured, walking behind her with the necklace. “I’ll take that as a positive thing.”

He settled the gemstone so it sat properly against the hollow of her throat, then secured the clasp. His lips brushed against her exposed neck. The feel of his warm breath against her skin sent delicious shivers coursing through her.

Moving in front of her again, he opened the other box. She saw the matching earrings and bracelet and brought her hand to her mouth. A tear fell. He reached up to wipe it away.

“You deserve more than this for all you’ve given me, Sierra,” he said, taking her hand and slipping the bracelet around her wrist. “But hopefully this begins to convey how grateful I am. I hope you’ll think of me whenever you wear it.”

She accepted the earrings when he handed them to her. As she put them on, she focused on reining in her emotions. It took another full minute, but she managed it.

“Thank you, Evan,” she said at last, reaching up to touch the side of his face. “This is already one of the best nights of my life.”

He smiled. “Well, then, let’s head to dinner while we’re still on a high note.”

She took his hand and picked up her purse so they could head out. He drove her car, following his phone’s directions to the downtown Savannah restaurant he’d chosen. When he had first called, they’d told him that they didn’t have any available tables. She wasn’t sure what he’d ultimately said to change their minds, but he’d gotten them a reservation for eight o’clock.

They pulled up to the valet and Evan handed over the keys. Striding around the car, he joined her on the curb and gently took her elbow to escort her to the door. One of the restaurant’s staff opened it and welcomed them. She’d never eaten in this particular establishment, though she’d always wanted to. Her eyes were probably wider than usual as she took in the elegant décor, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She longed for her camera.

“Good evening, Mr. Dorsey,” greeted the maître d. “We have your table waiting for you.”

“Great, thanks.”

They were led upstairs to a smaller dining room than what she’d glimpsed on the first floor. Only eight tables filled the space, each of them encircled by curved wooden walls. As Sierra took her seat and the maître d left them, she realized the arrangement was very private. Their server would be the only one able to see them throughout the meal.

“Are these tables different than the ones downstairs?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re reserved for what you might call VIPs. You have to know to request one.”

She grinned. “Wow. Even more cool points added to the evening, then.”

Their server greeted them and Evan ordered a bottle of wine as Sierra looked over the menu. She realized there weren’t any prices and wondered just how much this date was going to set Evan back.

“See anything you like?” Evan asked with a nod at her menu.

“Sure,” she said, moving her gaze over him like she was checking him out.

“Ha, ha.”

“I’m leaning toward the crab-stuffed grouper. I’m drooling a little just reading ‘bacon buttermilk mashed potatoes’ on the menu.”

He smiled. “My mom used to say everything is better with bacon.”

Her heart pounded over the casual mention of his mother. “Well, I happen to agree with her.”

Their server returned with their wine and took their orders. She went with the grouper and Evan ordered the filet. Once they were alone and had sampled the wine, she decided to test the waters.

“Will you tell me what your mom was like?” she asked.

His gaze grew shuttered. He drank some of his wine and looked down at the table. She considered taking the question back, but it was too late for that.

“She was strong,” he said at last, looking up and meeting her gaze. “She worked hard, but was quick to laugh. Everything she did, every decision she made in her life, she did for me.”

“Are you an only child?”

“I was her only child,” he answered. “Once we moved to the States, it was just the two of us. We came to Atlanta because that’s where her parents and brother lived. We didn’t spend much time with them, though. My grandparents both passed away within a couple years of us moving to the States. Before my mom’s funeral, I hadn’t seen my uncle in years, either. He moved out of state due to the economy when I was seventeen.”

“So you two really just had each other,” she said, reaching out and placing a hand on top of his. “I can only imagine how devastating it was for you to lose her. I’m sorry.”

He shrugged and took another drink of wine. She moved so she was sitting closer to him on the circular padded seat.

“When we first met, I thought you’d been sick,” she said softly. “Then I realized I was off the mark. Am I right that she was the one who was sick?”

Taking a deep breath and releasing it, he said, “Breast cancer.”

“Oh, Evan. How awful for you. For both of you.”

His gaze was on the wine in his glass, his eyes slightly unfocused as he revisited the painful past. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let go. Instead, she continued to grip his hand.

“There’s nothing worse than seeing someone you love, someone who has always been bright and strong, die by inches,” he said. “She fought so hard—”

He stopped talking and looked away. Tears stung her eyes. She hated putting him through this. But she knew it was something he needed to do.

“Did you cut your hair for her?” she prompted, remembering how closely shorn his hair was when they first met.

He nodded. “I promised her that when she lost her hair because of the chemo, I’d shave my head, too.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. She watched as he pulled up his photo gallery and clicked on an image. He brought up a picture of himself with no hair sitting next to a woman much smaller than him. His arm was thrown over her shoulder in a familiar form of embrace. Although the woman was also bald, she wore a cheerful smile.

“What was her name?” she asked.

“Adelaide. Addie.” He scrolled back through the pictures and found another one. “Here she is before the chemo.”

She’d had long brown hair, Sierra observed. Evan had inherited her dark blue eyes and the shape of her mouth. It was clear they were mother and son. In the picture, she was wearing an L.A. jersey and hugging him in his uniform.

“She’s beautiful,” she said.

He stared at the picture for another moment, then let the screen go dark. “She was supportive when I got traded to L.A., but I know she wasn’t thrilled about it. Neither was I. It made it harder for me to see her while she was going through her treatments. I talked to her on the phone every day, but it wasn’t enough. I should have quit baseball and stayed with her.”

“No, Evan,” she said, squeezing his hand. “Your mom wouldn’t have wanted that. She was so proud of you. I could see that in the picture. I’m sure it would have broken her heart if you’d tossed aside your dream for her.”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. He drank the rest of the wine in his glass and set it aside. When his eyes lifted again to hers, she saw the emotion there. It dealt a huge blow to her composure.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But at least I would have been there when she died.”

Chapter 37

Evan expected the words to hurt more when he spoke them. They’d been blades in his heart for the past ten months, after all. Oddly, though, he felt relieved.

He’d also dreaded seeing the pity on Sierra’s face. Throughout the process of claiming his mother’s body and making the arrangements for her funeral, that was what he remembered…looks of pity from friends and professionals, none of whom knew his mother like he did.

Sierra didn’t have pity in her eyes, though. She had tears of genuine sadness, as though she was taking his pain and making it hers.

“Did she die unexpectedly?” she asked.

Looking down at their joined hands, he nodded. “Things were going well. The cancer was responding to the treatment. I was in L.A. when I got a call. She’d had a heart attack.”

A tear slid down Sierra’s cheek. He welcomed it. She could shed the tears he wouldn’t.

“She’d had a rare reaction to the chemo drugs. They had weakened her heart to a point where they couldn’t save her after the attack.”

The server approached. Sierra dabbed at her eyes with her napkin and drank some of her wine as their salads were placed in front of them. He picked up his fork, surprised to find that he had an appetite.

When they were alone, Sierra said, “So you had to deal with the long battle against the cancer, as well as the shock of your mom passing unexpectedly. I know she wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”

He paused in mid-chew. All this time, he’d borne almost crippling guilt over not having been there for his mother. Not once had he considered how she might have viewed things if she’d still been alive.

Sierra was right. His mom would have done anything she could to keep him from enduring the pain that her death had caused him. She wouldn’t want him living every day with that pain, either.

It was something to think about.

“Where in Australia did you grow up?” she asked.

He swallowed another bite of salad and washed it down with some water. “I was born in Dandenong, a suburb of Melbourne. I don’t remember much about it. We were only there until I turned three. The first place I remember living was another suburb called Footscray. That’s where I started school. We moved around a lot after that. I think the longest we were in any place was nine months.”

“Wow. Was your father in the military?”

“No. He was a womanizing adulterer.”

He hadn’t meant to be so blunt. Frowning, he drank more water, thinking the glass of wine had loosened his tongue. He knew that wasn’t true, though. Sierra had a strange effect on him.

She didn’t say anything, just ate her salad and waited for him to go on. Her expression hadn’t changed due to his declaration, so he gave a mental shrug and kept talking.

“I grew up thinking we were moving because my father couldn’t hold down a job. He didn’t finish high school, so he took work wherever he could get it. Moving so much made it hard for me to make and keep friends. I got into the habit of falling in with the first crowd who would accept me, just so I had someone to hang out with wherever we lived. Most of the time, especially since we lived in poorer areas, that crowd was bad news.”

“Do they have gangs in Australia?”

“Yeah. Not as organized as here in the States, but just as dangerous.”

“Were you…?”

“No. I was never in a place long enough to get to that level. I ended up serving a stint in JD, though.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Juvenile Detention? How old were you?”

“Just shy of thirteen.” He finished his salad. Then, because he knew she was curious, he continued, “The psychiatrist who evaluated me said I was acting on repressed aggression toward my father. Since I’d caught him in bed with another woman a couple of weeks before the incident that got me sent to detention, she was probably right.”

She set down her fork and took another sip of wine. Since her glass was now empty, he took the bottle from the container beside the table and refilled it.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m guessing you didn’t tell your mom about the other woman?”

She knew him well. “No. I couldn’t do that to her. I was big for a twelve-year-old, but not big enough to take on my father. So when I caught another kid from school picking on someone I considered a friend, I beat the shit out of him.”

“That makes sense.”

He blinked. “It does?”

Their server arrived to clear the salad dishes. He refilled Evan’s wine glass and told them the entrees would be along shortly. Evan barely heard him. He was too busy looking at Sierra.

Her ageless eyes met his when they were alone again. “You wanted to defend your mother, but you couldn’t. Not really. So you defended the friend instead. Since you were at an age where you were likely going through some huge hormonal changes, you took it too far.”

Although he didn’t want it, he picked up his wine and drank some. “The kid was in the hospital for a week.”

“And you served time, got a record that has followed you, right?”

“Yeah.”

She nodded as though to herself. “How long after you got out of detention did it take before you apologized to the kid you hospitalized?”

Evan stared at her. How the hell did she know that?

Not for the first time, he felt uncomfortable with her level of insight. If she was right about this, what else was she right about?

“Two weeks,” he finally admitted.

“You saw how much your behavior upset your mom, right?”

“Yeah. She knew something bigger was at the root of what I’d done. Since I was so young, the psychiatrist talked to my mom about her concerns. My mom ended up putting two and two together. She worked as a waitress, and one day, she decided to go home early.”

“Oh, no,” Sierra whispered.

“She saw what I’d seen.”

The conversation ceased as their server delivered their entrees. Evan couldn’t help but imagine his mother walking in on his father with the woman he’d been doing at the time. They’d never talked about it. One day, he’d come home from school and knew she’d been crying. She’d said in a calm voice that they’d be moving as soon as she could contact her parents. He’d known immediately why.

It had broken his heart.

After that, he’d gotten much more protective of her. In the nine years they’d lived in the States before she was diagnosed with cancer, she’d gone on three dates. He’d grilled her about each guy, making sure he knew as much as he could about them before she went. Looking back, he suspected she might have done more socializing if it hadn’t been for him. It weighed on him, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

“You know,” Sierra said once they were alone again, “as kids, we don’t understand what our parents go through. We’re in our own worlds. Everything revolves around us. I can’t tell you how many times I asked my mothers why they couldn’t have been straight to save me and Lane the trouble of being picked on.”

He looked at her as he cut into his steak. “Really?”

“Yep. Now, I wish I could go back in time and kick my own ass.”

That made him smile. “I know the feeling.”

“You want to go back in time and kick my ass, too?”

His lips twitched. He knew what she was doing. All he could do was appreciate it.

“How’s your fish?” he asked.

“Succulent. Want to try some?”

And just that easily, the conversation switched from the oppressive weight of the past to where they sat now. They each tried some of their entrees, and both agreed that the crab-stuffed grouper was the better choice. Since he ended up eating more of her meal than he’d intended, they decided to order dessert, too.

“Are you upset about missing the All-Star game tonight?” she asked as she finished her third glass of wine.

His brow wrinkled. “Honest to God, I completely forgot about it. I guess I can’t be that upset about missing it.”

She laughed. “Well, I know you transitioned to Atlanta from L.A. mid-season, but I truly felt you deserved the All-Star vote this year. Your performance has been phenomenal, especially in Atlanta.”

I owe that to you
.

He didn’t say it, but he thought it. He hadn’t even been aware that he’d felt that way until just then. But as the thought ran through his head, he knew it was true.

After a moment, he just said, “Thanks. But I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than right here.”

She smiled and took his hand. The combination of her touch and her dimples made his heart leapfrog in his chest. After what he’d gone through the year before, he couldn’t believe he was sitting there experiencing the range of emotion she’d evoked in him that evening.

“You have that look in your eye,” she said.

“What look is that?”

“The look that says you’d rather I wasn’t wearing any clothes at all.”

“Oh. Well, that’s true enough.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you’d like to do with me when we get back to the rental house?” she asked.

Grinning, he did just that.