Sweet Tea at Sunrise (21 page)

“Oh?”

He grinned wickedly. “A great big king-size bed.”

She laughed. “Optimistic that you’ll find someone to share it, aren’t you?”

“Oh, sugar, I know I will. In fact, I’ve already picked her out. It’s just a matter of time.”

Sarah sighed over his super-sized ego. Unfortunately, though, that’s what she figured, too.

It had been two months and Walter still hadn’t found a job, not in Serenity, not within a fifty-mile radius. Searching had been an eye-opening experience. He was overqualified for much that was available, not that he wouldn’t have taken anything at this point, but those hiring for even the most menial jobs questioned whether he would stay long enough to make it worthwhile training him.

With a degree in business, a shortage of executive positions and too many people at that level out of work, he was competing with people whose qualifications and work experiences were more varied than his own.

And yet the prospect of going back to Alabama and asking for his old job back was too humiliating to contemplate. He refused to get sucked back into a world dominated by his parents.

“So, what are you going to do?” Raylene asked him one afternoon when they were sipping iced tea at the kitchen table while the children napped.

Walter found these quiet conversations to be oddly comforting, though he certainly wouldn’t have described Raylene as a relaxing person. She was usually edgy and critical and blunt. Surprisingly, he appreciated the fact that she spoke her mind, even when he came out wanting.

“I’ll keep looking,” he told her now. “I may have to go farther afield though. I think my prospects will be better in Charleston or Columbia.”

“Or you could swallow your pride and apply for the sales position at the radio station,” she suggested innocently.

“Not a chance in hell,” he said fiercely. He was not going to Travis McDonald, hat in hand, and asking him for anything. He’d heard about the job on the very day it had been listed, but he’d known even trying to arrange an interview would be a complete waste of time.

Raylene shrugged. “Suit yourself. I thought staying near your kids was what mattered most.”

“It is.”

“Well, then?”

“Look, you know perfectly well that Travis and I don’t exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

She smiled. “You mean Sarah.”

He shrugged. “Pretty much,” he admitted. “I’ve heard he blames me for really messing her up, making her think she’s not good enough.”

“Well, duh. Isn’t that exactly what you did?”

“Not intentionally,” he said, though he couldn’t deny that had been the effect of not only his nonstop criticism, but the barrage of negativity from his parents that he’d failed to stop. “I admit I was a lousy husband. I should have taken her side, instead of jumping on the bandwagon when my parents went after her.”

“Yes, you should have,” Raylene agreed without hesitation. “But there’s nothing to say you couldn’t try to make up for it now. You still have a tendency to point out something negative whenever you’re around her. Surely you’ve noticed all the good things she’s accomplished.”

He regarded her wearily. “I know it’s a habit I need
to break, and I am trying, but I don’t see why anything I say matters anymore. We’re divorced. Sarah doesn’t give two hoots what I think.”

“Oh, she’s a lot stronger now, no question about that, but I know that every time she gets close to really believing in herself, especially as a woman, it’s your voice she hears in her head, and every single doubt comes stampeding back.”

“After all this time?” he said incredulously. “That’s ridiculous.”

“I agree, but it’s true. Think about this. When you’re having a bad day or something doesn’t go your way, whose voice do you hear in your head? Your mother’s or your father’s, right? Even when you know how wrong they were or when you resent the way they talked down to you, you can’t shake all those years of criticism.”

Walter realized she was exactly right.

“Look, here’s the bottom line, Walter. When a woman loves a man the way Sarah loved you, it gives that man power. He can use it to build her up or to tear her down. We both know which way you went. Words can hurt, especially when they’re repeated often enough by someone you love and respect. If you care about Sarah, if you ever cared about her, fix the damage you did so she can move on. You owe it to her. Do that, and maybe Travis will look at you differently.”

He got what she was saying about Sarah, but the mention of Travis stirred his temper. “I don’t give a damn what Travis McDonald thinks of me.”

She gave him a wry look. “You should, if you want the best available job in town.”

Unfortunately, she had a point. “I’ll think about it,” he conceded eventually.

“Think fast. That job’s not going to be available for long. I happen to know you could have the inside track if you’d eat a little crow.”

“Meaning?”

“Sarah told me that Bill had already recommended you. Travis has a lot of respect for his opinion.”

“And Sarah? What does she think?” he asked, not wanting to get his hopes up.

“Ask her yourself. Personally, I think she’ll want it to work out so that you’ll be able to stay close to the kids. She always puts them first.”

“You said Bill recommended me. I’ll bet Travis told him to forget it, didn’t he?”

“He did, but when Sarah spoke to him, he said he’d reconsider if you showed signs of taking responsibility for what you’d done to her. The man will do pretty much anything she wants.”

Walter regarded her with exasperation. “And you know all this how? Eavesdropping?”

“I don’t have to resort to eavesdropping. People like me. They tell me things.” She grinned. “Even you’ve revealed a lot more than you realize. Now, fix this, Walter. Not just before it’s too late for you to get this job, but because it’s the right thing to do for Sarah. She needs it so she can move on to the life she deserves.”

“With Travis, I suppose,” he said.

“Possibly. That’s up to her. I just want her to have the option of reaching for anything and believing she deserves it.”

“You’re a good friend.”

“So they tell me.”

“When are you going to get out of this house and grab a life of your own?” He knew Sarah believed Raylene was agoraphobic, scared of what awaited her in the outside world. He wondered if the panic really ran that deep, or if she’d just grown comfortable and complacent where she was. What would it take to motivate her to try to change? The nagging of her best friends certainly hadn’t worked.

Her grin faded at his question. “Not your problem,” she said stiffly. “I need to check on the kids.”

He snagged her hand. “You’ve been a friend to me, so I’m going to try to return the favor. See a shrink, Raylene. Stop hiding out before it’s too late. You don’t want to wake up one day years from now and realize your entire life has passed you by. You say Sarah deserved better than what she got from me. Well, you deserve better than this. Staying locked up inside this house is letting that miserable ex-husband of yours win.”

She looked genuinely taken aback by the mention of her ex-husband, but before she could respond, Walter stood up. “I’ll check on the kids. You sit here and think about what I said.”

His opinion probably didn’t matter a whole lot to Raylene, but something told him if he did manage to get through to her, he might become a hero in Sarah’s eyes. He’d like to have that feeling again.

T
ravis, darn his hide, had Sarah blushing furiously as they wound up another morning of
Carolina Daybreak.
He seemed to take great pride in getting her all flustered on the air by saying the most outrageous things. Today, without actually saying it, he’d managed to suggest to the entire community that she was tired because she’d been out cavorting with him the night before. He never actually crossed a line and lied, but he was a master of suggestive innuendo. Listeners clearly thought their love life was a whole lot more interesting than it was.

As soon as Bill had gone on the air in the control booth, Sarah scowled at Travis. “Why do you do things like that? You know perfectly well what people are going to think.”

He grinned without the slightest hint of guilt. “Yes, I do.”

“Does it occur to you that you might embarrass me?”

“That’s half the fun,” he admitted. “I love seeing you get all flustered.”

“Well, what if Walter decides I’m making a spectacle of myself on the air and decides to sue me for
custody of Tommy and Libby? Will it still be all innocent fun for you, then?”

Travis’s expression sobered at once. “He wouldn’t dare.”

To be honest, Sarah didn’t think he would either, but it wouldn’t do to let Travis know that. “He might,” she said direly. “Are you going to explain to my kids why they have to leave Mommy?”

“I’ll beat him to a bloody pulp before I allow that to happen,” Travis said.

He sounded so grim, she backed off. The last thing she wanted was to have Travis and her ex-husband brawling on the town green. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she said. “I’m just saying you need to think about the consequences before you say some of this stuff.”

“One of the consequences I’m hoping for is that me talking about the two of us often enough will get
you
to believe we’re destined to be a couple.” He grinned. “Who knows, you could go crazy one day and seduce me.”

“Don’t count on it,” she said, hoping her tone was firm instead of filled with the quivering anticipation his words had set off inside her.

He perched on the corner of her desk, his knees crowding her. “How about we talk about this some more over lunch at Wharton’s? You can fill me in on what you think is appropriate and what’s going too far.”

It almost sounded as if he really wanted to know. Before she could utter her usual refusal, she found herself nodding. “Okay.”

Travis regarded her with a startled expression. “Was that a yes?”

“Don’t push me,” she told him. “I could change my mind. Let’s get over there before it gets too crowded.”

He stood up, grinning, then signaled to Bill with an exaggerated thumbs-up. “She said yes,” he mouthed.

Beside him, Sarah rolled her eyes. “To lunch,” she said before Bill announced to all the world that the question had been something else entirely.

At Wharton’s, most of the regulars had already claimed their booths, but there was one left in the back. As they walked toward it, the mayor winked at Travis. “Good show today.” His buddies seemed to concur.

“They just enjoyed it because they think you got the better of me,” Sarah grumbled at the demonstration of masculine support. “Men in this town stick together.”

“Come on, sugar, everybody in town knows it’s you who’s got me twisted in knots,” he replied.

“As if,” she murmured, grabbing a menu and burying her head in it as if she didn’t already know it by heart.

When Grace appeared to take their order, she was grinning from ear to ear. “I swear I can’t get a thing done in here when you get to going on the air. I haven’t had so much fun listening to two people courting since back when Dana Sue and Ronnie were shooting off sparks all over town.”

Sarah gaped at her. Courting? That’s what Grace—and most likely everyone else in town—thought was going on? Oh brother. It was already worse than she’d thought.

Once Grace had gone, she studied Travis to see if he was finally beginning to understand the risk of his on-air games. He didn’t appear to be the least bit fazed.

“You did hear what Grace said, didn’t you?” she prodded.

“Which part?”

“People think we’re courting.”

Travis met her gaze evenly, his expression about as serious as Sarah had ever seen it. He didn’t look upset. In fact, he appeared totally calm and relaxed.

“Haven’t you figured it out before now, sugar?” he asked. “Courting is exactly what we’re doing.”

“I’m not,” she said at once, then blinked. “Are you?”

A smile played on his lips. “I am.”

She sat back in her seat, her heart hammering.
Well, I’ll be,
she thought. She’d thought she understood all about Travis playing a game on the air. It was second-nature to him, but this? He was actually serious? That was an entirely different kettle of fish.

“Are you sure?” she asked, earning a full-fledged grin.

“Very sure.”

“Well, you need to stop it,” she told him. “My divorce is barely final. I can’t be thinking seriously about another man, especially you. A game’s one thing. I’m a lot rusty at those, but I can probably handle it. Courting? I am not ready for that.”

He laughed. “Why especially me?” he asked.

She waved off the ridiculous question. “Because you’re you.”

He feigned confusion, though he had to know exactly what she meant.

“You mean because I’m tall?” he asked.

“No.”

“You don’t like dark hair?”

“Oh, stop being ridiculous. You know who you are,
what
you are.”

“Oh, we’re back to me being an irresponsible player again, is that it?”

“Hey, I didn’t pin that label on you,” she said defensively. “You came to town with it.”

“And I think I’ve done a pretty good job of trying to live it down,” he said quietly. “Have you even seen me look at another woman besides you?”

“Mariah Litchfield,” she said at once.

His brows shot up. “We had one conversation in the studio, and it was about her daughter’s singing.”

She realized she was on thin ice with that one, so she moved on to a more recent example. “Rory Sue,” she said.

“
She
looked at
me,
” he corrected. “I haven’t given her the time of day.”

She honestly couldn’t deny that’s the way it had seemed, at Rosalina’s anyway. She still wasn’t quite ready to let it go, though.

“Well, I have no idea whom you see in your spare time,” she retorted, aware that she was losing her very best argument for continuing to keep him at a distance.

“I have almost no spare time,” he said. “And every minute of what I do have is spent trying to persuade you to give me a chance. I could probably give you an accurate accounting of every minute over the next week, if that will help. I’ll keep one of those charts you love so much.”

She scowled at the ridiculous offer. “Will you just stop it, please? You don’t have to account for your time with me.”

“Apparently I do.”

Sarah sighed. She wasn’t going to win, no matter
how hard she tried. He talked faster and had the skill to spin just about anything to his own benefit.

Fortunately, before she needed to come up with some quick-witted reply, she looked up and saw Walter heading in their direction, a determined expression on his face. For once, she was almost glad to see him. That reaction was startling enough to keep her from worrying about Travis for a half second.

“You looking for me?” she said, then slid over to make room for him.

The instant Travis realized whom she was speaking to, his expression turned sour.

“You two have met,” she said a little too cheerfully, then fixed her gaze on her ex-husband. “Is there a problem with the kids?”

“No, I was actually hoping to talk to you about something,” Walter said.

Though she’d usually rather be tortured than left alone with Walter, she immediately nodded. “Travis won’t mind leaving us alone, will you? I’m sure Grace can fix your order to go.”

Travis scowled and didn’t budge.

Beside her, Walter squirmed uncomfortably. “Actually, I’d like him to stay,” he said, then glanced across the table. “If you don’t mind.”

Since Travis had shown no sign of leaving anyway, it was a moot point.

Walter cleared his throat, then met Travis’s gaze. “I know you and I have gotten off on the wrong foot. You’ve probably heard a lot about all the things I did wrong while I was married to Sarah, and I can’t deny a one of them. I’m trying to do better by her.” He turned
to Sarah with a hopeful expression. “You can see that, right?”

She realized now where this was going. She didn’t want to sabotage him, so she nodded. “You have been trying harder.”

“The bottom line is that I love my kids and I want to stay close to them, but the way my job hunt has been going, I’m going to have to think about moving over to Charleston or Columbia.” He leveled a look into Travis’s eyes. “Unless you’ll at least consider interviewing me for your sales position.”

Sarah knew what it had taken for Walter to swallow his pride just to ask for a chance, especially with Travis. A glance across the table told her that Travis understood it, too.

Travis turned to her. “Sarah? How do you feel about this? You, Bill and me, we’ve been a team from the beginning, so you have a say in this, too. You say no, and we stop this right now.”

She met Travis’s gaze evenly and repeated what she’d told him in private when she’d first heard about the job opening. “I think you should talk to him,” she said sincerely. “Walter’s more than qualified for the job. He’d be great for the station. As for him and me getting along, we can manage to be civil, right, Walter?”

“I promise there will be no friction,” he said, then ventured a grin. “I imagine Sarah will be the first to call me on it if I get out of line.”

Travis didn’t look entirely convinced by their show of unity, but he nodded. “I’ll see you at two-thirty at the station. I’m not making any promises, but we’ll talk and see how it goes.”

Sarah could feel the tension go out of Walter’s body and realized just how badly he wanted this to work out.

“Thank you,” he said to Travis. “Now I’ll leave the two of you to your lunch.”

He’d barely walked away before Grace appeared with their meals. “I didn’t want to interrupt. Things looked pretty serious over here.”

“Just a friendly chat,” Travis said, clearly disappointing Grace, who’d obviously been hoping for fireworks.

After she’d gone, Sarah reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Thank you for agreeing to see Walter. I know it took a lot for him to ask. Walking away from his family’s business and being out of work has been humbling for him.”

Travis nodded. “I got that. In fact, that’s what decided me. It takes a certain amount of courage to go to someone you know dislikes you and ask for a chance.” He studied Sarah intently. “I know you said you could handle it, but are you sure it’ll be okay for you working with him?”

“We’ll make it work,” she said with resolve. For Tommy and Libby’s sake, she couldn’t do any less.

“If I overhear him saying one thing to cut you down, he’ll be booted out the door,” Travis warned.

“And I’ll be holding the door open for you,” she promised.

His apparent anxiety faded. “You had me worried for a minute. I thought maybe you were mellowing toward the man.”

“I’m mellowing. I’m not nuts,” she said.

It was a relief to figure out that she actually understood the difference.

Walking back to the station, Travis reached for Sarah’s hand, half anticipating that she’d yank it right back. When she didn’t, he took it as another sign that maybe she was starting to get used to the idea of them as a couple.

The shocking part was how content he was with the simple act of holding her soft, delicate hand against his calloused skin. He’d always moved directly past the hand-holding stage—or even the kissing stage—to get to more intriguing intimacies. Because of Sarah’s reticence, he was coming to appreciate the foreplay.

“This feels like courting to me,” he said casually. “How about you?”

She glanced up at him, a twinkle in her eye. “Could be.”

“Can you live with that?”

“I’m starting to get used to the idea,” she admitted.

Travis would have danced a little jig right there in the middle of the square if he hadn’t spotted his mother steaming toward the door of the radio station. Her arrival couldn’t mean anything good.

“Who’s that?” Sarah wondered when she saw the woman opening the door to the station.

“My mother,” Travis said with an air of resignation. “You may want to run for your life.”

“Why?”

“Because something tells me she’s not here for the grand tour of the station.”

“Oh?”

“It’s bound to be about my father. It’s
always
about my father. From the time I was ten, when he had his first
very public affair, she has vented about his behavior to me.”

“Even when you were just a kid?” Sarah asked, looking shocked.

“She thought I could shame him into walking the straight and narrow.”

“What a horrible position to put a child in!” Sarah said indignantly. “She should have been trying to shield you from what was happening, not putting you into the middle of it.”

Travis nodded. “I couldn’t agree with you more. At least that might help you to see why my father and I have this strange sort of love-hate relationship. I was taught to judge his actions at an early age. Then people started comparing me to him. Until recently, I had no idea whether I could be a decent husband or if I even wanted to try.”

“And you know now?”

He met her gaze. “I do,” he said solemnly. “At least I’m going to do my best not to be like my father. If and when I make that kind of commitment, it will be because I know with everything in me that I can make it work.”

“So, what do you think your mother wants from you now?”

“My guess is she’s heard about the baby and she expects me to fix things.”

Sarah looked justifiably bewildered. “How?”

“Beats me.” At the door to the station, he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “Go on home. There’s no reason for you to get dragged into this.”