Replacing Gentry (3 page)

Chapter Three

S
itting in the back seat of Daniel’s town car, I couldn’t help but smile. I’d never imagined myself riding in a hired car. Yet here I was for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, seated next to a state senator. In a dark gray suit, yellow tie pulled into a perfect knot at his throat and his hair, dark and combed back, he bore the casual elegance of a man who commanded respect, a man who got what he wanted.

“Will you be coming back to Nashville any time soon?” he asked in that self- assured, yet unassuming, way of his. The strong silent type, I’d decided, but with a hint of danger. Humphrey Bogart meets James Dean, wrapped nicely in a Southern accent.

“No, I hadn’t planned on it,” I said unable to decide if he was simply making polite conversation or if he was hoping to see me again. “I don’t have any extra vacation time. I’m going to Bali this summer to help out with the school my parents are building.”

My mom and dad were nondenominational ministers currently on an eighteen-month mission trip.

“I see,” he answered with what looked like disappointment.

“Do you ever get out to California?” I asked, brightly.

“No, I don’t much care for the west coast.” He glanced out the window. “Besides, I’m thinking of making a run for the US Senate next year, so I’ve been spending a lot of time on the opposite side of the country.”

The
US
Senate!
I felt my eyes pop.
He didn’t mention anything about this last night.
“Right, you’re a busy man. No time for frivolous trips to the coast,” I said, feeling my mood darken.

Daniel’s fingers brushed the back of my hand. “It would be nice to see you again though,” he said with expectant eyes.

My heart skipped a beat, but I told it to behave. “Yes it would,” I agreed just as the car swept the curve at the airport drop-off.

The driver opened the door for me, gave me his hand to help me out, then went to the back of the car and retrieved my small carry-on from the trunk.

Daniel slid from the back seat and came around back. “Wait here,” he said to the driver before lifting my bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

As we walked along, I glanced around the busy airport. There was the usual mix of people—young, old, wealthy, middle classes—but only in Nashville was the crowd dotted with people lugging a guitar case over their shoulders. In the distance I could hear the whiny twang of a country tune drifting from the lips of a starving artist looking for his big break. Then I noticed that people were glancing at us with curious looks. I in my jeans and Doc Martin boots, an earthy-colored scarf knotted around my neck, my hair in a messy sort of bun, and Daniel, in his expensive suit with a purposeful walk, we couldn’t have been more opposite.

At the dividers to the labyrinth that led to the security check-in, we slowed. “I guess this is where I have to let you go,” Daniel said, a hint of regret in his voice.

My chest tightened. “That sounds so permanent,” I said glancing up into his eyes. Dark blue and intense, he stared down at me with a look I couldn’t read.

He reached up and moved a strand of hair away from my cheek. The brush of his finger left a sizzling trail across my skin. “Marlie,” he started with hesitation, “I . . . well . . . It’s just that . . .”

I held silent as he tried a few more times to come up with whatever it was he had to say. Never in my life had I known a man quite like Daniel. Powerful, stately, genuine, and for some unimaginable reason, interested enough in me to be at a loss for words. He might be having a hard time finding his words but I knew what I wanted, and it had nothing to do with talking.

Taking a step closer, I grabbed hold of Daniel’s lapels, rolled up onto my toes, and pressed my lips to his. His mouth was soft and felt good against mine. The rush of his lips heated my cheeks and neck. Only the heat went no further. Though Daniel wasn’t pulling away, he wasn’t kissing me back either—not really. Maybe I’d missed my chance by not encouraging his affections last night and sharing his bed with him? Maybe he simply wasn’t interested? Allowing my lips to linger a moment longer, I savored the feel and drew away. But as I started to fall back onto my heels, he caught me, pulling me hard against his chest, his mouth taking mine in a fit of hunger.

The kiss lasted long enough for my heart beat to consume my chest, for my legs to feel as if they were fading beneath me. Over the loud speaker Gary LeVox from Rascal Flatts reminded travelers not to leave their luggage unattended an instant before the bustling airport drifted away, leaving Daniel and me suspended in a void of our own making. Then, without warning, he broke away and my surroundings crept back in.

Resting his forehead to mine, he said, “That was—”

“One for the record books,” I finished.

He brushed his lips with mine again. “Exactly,” he breathed.

I smiled through lips that wanted to touch his one more time. Drew in a breath though my heart continued to monopolize my chest. “Thanks for seeing me to the airport,” I said for lack of conscionable thought. “And for . . . everything else. You’ve been very kind.”

With a squeeze to my hand, he held silent, his eyes running over my face. “My pleasure,” he said with a meek smile. Then, turning loose of my hand, he handed me the carry-on and stepped to the side. I was devastated. No, “
I’ll call you.” “We’ll stay in touch.”
Or
“Be safe.”
None of the usual insincere farewells meant to make parting feel less final. I didn’t even have his cell number. He hadn’t asked for mine. That was it.

The end.

I didn’t want to but I returned his smile and forced my feet through the dividers. What choice did I have? Fall at his feet, cry—plead? I wondered if he was watching me go, and if not, if he’d at least turned for one last glimpse before I disappeared. An invisible force pulled at my shoulder, urging my chin to turn, to see, but I resisted as my fellow travelers filed in behind me, further separating Daniel and me. Sending my eyes to floor, I felt the sizzle of his kiss fading with each footfall, the line inching forward like a string of condemned prisoners.

“
Marlie
!
”

Stopping short of handing the security guard my ticket and ID, I scanned the crowd. Maybe it’d been my imagination? But as I turned back to the front, from the corner of my eye, I saw the throng of faces parting for a man in a suit excusing his way through.

“What’s going on? Did I forget something?” I questioned as if the hope that he would come after me had never crossed my mind.

Daniel stumbled past the last few irritated travelers.

“No, you didn’t, but
I
did.” He was out of breath as he reached me. “Marlie, we need to talk.”

Alarm stirred with anticipation. “What? Right now? I’m late for my flight,” I said glancing toward the security guard. “Can’t you just call me?”

Daniel shook his head. “No, I can’t call you. What I need to say can’t be said on the phone,” he insisted, taking my arm with a gentle nudge. “Just give me a minute.”

“Okay,” I conceded, allowing Daniel to lead me over to a wall of windows.

“Marlie, you can’t leave . . . I mean, I don’t want you to leave.”

I didn’t want to leave either but how could I stay? Not that I didn’t appreciate him running after me but what was he thinking? That I could just hang around Nashville for a few more days?

“Daniel, I have to go. I have to be back at work tomorrow. I can’t afford to lose my job. I have bills to pay,” I explained.

“I know you do, but if you get on that plane,” he pointed down the terminal, “we’ll never see each other again.” His eyes turned regretful. “Not like this anyway.”

“Like what, exactly?” I searched his expression. Panic . . . sadness . . . resolve? I couldn’t be sure. “I don’t understand,” I said, trying to work out what he meant while reminding myself that my plane would be boarding in five minutes and I still had to get through security.

Daniel looked out over the tarmac, closed his eyes before opening them again and focusing on mine. “Marry me.”

His words hung in the air a beat while I thought I’d just heard him ask me to marry him.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you right,” I said, measuring each word.

“You heard me just fine. I asked you to marry me.”

I snorted. “Is this some sort of joke? Because I’m starting to feel uncomfortable. As you well know, I’ve had about all the practical joking I can handle for a while.”

Daniel looked impatient. “Do I strike you as the kind of man who would engage in a practical joke of this kind, in the middle of a crowded airport?” he said, sparing the onlookers a glance.

It was a rhetorical question I knew, but I answered anyway. “No.”

Laying a hand on each of my shoulders, he claimed my complete attention. “Marlie, I’m proposing to you,” he reiterated.

I shrugged out of his grip. “All right, I heard you,” I said, drawing the words out as long as I could, giving myself a moment to think.

He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would throw caution to the wind and propose to a stranger in a fit of passion. Not that there’d been much passion. We’d shared a few kisses, a few dances, a night in the same condo, and one meal. But by the crease in his brow, the persistence in his voice, he appeared to be serious. This didn’t make any sense. Was he suffering from some sort of psychotic break causing him delusions that I was someone else? His late wife, maybe? I assessed him for the usual symptoms: labored breathing, inconsistent thoughts or speech, erratic behavior. He was out of breath but he’d been running. Erratic behavior? Definitely. How could his actions be anything but?

My training kicked in. “Give me one
good
reason why I should take this proposal seriously?” I said, challenging his irrational actions using calm, deliberate speech.

“Because we would make a good team, you and I.” He motioned to me, then to himself. “You’re smart and funny with a fresh perspective, which quite frankly I could use right now. Think about all the amazing things we could accomplish together.”

While I appreciated him thinking of me as smart and funny, it was his use of words like, “amazing things” and “accomplish” that gave me pause.
Not exactly the romantic language a man generally used to propose. He sounded like he needed a personal assistant not a wife, and I was about to say as much when what he said next cut straight to my heart.

“Because I need a wife who will ground me, who tells me what she
really
thinks and not what she
thinks
I want to hear.” He stepped closer, drew the back of his finger down my cheek. “Because I want you in my bed every night when I come home, and at my breakfast table in the mornin’. Because my boys need a momma—” he paused, his voice turning pensive “—and because I believe you need them, too.”

His reasons, so heartfelt, so true, fell from his eyes, pleading with me to take him seriously. But my common sense pushed back with enough force to have me saying, “Daniel, those are all good reasons for us to get to know each other, but marriage?”

He took both my hands in his and whispered. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He licked his lips, suppressed a weary smile. “Because you’re too sensible of a woman to quit her job, leave her family and her home, and move across the country for anythin’ less.”

The lucidity of his sincere sentiment gave way, once again, to nonsense. “But not so sensible that I would agree to marry a man I’ve not even known for twenty-four hours?”

Daniel tightened his grip on my hands. “Remember last night at the table, the question about love at first sight?” I nodded. “When I sat down at that table you were the first woman I saw and the last one I noticed,” he said, and I couldn’t help but feel flattered.

He’d been watching me throughout the meal while I hadn’t given him a second look, hadn’t even noticed him or thought him attractive until he’d asked me to dance. Then again, I’d been distracted by my disdain for Paul.

“Your answers impressed me,” he continued. “I know this sounds crazy, but I fell for you right then and there.”

“My answers?” I repeated, thinking back to what had gone on at the table. It had only been the night before but it felt like days, or even weeks, ago. “Are you talking about the game?”

His tone became more insistent. “I know what you’re thinkin’, but I’m not tryin’ to hide any serious character flaws, nothin’ twisted or depraved at least.” He stopped and shook his head, frustrated, like what he wanted to say wasn’t coming out right. “I haven’t felt this way about a woman in a long time.”

It took my besieged brain a moment to connect the dots but when it did, the trail ended with one conclusion—Gentry. Daniel thought I was the woman to replace his late wife. My memory looked back at her picture. Sure, I’d entertained a romantic interest in him, but could someone like me ever fill the shoes of an elegant, refined, never-licked-jelly-from-her-fingers or spooned-a-mountain-of-sugar-into-her-coffee woman like Gentry?

Daniel spoke again. “Look Marlie, we could take six months, or six years, gettin’ to know each other if that would make you feel better. But we both know at the end of that time we would end up right back here.”

“Right where?”

Taking my face in his hands, his lips sat suspended within reach of mine. “With me beggin’ you to marry me,” he said, and dropped a gentle kiss to my lips.

His kiss—so welcome, so perfect—sent a feeling of reassurance straight to my heart. The feeling swelled until my sense of reason could only conclude that he was sane, and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t sophisticated like his late wife. He knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was me. Love at first sight. Every woman’s dream was playing out right here, right now, and with me in the starring role. The response I couldn’t find got tangled with the breath hung up in my throat. Peeling my gaze from his, I studied the world beyond the window. Workers scurried to and fro. Carts overflowing with luggage sped to make plane changes, dodging jetliners rolling to destinations I couldn’t imagine, under the haze of a spring sky.

The safe decision would be to turn away from Daniel and board the plane bound for San Diego. From there I’d go home to my empty house, to my clients that would, more often than not, reoffend, to the life I’d always known. Security. The life I now knew would no longer be good enough—every day wondering if I’d passed up my last chance for happiness.