Single, Available, and Completely Attached (21 page)

“He’s aged quite gracefully.”
 
Nana informed them.

“Wow…he was, what, in his twenties, then, wasn’t he?”
 

“He actually asked about you.”
 
Drew bristled slightly.
   

“I was practically in love with him.
 
That blond hair…”
 
Anna leaned back into the glider, clutching her wineglass as she stared wistfully into the night sky.
 
“Did you know he took me skinny dipping?”

“You went skinny dipping?”
 
Drew couldn’t stop himself.
 
Even though it had already happened, he couldn’t help the subtle trickle of jealousy coursing through him.
 
“When you were sixteen and he was—what, ten years older than you?”
 

“Oh, nothing happened.”
 
Anna waved her hand in the air.
 
“Not that I didn’t want it to.
 
God, he was beautiful.”

“And I’ll take that as my cue to go get seconds.”
 

“Bring another bottle of wine!”
 
Anna called after him.
 
He did his very best to ignore the conversation that was carrying on just through the doorway, but he couldn’t help but hear about how this guy had a villa in Paris.

Pfft
, a villa in Paris.
 
Lame.

He returned to his seat, grateful to find they’d changed the subject.
 
Still, he finished his glass of wine and poured another.
 

“I loved my prom.”
 
Nana announced.
 
“It was beautiful—I wore this lovely dress, and I had flowers in my hair.
 
Your grandfather and I made love under the stars.”

Drew could hear the sadness in the older woman’s voice—a nostalgic, longing sort of sadness.
 
He didn’t press the issue, though he was curious.
 

“And I remember your father’s prom.
 
He wore a cummerbund, and I hated it.
 
But his date was a proper girl, and she wouldn’t hear of anything else.”
 
Nana laughed, the sadness still buried within her tone.
 

“I remember seeing pictures.”
 
Anna told her.
 
“I hated my prom.”

“Only because you didn’t have the right date.”

“Right, you should have taken Mr. Skinny Dipping.”
 
Drew chimed in.
 
“That probably would have brightened the evening right up.”
 

“What about you—how
was
your prom?”
 
Anna asked him, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, just awful.
 
I made the mistake of telling two girls I would go with them.
 
That
was an awkward limo ride.”

“Why am I not surprised?”
 
Anna asked, and Drew smirked at her.
 
“You’ve always been terrible, haven’t you?”

“Not always,
”
 
he
told her.
 
A memory of the little boy doing everything he could to make his mom smile passed through his mind again and he shifted his gaze to the plate in his lap, realizing he’d lost his appetite.
 

The three of them fell quiet for several moments, and Drew heard the faint sounds of music playing in the background somewhere.
 
“Daddy used to dance with me to this song.”
 
Anna
announced,
her tone sad.
 
“It’s the only memory I have, really—he was holding me, and we were spinning around, and he was singing this song.”

He listened for a moment, committing it to memory.
 

Of course, it was a Beatles song.
 
Here Comes the Sun—one of his favorites.
 

“He loved this song.
 
Not as much as he loved you—but
close
.”
 
Nana sighed softly, humming along with the song until it finished.
 

“Oh, Nana,
”
 
Anna
sighed.
 
Drew could hear the sleepiness in her voice.
 
The wine was finally taking
it’s
toll on her.
 
“I’m sad we’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Me, too,
”
 
Nana
admitted.
 
Anna fell silent then, and after several minutes, Drew stood up, seeing she had fallen asleep.
 

“I guess I’d better get her to bed,
”
 
he
told the older woman.

“Go on.
 
I think I’ll stay out here a bit longer.”
 

Drew nodded at her before he leaned down, scooping Anna up into his arms.
 
She pulled herself closer to him as he made his way back into the house and down the hall, laying her in the bed.
 
He sat beside her there, taking the image in.

He liked how peaceful she looked in her sleep.

His heart thumped loudly in his chest as he reached out and brushed her hair out of her face—and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep next to her.
 
Not like this.

He pulled the blanket up over her and turned back, heading the way he came.
 
“Do you mind if I stay out here just a little longer?”

“You’re more than welcome, Drew.”
 
He sat down in the chair he’d left only moments ago, pouring himself another glass of wine.
 
“You’ve taken good care of my girl.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that—”

“No, you wouldn’t, which is why I will.”
 
Nana turned to look at him, and he was startled by how much she resembled her granddaughter.
 
Whoever ended up with Anna was going to be a very lucky man.

“I…I just like seeing her happy.”

“She is.
 
She’s the happiest I’ve seen her in a very long time.”
 
Nana sighed.
 
“She reminds me of my Charlie, you know.
 
Alice—she’s very much a product of me, which is why she and I butt heads so often.
 
But Anna…I see her father in everything she says and does.”
 
She turned her head, so that she could look up at the stars.
 
“Do you know who you remind me of?”

“Chandler Duvet?”
 
Nana laughed, and it was soft and elegant, just as he would have expected.

“No, no.
 
You remind me of Charlie’s father.”
 
Drew took a sip of wine.
 
“Did Anna ever tell you about him?”
 

“No, she’s only talked about you and her parents.”
 
He remembered when she’d told him about her parents’ death—and, regrettably, how much of a jerk he’d been.

“I wouldn’t expect her to—she never even knew him.
 
Jack was my first love—tall, dark, passionate.
 
I loved everything about him.
 
He was drafted, and even though he hated everything about Vietnam, he couldn’t turn away.
 
He was killed a couple of months after I found out I was pregnant with Charlie.”

“I’m sorry.”
 
Drew whispered.
 
He couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for Nana—and then, twenty years later, to lose her son too.
 

“It’s life.”
 
She waved her hand in the air, much as Anna often did.
 
“I’m not telling you this because I want you to be sorry.
 
I’m telling you this because I feel like you need to understand something.
 
I don’t know you, and I don’t know your story, so forgive me for being frank—but I feel like you could use a little wisdom.”

Nana turned to face him before continuing on.
 
“I’m going to tell you the same thing I told Anna Marie.
 
The heart wants what the heart wants, Drew.
 
We can’t control that.
 
Love isn’t about who is best for you, or what makes the most sense.
 
Love is about passion.
 
It’s about hunger and desire.
 
It works
it’s
way in and it devours you, but it isn’t destructive.
 

“And when it’s right, it’s just beautiful.
 
Because you know.
 
I’m not saying it only happens once in a lifetime—but I am saying that, when it does, you should take full advantage of it, because you never know how much time you have.”
 
The older woman concluded.

“Miss—I mean, Nana,
”
 
Drew
was flustered now.
 
“Anna and I—I mean—”

“Maybe it’s there, and maybe it’s not.”
 
Nana shrugged her shoulders.
 
“I’ve seen a heart like yours before, Drew.
 
It’s a good one.
 
Don’t be afraid to let it live a little.”

She set her empty glass down on the table, rising to her feet.
 
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear my pillow calling my name.
 
Good night, Mr. Whitman.”

“Good night,
”
 
he
called after her, deciding to remain where he was.

He had a pretty strong feeling he wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.

~*~

Even though he was beyond exhausted, Drew still felt better behind the wheel of a car than as a passenger.
 
He was sure someone would say that it had something to do with the lack of control he’d had throughout his childhood, but he didn’t care.

He just didn’t like the thought of someone else driving—especially
his
vehicle.
 

Anna was riding quietly, perhaps a little hung-over from the night before.
 
Normally, he would have given her a hard time about it, but he just didn’t have it in him today.
 

He’d spent most of the night thinking about what Nana had told him, and about what he’d overheard Anna telling her earlier in the day.
 

And he still didn’t know what he was supposed to think or feel or do—

The only conclusion he’d come to was that he really, really didn’t like the thought of Anna fading from his life.
 

He swallowed hard as he changed lanes, a bundle of nerves thriving within his chest.

“My mom died when I was fourteen.”
 
He blurted out.
 
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Anna lift her head and turn to him.
 
He could see the surprised expression on her face.
 

“How?”

“Lung cancer.”
 
Anna nodded slowly.
 
Images of his mom flashed through his mind—healthy, sick, sad,
happy
.
 
“I didn’t even know my dad before that.
 
So when things started getting bad, I begged her to tell me who he was.”
 
Anna said nothing, so he continued on, his heart pounding so hard it physically pained him.

“Tyler Whitman.
 
CEO of Whitman Industries.
 
She’d been his secretary, and when she got pregnant, he tried to pay her off and sweep it under the rug.
 
So she quit, and she never asked him for anything.
 
Fourteen years, she bent over backward to provide for me.”

“That’s a mother’s sacrifice.”

“She shouldn’t have had to.”
 
Drew said with a shrug.
 
His tone was very casual, though he was anything but.
 
“So I left the hospital, and I found his building, and then I found his office.”
 
 
He remembered he’d been dripping wet, barely even noticing the rain.
 
He also remembered the security guards chasing after him, not catching up to him until he’d burst into the man’s office.

“I asked him if he knew who I was, and he didn’t try to deny it.
 
I inherited his looks—so it would have been pointless for him to even try.
 
He sent security away, and I told him why I’d come.”

“Why did you?”

“Because she’d never asked him for anything—and there she was, dying, worrying about where I was going to end up, and who was going to get stuck with her medical bills.
 
I couldn’t stand it.”
 
He didn’t realize how hard he was gripping the wheel until he glanced down and saw his knuckles turning white.

“I told him if he would give her some peace of mind, so that she could die without worry—I would never ask him for anything else in my life.”
 

He’d been true to his word, too.
 
The old man had taken him in, and he’d provided for him—but Drew had never asked for any of it.
 
Even after he’d died, Drew had donated what little inheritance he’d left for him.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I don’t know.
 
I just…I thought about my mom a lot this weekend.
 
And you’re my friend.”
 

He’d never told anyone that story—not even Jeff.
 

“Well, your mom sounds like she was an incredible woman.”

“She was a good Mom.”
 
It was all he could manage, and he let the subject go from there.
 
They didn’t speak again until he was dropping her off in front of her house.
 
He walked her to the door, giving his legs a chance to stretch.