Against Her Odds: when dedication meets desire (5 page)

It took him nearly a month to make his
move, but he was fairly confident by then. They spent even more time together
now. She spent every weekend at his place, and he’d taken her to the nicest
restaurant in town for what he hoped would be a big step for them.

“Wow,” Val said, glancing around the
restaurant and trying to keep her voice low. “This place is really nice,
Cason.”

“It oughta be,” he answered, trying not to
wince visibly at the menu prices. He glanced up to see her looking at him with
a quizzical expression.

“I mean, you know, it’s a special night,”
he hurried on, going for a save. Her soft smile told him that he’d accomplished
the job. “Three months since the night you showed up for that interview.”

“I remember,” she admitted. “I thought men
didn’t remember dates, though. As a general rule, that is.”

“I’m a special kind of man,” he said with a
grin. “But I’m smart enough to know that you should order the wine,” he said
quickly as the waiter began to make his way toward them through the crowded
restaurant. “I’ve got no clue what’s good and what’s not.”

Val scanned the wine list quickly and then
asked, “Red meat, right?”

“Yeah,” Cason answered as if it should have
been obvious.

She pointed to a selection quickly and
whispered the proper pronunciation. He only stumbled over it a bit, and the
waiter left with an approving nod.

“Thanks,” he said, reaching over and giving
her hand a squeeze. “You’re a good woman, Valerie Turner.”

“I like to think so,” she said with a
chuckle.

They ate slowly, enjoying the food and the
atmosphere. Val had eaten in a lot of fancy places, usually work dinner with
her father if her mother had a prior engagement. In the later years, once Val
was older, her mother had had a lot of those. Her father had never seemed to
mind and Val had learned to conduct herself well in situations like these.
Cason wasn’t doing badly himself. He wasn’t strictly proper, but his good
manners served him well. She was surprised he’d chosen a place like this.

“So,” he said once dinner had been served.
“I’ve got a question for you.”

Val stopped with her forkful of cheesecake
halfway to her lips. That was a serious expression. Her heart skipped a few
beats.

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

Cason cleared his throat. Now that the
moment was here, he was scared he was going to choke. He drained the last of
his wine and sat up straighter.

“I’m in love with you, Valerie.”

All the air left her lungs. “What?”

“I’m in love with you.”

Her fork fell to the plate with a clatter
that had heads turning in their direction almost instantly. Cason’s eyes stayed
on her. She reached for her wine glass, realized it was empty, and put her
hands in her lap instead.

“Cason. I…I don’t know what to say.” She
felt her face turning red under his steady gaze.

He swallowed hard. “There’re only two
options.” And he had a feeling he knew what she was about to say.

“Here you go,” the waiter said, discreetly
putting the bill down on the table. Cason handed him a credit card quickly and
the man disappeared again.

Val took a breath. “I...I’ll wait for you
outside.”

Once she was out from under the prying
gazes of the customers, she leaned against his truck and tried to catch her
breath. He loved her? He loved her! She pressed her hands to her cheeks. No.
This wasn’t what their relationship was about. He was never supposed to feel
this way about her.

She watched him walk out of the restaurant
and scan the parking lot for her. She raised a hand so that he’d see her and he
walked over, opening the door and boosting her into the truck. He didn’t close
the door as she’d expected though. Instead he looked at her in that unwavering
way he had.

“So, I’m gonna assume that you don’t feel
the same way,” he said, his voice soft and rough.

She couldn’t bring herself to speak for a
moment. Then she gathered what was left of her resolve, bolstering it with
memories of what her father had clearly wanted for her and said, “I’m sorry,
Cason. But no. I’m not in love with you. I thought you understood that this was
never serious for me.”

She waited for her to yell at her, to
accuse her of leading him on, to call her the things men had called her in the
past. Instead he reached out and cupped her face in his hand, drawing his thumb
down her cheek as he scanned her features carefully.

“Couldn’t help feeling what I feel for you,
Blondie,” he said honestly. “You mind telling me just why you don’t think that
this can work out?”

Val took a breath in frustration. Had he
not listened to her at all? “I don’t see why you want me to go over it all
again.”

“Because, and correct me if I’m wrong,
you’re saying that we can’t be together because of your job, right?”

“Right.”

“You’ve been working this whole time,” he
pointed out. “It hasn’t gotten in the way yet.”

She felt like he’d rubbed salt in the
wound. “That’s because I’m not doing what I should be doing,” she said tightly.
“I should be on the anchor desk. I should be out doing foreign correspondence,
bringing people news that actually matters. Once I have to start doing that, I
won’t have time for us anymore.”

“Once you
have
to?” Cason
questioned.

“What?”

“You said once you “have to” start doing
that kind of news. I have to tell you, it doesn’t seem like you even want it.”

“Of course I want it! This is what I’ve
been planning for my whole life!”

Cason nodded, keeping his gaze level on
her. “I know you have. But have you ever stopped to think about why?”

Val threw her hands up. “Why do you care?”

“Because I’ve seen you do what you call
fluff pieces and your face lights up. Because I’ve heard you talk about the
people you get to see when you visit new businesses or when you get to go down
and work at new volunteer locations. You’re happy, you’re energetic, you’re
glowing and I can’t get you to wind down. This is what you love doing and I
don’t see why you can’t admit it. You’re telling stories that make people
happy!”

She stood there for a second in silence.
“It’s not about enjoying my job,” she said finally. “It’s about doing something
that
matters
.”

“The news is about war and death and shady
business deals and crime and loss,” Cason said. “Val, what you do, they way you
bring people the good news, the stuff that makes them see that this whole world
isn’t a God-forsaken hell hole, that
is
the news that matters. And I can
tell you this for damn sure, Blondie. There is nothing wrong with loving what
you do.”

He stepped back and closed the door and
they drove to her apartment in silence. Once he’d let her out of the truck and
had driven away, Val raised her hand to her face, tracing the path his thumb
had taken as she remembered the look in his eyes. No one had ever been that
gentle with her before. She had the sinking feeling that no one ever would be
again.

Two mornings later, she didn’t feel any
better about how things had ended with Cason. Val sighed and rested her chin in
her hands. Why did he have to go and ruin their perfect relationship by telling
her he loved her? A sudden picture came unbidden to her mind, of herself waking
up every day in that beautiful bedroom, the light pouring in through the bay
windows awakening the reddish lights in Cason’s light brown hair as she wrote
in bed. That would be perfect.

She stood up, determined. No. She knew what
she wanted out of life and Cason didn’t fit into it. She opened the hall
closet, tugged down her white sneakers and laced them up tightly before
grabbing her keys and cell phone and heading out the door.

She did a few stretches and started off at
an easy pace. She wasn’t the world’s fastest jogger, but it always made her
feel better to get out and get moving. She looked at the changing leaves and
took a deep breath of the cooling fall air. She waved at one of her neighbors
as she passed the park, and dodged a small dog that had escaped its collar to
come and greet her.

She also realized that she wasn’t feeling
better. As a matter of fact, her tension was increasing. She was concentrating
on the weight of her cell phone in the pocket of her jogging pants, hoping with
all of her being that it would ring with the ringtone she’d assigned Cason, but
it was remaining stubbornly silent.

Val let out her breath in frustration.
There was no reason to hope for a call! He did not fit into her life! She was
tempted to say it out loud to help her heart understand her mind, but she
didn’t want anyone thinking that she was crazy.

She needed to focus on her career or she’d
be doing fluff news forever. Eventually she’d end up doing the weather and that
would be the end of her career altogether. She didn’t want that. She wanted a
career like her father’s.

Aaron Turner hadn’t done a piece of fluff
news in his whole career. He’d traveled the world, bringing viewers thought
provoking, hard hitting, meaningful news that people talked about at work the
next day. He’d made a difference in the world. She...she talked about baby
animals and pie eating contests. He...hadn’t even been home for her birthday
most of the time.

Val’s steps slowed down significantly. He’d
missed Christmas more than a few times too. And her high school graduation. And
dinner every night.

Once when she was around fourteen, she’d
added up the total consecutive days she’d seen her father in her life. It added
up to a little less than two years. She hadn’t mentioned that to either of her
parents and she’d done her best to push it to the back of her mind.

Was that the life she was striving for? She
knew deep down that, although she wasn’t ready now, she wanted children. Now
she wondered who would watch them. If she was a traveling correspondent, it
certainly wouldn’t be her. And even if she found the best nanny in the entire
world, would she really want to miss so much of her child’s life? She tried to
remember her father playing with her and came up blank. She’d never been able
to run to him with any of the coloring book pages she’d crayoned so
meticulously. He’d never sat down with her at one of the tea parties she’d
arranged frequently.

Her father had usually been gone before
breakfast and, if he wasn’t traveling, he still wasn’t home before she went to
bed. She’d practically worshipped the man though, and the few minutes a week
they spent together had only increased her awe. He was so important to so many
people, and he was her Daddy! It had amazed her.

Now, however, for the first time Val
thought about what it must have been like for her mother. Even though Aaron
supported the house financially, Margaret had essentially been a single mom
since he was gone so much. Once Val had entered school, Margaret had taken a
job as a receptionist at a local doctor’s office so that she could, as she’d
put it on the phone to one of her friends, “finally have some people to talk
to.” Val, who had been seven at the time, remembered feeling hurt by the words,
but now she understood. Her mother was often in bed by the time her father got
home. She had married a shadow.

Val found herself understanding why so many
of the people she worked with were unmarried or divorced. She couldn’t imagine
having a husband who was never home. Of course, it wouldn’t be her husband who
was never home. It would be her, Valerie, who never got to see the daylight in
her own living room, who never got to wake up beside her spouse or have
breakfast with him. She suddenly felt unaccountably lonely.

It wouldn’t be like that with Cason. He
would be on the ranch. She could go outside and talk to him, or have lunch with
him in the field. They could go to bed together every night and...and nothing.
She’d told him that she didn’t love him. She’d hurt him deeply and she was only
now beginning to see just how much she’d lost.

All of her energy seeped away and Val
turned slowly, walking back home, fighting back tears. For the first time in
her life, she was unsure of herself and what she wanted. Since she’d made all
of her career decisions at the age of eight, it was probably a long time
coming, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt.

She heated up a can of soup when she got
home and put it on the table in front of her.

She stirred the soup, absentmindedly
watching as the silver spoon vanished under the thick red of the tomato soup.
She stirred for nearly ten minutes before she realized that this was pointless.
She didn’t want soup. She wanted Cason. She reached out, and her fingers were
halfway over to her cell phone, diligently plugged into the charger on the
counter, before she snatched her hand back. What could she say anyway?

“Oh good God, Val!” Becky said when she
dropped by for their traditional movie night. “Call him!”

“I can’t call him,” Valarie said in shock.
“What kind of a woman would I be then?” She formed her fingers into a mock
telephone and said, “Hey, Cason! Yeah, I decided that I love you after all!
Let’s start planning the big day!” She let her hand drop and shook her head.
“Can you imagine what he’s told everyone about me? I’ll always be the woman who
turned him down. The flight risk. The career woman. The one who broke his
heart.”

“Look,” Becky said. “Don’t take this the
wrong way, but...well, get over yourself.”

“What?” Val asked in confusion.

“You’re always so busy being worried about
what everyone else thinks. You only pursued this hardnosed career woman stuff
because you felt like it’s what people expected. You like being the part of the
news that makes people feel good, but you can’t admit it because you’re afraid
of what people might think. The same thing for the clothes you wear and even
how you spend your free time. Before you started getting serious with Cason-”

“I was never serious with Cason,” Val
hedged.

“Oh please. You were serious whether you
wanted to admit it or not. Anyway, before that, the only time I saw you relax
and have fun was during our movie nights. The point is that you’re afraid to be
happy. You’re afraid to be yourself.”

Val didn’t know what to say. Becky had
pretty much hit the nail on the head with her assessment, and she’d never heard
herself described so truthfully. Most people called her fearless, a ball
buster, a woman to be reckoned with. And what she really was, was a woman who
couldn’t even leave the house in jeans and a tee shirt for fear of what people
would think. And she might have just alienated the man she was meant to be with
because of it.

“Oh honey, please don’t cry!” Becky said in
alarm. “I’m really sorry! I shouldn’t have--”

But Val shook her head and dashed the tears
off of her cheeks. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just feeling like an idiot.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to do that,” Becky
said sincerely. “I just wanted to shake you out of this. You only get one life
and you’ve got to live it the way you need to live it.”

“I guess you’re right,” Val admitted. “But
now I have to go and beg. I hate begging.”

“Begging?” Becky said with a raised
eyebrow. “When did I say that? You march over to that ranch and you say your
piece. If he doesn’t like it, well then, he can be a lonely cowboy. But you
don’t beg.”

For the first time since Cason had told her
how he felt, Val laughed.