Wanted A Real Family(43)
“I’ll hold the article for now. But I don’t think that’s the best thing to do.”
They were going to have to agree to disagree on this one because she wasn’t ready to go public with her life.
* * *
The following Monday, Sara picked up Amy and Jordan at day care. After carrying Jordan inside the winery offices to Marissa, she set him on his feet.
Spotting them, Marissa clapped her hands. “Come here, honey.”
Jordan had taken his first steps over the weekend, and he now babbled and smiled and walked toward his mommy with an exuberant, if halting, gait.
“At the day care they said he was walking everywhere he could today,” Sara explained.
Marissa clasped her son in her arms.
Amy looked up at Sara. “Can I draw?”
“Stay a few minutes,” Marissa suggested to Sara. “We haven’t talked since Jase’s article drew so many comments.”
The front door opened and Liam came in. After a “hello” to them both, he handed Marissa flyers. “These show what our competitors are doing.”
Marissa thanked him.
Amy pulled on Sara’s arm. “Can I draw, Mommy?”
After a look at Marissa, Sara suggested to her daughter, “I think you can draw at home.”
Home. She reminded herself she couldn’t think of the cottage that way.
“Did I interrupt something?” Liam asked, perceptive enough to sense the unfinished conversation between her and Marissa.
“We were about to have a discussion about the comments concerning Sara online,” Marissa responded honestly.
Sara shook her head, indicating she didn’t want to talk about it.
But Liam easily picked up the idea and the thread. “Jase told me he interviewed you. When’s that coming out?”
“I don’t know if I want him to go ahead with it.”
“You want rumors floating out there about you living here and your motives?” Liam asked with a penetrating look that surprised her. He wasn’t all charm, now, but blunt honesty.
“Of course not. But I also don’t want to feed more rumors.”
“Without putting rumors to rest in Jase’s interview, there’s supposition, Sara,” Marissa said softly. “With your job, do you really want that?”
Could her job be in jeopardy if the rumor mill really got going?
With a wave toward the door, Liam gestured to the outside world. “People are going to say what they want, no matter what the truth is. They talk and make up things and spread rumors. That’s just the way of life in a small town like Fawn Grove. Don’t you think I know people talk about me in unflattering ways? I’m not the lady-killer everybody thinks I am,” he admitted with some chagrin.
Sara had to smile. “You’re not?”
Scowling at her, he said decisively, “No. Sure, I don’t stick around much with any one woman. I’m just not the sticking-around type. But if I were the Casanova everybody says I am, I’d be too exhausted to make wine. The thing is—there’s a difference between me and you. I don’t care what everybody thinks. But you do. Right?”
Yes, she cared, because she had clients who had to believe in her, because she wanted Amy to be proud of her, because she didn’t want anything negative to touch her daughter.
“This is the way I see it,” Liam went on. “All you can do is put the truth out there. It won’t hurt to provide the public with it and you might be doing other women a service. Jase is a wonderful journalist. If anyone can sell your story, he can. Maybe you should let him give it a try.”
When Sara glanced at Marissa, Marissa nodded. “I agree with Liam. Jase knows how to slant an interview. You know that. Give him a chance with yours.”
Should she give Jase Cramer that chance?
* * *
Holding Amy’s hand, Sara strolled with her daughter through Raintree’s Wine and Music Festival on Saturday afternoon. The event was a landscape of color, sounds and scents. Chefs in canopied booths offered delicacies from lobster tails to egg rolls to endive wraps stuffed with goat cheese. Miniature orange trees as well as trellises laced with flowers separated the booths and led the guests along pathways, where they could sample food and wine in a garden-party atmosphere.
Her daughter seemed to be enjoying their stroll, too, as she pointed and chattered and played with a yellow balloon tied to one of the booths. Sara was looking for Marissa, who’d planned much of the festival, when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning, she found Rodney Herkfeld, who had been a friend of Conrad’s.
“I thought that was you,” he said with a huge smile. “I haven’t seen you since...”
Conrad’s funeral, Sara finished in her mind.