Right Where We Belong (Silver Springs #4)(37)

The chime of Savanna’s phone interrupted. She knew who’d be calling, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from lifting her cell to check.

Sure enough, it was Dorothy. Dorothy had been leaving threatening messages all day. In one, she’d said she’d follow Savanna to the ends of the earth, if necessary, to get the money Gordon needed.

With a grimace, Savanna silenced her ringtone and slid her phone away. Gordon knew her parents had left her a house in Silver Springs, and Silver Springs wasn’t that big a place. But surely Dorothy wouldn’t come to California...

Gavin tipped his glass in the direction of her phone. “The jail allows Gordon to make calls this late?”

“It’s not Gordon,” she explained. “It’s his mother. She calls me all the time.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“Whenever.”

“What does she want? I can’t imagine she’s hoping to talk to the kids if it’s well after their bedtime.”

“She doesn’t have much of a relationship with the kids. She didn’t have much of a relationship with Gordon, either, until she got older and sobered up. Anyway, to answer your question, she wants me to continue paying for Gordon’s defense. But I can’t help him. I have two kids to worry about. If I invest the last of the money I inherited from my folks in lawyers, how will I take care of them?”

“I think you’re doing the right thing,” he said.

She didn’t reply. As much as she’d tried not to dwell on what Gordon had said when she’d been standing on the side of the road outside the moving van, bits and pieces of that conversation had been coming back to her all day.

“After nine years together, it must’ve been a hard decision to withdraw your support,” Gavin said, breaking into her thoughts.

It had been agonizing. If Gordon was guilty, she couldn’t help him get off. The police insisted he’d only hurt more women if she did. But if there was some way that he could be telling the truth, she didn’t want to see the father of her children spend a huge chunk of his life behind bars.

Maybe that was why she was drinking more than she should tonight.

No. She knew Gordon wasn’t the reason. It was Gavin. She wanted something from him she wasn’t sure she dared take, and drinking eased that anxiety.

She slid off the counter. She should send him home. Remove the temptation. But with her mother-in-law saying such terrible things, Savanna didn’t want to be alone. It didn’t matter that she could now lock the back door. Her sense of security had been shattered.

So she let Gavin top off her glass before emptying the bottle into his own. “Nothing about what’s happened has been easy,” she said.

Gavin gestured toward the hall. “Do the kids know what their father has done?”

She tried to keep her mind on the question, but the wine was hitting her hard, and she couldn’t help admiring the shape of Gavin’s lips. Besides her kids, and how much she loved them, he seemed to be the one bright spot in everything that’d happened the past two months. She liked him. She wanted him in a way she hadn’t wanted anyone else. She’d never seen better lips...

“Savanna?”

She blinked and lifted her gaze to his chocolate-colored eyes. “What?”

“Do the kids know what their father has done?”

“They do, but they don’t fully understand it,” she replied. “They’ve heard what people have said, that there were naked women involved and choking. In other words, they know their father has done something terrible, which was why Branson wouldn’t talk to Gordon when he happened to get through to me this morning.” She motioned for Gavin to follow her. But she didn’t turn toward the door. She turned toward the living room. “Let’s go in here. It’ll be more comfortable on the couch.”

She held her own glass while Gavin carried his, and they left the empty bottle. “You said Gordon ‘happened’ to get hold of you,” Gavin said as he trailed behind her. “You didn’t know it was him?”

Savanna explained as, crossing her legs underneath her, she sat on the couch, which was more the size of a love seat. She hadn’t brought the big couch. She hadn’t had room for it in the van. “So I had to take the phone from Alia,” she said as she finished the story. “I wish I’d hung up, though. All he wanted to do was mess with my mind.”

Had a chair been available, Gavin might’ve taken it. But there were boxes everywhere. Only the couch had been cleared off. “I’m sorry,” he said as he sat next to her. “For everything.”

She studied his handsome face—the closely trimmed beard, the thick hair, the kind eyes with long lashes. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to see if this was leading anywhere. She got the impression he believed she’d let him know if and when she was ready, and that was more enticing than anything else he could’ve done. “Your lips are amazing,” she said.

“My lips?” he repeated with a sexy half smile.

“All of you.”

“I’m flattered. But you’ve been through a lot. I don’t want to make that any worse.”

She ignored his response. “I’m glad I came to Silver Springs,” she said as she gazed around the room. “This house may not look like much, but it’s the escape I needed. Thank God for my parents. They were so good to me. I wish they were still around.”