Next Time...Forever Read online

  Don’t miss this fan-favorite tale from New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods of lovers separated by circumstance, but destined to find their way back to each other.

  In the heat of a southern night, Catherine Devlin met Dillon Westin, and together they shared the joy of a single weekend. The sexy businessman charmed her, and in his arms she found a happiness she’d never known. But they lived in different cities, had busy lives—so they parted with a soul-shattering kiss…and a promise to meet again in one year.

  Catherine spent the passing seasons remembering the passion of those days. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with Dillon, and although their joyful reunion brought them together, a lifetime of obligations pulled them apart. And she began to wonder if “next time” would ever mean “forever.”

  Originally published in 1990.

  Sherryl Woods Booklist

  The Sweet Magnolias

  Stealing Home

  A Slice of Heaven

  Feels Like Family

  Welcome to Serenity

  Home in Carolina

  Sweet Tea at Sunrise

  Honeysuckle Summer

  Midnight Promises

  Catching Fireflies

  Where Azaleas Bloom

  Swan Point

  Chesapeake Shores

  The Inn at Eagle Point

  Flowers on Main

  Harbor Lights

  A Chesapeake Shores Christmas

  Driftwood Cottage

  Moonlight Cove

  Beach Lane

  An O’Brien Family Christmas

  The Summer Garden

  A Seaside Christmas

  The Christmas Bouquet

  Dogwood Hill

  Willow Brook Road

  The Devaney Brothers

  The Devaney Brothers: Ryan & Sean

  The Devaney Brothers: Michael & Patrick

  The Devaney Brothers: Daniel

  The Calamity Janes

  The Calamity Janes: Cassie

  The Calamity Janes: Karen

  The Calamity Janes: Gina

  The Calamity Janes: Emma

  The Calamity Janes: Lauren

  The Adams Dynasty

  A Christmas Blessing

  Natural Born Daddy

  The Cowboy and His Baby

  The Rancher and His Unexpected Daughter

  The Littlest Angel

  Natural Born Trouble

  Unexpected Mommy

  The Cowgirl and the Unexpected Wedding

  Natural Born Lawman

  The Unclaimed Baby

  The Cowboy and His Wayward Bride

  Suddenly, Annie’s Father

  The Cowboy and the New Year’s Baby

  Dylan and the Baby Doctor

  The Pint-Sized Secret

  Marrying a Delacourt

  The Delacourt Scandal

  Rose Cottage Sisters

  Three Down the Aisle

  What’s Cooking?

  The Laws of Attraction

  For the Love of Pete

  Next Time...Forever

  Sherryl Woods

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Epilogue

  PROLOGUE

  May 16

  Bold streaks of pink and gold banded the twilight sky and shimmered across the calm surface of the Savannah River. It was a dazzling, postcard-splashy sunset, but the lazy, mournful wail of a ship’s horn more accurately reflected Catherine Devlin’s mood as she watched the huge freighter inch through the narrow channel.

  Sipping a glass of overly-sweet white zinfandel wine, she tried to remember the precise moment when her once storybook-perfect life had gone so terribly wrong. What had been the turning point? When had Matthew fallen out of love with her and turned to other women? Even more disturbing, how had she ever allowed her own dreams to become so over-shadowed by her need to please her husband? Everyone thought Mrs. Matthew Devlin was so strong, so clever, but no one really knew Catherine Devlin. She didn’t even recognize herself anymore.

  “More coffee?”

  Lost in her private desolation, she waved the waiter away without glancing up. “No, thanks.”

  “Are you sure?” he said. There was an oddly plaintive note in his deep, rumbly voice that brought her head up. Dark brown eyes that glinted with the devil’s own laughter watched her closely.

  “It’s fresh,” he promised, passing the pot temptingly beneath her nose so she could savor the rich aroma.

  She found herself breathing deeply, then smiling apologetically into those irresistible, teasing eyes. She pointed to the clean, empty cup beside her plate. “Sorry. I’m not drinking coffee, just wine.”

  “Oh.” He sounded incredibly disappointed and looked as though he couldn’t quite make up his mind what to do next.

  Catherine found his apparent uncertainty endearing, but oddly out of character. “Are you new?” she asked kindly. Though she’d asked merely to put him at ease, she realized as she was waiting for his reply that she was clinging to the interruption. She was tired of being alone with nothing but her gloomy thoughts for company. Those eyes, so filled with life and humor, were the perfect antidote to her unexpected loneliness.

  “You could say that,” he agreed, instantly looking more hopeful and twice as appealing.

  “You’re the first person I’ve waited on.”

  “Ever?” she said skeptically. Another close examination aroused more puzzling contradictions. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties, too old to be waiting tables for the first time unless he was down on his luck. Yet she found herself dismissing that possibility immediately. There was an undefinable look of success, an aura of confident masculinity about him that seemed just as out of place as his vulnerable demeanor. It was as though she was watching a badly miscast actor struggling to play against type. The incongruities intrigued her.

  “My first customer ever,” he confirmed. “Are you absolutely sure you wouldn’t like some coffee?”

  She decided to play the game—if that’s what it was—and find out where it led. “Are you trying to see if you can pour without spilling?”

  A roguish dimple formed in one cheek. “Actually, I’m trying to find a way to keep talking to you.”

  The direct, boldly flirtatious response was the last thing she’d expected. Waiters in Atlanta’s elite establishments did not make passes at the customers. But then again, she’d rarely dined there alone. Maybe women by themselves were considered fair game.

  * * *

  “Why?” she asked cautiously.

  “You’re a beautiful woman. You’re apparently alone. And you looked so sad that I thought someone ought to cheer you up.”

  Her gaze narrowed slightly. “You figure you’ll get a bigger tip for doing that?”

  He shook his head. There was just the tiniest suggestion of guilt in his expression. “No tip.” He leaned closer. “If you promise not to tell, I’ll confess something.”

  Increasingly bemused by the entire conversation, Catherine was nonetheless fascinated. She found herself promising. Solemnly. Crossing her heart, in fact. She hadn’t done that since she was ten. It felt good to feel young again and to be sharing secrets, especially with a man as devilishly handsome as this one.

  He grinned in apparent satisfaction. “I knew I could count on you. Actually,” he confided, “I’m not even a waiter. I grabbed the coffeepot on my way past the service station.” He pointed toward a strategically placed counter filled
with pots of coffee, decaf and hot water, plus an assortment of silverware, napkins and extra salt and pepper shakers.

  Falling prey to his teasing tone, she said lightly, “Let me guess. You’re a busboy and you’re hoping for a promotion.”

  He laughed. “Wrong. I don’t even work here.”

  Catherine glanced at the coffeepot in his hand, then more closely at his attire. The perfect fit of his charcoal slacks hinted of custom tailoring. The fabric was definitely not polyester. His shirt cuffs were monogrammed, the material some sort of expensive silk and cotton blend. She glanced down. His shoes looked exactly like the last pair she’d bought for Matthew. They’d cost in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars. It was definitely a pricey neighborhood for a busboy or a waiter, even taking into account generous tips.

  “Okay, then,” she said sternly, wishing she could keep her lips from curving into an all-too-easily-forgiving smile. “It’s confession time. What’s the real story?”

  He feigned a sheepish expression. At least she assumed it was feigned. Now that she’d taken a closer look, he didn’t appear to be the type to make explanations for himself.

  “I was eating over there all by myself,” he confessed, “when I saw you.” He gestured toward a table where the remnants of a meal had yet to be cleared away. A matching charcoal jacket had been slung across the back of a chair and a tie draped over that. “I watched you come in and knew I had to meet you. You didn’t look like the kind of lady who’d like being picked up in a restaurant, so voil;aga! The coffee.”

  “Definitely enterprising,” she commended him, surprised to discover that she was enjoying the unexpected flirtation. It had been a very long time since anyone had dared to come on to her, unless they’d been drinking so heavily that the prospect of Matthew’s possessive wrath no longer fazed them. This man appeared to be stone-cold sober and openly fascinated. In her present mood, it was a difficult combination to resist.

  Catherine propped her chin in her hand and met his gaze evenly. “What kind of lady do I appear to be?” She was honestly curious. The divorce papers still folded in her purse said quite plainly that she was no longer a wife. Without that role, she wasn’t so sure what she actually was anymore. Maybe this stranger could give her a clue as to what Catherine Devlin had become.

  “Classy,” he said at once, pleasing her. “Self-contained. Maybe a little lost.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why? Am I that far off the mark?”

  “No. Closer than you could ever know, at least about the latter,” she said with a regretful sigh.

  He frowned. “Want to talk about it?”

  “To you?”

  “Why not? I’m here. I even have an entire pot of coffee we could share. It’s a lot cheaper than a shrink.”

  She laughed at that. Suddenly feeling more daring than she had in years, she nodded.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  He retrieved his jacket and tie, grabbed a cup from a neighboring table, poured them each a cup of coffee, then sat.

  “So,” he said, looking straight at her in a way that the two-timing Matthew hadn’t dared for months. She liked that, liked the fact that this man didn’t evade, liked that he was relaxed and unhurried, liked even more that he actually seemed interested in what she had to say. “Tell me why a beautiful woman like you is feeling lost. First though, tell me your name.”

  “Catherine,” she said, feeling almost giddy with a shyness she hadn’t experienced in a long time. Afternoon teas and charity balls had made her adept at small talk with strangers. Female strangers. Something about the man across from her suggested that inside where it counted he was no longer a stranger, that he was intuitively in tune with her, that he wanted to know her well. Best of all, he apparently saw her as a desirable woman and not as the eminent Dr. Matthew Devlin’s cast-off wife.

  “And the rest,” he encouraged. “Who are you, Catherine, and why are you sitting here all alone?”

  “I suppose if you wanted to drag out a clich;aae you could say that today is the first day of the rest of my life.”

  “You’re getting a divorce.”

  She gave him a startled look.

  He chuckled. “I’m not omniscient. You’re tugging on your wedding band as though you can’t quite make up your mind whether to take it off or leave it on. It’s a dead giveaway.”

  She held out her hand and tried to examine the spectacular two-carat diamond and its simple wide gold setting with a certain amount of objectivity. She couldn’t. She sighed as she admitted, “I hate what it represents, but I love the damn ring.” She glanced at him ruefully. “Isn’t it ridiculous to be so attached to a piece of jewelry?”

  Instead of laughing tolerantly as Matthew would have, he took the question seriously. “It depends on why.”

  “Because we had it made to order from a stone that belonged to my great-grandmother. Nana Devereaux was a wonderful old lady. She was eighty-seven when she died. That was ten years ago and I still miss her.”

  “I think I understand, but don’t you think it was a bad sign that your husband didn’t buy you a new diamond?”

  The criticism wasn’t without merit, but Catherine found herself defending Matthew’s choice. “Not at the time. I liked this one. It has sentimental value. Besides, he was just finishing a long surgical residency. I was barely twenty-one and just out of college. We were lucky he could afford the setting.”

  “Ah, the doctor syndrome. You nurtured him all through the lean years and then he ups and runs off with his nurse the minute the practice starts paying off.”

  “It was not his nurse,” she retorted, just to remind this amazingly astute stranger that he didn’t know everything.

  “Oh?”

  “It was a pediatrics resident.”

  He nodded and with obvious effort struggled to keep his impudent, know-it-all grin in check. “I’d forgotten about women’s lib. What did she have that you don’t have? I can’t imagine anything.”

  “A career.”

  “And he found that attractive?”

  “He found that convenient. Similar interests. Similar hours. And, I suppose, frequent opportunities to make it in the linen closets.”

  “And you’re bitter.”

  “No,” she admitted with mild astonishment. “I’m past bitter. I’m even past numb. Now I’m just frightened.” The candor surprised her. She was not in the habit of revealing herself to anyone. Matthew had been a stickler for privacy, which had limited her friendships to mostly superficial ones. She found now that she’d missed the days of college confidences and shared intimacy. The man watching her so compassionately encouraged them, promised with gentle brown eyes to keep them private.

  “I don’t know where to go from here,” she said. “What does a thirty-two-year-old woman do when she’s on her own for the first time?”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Raising money for a new pediatrics wing for the hospital.” She couldn’t keep the irony out of her tone.

  “Hmm,” he said with a solemnity that was mocked by the laughter in his eyes. “I can see why that might no longer appeal.”

  “I thought you might,” she said wryly.

  “Have you ever worked?”

  “Try organizing a few luncheons for five hundred people and talking people out of a few thousand dollars. Believe me, that’s work.”

  “But not the stuff of which r;aaesum;aaes are built.”

  “Exactly,” she said without the usual trace of defensiveness. “I have no idea what you do, but if you had a company, would you hire me?”

  Apparently taking the question seriously, he looked her over very slowly. Catherine felt heat flooding her cheeks at the intense thoroughness of his survey. It was not entirely the cool, professional examination of a prospective employer. Her blood pulsed to a long-forgotten beat. “Maybe,” he said finally.

  She couldn’t decide whether to be piqued by his caution or encouraged by his willingness to consi
der the possibility. “As what?”

  “A model.”

  She burst out laughing. “Really, now. A man who can use a coffeepot to wrangle an introduction can surely come up with something more original than that.”

  “Don’t laugh. You have nice bone structure, great skin and sexy, mysterious eyes. The camera would definitely love those eyes.”

  “Next thing I know you’ll tell me you could make me a star.”

  “I probably could,” he retorted so matter-of-factly that it gave her pause. “At least in commercials or print ads. I run an advertising agency in New York. I have a lot of accounts that could benefit from a spokeswoman with your obvious class.” He glanced pointedly at the ring. “The diamond trade, for instance.”

  She turned her hand until the diamond glinted in the candlelight. “See. I told you it would come in handy. Why are you in Savannah? Are you scouting locations? This is a beautiful city.”

  “It is, but I’m just here to pursue a new account. We finished our meetings early, so I should have flown back. The last few months have been hell, though, so I decided to stay over a night.” His gaze collided with hers, lingered. Her pulse raced wildly as he added in a seductive tone that promised unimaginable delights, “I’m glad I did.”

  “Me, too,” she admitted quietly, shocking herself with the depth of her sincerity. After so many years of holding herself aloof, she found she was thriving on the unexpected intimacy, the sympathetic ear, the unthreatening banter with its faint hint of sensuality.

  “Have you finished your dinner, Catherine?”

  She stared down at the shrimp she’d barely touched and nodded. “I wasn’t very hungry.”

  “Then let’s get out of here and go for a walk along the river. Afterward, I’ll buy you a nightcap.”

  The obligatory warnings screeched through her head. She peered deep into the stranger’s eyes and saw nothing but honesty and compassion and the tiniest flame of desire. All drew her. All—even that carefully restrained suggestion of masculine interest—made the warnings seem unwarranted.

  “If you can find my real waiter, so I can take care of my check, I’d love to join you for a walk,” she said with an uncommonly bold sense of daring.

  “I’ll take care of it.”