not get into the car with Zach Tanner. Few parents wanted to see their daughters take up with the town’s bad boy, especially one with no money or prospects.
She had to know who he was—she’d called him Zach. He knew little to nothing about the Wilde sisters, but he had heard that Savannah was “the brainy one.” So far, she wasn’t impressing him with her smarts.
“I don’t think me taking you home is a good idea. Who’d you come with?”
She glanced nervously toward the school. “My date.”
“Then what the hell are you doing out here?”
“He’s inside getting drunk. I was looking for my sister.”
The idiocy of some guys amazed him. While his date was in the parking lot close to getting raped, he was inside boozing it up. Figuring they had mere seconds before someone either called the cops or one of the guys on the pavement got up the courage to take him on again, Zach took Savannah’s hand and pulled her to his car. “Let’s get out of here.”
Savannah sank into the car seat, her relief so great she could barely catch her breath. She had no doubt what Clark Dayton and his friends had wanted to do. And Zach Tanner had been the one to save her.
The driver’s-side door squeaked open and Zach slid into the seat beside her. The heartbeat that had been slowing down sped right back up. She had never been this close to him before; he was even more handsome than she had thought.
“You live on Wildefire Lane, right?”
Too breathless to speak, she nodded.
The car shot forward. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clark leaning against a car. As they passed by him, he yelled out something and raised his hand, extending his middle finger in an obscene gesture.
Zach acted as though he didn’t exist, but shot her a warning look. “Dayton won’t forget this. You need to be on the lookout for him for a while.”
“I don’t plan to ever be in a position where I see him again.”
“You’re living in the same town … might be hard to avoid him.”
She didn’t bother to point out that she and Zach had lived in the same town and this was the first time they’d encountered each other. Instead she told him news that no one but her family knew. “I’m leaving for college in a few months.”
“Oh yeah, where you going?”
“Vanderbilt University in Nashville.”
A smile spread over his face and Savannah had to hold her breath to keep from gasping. She’d never seen such a transformation. Before, he’d been handsome but grim-looking. His smile changed him into just short of beautiful.
“Good for you. That’s a great school. What are you going to study?”
“Law. I’m going to be a criminal defense attorney.”
Zach nodded his approval as he turned in to the drive in front of her house. Savannah couldn’t believe they were already here. It felt as though she’d just gotten into the car.
“Might want to mention this incident to your granddaddy, just to be on the safe side.”
She nodded absently, biting her lip in indecision. While she’d been in the midst of those hideous boys, a thought had flashed through her mind of how safe and staid her life had become. She was eighteen years old and had never done anything remotely exciting or risky. Here was her chance to do something different, be someone different. Her mind whispered, Take a chance! For some reason, she felt changed, as if her life had been altered. She didn’t want to go back to the same boring Savannah. Taking that chance, Savannah blurted out her thoughts: “Would you like to come in and meet Granddad? I’m sure he’d like to thank you for basically saving my life.”
Zach snorted and shook his head. “You really are an innocent, aren’t you? Your granddaddy would probably lock you up until it’s time for you to leave for college if he saw you with me.”
She didn’t bother to ask him why he felt that way. She knew what the gossips said about him. Having been the victim of many of those same gossips, she knew better than to believe their lies. What they said didn’t faze her. Nor would it her grandfather.
“Granddad isn’t one to believe the gossips. He said you have to look beneath the surface to get the true measure of a person.”
Instead of arguing with her, he gave her another sweet smile. “Your grandfather sounds like a good man.” He glanced at his