Asking for Trouble (5 page)

A horrendous snort and grunt from the drunken heap of pliers and wrenches on the floor was enough to distract the dead. To those very much among the living, but spellbound in a state of bliss, the noise was a minor disturbance.

Tom held her tight, reluctant to let the moment pass.

Sydney was glowing inside. She cleared her mind of all the
what ifs
that cluttered her life and wallowed in the new and marvelous sensations of what was.

“We should wake our friend up,” Tom said, willfully setting her an arm’s distance away. “I feel as if I owe him that much, just for going to sleep.”

Twenty minutes later, the three of them were alert, tucked in, and standing in front of the door with jackets and tool belt in hand, waiting for the elevator to move. Sydney took deep breaths as a familiar panic churned in her abdomen.
The doors
w
ill open, the doors will open,
she told herself over and over.

There were several false starts as the cables clattered and squeaked overhead. The elevator bounced portentously before it finally made a slow descent to the first floor and released its prisoners.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, Tom,” Jerry said, when they’d regrouped after long turns at the water fountain and mad dashes to the restrooms. He’d already thanked them both repeatedly for waking him up. “Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

“There’s always that possibility,” Tom replied, with a glance in Sydney’s direction.

“What was it you said you did for a living?”

“Ah ... I’m in human services,” Tom said, faltering.

“What kind of human services?”

“Oh, you know, the usual kind,” he said. He shrugged and made a vague gesture with his hand. This wasn’t the right time to be talking about his job. He was fast falling in love with Sydney, but in truth he barely knew her. “Listening to problems, paperwork, that sort of thing. ... he said, leading Sydney toward the main door with a firm grip on her elbow.

“You work down at the welfare office?” Jerry called. “Because I’m down there once in a while with my sister when her car don’t work and maybe we could—”

“No. Not in the welfare office.” He pushed Sydney through the door and then turned back to the maintenance man. “Look, Jerry. The next time I see you, it’ll be right here in this building. I plan to come here a lot.”

Jerry grinned, waved, and ambled off with Charlie toward the stairwell.

“What sort of human services
do
you perform?” Sydney asked, waiting on the sidewalk for him to catch up with her.

“The kind nobody likes to do without,” he said, sliding his arm around her waist and pulling her to him so he could give her a quick peck on the lips. “My car’s over this way.”

She let him steer her around down the block, still wondering what he did for a living.

“And what kind of human service is it that nobody likes to do without?”

He arched a brow and gave her a licentious stare. “You want a demonstration?”

Before she could answer, before she had time to even decide if she wanted a demonstration or not, he took her into his arms and gave her a kiss that was deep, sweet, and long.

“Gigolo?” she murmured against his lips at her first opportunity.

“For you, I’m free.” He kissed her again.

Soon she didn’t care what he did, as long as he saved enough time for kissing. Still ... “Really. What do you do?” she asked as they walked hand in hand, hardly noticing the traffic on the busy boulevard.

“Don’t you just hate talking about your job on a date?” he asked. “Let’s save job talk for when we’ve run out of other things to talk about. How long do you think it’ll take us?”

She hoped forever. Her prime complaint with her usual dates had been the lack of topics for discussion. She was sick of job talk and more than willing to comply with his suggestion.

“Forever, I hope.”

“Dammit to hell!”

“What?” she cried, startled by his sudden outburst. She watched in confusion and amazement as he paced the sidewalk and ran a hand through his hair in an agitated fashion.

“I don’t believe it! This is the second time in a year this has happened to me!” he shouted to the world. “Why me? The insurance company isn’t going to believe this.
I
don’t believe this. What is it with those guys? Why don’t they make it a once-in-a-lifetime experience for
everybody
instead of picking on me all the time? Dammit, this makes me so mad.”

“What? Tom, what is it?” Sydney asked again, wondering if she’d dare touch him. She wanted to do something to help, but she wasn’t sure what.

“My car. Do you see my car?” He motioned to the empty curb space. “I parked it here. Do you see it now?”

“Ah, no.” He gave her a does-that-answer-your-question look and continued to pace. Thinking quickly, she said, “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s been stolen. Maybe it was towed. Maybe the police thought it was an abandoned car and had it towed away.”

“Who the hell would abandon a forty-thousand-dollar car, Sydney?” he shouted at her.

Sydney marched twenty feet down the sidewalk to a signpost and then shouted right back. “The idiot who parked it in a two-hour zone and then got stuck in an elevator for four, is my best guess.”

Either the tone of her voice or her remarkably sound logic made him stop pacing. She saw a new light of respect in his eyes, and she liked it.

“Is it really a two-hour zone?” he asked, sheepishly.

“Would I lie to you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, much to her surprise.

He had the nerve to walk over and look at the sign himself. And then he grinned at her, teasing her with his eyes. So she hit him in the arm.

“Okay,” he said, laughing. “There’s a chance it was towed. We’re still without wheels, and we’re both starving.”

They watched each other think for a few seconds and then Sydney offered her plan. “We’ll call a taxi.”

“Great idea. You got a phone in your purse?”

“No,” she said very sweetly, grinning back at him. “But there’s one in the lobby of my building, and if you go back and ring the service bell, Jerry or Charlie will let you in to use it.”

“Brains
and
beauty.” He sighed loudly. “Please say you’ll marry me.”

“Will you go? I’m so hungry, I could eat this sign.”

He started to jog off, then stopped and turned around. “Come with me.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes. I don’t want you wandering off while I’m gone.” He looked at the traffic passing by and the darkened buildings surrounding them. “This isn’t the best place in the world for a beautiful woman with brains to be alone, either.”

“Well, thank you, but I’ll be fine. I work late all the time. This street isn’t new to me.”

“Sure?”

“Go.”

S
YDNEY WATCHED TOM UNTIL
he turned toward the building and disappeared behind the ornamental shrubbery near the entrance. She enjoyed every second of it.

The man had a wonderful body—tall, lean, muscular. She sighed and swung around the signpost by one hand. If she was falling in love, she hoped she’d never hit bottom. He was more than she’d ever dreamed her someone would be. Handsome, intelligent, witty, charming ...

“Hey, mama! What you doin’ out here alone by yourself?”

Sydney groaned and glanced over at a beat-up car full of teenagers, then immediately wished she hadn’t. One of them was hanging by his armpits through the open window, ogling her, while his three or four companions encouraged him.

Slowly, calmly, she turned and began walking back to her office building. Tom had surely had enough time to summon Jerry and/or Charlie to the lobby. A group of boys wouldn’t stand a chance against three grown men ... unless two of the men were nearly fifty and a little out of shape ... and one of the two had been drinking all night. Tom would have to do most of the fighting, she realized, and one man against ...

She looked back over to the car for an accurate count. Five boys against one man, a lush, an overweight maintenance man, and a woman stood a very good chance of inflicting a great deal of injury, she brooded. And what if they had weapons? Everyone and their uncle had a weapon these days.

“You need a ride, mama? I don’t mind watchin’ you walk, but you’d be a whole lot more comfortable in here with us. You can even sit on my lap,” the spokesboy said, leaving no room to misinterpret his words.

She wanted to tell them to go home to their mothers, but the last time she’d heard, it was generally thought best to remain calm and try to ignore young people who liked to harass vulnerable, single woman.

But ignoring them wasn’t easy, and neither was trying to appear calm. Her heart was racing and her palms were sweaty. Her heels began to click faster on the pavement.

“Hey, mama. We got party favors.”

Click. Click. Click.

It wasn’t until she heard one of them tell the driver to pull over that she began to run. There wasn’t a hundred feet between her and the door to safety, but it seemed like forever before she was able to reach it and begin pounding on it with both fists.

No one came.

She glanced over her shoulder. Floodlights placed in the shrubbery to display the building’s name showed three of the youths approaching her. They’d fanned out, blocking all escapes routes.

“Oh, Lord, help me,” she muttered, frantic, still beating on the heavy metal doors.

“Take it easy, lady.”

“Yeah. We just want some fun. What’s a matter with you?”

“Can’t you see there’s nobody home there?”

She turned then, removing the strap of her purse from her shoulder. She threw it at them. Their faces were cast in the shadows, and she couldn’t see them clearly—which was probably a blessing.

“There. Take it and go away!” she shouted, hoping they’d be pleased with the
Electra-Love
money for the date and would leave her alone.

Suddenly she was being moved forward, toward the boys, from behind. She pushed back, not wanting to get any closer to them.

“Move away, Sydney,” she heard Tom say from the other side of the door, his voice strained as he pushed. The door opened wide, and he stood, battle ready, on the walkway beside her. “Go back inside,” he said without looking at her, his gaze fixed on the three young toughs.

She stepped inside, but didn’t let the door close completely. If they didn’t disperse immediately, now that they knew she wasn’t alone, Tom was going to need help. She quickly scanned the lobby and was dismayed to see that neither of the maintenance men was present.

“Party’s over, boys. Get lost,” Tom said. He sounded commanding and authoritative, much to his own amazement. Having a showdown with a street gang wasn’t something he did on a regular basis, and if anyone was interested in hearing the truth, he was scared spitless.

The boys, on the other hand, laughed at him and made several obscene remarks about Sydney’s character and his own ambitions for the evening. But Tom’s voice—strangely unaffected by the situation—remained calm and unimpressed. “You’ve had your fun. Take off,” he said.

“Who’s going to make us? You?”

“If I have to.” Had he really said that?

There were more crude remarks and a few taunts as all but one of the young men moved back toward the street and the waiting car.

“You don’t scare me, man.”

Tom remained silent.

“I can take you, man. And I can have your woman. I been up against old guys like you before. Easy.” He was shaking his hands and shuffling his feet from side to side. Tom didn’t move a muscle. A vision of Sydney having to face the young hoodlums alone took hold in his mind and tore at something in his chest. It didn’t make him feel any braver, but he understood that anything that happened to him couldn’t be nearly as bad as the mere thought of it happening to her.

When it became apparent to his friends that the young warrior with the raging hormones was spoiling for a fight, the two youths at the curb presented a united front and rejoined their companion, jeering at and taunting Tom.

“Tom, come inside,” Sydney called through the opening in the door. “The door locks automatically.”

“Call the cops, Sydney,” he said, still incredibly composed.

She hesitated, afraid to let the door close and shut him out completely. When it occurred to her that the police would have to be called one way or another, and that the sooner they got there, the better, she let go of the press-bar on the door and ran over to the telephone. Her purse and her money were out on the sidewalk, so she ran across the lobby to dial out at the reception desk.

As she spoke into the receiver, only vaguely aware of the questions and her answers, she caught sight of movement outside the door. The supposedly well-placed floodlights weren’t placed well enough for her to see everything that was happening.

A youth fell, and then another. The back of Tom’s jacket appeared in the long window of the door with a loud resounding bang on the metal. Then another youth fell—or maybe the same one fell again, she couldn’t tell. Then Tom’s head hit the door with a thump, followed by a second thump, and she heard the loud rumbling of the car pulling away.

Realizing that the police operator now had enough information to initiate some action, she dropped the receiver and ran back to where Tom stood waiting, his back to the street, his head lowered against the door.

“Oh, Tom. Are you all right?” She opened the door and pulled him inside, taking time only to make sure the door was securely latched. “I’m so sorry. What happened out there? I couldn’t see.”

“I’ll be fine. One of them threw a rock or something at me.”

It was then that she noticed the blood trickling down the side of his face from a gash on his right temple.

“Blood.” She identified the vital fluid as her stomach protested at the sight of it and bile gathered in the back of her throat. All color drained from her face.

“Sit down here,” she said, guiding him to a chair in the lobby. Fishing in her jacket pocket for a tissue to wipe away the blood, she said, “I am so sorry. I should have come back with you. I leave here late all the time, and that’s never happened before. Of course, I have a space in the parking garage, but ... oh, I’m so sorry. Does it hurt?”