Banjo Man (5 page)

“Everyone but me, I guess,” Laurie insisted, sighing with growing frustration.

Rick was looking at her with total amazement. “Come on, darlin’, you’re puttin’ me on!”

Laurie threw her fists against her hips and glared at him. “I am not putting you on! I never heard of Tom Preston, never saw him, never listened to him, and don’t care if I do! Now, can we drop this, please?”

Rick’s eyes glinted with amused incredulity. “I don’t believe it. Where were you, Pittsburgh or Siberia?”

After years on hold, Laurie’s Irish temper came to a boil.

Pulling herself up to her full five feet five inches, she threw her shoulders back and faced Rick Westin head on. In a voice that was loud and angry enough to send the pigeons into startled flight, she yelled, “Neither, dammit, Rick Westin! I was in a convent. I was a nun!”

An old man picking up papers with a pointed stick stopped and stared at the irate young woman; a small boy tugged at his mother’s hand and pointed her way; three men in business suits halted in mid-conversation to survey the scene.

Rick Westin only stared. His brows moved first, slowly edging up above wide, amazed eyes. Seconds later his voice exploded loud and clear. “You what? Well, I’ll be damned!”

“Yes, you may well be!” Laurie retorted quickly, her hands on her hips, her eyes bright with challenge.

“
You
 … a nun?” He shook his head hard, a nervous half-smile curving his lips. “No … no, you can’t be a nun. You don’t look like a nun. And I held you in my arms and you didn’t
feel
like a nun! No, I’d have known—”

“Rick, you’re not listening. I
was
a nun. Was. Am not now. Do you understand?”

Scowling, he shook his head again. “Nope. I don’t. Why were you a nun? For how long? Why
didn’t you say anything, instead of letting me make a fool of myself?”

“
Yourself
! Of all the insensitive, egotistical things! Here I am, scared half to death, trying to figure out how to talk and act and think like everyone else, like any ordinary person, and you want me to wear a sign saying I used to be a nun, just so you won’t be inconvenienced? Well, you can just go … Oh, go jump in the Potomac!”

Rick bit back a sudden burst of laughter. “Almost lost your cool, there, woman.”

“I am way past losing my cool,
mister!
As if it isn’t difficult enough trying to get my life together. You think I wouldn’t like to dress more … more ‘hip’?” she sputtered, yanking angrily at the hem of her neat, tailored blazer. “Well, I would! But the last time I was in a department store, I was buying my high-school graduation dress … and I went to an all-girls’ Catholic high school!”

“Sh-h-h-h,” Rick whispered, slipping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her close. “It’s okay, baby, you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t
feel
fine,” she snapped, the thread of her argument unraveling within the startling warmth of his arm. “I feel out of time, and out of step.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, for starters, they don’t say ‘hip’ anymore.” His laughter rustled her hair.

“No?” She looked up at him. Her face, clouded with confusion, was suddenly more lovely, more appealing, than any he had ever seen.

Taking hold of her shoulders, he gently turned Laurie to him. His coal-dark eyes held their own confusion as he studied her. “I … I don’t know how to talk to you now. What to say—what I’m
allowed
to say … or do.”

Laurie tried to feel the warmth of his hands on her shoulders through the fabric of her clothing. She needed that contact. Needed the warmth of
another’s touch to give her strength. This was all too difficult. What should she say? What was a woman supposed to say to a man she found irresistibly attractive? She hadn’t a clue.

“Rick …” She stared up at him, the sunlight revealing golden motes in her wide gray eyes. “Rick, don’t ask me.”

A muscle jumped in the tense line of his jaw. Dropping his hands to his sides, he whispered harshly, “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m way out of line.”

Laurie wanted to cry. This wasn’t going well at all! “No!” She groaned, her delicate features crumpling in a frown. “That’s not what I meant. I meant ‘Don’t ask
me
,’ not ‘Don’t
ask
me’! See? Oh, Rick, pretend I’ve just dropped in from Mars, or the seventeenth century, or something, and I haven’t the foggiest notion about … about kissing, and all that stuff! But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to learn. Rick Westin,
you
must know what to do—just go on and do it!”

She stopped to catch her breath, her cheeks flushed, her face tilted up to his in earnest concentration.

Catching her face between his hands, he bent his dark head and kissed her lightly on the lips. His mouth barely grazed hers, so tentative was the touch, but it was filled with a delicious sweetness.

Rick closed his eyes, breathing in the fresh scent of her skin and hair. His fingertips traced the curve of her cheek and ear, so delicate, so perfect.

Laurie stood wide-eyed, rapt beneath his touch. So this was what it felt like! This was a man’s kiss, with the musky scent of him filling your head, and the burning heat of him so close. And the promise of life and strength bound within his flesh.

Her breath escaped in a trembling sigh. “Oh … my goodness gracious.”

“You all right?” he asked softly, his blunt
fingertips stroking her cheeks with incredible tenderness. It was the touch of a man used to loving with his hands.

“I … I don’t know. I never felt like this before.”

Her solemn-eyed candor made him laugh. “Neither have I, darlin’. As the dough told the pastry cook—‘I am all you knead!’ ”

Laurie collapsed against his chest in helpless giggles. “What? Of all the times to be telling a joke—”

“I’ve been told I’m an unconventional lover.” Rick shrugged, the corner of his mouth turning up in a grin.

“Great! What a pair—unconventional and inexperienced!” Laurie laughed. And then she heard what she had said, and the blood rushed to her cheeks. “I mean … I
didn’t
mean we’d be lovers or … oh, heavens! … or mean to imply that we … we …” She struggled to free herself from his embrace, to put some distance between them.

Rick held her tight. “Whoa, darlin’. Don’t panic, now. Or faint dead away in the middle of the Mall, or anything. Finding out you were a nun was all the shock my system can take for one day.”

He loosened his hold, took a step back, and grabbed his banjo case. “Come on, sweet thing, I’m gonna buy you some lunch. I know a little Chinese place nearby that makes the best steamed dumplings you’ve ever eaten.”

“
Never
eaten,” she laughingly corrected him. “We feasted mostly on skinny pork chops and fish in the convent.”

“Ah, that again. I think you had better fill me in on the details of your hidden past so I don’t make a real fool of myself as we go along.”

“Go along where, Westin?” Laurie asked, casting him a quick, nervous glance.

“Down the rocky road of romance, sweet thing. ’Cause that’s where we’re bound, I can tell.”

Stopping in mid-stride, Laurie clasped her hands tightly behind her back and stared at the ground at her feet. “Rick, I … I just don’t know about any of this. Or even if I want to … to get to know anyone just now. My life is in such confusion; maybe it would be easier if we each took our own separate roads for now.”

In a hushed, haunting tenor, Rick began to sing:

He stopped, the notes left echoing on the still air, and shook his head, his dark eyes bright with a fierce, restrained emotion.

“Don’t you think that would be too sad an ending, darlin’? I’ve been hurt before, and it may happen again, but I’m sure as hell not going to give up easy.”

The passion of the man went through her like an electric shock, shaking her to the bone. There wasn’t a thing to say, and no way to resist when he slung his banjo case across his back, took her hand in his, and led her to the restaurant.

Chun Ho’s was crowded and noisy, a dim cave of a room with formica tables and wooden chairs, occupied by a surprising assortment of customers: business people with suits and briefcases, diplomats in foreign garb, young mothers with kids in high chairs, a group of punk rockers with dyed hair. A small, round-faced man with spectacles greeted them at the door. “Ah, Mr. Westin. A table for two and banjo?”

He led them to their seats, then winked broadly.
“No playing today, please? I am hoping everyone will eat quickly and leave, so I can fill their places again with other paying customers. I have two sons to put through college, remember?”

“No problem, Ho. I’ll keep it in the case.” Laughing, Rick explained to a bemused Laurie. “Last time I was in, Ho seated me next to a couple from Tupelo. They had seen the show, and asked for a song. That led to another … and three hours later Ho had to throw us all out to get ready for his dinner crowd.”

Laurie studied his handsome, expressive face and felt a stirring of surprise … and shyness. “I didn’t realize I was lunching with a celebrity.”

Rick tipped his chair back, his long, jean-clad legs crossed beneath the table, his arms folded over his chest. He gave Laurie a long, calculating look. “You say that as if you didn’t like it.”

She tossed her coppery hair in denial. “That’s not it at all. Everything here’s so new to me. I seem to misjudge the importance of things … of people. Like a man in the office yesterday afternoon. He came in all grump and growl, and I asked him to kindly sit down and wait quietly until the senator had a free moment. Well, it turned out to be the Secretary of State!”

Rick threw his head back and laughed, the sound so contagious that Laurie found herself laughing along at her own folly. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkling, and Rick was enjoying the sight and sound of her.

“Well, he probably deserved it!”

“Maybe, but not from me. It’s just that I have no feeling yet for all the subtleties, the nuances, of protocol and proper behavior: whom to brush off, whom to favor, whom to—”

“—fawn over? Cater to? Push aside because he’s not high up on someone’s list? I’d say you’re in a
state of blessed ignorance, darlin’! You can judge everyone on his own merits—”

“—and lose my job by next Friday!”

“There are other jobs.”

“I’m lucky to have this one! There isn’t a whole lot of demand in Washington, D.C., for ex-nuns at the moment.”

“You’d start a trend!”

Impetuously, Laurie reached across the table and touched Rick’s hand. “Are you always so positive about everything?” she asked with a laugh. “So sure and unconquerable?”

He caught her narrow hand with his broad one, weaving his strong, blunt fingers through hers.

“No, but I try like hell. It’s the only way I know of to get through this life with grace. But it’s not something I thought up on my own.”

The stark planes and angles of his face softened with an inward-turning look of memory. “No, Laurie, it’s what I’ve seen. I’ve ridden my ’cycle out the dusty roads through the hills, and seen old black men sitting on porches, their faces lined with struggle. But they can pick up a banjo, or a mouth harp, and fill the air with the sweet sound of joy. I’ve seen women in dusty, shapeless clothes, with more babies than they can care for, who can sing a tune that’ll make you cry. But they’re not cryin’; they’re singing about youth and hope and the promise of love, and they make you believe it. I’ve slept in a shack on a tick mattress stuffed with leaves and feathers and set on a dirt floor, where the table and chairs are finer than store-bought, the wood warm to your touch, rubbed smooth and golden by some man with rough, callused hands. A basket woven so neat you can carry water in it! A song sung so sweet you can think on it and go on for another day.”

He swallowed, ran his tongue over dry lips. His
broad chest rose with a sharp, indrawn breath. He let it out with a half-mocking grin. “You’ve got to watch what you get me started on, sweet thing.”

Laurie took a quick gulp of steaming Chinese tea to cover the sudden rush of emotion that shook her. Eyes lowered to the tabletop, she laughed softly. “I’ll remember that!”

When she looked up at him from under her gold-tipped lashes, it was with new admiration. “And here I thought you played folk songs in some little café.”

“No.” Again he flashed that grin that set her heart fluttering. “No, I’m more of a collector. Interpreter. A sort of genuine, single-minded, devil-be-damned roamer of the southern mountains. Just trying to save what I hear, preserve a little of it, so it won’t disappear and be lost forever. Some folks do it with paints, with clay or wood; I just do it with songs and stories—a little banjo dancin’, a little ridin’ to the moon.”

“There! You said it again. Tell me, what does that mean?”

Rick leaned forward, elbows on the table, his eyes alive with mischief. “You’ll have to come to my show to find out. Will you? Tonight?” Reaching into his shirt pocket, he pulled out a ticket and scrawled his name across the back. “Say you’ll come.”

“Tonight? Alone? Oh, Rick, I haven’t been that adventurous yet. I don’t know the city well, and I’m bound to get lost, and I don’t know if Ellen’s planned dinner.…”

“Here.” A second ticket materialized. “Bring Ellen. She’s seen the show a dozen times, but she won’t mind. And if she can’t come, well, bring someone else. Female, that is. A girlfriend. I plan to escort you home.”

“But I’d have to ride back with whoever brought me; that wouldn’t be polite.”

“Polite? I’m dyin’ here, woman, just trying to figure out how to get you alone for a while, and you’re worried about etiquette. You sure know how to make it tough for a guy!”

Honest contrition washed over her face. “But I don’t mean to,” she answered softly.

Rick felt the breath tighten in his chest. “I was only teasin’, Laurie. Just try to come tonight. If you can. Promise?”

Laurie nodded, saved from any further answer by the sudden and welcome appearance of the waiter. In the center of the table he placed a serving platter filled with steaming dumplings. And then, with the care of an artist, he decorated the table with a myriad of tiny bowls, the dipping sauces that transformed the dumplings from sweet to spicy to pungent to piquant.