Last Chance at Love (12 page)

She closed the door and leaned against it, contemplating the last twenty minutes, maybe the most important twenty minutes of her life, for she had admitted to Jacob Covington that she cared for him, wanted him, and would someday probably be his lover. Somehow, he had changed his mind about a personal relationship with her, and she’d give anything to know the reason for it.

Her cell phone rang, and she dashed across the room to get it. She glanced at the caller ID, saw her boss’s name and phone number, and dropped the phone back into her purse without answering it. She was in no shape to speak with Bill Jenkins and certainly not to ward off his innuendos. Jake had possessed her head, heart, and body, and she couldn’t think straight. Only the Lord knew where that tour would lead them.

* * *

Jake was in no such quandary, however. The day had been one in which the pieces of his life puzzle began moving into place, slowly perhaps, but surely. Back in his suite, he stripped and headed for the shower. He didn’t remember when he had last sat in a bathtub, but that elegant marble fixture tempted him. He hoped the water would cool his passion, so he turned it on full blast and let it punish his still-hungry libido.

“It would be best if we waited until I finish the tour and she turns in that article,” he told himself, “but if that happens, we’ll both deserve medals. I’m taking it as it comes.”

He rushed to get down to the lobby before she did, but she joined him when the elevator stopped at the fourth floor.

When she saw him, both of her eyebrows lifted, and a smile broke out on her face. He moved over to where she stood, past the rotund man who emphasized his girth by wearing a red plaid sports jacket.

“I tried to get down there before you did, but I’m moving slow. Still staggering under that wallop you gave me,” he said, speaking in a muffled voice. “Lady, you pack a wallop.”

She moved closer to him, maybe only an inch, but in doing so she gave him the confirmation he needed: they had experienced a communion of hearts as well as of minds.

“You’re pretty good at that, too.”

An unfamiliar feeling of contentment pervaded him. It wasn’t the way he felt when he sat down to eat his mother’s buttermilk biscuits, fried corn, string beans, crab cakes, Virginia ham with redeye gravy, and peach cobbler—that peace you only found in your mother’s presence. No, he thought, as they left the elevator, it was an indefinable something that took pounds from his shoulders, put a spring in his steps, and brightened everything around him.

“Want to have dinner someplace nice this evening?” he asked her, almost impulsively, while the doorman signaled for a taxi.

“Sounds good to me,” she said, her tone airy, an indication that she was still rattled. “It doesn’t have to be fancy, Jake. Let’s...just have a nice evening.”

The doorman opened the door of the taxi and stood aside waiting for his tip. Jake did the unexpected and accepted the man’s thanks with a smile, for he knew well the lowly life and the humiliation it could bring.

“We’ll work that out when we get to it. My problem right now is getting into the right frame of mind for that interview. I don’t know what kind of smart-ass of an interviewer I’ll get. If it’s a guy bucking for a promotion, I’ll need all my wits.” As usual, she’d taken a seat in the far corner of the taxi, so he had to lean toward her in order to touch her. “And you stay out of my head, lady.”

Later, as they ate supper in a small bistro on a side street just off the Commons, she surprised him with an observation about his interview that he had already made.

“When you were talking with the interviewer, you were so much more personable, charming, and far less businesslike than during your previous TV interviews,” she told him. “I can’t wait to see the tape. You smiled and appeared so relaxed. Was it the interviewer who made the difference?”

“You’re right, I suppose. I certainly enjoyed this one more. I didn’t feel as if I were on trial. It could have been the interviewer who made the difference, but I’m not sure.”

She was perceptive, and he’d do well to remember that and not loosen up to the extent that he forgot to protect his flank. He didn’t like keeping secrets from her, but he didn’t see an alternative.

As if she read his mind, she stopping eating the New England clam chowder and leaned toward him. “I want to know all kinds of things about you, but I can’t ask them, because the reporter promised to report only on your daytime activities, interviews, and book signings. But the woman wants to know everything about you. But if the woman knows, the reporter will also know, and I’m not sure I can separate it.”

He stiffened, and he knew she saw it, a complication he had not thought through. He didn’t see how an intimate relationship could thrive in a climate of secrecy, but she had just given him another reason to withhold particulars about his job, not to speak of his moonlighting as Mac Connelly.

“The more we’re together, the more we’ll learn about each other,” he said, as if he didn’t understand what she meant. “That’s inescapable. You’ll sort it out.”

She toyed with her napkin, twirling it around her finger, absentmindedly, he knew. “I guess. It’s as if fate is hounding my steps, dangling diamonds in front of me and daring me to steal them.”

He dabbed his own napkin at the corners of his mouth. “What do you mean by that? All you have to do is write the truth about what I do from nine to five and at interviews Monday through Friday. Shouldn’t be such a stretch.”

She leaned back in the booth and looked at him as one would a recalcitrant toddler. “Then it’s all right to describe the way you kiss a woman, the way you can spin a woman’s world off its axis. Should I include that? It happened well before five.”

So the contentious Allison was emerging, and he had summoned her. “I trust your integrity, Allison.” At the first sip, the espresso nearly burned his lip. He put the cup in its saucer and thought about what she said. “Tell me. Am I really that good? Hmm? I’d have thought I’d gotten rusty. Ouch! That’s my bad toe you kicked.”

“Sorry. Why would you be rusty? I can’t believe the women you meet are that imperceptive. You surprise me.”

He let a grin crawl over his face, once more enjoying the fencing at which she was so expert. “If you want to know, you’ll have to ask me a direct question.”

Her fingers caressed her neck, and for the first time he noticed how long and delicate it was and began to imagine the pleasure of tracing it with his lips until she begged him to move farther down. His thoughts must have been mirrored in his eyes for she sucked in her breath and rimmed her lips with her tongue.
I’d better get myself in hand,
he admonished himself. To her, he said, “What’s the matter, don’t you want to know? Chicken?”

She spread her hands, palms out. “I’m chicken. Can we leave soon? I have to pack, and I’m getting an early flight to Washington.”

“Why so early? Tired of my company?”

She didn’t take the bait, merely shook her head. “I have a one o’clock appointment, and prior to that I want to go home, unpack, and get my goose out of the pet shop.”

“Mind if I call you tomorrow morning?” They lived in the same city, and if he didn’t contact her for the entire weekend, she’d have a right to be both suspicious and angry.

“Of course not, Jake. I’ll be at home all morning.”

They held hands as they strolled the short block back to the hotel. An idyllic moonlit night with crisp air, a mild breeze, and a single star shooting through a blanket of twinkling little planets. Sniffing the salty scent of the distant ocean, he wondered if paradise could give him more peace.

“Did you see that?” he asked her of the shooting star. “Fantastic.”

“It’s lovely,” she said. “Too bad things can’t always be so perfect.”

In the lobby, she said, “I want to tell you good night right here. I haven’t decided how far I’m going with you, but if you go with me to my room, it won’t be a question of deciding. You understand?”

He did and said as much. “We’ll speak tomorrow.” Then, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, there in the lobby, he pulled her into his embrace, and brushed her lips with his own. “Night, sweetheart,” he said and headed for the elevators. But remembering to check his cell phone before going to his suite, he found a message from the chief that said, “Call Me.”

Jake walked around to the pay phones and dialed him.

“Your Rockefeller Center pal is keeping close tabs on you, but you haven’t noticed. I told you to watch your back, but instead you’re focusing on AW. So as of now, you have a guard.”

“A what? I don’t need—”

“But until we find out what this goon wants from you, you’ll have one. Incidentally, you’re taking a cruise next week, as part of your book-signing tour, and Miss Wakefield will accompany you. Be on your P’s and Q’s.”

“I’m doing
what?
How do you know she’ll go?”

“You know the answer to that. She’ll go.”

Jake hung up and allowed himself a laugh, harsh and bitter. What would they think up next? He was supposed to lecture, sign books, court Allison, and find somebody or something that the government wanted found. Good that his superiors thought well of his abilities, but there was a limit to what he could achieve in an unfamiliar environment with Allison at his elbow. He telephoned his mother, spoke briefly with her, and went to bed.

* * *

By eleven the next morning, Allison had arrived home, unpacked, taken her clothes to the cleaner’s, picked up her goose from the pet shop, and begun to dress for her appointment. As her mind traveled back over the previous week with Jake, their time with Sydney, and the few precious moments in Jake’s arms, the ringing of the telephone interrupted her musings.

“Hello.” She hadn’t meant to sound seductive, but her voice had dropped to a lower register and softened, for she hoped to hear Jake’s voice.

“What’s the matter, child? Did I wake you?”

Her aunt seldom called, and she was immediately alert and on edge. “No, Auntie. I just got back from Boston this morning, and I’m catching up on a few things. Uh...everything all right?”

“Fine. I just wanted to know if you’re coming for the annual barbecue feast this year. Everything going on nowadays is a fund-raiser; we’re trying to restore Idlewild to its former glory. The barbecue is always fun.”

“I don’t know, Auntie. I have to write a report, and everything depends on it.” She gulped, stricken with a sense of horror. She had forgotten to call her boss. Though she hadn’t taken the call, he’d left a message. Maybe Idlewild would be the perfect place for escape while she worked on the story. “Maybe I will. When is it?”

“August third. You be sure and come now.”

“I’m going to try, Auntie.” She hung up. A quiet place out of the reach of both Bill and Jake might be just what she needed.

She waited until a quarter of twelve, then got into her green Mercury Sable—her mother thought Allison should drive a Mercedes or a BMW, but that would mean accepting money from her parents—and headed for Mother’s Rest. She hadn’t been surrogate mother to any of the precious little children nearly as often as she would have liked since beginning the tour with Jake and, anticipating the joy of loving one of the little girls or boys for two hours, she realized how much she missed being with them.

“We’re short today,” Zena Carter, the head nurse, said when she opened the door and greeted Allison. “Go to your locker and get ready. I’ve got a very needy one for you today.”

Allison knew that meant the child was fretful and refused nourishment. She changed into the white gown and cap, and put a mask over her mouth.

“This is Freddy,” the nurse told her and placed the crying child in her arms.

Allison took him to the window and talked to him about the trees, the passing automobiles, and anything else that she saw. He stopping crying, and she noticed that he paid attention to everything she said. She snuggled him closer, caressing him and enjoying his sweet, baby scent. Then he startled her when he clapped his hands and said, “Car, car,” as a white sports car passed. Surmising that he was about fourteen months old, was bored and ready to talk, she began counting his fingers, and he soon joined her in the game.

“I think his problem is boredom,” she told Zena at the end of her two-hour visit, and explained how she discerned it.

“You may be right. He’s fifteen months old, and we don’t have time to talk to him and teach him things that a child that age can easily learn. I’ll pass the information to the next volunteer who gets him.”

On the way home, she bought a supply of gingersnaps and munched them as Freddy and Jake played games with her mind. Teasing her into believing they were a family. She slowed down to the speed limit. Maybe Jake called her and maybe he didn’t; she would neither ask him nor worry about it.

* * *

Little did Allison know of Jake’s frustration when his phone calls to her that morning went unanswered. He prided himself in being a man of his word, and he also didn’t want Allison to lose confidence in him. He spent several hours in the library working out a scenario for his next book before going to see his boss.

“Why do you think she’ll go with me on the cruise?” he asked the chief for the second time.

“Because you’re still on tour, and she doesn’t want to miss anything.”

He ran his hand through his hair, fingered his chin, and finally got up and began to walk from one of the chief’s office windows to the other. He was supposed to keep his job secret, and now the chief wanted him to carry out an assignment with Allison Wakefield—a reporter and a woman with whom he was rapidly becoming involved—in his company.

“But her boss might refuse to pay the bill. Maybe he won’t want the story that badly. And another thing: if she’s in danger, what do you think I’ll do first?”

“She’ll go. Jenkins wants her to dig up as much dirt on you as she can find. What better place for you to shed your exalted image than on a huge cruise ship? He’ll send her, trust me. And if she gets into any trouble, I expect you to protect her.”

Jake stared at the man. “That goes without saying. What about my publisher?”