Last Chance at Love (15 page)

“You did.” How was it that the man looked better every time she saw him? Unable to stay awake, she slept for most of the three-hour trip to New Orleans.

After his signing at the Community Bookstore on Broad Street that evening, Vera, the proprietor, treated them to a soul-food dinner—fried catfish, stewed collards, baked corn bread, and candied sweet potatoes.

“Now,
this
is food,” Jake said. “I love gourmet cooking, but this stuff nourishes the soul. You Yankees don’t know what good
is.
”

Facing her in the hotel lobby later, he said, “It’s been a long day, and I imagine you want to rest. My television interview is at eleven, and I have to be at Michelle’s African-American Book Stop at one. We’d better eat a substantial breakfast, so I suggest we meet in the restaurant around eight-thirty. Okay?”

Stunned at his blunt announcement that he wanted the evening to himself, she said, “Thanks. I wouldn’t mind some personal time.”

His left eyebrow shot up, and his face seemed to darken. “If you want to join me for breakfast, I’ll be in that café around there at eight-thirty. Good night.”

* * *

He hated to desert her, but he couldn’t come to New Orleans and not visit his favorite jazz haunts. Taking her with him would be tantamount to telling her he was Mac Connelly, for the jazzmen at his favorite saloons knew him well and would invite him to sit in with them and play the guitar. He had never been devious and certainly not deceptive, but he couldn’t share that part of his life with her. She cared for him, but she was a journalist, and he couldn’t risk her reporting it, for if she did he would surely lose the chance to become scholar-in-residence at his undergraduate university.

He waited in his room for a reasonable time, then left the hotel by a side door and headed for Snug Harbor, where he knew he’d find some of the best jazz in New Orleans.

“Hey, man, it’s been centuries,” the maître d’ said when Jake walked in.

“Smell’s the same,” Jake said, sniffing the odor of fried mushrooms, crab cakes, and fried catfish. “Who’s on tonight?”

“Ellis.”

Jake let the music roll over him, absorbing it into his mind, his heart, and the pores of his body. The waiter brought a plate of fried mushrooms, and Jake nibbled at it, sipped beer, and thought about Allison. He needed time alone with her, time to find out if she was the woman for him, as he had begun to suspect. And he had to figure out how to appease her, because right then she was either mad, suspicious of him, or both.

After a performance by one of the best jazz singers he’d heard in a while, the manager took the mike. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a rare treat for you tonight. Mac Connelly is in town, and he’s here. What do you say I give him a guitar?”

Any performer would have been gratified by that audience’s roar of approval, and Jake was moved to humility. The lights dimmed and he ducked in back of the stage where the maître d’ gave him a broad-brimmed hunter’s hat, a pair of dark glasses, and a Chet Atkins guitar.

For the next twenty minutes, he lived in the world that his fingers created, a world of consummate jazz. At last, he played “Back Home in Indiana,” his signature piece, which was guaranteed to set the audience roaring, clapping, and stomping. Then he bowed, the lights dimmed, and he left the stage and headed back to the hotel.

Playing renewed him as spring rain renewed and nourished flowers. If only he could share it with Allison, tell her what it meant to him! He showered, slipped into bed, and began his now familiar wrestle with the sheets. He turned over on his belly and gazed at the telephone, knowing that if he dared dial her room, it would bring the sound of her voice. Disgusted, he released a sharp expletive and turned out the light. At daybreak, he still ached for her.

* * *

As they boarded the cruise ship
Saint Marie,
Allison began to question her senses. “How far is your room from mine?” she asked him, remembering her distrust of long narrow corridors, public stairwells, and unattended elevators.

He didn’t look at her. “We share a wall.”

“Don’t tell me we have connecting doors.”

“We don’t, and I won’t. How long will it take you to learn to trust me? We share a small deck, or at least I agreed to that.”

After standing in a long line for a security check, room keys, and reboarding passes, they could at last see their rooms. “Mine’s a knockout,” she said to Jake after joining him on the deck.

“Mine, too. Even has a chintz-covered chaise lounge. Trouble is, I don’t like chintz.” He opened the door. “Come on in and have a look.”

“It’s lovely. Don’t like chintz? You’re acting just like a man.”

Both hands went to his hips. “What would you expect me to act like? A child?”

She punctuated her irreverence with a shrug. “Why not? Most men manage that on a regular basis.”

He grasped her shoulders, gazing into her eyes as he did so. “Are you asking me for a demonstration of my manhood? If you are, don’t expect me to disappoint you. I’m itching for the opportunity.”

His facial expression told her it wasn’t a time to smart-mouth him, so she said, “I didn’t mean to provoke you. I was merely stating a fact. If you don’t fall into that category—”

He cut her off. “Stop while you are ahead, Allison. Nothing would please me more than to show you what I’m made of, but I am not going to let you goad me into it. If you want us to make love, create the environment for it.” He waved his hand around the room. “You can’t say the opportunity isn’t here. A man will take sex where he finds it, but that’s not the same as making love, and especially not with a woman he cares for.”

“I wasn’t goading you, at least not intentionally. Thanks for showing me your room; except for the colors, it’s just like mine.”

“Now wait a second. You have no right to be angry. I put my cards on the table. What was wrong with that?”

“Nothing. I’m going to unpack, have a nap, and get dressed for dinner. Go read your notes.”

“Right. I’ll phone you at seven. We have an eight-thirty seating.”

He wasn’t anxious to spend the afternoon with me. If he’s planning the nights for himself as he did in New Orleans, he can kiss a relationship with me goodbye. I’m not holding still for that.
In her stateroom, she unpacked, showered, and stretched out on the chaise lounge to watch television. After a few minutes, she switched it off. So far, she had no reason to distrust Jake. If only she could wash that experience with Farr out of her mind.
Was she going to let it rule her life forever?
She jumped up. “I’m wasting precious time. I should be scouting out this boat for background information.”

She dressed in a yellow T-shirt, white shorts, and sneakers and headed for the main deck. “Everybody on the main deck for life raft and safety drill. Bring your life vest with you,” a voice over the loudspeaker admonished the passengers. She retraced her steps and reached her stateroom at the same time as Jake.

After the drill, he suggested they watch the ship pull away from shore. “You should see the seabirds out there.”

She had thought seagulls and water fowl only hung around northern waters, but they covered the Florida pier. As the
Saint Marie
coughed out its booming signal, she stood on deck with Jacob Covington’s arms wrapped around her—a pair of lovers to the eyes of all who saw them.

Jake gave her his lecture and book-signing schedule. “I’ll be busy a part of the time gathering information for my next book, which will have several scenes on a ship. Hope you won’t mind.”

She gazed at him, reading him and refusing to flinch beneath his appraisal. “In that case, I’ll work on my introduction to this story on you. Bill told me it will take up four full pages of the weekend ‘Living Section.’ That’s a lot of writing for a journalistic account of a man’s daily activities.”

The fingers of his left hand rubbed his chain. She’d seen him do that several times and had yet to discern the meaning of it.

“As long as you keep your promise, I don’t care what you write.”

She hoped he didn’t notice how she flinched at that remark.
Don’t surprise me, and I won’t surprise you.
Knowing she could never be callous about anything relating to Jake, she said a silent prayer that she wouldn’t uncover anything he didn’t want known.

* * *

Jake went to the head porter’s officer and introduced himself as a writer. “I’m thinking of setting my next story on this ship,” he told the man. “How many passengers did you check in?”

“Twelve hundred thirty.”

“Quite a crowd. How do you manage to get all that luggage to the right passengers?”

The man beamed with pride, as Jake knew he would. “Most women bring two pieces of luggage plus hand luggage, and men bring one piece. We have five hundred males and 730 females, all ages included. We screen every piece.”

Jake made himself seem impressed. “What a job. Do you screen when passengers reboard after doing ashore?”

“Well, we haven’t been doing that. Maybe we should. I’m going to speak with the captain about it. It’s a great idea, what with terrorism and all.”

“Yeah,” Jake said. “That’s what I was thinking about. A guy likes to know he’s safe.”

He headed for the kitchen to make friends with the chef and scrutinize his crew. If packages and passengers weren’t screened at reboarding, anybody could smuggle anything on board, perhaps even illegal aliens. And ship stowaways needed food and water, for which they had to have the help of the kitchen staff.

After Jake introduced himself as a writer who hoped to use the cruise ship as the setting for his next novel, the chef gave him free access to the kitchen and permission to interview the staff. The only man to refuse him an interview—a United States citizen of slight build and shifty eyes—aroused his suspicion at once. He returned to his stateroom, satisfied with what he had accomplished, and phoned the chief.

“Get me what you can on this guy. The kitchen help called him ‘Ring.’”

“You’ll get an email tomorrow morning. Good job.”

* * *

It amazed him that about two hundred people jammed the lecture hall for his first talk at ten the next morning. He had planned to read from his book, but instead he told them a story about a young man who pulled himself up from poverty and anonymity to national fame. Frequent glances to Allison verified her amazement. She didn’t write, but listened with her gaze glued to him and hardly moving a muscle, as if spellbound.

Following his thirty-minute talk, his listeners crowded around him, wanting to shake his hand and clamoring for his autograph. He couldn’t believe the reception they gave him.

“On a cruise where people come to be frivolous, I’m surprised that they appreciated anything that serious. It’s amazing,” he told Allison when they were at last alone. “I didn’t plan that, but once I started talking, I went with it.”

“I’m not surprised that the people enjoyed it,” she said. “I knew some of your life story, but this morning...well, you were riveting.”

“They’ll bring our lunch to our deck, if we ask for it,” he said. “Shall we?”

She nodded. “What haven’t you done that you have always wanted to do, or that you long for?” she asked him.

He draped his right foot over his left knee, leaned back, and locked his hands behind his head. “I want to be scholar-in-residence at my alma mater, settle down there, write, and teach our youth.”

“You’ve mentioned that before. Is there a real chance?”

“I think so, provided I maintain a squeaky-clean reputation. I’ve been nominated, but the university has only one such chair. We’ll see.”

“You would certainly get my vote.”

“Thanks. The boat docks Thursday morning. What’re you doing over the weekend?”

“My aunt wants me to visit her in Idlewild for the annual barbecue picnic, the second biggest community function of the year. Want to come?”

“I’d love to, but I’m not sure I can. I promised my mother I’d get to see her before I took this trip, but like you, I got almost no notice of the departure date, and I had to disappoint her. We’ll see.”

They ordered lunch, and two waiters appeared with large round trays and racks upon which to rest them. The order of shrimp scampi teased her nostrils before she saw the food. They ate with relish as the boat glided over the Caribbean waters and a soft breeze brushed their faces.

“I could live like this forever,” she said.

“You really could?” he asked her, savoring a crab-and-shrimp cannelloni.

“Not really, I guess. It’s not domestic enough. But it sure is wonderful being out of my boss’s reach,” she said, moving the conversation away from her.

“If you dislike him so much, why don’t you quit and get another job?”

She wasn’t yet prepared to tell him about Roland Farr and what the liaison with him had cost her. “It’s a long story, Jake. I hope that one of these days I can tell you about it.”

“Is it too painful, or are you sworn to secrecy?”

“Painful.”

His arm encircled her shoulder. “I’m a big guy, and not just in size. If it gets too heavy, let me help you carry it.”

As a child, she had leaned on her brother, Sydney, but from the day she’d graduated from college, she had fought her own battles. She didn’t want to lean on Jake, but she gloried in the knowledge that he was there for her.

Leaning toward him, she asked, “How many ways can you endear yourself to me?”

His lips brushed hers, and then he let the back of his hand graze her cheek, making her wonder how such a big man could be so tender.

“As many as you will permit. Want to walk around and see some of the boat? I understand there’s a movie in the theater, but I wouldn’t like to spend my time here sitting in the dark.”

With her hand in his, they strolled through the lounges, past the gaming rooms, closed until the boat was once again on the open sea. “Will you get off at the next port?” she asked him. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Martinique.”

“You bet. I’m anxious to...see it,” Jake said.

She wondered why he stopped in midsentence, but when she followed his gaze, she saw nothing unusual.