Fools Rush In Page 28

  So it would end sooner than she feared. Well, she’d given it all she had, and if she lost, she’d lose graciously. “You’ve done some thinking, some self-searching, haven’t you?”

  He nodded. “Yes, I have, and from now ’til we get that time to ourselves, I want you to do the same. Just work out how much you’re prepared to lose.”

  He must have seen in her eyes the despair she felt, for he lifted her chin with his finger and told her. “Understanding and trust can set a lot of things right. Don’t forget that. Now, let’s not worry about any of this. When the time comes, we’ll deal with it. Okay?”

  “You’re right. Our relationship needs some resolution. What I feel for you and what I think of myself deserve more than a convenient affair that’s headed no place.” She reached up and kissed his cheek. “Whatever happens to me, you’ll always be a special man.”

  He held her gaze so long that she had a sense of floating, drowning in his wonderful eyes. At last, he spoke. “Let me look in on Tonya.”

  The child squealed and bounced with joy when she saw her father. She raised her arms to him and sang out, “Daddy, Daddy,” over and over. Justine wondered if Tonya had been quiet and listless because she missed her father and decided not to tell him that she had been worried about her.

  She told Duncan, who held the laughing, bubbling child in his arms kissing her, “You can see who’s king around here. She’s so happy to see you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, hugging the little girl, “and Daddy’s happy to see his baby.”

  She looked at them until she had to turn away. No more “if only’s” for her; reality was about to settle in. “What are you wearing tomorrow night?” she asked, rechannelling her thoughts.

  “I’ll be in a tux. Let me know what color your dress is, so we don’t go looking like Mattie’s wigs.”

  “She’s got on a purple bandanna today; seems her available wig was blue, and this isn’t a blue day.”

  A half-smile floated over his face, revealing his one dimple. “I’d better get back there and give her a big hug before she threatens to leave. Mattie demands recognition and plenty of attention.” He winked, put Tonya in her playpen and loped down the stairs.

  Justine didn’t tell him about the man in the red car, because she knew that, although he needed every minute to work on his story, he’d stop and deal with any problem that affected her. Her fax phone rang, and she waited for Leland’s letter. Just as she’d surmised, Arnold Taylor wanted to give her buildings in a state of disrepair and in one of Washington’s seedier neighborhoods. But why? The buildings had full occupancy and no unmanageable debts. She locked up the papers and called her father’s office.

  “Please tell my father that I don’t want the buildings, because I’m not interested in refurbishing tenements. That’s all.”

  “Now, wait a minute. Those buildings bring in a tidy sum every month, and he’s giving them to you.”

  She blew out a long breath and tapped her fingers against the phone. “Tell him, I’d exchange all that for a chance to have a nice long talk with him. Bye.” She hung up, but she knew she hadn’t heard the end of it.

  She could hardly contain her relief when Tonya sat on her father’s lap, ate all of her dinner, and entertained them with her usual exuberance.

  Mattie presided over their evening meal as though she’d been serving it at her own table. “Mr. B, ax Justine what she thought of my Moe” She glanced at Justine. “Honey, ain’t he somethin’?” She stopped eating and confided to Duncan, “People always surprised he married me, but theys a lot they don’t know. My folks was sharecroppers in the backwoods of South Carolina, and I never got to go to school if they was any work I could do. I done everything a person can do on a farm, right down to roaming the forests in the wintertime lookin’ for fat wood that my papa would split and bundle up for us kids to go out and sell. I left home when I was seventeen, went to Charleston, and got a job in a cafeteria. That’s where I met my Moe. He was studying in one of they colleges down there, and I used to slip him food, otherwise he’d a starved. He got pneumonia from living in that place with no heat, and after I found out where he lived, I went and looked after him. We stuck to each other till he graduated and got a job. We both come from poor families, but theys good, God-fearing people. When he axed me to marry him, I fainted and scared him to death. I was so crazy ’bout that man, I couldn’t sleep at night. I tell you, he is somethin’. Justine, you quit foolin’ round, honey.”

  Knowing Mattie’s penchant for bluntness, Justine hurried to congratulate her on her fine husband, making certain that she kept her mind on him and not on Justine Taylor.

  “You’ve done well for yourself, Mattie,” Duncan said. “Not many of us began with so little and managed as well as you have.” He reached over and tapped Justine’s fingers. “I’m going to get Tonya settled in bed, then I think I’d better check on Rags before I start work. Did you hear from Mitch today?”

  “He hasn’t called, and I didn’t know how to reach him.”

  Duncan excused himself and left the table. “I’ll find him.”

  He’d planned to work, but he hadn’t heard from the boys, and he didn’t like it. He got Tonya to bed, read her some pages of Hiawatha which was what she wanted, put on a pair of jeans, grabbed the rest of his street clothes, and went downstairs.

  “Be back when I get back,” he told Justine and Mattie, and left. He got in the car, changed into a jogging shirt, sweater, and his old leather jacket, checked his gas gauge, and headed for Capitol View. After about twenty minutes, he found Mitch where he had least expected him, in the shelter.

  “Man, it was cold out there, and with all those stringers and their cameras hanging around the building, I split.”

  “Stringers?”

  “Yeah, man. Rats. News guys.”

  Duncan allowed himself a hearty laugh. “I thought you knew that I’m a writer.”

  Mitch didn’t seem impressed. “Sure, Pops, but you don’t rat on people. You tell it like it is. Not like those News and Times rats that can’t find nothing good to write about nobody black.”

  Duncan didn’t feel like arguing that, if indeed it needed arguing. “It’s seven-nineteen,” he said to Mitch. “We can still see Rags for a few minutes.”

  En route to the hospital, Mitch questioned him about Justine. “She’s forty karat, Pops. Is she your girl?”

  Now, what did he say to that? “I’m working on that, Mitch.”

  The boy’s face clouded in a frown. “She must think a lot of you. All I had to do was tell her you looked after us and, man, she pulled out the stops. A bird like that one. Man, I’d do more than work on it.”

  Duncan pulled up the hospital and cut the motor. “Trust me, Mitch, when I work on a thing, the job’s well done.”

  Mitch beamed as he jumped from the car. “You the man, Pops.”

  After a short visit with Rags, Duncan drove Mitch back to the shelter. “Any idea why those newsmen and cameramen gathered around your building?”

  “No, but if they only want to see slums, they sure don’t have to come all the way out here.”

  Duncan had been thinking the same thing. He gave the boy some money for transportation to and from the hospital and headed home. Washington slums weren’t his concern right then; he had to deal with Baltimore, and daylight found him hard at work on his story of the Baltimore slums.

  Justine strolled with Duncan along the Kennedy Center’s promenade, as the mammoth crystal chandeliers and the lighted lanterns that hung from the ceiling cast a romantic glow against the majestic windows that towered at least three stories high, the bronze bust of John F. Kennedy a regal figure in the midst of it. She allowed herself a proud glance at the tall, good-looking man who walked beside her, resplendent in a navy-blue tuxedo and accessories that matched her royal-blue velvet gown, and peace washed over her when he held her hand as they left the reception to take their seats at the performance.

  Warren Stokes stopped in fron
t of Justine, effectively blocking her passage. “Well. Well.”

  “’Evening, Warren,” Duncan said and propelled her in another direction.

  If she’d needed a clue to Duncan Banks’s personality, he’d just given her one.

  “Good grief,” she exclaimed, when the President and Mrs. Clinton entered the auditorium. “He seems as tall as you are. How tall are you, Duncan?”

  “Six four-and-a-half. How tall are you, shorty?”

  He stroked the back of her hand as though to soothe her, in case his remark might have opened a wound.

  “I’m five-seven, almost. Well…five-six.”

  An amused look settled over his features as he regarded her. “Yeah. A regular little totem pole.”

  She held her hands close to her sides and made certain that they stayed there. “I haven’t had any complaints so far.”

  A grin spread over his face. “No? You’re not likely to get any from me, either. Whatever you are, sweetheart, is what boils my water.”

  “You’re meddling with me.”

  “Sure thing. You make it easy.” He leaned forward. “What do you say we take Tonya to Frederick Wednesday after I turn in my story, leave her with Leah and my mother, go on to my lodge on Curtis Bay and have the next few days to ourselves. It’ll be late when we get there, but we can shop on the way.” When she didn’t answer immediately, he said, “I won’t pressure you to do or say anything.”

  “Then why are we going?”

  He stared into her eyes, and his own were flames of enticing warmth that promised her the heavens. “I want us to learn each other, to know each other without the sham of status between us. I want us to be out of that house, where you conveniently use your job to avoid seeing us as we are. I want you to go with me because I’m the man you want and you’re the woman I…I need.”

  Her disbelief that he’d said it must have been obvious, because he reiterated it. “That’s right, need. I didn’t plan it, but it’s part of me now, and I have to deal with it. From now on, I’m counting chicks and naming names. I have to know where I’m going. Are you with me?”

  When had he shed his determination to avoid emotional involvement? She’d never considered herself a coward, so she looked him in the eye and told him, “You said we need to resolve this, and I agree. If this is the way you want to do it, I’ll go with you to Curtis Bay.”

  He cocked his left eyebrow and rubbed his chin. “You don’t seem optimistic.”

  How could she be? “No, I’m not, but anything can happen.”

  He tightened his hold on her hand and led her to her seat. Her head pounded, but at least they could no longer talk. She put her hands together in a mild applause as the curtain opened and Cronkite stepped onto the stage.

  Duncan helped Justine into his car for the trip home, got in, and started the engine. He looked over his right shoulder to check the traffic before he backed out, glanced over at her, and seemed to freeze. He turned off the ignition and stared down at her. “You can look at me that way, Justine, and not feel as strongly as I do that we have to do something about our relationship?”

  She said the only thing that she could say. “One of these days, Duncan, you’ll wonder why you asked me that question. You promised not to push me, and that shouldn’t be difficult, because you know what I feel.”

  “All right.”

  He backed out and drove off. When they got home, he checked on Tonya and kissed Justine’s cheek. “Thanks for your company tonight, lovely lady. I’m taking the sitter home. See you in the morning.”

  He didn’t rush back after the short trip, because sleeping across a six-foot hall from Justine wasn’t something he relished doing. But he’d meant it when he said they should be friends only until they knew where their relationship was headed. When he got to the top of the stairs, his gaze found her door, and when he didn’t see a light there, he breathed deeply in palpable relief. Deciding against work, he looked in on Tonya and went to bed. But as he was about to turn out the light, he bolted upright. Screams. He’d locked all the doors. Who could…He sprang out of bed and dashed into the hallway. Screams. Sobs. Justine!

  He shoved open her door and rushed to her bed, where she thrashed wildly, sobbing and moaning. Should he shake her? “Justine,” he called, softly and repeatedly. Exasperated, he crawled into the bed, gathered her to his body, and began to rock her. She curled into him, and her tears wet his chest. When at last she was quiet, he turned on the light and whispered to her.

  “It’s all right, Justine. I’m here with you, and nothing can happen to you. I’m here, sweetheart.”

  She cuddled closer, and he held her for half an hour while she slept. Who and what were her demons? Nothing and no one would convince him that those nightmares and flashbacks weren’t tied to her secrets. What memory could have dragged her into the clutches of such abject misery as he’d just witnessed? He gazed at her face—peaceful, almost smiling—eased away from her, and went back to his room. Half an hour of the torment of holding her to his almost nude body was as much punishment as he cared to take.

  If she knew he’d been in her room the previous night, held her, and rocked her, she didn’t mention it at breakfast that Sunday morning.

  If Duncan thought his relationship with Justine was at a crossroads, Wayne had arrived at approximately the same conclusion in regard to himself and Duncan’s sister. He’d asked her to go away with him for the weekend; the suggestion of the fishing expedition had merely been a gracious way of phrasing it. Four days had passed and she hadn’t given him an answer. He telephoned her at her office Friday morning.

  “What about it, Leah? Should I pick you up after work?”

  “Where’re we going?”

  He let out a long breath. If she decided to match wits with him, he’d disintegrate. He didn’t have the patience for it right then.

  “To the Roundtree Lodge. Did you pack a bag for the weekend?”

  “Wayne, I’m not going to strut out of here with a suitcase and jump into your car in the presence of every gossip monger in Frederick, Maryland.”

  Don’t lose it, Roundtree, he told himself. “All right. Leave it at The Watering Hole at lunch time, and I’ll pick it up around four-thirty. Then, I’ll drop around to your place and get you. That suit you?” He held his breath for what seemed an eternity.

  “Okay. Pick me up at home at five o’clock.”

  He stared at the phone after she hung up. She was a handful, but, between then and Sunday night, he intended to make putty out of her. He couldn’t help laughing at himself. Leah as putty in his or anybody’s hands was a joke. To his amazement, their plans materialized without a hitch. They reached the lodge around seven o’clock, but her first act was to establish her ground rules.

  “Why do you want to carry me in here when I can walk?”

  He let her walk through the door, but he wouldn’t let her carry her bag. “Leah, are you planning a hard time for me? It would be a help if I knew what to expect.”

  Dreams seemed to take shape in her long-lashed, reddish-brown eyes and all of her fantasies settled in them and on him, shaking his very foundation. She promised much, but she was asking plenty. He started toward her, and she met him halfway, scooting into his arms and burying her face into his shoulder. He wasn’t certain of the message, but he knew he had better figure it out.

  “Let’s get unpacked and get some dinner together,” he said, needing a breather. “I stocked the kitchen yesterday.” A thought occurred to him. “Why did you put me through hell for ten days when you knew you were coming with me this evening? Why, Leah?”

  “You asked me to go fishing with you, and what did I say?”

  “You said you loved to fish.”

  She shrugged and poked her tongue into her right cheek as he’d so often seen Duncan do. “Wayne, even a mentally challenged person could figure out that was a yes.”

  He refused to match wits with her. “Did you want to be with me?”

  She nodded. �
�Yes, but let’s eat. Then we can go outside and watch the moon.”

  Laughter bubbled up in him. He had to touch her. He knew he’d better not rush her, but right that minute he wanted her in his arms. He hadn’t come there to practice high-level restraint, but that was what she needed, so he checked himself and settled for a kiss on the side of her mouth. Her face softened into a half-smile and she lowered her eyes.

  Damn! “All right. My mother mixed up the hamburgers and made the patties, since she knows I’m no cook.”

  Her mouth opened, and she sucked in a lot of air. “Your mother knows you’re here with me?”

  He pinched her nose and let the back of his hand drift over her face. “She knows I’m someplace where I need hamburgers, shucked corn, and biscuits. Period.”

  After eating, Wayne straightened up the kitchen and brought Banks her jacket. “You wanted to watch the moon. Let’s go.” Her hand found his as they started toward the river at the edge of the woods. He heard sticks cracking and cocked his ears.

  “Any bears out here, Wayne?”

  “Sure. Lots of ’em.”

  She pointed toward the woods. “Over there?” When he nodded, she whirled around. “I want to go back.”

  They stood on the deck of the lodge and gazed at the clear moon. “Except for those bears we heard,” she said, “it’s so quiet, I can touch the silence.”

  He opened the door and walked in with her. “Want to sit by the fire for a little?”

  She shook her head. “Wayne, I haven’t ever gone this far with a man. I’m not afraid, though. I’m scared to death, Wayne, but I’m…I’m so happy.”

  He pulled off her jacket and eased her sweater over her head. “Come with me. All I want is that you trust me. And, sweetheart, I know you’ve never obeyed anybody in your life, but—”

  “I have so,” she argued. “Ask Mama. I even obey Duncan.”