Just the Man She Needs Page 8

  “Hello, Felicia. What can I do for you?” was the way in which Ashton answered the telephone, taking advantage of Caller ID. From his tone of voice, one would think he had never met her. She steeled herself for another splash of cold water, well aware that the next move was hers, and that her brother had judged the situation correctly.

  “Ashton, I’ve thought over our conversation and particularly your concern, and I—I want to try a different angle. Rather than exposing your defensive strategy, which I realize now could be fatal and therefore foolish, I’d like to write about Dream’s history, how you started it, developed it and made it what it is today. Would you be willing to talk to me about that?”

  “Well. This is an about-face. I’ll talk with you if I’m satisfied after you explain to me why you changed your mind.”

  She’d made a mistake with Ashton, but that didn’t mean she had to tuck her little tail between her legs and beg for mercy. “You hung up on me, and I realized you did that not because you were angry, but because you were hurt. I could tolerate your anger, but I do not want to hurt you, and I apologize sincerely for doing it. I’ve had time to think over the implications of what I was asking of you and to appreciate the damage that reporting your plan could cause, and I would be deeply sorry if you lost Dream for any reason.

  “As I turned it over in my mind, I realized that I had a chance to tell your investors why they owe you loyalty, not in those words but by making them know that Dream is the product of years of your hard work during long hours, of your disappointments, pain and tears. I want to let them conclude that this is a human issue, not commercial volleyball generated by a foolish man’s whim. That’s…it.” She stopped talking and waited. If that didn’t satisfy him, she’d throw in the towel with regard both to him and the story. The silence screamed at her, but she refused to plead.

  Finally he spoke and her heartbeat returned to normal. “I don’t have time right now to do justice to the story you want, and besides, I need to look up a few facts. I’d offer to go to your office, but your editor would know at once that we have a personal relationship. Would you be willing to come to my office Thursday morning?”

  “Yes. Of, course. What time?”

  “Is nine-thirty too early for you?” he asked her.

  “Nine-thirty will be fine. I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you, Felicia. You can’t imagine what a help this will be. I’ll call you later.”

  “Thanks for the interview, Ashton. I hope you didn’t eat nails after you hung up earlier. You didn’t need the stress.”

  “Eat nails? That’s putting it mildly. Talk with you later. ’Bye for now.”

  He’d been as genial as he could, but the strain was there; he hadn’t been jovial, and he hadn’t asked for a kiss. It wouldn’t be the last mistake she made, but it could be the most meaningful. She made a few notes, hoping that they would help her guide the interview, but she was going to take Miles’s advice and let Ashton lead the interview. She got up from her desk and walked over to the gray-metal file cabinet that stood in a corner—every office at the New York Evening Journal had one—opened the bottom drawer and removed a copy of her first published newspaper story.

  She looked at the date beside her byline. Had it really been ten years? Three thousand, six hundred and fifty days since she’d jumped, shouted and laughed until she cried for joy. She had succeeded; she was now a journalist, and on her way to wider acclaim. And that very night, overcome with the joy of her “success,” she had relaxed whatever it was that had always made her think and act sensibly, and she’d lulled herself into believing what Herman Lamont told her and let him lure her into his bed. For months thereafter, she thought only of him, until the day he let it slip that he had a wife and children. She woke up then to the knowledge that her “success” had slipped away while she dawdled with a man who, in the end, offered only heartbreak.

  I don’t ever want to forget that. I got over Herman, but I still have the scars that he etched into my heart. If I allow myself to become callous, to do anything in order to get a story, I’ll be no better than Herman. I hurt Ashton, because somewhere in the archives of my mind resides the notion that men don’t have deep feelings—Herman’s gift to me.

  She put the old newspaper back in its place, locked the drawer, went to her desk and started writing her daily column. After she interviewed Ashton, she was going to produce a story worthy of her abilities, and Ashton Underwood would relish every word of it. She looked at the notes she’d made for her daily column. Heather Skylock wanted it known that she’d switched designers. Now sixteen pounds lighter, Jacobs’s styles suited her better. And Amber Jenkins’s publicist wanted it known that Amber was dropping the Jenkins from her name. In the future, she would be known only as Amber. Felicia pulled air through her front teeth and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. She pulled out another card. Anyo Adedee—where on earth did those names come from?—had called to report that her client, LaTenja Jones, had been mistaken for Beyoncé.

  Felicia leaned back in her chair, grimacing. “I’m a good writer, and I’m tired of spending my time puffing up the egos of frivolous women and self-satisfied men. What happened to the people who spend their leisure time doing charity work? Damned if I’ll write another note about a rap ‘artist’ or a celebrity who makes a living being by being a personality and nothing else.” She locked her desk and decided to go out and look for something newsworthy.

  She got on the elevator at the twelfth floor and settled against the back rail. When she smiled at the handsome man who got on at the next floor, he smiled back, pulled a gun and said, “Give me your pocketbook.”

  Her eyebrows shot up as she faced her worse nightmare, stood straighter and said, “I worked for what’s in this pocketbook. Why should I give it to you?”

  The man was not smiling when he said in tones so soft that she believed him, “Because you don’t want me to pull this trigger. That’s why.” She knew that the high-speed elevator was close to the street floor, so she slid the bag off her shoulder and handed it to him just as the door opened. He grabbed it and tried to bolt from the elevator, but she stuck out her foot and sent him sprawling into the people who were waiting in front of the elevator.

  “He pulled a gun on me, and he has my pocketbook,” she yelled as the man scrambled up in an effort to get away, but a delivery man knocked the thief down, put his foot in the man’s belly, took out his cell phone and called the police. Noticing the thief’s attempt to retrieve his gun, which fell out of his hand when Felicia tripped him, the delivery man put a halt to the thief’s effort with the weight of his left foot.

  “Well, I wanted a story,” Felicia said to herself as she rode to the police station to give an account of the attempted theft. “And it looks as if I’m the story.” At home that night, Felicia wrote the story for her column, ending with the would-be thief’s assurance, when he was booked at the police station, that she would see him again. She had wanted to interview the man so as to include in her column something of his background that would explain how he’d become a criminal, but the police advised against it. She faxed her column to the paper at a quarter of nine, went to the kitchen and put a frozen quiche in the microwave oven and prepared to eat her supper, which in addition to the quiche Lorraine included a salad of lettuce and tomato, and half a glass of Pilsner beer.

  She was in no mood for wine. After what she had experienced that day, beginning with her gargantuan mistake with Ashton, she’d had a taste of the nitty-gritty of life and, with drinks, beer was as close to that as you could get. Still hungry after finishing her meal and her last swill of beer, she opened the freezer, took out a bar of Snickers and enjoyed what she regarded as her favorite vice.

  The telephone rang and she hesitated to answer it, fearing that the man who’d tried to rob her may have been released. But her caller could also be Ashton. She lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Hello. You sound as if you’re scared. This is Ashton. What’s the
matter?”

  “My day started down during our first call this morning, and except for that little upward spiral when we agreed on the interview, it has gone downhill ever since. But as the song goes, I will survive.”

  “Do you feel like talking about it?” he asked her.

  It usually didn’t pay to speak candidly; whenever she did that, she regretted it. But if she didn’t tell him, he’d find out when he read her column the next day, and that would be one more strike against her.

  “I’ll sketch it out and when we see each other I’ll fill in the details. First, I realized that I no longer enjoy writing my daily column. It’s such as waste of time. So I left my office in search of news for a lively column and would you believe a man held a gun on me in the elevator and asked for my pocketbook?”

  “What? What elevator? When?”

  “I work on the twelfth floor, the man got on at the eleventh—”

  “I don’t care about that. Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”

  “He didn’t hurt me, Ashton, and he’s in custody, but I realize I’m a wreck, so I’m going to have another beer, and I’m going to bed.” When he didn’t respond for a full minute, she wondered if he’d hung up. But he hadn’t, and she knew he’d been musing over her remark.

  “I take it then that you don’t want any company tonight,” he said at last, in effect taking an exception to her saying she was going to bed.

  “Considering how reserved you were when we last spoke, I hadn’t thought you cared to see me,” she said, getting some of her own.

  “Felicia, I am forty years old, and my thoughts, feelings and emotions are not the ephemeral agitations of a pimply teenager. If you care for a man, you should want to share with him what you experienced in that elevator and what you’re feeling right now. If I’m not that man, forgive me for intruding.”

  How could she tell him that she resented being put on the spot without exacerbating their already strained relationship? “I wanted to call you,” she said. “I had beer with my supper, and I only drink beer when I’m in the dumps. But you haven’t given me the right to call you and dump stuff on you, and I haven’t learned how to do that. I’m used to taking the lumps, shaking them off and moving on.”

  “You don’t want to rely on me or any man, is that it?”

  “You’re wrong, Ashton. I have a loving relationship with my older brother, who’s been my idol since I knew myself. Do you want to come over here?”

  “Will you be happy to see me if I go there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Should I bring beer or wine?”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “With you here, why would I need beer?”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Less than thirty minutes later, Felicia opened the door and looked up at Ashton. Neither spoke as he walked in, closed the door and stared down at her. She wanted to thank him for coming, to tell him how glad she was to see him, to welcome him in some way, but words wouldn’t come. As if he had known she would need prompting, he handed her a red rose that was wrapped in cellophane and tied with a red ribbon.

  She took the flower, sent her gaze from it to his face and worked at holding back her emotions. His eyes glimmered with warmth and, she thought, uncertainty, vulnerability, robbing her of her defenses. She didn’t decide to do it, but as if directed by her heart, her arms moved up to his shoulders and, at last, she knew the joy of being held tight to his body. His lips captured her mouth, then her eyes, cheeks and her mouth once more. He hadn’t kissed her that way before. He had replaced the hot urgency of his passion with a sweetness that stirred her to the depths of her being. And although she knew he was intent upon preventing the usual escalation of their passion, she hugged him fiercely, for in her nestled a feeling she had never known before.

  “It isn’t all right between us yet, is it?” she said. “I can feel you holding back.”

  “No, it isn’t all right, but it’s a helluva lot better than it was.”

  “Can you forgive me?” she asked him, though she was well aware that forgiveness wasn’t the problem, that his apparent coolness stemmed from his doubt as to her loyalty.

  “I’ve already forgiven you, Felicia.” He looked around. “Let’s sit down somewhere.” It did not escape her that he glanced at the sofa, but looked farther, chose a chair and sat there.

  “I care a lot for you,” he told her, “more than I thought or wanted to. You threw me a hard punch, and forgetting it may take a while. But I’m here for you, even if at a little distance.”

  She blanched at that, but he could see that in spite of the pain reflected in her face, she didn’t rattle easily. “And you think you can’t trust me?” she asked him.

  It was a logical conclusion, but she was way off, because he knew from their abortive conversation that morning that she prided herself in her integrity.

  “Oddly enough, I don’t think that at all,” he said. “But I do think we ought to step back until we know what we mean to each other and you know what I mean to you. I know what you mean to me. This thing between us is too wild. It’s going headlong like a runaway train. If I’m wrong, tell me right now.”

  She had no answer for him, because she knew he hadn’t overstated it. She’d known him a month, and she spent most of her waking hours thinking of the way he made her feel and wanting to be with him so she could feel that way again. She prayed that he would have enough faith in them to allow what they felt for each other to mature.

  Ashton knew Felicia would live inside of him for a long time; the pain he felt when she argued against his best interest assured him of that. But he meant to walk softly with great care and to leave very few tracks. So far, what he liked about her outweighed her one action that hurt him, but that one thing was enough to alert him. He’d been traveling too fast.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” he asked her. “As soon as you close your eyes, that scene may replay itself.”

  “I hope not. I wasn’t really scared when he pulled that gun. I started shaking in the patrol car when the policemen were taking me to the station.”

  “I’ve glad you kept a cool head. Steady nerves can save your life.”

  “What I feel is that I’m vulnerable, that…that I’m not safe. I…No, I don’t mean that.”

  Whether or not she knew it, she did mean it. “Did you feel safe when you got inside your apartment?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. For the first time, I looked in every room and closet, even under my bed, and I—I had to resist turning on every light in this place.”

  “But you weren’t afraid. That’s great.” He didn’t believe it, but he didn’t think it good psychology to lead her to the conclusion that she was afraid of being alone. “I don’t think you were seriously threatened, because the man ran as soon as the door opened. Was the gun loaded?”

  “The police didn’t say, so I suppose it was. You know, I feel a little as I did five or six years ago when my car was stolen with a lot of my personal things in the trunk and the glove compartment. I feel…I guess you’d say, violated.”

  “Oh, no. You don’t want to feel that way. Anger is much healthier.”

  He watched her swinging her long, shapely legs, unconsciously but rhythmically and seductively, and told himself to get his mind on something else. Intimacy was not on his agenda. Yet, in his heart, he wanted everything with her that he had ever desired. And why not? Her lovely brown face was as beautiful as ever, her dark eyes as luminous, and her breasts jutted at him as high and inviting as ever. His mouth began to water as he wondered how her nipples would taste. He dragged himself away from that thought when he realized that she discerned the direction in which his mind traveled.

  “If I leave you now, will you be all right?” He noticed that she still held the rose in her right hand. “Will you?” he reiterated.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said. “You can’t know how much your coming here tonight means to me. I have a great deal to learn about relat
ionships, Ashton, and you’ve taught me a lot tonight. My previous experience conditioned me to look out for myself.”

  “Are you telling me that you had a man who mistreated you?”

  “If you call pledging eternal love and, after several months of a blissful relationship, suddenly announcing that he had to get on with his life, that he’d spent too much time away from his wife and children—If you’d call that mistreatment, I’d say yes. And especially since up to that time, he’d represented himself as a bachelor. Yes, I’d say I was mistreated.”

  His whistle split the air. “And I’d say that man should be horsewhipped. It explains a lot. How long ago was that?”

  “Ten years, and you’re the only man who’s gotten close to me since then.”

  Hmm. So her finesse and toughness covered a tenderness that he’d spotted a few times. Her warm femininity was almost always evident, but she cloaked that other part of her, the gentle sweetness and the tenderness that he needed. Yes, he’d go slowly, but he would cultivate in her what he most needed from her.

  “I’d better go. Are we still on for Thursday morning at nine in my office?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, and he steeled himself against the sadness he heard in her voice. He didn’t pause when he reached the door, but reached for the doorknob. She stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, reached up and kissed his mouth, quickly and as if in theft. The fire of it shot through him with such speed that he let the wall take his weight. She gazed up at him, letting him know that she didn’t plan to cooperate in his plan to put some distance between them.

  “Oh, hell, Felicia,” he said, locked her in his arms and gave himself to her. “See you Thursday morning,” he said, shaken and unable to hide it. He opened the door and walked out into the hallway, certain of one thing: Felicia Parker was in his blood. As he walked toward Riverside Drive, he didn’t promise himself anything. Deep down in his gut, he wanted more of what she gave him minutes earlier, that and much more. But he had to think of Teddy as well as of himself, and he meant to take it slow even if it killed him.