by Arlene James
Laurel named a fairly prominent local attorney with a busy and varied practice. Edward frowned, saying, “But does she have the steel to take on Kennison?”
Laurel sighed. “I suppose we’ll find out.”
Edward quickly realized that he couldn’t say anything at that point to change her mind. He’d have to settle for wait-and-see. “Okay. If that’s how it is, that’s how it is. You can let me know later if you’re going with her or not. If so, you can tell her I’ll send over everything I have on the case.”
She nodded almost desperately, her gaze carefully averted still. After a long silent moment, it became obvious that she wasn’t going to say anything else and that she didn’t want to hear anything he might have to say, either. He turned around and walked out of the room.
Greenlea was waiting for him. “Happy now?” he asked across the counter.
Ed put his head down and kept walking. When he rounded the end of the counter, Greenlea came off his stool. “Why can’t you leave her alone, Edward? Ever thought of that?”
It seemed to Ed that Greenlea was purposely goading him. He ground his teeth together and walked on past
“A kiss means nothing to you,” David said, “but Laurel’s different, you know. She takes these things to heart.” That’s when Ed decided to redesign the fit of David’s jacket. He swung around and grabbed handfuls of tweedy white, black and gray, practically lifting David off the floor by it. He was heavier than he looked.
“What would you know about it?”
“More than you might like,” David taunted.
The implications were clear, and Edward was suddenly seeing red. “If you’ve so much as laid a hand on her, I’ll break you in half!”
“Now why would you do that?”
Why indeed? Some of his anger gave way to confusion.
“Relax,” David said smugly, breaking Edward’s hold with a swift, upward movement of his hands. He smoothed the front of his coat unconcernedly. Edward got in his face.
“Why should I?”
“Because,” David replied smoothly, “all I’m offering Laurel now is just what she needs—friendship. Until she’s ready for more.”
“Yeah, right,” Edward snipped. “A friend, with all the manipulative skills of a head shrink!”
For the first time, anger flared in David Greenlea’s deep blue eyes. To his credit, he stood toe-to-toe with the several-inchestaller Edward. “I resent that”
“Then why don’t you do something about it?”
For a moment longer, Greenlea stubbornly held his gaze level, but then something flickered behind his flashing blue eyes, something so near pity that Edward recoiled from it. “You don’t need a beating, Edward. What you need is understanding. You see, Edward, we psychiatrists don’t discard our humanity when we get the diploma. We’re human like everyone else. We need human relationships…just like everyone else…even lawyers.”
“Spare me,” Edward said curtly, turning away. He strode as quickly as he could toward the door and still maintain his dignity. When he got outside and was certain that he couldn’t be seen from the diner, he let go the rage and bitter disappointment. Then he drove to the body shop to get the dents taken out of the hood of his car before anyone could see them and remark about the stupidity of reshaping his automobile with his fists. The broken and bruised knuckles, like his pride—and his heart—he nursed himself.
“You’re too good to us,” Laurel said softly, tugging the blanket into place and tucking it around Barry’s limp body.
David leaned close and remarked quietly, “He did enjoy the park, didn’t he?”
Laurel smiled, tears gathering in her eyes. “He must have run five miles today. And two weeks ago, he wasn’t even walking yet!”
“I thought sooner or later he’d get tired of picking himself up off the ground,” David whispered, laughter putting hitches and whistles in his voice.
Laurel sighed. “That part wasn’t fun for me.”
“I know,” David said, sobering and laying a hand upon her shoulder, “but you managed very well. You did just what a good mother should do—you kept your winces hidden and you let him pick himself up and go again.”
“He has to learn,” she commented dismissively, moving across the dimly lit room to put space between them and the crib.
“Yes,” David agreed, “but another mother in your position and with your background might have great difficulty letting him.”
Laurel gave him a dismissive look. “That would be selfish.”
“Yes, but another person might not realize that, and if you attempt to turn aside this compliment again, I’ll have to lower my assessment of you to ‘near perfect.’”
Laurel laughed behind her hand. It felt so good to laugh every time he made her do it. If only she didn’t feel so numb the rest of the time, numb and yet hovering on the brink of collapse, tears ever threatening. The laughter died, leaving her feeling rather forlorn again. She turned away before he could see it in her eyes. He was too good at reading her. He was too good at a great deal, and any woman in her right mind would be passionately in love with him by now. Oh, why couldn’t she do the sensible thing for once? Why must she dream of the unattainable? Hadn’t she learned anything from all those years of trying to win her grandmother’s love?
As usual, David seemed to read her thoughts. He reached out his hands and sent them gliding down her arms, then brought them back to pat her shoulders comfortingly. “How about dinner?” he suggested. “We’ll order in and eat sitting on the floor, Oriental-style.”
Laurel smiled, about to turn him down, but a knock upon her door sent her hurrying in that direction instead. Intent upon keeping whoever was there from waking the baby, she yanked open the door without first checking through the spy hole. A deliveryman stood on the landing, a baseball cap askew on his balding head, a pencil behind each ear, clipboard braced against one hip. “Laurel Miller?”
“Yes?”
He turned his back, walked to the railing, leaned over it and bawled down into the stairwell. “Bring ‘er on up, boys!”
His booming voice echoed off concrete and steel, swelling until it rattled the windows in their frames. Behind Laurel, Barry’s thin wail erupted, growing quickly into a scream of sheer misery. Laurel spun away, resisting the urge to tip the ignorant deliveryman over the rail, and met David halfway across the room, a bawling Barry in his arms.
“Mama!” Catching David unaware, Barry launched himself at her—and very nearly wound up hitting the floor headfirst
“Barry!” She caught him at the last instant, hauling him up into her arms, her knees threatening to buckle in relief. Frightened, Barry’s screams reached new decibel levels. Laurel backed up and leaned against the wall, jiggling him up and down and muttering sounds of comfort
.
She had calmed him to sniffles and was trying to find an opening amid an ever-changing tumble of little arms and fingers in order to wipe his nose with the tissue David had brought her, when three men entered her apartment carrying a sofa covered in heavy plastic.
“What on earth?” Even as she spoke, the men placed the sofa in the center of the floor. “What do you think you’re doing? I didn’t order that!”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the man with the clipboard as a second man disappeared outside once more and the third began ripping off the plastic, “but the boss said we was to leave ‘em anyway, seein’ as how they’re paid for.” The third man rolled the plastic sheeting into a huge ball and took it away. “We’re not to leave behind any refuse neither.” With that he flipped the clipboard beneath his arm and turned to follow the other two out the door.
David stepped forward. “One moment please.” He reached for the clipboard, scanned the top page, lifted it and scanned another.
“Did you do this?” Laurel demanded, but he shook his head.
“Not me. I wouldn’t have the guts.” He handed the clipboard back to the deliveryman, who turned and walked out just as the first
man reentered carrying a tall lamp and what appeared to be a set of bedsheets. “You’ll have to thank your attorney for this little surprise,” David went on. “It’s a sofa bed you know. Just the thing for a studio apartment.” He wandered over and ran a hand along the low, softly padded back. “I wouldn’t have thought Edward knew flowered upholstery existed.”
Laurel couldn’t get her mouth closed. Edward? Edward had bought her this furniture? This Hide-A-Bed sofa? A real bed? She shook her head, managing to croak out, “No.”
David lifted his head. “Yes, indeed.”
The clipboard carrier and the second man returned, hauling a chair that matched the sofa. They ripped the plastic off and disappeared with it. David walked over and touched the back. The chair swayed gently back and forth. “Rocker,” he announced succinctly. “Appropriate, wouldn’t you say?”
The final piece was a tabletop television, complete with its own table.
Laurel looked around the now-crowded room with mingled wonder and dismay. What did it mean, all this largesse? Was it a plea for forgiveness? A declaration of feeling? She closed her eyes, then opened them again to find the clipboard and an ink pen thrust at her.
“Sign here.”
She looked at the line with the big X scrawled at one end of it and thought of Edward picking out these pieces for her. Then Barry made a grab for the pen, and she was suddenly fending him off, the pen in her own hand now. Should she sign? Could she accept these things from him? She cast a longing glance at the sofa bed, steeled herself and laid the pen on the clipboard. “No, I—I can’t. You’ll…have to take them all back.”
The man shook his head. “Uh-uh. Like I told you, we can’t take ‘em back. You sign or you don’t sign, but the stuff stays. Only difference is, you don’t sign, the boss’s gonna chew my…" He cleared his throat. “Anyhow, I wish you’d sign.”
Laurel looked to David for guidance, but he merely lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Frowning, Laurel snatched up the pen and signed her name after the X. The man straightened his ball cap and said, “That’s it, then, boys. We’re outta here.”
David whipped out his wallet and began extracting dollar bills, but the man lifted his clipboard in refusal. “Naw, see, we done been tipped. The big guy, he said we wasn’t to take nothing else.”
David stashed the bills, folded his wallet and slipped it back into his hip pocket. “Have a good one, then, guys.”
“No problem.” They went out and closed the door behind them.
Laurel walked around the rocker, wary lest it spring to life and bite her. David chuckled and shook his head. “Sit down and rock the baby back to sleep. Then I’ll help you move it all into place.” He looked around. “I guess I could deflate the air mattress while you’re at it” He maneuvered around the sofa and sat down on the floor near the corner where she kept her “bed.” She sat down in the rocker, frowning to find it exceptionally comfortable, and helped Barry find a relaxing position.
He stared up at her for several minutes, occasionally patting her chin, then poked his middle finger into his mouth and closed his eyes. He’d recently replaced his pacifier with that middle finger, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what had prompted it One thing about a finger, it didn’t get lost She couldn’t very well take it away from him, however. She continued rocking gently until his little face went so lax that he began to drool. Then she tugged the finger from his mouth and rocked a minute or two longer before carefully rising, winding her way to the crib, and lowering him into it. He turned onto his side and stuck his finger into his mouth again. Sighing, Laurel tucked the blanket around him and turned to face a more immediate problem.
David was watching her, the deflated and folded air mattress in his arms. “Where do you want this?”
Laurel put a hand to her hair. “I don’t know.” She looked around her. “I don’t know where I want anything. Or if I want it at all.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you want it? You obviously need it…and Edward obviously needs to’ give it to you.”
That, of course, was the problem. “He doesn’t need anything from me. He’s just trying to salve a guilty conscience.”
David bowed his head, considering, then he lifted it again to give her one of his let’s-be-honest looks. “Can you really not forgive him, Laurel, or is it something else?”
She frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you?”
She hated it when he did that. She never knew what he wanted her to say, and she never enjoyed searching for it. Wandering over to the rocker, she dropped back down into it and threw one long bare leg over the padded arm, flipping her sandal against the bottom of her foot. “Stop playing psychiatrist,” she grumbled.
David moved to the end of the sofa nearest to her and sat down, leaning forward in that earnest way of his. “Can’t. A psychiatrist is what I am. Besides, I hate dishonesty, even if it’s yourself you’re lying to.”
Laurel wrinkled up her nose. “I’m not lying to myself.”
“No?”
She tugged at the hem of her shorts, refusing to look at him. After a while, she grudgingly gave in. “How am I lying to myself?”
As usual, he turned his answer into a question. “Haven’t you already forgiven him, Laurel?”
She averted her eyes again. “What makes you say that?”
“Oh, the way you’ve been defending him to Fancy lately, the detailed explanations about how he might have come to his erroneous conclusion, the self-deprecating disclosures about your past, the careful way you’ve omitted any reference to kissing him.”
Laurel felt the color drain from her face and then surge back again, stronger than before. She swallowed a lump in her throat, kept her eyes on the hem of her shorts and shrugged. David leaned back and crossed his legs.
“Well, you did slap him. Maybe you hated his kisses.”
She glowered, but she couldn’t hold it and wound up screwing up her face in a grimace. David folded his arms, sighing.
“Hmm, I didn’t think so.”
Exasperated, Laurel lashed out. “It doesn’t mean anything!”
David leaned forward, elbows on knees, tone and expression earnest. “I think you’re in love with him.”
Laurel sucked in her breath suddenly, whispering, “No.” Desperately she shook her head. “No. Don’t say that, please!" David let his head drop. For a long moment, he seemed to be thinking, but then he looked up again, and that comforting smile was in place. “What about dinner? We’ve got this lovely furniture to sit on now, and even a television.”
Laurel made herself relax. If there was something a little desperate about it, if her heart was beating painfully, she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think at all. Later she would decide what to do about the furniture, about Edward, about everything. Later.
She put on a watery smile. “Chinese or Italian?”
Chapter Ten
Edward stripped off his tie, tossed it into the middle of the glasstopped table and unbuttoned the top three buttons of his shirt. It was too damned hot for May. It was too damned hot for anytime, especially nighttime. He didn’t know what he was doing here anyway. He had work to do, and he was in no mood to sit here alone on the Sugarmans’ back deck listening to the bug zapper electrocute innocent winged insects. He grabbed the tie, stuffed it into his pants pocket and got up to go, snagging his coat from the back of the chair. He met Parker and Kendra in the doorway. Kendra carried a plate of sandwiches, and Parker a tray of tumblers filled with ice tea. Kendra put up a hand to block his way.
“Oh, no you don’t You sit right back down there and relax. I’ve made you some sandwiches.”
“Better do as she says,” Parker told him, slipping around them both to place the tray on the table. “She’s using her nurse’s voice.” He winked. “She’ll be ordering restraints next, and you know I can’t resist her in that mode.”
Kendra scolded him with narr
owed eyes and plucked Edward’s coat out of his hands. “Sit.”
Grumbling, he turned around and took his place at the table.
Kendra set the plate of sandwiches before him. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“That’s obvious.” She draped his suit coat over the back of his chair, then pulled out the chair on his left and sat down. “You’ve lost weight. You’re not taking care of yourself.”
“Something wrong?” Parker asked, every syllable rife with special meaning.
He knew what they thought, that he was wasting away with guilt over Laurel. Well, they could think what they liked. He’d been over and over it in his mind, and he figured that he’d done the best he could where Laurel was concerned. It wasn’t his fault she’d done all those stupid things. No one could hold him responsible for how things had seemed. He wished that she hadn’t found out about the scheme to have Greenlea secretly evaluate her, but he couldn’t do anything about that now, and if anyone was to blame, it was Greenlea.
As for himself, if he could change anything, he’d change those kisses. He’d make those kisses never happen. He’d go back to that moment in his office when he’d thought to teach her an obvious lesson and he’d simply sit there looking at her like she’d lost her mind until she realized her stupidity. He’d go back to that electric moment in his car when he’d never wanted anything so much as he’d wanted to lock lips with her, and instead he’d smile politely and say, “Let me walk you to your door.” And then he’d go home without getting his face slapped, which, by the way, was suitable recompense for his own stupidity. Add to that the fact that he’d spent a small fortune for furniture to make her current circumstances more comfortable, and he’d done everything he could do to make amends. If she was too ill-natured to respond with more than a hurried telephone call to tell him that she wasn’t sure she could keep it, he’d be damned if he’d go around on bended knee to beg forgiveness. Been there. Done that. No, he wasn’t eaten up with guilt. He was just too busy, always too busy—and too much alone.