Accidentally Yours

by Bettye Griffin

  “I’m not going to New London. I have a friend who lives up near Hartford. She’s the one I’m going on the safari with. We try to get together once a month.” That much was true, but she and Lauren Walters usually met in Stamford, the halfway point between their respective locations.

  “All right. I guess I’ll talk to you when you get back.” Was she imagining it, or did a knowing look cross his face?

  “I’m awfully tired, Bernard. I’m going to go home now.” She unlocked her car door.

  There was something in his kiss that told her he knew what was coming. His lips touched hers for just for a second and managed to reflect power and defeat at the same time.

  She waved to him as she drove off. The evening she’d dreaded for days was over. It hadn’t been too bad, if you didn’t count a lustful uncle, a horny dog, and a mother who thought she was a lush.

  She glanced at the clock on the dashboard display. It was early, only eight-forty-five. Good. All she could think about was going home to Zack. She hated to admit it, but she was going to miss him when he was gone.

  Chapter 12

  Brutal

  Zack looked at Vivian carefully. “You’re sure you’re up to it?”

  “Absolutely. Whenever you’re ready.”

  He hadn’t expected her to really want to go out again once she returned home; he thought she was only trying to humor him when she made the suggestion. But he also hadn’t expected her to return this early, either. He reached for his crutches.

  “Hey, you’ve really gotten good on those things.”

  “Thanks. I’ve had practice.” He eased down the stairs. It was a slow process, but when he got to the bottom he felt fine, not exhausted and weak the way he had after leaving the ER. This was actually the second time he’d ventured downstairs this evening; he’d paid a visit to Austin’s parents while Vivian was gone.

  She held the door open for him, and he breathed in a great gulp of night air. “Oh, that smells good. I’ve had the windows open during the day, but there’s nothing like letting fresh air surround you.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked when they were in his forest green Blazer, which he insisted they take; it had been sitting idle for two days and was due to be moved anyway; the street sweepers would be coming through overnight.

  “A little place called Smitty’s. It’s not far from here.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s a nice place. The bartender sings.”

  “He sings?”

  “He’s good at it, too. You’ll see.”

  Minutes later they arrived at the small establishment that had been a favorite of his ever since he had dated a young woman who lived nearby. They had broken up years ago, and the last he heard she was married and living in Maryland, but he still stopped in at the bar whenever he was in the area.

  Lemuel Smith, the owner, was tending bar. “Hey, it’s the Zack attack!” he greeted, smiling broadly. His gaze took in Zack’s crutches and arm sling. “What happened, you get run over by a bus?”

  Zack laughed. “I fell off a ladder.”

  “Broke your ankle, huh?”

  “No, just a sprain. I should be back on both feet Friday.” Zack turned to Vivian. “Vivian, this is Lemuel Smith. Lem, Vivian St. James.”

  “Are you the gentleman who sings?” she asked as she shook his hand.

  “That’s me. I’ll serenade you while you’re having your drinks. What’ll you have?”

  Zack ordered beer and Vivian requested wine. They brought their glasses to one of the booths lining the opposite wall, and he asked the question that had been on his mind ever since she returned. “How was dinner?”

  She rolled her eyes. “To sum it up nicely, it was awful. But I know I’ll sleep good tonight—this is my third glass of wine.”

  “And your last. You’re driving.” It probably wasn’t nice of him, but he was relieved to learn the evening hadn’t been pleasant for her. Perhaps that meant she was ready to write off her date. Had it been Bernard Williams, or someone else she’d met?

  He watched Vivian turn sharply when Lemuel began to sing along with the slow jam on the jukebox, his rich baritone amplified by the microphone he kept behind the bar. He was an excellent singer, reminding him of Will Downing.

  “Wow. He’s really good.” Her admiration was evident in her dreamy facial expression.

  “I wish you’d look at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re willing the person you’re looking at to sweep you up and carry you off.”

  “Can you sing to me like that?”

  “I couldn’t carry a tune if it came in a briefcase with a million dollars.”

  They only stayed long enough to have one drink. “You’d better get some sleep,” Zack told her. “I’d hate for the future manager of human resources to be found slumped over her desk, snoring.” He was yawning himself by the time they got back to Vivian’s apartment. Today was the most active day he’d had since his injury, and he’d been on red alert during the brief ride home, making certain she had no problems driving. “Sweet dreams,” he called out as she headed for her bedroom, her gait just a tad slow after three glasses of wine in relatively quick succession. He would have liked to kiss her again, even if it was for just a moment, but he passed. If she’d been with a date earlier, no matter how bad it was, she had probably already been kissed. He preferred to be the only one.

  *****

  Vivian fell asleep wondering why he hadn’t kissed her.

  When she woke up she wondered why he hadn’t kissed her.

  During the drive to work she wondered why he hadn’t kissed her. She was beginning to see Zack Warner in a different light, and she would have welcomed his embrace.

  When she arrived at work she had to put him out of her mind; she had too much to do.

  Zack himself had given her an idea of how to handle her biggest problem. Writing an anonymous note to the purchasing manager seemed cowardly, but under the circumstances it would save embarrassment, both hers and his. The trouble was, she had been drafting official-sounding correspondence for so long everything she wrote had that human resources air about it. She needed to sound ordinary, not administrative; none of that “it has recently been brought to my attention” stuff.

  She was pretty satisfied with what she had drafted when she took a call from the lab that processed their new employees’ chemical tests. “Hi, Sharon! What’s up?”

  “We’ve got a positive, Vivian.”

  “Oh, no! Who is it?”

  “Dennis Chin.”

  “Dennis Chin!” she exclaimed. “You’re kidding.”

  “I was kind of surprised, too. He’s so bookish, reminds me of Clark Kent. But he’s got marijuana and cocaine in his system.”

  “Are you sure you got the right results?”

  “Positive.”

  Vivian sighed. “I guess I’ll have to be the bearer of bad news.” She wasn’t looking forward to it, but company policy mandated that anyone who failed the drug test would be let go immediately. She wasn’t expecting to have to handle anything like this. Why was all this stuff happening while Lisa was out of town?

  She put in a call to the MIS director, Mel Norris. Maybe he would volunteer to give Dennis the ax. But even as she pecked out the four-digit extension, she didn’t feel particularly optimistic. Mel was an affable chap in his sixties whose previously silver hair was now brown (courtesy of one of those dye products whose slogan to a public they obviously thought stupid was that no one would notice). He was an excellent manager, but his style included leaving personnel matters to human resources.

  She took a deep breath when he answered. “Hello, Mel. It’s Vivian St James.”

  “Hullo, Vivian.”

  She winced. Mel was brilliant, but he had a slow, deliberate way of speaking that suggested an IQ of fifty. “The lab just called, Mel. They said Dennis Chin tested positive for marijuana and cocaine.”

  Silen
ce. Finally he spoke. “Dennis? Are they certain?”

  “I had the same reaction. I asked if there was any possibility of an error, but they said it was correct.”

  “That’s too bad. I’m certainly surprised. I guess you’ll want to see him.”

  A euphemism for terminating him, she knew. So much for hoping he would handle it. But of course it wasn’t his responsibility, it was hers. Dennis had fooled them all. “I was going to call him down now, but I wanted to notify you first”

  “Thank you. I’ll try to talk to him when he comes up to get his things.”

  Sheer nerves made her wait a half-hour before asking Dennis to come to her office. This would not be pleasant, and the procrastinator in her wanted to put it off as long as possible.

  But she knew she couldn’t hold off forever, so she called Mel’s secretary to get Dennis’s extension, then placed the call. “Hi, Dennis. Vivian St James in human resources…fine, thanks. I need to see you about something important. Can you come down to my office?”

  “Sure. Be right there.”

  Dennis didn’t appear suspicious of her motives when he announced his arrival by knocking on her open office door. “What’d I do, forget to sign something?”

  “Come in, Dennis, and close the door.”

  In the few seconds it took for him to be seated, his demeanor went from joviality to anxiousness. She saw him grip the arms of the chair and knew the first gnawings that something was wrong were taking effect.

  She cleared her throat and wished there was an easy way to say it. “Dennis, I’m afraid I have bad news.” She reminded herself that he certainly knew his own habits. Maybe he had misjudged the time it would take for the substances to clear his system.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Our lab tells us that you tested positive.”

  If the distress on his face was any indicator, Dennis was a fabulous actor. His forehead wrinkled as he shook his head, looking as disbelieving as anyone would if she’d just announced that Martians had landed in the parking lot. “It’s a mistake,” he said. “I don’t use drugs. I’ve never used drugs.”

  She wanted to badly to believe him. She could no easier picture Dennis with a joint between his fingers as she could picture Newt Gingrich naked. “They said they were certain, Dennis. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re firing me? For something I didn’t do?”

  “We don’t allow anyone who tests positive to remain in our employ. That’s the rule, and there can’t be any exceptions. I’m sure you understand.”

  “But they’re wrong!”

  Oh, my. His voice had broken, and were those tears in his eyes? This was so difficult. She didn’t understand how people could deliberately be cruel, like a landlord who chose the day when a snowstorm hit to evict a family with small children. “I’m so sorry, Dennis, but those are the rules. I have to abide by them.”

  “The lab made a mistake. Let them retest me. They won’t find any drugs in my system.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t do that. Giving second chances isn’t practical. The drugs in your system could have cleared out in the interim.”

  “Drugs? Plural?”

  “They found traces of both marijuana and cocaine.”

  He opened his mouth, but no words came out. He looked almost comical, sitting there wild-eyed with his mouth wide open. And then, as he closed his mouth, the tears poured out in earnest. His upper body trembled, and he removed his glasses to wipe his eyes with his palms.

  She leaned forward and handed him her box of tissues, trying to think of something comforting to say. She had little sympathy for people who used drugs or indulged in any behavior they knew had serious consequences, then expressed remorse when they were caught, but something about Dennis inspired compassion in her. “I wish there was something I could do,” was the best she could come up with.

  He stopped crying and wiped his eyes. “I swear to you, Vivian, it’s not possible for them to have found drugs in me.” He waved a hand when he saw her mouth open in protest. “It’s not fair. They make a mistake and I pay for it. I have no job, no way of paying my bills, my reputation is ruined…I went for that test on Friday afternoon. Someone was thinking about their plans for the weekend and mis-labeled my results.”

  “I’m sorry, Dennis,” she repeated.

  “I am, too.” He got up and left. She was glad to see he had recovered his dignity enough to leave with his head held high, but she found the entire experience unnerving.

  *****

  “I tell you, Glenda, the man was sobbing. It was so embarrassing.” Vivian was sitting in a hard plastic chair facing her friend’s desk in the payroll office.

  “I’ll bet. All I can say is he doesn’t look like a party animal to me.”

  “What a week I’m having!” she exclaimed.

  “It’s not all that bad. You don’t have to worry about Bernard anymore.” A curious Glenda had called her at home last night, but she’d been too groggy to talk. Vivian wasn’t surprised when Glenda came to the human resources office first thing in the morning, armed with a cup of steaming coffee and a cinnamon bun, to get the scoop about dinner at the Williams’s. “And at five o’clock you can go home and relax with Zack. What’s he making you for dinner tonight?”

  “Probably nothing. I have to go food shopping. My freezer’s empty except for maybe a pound of ground beef.” She paused, not sure if she was ready to confide a feeling so startlingly new to her. “Glenda, I like Zack. I mean, I really like him.”

  “Uh-oh. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I don’t know what you’re thinking. All I know is that I like him. He’s witty, he’s charming, he’s handsome...”

  “He’s a doctor,” Glenda concluded.

  She shrugged. “You’ve got to admit that doesn’t hurt.”

  “Well, you’ve got an ideal opportunity here. He’ll be your prisoner for two more days yet.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that, Glenda. He’s so popular with the ladies. You should have heard him at the hospital. He makes no secret of the fact that there are women who’d jump at the chance to marry him. It’s hard to compete with that…and I’m not sure I want to.”

  “Come on, Viv. Do you really want to have a man nobody else wants? At least let him know you’re interested. It doesn’t mean you have to give up any other invitations you might receive. Especially if you know he isn’t.”

  “Speaking of which, you’ll never believe who asked me to lunch. Timothy Golden. The auditor.”

  “That old guy? His first job was probably keeping records for Noah, making sure only two of each species got on board the ark.”

  “Come on, Glenda. He’s not that ancient.”

  “He’s fifty if he’s a day.”

  “Maybe. Do you know anything about him?”

  “Not really. I’ve never worked with him. He does the important stuff, corporate balance sheets, accounts payable, things like that. Payroll is easy to audit, so they assign me the newbies, the kids right out of college with the dumb nicknames. This year I had Whitey.”

  “Whitey!”

  “Yeah. He’s one of those people who are so fair they’re almost colorless. He told me that when he was a kid his hair was so blond it was almost white. I’m sure he’ll learn soon enough that he’ll have to drop that nickname in favor of the one he was given, or else the only star he’ll be is on the firm’s softball team.”

  Vivian thought about Glenda’s advice after returning to her office. Technically, Zack was a captive in her apartment. She decided the best thing she could do was spend as much time as possible with him while he was staying with her. It was clear from the way he kissed her the night before last that he found her attractive, but she also knew he was cut off from his usual social connections. He had probably never gone so long without female companionship, and she had to consider a possible connection between that and her suddenly looking good to him. Still, it warmed her heart when he said he h
ad gotten a taste of what he was missing. She was going to do her best to drive that point home, show him how good it could be if he was willing to settle down.

  At a quarter to five she had her hand on the receiver when someone called out her name. She removed her hand and forced herself to sound jovial. “Hi, Jim. What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about getting my son a summer job. He’s a junior in high school and has expressed an interest in chemistry, and I think it might be a good experience for him to work in the lab.”

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t allow any kids to work in the lab since the explosion that Mr. Arndt’s son caused two years ago.” The man appeared a bit taken aback; she wasn’t certain if it was because of the news itself or the way in which she delivered it. She probably should have forced a solemn note into her voice instead of sounding so cheerful about an incident in which employees could have been hurt, but at least he made a hasty retreat. Good, she thought. He should be able to figure out that if one of the VP’s kids had done major damage to the lab, his own son didn’t stand a chance of being hired. She grabbed the phone and began dialing, anxious to hear Zack’s voice. “It’s me. Everything okay?”

  “Fine. You won’t be late, will you?”

  Was she imagining it or did he sound like he was eager to see her? “No.”

  “I forgot to tell you. I went down to visit with the Hugheses for a little while last night while you were out. Mrs. Hughes insisted we have dinner with them tomorrow night. Can you make it?”

  “Yes. That was sweet of her. I’ll bet they were surprised to see you all banged up.”

  “And even more to learn I’m staying with you. But don’t worry, I explained we’re not having a torrid affair.”

  She laughed, in spite of the sudden flush of heat in her face. “I’m calling to ask if you want to go to the supermarket with me. I know it’s not very exciting, but at least it’ll get you out of the apartment. If not, I’ll stop on my way home.”

  “I’ll go. After being in the house all day it’ll be fun to hang out in the produce department and sample the grapes and the cherries.”