Present Danger

by Susan Andersen

  Otis arrived at noon. “Here,” he said, tossing a long white bag at James, “I brought you a sub.” He crossed over to the table where the drawings were laid out. Planting his large fists on the tabletop, he leaned over to study them.

  James joined him, dropping into a chair and pulling his sandwich out of the bag. The smell of vinegar wafted up as he unrolled the inner wrappings.

  “This looks like a slick little arrangement, Jimmy,” Otis commented, glancing up at him. Then he turned his attention back to the set of plans. “I don’t see a place for the switches, though. Do you have ‘em marked?”

  James leaned over and tapped a spot on the blueprint with one long finger. “Here, on the underside of the lip of her nightstand,” he said. “I haven’t marked the living room switch yet, because I’m still undecided. If he should somehow manage to get in here undetected, next to the door’s not gonna do her any good. He’s not apt to let her go in that direction. Kitchen’s a maybe. She’s got a nice set of knives in there that she could use to hold him off, but I don’t know … once in there, she’s also trapped—and given her weight and size, I’m afraid most weapons could be turned against her. I like the middle of the living room best … it gives her more options and more room to maneuver. But how do we run the wires along the hardwood floors? They’re either noticeable or they’re a hazard.”

  “How about drilling a hole and snaking it through?”

  James shook his head. “Works going down. That’s what I’m doing in the bedroom. But coming up is another matter … we need a hole at least large enough to accommodate my hand. I haven’t checked yet to see if we can pry up a board. The subflooring’s not a problem. We can always knock a hole in that.” He balled up the waxed paper that had held his sandwich and pushed back from the table. “Thanks for the lunch. Let’s get to work.”

  When James buzzed Aunie in later that afternoon, she raced up the stairs two at a time, anxious to see what progress he had made on the alarm system. She was smiling with anticipation as she barrelled through the front door, but she came to a dismayed halt just inside the entrance to the living room. “Oh, m’gawd! What have you done to my walls?”

  “It was necessary, “ James informed her tersely. Raising his voice, he called, “Okay, Otis! Snake ‘er through.” He shined a flashlight into the hole he’d knocked in the wall, then spared a glance at Aunie’s stricken face. “I’ll fix it, Aunie. It’ll look good as new when I’m done; I promise.”

  Dazed, Aunie sank down on the couch cushions. She hadn’t really considered how a person would go about installing an alarm. Staring at the black T-shirt stretched tautly across James’s shoulders and back as he hunched muttering to himself over the hole in her wall, she realized she had naively assumed it was merely a matter of hooking one up. Not one of her brighter assumptions, obviously. The thing had to have a source of electricity and electricity meant wires, and James had told her he was going to run some wires, but… well, she simply hadn’t given the matter enough thought.

  Lola breezed in moments later. She took one look at Aunie’s face and whipped across the room in a swirl of cotton skirts. Sitting down next to her on the couch, she reached over to pat her hand. “The mon didn’t warn you about the mess, woo-mon?”

  “No. I guess I should have realized …”

  “You’re not an electrician, girl, no reason you should. Come.” She stood and pulled Aunie up with her. “You come wid me. Load your purse wid money … we go do some shoppin’. Make you forget the mons turnin’ this place into a madhouse.”

  “Oh, Lola, that sounds like an excellent idea.” Aunie picked up the book bag she’d dropped in her surprise and carried it to the dining room. She retrieved her purse from the bedroom—where she found Otis down on all fours next to the bed, feeding wire down a small hole in the carpet—then she returned to Lola. “I’m ready.”

  The phone rang and everyone stilled.

  Aunie picked it up, only to hear the party at the other end disconnect. Glancing at her watch, she noted the time on the pad placed next to the phone for that purpose. She looked up to find James regarding her tensely over his shoulder.

  “That him?”

  “Yes. At least … yes.” She supposed it remained to be seen if it were Wesley, but it was definitely her caller.

  “Shit,” he whispered and turned back to his work.

  Aunie and Lola spent the rest of the afternoon shopping. They spent more than an hour in the infant department at one store, exclaiming over tiny little shoes and stretchies, narrowing down future choices for decorating a nursery.

  Aunie insisted on cooking a special dinner for everyone as a partial payment for all the hard work they were doing on her behalf, and on the way home they stopped at a grocery store for the ingredients. She went to work in the kitchen as soon as they returned.

  Dinner was finished, the alarm installed, and the walls replastered by eight o’clock. James watched Aunie gaze around her in dismay as they gave Lola and Otis enough time to reach James’s and the Jacksons’ apartments before testing the new system. “The plaster has to set,” he informed her gently. “I’ll touch up the paint tomorrow afternoon.”

  She turned to him, reaching out to touch his arm. “Thank you, James,” she said softly. “For everything. You must think I’m spoiled rotten, but I really do appreciate—”

  The phone rang.

  When she answered it, it was Lola. “Flip the switch, woo-mon.”

  Aunie glanced at James and he nodded. She flipped the switch that he had installed on the underside of the end table next to her couch.

  Over the phone, she could hear a faint beeping and she laughed, turning to James. “It works!” Spontaneously, she threw her free arm around his narrow waist and hugged him tightly. “You are so clever!” Releasing him, she spoke excitedly into the phone.

  Later that evening, Aunie thought a great deal about her relationship with the three people who had just left. It was her belief, generated by hard experience, that adversity, more than any other factor, most accurately measured the depth of a friendship. When times were tough, one established rather quickly who one’s real friends were. That had been emphatically driven home when she had divorced Wesley and discovered herself to be quite without any, her many acquaintances nowhere to be found. For the first time, she’d been made to realize that, in spite of having been surrounded by people all her life, she’d never had a genuine friendship with anyone.

  So when she’d started taking courses at the college in Atlanta, she’d been determined to change all that. She had forged a few tentative new relationships despite the hindrance of her shyness. She liked to believe they would have eventually progressed had Wesley’s actions not forced her to flee. She already knew, however, that she hadn’t been accepted as readily or as immediately by anyone back home as she had been by Lola and Otis Jackson. From the very first day when she had arrived bearing the fresh marks of Wesley’s beating, they had made her feel welcome. Without question or reservation … never once had she felt that their acceptance was conditional on the way she looked or the amount of money she possessed.

  And then there was James, who, despite his many protests to the contrary, had nevertheless been there to offer his help every single time she was in need of it. She loved all three of them.

  She was in love with him.

  As she sat curled up in the corner of her couch, staring at the raw patches of plaster that changed the appearance of her living room from upscale yuppie to tenement tacky, she didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or to cry. God. She’d never dreamed she’d fall in love with a man whose hair was longer than her own. She’d never thought she’d fall in love with a man who swore at her, ordered her around, and assumed command of her life when it suited him, without the least regard to her own wishes or protests.

  And she certainly never dreamed she would fall in love with a man who repeatedly told her she wasn’t his type and refused the use of her body before she’d even thou
ght to offer it.

  But she had. Lord have mercy … she had.

  She’d realized it this afternoon as she’d watched him working so competently on the installation of her alarm, but she had a feeling it had been brewing inside her, unacknowledged, for quite some time now. She should have considered the possibility the very first time she had wondered what it would be like to make love with him.

  For, if the truth were known, she had a sneaking suspicion she was one of those depressing women who had to be in love in order to make love. It would explain why, in all those years when the subject of sex had filled her mind with erotic fantasies, she had always shied away from any actual opportunities to experience it for herself. It wasn’t until she’d fallen in love with Wesley that she’d truly felt prepared to seek carnal knowledge … and then she’d been raring to go.

  For all the good it had done her.

  But that was really beside the point. The question was: What was she going to do now?

  How did she go about reconciling her need for independence with James’s propensity for barging in and taking over? She might love him to pieces, but never again would she relinquish her own plans and dreams in order to fall docilely into line with some masculine vision of what was supposed to be.

  But to be utterly fair, there was one fact she had to acknowledge. Both of the ideas that James had brought up thus far were indisputably viable. They were inventive, designed for her protection … and, dammit, she hadn’t thought of them on her own. Having admitted as much, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to take it one step further. In all likelihood, he’d probably known what he was talking about as well when he’d spoken of showing her ways to mitigate her helplessness. So, perhaps …

  Oh, what the hell. She’d let him take over—for the time being at any rate—and as long as he didn’t attempt to force her into doing something she didn’t want to do. At worst, she might learn something. At best …

  Well, at best, she would at least get to see more of him.

  Aunie was involved in an animated debate with two of her fellow students as she exited her last class of the day. They paused in the corridor outside the classroom, and she hefted the strap of her bulky book bag to a more comfortable fit on her shoulder as she leaned forward attentively to listen to the argument being presented by one of her companions.

  “Aunie.” The voice was a deep rumble and her head whipped around in surprise. Otis lounged against a nearby wall, a huge, dark, monolithic presence who drew sidelong stares even as those watching were careful to skirt around him. The overhead light picked out the ridge of scar tissue on his hard, ebony skull, and the small golden hoop with its tiny bead of onyx that Aunie had given him for Christmas gleamed in his ear. Even covered by a lightweight sweater and jeans, his physique was formidable. Aunie excused herself from her wide-eyed classmates and crossed the hall to him.

  “Hi, Otis,” she said with a smile. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to escort you home,” he said in a deep, soft voice that nevertheless carried, and Aunie almost laughed at the preponderance of dropped jaws around her. She spotted Mary in the distance. Her friend’s cocked eyebrow seemed to ask, What’s up? and she headed in their direction. But before she could successfully navigate her way to them against the flow of student traffic, Otis had wrapped one meaty hand around Aunie’s elbow and steered her toward the exit. She looked over her shoulder and grimaced, shrugging in response to Mary’s bewilderment as she allowed Otis to guide her out the door.

  “Just one more of James’s little plans, I take it?” she commented mildly as he opened the passenger door of his illegally parked candy-apple red Thunderbird for her. She made no move to get in.

  Otis eyed her warily, but before he could respond Mary raced up. She skidded to a halt before him, out of breath. “What’s going on?”

  “Where are you parked?” was his only reply.

  “Over by the reservoir.”

  “Get in,” he said and flipped the seat forward for her to climb in the back. “I’ll drive you over.” His expression and tone clearly said Don’t push me, and both women climbed into the car.

  “Now,” he said as he pulled into a parking spot that had just been vacated behind the reservoir, “here’s the deal.” He turned to Aunie. “We only have your supposition that your caller is Wesley. Could be you’re right. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you’re wrong.” He waited, wondering if she’d argue with him.

  Aunie shrugged. “True.”

  “If it should turn out that your caller is not your ex-husband, but rather the same person who’s been harassing the other students at this college,” Otis continued, “and if, as seems likely, he is a student here himself, then Jimmy feels a show of strength is called for.”

  “And that’s you.”

  “And that’s me. Today. If your caller is a student here, he’s gonna see for himself that you are not unprotected.”

  Mary slapped the back of the front seat. “I love it!”

  Aunie didn’t share her enthusiasm, but she had to. admit that it made sense. That was the damnable thing about James’s plans. She always felt an instinctive desire to protest his interference, but she never did, because his ideas always made sense.

  And she always wished she’d thought of them first.

  James stuck his head out into the hallway when Aunie returned from her workout at the gym. “Where y’ been?” he inquired, and she knew she would have bristled at his presumption if his tone hadn’t been so friendly.

  She found he was a hard man to resist when he was feeling friendly.

  “Workin’ out with Leon.”

  He stepped out into the hall. “That’s right. Otis mentioned something about that.”

  Aunie shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah, well … I don’t know if it’ll do me much good if it ever comes down to hand-to-hand combat with Wesley, but …”

  “Hey, it builds endurance,” he interrupted her. “It can only help.”

  “That’s what I thought. If nothin’ else, I can always outrun him.”

  He came closer and reached for her hand. He studied it for a moment, then let it go; transferring his gaze from her fingers to her eyes. “Grow your nails.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your fingernails. Let ‘em grow. Long nails are an excellent weapon.”

  “Oh.” She studied them herself. “Okay.”

  “What time you gettin’ home tomorrow?”

  She looked at him askance but politely replied, “About the same time as now, I imagine. After school I usually study for a while and then I go to the gym for a workout.” She tilted her head to one side inquiringly. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m gonna teach you some of the basics for fightin’ dirty.” He grinned at her expression. She was looking at him as if he had suggested she dance topless on a gin-joint tabletop. “Wear something comfortable.”

  “You’ve had some really good ideas, James,” she replied with a certain inbred haughtiness, “but this is not one of them. This is certifiable.”

  “Yeah?” In a flash, he had her pinned to the wall, her hands pulled high above her head and rendered immobile by one large fist, her lower body trapped by the strength of his legs. “So whaddaya gonna do?” he breathed into her hair. Closing his eyes, he inhaled her scent.

  “Spit in your eye?” she suggested between her teeth. She hated it when he was right. Hated it, hated it, hated it.

  She felt warm and soft and smelled even better, pressed between his body and the wall, and James’s body responded enthusiastically. His erection was painful and immediate. Dammit! What was it about this one little woman? He didn’t understand this at all.

  Oh, not the hard-on; that came as no major surprise. But these feelings all churning around inside of him … Something had to be done about those. They were so damn intense. The only other thing he’d ever felt this strongly about was his ‘toons.

  And that didn’t make a go
ddamn lick of sense.

  He stepped back and released her. “Wear something comfortable,” he reiterated with studied casualness. Then he turned and walked away.

  Aunie walked out of her last class on Friday expecting to see Otis once again. But it was Bob who leaned against the far wall.

  “Hiya, kid,” he said, pushing himself erect. He offered his tattooed arm. “Your chariot awaits.”

  “Oh, no,” she protested weakly moments later when he stopped in front of a huge, black Harley Davidson. She had never ridden on a motorcycle in her life.

  “You’ll be safe as houses,” he assured her, patting the bike seat with pride. “She’s a full-dress hog, and I brought a helmet just for you.” Rummaging through the saddlebag, he extended it to her. Out of the other one, he pulled a wadded-up leather jacket. “Here. Jimmy thought y’ might need this, too.” He took her book bag and arranged it in the storage space, then watched as she donned her borrowed safety apparel. Grinning at the picture she made in Jimmy’s jacket, which was large enough to wrap around her twice and had sleeves that dangled well below her fingertips, he flipped up the tinted visor to her helmet. “You’re okay, kid,” he said, peering in at her wide brown eyes. “Climb aboard and hang on.” He flipped the visor closed again and boarded his motorcycle.

  Aunie gamely climbed on behind him and put her arms around his waist. She saw several of her fellow students eyeing Bob and her with amazement as he roared away from the curb. Mary had gleefully informed her yesterday that the new word around school was that Aunie Franklin kept dangerous company.

  James would be tickled to hear it, she was sure. Wait until her schoolmates got a load of him. They hadn’t even seen him yet, and he was probably the most dangerous of them all. She was beginning to think that facile mind of his was downright scary.

  James watched from his apartment window as she climbed off his brother’s bike a short while later. Seeing her in his jacket, he got another of those weird churnings in his gut. As he watched, she reached up with invisible, leather-covered fingers to remove the helmet and hand it to Bob. She shook her head as she spoke to him, and her expensively cut, shiny brown hair flew gently around her face until it gradually all swayed smoothly into place, once again hugging her nape and jaw. Whispering an obscenity, James turned away from the window.