For a moment, Will looked as though he might explode, and Aunie took a leery step backwards. But then he puffed up his cheeks and expelled a long breath. “Okay, maybe you have a point,” he conceded with a modicum of good grace. He even managed half a smile. “I’ll consider what you say, all right?”
“All right.”
His conscience pinching, Will was totally sincere as he spoke the words. He was almost thirty … maybe it was time he quit depending on Jimmy to bail him out every time he was in trouble. Maybe he should start figuring a way to take care of business for himself. He’d give it some real thought.
By the time he’d reached the main entrance door of the building, however, he was already wondering if Paul had any spare change, now that he was no longer putting all his money up his nose.
Aunie closed the door behind Will’s departing back and slowly slid down it until her knees were wobbling in front of her face. Of the many times she had fantasized the seduction of James Ryder, never had she visualized a morning after quite like this one. It had turned out to be a regular circus, and now she didn’t have a clue where she stood. Would James be back?
He had flat-out told her ages ago that he wasn’t big on commitment. That was something she had better keep in mind. And yet …
She couldn’t erase from her mind the way he’d looked at her just before he’d stomped out of the apartment. He’d looked at her as if he needed her understanding, her approbation … needed her. And, as much as the viciousness of his attack on Will had unsettled her, the fact remained he’d come unglued in defense of her. Almost as if… well, almost as if she were important to him.
Aunie pushed up from the floor and went into the bathroom to start a bath. In her bedroom, she picked James’s T-shirt off the floor and buried her nose in it, inhaling his scent. She found his shorts, shoes, and socks on the floor under the satin-and-lace spread when she pulled it up to make the bed. Gathering together the soiled items of his apparel, as well as a few discarded items of her own, she tossed them into her clothes hamper. Then she returned to the bathroom, shut off the steaming water, and removed her clothes. As she turned to drape her kimono and slip over a hook on the back of the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in its full length mirror and stilled.
“Oh … my … gaaawd.” She stepped closer and used her forearm to wipe the steam from the mirror’s surface. Lord have mercy. No wonder Will had felt free to voice those crude insinuations. She’d thought they’d simply come off the top of his head before she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
Talk about your morning afters. Caption her Tart on the Town. She’d always marked easily, so she didn’t give much consideration to the splotches of red that decorated much of her body. But look at her mouth— look at those whisker burns! They made her look so corrupt, so … slutty.
Slowly, slowly, her reflection’s lips curled up in a wicked smile, the dark eyes took on a knowing cast.
Because, honestly, hadn’t she had the most wonderful time of her life getting in this condition?
She whipped her kimono back on and went to the kitchen to mash up a couple ice cubes. Returning to the bathroom with them in a plastic baggie, she wrapped them in a washcloth, slid into the steaming bubbles with a sigh, and held the ice pack to her mouth. Ah gawd, that felt good. Her head tilted back against the rounded edge of the tub and her eyes closed.
Would James be back?
Or was she going to have to take matters into her own hands and go looking for him?
James was not accustomed to needing anyone, and he felt torn apart trying to deal with all the new emotions that kept surfacing. From his sixteenth year onward, his life had been spent catering to the needs of others, and aside from a growing desire for more privacy and fewer problems, he’d never questioned the rightness of his particular circumstance—it simply was.
When he slammed out of Aunie’s apartment that Saturday morning, however, nothing appeared simple. Temper high, heart pounding, stomach churning, he paused indecisively in the hall for about six heartbeats; then he loped down two flights of stairs to his basement workshop. He crossed straight to the heavy-equipment rack, where he picked out a sledgehammer of considerable size. He was too damn wired to work on his ‘toons. Might as well do something more in keeping with his mood.
It wasn’t until he bent a toe on the leg of his workbench that his attention was drawn to his lack of clothing … never mind proper work clothes. He slapped his jeans pockets, relieved to find his apartment key still intact. Well, thank God for small favors, at least. He sure as hell was in no mood to come under Lola’s eagle eye had he lost the damn thing in Aunie’s bedroom. He could swear, sometimes, that Lola was part witch. One look at him and she’d probably know exactly what was eating him.
And she’d offer a truckload of unwanted advice on what to do about it.
Hauling his sledgehammer with him, he went up to his place. He stood under the pounding spray of the shower for a long time, trying his damnedest to assemble a little rational thought. It proved to be a losing battle. He felt almost as if he had the flu: queasy stomach, aching head, and his mind was racing too rapidly to pin down any one thought long enough to deal with it. Climbing out, he dried off, dressed, and roughly towel-dried his hair. He took a brush to it, showing it no mercy, and rubber-banded it back. Hoping that the distress knotting his stomach was merely hunger, he padded into the kitchen, but nothing in his refrigerator appealed to him. He slammed the door shut. The hell with it. He’d eat later.
Digging through his files for the plans he’d drawn for the third floor, he collapsed cross-legged onto the floor and pored over them. He’d always planned to convert the four apartments up there into one large place for himself. It was a future project, but he decided he might as well start now by knocking out a wall or two. He could use a little catharsis.
He swung his sledgehammer at an interior wall in one of the upstairs apartments until his shoulders and arms burned in protest, but he failed to find a true measure of release for his bottled-up emotions. Usually self-aware and honest to a fault, he had built up a blind spot when it came to Aunie Franklin. A defense mechanism he refused even to acknowledge had guided his responses to her practically from the beginning … for somewhere deep inside of him lurked an instinctive awareness that she had the power to hurt him in ways he’d never been hurt before. So he stood within a cloud of plaster dust, angrily destroying the wall, and lied to himself, just as he’d been lying for months. He told himself that it was just because the sex last night had been so surprisingly good that he was feeling a little lost and edgy today. It had nothing to do with need. Nothing.
He ignored the fact that it wasn’t images of last night’s sex that were twisting his guts into a relentlessly agonized mass. Visual images flashed across his mind, all right, but they were images of her delicate skin marred by his careless handling, images of the expression on her elegantly structured face when he’d gone berserk with his brother. Oh God, that look. He kept seeing it. She’d stared at him as if wondering whether he had some latent penchant for destruction that she’d missed up until that moment, and he couldn’t shake that expression free of his mental viewing screens no matter how hard he tried.
Not for the world would he admit to a feeling of social inferiority when it came to her. Hell, he’d never felt inferior in his life, not to man, woman, or child, and he sure as hell didn’t now.
He was just having one of those days.
* * *
“Woo-mon! I’m so pleasured to see you … I thought you’d never get home!”
Aunie, who was barely through the oval-glassed front door, looked up to see Lola leaning out her open doorway. “Hi,” she said and smiled. Her tall, exotic friend was practically bristling with suppressed excitement. “What’s up? You look like you’ve just won the lottery.”
“Better.” Lola stood back, holding the door. “Please to come in.” As politely as she’d expressed it, it clearly wasn’t a request
Lola expected to be ignored. Aunie went in.
“Sit, sit.” Lola waved her to a chair. “Would you like some tea? Coffee? A Coke?”
“What I’d like,” Aunie retorted, grabbing Lola’s hand and dragging her onto the couch beside her, “is to know what’s going on. You look as if you’re about to explode.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh gawd, Lola, is it about a baby?”
Lola laughed and hugged herself. “Yes! Our social worker at the agency called!”
Aunie snapped upright. “And … and?”
“And she say there is a young woo-mon there who pick our family album!”
“Oh, Lola!” Aunie grasped her friend’s hands. “That’s marvelous news! Tell me everything.”
“She is young, only fifteen years old. She is due to deliver on June fifth.”
“That’s only a smidgin over two months to wait.”
“If she is on time. With a first baby, it’s just as likely she’ll be late. But, oh, I am so thrilled. I can bear the wait if I know that at the end of it we’ll be gettin’ our babe. I will fill the moments until then fixin’ a room for it.” Her laughter was deep and rich.
It was also contagious, and Aunie laughed with her. “Oh, Lola, congratulations. Otis must be terribly excited, too.”
Some of the laughter left Lola’s dark eyes. “He doesn’t know yet, woo-mon.”
“He doesn’t! Why?”
Lola bounced up from the couch, then sat down again. “The social worker, she call me ‘bout three hours ago. I call Otis immediately, but he’s ridin’ with the paramedics today. You were gone. James, he’s makin’ a racket up on the third floor like he has much on his mind, and from the sound of things, I think it best not to disturb him. I thought Otis should be here when I phoned his family to give them the news. I have been going coconuts with all this excitement and no one to tell. I’m so glad you finally came home.” She nibbled the skin around her fingernail. “I wish Otis would call me back.”
“I’m sure he will, the moment he gets back to the station. When does his rotation end?”
“Not until tomorrow afternoon. Look,” she leaned over to pick a heavy cookbook off the floor and flipped through the pages. “I thought I’d make this for dinner tomorrow night to celebrate,” she said, pointing to a colored photograph of beef Wellington.
“What a wonderful idea. I’ll bring down my crystal candleholders. They’d look pretty on the table.” Suddenly the couch vibrated and Aunie sat upright in apprehension. “What’s that?” She’d heard conversations among her fellow schoolmates about earthquakes and it flashed through her mind that this might be one. But if it were, the tremor quickly passed.
Lola squeezed her hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s only James. He must have knocked a main support beam.”
“I thought it was an earthquake,” Aunie admitted. She glanced at the ceiling. “What is he doin’ up there?”
“Workin’ out a load of aggression, I’d say,” Lola commented. She leaned forward and gently twitched aside Aunie’s flipped-up collar, studying the small, blood-red mark that had been mostly concealed beneath it. “You wouldn’t hoppen to know anything ‘bout James’s aggressions now would you, woo-mon?”
Aunie opened her mouth to tell Lola everything but discovered somewhat to her amazement that she could not. Funny, she’d planned to do exactly that earlier. Unsure if Otis were at home, however, and knowing she’d be uncomfortable discussing something so personal in front of James’s best friend, she had taken a cab over to Mary’s instead.
Mary hadn’t been home. Perhaps she should have paid more attention to the relief that had mixed with her disappointment as she’d turned away from her door, but until now it hadn’t fully registered. All she’d known at the time was that she was too restless to return to her apartment. She had wandered the shops downtown for several hours and then killed additional time by walking home instead of calling a taxi. And during that entire time, she’d carried on mental conversations with Lola, in which she received encouragement and solid advice.
Now she discovered that what had passed between James and her last night was too personal, too important to her to discuss … even with Lola, who knew him well. This was one problem she simply had to unravel for herself. She bit her lip and heard herself say, “I’m not precisely certain what James is feelin’ at this moment; but if you’re askin’ if it has anything to do with me, then I’d have to say yes, I think it does. I can’t talk about it, Lola.”
Lola studied her quietly. Finally, she said, “Just tell me this. Did James give you that mark or is he up there tearin’ apart the third floor because someone else did and he saw it?”
“Don’t be silly. This is Jimmy’s handiwork.”
“Don’t be silly, she say. I’ve been watchin’ the mon twitch like a finger on a hair-trigger for some time now, so I don’t think it’s silly. I don’t want to see him hurt, woo-mon, so don’t you go breakin’ his heart.”
Aunie laughed wearily. “Oh, Lola,” she sighed, “you’ve got it all backward. I love that man so much it’s drivin’ me crazy. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what the heck it is that he’s feelin’ for me.”
She stood at the base of the stairway to the third floor for several long moments, trying to summon the nerve to climb the stairs and confront James once and for all about their relationship. In the end, however, she chickened out. She kept hoping he would come to her apartment. When seven o’clock came and went, when all had been still on the third floor for over an hour and still he didn’t arrive on her doorstep, she didn’t know what to do. This morning it had seemed so simple, so clear-cut, to say that if he didn’t come to her she would go to him.
Now nothing seemed simple.
Yet…
Was this what she wanted? This uncertainty, this stark insecurity? When his eyes seemed to give her one message and his words gave her another, did she stake her happiness on trying to guess what he wanted? Or did she take the bull by the horns like a big girl and ask him what his intentions were?
Out in the hallway, James turned away from her door for the third time while he, too, argued with himself. He was unwilling to admit that he harbored any sort of need … and yet, he couldn’t seem to stay away from her. He lifted his hand to knock on the door, then let it drop to his side, its mission incomplete. What if she didn’t want to see him?
The thought brought his chin up. If she didn’t want to see him then that was just tough. She still needed his help, so she’d simply have to get used to having him around. He rang the doorbell.
The door was whipped open, and they stood face to face, hearts pounding. For several seconds they simply stared at each other warily.
Then Aunie launched herself at his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up his body, with the help of his hands on her bottom, until her legs were twined around his waist. “Oh gawd, Jimmy,” she mumbled into the warm contour of his neck. “I was so scared you weren’t comin’ back.”
CHAPTER 15
James’s arms tightened around her convulsively. He stepped into the apartment with Aunie still clinging to his torso like a treed cat and bumped the door shut behind him with his hip. He leaned back against it. “You aren’t mad at me then?” he asked in a hoarse voice, rubbing his jaw against her silky hair. God, she smelled so good, felt so good.
She shook her head against his throat. “Why would I be mad?”
Christ, if she didn’t already know, he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her. But she had already raised her head, loosened her grip on his neck, and was leaning back from the hips to look into his face, so he admitted, “For leaving hickeys all over you like some no-class teenager? I thought you’d be furious.”
“Over those?” She laughed in astonishment, dimples flashing. “Sugah, I’ve had bruises the color of pansies and the size of your fist from merely brushin’ up against a hard object. I mark easily. A few little ol’ red splotches are not gonna throw me into a tizzy.”
>
The knots in his stomach, which had begun to unravel the minute she’d thrown herself into his arms, finally dissolved entirely. He pushed away from the door and maneuvered her around until she was riding his back piggyback style. He jogged into the living room.
“Want to go for a walk around the neighborhood? I can show you some of the lesser known hidey-holes you may have missed.”
“Mm.” She nibbled on his earlobe. “It’s dark out there. I wanna make love.”
“Stop that!” He dropped her like a hot spud on the living room couch and stepped back, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Don’t tease me, Magnolia. You know we can’t do that.”
“I do?” Aunie pushed up on her elbows and knuckled her hair out of her left eye. “We can’t? Why not?”
“Why not! I went overboard last night and this morning you were walkin’ around here like a cowgirl after a week-long roundup.”
Aunie grinned at him and pulled up her sweater, showing him a pale blue satin-and-lace bra. “Yeah,” she murmured, “but I was still walking, wasn’t I?”
“C’mon,” he growled, eyes glued to the pale curves of her breasts. “Don’t do this to me. I’m trying to be responsible here.”
“Well, don’t be. Let me be responsible for myself.”
“I don’t want to hurt you!”
“You won’t. I took a long, hot bath this morning and I feel fine James, honest I do.” She reached for the button on her waistband. “Wanna see my matchin’ panties?”
James grabbed her wrists and slammed them to the cushions on either side of her head. Kneeling at the side of the couch, he glowered at her. “Yes, damn you, I do. Now, knock it off, will ya? I don’t have a whole lot of control around you, Aunie, and I don’t think I can stand another day like the one I just spent, feeling guilty and sick every time I thought of how carefully you had to walk because of me.”
“Let go of my wrists, Yank.” He did and she sat up, scooting into the corner of the couch. Pointedly, she pulled her sweater back down, picked up a throw pillow, and hugged it to her chest. “I think we’d better get a few things straight,” she said in a quiet voice filled with conviction. “First of all, nobody … not you, not some gynecologist with ten years worth of education … nobody knows my body better than I do. I’m tired of having you judge my endurance by my size, not to mention being less than thrilled when you make decisions that directly affect me without bothering to consult me first. I’m a grown woman, James, not a little girl.”
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