Against the Wind

by Gwynne Forster

  “What is it?” she asked him.

  His mind had been at work, but he didn’t let a person look at him and know his thoughts. He allowed himself a lazy half-smile. While Leslie had been looking over the apartment, he had been thinking over some of the things she’d told him

  “Leslie, have you borrowed money from anybody?”

  He knew she wanted to reveal as little as possible of herself, but he didn’t intend to give her an alternative. Without seeming to pressure her, he’d get what he was after, no matter how relentless he had to be. He had a right to certain information about his employees, and he didn’t pretend everything was fine when he could see that it wasn’t. Where there was smoke, look for fire.

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “I had to borrow money from a small finance company to finance a part of my education. The interest rate is very high, but at least I could get the loan without collateral. Repaying it has meant that I’ve had to put school on hold for a while.”

  “Probably a loan shark,” he muttered under his breath.

  School, huh? Probably the key to Leslie or one of them, but he’d let that go for the present. He didn’t mention another thing that was baffling him. She was here in this apartment alone with him, and she didn’t appear to be anxious. That pleased him, but he had no intention of mentioning it to her. She also seemed to have forgotten their conflict of only minutes ago. Well, better that than an atmosphere of animosity, he mused.

  Seeing the joy on her face, he urged, “All right, let’s go.” He looked down at her and realized that sometime since seven-thirty that morning when he’d bullied her, he’d developed a lot more compassion for her than was healthy. Damned if he could figure it out. “Come on, Leslie,” he roared—that demeanor being safer—”let’s get going.”

  Leslie headed back to the kitchen to tell Julia where she was going. Jordan might ignore the fact that her being away for a couple of hours in the morning would upset Julia’s work schedule, but she didn’t want to make an enemy of the woman. She stopped short as she reached the bottom of the stairs leading from the little apartment. Sometime in the course of the morning’s events, Jordan had ceased to be a gruff, demanding boss, who in her mind could, if he so decided, use his power and authority to wreck the lives of those beneath him. Somehow, his gentleness and compassion had made a mark with her and, in her perception of him, had replaced his toughness. Unless he had a multiple personality, he was a good man. He had barked at her because she’d broken his ironclad rule and come to work late, but as soon as he’d learned she had a problem, he’d reached out to her, offering her compassion and assistance. She skipped into the kitchen.

  “Julia, Jordan’s going to give me the apartment over the garage, and he wants me to get my things from the women’s residence in Preston right now. I know this’ll upset everything here.”

  Julia crammed leeks into the blender, put the lid on it and turned to face Leslie. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard recently. It’s a lovely apartment, and you won’t have those long trips every day. You go on. They’ll get cornbread instead of biscuits.”

  “Oh, no. If you measure out five pounds of flour and a pound and a quarter of lard, I’ll get them made before Jack comes for the steam table.”

  “We’ll see. Now run along and, for goodness sake, put on some lipstick. A woman ought to rouge her lips. Hurry. You know how far Jordan’s patience goes when he’s waiting on somebody.”

  * * *

  Jordan leaned against his big, silver gray Town Car waiting for Leslie. His pickup would probably have been more suitable for transporting her belongings, but he had wanted Leslie to know, somehow without being told, that she deserved his courtesy, that she wasn’t merely a servant. He didn’t welcome the intruding thought: if she wasn’t a servant, what was she? She cooked, cleaned and did laundry, and he paid her for it. Frowning, he wondered if he wasn’t going overboard over nothing and if he’d regret it. She wasn’t his responsibility, or at least, she hadn’t been. And he didn’t want a woman leaning on him. He was sick and tired of clinging vines. They could fall in love right on cue—as soon as they found a man able to take care of them in the style to which they aspired. He had no more use for them than he had for unfaithful bed hoppers like Joan, his ex-fiancée. He liked and admired capable, intelligent women who could meet a man halfway. He wasn’t normally gullible. Far from it. Was he making a mistake with Leslie? It surprised, almost shocked him that he felt so protective toward her. She was nothing like other women he’d known but still it bore watching. Lean on him? He laughed in self-derision. She certainly hadn’t given any indication that she wanted to lean on him or on anybody else.

  Leslie skipped off the porch and down the steps, capturing Jordan’s attention. He surmised that it was the first time he’d seen her express youthfulness or lightheartedness. The hell with being gullible. He wanted her to forget whatever it was that had clipped her wings, to smile and laugh. He wanted…

  “Oh, Jordan,” she whispered, as she caressed the automobile’s sleek lines. “I didn’t know you had one of these. It’s beautiful and so elegant. But shouldn’t you take the truck? My stuff is old, and I wouldn’t like anything to soil your nice car.”

  “None of that,” he tempered gruffly. “I want the people at that place to see that you’ll be with good folks.” He opened the door on the passenger side and placed his hand lightly on her elbow to assist her. She flinched slightly, and it didn’t pass him unnoticed. This flower closed its petals if you got too close.

  The hell with it, he thought. I’m not going to ignore my upbringing just to suit her.

  Leslie sat against the door of the car, as far away from Jordan as she could get, surreptitiously watching him as he drove. His hands with their long, tapered fingers fascinated her. Hands that might have sprung from an artist’s palette. Elegant. Strong. And he sat behind the wheel as if it were he rather than the car that had the horsepower. Unaware that he knew she was watching him, she fastened her eyes on his profile, but caught with her thoughts unsheltered, she quickly looked away. “Where did you learn to cook so well?” Jordan asked, reducing the sudden tension.

  “After I finished high school, I had two summer jobs working in a restaurant. The first summer I was a waitress. The next, I worked as a short order cook.”

  He’d begun to understand that Leslie never volunteered information about anything, including and especially herself. If he wanted more, he had to ask for it. He digested that for a moment. “What did you do in the winters?”

  “I went to the University of Maryland on an academic scholarship, but I stayed with a family and cooked the dinner and weekend meals in exchange for room and board.” He smiled and didn’t dare ask himself why he was so inordinately pleased with that reply. He’d been right. She was neither a house servant nor a laborer.

  “Come on, Leslie. You’re hard ground after a long drought. Hell, I need a pickax to get anything out of you. What were you studying? Did you get your degree? What did you do the other summers?” When he glanced at her, he had the pleasure of seeing her grin mischievously.

  “I worked as a secretary in the summer following my sophomore year in college, but my boss was as boorish as…” She hesitated and, when he glanced at her, he saw something—fear, pain or a bad memory—flicker briefly in her eyes. He quickly interrupted her.

  “You don’t have to say it. I’m beginning to understand a lot of things. Go on.”

  Her voice was stronger now. Melodious. Prideful. She spoke eagerly. “Well, I’ve got my bachelor’s degree, and I’m still studying.” The sudden swerving of the car in front of them distracted his attention from their conversation, and averting a multi-car collision took all of his skill as a driver. At the residence, they collected her things, and Jordan packed them into the Town Car and headed back to the Estates.

  “Over here, Ossie,” Jordan called as he stepped out of the car and saw the man walking toward the house.

  Leslie watched the
man stroll casually over to them, his face displaying a warmth and receptiveness that she hadn’t previously observed in him

  He walked directly up to Jordan, smiled, braced his elbow against the car and supported his head with his hand. “What can I do for you, Jordan?”

  “Ossie, this is Miss Collins “

  She noted the warmth in Jordan’s equally casual manner, and it occurred to her that they seemed more like friends than employer and employee.

  Jordan opened the car’s trunk “Give me a hand with her things. She’ll be staying in the apartment that I offered you last winter.”

  “Hello, Ossie.”

  “How do you do?” he replied, though he barely spared her a glance.

  She reached for her portable typewriter, but Jordan stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll take care of this. You go on up and show us where you want us to place things.”

  She was about to thank him, when she noticed the direction of Ossie’s gaze. He stared at Jordan’s hand on her shoulder, scowled, and she knew he’d drawn the wrong conclusion when he trained knowing eyes on her and let her see his disapproval, his distaste. She could almost measure the change in Ossie, from a tepid acknowledgement of her presence to outright dismissal. Like an unheralded chill at the sudden setting of an autumn sun. She glanced at Jordan, although, as she’d expected, he hadn’t noticed their wordless exchange. When a brother looked at an African-American woman, she knew what he saw. And Ossie Dixon left no doubt that he didn’t like her and had no use for her.

  After Ossie left them, Jordan helped Leslie rearrange the apartment and made notes of things she would need. He had begun to measure the filter in an air conditioner when she screamed. He looked up just as the step stool on which she was standing tilted to a dangerous angle and, with lightning speed, he made it to the closet just as she fell backward and into his arms. He stared at his right forearm, wrapped firmly across her chest and all but clasping her breasts, and at his left hand splayed across her belly. He settled her on her feet, and she turned to face him, her face wreathed in obvious amusement—no doubt at her folly—when her mouth moved to within an inch of his own. He knew the second she realized the position of his hands and how they felt, for she gasped as though shocked. For a moment, she stared at his lips. Then she shifted her glance to his eyes. That blatant, if innocent, invitation sent his blood pressure to a dangerous high, and he swallowed hard. But as if on automatic pilot, she gathered her wits and, with seeming reluctance, leaned away from him, obviously shaken. But not before he’d seen that she wanted more of him Not before he realized that he wanted her and had wanted her for weeks. He let himself breathe and dropped his arms, releasing her.

  So close. Her voluptuous, unpainted mouth had been so close. His if he’d wanted to take it. But he was fairly certain that she had no idea what had just happened between them and that, if she figured it out, she’d probably be gone before nightfall. No one could tell him that she wasn’t repressing some deep-seated fear. He was sure of it. He had felt her tremors of excitement and seen her wet her trembling lips as, flushed with blatant desire, she stared at his mouth, but she’d nonetheless moved away from him. He had to diffuse the situation and do it quickly, so he grinned, seeking leverage with humor.

  “Leslie, you’re going to have to stay off stools and ladders. I won’t always be around to catch you.”

  He had to hand it to her. The woman was a thoroughbred. Even so, her sally surprised him “Advice is cheap as well as useless: wise men don’t need it and fools won’t take it.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re fast with the repartee, too, when you want to be, aren’t you?” Or when she forgets her self-consciousness, he mentally corrected. She’d be delightful company, if she could lose that wariness. A thought jarred him. What had happened to his highfalutin scruples about not consorting with a woman who was his employee? Thinking that he’d best put some distance between them, he finished with the air conditioner and started for the door. Then he turned to reassure her that their relationship had not changed.

  “If you need anything at all, Leslie, just let me know. You’ll have your own telephone sometime tomorrow, and I intend to install an intercom here so you can reach Cal, Julia or me conveniently whenever you want to.” With that he was gone.

  * * *

  Leslie looked around her. Home. Her own place. She opened the door and stepped out on the porch. Blue clear sky, bright sunshine, green trees, flowers everywhere and God’s great earth, lush and beautiful for as far as she could see. She loved everything her eyes beheld. And not a sound. Then, the quiet, almost spiritual in its all-enveloping splendor, yielded to the click-clack of Jordan’s horse’s hooves as he cantered in the direction of the brook, his presence in her world adding to her sense of peace and security. She watched him astride that big horse, master of that powerful animal, and remembered the feel of his hand gentle on her shoulder, yet strong as he’d held her when she almost fell. Her gaze followed him until he was out of sight.

  She had told him not to touch her. What else could she do to protect herself when what she really wanted was just the opposite, a want that didn’t belong in her relationship with this man. It was unthinkable. But his hands. Frissons of heat had darted all through her when he’d held her those few minutes. She gripped her left hand with her right one and shook her head. She had to get him out of her mind. She didn’t want to think such things about Jordan, because nothing could come of it. She wouldn’t let anything come of it. Besides, he wouldn’t get involved with his African-American cook, any more than she would consort with her white boss. Life was hard enough without that burden. Like pulling a bag of rocks up the side of a steep mountain while everybody stood back to watch you fall flat on your face. Not for her. She changed into jeans and T-shirt and went back to help Julia.

  “All settled in? How do you like it?” Julia asked her.

  As she washed her hands, Leslie observed Julia’s pristine, sharply creased jeans. The woman could cook a meal and stay as spotless as an altar cloth. “I’m all set,” she told Julia. “And it’s…I adore it. I, uh, I think I have time to make the biscuits before Jack gets here.”

  “I’d say so.”

  * * *

  “What is it?” Leslie asked Julia half an hour later when she caught the woman looking at her inquiringly.

  “You’ve been humming and singing ever since you started those biscuits. I’m glad you’re happy, Leslie.”

  She let herself laugh aloud, and joy suffused her as she anticipated the pleasure of a quiet evening in her own place. She had intended to look at the clock beside the window, but instead, her glance caught a looking glass that was framed in red and white checks that matched the kitchen curtains. It leaned against a windowpane as though part of the decor. For heaven’s sake. And to think that in all these weeks, she hadn’t noticed it. This had to be the only kitchen in the country with a mirror over the sink. She said as much to Julia.

  Julia’s wink suggested that she might have even more interesting secrets. Patting her hair, she said, “I just put it there this morning. I got tired of scampering around there to our apartment every time I hear Cal coming in the door.”

  Leslie stared at her. “You mean…”

  “Honey,” Julia began in her best Southern drawl and as though patience was needed, “that man has never seen me looking anything but good. I get up first every morning and take care of business long before he opens his baby blues.” She bent to open the oven. “It’s working, so I don’t see any point in changing.”

  Leslie shook her head in wonder. “Yeah. Like Yogi says, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

  Her first night in her apartment would have been heaven, if somebody hadn’t tossed pebbles at her bedroom window. Ossie or Faron? It could have been either. One disliked her and the other hated her. After checking the lock on the front door, she closed and locked the windows, turned on the air conditioner and went back to bed. Maybe she should tell Jo
rdan, but if she did, she’d invite more of his probing. The night sounds lulled her to sleep.

  Leslie couldn’t have been more surprised when she answered her telephone several nights later and heard the voice of Berle Cox, her acquaintance at the women’s residence. “How’d you find me, Berle?”

  “I was looking out of my window when Jordan Saber brought you here to pick up your things. The rest was easy.”

  A wave of apprehension swept through her. If Berle had reached her so easily, so could Faron. She wouldn’t appeal to the woman; that, too, was dangerous. Instead, she said, “I sure hope you’re tight-lipped, because I don’t want everybody to know my business. How are you, Berle?”

  She could imagine Berle pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. More than once, she’d almost asked her why she didn’t get a pair that stayed in place. “Me? Same as always. Nothing interesting ever happens to me. Now, if I got a job working for a hot number like Jordan Saber, I’d…”

  Leslie didn’t let her finish. “I work for him, and he pays me twice monthly, Berle. That’s it. Period.”

  “I hope you’re not complaining. At least you can look at him.”

  Leslie couldn’t decide whether Berle was fishing for something to gossip about or merely making conversation, so she made her reply as vague as possible. “Looking doesn’t do a thing for me, Berle.”

  A deep sigh reached her through the wires. “Six feet, five or so, jet black hair, moss green eyes and a smile to die for. Girl, when it comes to that man, just looking would do a lot for me.”

  Leslie hardly believed her. “You serious? You don’t think he’s off limits?”