But did she trust him? She thought on some level she must. And that was a realization that could cause her a sleepless night or two.
But friends?
No.
Definitely not…friends.
An hour later, balancing a plate of grilled shrimp, homemade cornbread, and a glass of iced tea, Sophie surveyed her surroundings. It was quieter here in a shrub-shrouded corner of the candlelit patio. Not far from her, Tyree and Judah stood beside the grill, their murmurs a counterpoint to the clamor and singing inside.
She’d been awash in noise and conversation since Yvonna had introduced herself. The children had brought food to her. The Joneses’ friends had, singly and in groups, come over to introduce themselves and to solicit her opinions about the hospital, the people she’d met, and the town. One or two had alluded to an incident at the church late Saturday but hadn’t gone into details.
When Judah had walked outside, she’d gone with him, welcoming the chance to take a step back from the chaos and sort out her impressions.
Sipping her tea, she saw Tyree shove a plate of grilled shrimp at Judah.
There was something going on between the two men, a twitchiness that confirmed her original suspicion. Judah was uncomfortable about this whole “going to Tyree’s barbecue” invitation. In the two and a half hours she’d been here, she’d met only three other Poinciana cops, all three African-American. At first she’d been relieved, not having been sure how Judah’s fellow cops would react to her presence. Once she’d made the round of introductions, though, she’d wondered about the absence of those fellow cops, concluding at first that it was a church gathering.
But there were those three cops. There were the teachers from the local high school where Yvonna taught, and they’d indicated they weren’t members of the Joneses’ church. And then there was Judah.
Considering the current tension in Poinciana, it wasn’t too hard to figure out the situation. The boys in blue evidently still saw things in black and white.
Still, why the edginess between Tyree and Judah? She nibbled thoughtfully on a piece of the best cornbread she’d ever eaten in her life. Judah and Tyree knew she was in the corner of the patio, but their conversation had become uncomfortably intense. She wasn’t sure if they realized she could hear them.
A less curious woman would have walked away.
She wasn’t eavesdropping. Of course she wasn’t. She probably wasn’t.
But she was very curious.
As she watched, Judah unscrewed the lid of a plastic bottle of ginger ale and poured some into one of the paper cups on the picnic table. “You and Yvonna put on a nice party.”
Tyree nodded stiffly.
Both men shifted awkwardly in that way that men did when they were forced to talk with each other and didn’t want to.
Finally she heard Judah speak again. “You mind that I brought Sophie?”
“Sophie, is it? How long you two been on a cozy first-name basis?”
“I met her over a year ago. We had a couple of dates. Sort of.”
“Sort of?” Tyree dabbed sauce onto the grill.
Shrimp hissed, and Sophie’s mouth watered. Curious to hear Judah’s answer, she leaned forward. She remembered those “sort of dates” all too well. Her remembering had been part of the turmoil of the past year.
“Nothing came of it.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right, Tyree.”
Tyree lifted his glass of iced tea, saluted Judah with it.
“Looks to me like nothing’s becoming something.”
“We’re not real compatible.”
“Not how it looks to me.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Don’t think I am. Remember? I’m one of Poinciana’s mighty fine po-licemen. A dee-tective, in fact. I see what I see,” Tyree drawled.
In spite of the apparent light tone, Sophie detected an undercurrent of tension, of things left unspoken.
As footsteps came up behind her, she turned. Minus Taylor Bell, Yvonna stopped beside Sophie. Like Sophie, she watched the two men. “They seem awfully serious. Do you think we should interrupt them?”
Sophie crumpled her paper plate with the shrimp tails in it. Cornbread crumbs dribbled onto her skirt. “It would probably be a good idea since I seem to be the subject of the conversation. And you know how it goes, right? Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. Not that, technically, I’m eavesdropping, you understand.” She looked around for a trash can.
“Here, I’ll take that.” Yvonna took the plate and walked over to a plastic container near the back door. As she walked slowly back, her expression indicated that she’d made up her mind about something. “I was surprised Judah came tonight. Don’t misunderstand me, Sophie. I’m glad he did. And I’m really pleased he brought you. It’s a good thing, this breaking down of barriers. He and my Tyree need to move past some stuff.”
“I did think it was strange that Judah had never been to your house.”
Yvonna shrugged. “It was well understood in the department that Judah didn’t want another partner. But you probably knew that?”
“No.”
“These last four months have been a shakedown period for Tyree and Judah both. With the emphasis on shaky.”
“That explains a lot.” Sophie met Yvonna’s gaze. “I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome here. You know I’m the doctor who treated Judah’s partner?”
“Uh, that could be a bit awkward for you, I’d imagine, if some of the oldtimers from the department were here?”
Sophie laughed. From the corner of her eye, she saw Judah turn his head toward her. “Wow. So if I’m not the reason, why are only three of Poinciana’s finest in attendance? Oops,” she added as Yvonna’s face froze, confirming Sophie’s earlier suspicion. “Oh.”
“Not your problem. It’s simply the way things are in this town at the moment.” Yvonna shrugged. “You didn’t cause it.”
“Wow,” Sophie repeated, wishing she could replay the last two minutes, “there’s a whole lot of subtext going on at this party. And I’ve just come down with a galloping case of foot-in-the-mouth disease, haven’t I?”
“You didn’t know how things are. Some lines still aren’t easily crossed here.”
“I’m sorry.” An awkwardness had been entered into the conversation, and neither one knew quite how to proceed. “Anyway,” Sophie plunged ahead, “I thought either Judah or Tyree must have told you that I was the doctor on call the night Roberts was brought in. That I was the one who insisted on the test for his blood alcohol level? The test that would have resulted in his suspension?” Sophie didn’t feel like adding the rest of the story. Either Yvonna knew that Judah blamed her for his partner’s suicide, or she didn’t.
“Tyree would have said something if he’d known. I’m sure Judah never mentioned it to him.”
“Oh?” Opting for discretion this time, Sophie clamped her mouth shut. Why hadn’t Judah told Tyree about what he saw as her role in George Roberts’s death? “I’m surprised,” she said finally.
“Judah and Tyree don’t talk much. Or at least they didn’t used to. But, yes, I know about George’s suicide. I’ve been told he and Judah were close and that Judah was really annoyed about being forced into taking a new partner. I don’t imagine Judah was thinking clearly. Why on earth would the man want to work alone when the situation in Poinciana has gotten so dicey that even the suits in charge don’t want the men going out on solitary duty? I also think that Tyree—well, that the brass were trying to make a point with Tyree once he had his detective ranking. As for how he and Judah are doing right now? Who knows? I think things are changing. I hope so. Because I want my man safe. And if things aren’t right between him and his partner when they’re out on the street—” Yvonna hesitated, glanced over at the men. “Look, I don’t mean to pry or poke my nose into your business, but their partnership hasn’t been easy for Tyree, you know?”
“And you want me to do what?�
��
“Whatever you can.”
“Yvonna, I don’t have any influence with Judah. He blames me for George Roberts’s death.”
Yvonna made a face. “But he brought you here. When he’s never been here before himself. That must mean something.”
“Not with Judah. I still haven’t figured out why he invited me, in fact. I wish I could help you, Yvonna, but I don’t see that there’s any way I can. I understand your concern. Poinciana’s a keg of dynamite right now, isn’t it?”
“Everything’s unsettled. Too many guns, too many angry folks, too many people looking for jobs and not finding anything. Add into that mix the changing ethnic population. A little tolerance and patience would help, but those seem in short supply in this town right now. Bad times and scared folks. That’s a mighty volatile combination. Especially for cops manning the barricades. Or should I say manning and womaning?” Yvonna touched Sophie’s arm. “Do what you can. I’d like my Tyree with us come Christmas.”
Sophie expected her to walk over to the men, but Yvonna regarded them pensively before pressing her hands over her eyes and walking back inside, her back straight, her head up.
Cops’ wives. Sophie had seen their strength before. Women who married cops had their own kind of courage. Or they didn’t last.
She felt a hand on her back, low, near her left hip, and knew instantly it was Judah’s. When she turned to face him, he was right inside her bubble of personal space, that one step that sent a clear signal to any woman.
She didn’t step back.
Instead, she took a deliberate step forward, let her hip bump up against him. It could have been a friendly bump. But she made sure the nudge wasn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of friendly. That hip bump took a detour right around friendly straight to desire. She smiled slowly up at him, liking the way he frowned back, liking that she could throw him off balance for a minute.
“You know what you’re doing, don’t you, sugar?”
“You betcha, big guy.” She tugged at the edge of his collar. “Want to make something of it?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. He twined his fingers with hers, raising them to her shoulder level, their palms flat against one another. He moved his palm sideways, slowly, against hers. “Reckon I do.”
“Then what’s keeping you, slowpoke?” she whispered, not moving an inch, simply letting the words drift like dust in sunlight.
Judah looked over his shoulder, scoped out the patio. “Not one damn thing.”
All her senses were concentrated in those few square inches of contact. She could never have imagined the sensory power of a man’s hand pressing against hers.
Not any man’s hand.
Judah’s.
He let his hand drift to her fanny, gave her a tiny slap that sent tingles down to her toes. “Your place or mine, Sophie? And how fast?”
“Which is closer?” She pulled his head down to hers, skimmed his mouth with hers.
She meant to tantalize him, to tease with a hint, a promise.
But teasing went both ways, she discovered breathlessly.
“Mine,” he said, and his eyes had gone dark with intent. “Definitely mine. Follow me.”
Walking side by side back to the house, they said their goodbyes, keeping a distance between them, a distance bridged by the almost-brush of his little finger against hers, by a whisper of skirt against pants. Sophie understood why he didn’t touch her once they were on the sidewalk with the clamor of the Joneses’ party behind them.
One touch wouldn’t have been enough.
Three minutes later, Judah held her car door open for her to slide inside. Sophie hesitated, but because of what Yvonna had asked her to do, she asked, “Why are you and Tyree so edgy with each other?”
Judah shut the door. “Because Tyree thinks I’m a white cop.”
She ran the back of her hand down his throat and smiled as his eyes grew sleepy. “You could have fooled me.”
“I’m a cop, Sophie. Period. Tyree’s going to believe what he wants to.”
As Sophie followed the red flicker of his bike’s taillight, she wondered if some day she would look back on these December days and conclude that she’d been in a fever.
She’d never craved anyone’s touch the way she did Judah’s.
She was almost sick with wanting to be near him.
In a million breaths, she couldn’t have explained to anyone the way he made her feel. What she felt when she was with Judah Finnegan was outside her experience and imagination. She’d never expected to feel this way, never known it was possible.
As the tidy neighborhood lots gave way to the open country of cattle and scrub pines, she followed the steady light from his bike. Into the deepening blackness of Florida country she let him lead her, and as she did, she sent up a tiny prayer to whatever female spirits protected a risk-taking woman like herself.
When this ended, and it would, it had to, please, she prayed, let it not end with ugliness.
This—what was it? An affair? Somehow the word didn’t begin to cover the situation, but whatever she called it, she accepted that it would burn itself out. How could it not? Impossible for this kind of heat to last. Too fierce, too intense. These days with Judah were like a supernova flaring brilliantly in its final hours.
Turning a corner behind him, she resolved that she wouldn’t waste these moments anticipating an ending. It would come when it came. Not for the first time since she’d met Judah, she promised herself that for now she would seize every moment. Go for the adventure, the wild ride of fate.
That was what she’d always done, reached out and grabbed hold of life, let it take her where it would. There was no reason to change her modus operandi.
Except a broken heart? She dimmed her bright lights in the face of an oncoming car. The physician in her reminded her that broken hearts might not mend but they went on beating. Willy-nilly, the earth whirled on through cold and dark space.
She would deal with whatever lay ahead, with the pain that might rise up and slam into her.
As for that old snake in the grass, pain?
A risk? Sure. Worse, much worse never to have had these moments. To have lived her life and never known Judah. Never to have known that there were places in the human heart and soul that were just as wild and exhilarating as the biggest wave she’d ever ridden.
Sophie parked her car under a cabbage palm near the porte cochere next to Judah and his bike. Getting out, she locked it and leaned against the door, waiting. Judah had braked, but the engine continued to rumble. Still straddling the bike, feet planted on the sandy ground, he threw her a long stare over his shoulder.
She straightened. “I’m not going to change my mind.”
“You could have. Any time.”
“I know.” She walked across the sand toward him.
He gunned the engine once, turned it off. The cooling tick of metal counterpointed the chirping of tree frogs in the background.
He touched her elbow, pointed to a door of the porte cochere. “Come inside, Sophie.”
She waited while he opened the door and led her through the small rooms to the back. His house was what she might have expected if she’d thought about it. Spare, plain, it was a cracker house as she’d heard Poincianians describe the pine-board frame homes on stilts with tin roofs. The stilts allowed air to circulate and cool these old-style Florida houses. Long, floor-to-ceiling windows broke the weathered gray of the boards. It was a house for another time, for a time when people didn’t lock their doors in fear and hide inside air-conditioned isolation, didn’t hide behind barred windows. A house for a time long gone, one not likely to come again.
In its simplicity and austerity, the rooms of the house whispered to her of Judah. No television, no clutter, no life. A board-and-brick bookcase. Empty.
Like an anchorite’s cell, Judah’s house told her that here was a man punishing himself.
In his bedroom, she turned in a circle, registering in one look the
white-and-gray striped duvet over the bed, the ancient bureau against one wall. No mirror, no rug. No softness anywhere.
His house made her ache with sympathy for him, made her see him in a new light. It didn’t detract from his strength, his hard edges. But it gave her a glimpse of what lay underneath the tough shell of the man. And she remembered the loneliness of the boy.
“Wait,” he said as she tugged at the scarf around her waist. “Let me.”
He undressed her slowly in the moonlight of his small, austere bedroom, his hands sliding and caressing until she felt as though she wore him, as if his hands clothed her. He spread his thumbs under the thin straps of her rib-length camisole, lowering them inch by inch down her arms, his thumbs brushing her breasts like a summer breeze.
“I like this.” He touched the pale-gray chiffon of her camisole. “But I’m sure glad I didn’t know you had these bits of nothing underneath your Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, Sophie.” He plucked at the thin line at the bottom of the camisole, slid his palm underneath the soft illusion. “I’ll bet it was expensive.”
She leaned into his palm, welcoming the roughness of his callused hand against her. “And worth every dollar.”
He traced the darker gray, embroidered roses that covered her breasts, palmed the single rose on her panties. “It’s like smoke on clear water, but all you see is you, the gleam of your skin. You’re a mystery, Sophie.” He spread his hands flat on her fanny, slipped them under the illusion of fabric that pretended to be panties, tugged at the narrow waistband. Like a sigh, wispy gray roses drifted to the floor.
She undressed him with the same careful attention to detail, the same deliberate slowness. It was an appreciation of the physical, of the marvel of bone and sinew and skin. She had thought there was nothing about the human body that could surprise her any more.
But Judah’s body delighted her. She touched the scar she’d stitched only days earlier, smoothed her hands over the muscles of his ribs and marveled. The texture of his skin, the scent of his neck. The taste of his mouth, the slide of his tongue with hers.
Dead Calm Page 18