by J. A. Coffey
It would be great working with him again.
He realized he had kept the Realtor hanging. He snapped back to attention and took a fortifying breath. "I travel the world competing in Aikido, and I've been thinking it's high time I lay down some roots. This building would make a perfect dojo. I'll take it."
Calls to his financial advisor thus ensued, and the Realtor and Cristoph soon hashed out the details.
While they haggled with the real-estate lawyer, Darius scrolled through his contact list to find a different one.
He smiled when he found the name, placed the call, and got Amos Abel's secretary, relieved when Ollie's cryptic message from Kris Kringle had tripped the man's name in his foggy memory. A mouse is able. Amos Able. Only Ollie would feel the need to leave a riddle just to locate a lawyer. "Hello, Mary, did you say? This is Darius Covington. I wondered if the big guy is available?"
He held for a few minutes, then the familiar pleasant voice clicked over the air. "Well, well, well, Mr. Covington III. How the hell are you?"
He grinned, picturing the short, stocky man with the round face and balding head. Ollie had always liked the man, and Darius recalled some fond days of fox hunting in England, minus the fox.
"As well as ever. Better than, actually. I heard you've moved up the ranks. No longer a lowly lawyer anymore?"
"Not anymore. You're speaking with a bona fide judge."
"I'll behave," he chuckled, glad he had kept in contact with this particular man over the years. "I heard you have a package for me?"
He heard the man take a deep breath. "Yes. Ollie's urn. So sorry to hear about his passing. It was his last wish that I keep this for you."
Strange that he would send it to a judge and not his own personal attorney, but Darius had come to expect the unexpected from Ollie. "I wondered what your schedule looks like for the next few days?"
Darius nodded along to what he heard, liking the news. "Great. I'll keep you posted. Got some big plans, my friend. Just have to solidify them. If all goes well, I should be in touch by, say, tomorrow?"
He hung up, feeling better and better about his life.
It was almost too perfect.
He made it home around noon, and the first thing he did was race through the house, calling for Jess.
"Lady Swan is upstairs," Bigsby informed him, his face as stoic as ever.
"Thanks, Bigs." He raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time and pretending he didn't give the old goat a coronary by abbreviating his name.
Jess' door stood open, and he saw Kimi's shadow on the wall, then watched her move an armful of clothes still in their dry-cleaning bags. He rasped on the door and, leaning from the jamb, asked, "Mind if I come in?"
The bed had been piled with all the clothes from the cleaners. When Jess turned to him he noted the welling tears, and her hand flew to her mouth. "I can't believe you did all this." She sniffled and threw her arms around his neck, then grabbed his head and kissed him. Hard. "This is the nicest gift I've ever been given. I can't believe you went back for all this. I mean, look," she went and pulled open a bag and sniffed. "You can barely smell anything. This is incredible. I loved these clothes."
He bowed low to her. "It was my pleasure."
"And the gown." She rummaged to the bottom of the pile. "Just the thought of having it up in flames was horrifying. You have no idea how happy...no, how grateful I am to you right now."
She wobbled a grin at him and stepped close, this time easing her arms around his neck.
Kimi muttered, "Think I hear the doorbell," and raced out of the room.
They grinned at each other, and Darius lowered his lips to hers. When she molded her body to his, he held her tighter, wrapping his arms around her back and drawing her ever closer. He wanted to give her the next gift, the one that would seal their future, but not when she was crying.
She pulled back, her teary smile growing less watery as they held each others' eyes. "Have you seen the mail?" A small amount of mischief suddenly appeared in her expression.
He narrowed his gaze in reply. "No. Why?"
She licked her lips and grinned. "Come." She grabbed his hand and led him to the staircase.
He realized they didn't walk hand in hand nearly enough, and made a mental note to rectify that. She led him to the parlor and grabbed a magazine from the scalloped walnut table. "Look."
Zewspaper in bold print covered the top third, and there, filling the middle third, was the picture of them kissing, with the optimistic headline, Long Lost Love Rekindled at Zoo.
He couldn't stop smiling as he remembered Jess' gentle hands on his chest, the electricity coursing through him when their tongues touched, the trumpet of the pachyderm reverberating through him. "He must have seen what we weren't ready to."
"Long lost love?"
He stroked her cheek, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Love rekindled."
They stayed that way, just holding each others' eyes. He wanted to say it; he really did.
He would tell her on bended knee.
"I'd like to take you somewhere today. Miniature golf? The beach? Movie? Mall? Where would you like to go, Jess?"
She considered his question for a minute. "How about the park? We can have a picnic lunch."
He grinned and raised her hand to kiss her knuckles. "Perfect. I'll have Betsy make us a basket."
"I can do that," she protested, and Darius raised a finger. "Jess, I know you're not used to it, but you have to let our staff take care of us."
She cocked out a hip and stared at him. "Are you on a mission to make me helpless?"
He wrapped his hands around her hipbones, wanting to feel them against his bare skin. "Helpless? No. Merely pampered."
He could see the cold thoughts churning and detected a hint of hardness when she said, "I'll never be a blue-blood, Darius."
He smiled and pressed a kiss to her brow, knowing it stemmed from the day they met. Many a woman moved up the ranks by marriage, but he saw no need to share that wisdom yet. "Never say never." Then, before any words spilled out of her opened mouth, he pulled her towards the kitchen. "Betsy?"
"Yes?" She looked up from the mound of dough on the counter, and the aroma of yeast teased him. "Would you be a dear and pack us a picnic lunch?"
She grinned and wiped her hands on her apron, already white and dusty from flour. "My pleasure. Would you like wine?"
They both grinned.
Towie hadn't been out to run in a while, and her vet had taken out the staples and declared him fit for play. He bobbled around the park at Jess' side, his shaved square of skin and healing incision a beacon for other dogs to hone in and sniff.
She watched like a hawk each time a dog approached, not wanting to interfere with his socializing, yet not ready to see him back in the hospital should any more problems develop.
Darius had held her hand the entire time, and her burgeoning feelings of giddiness became harder and harder to suppress. She wanted to know everything about him, so she asked, "What's your favorite childhood memory?"
He looked down at her with mirth, his eyes so gentle and warm she felt herself tingle. "Really?"
"Why not?"
He inclined his head, looking up at the fluttering leaves on the tree-lined path they walked. A few robins called out, and a pair of ducks quacked as they paddled further out into the creek while she waited for his answer.
"Ollie teaching me to shake hands."
She giggled. "Really?"
"Yup." He kissed her hand again. "I don't mean like a little boy. I mean, he really instructed me. Here." He stopped and faced her, setting the picnic basket at his feet. "A young boy's hand is timid, like this." He gave her a weak offering, and she raised a brow at him. "Exactly. No woman wants to shake a man's hand whose grip is that weak. So Ollie showed me not only how hard to hold," his grip grew strong, firm, and she felt herself respond to his strength accordingly, "but he also told me to face a man directly, chin up, shoulders back, and to make
good eye contact."
The hand shake he gave her impressed her, and she realized they had never shaken hands the day he walked into her store. She could tell he tempered his touch for her, a woman, but that his grip would be firmer had she been male.
"A good hand shake on a man, Ollie said, is what is going to make every person you encounter judge you for who you are. He said a man should always come off as strong, honest, forthright, and all of that can be conveyed in a good grip.
"That night- it was a party- he took me around to all of his friends. 'Come meet Darius. Shake his hand,' he told them. "And one by one, I shook every last hand, and didn't the men stand straighter when I met them as equals."
She watched his Adam's apple bob up and down, and his lips tightened. "For a kid who had a lot of anger and no strong male role model, that one thing- a handshake- granted me a sense of worth. Self respect. For the first time in my young life, I felt like I was more than a...terrible burden."
She noticed a bit of mist on his eyes as he turned from her to pick up the basket, tucking her fingers into the crook of his elbow and leading her back down the path, the basket swinging merrily on his other arm. "He made me the man I am today. Everything I am is because of him."
Jess stopped him and pulled him close, hugging him the way he hugged her when things went bad. He chuckled and kissed her crown. "Here I assumed it was your father who made you who you are today."
Another chuckle. "He drove me to find a way to cope with him and his drinking and subsequent abuse. Aikido was it, so, yeah, I guess I can credit both of them. Begrudgingly on the second, of course."
"Natch."
He chuckled. "My turn." They resumed their stroll, hands intertwined. "What is the single largest obstacle you've had to overcome?"
"My virginity."
"Come on." He obviously expected a deeper answer than that.
"I'm serious," she said, facing him squarely. "Once I hit a point where I realized I was saving myself, it went from being a gift to a hassle. Every single relationship I've been in since then has had this chasm of: 'Do I love him enough to lose it?' "Then," warming to her topic, "every guy was all for 'teaching me the ropes.' By the time I was in college, I stopped telling guys the truth. I just broke up with them when they tried to get physical."
Her voice dropped. "Now, I'm trying rather unsuccessfully to rid myself of it, to no avail."
Damn, he wanted to tell her his plans. One hand fingered the ring in his pocket, and he cast his glance around and saw no one nearby. He opened his mouth, but just then a dog bounded up out of the bush and snarled at Towie, and Jess had to shoo the nasty little ankle biter away. He inhaled to try again, and a couple beat their way through the overgrowth and yelled, "Precious! Get over here."
Personally, Darius didn't think the snarling football-sized dog deserved the honorific, but he offered them a wan smile and motioned Towie to their side of the path.
Jess shot him a slightly uncomfortable look, and he realized her last words had been rather vulnerable. He squeezed her hand, and a child on a bicycle armed with training wheels came careening down the path, screaming, "Can't catch me," which prompted two other children to reply in kind.
So Darius tugged her close and hedged with, "Don't be in too much of a hurry." He wanted to make his point, so he faced her, his gaze solemn. "Some men would still consider it an honor." He didn't let her look away. He wanted to tell her so badly, and considered dropping to one knee right there on the main path, but a biker raced by, and three barking dogs were hot on his heels, two owners screaming at the tops of their lungs for their dogs to stop, leashes waving in their hands.
She studied him, seeming to read his thoughts, and seemed mollified. She continued walking and randomly asked, "Do you like canoeing?"
He heaved a deep breath of relief at her subject change. "Never been."
"Come on." She looked at him, clearly disbelieving his words.
"It's true. I've been yachting, though."
"How silly of me." She turned and kept walking.
He felt the chasm yawn wider at that, bringing to the fore her words of how she would never be a blueblood, and knew she would linger on that. "Would you like to teach me?"
"There's nothing to teach that a skilled seaman wouldn't already know how to do." He could see her storm clouds forming.
"Good. Then we'll go. Where do you recommend?"
He took her silence to be that of a woman desperately trying to reconcile her desires against his words. She licked her lips, and he watched, mesmerized by that tongue, as she formulated her words. "There's this creek about an hour away. There're actually beavers there, reintroduced a few years back. They made a dam, and a giant hut. I swear it was five feet over the water level. Herons and woodpeckers were all over the pond. It was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen. Just...raw nature."
He tried to imagine the scene she described, knowing beavers were hunted not only for their fur, but for the damage they created by damming rivers. But damming would create a pond, and he envisioned flooded plains filled with giant trees and water birds, leaping frogs, fox and deer at the water's edge, and a giant domed wooden hut dominating the surface like a brown gumdrop. He smiled down at her and said, "Not for our first vacation, all right? I think I'd like the Riviera first."
She grinned and said, "You're on."
Their lunch was amazing, and not just the food. The wine made Jess glow with a warmth he wanted to touch, over and over again.
"I have a confession to make." Darius had been lying on his stomach on the sheet Betsy thoughtfully packed for them. He peeked up at Jess to watch her reaction.
Jess lowered the fork from her mouth, and the pasta salad fell to her plate. "Yes?"
"I chatted with you, anonymously, in on online antique forum." He focused on smoothing the material between his spread fingers as he awaited her reply.
She gasped and then jabbed at him with her fork. "I thought that was you."
His mouth opened to match hers as he sat up. "You did not."
"Darius." She set down her plate and moved from a sitting to kneeling position before him. "You said the only thing that would improve the Rococo sideboard I was talking about would be a vase of calla lilies on top."
He grinned and looked away. "I did say that, didn't I."
"Why didn't you tell me it was you? My user name was Olliesgal, for crying out loud."
He looked up and ventured, "I'm a stalker?"
"Well, you're doing a piss-poor job of it." In a theater whisper she pitched, "You are supposed to be discreet."
He grinned at her, so glad he told her this. "Olliesgal? Not Dariusgal?"
She snorted out a laugh. "A little presumptuous, don't you think? Especially since I hadn't heard from you in a decade.... That would make a man run for shelter." She shoved a forkful of pasta into her mouth.
He laughed.
"I didn't understand your user name. What was it, again?"
"Kancho5. Kancho is the title of someone who owns a dojo, like I do. Five refers to my degree of black belt."
"No wonder it made no sense." She raised up off her heels, still kneeling before him. "Can you teach me some moves?"
He grinned. "Of course. It's what I do." He claimed her hand to pull her up and off their blanket and to a flat grassy area nearby. "As a woman, the first thing I would teach you is self-defense. Men are good at overpowering women, so it's a matter of knowing how to break free."
"Okay." She loosened her arms at her sides.
"First thing men do is grab. We're primal creatures, what can I say." He grabbed her wrist to demonstrate. "Now, your job is to break free. Go ahead and try."
She flung and twisted to no avail.
"Exactly. Now, men are stronger, and if I'm dragging you off to my cave or my car, every time you come at me to kick or hit, I'm able to pull you more my way. Give it a try."
She feinted kicks and hits, and each time she moved, he pulled her closer.
"Imagine you're trying to get away, and you can see how dangerous this is becoming."
Ever the good pupil, Jess faced him, quiet and attentive, wrist still held firmly in his grip.
"Spread your feet so you're stable. Good, now, step into me, and swing your elbow underneath to touch mine."
She moved slowly and he said, "Watch my grip. As you bring your elbow to mine, my hand twists. I can't hang on." She continued her motion and watched him let go.
He grinned, pleased with how excited it made her, and said, "Me being me, I follow through with a chop to the throat. Now, try it again."
After a few rounds of that, he said, "On to bear hugs. Another move men like to use to overpower women is the bear hug. There are lots of ways out of it. I'm going to show you two. First is if he's your size, and second if he's bigger.
"Same size," he came behind her and wrapped his arms around her, "You're going to drop your weight." She crouched low. "You can stomp on his foot to distract him long enough to grab a finger. Put your thumb here." She placed her digit where he showed her, and he pushed it hard into the flesh of his thumb. "This immobilizes his hand. Bend back his fingers, swing away like a dance twirl," she did as he instructed, and he guided her arm until his fingers were at an impossible angle, "now kick to the groin and run."
She faked a kick and he let go.
By now a few people had gathered, and Darius waved them closer. One couple, a blonde Hollywood type with a macho bald tough-guy boyfriend, hovered. "Come on. He ever gets rough with you, I'll show you how Barbie can beat G.I. Joe's ass."
They laughed and stepped nearer.
"Okay, big guy. You're a good head taller than Blondie. Give your gal a bear hug from behind."
Darius did the same to Jess.
"Ladies, he's big. You're trapped. You're going to need to do some serious damage to get free. Stomp on his foot hard, which will lower his head. At that point you're going to use the back of your head to hammer into his face. If you're lucky, you'll smash his nose, or at least break a few teeth."
The girls moved slowly, and the guys complied with the imagined pain.
"Now, spin out of their grasp and kick them in the shin and/or groin. They're done."