“Me, neither. Put on something cool and let’s go.”
It seemed as though Ginger took possession of his thoughts whenever he was indoors. He could only surmise that she left him free of her memory when he went outside, because nothing could compare with the beauty they witnessed together at Victoria Falls and in the environs of Harare. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his shorts and trailed Eric out of the apartment. When had he known such emptiness that he wanted company, crowds of people around him, so that he wouldn’t think? He loved Eric’s company, but didn’t want to talk with him, only to sit with him in a crowd with such a din that it made conversation impossible. Ginger! In the name of heaven, where are you?
G.A. Hinds, as Ginger was known to her clients and in court circles, stepped into the judge’s chamber and froze, rooted in her tracks as though struck by lightning. It couldn’t be! She forced herself to take one step closer, willing him to turn around so that she could see his face.
“Good morning, Ms. Hinds,” Judge Williams said—and then he turned to face her.
“You!” she shrieked. “It can’t be. It… My God, it’s you!”
As if coming out of a thick fog, he stared, shaking his head as though mute, his feet taking him slowly to her. When barely a yard separated them he grabbed her, lifted her from her feet, spun her around, and squeezed her to him. “Ginger. Ginger. Ginger! I can’t believe it. I’d given up all hope of ever seeing you again. I—”
“Uh hmm.” Judge Williams cleared her throat. “I hope this isn’t what it looks like. Attorney Calhoun, I assume you didn’t know your client’s husband was being represented by Attorney Hinds. This is unusual, but if you aren’t married or lovers, I suppose we can continue.” She looked at Ginger. “Well?”
Ginger didn’t know how she found her voice. “We’ve never been lovers, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Calhoun, do you agree?”
His eyes sparkled with merriment, and he rubbed his chin contemplatively, like a wise man seeking the truth. He told her, “Yes, ma’am, Your Honor. I certainly do.”
Ginger saw no reason why Her Honor should smirk. “Good,” Judge Agatha Williams said, adjusting her wig. “You may unhand her now, Mr. Calhoun. And if I ask you two that question at any time before this case is closed, your answers had better be the same as now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they replied in unison as Jason released Ginger.
Judge Williams cleared her throat, louder than Ginger thought necessary, shuffled some of the papers on her desk, and resumed her official demeanor.”
“Ms. Hinds, your client is bringing the suit, so I want to hear his charge first.”
“Basically,” Ginger began, “my client’s wife is immature, interested only in sensual gratification, parties and fun and—because he works hard trying to make a good life for them—she accuses him of putting his career before her.”
“And he does, Your Honor,” Jason broke in, presenting the wife’s countersuit. “He’s a workaholic, saves money because he hates to spend it, and pays her absolutely no attention.”
“That’s not true,” Ginger declared. “A person has a right to expect complete cooperation, to have a true partnership with his spouse, not a firefly who wants to run out every evening at sundown.”
“And my client has a right to expect some joy in her life with her husband, not to shrivel up with a dull spud who comes home at eight or nine o’clock every night, wolfs down whatever she’s cooked, and passes out in front of the TV.”
Judge Williams banged her gavel. “I see I don’t have to worry about the two of you shacking up any time soon. I had agreed to hear this case with the principals absent, but I’ve changed my mind. Case recessed for today. Bring those two adolescents in here Monday morning at ten sharp. And go your separate ways.”
Jason stood on the top step of the Municipal Building at 60 Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan and made an effort to settle his nerves. In the course of half an hour, he’d had as many shocks as a man ought to have in his lifetime. He’d found her. She proved to be an accomplished woman, and he liked that. But she was his adversary in court and, worse still, she might beat him. He took comfort in the way she’d behaved when her gaze lit on him; she had surely missed him every bit as much as he’d missed her.
He looked back toward the door, hoping to see Ginger stroll through it. After the way in which they’d greeted each other, she couldn’t expect him to walk out of there and leave her, no matter what Judge Williams said. And if the judge had meant they shouldn’t see each other, she needed to learn something about the behavior of men and women when a sizzling chemistry hooked them together.
After what seemed like half an hour, she walked out of the building, and he rushed to her; he couldn’t have restrained himself if his life had depended on it. He had to touch her, to assure himself that she was really Ginger. “What took you so long?” he asked her.
The warm and welcoming lights in her wonderful brown eyes made a mockery of her effort to maintain a cool, professional façade. “Hi, Jason. I figured you’d get tired of waiting and leave. I’m not in the habit of ignoring a judge’s orders.”
He took her hand and walked with her toward the steps, still wondering whether he could be dreaming. “Ginger, that judge is not stupid. She said what was required of her, but she’d think us both insane if we obeyed.”
Her fingers tightened around his, but her words denied her gesture of affection. “I don’t disobey judges, and that’s that. I’m glad to see you, though. I really am, Jason.”
The tone of finality in her voice gave him a feeling of anxiety, and he stared in shocked disbelief as she dropped his hand, ran down the remaining steps, jumped into a cab, and rode away. He went back to the clerk’s office.
“Hi, Ann. Could you give me the phone number of the lawyer for my client’s husband?”
“Your reasons, Mr. Calhoun?”
“I’m going to try for a deal.” She didn’t ask what kind of deal, and he didn’t see a need to tell.
“Sure.” She flipped through her files, wrote two numbers on a scratch pad, and handed them to him.
He thanked Ann, and headed for the street. “Ginger, Girl,” he said to himself, “you won’t get away from me this time,” and strolled down the steps whistling Marty Stuart’s number one hit, “Till I Found You.” He spotted a florist, went in, and asked for a Manhattan telephone directory. An address for her matched the phone number that Ann gave him, so he ordered a bouquet of calla lilies and had them delivered to her.
Ginger told herself she’d done the professional thing, but she’d used as much fortitude as any woman ever had when she walked away from Jason Calhoun. Calhoun. She liked his name. She hadn’t guessed he’d be an attorney, though she had realized he was a man of some accomplishment. She didn’t let herself imagine what could come next. Maybe he had a wife. The taxi driver pulled up to West View, the building in which she lived, and she paid and got out.
Who was that man? she wondered. Every time she saw him he had a thick, hardcover book in his hand. Something about his demeanor, his clothing, and his carriage suggested academic life. Always a book, even while he ate his meals, which he took at Andy’s Place. She supposed he was retired. Oddly, he seemed as curious about her as she was about him, but neither had bridged the gap and spoken. She thought that strange, because Roosevelt Islanders spoke to each other whether they’d been introduced or not. She made up her mind to put an end to it first chance she got.
With the afternoon free of court duties, she changed into casual dress and went to Andy’s Place for lunch. One of the local clergymen walked in and was soon joined by the mystery man with his book. Seeing an opportunity for an introduction, she left her table, walked over, and greeted the minister.
“Hello, Ginger,” the Reverend Armstrong said. “You know Amos Logan, don’t you?”
“I’ve been wondering who you were. I’m Ginger Hinds,” she said to Amos, who rose to his feet and extended his hand.
“S
ame here, Miss Hinds. How do you do? I figured you were either in banking, education or law. How far off was I?”
“Law.”
“Why don’t you join us old folk?” Reverend Armstrong asked. “Amos retired last year from his cushy job as a law school dean.”
Amos raised both eyebrows. “About as cushy as running a church.” He regarded Ginger with the penetrating stare of a judge. “What kind of law do you practice?”
“Criminal, but right now I have a divorce case, my first, and I’m not sure I’ll take another one.”
“Why?” Amos wanted to know.
“Because my client can’t make up his mind. He’s called me twice to indicate he may be making a mistake, but he has no choice now, because his wife has entered a countersuit.”
“Smart woman,” Amos said.
The Reverend Armstrong pulled air through his teeth and strummed his fingers on the table. “If they’d only go for counseling and work out their problems.”
Amos shrugged. “A lot of them do…just before they file for divorce.”
She ordered bean soup and a green salad and finished it quickly. Amos had come too close to her life, to the crumbling of her own marriage, and she wouldn’t put it past the good Reverend to pounce on it in the presence of this stranger.
She gulped down the last of her ginger ale and stood. “See you Sunday, Reverend Armstrong. I’m glad to know who you are, Mr. Logan.”
Amos wiped his mouth with one of Andy’s paper napkins and stood. “Call me Amos. Perhaps we can have a cup of coffee together sometime. Not many people around here want to talk law.”
“I’d love it,” she said, and headed back to her apartment. Amos Logan was an interesting man.
She stopped by the mailbox, collected her mail, and hastened to the air-conditioned haven of her apartment. Who ever heard of ninety-one degrees in April? That and the equally high humidity had sapped her energy in the short walk from Andy’s Place to the building in which she lived. The first letter confirmed her sister Linda’s wedding date in late May, a month away, and she hadn’t shopped for the dress she’d wear as maid of honor. She looked at the long list of things that Linda couldn’t find in the small town of Easton and wanted her to purchase in New York, and made some notes as to where she might find them. Anything except settling down to her work, because the minute she tried it, the face of Jason Calhoun mocked her from the pages before her.
The sound of the doorman’s buzzer irritated her, because she didn’t want company. “Delivery, Ms. Hinds.”
“Thanks, Allan. Please send him up.”
Minutes later, she stood in the doorway of her apartment and stared at the bouquet of one dozen calla lilies in her arm, winded as if she had run for miles. She closed the door, found the note, and read, Fate has caught us in her net. What shall we do about it? As for me, I’m overjoyed. Jason.
She kissed the flowers, placed them in a vase, and sat staring at them. She had found him, and he was more than she had thought existed. And he wanted her! She hugged herself and danced around and around until she collapsed on the sofa, giddy with joy. She didn’t want to work or do anything but think of him.
Suddenly, she sobered and, annoyed at her frivolity, got up and went to her desk. “I’m not going to let him control me this way,” she admonished herself, opened her file on Roberts versus Roberts and got down to work. Until Steven’s wife contested the divorce, she hadn’t worried about the reasons Steven was giving for wanting one. An uncontested divorce posed no problem. But in her view, her client’s grounds were no better than his wife’s charges and, from the judge’s order that the contestants be present at the trial, she suspected that Agatha Williams meant to raise some tough questions. Well, she could only represent her client as best she could with the flimsy reasons he’d given her. She worked until dinnertime, called the Chinese take-out shop, and ordered her dinner. Minutes after she’d finished it and destroyed the evidence, her phone rang.
“Hello, Ginger. This is Jason.”
At the sound of his voice, a sharp, unfamiliar sensation shot through her, but she spoke with a calm voice. “Hello, Jason. I don’t remember giving you my address or my home phone number.”
Laughter tinged his words. “Of course you don’t. I have my sources. If you had remembered giving either one to me, I’d start worrying about your truthfulness.”
“Jason, we’re not supposed to be consorting socially. You know that.”
“What do you think we can do through these telephone wires? I spent weeks cursing myself for letting you get away without a clue as to who you were or where to find you. God let you back into my life and, unless there is a compelling reason for me to do otherwise, I am not, I repeat not, letting you get away from me again.”
She grabbed her chest to still her heart’s pounding, but she was doggoned if she’d let him know how he excited her. Coolly, she told him, “We don’t know each other well enough for you to say things like that.”
“Speak for yourself, Ginger. I let you walk away because you wanted to go, and because I’d never had a one-night affair with anyone and agreed that it wasn’t wise. But after you’d checked out of the hotel the next morning, I saw the hole you’d left me in, and I knew that if we had made love you wouldn’t have been a one-time fling. In those two days, you got so deep in me, sweetheart, that you’ll be with me forever. I don’t know what it means, but I want to—”
“Jason, please don’t. You can’t say things like this to me. We’re adversaries, and the judge said—”
She heard him pull air through his front teeth. “Hang that woman. Alma Roberts and Steven Roberts are adversaries. You and I are not, and don’t you forget that.”
A flush of blood warmed her face. “What are you talking about? You practically bit off my head in that judge’s chamber this morning.”
“You were taking your frustrations out on my client, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.”
She looked toward the ceiling and rolled her eyes. Another self-satisfied male chauvinist. “Jason, a wife isn’t somebody you stash away at home to eat chocolates and watch the soaps. Women have brains, and they can use them for something other than sterilizing baby bottles.”
She figured from his long silence that she’d hit a tender spot, and she was certain when he said, “Women who think like you are the reason for half of society’s problems. A man has no rights in a marriage, as far as you’re concerned. You never heard of fifty-fifty. A woman can work if she wants to, but nobody should force her to do it. Women who stay at home, though, are less likely to get a divorce than those who work outside.”
She pulled her hair away from her face and got comfortable. “Spoken like a true Republican, a species for which I have no use. And don’t forget—Alma Roberts stayed at home and didn’t work.”
“You probably love Republicans about as much as I love Democrats, especially the so-called liberals.” When she didn’t respond to that sally, he asked, “Ginger, what in the devil are we fighting about?”
“You’re asking me? It all started because you went after me in court this morning with all your guns blasting.”
“Come on, Ginger. That’s between Calhoun and Hinds. It’s got nothing to do with Jason and Ginger.”
Images of his gray eyes lit with merriment, of the way his smile sort of hung on the right side of his mouth, danced before her eyes, and she slapped her forehead to dispel them.
“What was that I heard?” he asked.
“Don’t change the subject,” she said, increasingly wary of the force of her feelings for him. “I’m not a schizophrenic with two personalities and two minds, so don’t expect me to split myself into DayGinger and NightGinger. No socializing until this case is over.”
“When it’s over, lady,” he growled, “I’m going to delight in reminding you of the way it feels to slump against me in submission when my tongue is deep in your mouth loving you and teaching you who you are. Have you forgotten how close we became?”
When awareness slammed into her, she would have enjoyed throttling him for tampering with her brain and shaking up her sense of self. “For that, you would need my cooperation, mister,” she shot at him.
“And I’ll make sure I get it,” he drawled.
“I’m going to hang up, Jason.”
“Ginger.” His voice was no longer assertive with self-confidence, but carried an urgency, a need that found its destination in her heart. “Ginger, I am serious. I called to ask if we can be friends. It got personal today, but I want us to be as we were in Zimbabwe. I need that woman in my life. I’ve never known anyone like her. For two days, she lit up my horizon, brightened my world. While I roamed those hills, preserves, parks and streams with her, the world strutted brand new all around me, every place I looked. You and I were ourselves, then, not the products of our training, not public personas acting out the roles that society and the people we know have set for us. I want you back with me, Ginger.”
Stunned, she parted her lips but no words came out of them.
“I mean every word I’m saying,” he went on. “I missed you more than I can describe, and I can’t believe that feelings this strong, this deep, are one-sided. Will you walk away again from what we found in Harare? Or maybe I’m wrong. Can’t you tell me you reciprocate what I feel?”
She had forgotten how direct he could be. “Jason, surely you know that you touched me. I didn’t forget you. I didn’t even try. But I have to do my best for my client, and that won’t happen if I’m moonlighting with you. So let’s be glad we found each other and let the future take care of itself—after this case is over.”
“Well, thanks for that much, Ginger. I’d better tell you, though, that I don’t leave my life to Miss Future’s whims. I do whatever I can to shape it the way I want it, and I want to get to know you well enough to find out where you fit in my future. You ought to want the same.”
“I do, Jason, but right now I want you to give me some room. You needn’t worry. You won’t be out of my mind. Can I count on that?”
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