After an Italian meal in a mom-and-pop restaurant on Thompson Street, they wound their way to the city’s hottest jazz spot. From the minute they entered, Ginger wished she hadn’t been so agreeable. A waitress barely out of her teens sauntered over to their table, her face an open invitation.
“Hi, Jason,” she cooed. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”
For a second, she thought he’d stand up and kiss the little flirt. “I was here, but you weren’t. How’s everything?”
“You know my situation, Jason. Seeing you is the only good thing that’s happened to me this week.”
Ginger thought she’d burst. He could at least introduce them or, at worst, glance at her to let her know he remembered her presence. The waitress took their orders and left, and she took great pains not to look at the man who, only hours earlier, she had admitted to herself that she loved. To exacerbate her displeasure, he seemed oblivious to her quiet manner.
If it weren’t enough that she had to tolerate the waitress, the comedian who performed during the band’s intermission delivered the final insult.
“My wife doesn’t understand me,” he proclaimed. Then he looked at Ginger. “You’d understand me, wouldn’t you, baby? Soft, pretty thing like you.” He looked at the audience, then back at her sitting beside Jason in front of the stage. “Man, look at those warm, brown eyes. Ain’t no black chicks supposed to walk around with eyes like that. A lot of our women have big black eyes, but this beauty here—”
Jason grabbed the mike from him. “You say one more word to or about this woman, and you’ll wake up a lot smaller than you are now. Got it?”
The comedian looked up at Jason. “I was just teasing, man. Can I have my mike back? Thanks. I have to tell you, though, if she’s yours, you can afford to be cool. She’s choice.”
Jason glared at the little man. “I thought I told you—”
“Okay. I heard you. No offense meant.”
Jason sat down, and she could see the furor boiling up in him. “Would you like to leave?”
So he had a short fuse. She’d have to remember that. Certain that he felt as badly about the incident as she did, she covered his hand with hers and told him, “It never happened. What I want to know is who that child is who waited on us and called you by your first name?”
He leaned back and raised both eyebrows as though he hadn’t understood her. “Mindy? She’s the wife of one of my clients. She left him and calls herself teaching him a lesson which, I’m sorry to say, he isn’t getting. Don’t tell me you thought I was foolish enough to bring you to a place where you’d run into…” He stared at her. “Ginger, if you don’t learn to trust me, we aren’t going anywhere together.”
She stared right back at him. “If you had introduced us, maybe I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.”
“I would have, if I’d known what to call her. She isn’t using her husband’s name now, and I don’t know her maiden name. I certainly wasn’t going to introduce the two of you as Mindy and Ginger. Okay?”
His light touch warmed her arm. “If we put ourselves to it, we can fight nonstop, but these misunderstandings will cease when we become closer and we’re not so uncertain about each other.”
He squeezed her fingers with affection, and she couldn’t help leaning from her chair and letting her shoulder brush his. “You’re positive that we’ll be closer?”
“I am. It’s something that I can’t afford to doubt, sweetheart. Yes, I am absolutely positive.” He moved his chair until it touched hers, and she had again that peculiar sensation of peace when his arm stole around her shoulder. They sat that way through the show.
“I don’t think I’d better go in tonight,” Jason said at her door.
As far as she was concerned, he’d wasted his breath. “I’m not kissing you in front of my neighbors should any of them walk by, and I’m not letting you go without giving me my kiss.”
She’d known that her words would amuse him, but her heart still took a dive when the lights danced in his eyes and his face bloomed into a smile just before he laughed. He held his head with both hands and told her, “If I don’t hold it, there’s no telling how big it’ll get with you saying things like that.”
She walked into the foyer, dropped the wicker basket on the floor, and turned to him. “I waited all day for this, Jason.”
Gone was his laughter, his lighthearted demeanor, as his face took on the somber cast of a serious man. He took a step to her. “Come to me, sweetheart.”
She’d been anticipating the explosive passion that he’d unleashed Tuesday, the first time she’d been in his arms since they’d found each other. But he brought her to him with a gentleness, a tenderness that seeped into her soul the way a long, breaking sunrise robs you of all but your deep spiritual self. He looked into her eyes, and she searched them for whatever truth he offered her. Her heart quickened at the adoration, the sweetness that she saw there—an openness that said, Trust me and I will be all good things to you.
“Jason, don’t…please don’t mislead me.”
He continued to look at her, his eyes telling her that he adored her. “Whatever you see, Ginger,” he said at last, “comes from inside of me.” He pulled her closer, as if he wanted to lock them together, and lowered his head.
Surely he felt her tremors when his lips finally touched hers in a shadow of a kiss. Feather-light, it was, until she held his head to intensify the pressure. He capitulated, but only for a second, and placed soft kisses on her mouth until she thought she’d scream for more.
“We can’t go to the brink as we did last time, honey. We’re not ready for more, and if we get that far again, I’ll have a hard time stopping.”
She let him take her weight when he squeezed her to him and brushed her lips with his kiss. His hand was already on the doorknob. With a wink, he left.
She stuck her hands on her hips and, for want of a human target, glared at the door. “Tell me about the next time,” she said. “I guarantee you, you won’t stop.”
She put away the wicker basket and threw the linen into a hamper while her mind went to work. After Harold obtained the divorce, she’d sworn off men. When she first met Jason, he intimated something about the virtue of being alone. Now they’d both backtracked, and she didn’t see herself changing course unless forced.
Jason walked to the bus stop, leaned against it, and waited. Somewhere in the last five weeks, his vow to avoid involvement with women had gone down the drain, and he didn’t regret it. Unless Ginger showed him something that he hadn’t imagined or anticipated, he was in deep with her for the indefinite future. He knew she cared for him. But did she love him? If he’d learned anything that long day, it was that she meant more to him than any woman ever had. He thanked God that they’d found each other again. It couldn’t have been luck or coincidence, and he didn’t intend to treat it as such.
When he got home, he stopped by the mail room and found a letter in his box. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts requested the honor of his presence at the renewal of their vows. Would Mr. Calhoun please stand with them. He couldn’t help laughing. That case had been both a miracle and a nuisance.
He stepped into his apartment and telephoned Ginger. “Sweetheart, would you believe this? The Roberts are actually getting back together, and they want me to stand with them when they renew their vows. Did you get an announcement?”
“I haven’t been to my mailbox. I’ll check it.”
“If you got one, call me.” He made the sound of a kiss and hung up.
Sure enough, she had received a similar announcement and request, but Roberts had added that Judge Williams would preside over their ceremony. She told Jason she wasn’t sure she liked that, but he thought it amusing and said he could hardly wait until the four of them strolled into the judge’s chambers for the ceremony.
Marriage filled Ginger’s thoughts in the days to come. As she awaited the impending marriage between her sister, Linda, and Lloyd Jenkins, she had begun to wonder if
she would ever know true love. Everlasting love. She set aside a weekend in which to do Linda’s shopping. On the following Monday she put on her electric-blue linen suit and joined the Roberts and Jason in Judge Williams’ chambers.
“Well, well,” the judge observed. “If this doesn’t beat all.” She put on her glasses and looked from Ginger to Jason. “I suppose I can count on you two not to go at each other’s throats?”
Ginger noted that Jason seemed taken aback, but since the occasion had no legal implications, she decided to get some of her own.
“Yes, Your Honor,” she replied, “but that’s all you can count on our not doing.”
Agatha Williams removed her glasses and stared at Ginger, and Jason cleared his throat several times, obviously in the hope of quieting her. She ignored them both.
“A lot of water’s flowed under the bridge since we last saw you,” she told the judge.
“I can imagine,” Judge Williams replied. “That water was rushing pretty fast while you were arguing this case. Now, if we may begin…”
As the judge read the ceremony, Ginger looked up to find Jason’s eyes on her, and their gazes clung. His lips formed words that she couldn’t hear, and his eyes pierced the distance between them, drawing her into the orbit of his being. The words, Till death do us part reverberated in her head, and her right hand reached involuntarily toward him. His smiling eyes promised her the world, and she knew without doubt that she wanted his universe, to have her being in Jason Calhoun. If only he wanted the same.
Jason invited the Robertses to lunch with Ginger and him, but the couple barely had time to make the plane that would take them on the start of their second honeymoon.
“Think they’ll make it?” Ginger asked Jason.
“I’d bet on it. You don’t go to that much trouble a second time unless you’re certain.”
At that, her antennae zipped up, and she wondered what he’d left unsaid, but she didn’t voice her thoughts. She couldn’t, because she had her own dark chasm to cross. During lunch she told him she’d planned to rent a car in order to take to Easton, Maryland the things she’d purchased for her sister. He offered to drive her, and when he wouldn’t be dissuaded, it occurred to her that he might relish the opportunity to meet her only close relative.
“She’s getting married, and I’m standing up with her.” She had almost said matron of honor, but it wasn’t the time to go into all that, though she suspected they’d soon have to tell each other of their pasts.
“When’s the ceremony?”
“Saturday night. That’s why I have to leave here Friday morning.”
His glance held no annoyance, but his voice did the job for him. “Good thing you told me, so I can pack something other than jeans and sneakers.”
“Sorry. I’m not thinking straight, but I’m glad you’re going with me.”
They held hands as they left the restaurant. “I’m not going to see much of you this week, honey,” he told her. “Taking Friday off means cramming five days’ work into four days and nights. Okay?”
“All right. It’s the same with me, and I also have to get my dress fitted.”
Still holding her hand, he pressed a quick kiss to her mouth. “We’ll talk. Prepare to leave home at seven-thirty Friday morning.” Another kiss fell soft on her lips. “And stay out of mischief.”
Jason parked the rented Ford Taurus in front of Glenwood Street’s only yellow brick house at ten forty-three that morning. He didn’t usually speed, but there had been no traffic, and he’d had the wind at his back, so to speak. He busied himself collecting parcels from the car trunk, all the while wondering why he didn’t follow Ginger into the house and meet her sister.
A man paused in passing and stopped. “Man, you need any help with those things?”
He swung around defensively, remembered that he was not in New York, but a small Maryland town, and accepted the offer. Together, they lugged Ginger’s packages to Linda’s front door.
The stranger spoke as he rang the bell. “You down for the wedding?”
“Yes.” Why did he feel as though he had to pick his way through a briar patch? “I drove Linda’s sister.”
The man’s face brightened as footsteps could be heard approaching the door. “Well, glad to meet you. I’m Lloyd, Linda’s fiancé.” He extended his hand. “I live right across the street, so be sure and come over anytime.”
“Hi, sugah,” a tall, good-looking woman very much like Ginger crooned when she opened the door and saw Lloyd. “I thought Jason—” Her gaze landed on him, and she flung her arms around his neck. “Jason! I’ll never believe she really found you. I’m so happy to meet you. I tell you, the Lord was with her. Lloyd, honey, you and Jason bring those things on in.”
He soon learned that Linda organized people. Three women sat on the back porch peeling potatoes, wrapping cutlery in linen napkins, and making party favors, and in the garden a man painted silver stars and crescents to form mobiles. Linda evidently didn’t believe in letting a person feel useless. She walked into the dining room where he stood talking with Ginger.
“Ginger, honey, could you take Lloyd—he’s gone home across the street—and run down to Dillard’s and get me two rolls of silver ribbon about four inches wide? They have it. And Jason, honey, you come in the living room and help me practice my song.”
He blinked. “Your song?”
“Yes. I’m singing. Why should I let some other woman sing to my man at my wedding when I can do it, huh?” She had his hand, leading him to the living room. He didn’t say, Whew, but he thought it. A real steamroller. She played and sang “For You Alone,” and her voice brought back to him the moments when he’d been lost in the web Ginger had spun around him as she sang “Mood Indigo.”
He applauded her. “You and Ginger have beautiful voices, and very similar, too.”
She thanked him. “Just think. After tomorrow, I won’t be in this big house all by myself. We’re going to live here and rent out Lloyd’s house.”
He had wondered why she lived alone in such a big house, and voiced his thoughts.
“It’s our family home. Our parents died, Ginger went to New York, and I was left.” She got up and walked to the window, let out a deep breath, and spoke with her back to him. “I’m a very lucky woman, Jason. Lloyd and I were engaged once before, and a couple of weeks before we were to marry we had an awful spat. It was my fault. I’d always been insecure, and I saw this beautiful woman crawling all over him at our annual NAACP dance. I went nuts. He didn’t push her away, so I decided there was something between them. I guess he’d gotten tired of my foolishness, because he walked out of there and left me. When I called him, he said he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life accounting for every blink of his eyelids. I begged forgiveness and he gave it, but two days later the same woman came into church and sat beside him. He moved over to make a place for her. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about it, so I strutted out of that big, crowded church.
“As you may imagine, I didn’t crawl back, and he didn’t ask. Several days later, I heard he’d left town. That ended it, but for the next three years, I was perpetually depressed. I loved him so much that not an hour passed that I didn’t long for him. One day I decided to find him. I wrote a letter telling him what I felt and what I knew I’d lost, and asked his forgiveness. Then I hired a private investigator and gave him the letter to give to Lloyd. The PI found him in Denver, and Lloyd called me. I asked if I could go out there to see him. He met me at the airport, and nothing that happens to me in the future will ever supersede in my heart that moment of reconciliation there in his arms in the Denver airport. That was about eight months ago. He moved back here and bought that house, got a job teaching at the University of Maryland in Princess Ann—about thirty miles from here—and we’ve never looked back.”
She turned and faced him. “I grew up, Jason, and I now know what’s important between a man and a woman.”
“What?”
“Lo
ve, trust, and fidelity. I learned the hard way what it means not to trust.”
Analyzing events and situations was his business, and he thought about all she’d told him without any provocation on his part. “You arranged this opportunity for us to be alone. Why?”
Her light brown eyes, so like Ginger’s, appraised him carefully. “My sister was practically a basket case when she got back here from Zimbabwe. She’d found more with you in two days than she’d had in her entire life, and she’d let it slip through her fingers. I hurt for her. As with Lloyd and me, a second chance is not to be taken lightly. The angels aren’t happy when you throw their gifts back at them.”
He wouldn’t argue with that. “What do you do, Linda?”
“I teach math at the University of Maryland.”
He nodded absentmindedly. “Two talented, accomplished sisters.”
Linda had a right to be concerned for her sibling, but pressure of any kind had never sat well with him and, though she did it subtly, she was nevertheless leaning on him. Not that he blamed Ginger; it wasn’t her idea that he drive her down there. As the day wore on, he saw similarities to the life he’d known in Dallas: privacy was nonexistent. One neighbor after another greeted him and gave him and Ginger their blessings, assuming that they also planned to marry. Linda hadn’t arranged a bridal supper, but a party at her home for neighbors and friends, and he soon had a surfeit of the neighborly well wishes.
He sat on the bride’s side of the church the next evening and looked back as Ginger, breathtakingly beautiful in a mauve pink silk evening gown, preceded her sister to the altar. His head did battle with his heart as he watched the proceedings, wanting to the pit of his soul to take that man’s place and stand there with Ginger beside him, but at the same time struggling against the irritating thought that the whole town was trying to shove him into it.
At the end of the ceremony, he kissed Linda and was about to shake Lloyd’s hand, but he recoiled when Linda’s new husband addressed him as brother-in-law.
Yes, I Do Page 17