Last Chance at Love

by Gwynne Forster

  She interrupted him. “Jake, are you ashamed of me? If not, why are you upset?”

  He related his agreement with Allison and added, “She violated the terms, and she’s going to hear from me.”

  “Jake, are you in love with Allison?”

  He remembered how tortured he’d been when he didn’t know where she was and feared for her safety. “She...uh...she means a lot to me.”

  “Hogwash. I asked you if you love her.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I won’t—”

  “You won’t do anything. Give her my love.”

  Jake hung up, walked over to the dining room window, and looked out on the yellowing trees. September and the beginning of his favorite season. A time when his mind always seemed to refresh itself, when he reaped a harvest of new ideas, like heading back to school after a summer of intellectual draught. He stared at the already changing foliage and saw nothing of the emerging season that interested him. Gone was his desire to jog or do anything other than confront Allison. He walked down the hall, opened the door, and sat on the balcony, enjoying the breeze that shot through him. What the devil possessed her do such a thing? Get into her car and drive from Washington to Reed Hollow and knock on his mother’s front door?

  Unable to put his mind on his work, he went into his storage closet, got a tub of varnish and a brush, and began to weatherproof the balcony’s wooden floor, something he had been postponing for the past three years. He worked feverishly in an attempt to rid himself of his anger and get his mind off Allison. He accomplished neither. At four o’clock, he took a shower, dressed, called a taxi, and headed for Duncan’s home.

  The smell of food on the grill when he got out of the taxi reminded him that he hadn’t eaten lunch, and he felt a pinch in his belly. He had barely touched the doorbell when Justine opened the door.

  “I saw your taxi drive up,” she said, evidently in response to his raised eyebrow. “I’m so glad you could come. We don’t get to see you nearly as often as we’d like.”

  He kissed her cheek. “You and Dunc are too good to me. Where’s Tonya?”

  “Downstairs at the piano. She’s not quite four, but considering how she loves that instrument, we may have a prodigy on our hands.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  “That’s what I say.”

  He let his gaze sweep over her and smiled inwardly. “Where’s the old man?”

  “Wait’ll I tell him what you called him. He’s out back dropping hot dogs on the grass.”

  “As long as he has some more.”

  “How’s it going, man? These ribs are already getting tender. I’ve got some Cornish hens on the spit, and later I’ll put the hot dogs and hamburgers on. That’s corn and red potatoes wrapped in foil in that basket over there. I’ll start ’em to roasting in a minute, and I’ll grill some peppers, eggplant, and red onions. It ought to be good.”

  “Yeah, I don’t doubt it. You’re cooking enough for twenty people. Who else is coming?”

  Duncan turned to face him. “Just us. You think it’s too much?”

  One look at Justine had told him she’d be eating for two, but even with that addition, he didn’t see how they could consume so much food, and told Duncan as much.

  Duncan allowed himself a careless shrug. “Oh, well. You’ll take some home with you.” He paused and seemed to scrutinize Jake. “You’re pretty low-key today. Anything I can do?”

  Jake didn’t like thinking he was transparent. “Naah, man. Just one of those things.”

  A grin lightened Duncan’s facial expression from serious to mocking. “I see. Why didn’t you bring her with you? I told you this was informal.”

  “What makes you think it’s a woman?”

  “Considering the last conversation we had about this I figured by now she’d gotten to you.” He cleared his throat. “That is, if she hadn’t already. Smart as you are, any woman you get involved with must be a good woman. Let it happen, man. I wouldn’t exchange my life with Justine for the Fort Knox vaults.”

  Jake leaned against a pear tree and heard himself telling Duncan Banks what his mother told him that morning. “I can’t believe she’d do that. I’ve got a notion to drop her from the tour and out of my life. I trusted her.”

  “Hold it,” Duncan said, waving the grilling tongs as if he were a conducting an orchestra. “Some of that’s your fault. If you love each other, you should already have told her that much about yourself. I imagine loving blind must be frustrating, and especially for an intelligent person.”

  “My mother said something to that effect. Oh, hell. My life is complicated, and I try to separate the business from the social.”

  “And you’re a maser at it. I don’t ask questions, because we wouldn’t be friends long if I did.”

  Jake slouched against the tree with his hands buried in his trouser pockets. “No, but I’d bet my hat there isn’t much about me you don’t know. A journalist of your stature has informants everywhere and knows where and how to get information.”

  “True,” Duncan said, about the time Justine opened the door and stepped out on the porch. “Next time you come, bring her with you. I want to meet the woman who slowed you down.” He walked over to Justine and kissed her quickly on the mouth. “Where’s Tonya?” he asked her, letting Jake know they would finish their conversation another time.

  “At the piano. Where else? That’s all she wants to do,” she told Jake. “If she isn’t trying to play, she wants me to play.”

  “Is she studying music?”

  “Yes, and doing well. I didn’t want to start her lessons so early, but she gave me no choice.”

  “Make yourself comfortable, Jake, while I get my daughter,” Duncan said.

  “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come, Jake. My husband is cooking enough for two dozen people.”

  “That’s what I told him. Today’s his birthday?”

  “Yes. Wayne and Banks should be here any minute. It’s a surprise.”

  Wayne and Banks Roundtree arrived, bringing their young son, Luke. Jake didn’t know when, if ever before, he’d felt so out of place. He couldn’t enter the banter and camaraderie that centered on family, on the joy that parents found in their children, couldn’t loosen up with two men whose company he always enjoyed. Not even Banks’s irreverence lightened his mood.

  “Want to hear me play, Uncle Jake?” Tonya asked him.

  He was about to say yes, if only to be relieved of his halfhearted participation in the conversation, but Duncan closed that avenue.

  “Uncle Jake can hear you play next time he comes,” Duncan told the child. “He wants to talk with us.”

  “I’ll play for you next time, Uncle Jake.” She gazed up at him, apologetically, he thought. “I don’t know. My mummy is making a baby, and I may be a big sister. Then I’ll have to help my mummy.”

  He hunkered before her and hugged her warm little body to him, and it seemed as if she made up for all the loneliness he felt. Lonely as he watched Wayne and Duncan bask in the love of their adoring wives and children. He told himself to snap out of it, released Tonya, and looked at Duncan.

  “Is that so?” It was obvious to him, but he didn’t think it proper to announce that fact.

  “Sure thing. We’re expecting a son in about four months. Get busy, man.”

  “Don’t let them push you around, Jake,” Banks said. “The only reason Wayne is married is that I took one look at him and decided he was mine.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Jake,” Wayne said. “I’m married because this woman got into me and wouldn’t budge. It’s the life, though. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Yes. The life he wanted more than anything else. After dinner, Justine produced Duncan’s birthday cake and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champa
gne, and he raised his glass in a toast that he meant with all his heart. “Happy birthday, Dunc. God’s grace upon you and your family, and may it always give you joy.”

  He knew they were expecting something witty, even wicked, but that wasn’t what he felt, and he was in no mood to pretend. As soon as he could do it gracefully, he made his excuses.

  “Thanks for sharing, old man,” he said to Duncan. “I wouldn’t have missed it.” He winked at Banks. “I’ll match wits with you next time.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “A solemn, no-nonsense Jacob Covington means I have to straighten up and act the same, and you can imagine how that thought pleases me.”

  He told them goodbye, walked outside, and called a taxi with the use of his cell phone.

  Inside his house, he decided to talk with Allison that night even if he had to spend the better part of it tracing her. However, she answered her phone the first time he dialed her number.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Allison.”

  “Hi.”

  Silence. So she was waiting to hear what he had to say about her excursion to Reed Hollow. Let her wait. “I must have phoned you twenty times since I got back here. Can you imagine the scenarios my mind conjured up about where you might be? All of them unsettling. Couldn’t you have phoned me, knowing I’d tried to reach you?”

  “Well, yes...I could have, but somehow I didn’t think to do it. Lodged somewhere in the archives of my mind was the certainty that you wouldn’t be home, since you had an emergency.”

  “Did I say I had an emergency? I did not. Besides, I gave you my cell phone number. You weren’t home at midnight or at nine this morning. I’m asking you for the second time whether there’s another man in your life. If there is, tell me now and I’m out of here.”

  “There isn’t anyone else.”

  “Then—”

  “How can you demand what you either can’t or won’t give? You want to know where I was, but you’re not about to tell me why you broke four lecture and signing dates in San Antonio. Don’t you think I’m as much entitled to my privacy as you are to yours?”

  “Yes, you are. However, if you thought I was entitled to privacy, why would you go to such lengths to invade it?” Her gasp reached him through the wires. Did she think his mother wouldn’t tell him?

  “I didn’t invade your privacy. If you weren’t so secretive, I could have gotten exactly the same information from your publisher or from the Library of Congress. For most people, dates of birth, first-day school attendance and graduations, colleges or universities attended, along with honors, are public records. If I left that out of the story, I’d never get another job. If you’re angry, I’m sorry but I’m not going to apologize, because I loved your mother.”

  He stopped a mild expletive just before it passed his lips. Hadn’t his mother and Duncan said as much? His conscience began to taunt him. Don’t be stubborn, man. It isn’t worth turning your back, walking away from the only woman you have ever loved. Besides, one day soon, you’re going to have to ask her forgiveness for a lot of things.

  “Yeah. The two of you must have had a ball together. She burned my ears off about you.”

  “You’re blessed to have her as your mother, Jake. When I left her, I couldn’t help crying. I got more love from her in eighteen hours than I had from my own mother in thirty years. My mother took care of Sydney and me in every way and made certain that we had every advantage, every opportunity, but, Jake, she doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body. She’s not loving. Your mother is love personified. I’m glad I went to see her.”

  “You promised to report only on my nine-to-five activities,” he said, clinging to his stubbornness.

  “Well, in that case, I can insert some salacious tidbits, not to speak of mystery, such as your sudden disappearance onboard ship while I went to get us some frozen yogurt. If you want me to stick to our agreement, I can do that.”

  He wasn’t accustomed to being bested, and he had to admire her for it. “All right. Come off your high horse. What did the two of you do?”

  “Nothing much,” she told him after recounting the time spent with Annie Covington. “It was... Well, you know how she is. She just opened her heart to me the minute she opened the door. I was at home with her, and you should have tasted those crab cakes.”

  “I know all about those crab cakes, Allison. I don’t even want to think about them. What are you doing this evening... I mean, can we see each other?”

  “I’d love to see you. We can’t stay out late, though. Where did you say we’re going in the morning? I don’t have my schedule handy.”

  “New Haven, so think in terms of autumn-weight clothing.”

  “Thanks. What time and where do we meet later on?”

  “If it’s all right with you, I’ll be at your place at six. I’m...looking forward to seeing you.”

  After hanging up he mused over his last, banal words to her. Looking forward to seeing you. “Hell,” he said, making his way to his office to settle at last into work, “I’m on my way out of my mind waiting to see her.” Six o’clock found him ringing her doorbell.

  * * *

  Allison didn’t know what to expect from Jake when he learned she had visited his mother, but she knew he would at the least take her to task for it. No point in worrying about a new litter of kittens after the cat’s been let out, she said to herself, quoting her paternal grandmother.

  She parked in her garage and took the package Annie Covington had given her into the house. She had never been able to control her curiosity, mainly because she loved surprises. In her little modern kitchen, the jewel of her home with its chrome appliances, beige marble countertops and yellow-brick walls, she placed the package on the counter and sniffed.

  “I know what I’m having for my dinner,” she said aloud, overjoyed to have the crab cakes.

  After unpacking, she prepared to treat herself to a luxurious bubble bath and had started toward the bathroom when the telephone rang.

  “Hello.” Hearing Jake’s beloved voice excited her, but she wouldn’t say it pleased her, for she would have to tell him she had visited his mother, and there would be hell to pay. To her amazement, he had his say and then backed down. It seemed out of character, but for whatever reason he softened; she couldn’t have been more grateful.

  She didn’t know where they were going, so she dressed casually, and when she opened the door to him it pleased her that he had done the same.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she said and found she couldn’t look into his eyes, not from guilt, but because the sight of him heated her blood. Her body telegraphed to her an unfamiliar message, reminding her that she had once known the power and pleasure of his hard, masculine thrusts—loving that made her a new and different woman—and that she needed to lie in his arms again. Raw and shocked at her feelings, she diverted her gaze, reached past him, and closed the door.

  “Hi. Come in.”

  But as if her body had sent the same message to him, he grasped her arm, and she moved into him, relishing his strength as he locked her to him.

  “I missed you,” he said. “Last evening, I attended a party with close friends, and I was out of sorts. I didn’t know where the hell you were, if you were in trouble, or what.”

  With her left hand she stroked the side of his face as his gaze bored into her. Then, she felt the hard pressure of his mouth and parted her lips to welcome him into her body. All she could think of while he loved her was the need to have him fill her with his heat and the driving power of his loins.

  He stepped back from her. “We’re of one accord here, sweetheart, but I need you to tell me what you meant when we separated in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency in San Antonio. I haven’t lost sleep over it, but I don’t believe in sweeping things under the rug.”

&nbs
p; She didn’t hesitate, but took his hand and led him into her living room. “I was angry, Jake, and I struck out. I know it’s a bad habit, and it’s one I have trouble controlling.”

  “But you must already have been thinking that way.”

  “True, but I always gave you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “I see. All right.” He looked at his watch. “It’s getting too late for dinner and a movie.”

  A thought occurred to her. “If you don’t mind being here alone for fifteen minutes, we can eat right here.” She handed him a copy of Once in a Lifetime. “Read this. You’ll love it.” She kissed his forehead, grabbed her handbag, and was out of the door and headed for Matty’s Gourmet Shop before he could react. She collected potato salad; corn on the cob; roasted red, orange, and green peppers; marinated shrimp; and buttermilk biscuits and was back in her house within twenty minutes.

  “Luckily, Matty’s was empty, and I’ve never seen that before.”

  “How can I help?”

  She showed him the plates, glasses, and cutlery. “You can set the table.” She put the biscuits and crab cakes in the oven to warm, heated the corn, and put the remainder of the food on serving plates.

  “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” she said, parroting the famous saying.

  “How much did you spend?”

  She treated him to a withering look. “Nobody pays for the food served in my house but me. You buy when we eat at your place.” She noticed that he was skilled in setting the table and complimented him on it.

  “Why shouldn’t I know how to set a table? I eat. I can cook, too. How about you?” It was a reasonable question, she conceded, but his tone in asking it suggested he expected a negative reply. She wasn’t much good around a kitchen stove, and didn’t think she should apologize for it.

  “I have other attributes,” she said.

  His right eyebrow shot up, and then he laughed that broken-into-pieces laugh he had when he put his whole body into it, and although she loved to see him let himself go like that, at the moment she had an urge to swat him.