In spite of her rioting nerves, she tossed her head and glared at him. “Don’t forget any of this, Warren, because you will have to repeat it before a judge.”
Outside, she hailed a taxi and headed for Primrose Street and home. Yes, home. How had she let herself forget the size of Warren’s ego, his bulldog tenacity in getting what he wanted, and the lengths to which he’d go for revenge? Revenge for her having walked out on him ten years earlier. She heard Duncan in the kitchen, but went directly to her room, changed her clothes, and called her godfather.
“Give me Stokes’s phone number,” Hugh said after she told him what had transpired between Warren and her. “Unless he’s foolhardy for sure, you won’t have to worry about him again.”
“You…You’re not going to do anything—”
“Illegal?” he asked, interrupting her. “Of course not, but neither am I going to let him intimidate you. Sleep well.”
But she didn’t. Warren had intimated that he meant to have her, and she’d seen his ruthless streak, so she had to take him seriously.
Duncan’s knock was not unexpected. She put on a kimono and opened the door.
“I don’t usually go out on your day off,” he said, “but this is an emergency, and I’d appreciate it if you’d check on Tonya while I’m gone.”
She nodded. “Of course. Please leave her door open so I can hear if she calls.”
“Thanks. Good night.” His wink didn’t have its usual punch.
Justine didn’t want to answer the telephone, because her anonymous caller usually made his evening calls soon after Duncan left the house. When the ringing persisted, she stormed out of her room to the hall phone.
“Hello!”
“Hey, Justine. This is Banks. I was beginning to think you guys had taken Tonya and gone off somewhere.”
Relief spread over her. “Banks. How are you? You just missed him.”
“Missed who? Duncan? I’m calling you. I’ll be over Saturday, and I thought we could have lunch or something. You need to get out of the house. Mattie can keep Tonya for a couple of hours.”
“I know she can, and I’d love to have lunch with you, but I’m supposed to work on Saturdays. Besides, Mattie hates babysitting.”
“You leave Mattie to me. She’ll do anything I ask her to do. You need the company of some females your own age.”
Justine couldn’t help smiling when it occurred to her that Banks probably had “Wayne” trouble and wanted to talk about it. “I’m older than you.”
“No problem. You can bring along your cane. Is it a date?”
“I’ll have to ask Duncan.”
Waves of laughter reached her through the phone. “That’s right, girlfriend. Dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s, then lower your lashes and give him your best smile. I’ll meet you at the Willard. Twelve-thirty”
Justine heard herself agreeing, and realized that she would enjoy an elegant lunch with a friend. “I’m looking forward to it,” she told Banks. “Anything new with you and Wayne?”
“Depends on what you’d call new. I’ll tell you all about it. See you then.”
Justine said good-bye and hung up. Did she want to be friends with Duncan’s sister? She liked the woman’s intelligence and quick wit, but she was wary of Banks’s uncanny perceptiveness. She doubted Banks ever missed much, and figured that she could even be on the trail of something with this luncheon date. Had she noticed the resemblance between Tonya and herself? She went back into her room but left the door ajar so as to hear Tonya if she called. Restless, she stepped out on her balcony, but the chill of the air sent her back inside. She realized that she was pacing the floor, something she hadn’t done since her days as Mrs. Kenneth Montgomery, threw her hands up, and told herself not to be paranoid about Warren or about Tonya’s resemblance to her. People don’t spend all their time thinking about you, she admonished herself.
At that very moment, however, she filled Duncan’s thoughts. He sat in the corner of a pool room just off Benning, greeting the regulars in the language of the street. He didn’t doubt that if the men and women who habituated “the street,” living on the edge and skirting the law, were aware that he was Duncan Banks, the well-known journalist, at best he’d lose access to his most important sources of information, but the greater likelihood was that he’d lose his life. He let them think him a worn-out has-been, dressed the part, and they considered him one of them.
“Say, man, how’s your old lady? Out of the bone factory yet?” he asked Buck, a longtime informant. Told that the man’s wife needed additional surgery and might be confined to the hospital for weeks, he stuck his hand in his pocket, balled up a fifty dollar bill, and slipped it to Buck.
“Gramercy, Pops,” was the man’s thanks. In Capital View, he was known as Pops, a guy who wrote for supermarket tabloids or some other periodical of low repute. “Any time you need the word,” Buck told him, “you know where I am.”
Duncan knew that if he sat in that corner for an hour any night, he’d see Buck and all the other regulars. He wasn’t there seeking information, though he was always glad to get it. He was reminding himself that he worked at night as well as day, and that he had to stop finding excuses to stay home evenings because Justine was there. He’d hired her so he’d be free to work when and where he chose, but home was a different place since she’d been in it, and he pulled himself away from it with increasing difficulty.
“When did ya blow in?” he asked an interstate bus driver, who paused on his way to the pool table.
“Couple of hours ago. Say, Pops, you’re in the wrong place. Bunch of flat feet pulling a sting ’round on Fifteenth Street. A lot of A-bombs going down the drain tonight.”
Duncan was on his feet. “Owe ya one, man.” Such contacts were reasons why he was one of the areas most respected reporters. He’s just been told that the police were carrying out a sting that would yield a mother lode of crack.
“Watch it, man,” someone said as he rushed across the street. “These cops see ya running, they figure you stole something and let you have a couple of bullets.”
“Thanks, buddy.” He slowed down.
When he reached the crowd, he pulled off his woolen cap, put it in his pocket and hung his press pass around his neck. “How’s it going?” he asked an officer.
“Same old thing. A bunch of idiot kids trying to kill each other.”
He wanted a story, not tired philosophy. “You deserve credit for breaking it up. What’s your name and precinct?” Duncan asked him. Half an hour later, he had the first story in his series about American juveniles. Eleven black, white and Hispanic boys under nineteen years of age were arrested for selling drugs. He shook his head. Was there no end to it?
After learning that Mitch and Rags were all right, he walked to his car. On the way home, he stopped at a convenience store for early editions of the papers and his glance caught a box of Godiva chocolates wrapped in gold foil and tied with a green silk ribbon. Justine loved green and looked good in it.
“One of those, please,” he said to the clerk. “Do you have a little card to go with it?”
She found one and dropped it in the plastic bag along with the chocolates. He didn’t let himself think about the impulsive purchase until he looked at Justine’s room door, saw no light, and had to deal with his disappointment. He sat at his desk and wrote, “Justine, I would never knowingly contribute to your discomfort or your unhappiness. Yours, Duncan.” He read it over several times, but didn’t see there what he felt, what he wanted to say. He shredded it and dropped the pieces into his waste basket.
The next morning, Justine brought Tonya downstairs in her arms against the child’s protests. Tonya wanted to walk down, but Justine didn’t want to spend the thirty minutes necessary to accomplish it. She put her in the high chair, sat down, and prepared to serve herself a cup of coffee.
“What on earth? Mattie, where’s Duncan?”
She picked up the box of chocolates, turned it over,
around and sideways. No card. “Mattie, where did this come from? Where’s Duncan?”
Mattie pranced into the dining room bearing a platter of eggs, sausages, and grits and a plate of biscuits. “You axin’ me? His royalty didn’t eat one mouthful of my breakfast. Said he had to go. Guess he don’t want to be here when you see this candy he put here. I tell you, there ain’t no figurin’ out men. Who else you gonna think give it to you? Me?” She patted her red and purple wig and looked at Tonya. “I forgot your cream of wheat.”
Justine looked at the box. No card. Nothing. Mattie returned with Tonya’s breakfast, and Justine was glad to concentrate on feeding her. “Do you know what time Duncan left?” she asked Mattie.
“I was too mad to look at the clock. My Moe woulda just give me the candy and sit down and eat his breakfast. I tell you, sometimes I think education makes people scared of theyselves.”
Best not to comment on that. She fed Tonya, drank another cup of coffee, and prepared to leave the table. “You ain’t eatin’ either? I tell you, you and Mr. B better get this thing straightened out, whatever it is, ’cause I don’t cook for people what don’t eat. Never seen the beat of it. First he bounces in here and says he gotta leave without his breakfast, then you show up and drink coffee. I’m supposed to be dumb?”
Justine stared at Mattie as she flounced toward the kitchen, lifted Tonya from the high chair, and escaped upstairs. She’d had as much of Mattie’s outrage as she could tolerate. She placed the box on her dressing table, wrote a thank-you note, and went to his office to leave it on his desk. When her gaze found the small envelope that he’d left there, she pulled the waste basket from beneath the desk, looked at the tiny bits of paper, and knew that he had written a note to her, thought better of it, and destroyed the message. She didn’t know why, but seeing the shredded paper warmed her heart. He’d written something and decided not to give it to her. If she had needed confirmation that he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, here it was.
When she heard Duncan’s car turn into the garage that afternoon, she rushed to the front door, waited for him, and opened it when he reached for the knob. “Well. Hi. What’s up?”
Obviously, she had surprised him. She couldn’t remember what she’d planned to say, and he stood there waiting for her to speak. She had a sudden overwhelming desire to kiss him, explanation be hanged.
“I…uh…You mind if I kiss you?” Where had those words come from? Her open palm flew to her mouth.
“Hell no, I don’t mind. Come here to me.”
He gave her neither time nor room to avoid his fire. His fingers grasped her arms, and jolts of electricity whistled through her veins. She moved toward him. Waiting. Wanting. He took his time and slowly lowered his mouth to hers. Her hands grabbed his shoulders and wound their way to his nape, while his hot mouth scattered her senses. She parted her lips in a plea for more, but instead of giving her what she longed for, he gripped her arms, closed his eyes, and brought her to him in a steely embrace. “One of these days, we’ll go the limit, Justine, and I don’t think either one of us is ready for the consequences.”
He settled her against the wall as though she were a precious figurine and braced his hands one either side of her. “And one of these days, I won’t be able to stop.”
Giddy with lust for the aphrodisiac in front of her and all around her, she asked him, “And one of these days, will you decide you don’t want to stop?”
He stepped back, his eyes stripping her bare. “Don’t be reckless, Justine. I am well aware that you’d panic if I went after you. You’re scared to death of involvement with me. And you ought to be, because it wouldn’t be something either of us would be able to walk away from without scars.”
“I know that, Duncan, and that’s why I fear it.”
“But don’t ever be afraid of me, Justine. You live in my home and you’re in my employ, so I’ll protect you even from myself. You may depend on that. But if you come to me, Justine, be prepared to stay a while.”
He may have intended to warn her, but he’d only excited her. She stared at him, mesmerized. He had the most beguiling habits, as when his eyes suddenly blazed with humor and a grin spread over his face. “Why’d you want to kiss me?”
She stuck her hands on her hips and removed them just as quickly. “I think it had something to do with those chocolates. But I suspect any excuse would have served. They’re delicious.”
“Chocolates? What chocolates?”
She poked him in the chest with her right index finger. “The ones that you were too chicken to stick a note on, but I didn’t care. I’ve never received anything that I appreciated as much.”
She could see that as hard as he tried not to smile, her comment had pleased him, and a glow claimed his face. “Well, I’ll be. It was my pleasure.”
Several days later, she received more evidence of Duncan’s kindness. “I’m here to put these guards at the tops of the stairs,” a strange man told Justine when she answered the door several days later. If that weren’t enough, a piano arrived. Duncan hadn’t said anything more about the things she’d asked him to provide for Tonya, so she gazed in awe when a large truck parked in front of the house later that afternoon. The driver walked over to where she stood with Tonya on the front lawn and handed her some papers for her signature.
“I got a Steinway grand for Miss Justine Taylor. You Miss Taylor?”
She steadied her fingers as she reached for the paper. “Yes…Yes, I’m Justine Taylor.”
“Surprised you, did he?” the man asked, his amusement more suggestive than merry.
Not that she cared what he thought. “Indeed he did.” She signed the papers and rushed into the house. Where would she put it?
“He said it goes in the basement where the long sofa is,” the man informed her. “You just take it easy, we’ll see to it.”
She had to find a place to sit down. Two surprises in one day. And a Steinway Grand, at that. For the next three days, she waited in vain for work to begin on Tonya’s recreation room. He had vetoed that suggestion, and seeing that he meant it reminded her once again that she was her daughter’s caretaker. Nothing more. For the piano, which she discovered he’d registered in her name, she wrote him a warm note.
After reading it, he’d joked, “Changing your thank you style, I see.”
“Do you think I can take a few hours off tomorrow afternoon?” she asked Duncan that Friday night at dinner. “Banks invited me to lunch at the Willard.”
He stopped eating and stared at her, wide eyed. “Banks? My sister, Leah? I didn’t know she’d be in town tomorrow. When did this happen?”
“She called me Sunday night. Will you be home?”
“He don’t need to be here,” Mattie interjected. “Miss Leah axed me to keep Tonya, and you know, Mr. B, I’d do anything for that sister of yours. You go right on, Justine. I’ll be here.”
Twinkling stars in his reddish-brown eyes danced merrily for Justine. “I’m not invited? Mattie’s keeping Tonya, so I could go along.”
She’d learned that he was pretty good at leg-pulling. Well, she wasn’t too bad at it herself. “Sure. Glad to have you,” she said and dared to add, “provided you take me along on your next midnight prowl.”
His head jerked up and she delighted in seeing his Adam’s apple bobble up and down, while he wrestled with his answer. He hadn’t thought she knew. “Just let me know when,” she teased. “Should I wear my Dracula’s cape, Nikes and hood, or my red mini-skirt?”
When his brow furrowed in a deep frown, and his eyes narrowed in a level, almost accusing look, she knew she’d come close to meddling in something that he chose not to share. Making light of it, she joked, “I have facets you haven’t seen, so let me know what it’ll be.”
His eyes drilled her. “Mini-skirt, and make it a short one.”
She held his gaze. Doggoned if she’d let him back her into a corner. If you don’t play the fiddle, get out of the front row, was the message behind that cryptic r
emark. Well, she could give as good as she got.
“If you don’t play basketball, stay off the court,” she advised him.
“Right!” he jeered. “And always be sure the credentials you present match your talents.”
The spoon slipped from her fingers, and her breath caught in her throat. She had forgotten her role again, and this time, he’d let her know that he was aware of it. He’d practically said, you’re anything but a nanny.
Having to recover while he kept his gaze glued on her took some doing, but she squared her shoulders and stared right back at him. “May I have those few hours off?”
The dark clouds in his eyes forecast a coming storm, but his words belied it and would have given her an unwarranted sense of security, if she had allowed them to dupe her. “Of course. You ask for so little.”
She thanked him, and when she would have excused herself and left the table, he leaned back in his chair and smiled, not in the way that could send goose pimples skittering about her skin as when it came naturally, but his cool, practiced smile. The smile that said he wasn’t pleased. “I haven’t heard you play the piano. Why is that?”
“As soon as the piano tuner comes over to tune it, that’s probably what you’ll hear most around here.”
“Has Tonya heard you play?”
“I played for her the day it arrived, and I had to carry her kicking and screaming away from it. You should have seen her. She erupted in fury at me.”
“Well, I’ll be. So you were right about that, too.”
She dared to say, “I was. And I’m right about that—”
His hand went out, palm forward. “Don’t say it. You know my view on that, and it stands.”
All right. She’d back off for now, but he hadn’t heard the last of it.
She found herself eagerly looking forward to her luncheon with Banks and, in a fit of honesty, admitted that what she anticipated was the return to the life she’d known before Kenneth’s betrayal and death—seeing friends at lunch and dinner in elegant restaurants and dressing as a modern career woman. She dressed in a red wool gabardine suit and black accessories and walked into Tonya’s room, where she found Duncan sitting in the rocker with the child in his lap. She bent down to kiss the child and he put his mouth in the path of her lips.
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