“Hello.”
He wondered why she’d hesitated so long before speaking. “This is Duncan. I’ve got to run a couple of errands. If you need me, call my cell number. See you in the morning.”
“Take care.”
The concern in her voice said she might fear for his safety. But why should she? She didn’t know where he went nor what he did, though she tried to guess. “That I will,” he replied, keeping it light. “Good night.” He stopped in Tonya’s room, saw that she was asleep, and headed for the garage where he put on the “street” clothes that he wore as an undercover journalist, pulled a navy blue woolen cap down to his eyebrows, and drove off.
He parked several blocks from his destination and walked to Bladensburg.
“Say brother.” A man sidled up to him at the edge of an alley. “You wouldn’t have a light?”
Duncan turned off his cell phone, because a ring would trigger the man’s suspicion. He pressed his recorder and pretended to look for a lighter. “Looks like some cat took it off me, man,” he replied. If he’d said he didn’t smoke, he’d have provoked the man’s curiosity, because everyone on the street smoked something.
“What can I get you, man?” the stranger asked.
Alert to trouble, Duncan only gave the appearance of being relaxed. “Not even a drink of water, brother. The guy who went off with my lighter got every cent.”
The man looked from side to side, lit a cigarette, and assured Duncan, “No problem. Your credit’s good.”
“Thanks, man, but I owe everybody on the street from here to East of the River, and you know what happens when you can’t pay up. If it gets bad, I’ll look you up.” He extended his hand to the stranger. “My name’s Dunc. Don’t forget it.”
“If you get stuck, Dunc, here’s my pager. Six to nine every evening. Just ask for Joe.” He walked on, and with that slip-slide gait, he’d be easily recognizable if they met again.
Duncan stood there long enough to be sure the man who called himself Joe wouldn’t return, and struck out for East of the River. Kids taking orders for drugs with pagers and regular business hours. He flicked off his recorder and quickened his steps. He’d begun to tire of the seedy side of his job. And now that he had Tonya, he had to consider the dangers involved.
He passed a woman sitting on the street beside her belongings, and his mind went back twenty-seven years to that day when his family sat homeless on the sidewalks of Bolton Street in the freezing cold. His hatred for Hugh Pickford flared anew.
His cell phone rang. “Yeah.”
“Say, Pops, this is Mich. Haven’t seen ya ’round, and me and Rags heard you been looking for us. Not to worry. We’re going to school every day, and we been checking out the shelter like you said. It beats that roach trap of ours, and the food’s pretty good. When you coming ’round? Some guy came by here said he wanted to teach us how to play chess. Is that legal?”
“Chess? Legal as taxpaying, so long as you don’t gamble. Take him up on it. Supposed to be a great game. Where’s Rags?”
“He’s right here, man. You be ’round tonight?”
If the boys were all right, he could go home and write. “I’m headed home. Call me if you two need anything, Mitch.”
“Gotcha, Pops”
Duncan reversed his steps, got into his car and went home. He parked in the garage, walked to his front door, and stopped. Why had the women stopped calling about his marriage proposal? He read Dee Dee’s column every day, and the notice appeared at the end of each one, but nobody called. Maybe marriage prospects for women twenty-eight to thirty-four were better than people thought. He told himself he wouldn’t glance toward Justine’s door. But when he got to the top of the stairs, his gaze went straight to the light beneath her door. He had to laugh at himself.
“Justine, woman,” he said as he closed his bedroom door, “all you need is a big black hat that has a wide brim and a pointed top, and a broom. A normal woman couldn’t do this to me.”
The following afternoon, Duncan stopped by his office at The Maryland Journal, checked his mail, and would have headed for CafeAhNay if Dee Dee hadn’t challenged him when he passed her open door.
“Still single, I see. You sure you’re not just putting up a front?”
He stepped inside her office and leaned his right shoulder against the powder-blue wall. “The problem is your column. If I’ve stopped getting responses, maybe it’s because nobody’s reading your column.”
“I’m crushed,” she said, leaving her desk and strolling to where he stood. “Half a dozen women have called here and said that line I run for you is a hoax, that you’re already married. I don’t know why they’d think that, but if you’re still looking, I could run your handsome picture.”
He grimaced. “Definitely not. No way.”
She eyed him from beneath her lashes. “Maybe you should look a little closer to home. I wouldn’t be a bad companion for a man-about-town.”
He was about to tell her how foolish an idea it was when he realized that she was serious. He put an arm around her shoulder. “Dee, I couldn’t marry my sister, and that’s what you are to me.”
Her rueful smile told him that her suggestion had been anything but casual. She shrugged. “Your sister, huh? Knowing you, that’s an honor, though I have to say it’s a dubious one.”
He told her good-bye and left the building. Something wasn’t right; why would any woman who called his house think he’d gotten married? As he drove, light, drifting snowflakes obscured his vision, and he decided he’d better go home and finish his series.
Duncan walked into an empty house. Knowing that Justine and Tonya were out in the snow, even a light one, annoyed him and, besides, he hated getting home and finding that she wasn’t there. The hall phone rang.
“Hello.”
A woman wanted to know if he was Duncan Banks and if he was still satisfied with his choice for a wife and didn’t intend to interview anyone else.
Wait a minute, he thought, as his mind jumped into action. “What do you mean, am I still satisfied?”
She hesitated as though unsure of her facts. “Well…The lady said the position had been filled and, you know—”
His hand gripped the phone, bruising his palm. “When was that?”
“I called a lot of times, and every time, that’s what she said. Is it open? I mean did you get married yet or did you change your mind or…or something?”
He jotted down her name and phone number and told her he’d call her back. Mattie had said she hadn’t taken any calls, and he couldn’t believe Justine would do such a thing. But who else? Tonya couldn’t even pronounce her own name properly.
Half an hour later, Justine, Mattie, and Tonya burst into the front door. Tonya greeted him with open arms and Justine explained that someone had stolen the battery out of Moe’s car and taxis weren’t answering calls, so she’d gone to Mattie’s house and gotten her.
“I would have left a note, but I thought we’d be back before you got home,” Justine explained.
“No harm done, but I’m getting you a cell phone and, if necessary, I’ll glue it to you. Woman, you’re going to give me gray hairs. When you get Tonya settled, I want to ask you something.” He kept his voice light. “I’ll be in my office.”
She nodded, and he watched her trudge slowly along so that Tonya could climb the stairs. When he could no longer see them from where he stood in the foyer, he went to the kitchen to speak to Mattie, though he knew he wasted his time.
“Mr. B, did you think I was lying to you?” she asked, when he mentioned the calls. “That woman don’t have to be telling the truth. Why you care, anyhow? I got sick of them women callin’ here and acting like they was the Queen of Sheba, but I never told them nothing. Just took they names. Them callin’ all the time wasn’t a good thing for Tonya.”
He patted her slight shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d tell me an untruth; I had to check. It’s settled, now, so don’t worry about it.”
&n
bsp; He had a theory, but he didn’t think testing it would earn him any points with Justine. Curiously, she didn’t display annoyance when he asked her about it.
“Either the woman was lying or you had what you considered a justifiable reason for doing it. Did you tell any woman that I’d settled on a wife?”
She showed no remorse, but looked him in the eye and said, “I don’t remember saying that you’d settled on a wife. In fact, I know I didn’t. In every case, I was careful to state that the position had been filled. They didn’t ask which position, and I let them think what they liked.”
He fingered his chin, wondering why he wasn’t surprised. “How many women did you tell that?”
Her right shoulder bunched into a careless shrug. “I don’t know exactly, Duncan. Maybe fifteen, or it could have been more.”
“Why’d you do it?” The huskiness in his voice astonished him; what was he hoping she’d say?
Without hesitating, she told him, “Because I didn’t want anyone else to take care of Tonya.”
He mused over that and decided that it didn’t ring true; it was an excuse, not the reason. “I wasn’t looking for a nanny, but a wife, and I suspect you knew that. Why would you think you couldn’t be my child’s nanny if I got married? Was it because you didn’t want to see me—?”
She almost knocked over the chair as she got up and bolted out of the room. He didn’t stop to think, but raced after her. She shoved at her bedroom door with all of her body’s force, but he grabbed the door knob, and they plowed into her room together.
“Have you lost…Duncan, are you crazy?”
He pulled her to him, wrapped her in his arms, and with his free hand, tilted up her chin so he could see the grayish-brown eyes that followed him everywhere he went.
“You called them off because you want me for yourself. Don’t deny it.”
She had guts and plenty of it. “If you’re not going to fire me, please leave me alone. I told you the truth.”
Her mouth was so close and so sweet. God help him, he had to taste her, feel her spin out of control while he kissed her, had to shatter her will, to assure himself that if he chose, she was his. When, as though impatient for him, she reached up, clasped his head and brought his mouth to hers, he thought he would explode as he soaked up the passion that she poured over him, lost himself in her frenzied kiss and gloried in her mild abandon. Then, it was he who nearly lost command of his will, he who had to battle the influence of her woman’s scent, to resist the sweet torture of her soft mounds pressing against him. He looked around for…Good Lord. He was in her bedroom, seconds from disrobing her. Minutes from pouring himself into her warm tunnel of love. Minutes from heaven and the devil take the morrow He backed away. Damned if he’d let his libido lead him as though he were a puppy on a leash.
He took her hand, walked with her to this office, and offered her a straight back chair. This was the fourth time they’d been headed for the limit and the fourth time he’d put on the brakes. He told her as much.
“If you’re counting on my self-control, Justine, don’t. On the other occasions, I didn’t want us to make love, but tonight for some reason, I wanted it. Badly. And I still do. If this ever happens again, I don’t promise to stop; protecting you from myself is getting harder and harder.”
She got up and walked to the door, then turned and faced him. “If you knew what you were doing, that would probably be sufficient to assure your self-control. But you don’t, so—”
“And you aren’t telling me,” he cut in.
“So don’t put your hands on me. That way, you won’t start a fire, because I certainly am not going to walk up to you and begin testing my feminine powers.”
“But you don’t resist.”
“What happens when you pour water on a thirsty plant, Duncan?”
“You’re telling me you’re missing something?”
“No, I’m not. You have to know a thing in order to miss it. Good night.”
For the next hour, he sat as she’d left him. Not for anything would he take that sentence apart. Maybe he hadn’t been fair; after all he was as much a participant as she. He let his thoughts roam. What kind of life was it for an intelligent woman cooped up in a house six or seven days a week with a baby for company? True, she took the position voluntarily, but she needed a respite from it. It occurred to him that he hadn’t been to the Adirondacks since his divorce. Several days at the log cabin he rented in Indian Lake might be just what she needed. To his astonishment, she embraced his suggestion with enthusiasm.
“Just the three of us?” she asked, as if on second thought.
He tried to put her at ease. “The place has two bedrooms, and Tonya could share with you, if you don’t mind. The owners serve great meals and their place is a short walk away, so we wouldn’t have to cook, although the cabin has a full kitchen. Okay?”
The glow on her face nearly undid him. He started downstairs to tell Mattie that she would have some days off then stopped. When Justine had smiled, she’d reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t place the person. He’d known her from somewhere, he’d swear it.
Chapter 9
Justine reflected on her feelings while her child played around her feet. She had always reached toward her father, grasping for any straw of warmth that might accidentally escape him. She had looked for affection in her aunts, her husband. Always denied. Oh, Kenneth had gone through the motions of warmth, but she now knew that it hadn’t poured from his heart, that she had married a man who’d had her father’s temperament. And she knew it because she’d been in Duncan Banks’s arms, known his unrestrained affection and warmth, and because she had the constant and unfettered love of her child. Because, at last, she knew what love was.
She had answered all the letters to Aunt Mariah that were in her possession and couldn’t risk sending in another warmed-over column. She had to go to the post office.
“You’re getting heavy,” she told Tonya, as she lifted her and walked up the mottled gray stone steps of the old post office.
“Walk, Juju. Tonya walk?”
She shifted the child to a more comfortable spot on her hip. “Not this time, Love. I can’t have you running away from me the way you like to do at home,” Justine said and headed toward the mail drop where she posted several letters. When she turned toward the mail boxes that were located just around a corner, a short man walked directly to her and stopped in front of her.
“You Justine Taylor?”
Her first impulse was to clutch Tonya close to her breast. “Who?”
The short, mustached man repeated his question.
“Sorry. I can’t help you, Mister.”
He didn’t move, effectively blocking her way, but she didn’t take her gaze from his eyes as he pulled off the baseball cap that he wore with the bill turned backward, ran his hands over his hair, put it back on, and appeared to consider her reply.
“You sure?”
Taking advantage of his indecision and the opportunity to throw him off balance, she smiled as warmly as she could. “Of course I’m sure. Hope you find who you’re looking for.” As if there was no reason why he shouldn’t move, she smiled again. “Excuse me, please.”
He stepped out of her path, but instead of going to the mail boxes, she headed for the stamp window, bought some stamps, and got her nerves under control. After assuring herself that she had the cell phone Duncan had given her, she took her time walking down the steps, carefully observing her surroundings as she did so. She could almost hear the accelerated racing of her heart when, across the street, she saw the man get into a red Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and drive off.
That voice. The same voice that had warned her in one of those mysterious phone calls to mind her own business. She drove past Duncan’s house, didn’t see the red car, circled the block, drove into the garage, and closed the door from the inside.
“What you doing coming in that way?” Mattie asked when she let her in the side door. Mr. B don�
�t like that door opened ’cause it’s too easy to forget and leave it unlocked.”
The little woman picked Tonya up and hugged her. “You shore is a cute little tike.” Then she set the child on her feet, braced her left hip with her fist, and looked at Justine. “That scruffy little man was back here looking for you. This the second time he axed me if you was home. I told him you don’t live here, but looks like he don’t believe me.”
Justine had learned that Mattie wasn’t as simple a person as she seemed. She studied the woman. “Why did you tell him I don’t live here?”
Maggie shrugged, rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, and let the slow rising of her upper lip expose her large front teeth. “My Moe tells me to always figure out what kind of person a man is. And I knew no woman the likes of you has anything to do with that man. His kind ain’t never up to no good. Humph. Him with his beady little eyes that don’t look straight at you. Shady character if my name is Mattie Swindell”
Justine patted Mattie’s shoulder. “You’re a treasure, Mattie. Thanks.”
Mind her own business. She hadn’t meddled in anyone’s affairs…except, maybe…She dialed Al’s number.
“Al, have you given anybody other than Warren information about me and where I live?”
“’Course not, babe. Why? You having problems?”
She told him about the calls and the man who had confronted her in the post office. “He could only be someone incensed by something that I put in my column.”
“I should have had you use the paper’s address, and maybe we’d better change. Anybody can find out who a P.O. box belongs to if they know how to go about it.”
And that would cause more problems. She’d have to tell him she lived at Duncan Banks’s home, and he’d want to get buddy-buddy with Duncan. “Wait on that, Al, ’til I get to the bottom of this.”
She hung up and faced a truth that she’d rather not have to deal with. She had to tell Duncan that she was Aunt Mariah.
She waited until after dinner when he’d gone to his office, crossed her fingers, looked up to heaven, and knocked on his door.
Fools Rush In Page 19