The twinge, she supposed, had something to do with Tom. No, it had everything to do with Tom. She felt as if she would be leaving him behind, which of course was ridiculous. There were airplanes. She would probably see just as much of him in Washington as she did in Jackson.
Which, come to think of it, wasn’t nearly enough.
He called once, using her cell-phone number. As Ronnie was surrounded by people at the time—two state troopers, Thea, and a pair of reporters were accompanying her as she toured the schools on their opening day in the steamy Mississippi Delta—she had no choice but to keep the conversation brief and businesslike. The schools were in bad physical shape, the students for the most part poor. Kenny had arranged the tour as a way of continuing to emphasize for the media her concern with education, and Ronnie was genuinely touched by the poverty she saw.
But when Tom called, she fervently wished children, teachers, Thea, and everyone else nearby would vanish so that she could have just a few minutes of privacy to talk to him. What she wanted to say was for no one else’s ears but his.
“Was that Tom?” Thea inquired, frowning, when Ronnie hung up.
Ronnie nodded, giving all her attention to the clay masks the children had made in art class, which decorated the walls.
“Did he want something? Should I call him back? I’m surprised he didn’t call the office.” Thea was still frowning. Tom did not, in her experience, call Ronnie directly for anything.
Ronnie shook her head. It was difficult to be casual, but she tried her best. “He wanted to know how I felt about doing an interview with another women’s magazine.”
With the near debacle over Ladies’ Home Journal fresh in both their minds, it was a good answer. Ronnie was pardonably proud of it. Thea’s curiosity evaporated.
Ronnie’s longing for Tom increased.
She missed him with an intensity that grew worse instead of better with every hour that passed without him.
He was due back on Saturday. As it happened, he got home on Friday afternoon. Having just finished saying a few words about the historic nature of the event, she was at that moment engaged in cutting the ribbon for the opening ceremonies for the Sky Parade, a Labor Day weekend extravaganza featuring hot-air balloons, stunt flying, and military air shows, when she looked up to see Tom standing at the front of the crowd.
He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap, and he was watching her from beneath the cap’s brim as the large silver scissors she held snipped through the length of red satin. At first she didn’t recognize him. He was just a tall, athletically built man in a baseball cap, bolder than most because he was openly eyeing her. Then their gazes met, and he grinned.
As Ronnie recognized him, her face lit up, and she completely lost track of what she was saying. The smile she gave him was both spontaneous and megawatt in its power.
“You see a friend, Mrs. Honneker?” Chip Vines, the chairman of the event who was standing beside her as she performed the ceremonial function, asked jovially.
“Yes, I do,” Ronnie answered, recalled to a sense of time and place by the man’s question. A quick sideways glance revealed that Kenny and Thea, who stood with Ronnie’s security detail a few feet away, were both waving at Tom, but he was blind to their overtures, his gaze still on her.
“If we’re all done here, I’ll just go over and say hi,” she said, handing over the scissors.
“Yes, ma’am, we are. And we sure thank you for coming.”
The ceremony was over. The small group of people on the platform clambered down, and the platform itself was wheeled out of the way. Kenny, Thea, and the troopers gathered around Ronnie as she moved toward the crowd massed to watch the air show.
Behind her the first of the military planes rolled out of the hangars onto the runway. The crowd cheered.
Tom’s grin widened in welcome as she drew near. The desire to walk straight into his arms was almost overpowering, and she could read in his face the desire to have her do so. Instead Ronnie stopped in front of him, holding out her hand.
“Hello, Tom,” she said while her eyes said much more. He took her hand, shaking it gravely before releasing it.
“Hello, Ronnie.” His gaze flickered past her to Kenny and Thea. “Nice work on your speech. Hey, Kenny, Thea. Have you all met my son?”
For the first time Ronnie realized Tom was not alone. A teenage boy stood beside him.
“This is Mrs. Honneker, Mark. And Miss Cambridge.”
“Hi,” Mark said, nodding first at Ronnie, then Thea.
“Nice to meet you, Mark.” Ronnie smiled at him, shaking hands, and Thea followed suit. Kenny obviously already knew Mark, and greeted him in friendly fashion. Though they had not been introduced then, Ronnie remembered the teenager from that day at Tom’s mother’s farm. He was nearly as tall as Tom, and there was a definite resemblance between them, mostly in the shape of the mouth and jaw, and the color of the eyes. The boy’s hair was light brown, several shades darker than Tom’s, and in his baggy shorts and white T-shirt with the legend Big Johnson Rules, he looked thin rather than lean like his father.
Ronnie was slightly taken aback to find herself the object of Mark’s admiring stare. She was wearing a turquoise silk shirtdress that buttoned up the front. It had a long, full skirt and open collar, and was sleeveless but otherwise completely covered up. It could have been made with Tom’s directives on appropriate campaign gear in mind. There was nothing sexy about it, but still Tom’s son was eyeing her appreciatively.
She glanced at Tom to see how he would take this evidence of his son’s admiration. He was saying something to Thea, though, and appeared not to have noticed.
“What are you doing here? I thought you weren’t getting in until tomorrow.” Kenny put into words the question Ronnie wanted to ask.
“Mark’s up for the weekend. So I worked a little faster and finished up early.”
The crowd cheered as more airplanes rolled down the runway. Their small group shifted so as not to impede the view of those standing behind them.
“His plane landed an hour ago, but he wanted to hang around and see the air show,” Mark put in caustically. “If I’d known that, I would have had Grandma pick him up.”
Tom met Ronnie’s gaze with a lurking smile in his eyes. “So I’ve got a thing for military aircraft,” he said, shrugging. Then, to Mark, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home in time for your date.”
“I’m supposed to pick Loren up at six-thirty.”
“You’ll get there.”
“I hate to be a spoilsport, but I really need to get going,” Thea said. “I have a date tonight too.”
“Todd Farber?” Ronnie asked, mentioning the name of the man Thea had brought to Lewis’s party with an interested lift of her eyebrows. Thea nodded.
“Then I guess we’d better go,” Ronnie said, trying hard not to sound as reluctant as she felt. Her gaze met Tom’s again. To see him so briefly, and in such a public place, was almost worse than not seeing him at all.
“We’ll walk you to your car,” Tom said.
“I thought you wanted to see the air show!” Mark’s protest was indignant.
“We can see the air show from the parking lot just as well as we can see it from here.” Tom’s tone was quelling. Ronnie had to suppress a smile as they all turned and headed toward the parking lot.
The state troopers were in front, clearing a path through the crowd. Mark, Thea, and Kenny were right behind them. Tom caught Ronnie’s hand, pulling her back.
“Miss me?” he asked softly.
Ronnie looked at him. Her hand tightened around his. She did not dare to touch him any other way. Many in the crowd knew her identity, and there were reporters present, although they were focused on the air show rather than on her.
“You know I did.”
He slid something into her hand. Glancing down, Ronnie saw that it was an envelope folded into a business-card-sized rectangle, with something hard inside. She looked a questio
n at him.
“The key to my apartment. Mark will be gone by six-thirty at the latest.”
Ronnie’s hand closed around the paper rectangle. Her heartbeat speeded up. She gave him a quick, glimmering smile.
“Are you by any chance inviting me to dinner?”
“Something like that.”
“Hey, Dad, would you hurry up?” Mark’s impatient summons made them both start, and look around. Their privacy at an end, Ronnie and Tom moved forward to join the others as they pushed through the crowd.
Lewis was supposed to speak before a gathering of tobacco farmers at seven-thirty, and Ronnie was supposed to go with him. But she pleaded a debilitating headache instead and retired to her room. Dorothy was hostessing a bridge party, and twenty or so elderly women were gabbing away in the living room, Ronnie saw when she came downstairs again after Lewis had left. That made it easy to leave; Dorothy wouldn’t miss her either. Instead of sneaking out, though, which carried with it the danger of being missed or caught coming back in, she told Selma that she thought she would go for a drive to see if fresh air would blow her headache away.
Then she simply climbed into her small white BMW and drove away.
Tom’s apartment was north of Fortification Street, in Belhaven. The address, as well as directions, were written on the envelope that held the key. It was a venerable part of town, with towering trees, large older homes, and eclectic architecture. The apartment was one of three in an old brick Victorian mansion that had been converted into condominiums. Tom had the entire third floor.
There was an alley around back where Ronnie parked just in case anyone (she couldn’t imagine who) should see and recognize her car. It was still light outside, a beautiful Indian-summer evening. Quite a few people were out, tending their gardens or sitting on their porches or chatting with their neighbors. Ronnie wasn’t much afraid of being recognized herself. Taking a page out of Tom’s book earlier, she wore jeans and a T-shirt, with her hair tucked up under a baseball cap.
Still, she didn’t linger, but walked quickly into the building and up the stairs. The door fronting the third-floor landing was solid oak. Tom and Mark Quinlan, read the hand-scrawled label tucked into a small brass frame beneath the bell button at the side of the door.
She pushed the button and waited.
Tom opened the door.
Ronnie walked in. He shut the door, and pulled her into his arms.
Her baseball cap hit the floor.
Later, when their primary hunger was slaked, Tom rummaged around in the refrigerator for the makings of a light supper. After expending a serious amount of energy in the bedroom, he had professed himself starved, and dragged her up with him in search of food. Ronnie sat at the small, glass-topped table tucked into a corner of the kitchen, sipping Coke from a can and watching him. Shirtless, barefoot, clad only in a pair of faded jeans, he was looking seriously hunky as he rooted through the shelves, Ronnie thought, smiling to herself.
“How about a ham sandwich?” Tom asked, removing a platter containing a large, foil-wrapped object from the bottom shelf, and shut the refrigerator door. “Sandra’s convinced I don’t feed Mark properly, so she sent this ham and a container of green beans with him.” He laughed. “Well, she’s probably right. When he’s with me, we usually end up ordering pizza.”
“A ham sandwich is fine,” Ronnie said. Then, elaborately casual, she asked, “Are you and Sandra on good terms?”
Setting the platter on the counter, he removed the aluminum foil.
“Reasonably good, because of Mark. We both love him a lot. Of course when the divorce was going down, it was a different story.”
Tom found a knife, plates, and bread, and began hacking off slices of ham.
“You split up because she was sleeping around while you were out of town?” Ronnie prompted, remembering what he had told her the day she had met him.
Tom nodded. “Yup.”
“Were you really all that surprised?” It was hard to imagine he hadn’t suspected. She had suspected Lewis right from the beginning. No, she had known.
Tom finished one sandwich and started on the other. “Yup. I didn’t have a clue. I came home a day early from a trip, just like I did today, and walked right in on it. In my house, in my bed. It wasn’t pretty.”
Ronnie had the feeling that that was the understatement of the year. “That must have been bad.”
“It was.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Mustard?”
“No, thanks. Just plain, please.”
“No mayo either?”
“No, nothing.”
He walked toward the table carrying two paper plates. As he set hers before her, Ronnie was amused to discover that the sandwiches were each thick enough to feed three people.
“Thank you,” she said.
He sat down opposite her and bit into his sandwich.
“So the divorce was Sandra’s fault?” Ronnie probed, removing about half the ham from her sandwich so that she could eat it.
“Want to know all the gory details, do you?” He smiled wryly at her. “If I was smart, I guess I’d say yes. But the truth is I was working a lot, which means I was gone a lot. I did occasionally meet women in the course of my work and …” His voice trailed off, and he lifted his eyebrows expressively at her to complete the sentence.
“Sleep with them?” Ronnie finished for him politely.
“That about sums it up, yeah.” Tom’s mouth twisted at her tone. “I’d been married since I was twenty-one, and I fell out of love with Sandra about two years later.”
“I see.” Ronnie took a bite of her sandwich. “But you were still surprised to find your wife sleeping with someone else.”
“Surprised isn’t the word.” Tom put his sandwich down and picked up his Coke, then put that down, too, without drinking any. “I went nuts. I beat the crap out of the guy, scared the hell out of Sandra, and took off. The divorce took almost two years to finalize. Sandra wound up with everything: the house, the cars, the retirement fund, Mark. While it was going on, I couldn’t keep my mind on my business, which went to hell on a greased slide. The firm wound up getting accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of illegal campaign contributions on behalf of one of the clients we were working for at the time. Which we were not guilty of, by the way, not that it mattered in the end. It was all over the papers—I’m surprised you didn’t see it. We had to pay a huge fine, and afterward business went down the tubes. We couldn’t buy a client. The firm went bankrupt. Finally Kenny and I started picking up the pieces.” He smiled at her. “You were our big break. We’re coming back in a big way now. And I must say, I learned a lot from the experience.”
“Tom,” Ronnie began, and stopped. Her ham sandwich lay forgotten on her plate.
“What?” he asked, taking a bite of his.
“Tell me something: where do I fit into this picture? Do I fall under the category of one of the women you meet in the course of your work that you occasionally sleep with? Or are you still ‘handling’ me for the good of the firm?”
Tom stared at her across the table, and slowly put his sandwich back on his plate. His eyes narrowed. “For the record, the women I slept with while I was married were basically one-night stands. No emotional ties. They didn’t want any, I didn’t want any. And I draw the line at handling clients by sleeping with them.”
“Of course, it helps that most of your other clients are men,” Ronnie said sweetly.
His mouth quirked, and a flare of amusement lit his eyes. “That does help, yes.”
Ronnie stood up, scowling at him. Tom stood up, too, and caught her by her upper arms, pulling her close against him, looking down into her eyes.
“You want to know where you fit into my life? Is that what you’re asking me? The answer is, you don’t fit in. You are one huge complication in a life that was starting to get fairly smooth again. You are professional suicide and a personal scandal on a scale I don’t even like to think about, all wrapp
ed up in one gorgeous, sexy package. I tried my very best not to get involved with you like this. I couldn’t help it. I think about you during the day. I dream about you at night. Whenever I see you, it’s like the sun breaking through the clouds after a cold rain.”
As she listened, the frown faded from Ronnie’s face. She slid her arms up around his neck.
His voice turned husky. “So I guess I’d have to say that at this point where you fit into my life is kind of up to you.”
Ronnie stood on tiptoes to kiss him. No sooner had their mouths touched than the door to the apartment burst open, and then closed again with a tremendous slam.
Chapter
34
“DAD!” MARK’S BELLOW broke Tom and Ronnie apart faster than a bucket of cold water being thrown over them. They had only an instant to look at each other in consternation. “Dad, are you in the kitchen? You’ll never believe what she did!”
Ronnie had a sudden wild impulse to hide, which was ridiculous. She was trapped in the kitchen. There was no way out except through the living room, which Mark was already stomping across. And she was too big to fit in a cabinet.
Anyway, it became a moot point in seconds. Mark reached the kitchen door and stopped dead, the wrath draining from his face in the space of a single breath as his gaze moved from his father to Ronnie and back.
Ronnie saw the scene through Mark’s eyes, and winced: There was Tom, clad in nothing but jeans, barefoot and shirtless. She was fully dressed at least, in jeans and a clingy, bright yellow T-shirt with a pink rising sun on it, but she was equally barefoot, her mouth devoid of lipstick, her hair in a deep red tangle around her shoulders. They stood about a yard apart, having instinctively separated as soon as they’d heard him come in. Tom was in front of the cabinets next to the refrigerator, while Ronnie was frozen beside the table, which held two Cokes in cans, and two plates with the remains of two ham sandwiches.
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