by Kris Calvert
“So, King, when you said you wanted to spend some alone time with me, you’re weren’t kidding.”
I laughed at her joke, but what I wanted was real alone time with Reagan—the two of us—completely honest and trusting. I was determined to know her. I settled for asking her questions to get inside her head.
Taking her hand in mine I stared into her dark eyes. “I needed to get you up here so I could discover the real Reagan.”
“What you see is what you get,” she said swinging our hands back and forth. She let me know she was nervous without saying a word.
“What’s Reagan Weatherford afraid of?” I pulled her close to me and brought my voice down to a near whisper.
“Are we speaking of her as if she isn’t here?”
“Why don’t we?”
Together we stared into the horizon, our arms wrapped around each other. There was something calming about the silence of the earth. It was easy to gain perspective at one thousand feet—at least it was for me. Looking at Reagan, I realized I could leave my secret life behind for many more nights like this. I was weary of so many aspects of my current life.
I looked back to her hoping she would open up to me—hoping she could touch on the hardest emotion known to man. Honesty.
“Reagan’s afraid of lots of things. Even though she’s a federal agent, who graduated at the top of her class no less, she’s afraid someone will expose her for the fraud she is.”
“Reagan’s a fraud? Why?”
“Because she wakes up every morning hoping that today isn’t the day her male colleagues figure out that deep down she’s a girl who cares what people think. She’s tough on the outside, but that’s her armor—it hides her weak interior.”
“Caring what people think makes Reagan a fraud?” I asked, loving that she was opening up to me so easily.
“No. Acting like she doesn’t care does. Reagan does things that Agent Weatherford would never do.”
“Such as…”
She turned to look me squarely in the face. Her delicate features were a cover for what I knew was a street smart, calculating enforcer of the law. “Like going on a date with a doctor whose ex-girlfriend showed up dead in his driveway thirty-six hours ago.”
“Oh,” I said. “That.”
“Not to mention that somehow it’s all gone away and the details of said murder have been erased from existence.”
Walking away from her, I reached behind the propane tanks and found the iced champagne and two crystal glasses. “Would you care for a drink, Reagan?”
“Really?” she asked. “You have nothing to say about any of that?”
I stared at her. She was beautiful and stubborn—a fighter—just my type.
I popped the cork and allowed it to fly overboard before pouring the Krug Champagne into the flutes I had intertwined in the fingers of my other hand. “I’d like to propose a toast,” I said handing her the glass.
Turning to face me, she raised one suspicious eyebrow along with her crystal flute.
“To honesty and all its virtues.” Touching her glass to mine, the crystal rang out and we locked eyes. I knew I could reach into the heart of this woman, but it was going to take some time and that was something I didn’t have.
“You know, Groucho Marx said, the secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made,” Reagan spouted.
I nodded. “So what is Reagan faking? I mean I know she’s a fraud, but she’s also a fake?”
She blinked deliberately and bit her lip. “I don’t think I should tell you unless you start telling me about King Giles.”
I pulled the gloves on and pulled the cord, igniting the burner to keep the hot air consistent. “What do you want to know about him?”
“What’s his deal?” she asked as she finished off her glass of champagne. Reagan was nervous and when she held the flute out to me for another drink I obliged her.
“He doesn’t have a deal. He’s a small town doctor who lives in his family’s house—”
“Estate,” she said correcting me and pointing her finger into my chest.
“Fine, estate. He likes to ride his horses, fish at his house near New Orleans, and he works for a lot of drug companies and Washington D.C. based lobbyists who want to keep tabs on pharmaceuticals in the market place.”
“And the women in his life?” she asked taking another drink.
“He’s had women. He’s not gay, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Is he looking?”
I finished my own glass of Krug and nodded. “He’s a hopeless romantic.”
She smiled at me and moved in closer. “The champagne really is lovely, may I have another glass?”
“Of course,” I said, picking up the bottle from the secure ice bucket, pouring her another. “How are you liking the balloon ride?”
“No one has ever done anything like this for me before. It’s…dare I say, charming?”
I nodded. “Well, there’s always that.”
“So, King,” she said moving in closer.
I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her to me. I couldn’t resist the urge to have my hands on her and I wasn’t one to quell my urges.
A breath away from her lips I stopped, waiting for her to make the move. I wanted to kiss her, God, I wanted to taste her lips. But I didn’t want to take advantage of the situation. “Yes?” I breathed the word into her and watched her tongue graze her red lips.
“Are you going to tell me who you really are? Because we both know you’re hiding something. You’re hiding something big. I feel it and you know it. You could save us both a lot of time if you just came clean.”
I gazed at the horizon over her shoulder. I couldn’t look her in the face and lie. I couldn’t even lie. “I am merely a man. And like you, a fraud.”
“How so?”
“I’m compassionate on the outside—being a doctor required it. But underneath, I’ve seen so much pain and destruction, sometimes I feel I’ve lost myself. I thought my heart was completely hardened—that is until—”
“Until you found your ex-girlfriend dead?
I tilted my head, stared into Reagan’s face and swallowed hard. The words were in my mouth, but protesting against coming out. “No. until you walked into my study at Rose Hill. I’ve thought of nothing but kissing you since the moment I met you.”
It was honest. It was truthful. It just wasn’t all of me.
She smiled slowly and lazily blinked her eyes. The champagne had calmed her—opened her up. “You want to kiss me?”
“Only with your permission,” I answered taking the crystal flute from her hand and safely storing it with mine on the side of the basket. Coming back to her, I pulled her body to me with such resolve, a quiet gasp escaped her red lips and I knew she was more than just an FBI agent—she was all woman.
“You first.” The words escaped her mouth as if she lacked the breath to speak them.
“Reagan,” I whispered into her ear, allowing my lips to brush across her skin as her name rolled off my tongue with ease. “You have my permission.”
We stood in the basket, high above the world below as the sun dipped into the horizon. Taking her face in my hands I inched my way toward her mouth, waiting for her to come the final breath to my lips. Standing at the finish line, we stopped and stared, each daring the other to cross. The wind blew through us, kicking up her long blonde hair and the glow of the setting sun on her skin made her look like an angel. I stroked her rosy cheek with my thumb inexorably, causing her body to shudder in my hands. Our lips still a breath apart I waited, straining against my desire like dog on a leash.
“I don’t do this…very often,” she whispered. “Or…ever.”
“We haven’t done anything,” I said steadfast in my posture.
“What if I’m bad at it?”
“At what?”
“Kissing.”
The word escaped her lips in a whisper as if it were beyo
nd the pale. “Not a chance,” I said dropping my forehead into hers.
Releasing her neck into my willing hands, she closed her eyes and the warmth of her body was on my skin in an instant as she brushed her lips across my cheek and the corner of my mouth.
“King?” she asked, her lips moving against mine.
“Umm Hmm” I didn’t move to form a word knowing it would turn into a drugging kiss.
“King, will you please…kiss me?”
There it was. Permission. “Yes.”
I skimmed my thumb across her bottom lip and reveled in her deep moan. Lightly placing my mouth on hers, I swept my tongue across her lips, tasting the champagne and the sweetness of her. Delicious. Claiming her mouth, I captured her lips—feeding from the intoxicating nectar that flowed between us.
Her hands ran from my neck down my back and I flinched under her touch, feeling myself grow long and hard.
Sliding my tongue between her parted lips, I stroked her mouth to ecstasy, her moans fueling my growing erection.
“Oh my God,” she breathed into my mouth. Suckling her throbbing lips until I could feel her tremble in my arms, I took her head in my hands, absorbing her essence into my very being. With each deep kiss and delicate after-kiss, we drowned in each other, leaving one another unsteady on our feet seven hundred feet above the stillness of the fleeting daylight.
12
REAGAN
When the hot air balloon touched down, the evening had faded into a lovely vignette of passion and full on making out. I didn’t want to put my feet back on the ground and lose what I’d found a thousand feet above the earth.
“Welcome back!” Keith shouted as King tossed him the rope lines over the side of the basket while he landed us without a hitch. We were back, down to earth. My fairytale was over.
I looked to King, who gave me a wink before picking me up and placing me on the dew covered grass. My high heels began to sink into the ground and I took them off one at a time, holding them in the crook of my finger.
King jumped the side of the basket and took my hand in his without reservation, giving it a squeeze. I’d spent the most romantic night of my life—well, the only romantic night of my life with the most handsome man I’d ever laid my eyes on. I told myself it could never get better than the last hour and sadness gripped me when I thought about it being over.
“Dr. Giles?” Keith said holding up a set of car keys.
“Thanks boss.” King caught the keys and we walked to the car, my hand still firmly in his grip.
“Hungry?”
He pressed the key fob to trigger the car’s remote start. I nodded, but didn’t say a word.
“Where are your shoes, love?”
I held them up by the two fingers they hung from. “My heels were sinking into the wet grass.”
King stopped in his tracks, picked me up once again, and carried me to the car.
“King, I’m fine. I can walk.”
Stopping on the passenger side to put me down, he kissed me. “I love those lips, but sometimes you talk too much. Just go with it.”
Again, I nodded as he opened the car and waited for me to sit before shutting the door.
I pulled down the sun visor and the vanity mirror lit up, shining a light on my windblown hair and now mostly smeared make up from all the snogging we’d done high in the air. I dug through my purse and was just swiping my new red lipstick across my mouth when King shut his door.
“I look like something the cat dragged in,” I confessed, running my hands through my long mane hoping the natural look was working for me.
“You’re beautiful, he said pulling me by the neck into him for a long drugging kiss that had my lady-bits clenching again just as he’d done to me in the balloon.
I didn’t know how to break it to him that we’d probably never do anything but kiss. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him—I did. But I’d never been with a man—not really.
It seemed ridiculous to even contemplate. I was twenty-five and I’d never made love to a man. The word love and I weren’t very familiar. The only word I knew was rape. That word and I were old friends.
I’d been in therapy because of it for years—dealing with the post-traumatic stress—but I’d managed to avoid ever having sex or making love whenever I was put into the awkward situation of even getting close to it being a possibility.
A man like King—a man who has his name on women’s panties—had bedded many women. It was a bad combination, a twenty-five year old born again virgin with all the book smarts in the world, but not enough time on the streets to be savvy and the sexually accomplished thirty-something world-traveling bachelor with life experience I may never know. But I couldn’t help myself. I knew it would end—it would end tragically—at least for me. Still, it was a risk I was willing to take. I needed to start my life somewhere and this seemed as good a place as any.
“Are you hungry, love?” he asked.
I was, but I didn’t know if I was supposed to be hungry on a date. I thought that maybe I should act like I wasn’t, and eat when I got home. But my home was a hotel and room service wouldn’t deliver after eleven. I answered honestly, regardless of what other women might’ve said. “I’m starving.”
“Me too. What are you in the mood for?”
“I’ll eat whatever.”
“No you won’t and neither will I. Let me think,” he said with a heavy sigh as he looked at the glowing clock on the dashboard. “It’s too late to find a decent restaurant and I dismissed the staff at Rose Hill, but I know there’s food in the kitchen. We could go back to my place and get creative.”
He looked at me with a huge smile, and I didn’t know if he was speaking of the food or the something else. I bit my lip and tried to decide what to say. I’d told myself I was on this date to find out more about King Giles and the disappearing case of the ex-girlfriend. I’d told myself I stayed behind to Nancy Drew this bitch up but so far I had zilch. If I stayed behind and had zero to show for it, it would all be for nothing and what was worse? I’d never hear the end of it from Win.
“Sure. Going back to Rose Hill sounds great. Are you going to cook for me?”
We came to a stop and a fork in the road and King leaned over the center console and gently kissed my neck, making the hair all over my body stand on end. When he grazed his tongue across my neck and kissed it again, I physically shuddered. I was embarrassed, but it was beyond my control.
“Sorry,” I said, flustered that I couldn’t curb my body or my emotions.
“Don’t be,” he whispered. “I’ve had a little taste of you and now I’m finding it hard not to go back for more.”
I let his words settle over me. The well-trained agent in me wanted to believe he was feeding me a line—the woman in me wanted it to be true. I wanted the tall, dark and handsome man next to me to want me.
Taking the turn into town, I rested my fingertips on my lips as I gazed out the passenger window and thought about what I was getting myself into.
“Everything okay, Reagan?”
I shook off my thoughts of how to tell him I couldn’t sleep with him and not for the reasons he might think, and gave a standard answer. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
As we drove down Rural Route 27, I turned from thoughts of myself to Tina Joseph—running the photos and case file over in my mind. We approached the front gate of Rose Hill and I noticed for the first time the intertwined wrought iron roses that adorned the front gate as it opened upon our arrival. I wondered if it was the last thing Tina saw before she died.
The tree lined lane led to the beautiful antebellum mansion of Rose Hill. It looked like Tara from Gone with the Wind. Moss hung from the trees and to the left of the house was the famous rose garden of the property. Too dark to see, the headlights from King’s car lit up the massive garden as we made the turn into the fancy eight-car garage.
“Eight cars?” I asked with a laugh. “Eight cars for one man?”
“I’m a bachelor,”
he said as we waited for the door to open completely. “And bachelors collect things—cars, horses, wine…”
“Women.” The word popped out of my mouth and I said a silent prayer that I hadn’t offended him. Still it was the truth and the truth always seems to be the funniest and the most hurtful.
He didn’t laugh and I assumed I’d hit upon the hurtful chord.
“Look Reagan, I’m sure you think I’ve had lots of women in and out of my life. But it’s simply not true. I’m a very private man—always have been. There have been women, a few, but there have been very few of what you would deem relationships.”
I nodded. “I get it. You’re not a relationship kind of guy.”
We pulled into the immaculate garage and he turned off the car but didn’t get out. When I reached the handle he stopped me. “Wait.”
“What?” I said looking to him with a burst of confidence.
“It’s not that I’m not a relationship kind of guy.” He pulled my hand from my lap and kissed my knuckles. “I am.”
“I believe you,” I said finding a foothold in reality while tucking the magical moments of the evening into the dark recesses of my mind.
“No, you don’t.” He dropped my hand and opened his door. “Please wait,” he said.
I put my hand back into my lap and watched him walk around the car to open the door for me.
“Sorry. It’s just something I feel strongly about. I’m always going to get your door, walk on the outside of the street and hold your hand or offer you my arm if you’ll allow me. I know it’s old-fashioned, but it was my dad’s way and his father’s before him. It’s not I that I think you are unable—I know you don’t need to be taken care of—you’re a federal agent packing heat, for Pete’s sake—but I’d like to if you’d allow me. It’s my unspoken way of always letting you know—”
“Know what?”
“That I’m here. That I care—for you—that you can depend on me. If you don’t like it we can talk about it.”
“No,” I said bringing my voice down. “It’s fine. I’m the one who should be sorry.”
King again took my hand in his and walked me through the garage and into an elaborate mudroom at the back of the house. “Sorry, we’re coming through the back door.”