“Who’re you?” she asked him with all the cockiness of a female aware of her feminine assets and of their effect on a man.
“Richard Peterson. Are you as reckless as I suspect you are?” he asked her in a tone that was part arrogant and part scornful. He judged her to be about twenty-one or twenty-two.
She shortened the distance between them to about five feet and cocked her head to one side, openly appraising him as a man.
“Like what you see?” he asked, tersely, then turned and resumed his inspection of the world beyond the window.
“Sure beats anything I’ve ever seen in this town,” she replied. “How long are you staying?”
Annoyed as he was, he recognized himself in her. A player sure of her shots and unconcerned about what they hit. He commented on her remark. “Beats any thing you’ve seen, huh? Where, other than Raleigh, North Carolina, have you been?”
“Nowhere,” she said airily. “Can I . . . uh . . . give you something?”
He thought for a moment that he had swallowed his tongue, and when he recovered from the shock, he said, “You should have more respect for your elders,” aware that he was grabbing at any means of shielding himself from her sexual onslaught. However, instead of taking him seriously, she laughed.
“I can take care of myself. Can you?”
He swung around, then, gritting his teeth, and his gazed captured her hardened nipples, which strained against the tight sweater. “Oh, I can take care of myself,” he said, “and you, too. You like to challenge men, do you? Well, if I take you up on that, you’ll never forget it.”
She looked him in the eye. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
“I see you’ve met Gretchen, m’ niece.”
Richard looked up to find Judd’s gaze locked on him and a quizzical expression on the old man’s face. “Yes,” he said, hating the sound of wariness in his voice, “we’ve met.”
“Can I tear you loose long enough to take you upstairs to meet m’ sister?”
“Sure. That won’t be difficult,” he replied and immediately regretted putting Gretchen down. Wasn’t he partly responsible for her fresh behavior? Hadn’t he made the mistake of registering his reaction to her on his face and in his demeanor? Hell, he’d behaved like a stallion on a stud farm for so long that it had become as native to him as the clothes he wore. He swore harshly beneath his breath.
“How’s your sister doing?” he asked Judd as he followed him up the stairs.
“Well, I haven’t seen her in a while, but she looks pretty good, and her voice is as strong as ever. Still, I know she’s sick.”
In the room, a chamber decorated with white furniture and curtains, and heather blue walls, bedding, and carpeting that impressed him as a cheerful place in which to be sick, Judd took his sister’s hand. “Josie, this here’s m’ friend, Ambassador Richard Peterson.” He decided that to correct Judd would deprecate him in some way, so he accepted the reference to his former status.
“I’m so glad to meet you, sir,” she said. “Judd’s letters are full of nice things about you. Thanks for bringing him to see me.”
“I’m glad we could come. How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good, all things considered. Yesterday, the doctor told me I’d soon be up and that he doesn’t expect me to . . . check out for a while yet.”
“That’s good news,” Richard said. “Perhaps the next time we come, you’ll be able to show us around your city.”
“Not much to see, but I sure will enjoy showing you what’s here. Judd, ask Gretchen to come here, please.”
“I’ll do it,” Richard said. He went to the top of the stairs and called her. “Your mother wants you.” She didn’t answer, and he stood there staring while she took her time, sashaying up the steps like an exotic dancer. At the top of the stairs, she managed to brush his body while looking him in the eye. He’d never seen such a brazen woman, and he had a mind to teach her a lesson.
“You want me, Mama?” she asked, the picture of innocence.
“Honey, would you give Ambassador Peterson and your uncle Judd some lunch? They must be starved after that long drive.”
Richard held up his right hand. “Oh, no. We don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“I baked a North Carolina ham yesterday, and I made some buttermilk biscuits this morning. We’ve got string beans, corn and coconut cake. There’s plenty,” Gretchen added, looking at her mother and not at him.
So she knew that her mother wouldn’t approve of her behavior. Hmm. Probably a phony. Suddenly, his bruised nerves heated up. He’d bet a few thousand that she was a virgin. An experienced woman wouldn’t feel the need to broadcast her sexuality. Well. Well. He swallowed the liquid that accumulated in his mouth, and closed his eyes, for he remembered the one experience he’d had introducing a woman to her sexual potential. Before it was over, she drove him to the stratosphere, so to speak.
“Until you’ve eaten North Carolina ham, you haven’t tasted ham,” Judd said.
Richard observed Judd’s eagerness to show him hospitality, even though he expressed it through his sister. “You won’t catch me turning down this kind of food,” he said. “Of course, I’ll stay.”
He had to admit that the food was, indeed, first class and that he hadn’t eaten better biscuits. “You’re an excellent cook,” he told Gretchen. “These biscuits are to die for.”
“Thanks.” Her eyelids fluttered. “I’m good at everything I do.”
Judd’s fork clattered against his plate. He looked first at his niece and then at him. Now what? She had made her interest in him clear to Judd, who stopped eating and stared at her. But Gretchen continued her game as if Judd was either too old or too stupid to know that she was flirting with Richard. He saw the disappointment and the sadness on the old man’s face and was moved by it. In forty-four years, he had made one friend, and he was learning that doing things for a person didn’t prove friendship, that loyalty was probably the test. For the past hour, he had been thrashed alternately by the ravages of his libido and by what remained of his habit of accepting what women offered, provided it interested him and had no strings. He looked at Judd, who seemed shrouded in sadness, and decided to put an end to it.
“How old are you?” he asked Gretchen, and he could see that she was taken aback.
“Uh . . . twenty-two.”
“I’m exactly twice your age and old enough to be your father. You’ve been flaunting your breasts and your behind at me ever since I’ve been here. I’m tired of it, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop it right now.”
She gasped. “How can you say that?”
“I’m a man of the world, Gretchen, and when it comes to women, I haven’t misunderstood one in years. And trust me; I’ve had a slew of ’em. No point in being offended. I didn’t get mad when you deliberately brushed against me at the top of the stairs.” He changed the subject. “Judd, if I told Marilyn how good these biscuits are, she’d never forgive me.”
He hardly believed the change in Judd’s demeanor. Had Judd really thought he would take his friend’s niece to bed for the sport of it? “You’re too smart to tell Marilyn that,” Judd said and turned his attention to his niece. “You just learned a lesson and, if you got any sense, you won’t have to learn it again. You thought I didn’t know what was going on, didn’t you? I was on to you from the time I came down here to ask Ambassador Peterson to come meet m’ sister. Try that on some men, and they’ll make you deliver whether you want to or not.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Judd.”
“You should be. You got any lemonade or sweetened iced tea?”
She brought a pitcher of each and, to Richard’s surprise, she rejoined them at the table. “What’s it like where you live, Uncle Judd?”
Judd sipped the iced tea with relish, the pleasure of it mirrored on his face. “Water everywhere. Perfect in summer, and just cold enough in winter. All in all, it’s a lot like paradise.”
With a long sigh, she leaned
back in her chair, a person without purpose. Richard looked at Gretchen, twenty-two years old, bored with her life, and ripe for trouble. If she thought he was going to provide excitement for her, she could forget it.
“We ought to get started pretty soon,” Judd said. “Fannie will kick up a storm if the two of us are late for supper.”
“Right,” he replied, though the prospect didn’t worry him. “I’ll run up and say good-bye to your sister.”
Judd drained his glass of its remaining iced tea. “I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t think we’ll make it home for supper,” Judd said about two hours later. “We’re just getting to Northampton.”
“You’re right, and this looks like a good place to stop,” Richard said as they approached an inn, a large white brick structure with red shutters at its windows, smoke billowing from its chimney, and an elegant facade that faced the ocean. “Let’s see what this place is offering.”
“Nice place,” he said to Judd when he returned to the rented Chevrolet. “What do you say we spend the night here? I’ll call Fannie and let her know. It’s on me.”
“I can’t let you pay for m’ room,” Judd said. “Pretty soon, you’ll be broke, and I’ll have to take care of you.”
“I already paid in advance,” he told Judd. “Come on.”
After an excellent supper of fish right out of the bay, he sat in the lounge sipping coffee and thinking over the day. A day in which he’d done something that he would always look back on with pride. He hadn’t let his friend down, and he had turned his back on what every molecule of his body screamed for—sex with a luscious female naïve enough to give him carte blanche.
“I got a lot to thank you for,” Judd said, bringing him out of his reverie.
“What’s that?”
“You could have had Gretchen if you wanted to, and for a while there, I thought you would because she was getting to you. You’ll never know what a relief I felt when you put her in her place. She loves to toy with men; I’ve seen her at it since she was twelve or thirteen. She’s a tease, and I hope you taught her a lesson.”
Richard rubbed the back of his neck with his left hand. “For once, I did the right thing.”
Judd rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, and you haven’t always done that, have you? When you dance with the devil, son, you gotta pay the tab, and I suspect you owe him.”
Richard leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “And how! I’m no saint, and you know it. If she hadn’t been your niece, I’d probably be in her right now, good intentions be damned. It’s been a year since I touched a woman.” He sat forward and looked straight at Judd. “You know, something happened to me. You could say it was an epiphany of sorts. I felt cleansed after I straightened her out. For the first time in my memory, I did the right thing with a woman at a time when . . . when my needs said do the opposite.”
The fire crackled, and sparks shot up the old fashioned chimney, but it was more than the fire that warmed Richard Peterson. For the first time in his life, he had a friend with whom he could talk, a friend with whom he needn’t bother to posture or pretend. He leaned back again, clasped his hands behind his head and spoke softly.
“You know, Judd, I don’t believe there are many men my age who can regret as many deeds and as many experiences as I do. I was self-centered from childhood, demanding things that my parents couldn’t afford. As I look back, I realize they made so many sacrifices for me, denied the fulfillment of their own needs for my sake and with no thanks from me.
“I’ve mistreated more women than I’ve been gracious to. Oh, I didn’t abuse them physically, slander or betray them, but I took what they offered—knowing that I had beguiled them with charm, manners, and my appearance—and then I left them to deal with it as best they could. I’m speaking of dozens of women, Judd. Married, single, young, old, white, black, any color or nationality. I made love to them efficiently, flawlessly, felt nothing but physical release, and went on my way.
“When I was nineteen, I fathered a child with a girl I loved and wanted to marry.” Judd’s eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing. “But she had her own agenda,” Richard continued, squeezed his eyes tight and said, “and she aborted it. I felt that for many years.”
“Is that what keeps you from committing to Francine?”
“No. I got over that some years ago. But I met a woman in my circle, well placed, and her status about equal to mine, and she was no pushover. I thought she was playing hard to get, but as it turned out, she wasn’t. She was elegant and well aware of who she was. There was a guy around her, but I discounted him as of no importance. Certainly no competition for me, an ambassador.
“I meant to have her as one of my trophies, nothing more. When I’d about given up, she let me make love with her, and I fell in love, but she didn’t. More proof that I didn’t understand her. She let me down gently, and about six month later, she married another man. Not a night passes when I don’t think about her.”
“How long ago did all this take place?”
“I last saw her three years ago. I reached the pinnacle. I had everything. I went from life in a four-story walk-up apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to executive-director of an important nongovernmental international agency in which my personal office was bigger than the apartment in which I grew up. The world was my oyster, and I walked away from it.”
Judd’s creased brow showed how perplexed he was. “Why, for goodness sake?”
“I had paid too dearly, stepped on too many people on my way up. I couldn’t enjoy it. I began to see my shallowness and that of my colleagues. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted out. Forty-three years old, and I didn’t have a person I could call friend, didn’t even know I needed one.” His sigh seemed to pour out of him like water streaming from a jug. “When I realized that I cared deeply for you, I was shocked. It was a strange new feeling. I don’t know how it came about, but I’m thankful.”
Judd sipped what was left of his cold coffee, thoughtfully, as if he wanted his next words to have strong import. “You’ve painted a dark picture of yourself, Richard Peterson. Now, I’d like you to tell me some of the good things you’ve done.”
“What do you . . . Oh, I suppose there’ve been a few.”
“But the ones that stay on your mind are the ones you’re not proud of. Whatever you did that you’re not proud of, let it loose. Let all of it go, including that woman.”
“Judd, I can’t forget her. It’s as if she’s my jail sentence.”
Judd cocked his head to one side and looked Richard in the eye, his expression stern. “You want it to be your jail sentence. Don’t enjoy your punishment so much. Go to see her, talk with her, and get rid of that thing that’s bedeviling you. Then you can get on with your life.”
“But, she’s married. I can’t do that.”
“You can so, and it’ll be the best discipline you ever had. When you face her, you may find you’ve been overestimating your feelings for her.”
“Suppose I find that I care more for her than I thought I did. What if seeing her exacerbates an already intolerable situation?”
Judd threw up both hands as if losing patience. “It can’t happen. If it could, you wouldn’t feel the way you do about Francine. You haven’t taken Francine to bed, because you won’t lie to her and treat her the way you treated all those women you didn’t care about. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
Richard got up, walked to the fireplace, stood there for a few minutes, and then went back to his chair and sat down. “I promised myself I wouldn’t call or contact Estelle in any way, that I’d respect the fact that she’s married.”
“Normally, I’d agree, but your passion for that woman has been your bedmate for so long you think you can’t sleep without it. I see what’s going on between you and Francine, and I say you don’t love any other woman.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“’Cause I’ve lived a long time. I know when I’m lookin
g at lust and when I’m looking at love between two people who are perfect for each other.”
“Wish I could be that certain,” Richard said and blew out a long breath. He had exposed himself to Judd, a man he’d known a mere eight months, in a way that he’d never revealed himself to another human being. He spoke to the man in soft tones. “You don’t think less of me after what I just told you?”
Judd furrowed his brow. “Me? Not a bit, and why should I? I’m only concerned with who and what you are now, m’best friend, the fellow who gave me—an old man—m’first birthday party, who opened a new world to a lot of people in Pike Hill. Sixty adults and well-nigh seventy-five kids will have computer skills because of your efforts. You’re a fine man.”
He hoped his eyes communicated his feeling at that moment, for Judd’s words touched him deeply. “Thank you,” he said. “You don’t know what hearing you say that means to me.”
Richard and Judd arrived in Ocean Pines around eleven o’clock the next morning and returned the rental car. After wondering what he could do to placate Fannie, Richard bought a bushel and a half of crabs, called Dan, the taxi driver, and he and Judd got to the Thank the Lord Boarding House in time for lunch. Fannie met them at the door.
“I don’t like my boarders to stay out all night, but at least you called so I wouldn’t worry.”
Instead of responding, Richard pointed to the sack of crabs. “We thought you’d like to have these. The crabber had just pulled them out of the sound.”
The reprimand forgotten, her eyes widened, and a smile brightened her face. “Oh, thank you. Thank you! Lord, I do love these crabs. We’ll have them for supper.” She dashed off in the direction of the kitchen.
Richard gazed at Judd. “How do you like that? I knew she’d lecture to us, and I also knew that those crabs would cool her off.”
When You Dance With The Devil Page 22