Angels Landing

by Rochelle Alers

  Her gaze swung back to meet his. “Is it because you resent being Gullah?”

  “No! Why would you think that?” he asked, letting go of her hand.

  “I don’t know, Jeff. It just seems odd that you don’t find any woman on an eight-square-mile island attractive.”

  Jeff lowered his arm. “That’s where you’re wrong. I find you attractive.”

  Kara blushed again. “I don’t count.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I don’t live on Cavanaugh Island.”

  A pregnant silence ensued as they stared at each other. “What if you do decide to stay?” Jeff asked, “would you be opposed to going out with me?”

  There, he’d said it. Depending on Kara’s answer he would know whether she was or wasn’t involved with someone either in New York or Little Rock. And he hoped it was the latter.

  A hint of a smile softened Kara’s mouth. “I’m having lunch with you, aren’t I?”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, he nodded slowly. “Yes, you are. But it’s not really a date.”

  “Then what is it, Jeff?”

  “It’s keeping a promise to my cousin that I would look after you. And that includes showing you around and making sure that certain people like that jerk who disrespected you won’t do it again.”

  “So I’m safe as long as I’m with you?”

  Lines fanned out around his eyes when he smiled. “As safe as you’d be if you were locked in a bank’s vault.”

  “You just reminded me of something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have to go to the bank. I have power of attorney to open Taylor’s safe-deposit box.”

  “Do you have the key?”

  “Yes. David gave me an envelope yesterday with the key and some other papers that I never took out of my bag.”

  “After lunch I’ll take you to the bank.”

  Kara let out an audible sigh. “How can I thank you?”

  “Go to the movies with me,” he said quickly. “I’m off duty tomorrow.”

  “Is there a movie theater here on the island?”

  “There’s one on the Cove, but most of the films are at least two to three months behind the ones they show in Charleston. There’s also a small theater in the Creek. They only feature foreign films and black-and-white movies from the thirties and forties. The Creek is our artist community. Most of the people who live there are artisans and farmers. All of the chickens sold on the island come from the Creek. There’s still a dairy farm and a couple of hog farms. Every Wednesday the farmers set up an outdoor market where you can buy fruits, veggies, and home-baked goods.

  “Angels Landing is different because it is solely residential. The Cove offers both. It has a bank, post office, pharmacy, bakery, boardinghouse, supermarket, liquor store, ice cream parlor, and bookstore. It also has a unisex salon. Last year the island got its first resident doctor in more than a decade. Dr. Monroe has an office off Main Street and Moss Alley, and he makes house calls.”

  “So folks really don’t have to leave the island if they don’t want to.”

  Jeff shook his head. “No, they don’t. Every town has a school with grades one through eight. Once they graduate they go into Charleston for high school.”

  “Do the kids from Charleston ever come to the island?”

  “Many of them do once they form friendships with the kids who live here. It’s like culture shock for many of them because life here is very laid-back. Everyone knows one another, and there is zero tolerance for crime. Old folks say kids can cut the fool on the mainland, but we don’t tolerate that here.”

  “What about churches?”

  “Each town has its own church.”

  A waitress with neatly braided hair covered with a hairnet came over to their table. Her dark skin glistened with good health as she nodded to Jeff, then Kara. “Would you like to see a menu?”

  “Yes,” Jeff said, answering for himself and Kara.

  Within seconds, menus were placed on the table along with a pitcher of sweet tea, two tall glasses, and a plate of biscuits. “We are a little backed up in the kitchen, so it may take awhile before you get your food. But I could start you off with a bowl of gumbo.”

  “Would you like to try the gumbo?” Jeff asked Kara.

  “Yes, please.”

  Chapter Four

  Kara was tempted to undo the button on her slacks. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten so much. The gumbo could’ve been a meal because it wasn’t just celery, okra, tomato, onion, corn, and peppers; the chef had added pieces of smoked meat, spicy sausage, crabmeat, oysters, and shrimp.

  When she couldn’t decide what to order she’d insisted that Jeff order for her, and much to her delight he’d selected red rice and sausage, shrimp, crab and salmon cakes, and mustard greens with cornmeal dumplings.

  Kara placed her napkin beside her plate. “I can’t eat like this every day.”

  “You hardly ate anything. Are you sure you don’t want dessert?”

  She groaned. “Quite sure. Lunch for me is usually a tuna salad or a half a bagel left over from breakfast.”

  Jeff dabbed the corners of his mouth with the napkin. “I hope you’re not one of those women who monitors everything they put into their mouths because they don’t want to gain two pounds.”

  “No way. It’s just that I don’t have time to eat. Between seeing clients and field visits I’m lucky if I eat two meals a day.”

  “Do you ever take a vacation and just chill out?”

  “That’s what I’m doing now,” Kara explained. “I’ve accrued so much vacation leave that if I hadn’t taken at least three weeks I would’ve lost it.”

  “Oh, so you can stay three weeks.”

  Kara bit back a smile when she saw the look of expectation on Jeff’s handsome face. There was something about the man sitting across from her that was intriguing. He still had the drawl verifying that he’d grown up in the American South; however, there was a worldliness about him that probably had come from his time in the military.

  “I can stay a maximum of three weeks, then it’s back to New York and the grind.” She saw Jeff angle his head and stare at her as if he were committing her face to memory. “What’s the matter?”

  “Why do you work at something you refer to as a grind, Kara?”

  “I only say that because it’s the same routine day in and day out. I’m certain it was the same with you when you were in the military.”

  “Not when you’re in a war zone.”

  A slight gasp escaped Kara. “You were in Iraq?” Jeff’s expression changed, the warmth in his eyes was replaced by something she could only interpret as pain.

  “Afghanistan. Two tours.”

  She slumped back in her chair. “I’m sorry if what I said sounded so glib.”

  “It’s all right. You didn’t know.”

  “Were you in the army?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Ouch!” Kara held up her hand, palm facing Jeff. “You must have been a jarhead.”

  “You’ve got it,” Jeff admitted proudly.

  “Once a marine, always a marine?” she teased.

  “You better believe it.” He shrugged out of his jacket, pushed up the sleeve to his sweater, and showed her the insignia and motto of the corps on his left forearm.

  She stared at the tattoo of an eagle, globe, anchor, and Semper fidelis on his muscular arm. “How long have you had your tattoo?”

  “Almost twenty years. I got it after successfully completing OCS and the NROTC program.”

  Kara tucked a thick lock of hair behind her right ear. “So, you were an officer.”

  “I’d attained the rank of captain in the military police before I put in my discharge papers.”

  Shock after shock slapped at Kara with this disclosure. “My dad was also in the corps as military police. He retired last year after thirty years as a sergeant major.”

  “Hot damn! My man!”

/>   She brought her hand up to stifle a giggle. “It can’t be all that, Jeff.”

  “Baby, you just don’t know what it means to be a marine.”

  “I do know,” Kara countered. “My mother lived on base with Dad for the first eight years of my life. She didn’t like it, and I didn’t like moving from base to base and leaving my friends. We moved back to Little Rock, and I lived there until I left to go to college.”

  She felt as if she’d known Jeff for years when she told him about moving to New York to attend college, earning an undergraduate degree and MSW, and sharing an apartment with a professional dancer.

  “Do you like New York?” he asked.

  “There was a period of adjustment, but I’ve grown used to the noise, grittiness, and the pulsing excitement that’s so contagious. The first time I went to Times Square during the summer I couldn’t believe I had to jostle for space on the sidewalk at three in the morning.”

  “Well, it is touted as the city that never sleeps,” Jeff reminded her.

  “And it doesn’t. What made you decide on a military career?” Kara asked, deftly steering the focus of conversation from her to Jeff.

  “A recruiter approached me within days of my enrolling in college, and his pitch sounded so good I signed up.”

  “Do you miss it, Jeff?” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

  He pulled down his sleeve and stared at the initials carved into the table. “Yes and no. I miss the brotherhood, seeing the drills, the dress parades, and the silent drill platoon. I still get together with some of the officers whenever they come to Charleston.”

  “Your mother must be very proud of you.” Without warning Jeff sobered, and instinctually she knew she’d mentioned something that should’ve been left unsaid. She also recalled he’d talked about his grandmother, but not his mother. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about her.”

  “There’s not much to talk about. My mother died giving birth to me.”

  Kara’s eyelids fluttered as she attempted to bring her emotions under control. She’d been trained as a therapist to remain detached, not get emotionally involved with her clients, but Jeff wasn’t a client. He was the man whom she’d found herself drawn to; a man who made her feel things and react to him when she didn’t want to.

  He’d openly admitted he was attracted to her, while she didn’t and couldn’t tell him she felt the same. There was no way she would permit herself to get involved with Jeff when she knew she would be leaving Cavanaugh Island in three weeks or maybe even less. It had taken only one devastating relationship for Kara to learn never to let her heart rule her head. If she had planned to relocate to Angels Landing, she would seriously consider dating Jeff. He was intelligent, a wonderful conversationalist, and very easy on the eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Jeff.” She exhaled a breath. “Why is it we keeping apologizing to each other?” He angled his head in a gesture she found endearing and had come to look for.

  “I don’t know, Kara. Actually there isn’t anything to apologize for. I—” Whatever he was going to say was preempted when the waitress approached their table.

  “Is there anything else I can get you, Sheriff Hamilton?”

  “Just the check, Bessie.”

  Reaching into the pocket of her apron, Bessie placed the check facedown on the table. She stared openly at Kara. “You have to be a Patton because you look just like those folks in the Landing. Which one are—”

  “Thank you, Bessie, and keep the change,” Jeff said, handing her several twenties and cutting her off. He pushed to his feet, came around the table, and pulled back Kara’s chair. “Please let Otis and Miss Vina know that everything was delicious.”

  “That wasn’t very nice,” Kara chastised once they were out in the parking lot.

  “It wasn’t very nice that she tried to get in your business like that,” he countered.

  “I am a Patton, Jeff, and that means I don’t have any business—at least not on Cavanugh Island. Right now, I feel as if my life is a puzzle with several missing pieces. Meanwhile, I have to wait until my mother gets here before she can give me the piece about her relationship with Taylor. Then there’s the financial component and the mandate to restore Angels Landing. It’s not only a lot to take in, but a great deal to handle in just a couple of weeks. The only constant is that I’m still Kara Newell and Austin Newell is and will always be my father.”

  Jeff glanced at his watch. “Speaking of finances, I’d better get you over to the bank before it closes.”

  Three minutes later, Jeff sat in his car in the business district parking lot behind the bank waiting for Kara. He’d revealed things about himself that he never would have said to another woman during their first encounter. He’d thought of it as an encounter and not a date. David had asked him to keep an eye on her, yet keeping an eye on Kara did not translate into asking her to go to the movies with him. She hadn’t said yes or no to his offer, so as an optimist he’d hoped she would go with him.

  Jeff reclined the seat, crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what prompted him to tell Kara about his mother, because whenever anyone asked about Juanita Hamilton his reply was she was dead. His mother had died in childbirth, but the details of the events leading up to her death were imprinted on his brain like a permanent tattoo.

  Whenever kids asked about his father, he’d either refuse to talk about him or say he’d died a hero. It was easier to lie and tell them his father had died in Vietnam than say he didn’t know who his father was.

  The drawback to growing up on Cavanaugh Island was no one had to ask who your folks were because everyone knew everyone. Although he rarely interacted with the Pattons, Jeff knew them all. Even when he’d been away for years and returned on leave, his grandmother would catch him up on what had been going on not only in the Cove, but also in Haven Creek and Angels Landing. She’d given him an update on who’d died, gotten married, divorced, moved back and the names and sex of newborns, some who’d been delivered by a midwife and some who were born in hospitals on the mainland.

  It wasn’t until the year he’d celebrated his tenth birthday that his grandmother felt he was ready to deal with the circumstances behind his birth. Juanita left the island to go to college and had found herself involved with an older student. Corrine had believed she was living on campus when in reality Juanita had moved in with her boyfriend. Juanita hadn’t realized she was pregnant until she went into labor late one night. It was only when she’d begun hemorrhaging that her baby’s father drove her to the hospital; he’d panicked, leaving her in the hospital’s parking lot and drove away. Her body was found the following morning, barely conscious. Juanita was lucid enough to give the ER doctor her contact information and how she’d gotten to the hospital. What she did not reveal was who’d left her there. She delivered a three-pound baby boy but did not survive the ordeal because she’d lost too much blood.

  When Corrine and Malachi came to claim her body, they were unable to bring home their grandson until he was able to breathe on his own. Jeff was four months old when his grandparents finally brought him to the Cove. When asked, Corrine told everyone the baby was their grandchild and their daughter had died giving birth to him.

  There was gossip that if Corrine hadn’t kept her daughter on such a tight leash, Juanita wouldn’t have gone buck wild when it came time to leave home for college because Corrine had established a reputation as a strict teacher and an even stricter no-nonsense principal.

  Jeff never got to see that side of his grandmother; he’d never had her as a teacher and had only known her as a soft-spoken and somewhat overindulgent grandparent. He didn’t know whether her spoiling him was because she’d wanted to make up for him not knowing either of his parents, but that aside he realized he’d had a wonderful childhood. He knew how much his grandmother valued education and Jeff studied longer and harder than necessary, eventually becoming an overachiever.

  Once he’d become sexual
ly active there was never a time when he hadn’t assumed the responsibility of using protection. Even when a woman claimed she was using an oral contraceptive, he still wore a condom.

  A light tapping on the window garnered his attention, and Jeff sat up. Kara had returned. He got out of the car. The wind had picked up, blowing her hair around her face. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees from the day before, topping out at forty instead of the average sixty. He tucked several strands behind her ear. “Did you finish what you had to do?”

  Kara shook her head, her windblown hair moving with the motion. “No. I left a message with the manager’s secretary that I’d like to see him tomorrow morning. I decided on a morning meeting because I didn’t know when you wanted to go to the movies.”

  Jeff was hard-pressed not to pump his fist. Kara had given him her answer. She would go out with him. However, he had to be careful, very, very careful not to become too emotionally involved only because she was going to leave, just like the other women in his life. He’d lost his mother, past girlfriends, fiancée, and it was inevitable he would eventually lose his grandmother.

  “Would you like to take in a matinee, then eat afterward, or see a later show?”

  “I’ll leave that up to you,” Kara said.

  “Are you all right?” he asked when he saw her chewing her lip.

  Kara flashed a quick, too bright smile, then looked away. “Of course.”

  Cradling her face in his hands, Jeff forced her to look at him. “What’s the matter, Kara?” He lowered his head, their mouths inches apart. “Whatever it is, I want you to remember that I’m here to help you.”

  Kara anchored her arms under Jeff’s shoulders, feeding on his warmth and the strength in his muscular upper body. How could a man she’d known twenty-four hours make her feel so safe, protected? There were men she’d dated for months, a few for years, and she’d continued to see them because it was better than sitting home alone. They took up the empty hours when she wanted and needed to get out of the apartment. However, none of them made her feel quite like she did with Jeff. He’d parried the outburst from the man in the restaurant with a warning about disrespecting her, while she’d lost count of the number of ribald comments and lecherous gazes directed at her whenever she walked down a street or entered a traditional male bastion with another man who’d kept walking as if he were deaf and mute.