“How about breakfast?” Steve asked. “Will you be over for breakfast?”
Kevin’s face brightened. “Yeah, we’ll be here for breakfast.”
“Breakfast would be nice,” Elsie admitted. “I wouldn’t mind stopping in for breakfast.”
“You’re being sneaky again,” Daisy said to Steve.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
By the end of the week Daisy was forced to admit it didn’t matter which house she lived in—she couldn’t get away from Steve. She’d had to rely on him for transportation since the two stolen cars had never turned up. In addition, he lured her fickle brother and bodyguard to his house with food, rented movies, a new pool table, dartboard, and pinball machine. There were late-night poker games, gourmet picnic lunches in the park, and midnight pizza orgies.
In her weaker moments Daisy had to concede she was thoroughly enjoying herself. During more somber times she referred to her calendar and grimly added up the days when she hadn’t worked on her dissertation or put in hours at the nursing home.
That was okay, she told herself. Everybody deserves a vacation once in a while, and hers was about to end. It was Friday. There hadn’t been any incidents since last Sunday, and the police were talking about ending her round-the-clock protection tomorrow. Tomorrow was also the day her parents were due to arrive home.
By this time tomorrow night she’d be alone in her town house. Her life would be back to normal. She’d buckle down to work, complete her dissertation, and finish up her internship at the nursing home. Then what? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to think about it. When she tried to imagine her life beyond her thesis, her mind went blank. She imagined thirty years of counseling the elderly on problems that were largely unsolvable. In the past two months three patients she’d come to love had died. There would be more in the future. Lots more. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes and bowed her head.
Steve came to her side. “Something wrong?”
“Smog,” she said, blinking to clear eyes that were smarting with tears.
He didn’t believe her, but he let it go. He’d learned he couldn’t force her to discuss her problems. After the amusement-park confession she’d closed up tight, keeping all her hurt and confusion locked away inside. Head-inthe-sand syndrome, he thought. Besides, it could very well be smog. The air quality wasn’t all that great. Washington emptied out early on Fridays in the summer. By six o’clock the acrid yellow smog caused by traffic settled in the humid air and was replaced by a more savory cloud rising from hundreds of thousands of suburban barbecues. The mesquite haze hanging over Northern Virginia backyards smelled better, but it caught you in the back of the throat all the same.
Steve stood at his grill, ready to make his Friday-night contribution to air pollution. He struck a match and adjusted the gas jets. He watched the lava rocks heat. At the appropriate moment he deposited his hamburger patties on the grill and stepped back. There was a giant whoosh of flame, the hamburger patties were instantly incinerated into ash, and the fire returned to normal intensity.
Kevin made a disgusted noise, Daisy shook her head in disbelief, and Elsie stepped forward to get a closer look at the hamburger cinders.
“I haven’t never seen you cook an edible hamburger yet on this thing,” Elsie said to Steve. “If it was me, I would’ve given up long ago.”
Steve took the spatula with the extralong redwood handle, the spatula he’d bought especially for his barbecue, and threw it into his neighbor’s yard.
“Feel better?” Daisy asked.
He gave her a sheepish grin. “Yup. What do you say we all pile in the car and go buy some burgers?”
“Good thing the SUV’s fixed,” Elsie said when they got to the driveway. “We’d never all fit in that racy black thing.”
Steve ran his hand over the front fender and walked around to the passenger side to look over the repairs. The body shop had done a good job. The Ford looked like new. “We’re going for burgers,” he called to the two cops sitting in their car across the street.
Five minutes later they were all in line at McDonald’s, except Bob. Bob sat perched on the backseat of the Ford Explorer, eyes and ears alert, watching his family through the large plate-glass windows.
The two cops had ordered first. They stood at the door in obvious boredom, bags of food dangling from their fingertips, waiting for Daisy. The younger one was small and wiry. His name was Koselle. His partner was older, paunchy but still fit. Koselle cracked the lid to his large coffee, added creamer, and sipped the coffee without tasting.
Elsie was the last to give her order. “Double cheeseburger, lots of grease, large fries, and one of them gut-bustin’ vanilla milk shakes,” she said to the girl behind the counter. She shouldered her pocketbook and turned to Daisy. “I don’t know why I keep getting them milk shakes. Last time I had to suck so hard I gave myself a headache.”
“Maybe you should have gotten a soda.”
“Well, the milk shakes taste so dang good,” she said. “Besides, I like a challenge. All them yuppies are out there joining spas and working on them fancy machines to keep in shape. I just buy a couple of these milk shakes every week and try to suck them up through a straw. Keeps my stomach muscles hard as a rock.” Her eyes opened wide and her mouth fell open as she stared out the big front window. “Will you look at that!” she said with a gasp of amazement. “It’s my Caddy!”
Everyone turned in time to see the powder blue rear fender disappear around the side of the building.
“I’ll be a son of a gun!” Elsie shouted. “What nerve!” She snatched the keys to the Ford from Steve’s back pocket and ran outside. “Stop!” she shouted, but the Cadillac was already turning onto Burke Center Parkway. Elsie jumped into the Explorer, cranked over the engine, and was halfway out of the parking space when Kevin, Daisy, and Steve reached the car and wrenched the doors open. Elsie paused for a second while everyone piled in, then she gunned the Ford and took off.
Koselle was a few beats behind, steering with one hand, sticking the flasher to the roof of his car with the other. He swore at the coffee stains on his slacks and told his partner to radio in.
The older man paused with the two-way in his hand. “What’ll I tell them?”
“Hell, tell them we’re in pursuit of some crazy old lady who’s chasing an old Cadillac.”
Elsie tore down the road after her Cadillac. Kevin, Bob, and Daisy were in the backseat. Bob had his head out the window, his ears were flapping vigorously, his eyes were narrowed to slits. Steve had his seat belt pulled tight in the front seat. His hand was braced against the dash. “Slow down,” he said to Elsie. “Let the police take over.”
“Hah!” Elsie shouted. “Them police are a bunch of wimps. They lost these slimebags last time.” She slammed the gas pedal to the floor, and the SUV jumped forward. “Get my gun out of my pocketbook. Shoot out the tires, but be careful of the bumper. I like to keep the chrome nice and shiny.”
“This isn’t Dodge City,” Steve shouted back at her. “I can’t just go around shooting out people’s tires!”
“Well hell, they’re my tires,” she said. “I guess you can shoot them if I want you to.”
Elsie moved up fast in the left lane and came up behind the Cadillac. There were two men in the car. The one in the passenger seat turned and leveled a gun at the Explorer.
“Holy cow!” Elsie said. She swerved right, and a bullet zinged off the roof.
Two blue-and-white cruisers raced into place behind Koselle. The Cadillac cut off into a subdivision and barreled down narrow tree-lined streets. Elsie, Koselle, and the two squad cars followed.
Elsie hunched over the wheel, her eyes fixed on the men in front of her. Her knuckles were white, her mouth pinched together. “Sure wish I was driving my Caddy,” she said. “They wouldn’t stand a chance if I was in my Caddy.”
The Cadillac turned left, and everyone realized at once that it had made a grave error. It had turne
d into a cul-de-sac. All the cars slammed on their brakes leaving skid marks the length of the road. The Cadillac jumped the curb and did a 180-degree turn before stopping on a patch of lawn. Elsie hit it broadside. Koselle sideswiped the front of the Cadillac and the two blue-and-whites slid into the tangle of smashed cars.
Seat belts yanked tight, and air bags exploded. Bob flew off the backseat with a yelp but instantly righted himself when he discovered the bag of burgers and fries Steve had carried out with him.
“What a mess,” Elsie said, fighting to deflate her air bag. She slowly moved her head and flexed her fingers. “I don’t think I broke anything.”
“That was so cool,” Kevin said. “Wait’ll I tell the guys. They’re never gonna believe this.”
Steve put his shoulder to the door and shoved it open. He gently pulled Daisy from the backseat and wrapped her in his arms.
“I was scared,” Daisy said. “I was scared. Boy, was I ever scared. I was really scared.”
He gave her a little shake. “You’re all right now.”
“Yeah, but I was scared.”
It was odd, she thought. She’d been frightened when her house had been broken into, and when Steve’s house had been firebombed, and when the Cadillac had tried to smash them into the guardrail. She’d been rattled on those occasions, but she hadn’t been terrified—not like this. When the passenger in the Cadillac had turned around and pointed a gun at her, she’d felt her heart go cold.
She rested her head on Steve’s shoulder and let his warmth and strength seep into her. Sometimes people needed to come close to losing something before they understood its value, Daisy thought. Her life might not be perfect right now, but the imperfections seemed much less significant. There were parts of her life that were very special; there were people in her life that were very wonderful. And there was always the opportunity to make things better. Changing direction no longer seemed so depressing.
Koselle and the uniformed officers had the two men out of the Cadillac and on the ground. An ambulance and more police cars whined in the distance.
“I would’ve gone and helped them make the collar,” Elsie said, “but I can’t move so fast, what with my steel hip.”
Kevin grinned at her. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You were awesome. Man, you smashed right into them. You really gave them a shot.”
“Yeah, I guess I was pretty good,” Elsie agreed.
The two men were carted off, and everyone crowded around the cars to assess the damage. The SUV was smashed front and rear. Doors were buckled, steam hissed from the radiator, and the hood looked like an accordion. Koselle’s car had caught the front of the Cadillac, and the entire right front quarter panel of the cop car had been ripped off. The two blue-and-whites were totaled. Miraculously, no one had been seriously hurt. The Cadillac didn’t have a dent.
“They just don’t make cars like they used to,” Elsie said.
Twenty-four hours later, Daisy, Steve, and Bob sat on the front stoop of Daisy’s town house and watched the sun set into the trees behind Lula Kaplan’s brick duplex. The parking lot seemed oddly empty to Daisy. There were no undercover squad cars, no policemen on surveillance.
The mystery of her harassment had been solved. Just as they’d all suspected, it hadn’t been the Roach. It had been the work of a rival drug dealer who’d hoped to pin additional charges on the Roach and get him off the street for good. Elsie’s Cadillac had finally been returned, but that, too, was missing from the lot. Elsie had gone home. She was no longer on twenty-four-hour duty. At least she would see Elsie on Monday, Daisy thought. Steve had decided that she and Elsie made a good traffic team and had changed Elsie’s job description to temporary assistant traffic reporter.
The town house was silent behind her. No stereo blasting away, no television, no refrigerator door opening and closing. Her parents had come home from Texas and collected Kevin. She was alone, and her life was tidy again, she told herself. The realization provoked a flutter of excitement in her chest. Even if she never used her degree in geriatric counseling, she was determined to finish her thesis and defend it. She needed two months of hard work to get the job done, she’d decided.
Steve rested his back against a wooden tub of geraniums and looked at Daisy. “You’re getting ready to kick me out of your life, aren’t you?”
“I need two months to myself.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know.” It wasn’t an entirely honest answer. True, she didn’t know for sure how she’d feel in two months when the burden of her doctorate degree was lifted from her shoulders, but she suspected she’d buy a can of furniture polish for his kitchen table and beg him to marry her immediately. She glanced down at the ring on her finger and when she spoke her voice was low. “I’d like to keep the ring.”
A smile softened his mouth. “I suppose that’s a good sign.”
He stayed very still against the geraniums, but it was a relaxed, contented sort of stillness, Daisy thought. Their eyes locked, and a visual caress passed between them. “I love you,” she told him.
“There’s all kinds of love,” he teased. “Am I going to have to wait two months before I find out what kind of love we’re talking about?”
“You could spend the night with me and in the morning you can draw your own conclusions.”
It was much more than he’d expected, and he had no intention of wasting his opportunity. The kitchen table had been exciting, but this was what he’d really wanted. He’d wanted the chance to make love to her. He wanted soft lights, candles, lots of time, lots of privacy, and a comfortable bed where they could spend the night locked in each other’s arms.
He leaned forward to kiss her, but she pulled back. “There’s a catch,” she said.
“I’m not surprised.”
“I need time to think, and I need to get my dissertation done. I don’t want to have to worry about your secret weapon. After tomorrow morning my body is off-limits to all of your sneaky, subversive maneuverings.”
“So this is like a last meal for a condemned man?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll take it.”
She didn’t have candles, but the lighting in her bedroom was dim. A small table lamp with a periwinkle shade filled the room with soft light and dusky shadows. The double bed had been hers as a girl. The comforter was white and fluffy. The sheets were smooth with age, their big pink flowers faded to pale shades of rose. A small television sat on a cherrywood dresser. The only other piece of furniture was a padded rocking chair.
She drew the curtains closed and felt shy as she faced him. Their previous lovemaking had been so explosive, it hadn’t left time for nerves or self-conscious fumblings. There were great advantages to fast lovemaking, she suddenly realized. There were advantages to total darkness, nitrous oxide, and abstinence, too. She’d had fantasies of peeling her clothes off in an erotic strip, but now that the moment was upon her she was paralyzed with stage fright. She found herself fidgeting with the hem of her T-shirt and rolled her eyes in disgust.
Steve kicked his docksiders off and slid onto the bed. He arranged the pillows behind his back, took the channel changer in his hand, and turned the television on. “You look like you’re thinking about jumping out the window.”
“Just one of many options.”
He patted the spot next to him. “I wouldn’t do it if I were you. You’d land in the azalea bush. Your landlord would make you pay for a new one. Why don’t you come sit here instead?”
“I’m a little nervous,” she said, crawling onto the bed.
“With good reason,” he told her. “Since I’m honor-bound not to use my secret weapon for two months after this, I intend to empty out the arsenal tonight.”
Daisy giggled. “You’ll have to give me directions if you want to try anything fancy. My education is limited.”
She was wearing shorts, and her smooth bare leg brushed against his, causing his pulse to quicken. He wrapped her in
his arms and held her close. He wasn’t going to rush into things this time, he told himself, but already he could feel desire burning into him.
He ran his hand the length of her rib cage, letting it rest on the curve of her hip. She tilted her face toward him and he kissed her, lightly, playfully. The kiss grew more serious, but he held back, seducing her slowly. He skimmed kisses along the side of her neck and told her he loved her. His hands were gentle as they ranged over her, heating the skin beneath her clothes. He kissed her again, deeper this time, teasing her with his tongue. The kisses were long and intoxicating, filled with love and promising passion. He felt her hands flatten on his chest, felt her press against him. He fought to move slowly but control was slipping away. He noticed with some satisfaction that her control had already completely evaporated.
He lowered her shorts slowly, inch by inch, his mouth following his hands, kissing and caressing. He felt her fingers curl into his shirt. He was half crazy with wanting her, but he continued methodically, searching for the most sensitive places, memorizing the way she liked to be touched.
Clothes were discarded entirely and he allowed himself a moment to study her. She was pretty, he thought. And she was his. This had to be the result of all those years of meditating with his grandfather and trying to control his cussing. God had finally rewarded him.
He brought her to climax and then he followed.
When Daisy’s breathing was almost normal she opened her eyes. Steve had shifted slightly to the side and was watching her. “I’m glad I didn’t jump,” she said. “Do you still love me?”
“I will love you forever and ever.”
The Rocky Road to Romance Page 13