Banjo Man (13 page)

He was … proud
and
excited by the new fire in her eyes these days.

“Okay, darlin’. You win. But on one condition.”

Laurie narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“That you at least let me help you move—and make sure the lock on your door is a strong one!”

After two weeks of looking, the only apartment Laurie was able to find was on the fourth floor of an older building not far from the hospital where Ellen worked. A nurse friend was leaving town and wanted someone to finish out the lease. Ellen had begrudgingly arranged for Laurie to take over as soon as possible, listening halfheartedly to Laurie’s insistence that she needed to be alone.

Alone.
She hadn’t been alone since … since never, that was when. The thought at once terrified and intrigued her. And she had signed the lease in a moment of awful surrender to the future.

One load was all it took in Rick’s sturdy Jeep to move her belongings: two suitcases—she had bought herself a number of new clothes—and a few stray pieces of kitchenware Ellen had insisted she take along.

“You did say it was furnished, right, babe?” Rick asked as they struggled up the stairs with an assortment of boxes and a wild array of plants Rick had picked up at the farmers’ market.

“Sparsely,” Laurie admitted, nibbling nervously on her lower lip. Then her face brightened, and she added quickly, “But that’s fine. I don’t need clutter. Just a bed, a few chairs. You know, the essentials.” She’d lived with much less for years; whatever was there would be fine.

“Well, darlin’ ”—Rick kicked open the door to
number 205 with the toe of his boot and took a cursory glance around—“that’s what you got … the bare essentials!”

They stood together in the doorway and surveyed the tiny room. A well-polished hardwood floor reflected the shape of a patterned hide-a-bed and two chairs. Off to one side was a round oak table and chairs, and beyond that, on the other side of a divider, a tiny kitchen.

Laurie stood silently for several moments, her head reeling with memories and sensations of times past. Slowly she took in the sunlit windows, the high ceilings, the old wooden molding edging the walls … the stuff of her new home.

Rick was quiet beside her, one arm resting lightly around her shoulder, ready to sweep her away from it all should she but say the word. Beneath her thin cotton blouse he could feel her tremble, but he found her silence impossible to read.

“Well, darlin’?” he asked at last.

Laurie tilted her head back and met his eyes. She knew what he was thinking: that this was an awful place, small and empty and cold. How could she explain to him what it meant to her? That this tiny stark apartment meant for the first time in a life-time she could come and go as she pleased, that she could eat what she wanted, put her bed in the middle of the room if she wanted, and dance around it at three in the morning if she wanted! Her eyes crinkled at the corners and a lovely smile lit her face. “Oh, Rick, it’s beautiful.”

Rick held his silence, watching her with a bemused smile as she walked slowly into the room, her head held high and her face aglow with wonder.

“It’s mine … my apartment. My own apartment.”

She ran her hands slowly over the oak tabletop,
then walked over to the couch, then back to the kitchen, her tempo increasing with each step. “Rick, it’s going to be perfect—just perfect!” She raced to the windows. “We can put some of your plants here—and if I get a little rug for over there …” She spun around, her arms flying through the air and sending tiny dust flecks dancing in the sunlight. “It’s absolutely grand!”

Rick caught her on the second spin and pulled her close, his eyes shining brightly. “Laurie O’Neill, you are something else. Each day you’re something else! What will tomorrow bring to my wild Irish rose?”

She welcomed the kiss that slowly formed between them, the soft crush of his lips upon her own as he held her gently and pressed her into the warmth of his body. There was no fear left, for the feel of Rick’s body against her own was becoming as natural and welcome as sunlight.

Wrapping her arms around his neck, she kissed him back, eagerly, passionately. “You know, Rick,” she murmured, “I used to worry about whether I’d know how to do that right—about whether I’d get my lips in the right place, whose went where. It doesn’t matter if teenagers flub it up, but a woman my age should know about such things, and I wasn’t sure I did!”

“Well, darlin’,” Rick said huskily, “you’ve been doing just fine! But if I, ah, don’t put some fresh air between us soon, I’m afraid we’re not going to … to get this place in working order.”

Reluctantly, and with great effort, Rick settled his hands firmly on her shoulders and stepped back, taking in a lungful of air. “Now, Laurie, we need to make some sense out of this room.”

Laurie watched him with emotions that swirled crazily through her body.

He confused her sometimes, stopping short
when she wanted nothing more than to press her body harder and harder against his and have him hold her there tightly. She craved all this cuddling and touching and kissing. Rick was like some exotic new food that awakened taste buds never used before, and she couldn’t get enough of him. And though he came to her eagerly, and never forced the issue of their sleeping together, he often pushed her away suddenly, inexplicably. Laurie was too shy to ask, but she sensed that pushing her away was something Rick Westin did out of necessity, not choice.

Shaking her coppery hair to clear her head, she glanced around the room. “Well, Rick, there aren’t a whole lot of choices.”

“Of course there are!” He flopped down on the hide-a-bed and surveyed the room with exaggerated concentration. “Now, first, what kind of decor would interest you, madame?” He lifted one thick brow and tilted his head.

Laurie laughed. “Oh, early attic, I should think.”

“Marvelous choice! And I know just the way to do it!” Rick leaped off the couch. “Of course! It’s a terrific idea!”

Laurie stepped back curiously. “Oh?”

“A housewarming! That’s what this place needs.”

“A housewarming?” Wandering into the tiny strip of a kitchen, Laurie mulled over the idea.

“Sure,” Rick insisted, his dark eyes flashing. “Next best thing to a house-raising!” He leaned his long frame against the chipped edge of the sink and rubbed a silken strand of her hair between two fingers. “You know, I helped out with one of those things a few years back when I was traveling through Tennessee, and it was great. Everyone came—uncles, aunts, cousins, friends. There was this old guy helping who was ninety if he was a
day, and he didn’t stop for a breath until the job was done. In
one
day we raised the walls of that house—it was somethin’! And passersby cheered us on as if we had just invented the wheel.”

“Did you know the people?”

“Not when I came. Sure did when I left.”

“You’re such a strange man, Rick Westin.” Laurie sighed, slipping down onto one of the oak chairs near the table.

“I’m not sure that’s a compliment.” Rick cocked his head to one side and grinned. “What kind of strange?”

“Well, first there’s your life on the road, living with those people, never meeting a stranger, sleeping wherever and whenever—like a cowboy or a gypsy.”

“Yeah, I’m sorta like that.”

“And then here in Washington you’ve got this beautiful old Georgetown town house that my coworkers say is like gold to come by. I mean, you’re a well-known entertainer, who probably … well, not that it’s any of my business.”

“What … makes a lot of money?” he prompted, amused by her sudden formality. This must be another of the many things one did not talk about in the convent.

“Well, yes, I guess.” She looked up shyly.

“It’s what I was trying to explain the other day, darlin’. I love my home here,
and
I love my traveling home out there. Sure, they’re as different as ice cream and molasses, but both are sweet to my taste. See?”

“I think so.”

“The fact is, I don’t think of it as strange. I think it’s more the way life ought to be. A balance. Does that make any sense, Laurie?”

Laurie nodded, a soft smile playing over her lips. “Sure. It makes lots of sense, Rick.” She touched
his arm lightly and her voice turned thoughtful. “A delicate balance. I think that’s what I was missing in the convent. I tried to find it, but it never felt quite right. Somehow I wasn’t able to hang on to Laurie O’Neill in the middle of everything else. I lost her, and became someone else.”

Rick was leaning forward, watching her with dark intensity, wondering about that life, the years that were part of Laurie’s past. She didn’t talk easily about it, so he salvaged bits and pieces that she threw out at random, and patiently hoped that someday they’d form a picture he could understand.

Laurie felt the heat of his gaze and blushed. Wiping an imaginary crumb off the table, she tossed her head back and changed the subject. “Back to this housewarming, Westin. Just what do you have in mind?”

Rick accepted her mood swing, and began pacing around the room as if measuring space. “It’ll be great! We’ll be a little crowded, but that’s okay—that’s what makes it a house
warming
, after all. Simple and easy. We’ll just do it, that’s all. What do you say about Friday night, right after the show?”

“A housewarming Friday night? That’s too soon. We’ve got to plan it!”

Rick waved away her objections. “What’s to plan? I’ll take care of the food and libations. You take care of opening the door when the guests arrive.”

Suddenly Laurie threw her hands in the air, her eyes round. “Oh, Rick—we can’t!”

“We can’t?”

“No, we can’t. For one very basic, very good reason. Except for you, Paula, Ellen, and Dan, I don’t have any friends to invite!”

Rick’s husky laughter swallowed her mournful protest. “Then, my sweet thing, we shall find you
some friends! No problem at all. Why, I’ll just go up and down the halls and—”

“Rick, stop it! I’m serious. Who would I invite?”

“You invite Paula, Ellen, and Dan. And I’ll invite all my friends who have been badgering me for weeks to let them meet you. You see, Laurie”—he wound an arm around her waist and ran a finger slowly over the alluring curve of her cheek bone—“I’ve been very selfish. I’ve been keeping you all to myself. But I can’t do that forever, much as I’d like to!”

“This will never work!” Laurie stared into the refrigerator. Plates of cheese and sausage and pungent antipasto glared silently back at her.

“It won’t, you know. I’m not ready to meet Rick’s friends. I don’t
want
to meet them. What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t like them? And what in heaven’s name will I say to a houseful of guests—
my
guests—whom I’ve never met?” She stabbed an innocent olive and shoved it into her mouth.

“I have the same trouble with those darn things—they never talk back.” Ellen’s laughing voice filtered into the kitchen from the doorway.

“Ellen!” Laurie spun around. “I didn’t hear you!”

“That’s because you were having an animated conversation with an olive.” She grinned as she dropped a sackful of food on the table. “Laurie O’Neill, considering it’s a dump, I think you’ve done wonderful things in here!” Her eyes flew around the apartment appreciatively.

Laurie had spent her whole week’s salary on the apartment, but it had been worth it. Colorful throws brightened the drab furniture, and the flickering light of dozens of tiny candles grouped on the chipped mantel softened the bare ivory
walls. At a flea market on Wisconsin Avenue she’d even found some huge, plump floor pillows that transformed the shadowy corners of the room into warm, inviting niches.

Laurie beamed her thanks. “Well, I hope there’ll be enough room. Rick didn’t say how many people he’d invited.”

Frowning, she fidgeted with a pleat at the waist of her full cotton skirt. “I can’t imagine anyone coming on such short notice, anyway. This was really a silly idea. A
dumb
idea. Stupid!” She tried to force a little nonchalance into her voice. “You know, my partying experience leaves a little to be desired. I’m used to a good, heated game of volleyball followed by fruit juice and cookies in the community room!”

Ellen laughed as she began pulling chips, egg rolls, and nacho sauce out of her brown sack. “You’re wrong, Laurie. It was a great idea! I’ve met a few of Rick’s friends, and they’re very nice. They’ll love you—just like Dan did once he found out you weren’t a ghost who prowls around bedrooms—”

“—sprinkling holy water!” Laurie laughed at the memory of her first meeting with Dan. When he had finally tumbled out of bed that day, Laurie had found in Ellen’s boyfriend a warm and witty friend. He was good for Ellen, Laurie had decided, and she almost envied the open and comfortable flow of affection between them. It seemed so much simpler, somehow, than her heated passion for Rick.

“Well,” Laurie said with a groan, “I guess there’s no turning back now, is there? But I sure wish Rick would get here! He dropped off all this food right after the show, then disappeared again.”

“Well, he’s back, and he’s not alone!” Ellen announced a second before his enthusiastic pounding nearly broke down the door.

“Open, sesame!” Rick called in a deep voice that
caused doors to open all down the hall. “Company’s here!”

The first two hours were a blur to Laurie. She plastered a smile on her face and did all she could to be the gracious hostess. Rick’s friends continued to arrive, filling the tiny studio apartment with their laughter and animated conversation … and surprise gifts that stunned her. Plants and towels and place mats followed a lovely old coffee table which the producer of Rick’s show didn’t want anymore. The set designer brought a wonderful painting of old Georgetown. There were end tables, lovely handmade pots, more plants, and enough kitchen gadgets to open a store. No one came empty-handed, and Laurie was in awe of how quickly they helped turn her apartment into a home.

A tall, thin woman with short, curly hair settled down next to Laurie, folding her blue-jean clad legs into a pretzel. “You’ve been a mystery to us, Laurie. We’ve all been speculating when Rick was going to bring you out of the woodwork.”