Dancing in the Dark (10 page)

He couldn’t get enough of her like this, and yet each kiss, each touch, only drove the heat higher. It occurred to him that nothing was stopping them from finding every inch of each other together. She wanted him. He could feel it in every breath she took, every moan, every touch. And he wanted her, desperately.…

That thought, rather than driving his body and mind forward as one, brought the opposite reaction. He lifted his head, breaking the kiss. He held her close against his chest, just held her, for long, long moments, until her breath stopped coming in gasps. Then he let her go. She slumped against the refrigerator. He stared at her as she opened her eyes in bewilderment. She’d never looked more beautiful, her hair disheveled and her lips swollen with his kisses.

“We can’t,” he said, hating the words.

“Wha—?”

“We can’t. You’re not ready.” He took a deep breath, forcing himself to ignore the hurt that filled her eyes. He didn’t know if she’d ever forgive him for stopping, but he would never forgive himself if he didn’t. “I want it to be right, with no regrets.”

He turned around and walked out of Charity’s apartment. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. There was only one explanation for his leaving like that.

He was insane.

“Here.”

Charity watched as Dave dropped a pile of papers on her desk, right on top of the printout she was reading, and walked away.

“Thank you,” she called out sweetly, then cursed him under her breath. If he’d been Mr. Maudlin at Jake’s little soiree that past weekend, it certainly didn’t show. He was just as two-by-four-headed as always. And rude. The funny thought ran through her mind that Dave had looked angry, but she dismissed it. Dave simply didn’t know the meaning of “pleasant.”

She swiveled the papers around, intending to put them aside, when a name caught her eye. As she began to read the order, a sense of retroactive humiliation slowly sank in. When she was done, she sighed in complete disgust with herself. The papers were substantial orders and deals made with three companies in Boston, companies Jake had visited after their presentation at DGF. He hadn’t lied, and if he had arranged those meetings so he could hang around that night, hoping to persuade her to
stay over again doing something more intimate than talking on the telephone, he’d certainly made it worth Wayans’s while. And he hadn’t asked such a thing of her, anyway. She might always have her suspicions about his real purpose for staying on, but the knowledge that he hadn’t acted upon it still rankled.

“Lord, if only I
could
kill him and get away with it,” she muttered. She hadn’t seen him, either, since he’d left her house so abruptly two days earlier. The feel of his lips and hands on her, driving her nearly senseless, had haunted her ever since. She wanted him, wanted to break all the rules she lived by. In fact, she might have broken them right there in her kitchen if he hadn’t been noble and stopped her. He was never quite what she expected him to be.

Remembering Dave’s furious expression, she admitted it was no wonder he was angry. It did not look good on the résumé to have the boss going out and getting orders when that was Dave’s job. Maybe it would make Dave more … enthusiastic. She’d like to see that.

Still, she knew what she had to do. With another groan of self-disgust she picked up the telephone and called Jake. His secretary put her through.

“Good morning, Ms. Brown,” he said in his best schoolboy voice.

She looked up at the ceiling for strength. He would be so damned cheerful. Even so, a frisson of awareness rippled through her, for that cheerfulness couldn’t mask the natural sensuality in his voice. Some men had it, and some men didn’t. Timothy Dalton had it. So did Jake.

“Jake.” She kept her own tone businesslike. “I have orders on my desk from those three companies you
saw in Boston, and I wanted to”—she drew in a deep breath—“apologize if I was curt with you that evening.”

“I think you made up for it the next day,” he said, his smug amusement coming through. “But I’m glad to know I’m completely forgiven.”

“I wouldn’t say completely.” She felt vulnerable enough without giving him every edge.

“What do I have to do to get the new hair shirt off?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s pretty much off. I’ll process these orders right away.”

“Good. We need the business badly. The guys upstairs are making noises. But never mind that.”

Clearly, he was coming under pressure from Wayans’s board of directors. She’d never seen any of them, but she always thought of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon where the board conference chairs were filled with cabbage heads—literally. Still, this wasn’t the place to say sensitive things, so she warned him: “I think the phones lines have eyes sometimes. The oddest things can get about around here.”

“Ears, Charity. Phones can’t have eyes. But I see your point. Call my private line from now on,” he said, and gave her the number.

She wrote it down, then realized that protected only one end. She began to say something, but he interrupted her.

“I’ve decided the men need to have a real wild-man session right away. As soon as possible to get them all back in proper perspective.”

Thoughts of phone lines flew right out of her head.

“Good, good.” She hoped she sounded uninterested,
but every sense was on alert. This was a not-to-be-missed event. “Are you doing it this week?”

“I guess I should. Soon, anyway. How have they been?”

“Pretty normal,” she replied, thinking of Dave. Then she corrected herself. “Actually, it’s hard to say. None of them are saying much.”

“I see.” He sounded depressed.

Oh, wicked, wicked Charity, she thought. It really wasn’t fair of her to help his misconceptions and concerns along like this. But she’d be crazy if she stopped now. “I suppose you could hold the meeting tonight—”

“I couldn’t get it organized in time. Maybe for the weekend. You know, it’s rather odd to be talking about the men’s movement with a woman.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said nonchalantly. “Besides, emotional problems are usually universal.”

“True. So you’ll have those orders put through today? I really didn’t expect them this soon. How are you and Mary coming on the project?”

“Good. I’m working up the figures for our exclusivity contract with DGF. In fact, I need to get back to it. I just wanted to apologize to you.”

“More than accepted.”

She hung up, grateful to get off the telephone without anything intimate being said. Well, nearly anything, she amended, remembering his comment about her having “made up.” With Jake, she was sinking faster than the
Titanic
. And the terrible part was that she
wanted
to. He was like a drug she couldn’t resist.

She pushed the disturbing notion away. It seemed that she was doing that a lot lately, ignoring her own
thoughts and feelings. But she had something better to concentrate on. Men would be dancing around a fire in five days. Now all she had to discover was where.

Mary stopped by her desk at that moment. “I’ve got the other specs you wanted. How did Jake do in Boston?”

Charity tapped the papers. “More orders. Good ones.”

Mary smiled. “He thought it was worthwhile staying on.” She continued looking at Charity, and a much more personal question hung like fog in the air.

Charity’s blood heated with anger. Damn that man! She knew Mary was chomping to ask what happened in Boston Friday night, but the woman was too polite. Thank heavens. Even if nothing developed between her and Jake, though, she wondered if enough rumors would fly around to kill her reputation. Deciding that that would be Jake’s fault too, she grinned slyly. Jake would kill her if he found out, but she couldn’t resist.

“Mary.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Eating dinner, watching TV, and avoiding yard-work. The usual American fare. Why?”

“There’s … a dance troupe you might enjoy.”

Charity began to explain.

Saturday night, two groups of women drove slowly along a deserted dirt road, back through the haunts of the Pine Barrens. The moon was beginning to wax full, giving off light that turned the sky nearly as bright as day. None of the women feared the centuries-old tale of the Jersey devil, spawn of Satan,
who rode the treetops in search of his next victims throughout this vast wilderness smack in the middle of an industrial state. Everyone in the two cars was cheerfully contemplating her human version of the beast.

Charity, driving the lead vehicle, spotted several cars pulled off onto the sandy bank of a little clearing. She immediately swiveled her car off the roadway onto the opposite shoulder. “Ladies, I do believe we’ve struck pay dirt.”

This time Jake had taken his Iron Johns into the backwoods, nowhere near Milton. They might not have found them if the mayor, invited by his brother-in-law who worked at Wayans, hadn’t mentioned to his wife that they were headed for his favorite fishing spot. The mayor’s wife, who was friends with Mary, had ended any concerns about having to tail the men. Instead, the knowledge allowed them to let some time pass before arriving.

They climbed out of the cars and gathered around Charity. All were trustworthy women, hand-picked by Charity. Other than herself, they were all married or older, good acquaintances of hers from work or wives of the men involved. Each had suffered—either personally or professionally—because of a man.

“Ladies, quietly,” she said. “If we’re caught, there’s hell to pay.”

All of them chuckled, but their voices lowered.

“I’d like to know how you found out about this,” one of them said.

“Sheer luck,” Charity lied, then led her troops across the dirt road and into the bush.

She ought to feel more guilty, she thought. She
did
feel guilty, knowing Jake would be furious if he
knew. After all, she’d broken what he must consider a confidence. But she couldn’t help herself. The whole thing was just too rich to pass up. It always seemed like men had the last laugh on women, so a slight reversal was surely in order.

Firelight in the distance caught her eye. She veered toward it, while motioning the women to complete silence. When they were close enough to hear and see clearly, she waved the women to fan out around the clearing. Everybody moved swiftly into place behind trees and bushes. Charity peered out from around a large scrub pine.

The men were sitting around the fire, fully clothed. One of them was idly flipping dirt up with a stick. Jake, sitting with his back to Charity, was talking about the men’s movement and its objectives. She’d heard it before from him, but the other women hadn’t. She wondered if they found it ludicrous, the idea that—as Jake was saying now—men were confused, that they’d lost their ability to fulfill their needs. The woman beside her rolled her eyes and grimaced, and Charity guessed they weren’t buying it.

Jake finished by saying that men needed to share their experiences in order to help them all thrive and grow. It was an invitation for the men to talk, and after a minute of silence they did.

“No one understands the pressure to perform,” one said.

“Or the tension in that.”

“Yeah. The tension.”

“I feel like a failure because my wife
has
to work,” another added. He was a young man. “I can’t provide like my father did for his family. Hell, I’ve got to watch how many candy bars I buy a week, not only
because of the sugar and cholesterol, but because we can’t afford it.”

“The financial pressure is still on our shoulders,” Jake said. “If the wife loses her job, it’s not the catastrophe it is when we lose ours—”

“And the women act like it’s our fault!”

The last voice was Dave’s. Charity looked heavenward. Up to that point she was beginning to realize the men had a whole set of problems that were different from women’s.

“Yeah—” another began, but Jake broke in.

“We’ve got to get back to our genetic roots as men and support one another,” he said, turning the tide of machismo.

The minutes ticked along as more men spoke. The moon climbed higher, the temperature dropped lower, and the men continued to talk, telling stories and revealing doubts and hopes that alternately amused and amazed Charity. That aside, however, she was beginning to get leg cramps from standing so long. The little light on her digital watch showed they had been there nearly an hour. She glanced over at the woman behind the next tree and shrugged helplessly.

“Honest, people,” she muttered under her breath. “He really did say wild man.”

She was about to signal the women to leave, when a thrumping began. The men rose and began to shuffle self-consciously around the fire. As they did, they grinned sheepishly at one another. Charity looked at the woman closest to her. She had her hand over her mouth to hold back her giggles.

The drummer picked up the pace. Jake stood outside the circle, calling out encouragements. The men
shuffled faster, their amusement slowly giving way to concentration. Their dancing did resemble tribal dances of aborigines or African peoples, an ancient form of communication. When one of the men suddenly let out a war whoop, Charity jumped back in fright. She heard a tiny shriek from one of the women and prayed the men hadn’t. They didn’t seem to, and began to dance faster and faster in a definite rhythm. One of them stripped off his shirt and waved his arms around in the air. Other men joined suit, men who hadn’t seen the lean side of twenty. Ever. They whooped and hollered and waved discarded clothing in the air, spinning around in circles, venting their latent masculinity.

Charity doubled over in hysterics.

Jake was thinking the mayor was going a little too far, stripping down to his Jockey shorts, when he heard a noise.

It wasn’t loud, sort of muffled, but the sound was reminiscent of a snicker of laughter. Immediately, Charity came to mind. Though she had accidentally viewed him that first time, that was no reason to think she was out in the middle of the real woods spying. Yet now that his attention had been caught, he couldn’t shake the notion of eyes watching him.