Last Chance at Love (10 page)

“I trust my instincts. I’m thirty, and I haven’t known anyone else like him or felt what I feel when I’m with him. I’ve dated a lot of guys, but I’ve not one taken one of them seriously. Mark is it.”

Allison stared at her friend. The cool, unassuming woman who didn’t allow herself to get excited about anything was as susceptible as she. And far more self-assured about the man she wanted.

The maître d’ led them to their table, and Carly jumped up and rushed to meet them. “Hey, you gals. You look fantastic,” she said.

“You’re the one,” Connie replied and Allison concurred.

After they hugged each other, Carly spoke in a wistful tone. “I wish we did this more often. You don’t know how much I miss you guys. I haven’t seen Desiree in ages, and I hear she just lost her art gallery in a fire. Kaput. Everything.”

“Oh, no!” Allison said.

“That’s a terrible thing,” Connie said, rubbing her hands together. “We ought to do something to cheer her up.”

“I’m all for it. Let’s talk it over after the show,” Allison said, her attention already on the stage as the lights dimmed and Buddy Dee’s downbeat floated over the room. The music began, and Allison’s heart skipped a beat as the lights went up and Mac Connelly’s fingers sped over the guitar strings.

She hated that their table was so far from the stage that she couldn’t see Mac’s facial expressions. She hoped she hadn’t gotten a fixation on the man, but the more she watched him, the more curious she became about him. He didn’t slump in his chair, and he didn’t have the lost, faraway manner that stamped the persona of his fellow musicians. He sat upright, in control, alert to everything around him. And he could pick that guitar! Quickly, she scribbled a note, asking him for an interview, and handed it to a waiter. He read it, put it in his pocket, and tipped the waiter, but didn’t send a reply. The band finished the chorus of “Round Midnight,” acknowledged the long, boisterous ovation, and the stage lights dimmed. Allison rushed toward the stage, but by the time she darted through the crowd and around the tables, she’d missed him. She ran to the side door and out on the street and stopped. He had deliberately escaped her; she knew it. All the other musicians stood in a group getting that long-needed cigarette, because smoking was not permitted in the club.

“He doesn’t want me to interview him,” she grumbled to Connie.

Her friend’s shoulder moved upward with the laziness of one disinterested. “Next time, tell him you’re Barbara Walters; he’ll break his neck getting to you.”

“Very funny.” Allison didn’t like being bested. She had a nose for news, and she’d never known her suspicions to be unfounded. She stopped walking and regarded Connie intently, though her mind roamed elsewhere. “Have you ever seen a blind person move that fast?”

She continued to muse over it after she got home, and the idea hit her with the suddenness of a thunderclap. He reminded her of someone. But who?

* * *

Jake looked in every direction before getting out of the cab. His numerous and dangerous stints for the government had taught him the value of caution. Deciding that he hadn’t been followed, he got out of the taxi, went into his house, stored his guitar and musician’s clothes in his closet, and wondered what to do about Allison. She was either a fickle woman or a reporter who smelled a story. In either case, he had better walk carefully.

He couldn’t rid himself of his unease about her interest in Mac Connelly. The black glasses assured him anonymity only so long as his thick, black wavy hair was covered and he didn’t reveal his height. He had the management’s agreement that he needn’t stand, and his fellow musicians would go to great lengths to make certain he played with them. Not even jail mates had a stricter code of loyalty.

He’d managed to follow his vocation and to enjoy his hobby without having his career wrecked by reporters bent on ensuring the public’s right to know. The journey to his present status as an acclaimed author had been a rough one. He had left the security of his home, arrived at the university a freshman wearing patched jeans, the first sweater his mother had ever knitted, and his deceased father’s army overcoat. And his height had made his impoverished condition doubly conspicuous. He’d gotten to the school on a hard-won scholarship, and he had refused to be ashamed of the contrast in wealth and status between himself and most of his schoolmates, none of whom eased his way.

Jake didn’t fool himself. He wanted the last laugh, and he worked hard to get it. He wanted to show all of them that superior intellect counted for more than classy cars or the latest fashions. Writing national bestsellers wouldn’t do it, but being appointed scholar-in-residence at his alma mater would. The university had one such chair, which it awarded to the former student who won wide national acclaim in his field of study, and he wanted that chair. The supercilious fathers who bestowed the honor would pass over any alumnus whose character had the slightest blemish. And in their view, playing in a jazz band and associating with jazz musicians did not befit their august scholars. Yet, his music was his life; he could bear anything, so long as he had that.

The department had never liked his nocturnal activities, reckoning that one of the enemies he’d made when he was an undercover agent would eventually trace him to Blues Alley, where he was any gunman’s easy target. The agency liked it even less. He’d told the chief that he disguised himself as best he could, that he’d be careful, but that he had to take the chance. He needed his music. No matter where he went, what he did, or how many plaudits he received, a restlessness pervaded him until he sat down with the band and raced his fingers over those guitar strings. He’d take the risk.

Chapter 5

H
e hadn’t been with her in four days, and he had to force himself to walk, not run, to the Delta Airlines ticket counter, where he knew he’d find her waiting. And what a sight she was! Exotic and lovely in a knee-length beige silk suit, high-heeled brown leather boots, and matching briefcase, and her jet-black hair pulled away from her face in what he now knew would be an elegant chignon. She had slung her raincoat over her left arm. When he saw her, it seemed that he walked faster, but he knew he’d stopped. Stunned.

“Come on,” she said. “They’re just about to board.”

Her smile returned his senses to him, and he took the last few steps, stopping inches from her. “Hi. If you tell me you didn’t miss me this past weekend, I’ll mark you down as a liar.” He let a big grin soften his words.

She turned away and faced the ticket agent, letting her words find their way over her shoulder. “What do I say to that?”

“My parents taught me that if you tell the truth, you have nothing to remember, nothing to fear, and nothing to haunt you later. So how about it?” He gave the ticket agent his ID and credit card. “Did you or didn’t you?”

Her fingers rubbed the side of her face as if to suggest she couldn’t remember. “It’ll come to me.”

He put his ticket in the inside pocket of his coat, stacked her carry-on on top of his bag, and took her hand. “One of these days, you’ll tell me the truth, and I won’t have to ask.”

“You’re so sure of yourself.”

“No, but I’m sure of this: our story hasn’t even begun. When it really gets started, it will be riveting. I can hardly wait.”

As had become their pattern, he stored their bags overhead, she took the window seat, and he settled in the aisle seat, glad that he could stretch out at least one leg. He needed so much from her, to know which of the women she showed him from time to time was her real self or if, indeed, any one of them was the real Allison. He wanted to talk with her, tell her how he longed to have his alma mater recognize him with its scholar-in-residence honor. But this was not the time. He couldn’t tell her, either, how he had hated avoiding her at Blues Alley and how much he wanted to question her about her interest in Mac Connelly. He contented himself with squeezing her fingers and then holding her hand.

“Coffee, sir?” the flight attendant asked, blessing him with a warm smile. He thanked her, and she put the coffee along with a half pint of milk and several packages of sugar on the table in front of him. Then the flight attendant looked at Allison.

“What would you like?”

“Coffee with milk, if it wouldn’t trouble you too much,” Allison said evenly, her tone just short of sharp.

His head snapped around. He’d never seen such a stormy expression on Allison’s face, and he had certainly provoked her often enough. A glance at the flight attendant, and he settled farther down in his seat; those two sisters definitely understood each other.

With a face the color of crimson, the flight attendant passed Allison a napkin and a cup of coffee, to which she had added a bit of milk.

“Thank you,” Allison said with such frostiness that he scratched his head, perplexed.

“What did she do to you?” he asked her, and when she looked at him he wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Just like a man,” he heard her say under her breath. To him, she said, “I’m on the inside. Take a look around. She serves the inside first. But Miss Moonbeam was so busy trying to impress you that she ignored me. She also gave you a pint of milk to put in a six-ounce cup of coffee, but she hardly put enough milk in mine to change the color. Do women always fall all over you?”

So that was it. He wanted to laugh, but he didn’t dare risk making her angrier than she was. He opened the box of milk and poured some into her coffee. “Come on, Allison, you can afford to be generous. I’m leaving her with you.”

She turned fully to face him then, and he thought she would pop. Try as he would to stop it, the laughter began as a rumble deep in his chest and bubbled up slowly like a volcano threatening to expel its lava. He braced his arms against the back of the seat in front of his and shook with laughter, and the more he laughed the happier he felt. Relieved, as it were, of every burden he’d ever had. It hit him forcibly then, that something had just happened to him, something of great import. He sat up and looked at her. Awed, it seemed, by his laughing fit, her anger had dissipated, and what he saw humbled him. He took her hand.

“I have no doubt that if we were alone right now, I’d take you in my arms, hold you, and kiss you thoroughly.”

Her lower lip dropped. “I...you’d need my cooperation.”

He squeezed her fingers. “And I would get it.” It didn’t surprise him that she remained silent, for he had learned that she preferred not to lie.

“I’m still holding your hand,” he said, as the plane neared Logan Airport in Boston.

“I know, I know.”

* * *

They walked into the Ritz-Carlton Hotel facing the Boston Commons, and she had to stifle a gasp. “Who picked this palace? My boss will stand on his head when he gets the bill for this place.”

“My publisher takes care of this. Wait till you see these suites.”

Her reply was a withering look. “I’m taking a room. Bill would hang me if I gave him a bill for a suite.”

The change in his demeanor didn’t escape her, for she had learned that mention of her boss’s name served as a kind of reality check for Jake, making him cautious and ill at ease.

“It isn’t Bill who’s writing this story, Jake. I’m writing it. So come back from wherever you went.”

His response, a half sad, half questioning facial expression, unsettled her. She had relaxed her guard, and for all she knew she’d made the biggest error of her life.

“I have a noontime signing at Black Library. After that, we’re free until five-thirty. I didn’t have a decent breakfast. What do you say we unpack and meet down here in twenty minutes?”

“Suits me. See you shortly.” Minutes later she looked out of the window at the famous and historical Commons, feeling as if she’d been thrown back in time. As her gaze traveled from the old State House, to the George Middleton House, the Somerset Club, and Fisher College, she couldn’t help wondering about the minds of the framers of the Constitution. Brilliant men who thought only to gain and preserve their own freedom, without thought as to the rights of women, Native Americans, and the enslaved human beings who toiled for them in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Better shake this mood before I get back to Jake,
she told herself, knowing that her reflections stemmed in part from her running battle with her boss, a man who didn’t esteem women and most men. Her gaze drifted toward the park, and she imagined that in spring the Public Garden, as it was known, was a beautiful and restful place. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes left, and she hadn’t unpacked. Quickly, she hung up the two dresses and two suits, stored the remainder of her things in drawers, and left the room.

By then, Allison expected that she’d see Jake lounging against the wall facing the elevator when the door opened, and he didn’t disappoint her.

“Your respect for time is one of the things I like about you. How’s your room?”

“Rich. Even for my blood,” she said without thinking of the impact those words might have on Jake.

“Come again. What was that?”

“It’s elegant, and the view is wonderful.”

As soon as the waiter took their order and left them, he said, “When you told me about your relationship with your parents, I realized you were well off, at least until you left home. But what you said back there... Are your folks rich?”

“They have a lot of money from real estate, inheritance, and the stock market, but people who don’t share themselves with their children are definitely not rich.”

She heard the bitterness in her voice and wished she had spoken differently. With his ability to discern the slightest nuance, he would probably pigeonhole her as “poor little rich Allison,” and he would be wrong.

“Jake, I got my first job three weeks after I graduated from Howard University, got a degree in journalism from Columbia, and my first paycheck three weeks later. I’ve never taken another cent from my parents, and believe me, there’ve been times when I was flat broke.”

“I believe that. Everything about your personality says you overcame a lot of hurdles to get where you are. Don’t you want to know about my suite?” he asked, changing the tenor of the conversation. And surprising her.

“Uh, yes. I would love to see it.”

She wouldn’t call the change in his eyes from hazel to nearly black in seconds a sign of heightened sexual desire, though it could be, but the rest of his face suggested she’d shocked him.

“I mean, as luxurious as my room is, your suite must be the epitome of posh.” He grinned, and she quickly added, “That’s all I meant. And stop grinning, you hear?”

He didn’t look toward the waiter who filled their coffee cups. “Be thankful for that waiter. That’s what I meant, too, but I see you’ve thought past that. Welcome to the club. Allison, my mind spends a lot of time on you, so you may imagine it occasionally conjures up some intimate scenes with you. If your mind has never done the same, I don’t mean much to you.”

She put the coffee cup back into its saucer without taking that first precious sip, folded her hands in her lap, and considered her words. He waited. At last she told him, “Jake, you don’t want me to mean anything to you, and you have showed me that in many ways. I also don’t want your importance to me to extend beyond the information from you that I need for this story.”

She could almost see his patience snap. “It’s too damned late for that.”

She agreed with that, but she’d never tell him. “How far is the Black Library from here?”

“It’s on Huntington Avenue, wherever that is. We’ll get a taxi. Boston is not a huge city, so half an hour ought to be plenty of time.”

As if he knew that a crowd awaited him, a smile claimed his face as the taxi drove up to 325 Huntington Avenue. He stepped out and extended his hand to her. For once, she welcomed his assistance, for she wouldn’t have noticed the street’s sunken slope at the place where the taxi stopped.

“Thanks.”

His grin caught the curve of his bottom lip and gave him a roguish appearance. “You see? I’m good for something.”

The proprietor gave her a comfortable chair a few feet from the table at which Jake was to sign books, and she took out her pad and tape recorder in the hope of capturing something personal about him.

He’d signed about thirty books when she noticed what seemed to her a familiar figure approach the table. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t... But it was.

“Sydney! Sydney!” Forgetting professionalism, she sprang from the chair and raced around the table. “Sydney!”

* * *

Jake’s pen screeched across the page and he closed the book, put it on the floor, and reached for another. His aplomb restored, he signed Heather Wilkinson’s book and gave her a bookmark for good measure. Who the devil was Sydney that he should excite Allison to the extent that she forgot where she was? He made himself smile at the teenage boy who stood before him with a worshipful expression on his young face.

“I’m Matthew Hill, sir, and I want to be a spy just like you used to be.”

He extended his hand, and the boy grasped it, albeit reluctantly. “I’m sure you’ll be a good one, young man, but I was never a spy,” he said as he signed the book.

“Oh, I know that, sir, but if nobody knew what you were doing, that’s the same as spying.”

It wasn’t, but he didn’t have time to explain it. “I expect you’ll be the best at whatever you do,” he said, wished the boy good luck, and looked around for Allison. At last his gaze captured her as she leaned against a section of books, holding both hands of the man called Sydney. After that, he greeted his fans with forced enthusiasm, signed books automatically, and smiled mechanically, for neither his heart nor his mind was in it.

After nearly two hours, during which his fingers almost lost their feeling, he signed the last book. If she didn’t come back within the next two minutes, she’d see his TV taping on the television in her hotel room, provided she remembered it and was interested enough to watch.

He gathered his fliers, bookmarks, and the pens he gave to each buyer, and as he stood he saw her walking toward him holding Sydney’s hand, her face adorned with a happier smile than he’d ever seen on her. And pride seemed to suffuse her.
What the hell?
he said to himself.

“Jake, this is my brother, Sydney. He really surprised me. I hadn’t seen him in months. Sydney, this is Jacob Covington.”

Sydney held out his hand. “I’m glad to meet you. Your signing was advertized on fliers, radio, television, and a blimp. I wouldn’t have missed meeting you and getting a chance to touch base with my sister.”

As best he could, Jake camouflaged the deep breath of relief that seeped out of him. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sydney. Allison speaks highly of you.” Now why had he said that? He had to get a grip on himself. That lapse into jealousy had him in shock.

“She’s biased,” Sydney said, “and I’m starved. How about lunch?”

Of course they would be expected to have lunch with Allison’s brother, and Jake was anxious to see more of the man and get better insight into Allison.

“I’d love it,” he said. “My publicist gave me a list of recommended restaurants. I can do without the clam chowder and baked beans. What about you two?”

“I vote for Italian,” they said in unison, and he suppressed a smile.

* * *

“What’s the difference in your ages?” Jake asked after they seated themselves in the Ristorante Vivola at a table overlooking the Commons.

“I’m two years older,” Sydney said, “and since she probably didn’t tell you her age, having said that, I’d better not tell you mine.”

“Oh, she won’t mind. Allison is a liberated, independent woman. Besides, a beautiful woman doesn’t have to hide her age.”

“Whew,” Sydney said, wiping his brow. “I walked into that one.”

Sydney leaned forward, and his voice held a note of urgency. “This story is important to my sister, and I’m getting the sense that you are also important to her. She acts tough, Covington, but she isn’t. Please bear that in mind.”