Last Chance at Love (24 page)

Oh, how she loved to see him laugh, and he treated her to a good dose of it. He said the grace and then let his gaze travel over the food.

“This is a feast. I love shrimp. Say, what’s that over there?” He pointed to the crab cakes, served himself one, and put a forkful in his mouth.

“Hey. You didn’t tell me you had these. These are my mother’s crab cakes. Did she send them to me?”

It was her turn to laugh. “No, my dear, she did not. She didn’t even tell me to give you any. But I graciously took pity on you, and I’m letting you eat up my favorite food in all the world.”

He reached for another crab cake while still chewing on one. “What food is that?”

“Crab cakes, Maryland style. And I’ve never had any this good. Greater love hath no woman than to—”

He stopped chewing. “Don’t joke about a thing like that.”

“Who’s joking? Sydney’s the only other person I’d let taste these.”

He did his best not to react to what she’d just said. “I miss these. I’ve loved them since before I could walk. This is really a treat.” His smile blessed her as someone precious. “And such a surprise. Thanks.”

After they cleaned the table and the kitchen, he asked her, “Do I get a doggie bag?”

“To eat on the plane tomorrow?”

“No. For my breakfast.”

She put some crab cakes and biscuits in a small brown bag and handed them to him. “It’s nine o’clock. Too late for a movie. We have to get up early.”

He took the bag and stared down in her face. Her heart constricted when she saw the loneliness there. At least she thought it was loneliness. His desire was a thing she recognized, for she’d seen him exploding with it many times. But this...this almost pained look, this needful expression...

“Jake, if I put my arms around you, will it...will it help? Oh, Lord. Do you want to stay? Is that it?” She opened her arms, and he moved into them with such speed that she didn’t know how it happened. He was a big man, tall and muscular, and she squeezed him to her until her arms hurt, until he pressed soft and tender kisses all over her face. She wanted to respond to him, to give him whatever he needed. If only she knew the wellspring of his angst! But he gave her no clue.

“You are so sweet. So sweet,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you at the check-in counter tomorrow morning at seven-thirty.” Holding her hand tightly in his, he walked to the door.

“I’d better call a taxi for you.”

“No. I want to walk for a few blocks. Then I’ll call one.” Abruptly, his arms went around her, and he hugged her close to him. “You...you’re precious. I hate for the evening to end, because tomorrow your hair will be up in a knot at the back of your head and you’ll have business written all over you. We only hurt each other when we’re author and reporter. Maybe there’s a message there somewhere. This is a short week, so we’ll be back here Thursday noon. By the way, I’m getting an award Thursday evening at the Library of Congress. Will you go with me?”

“I’d be happy to. What’s the award?”

“American Book Award.”

“You’re kidding. Congratulations, love. I’m so happy for you. This is... It’s fantastic. I wouldn’t miss it.”

* * *

Jake walked ten blocks to Tucker Street where he saw a taxi, hailed it, and got in. “Fine night,” the driver said. “Where to?”

Jake gave the driver his address. “Yep. Sure is.” He couldn’t have gotten his mind on a conversation if he had wanted to talk, and he didn’t. He had stood there looking into the face of the woman who’d just told him that if she didn’t love him she wouldn’t have given him her crab cakes.
If she didn’t love me.
Then she affirmed that she was not joking. As he looked at her, he came close to saying he wanted her to be his wife, to live and die with him. He didn’t know why the words wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t help wondering if one day they would.

“You don’t look the type to have woman trouble,” the driver said. “Some guys get in this cab, and they got
no good
written all over them. Don’t matter their color or the language they speak, I know they’re no good. And they got no-good women. Then, there’s guys like you. Gentlemen. Law-abiding. Upright citizens. My son’s one of those, thank God, and I hope he’s raising my grandson to be just like him. Get yourself a good woman, one who’ll appreciate you. Well, here you are. Nice talking with you.”

Jake thanked the old man and tipped him a five-dollar bill. He wasn’t rich, but the man’s jacket was ripped in the back, and that meant he could use an extra dollar. Since it was only nine-thirty, he phoned his mother.

“You didn’t send me any crab cakes,” he said after they greeted each other, “but I ate three of them anyway. Up to your usual high standards. How are you?”

“I’m just fine. I didn’t tell her to give you any, but would have been disappointed if she hadn’t. Does that mean you didn’t pick a fight with her about coming to see me?”

He couldn’t help laughing. “I did my best, but Allison fights back. You could say she put me in my place.”

“Well, hallelujah! Next time you come down, bring her, will you? Jake, I’d feel the same way about her if you had never met her. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes. I’ll ask her if she’ll come with me.”

“That’s all you can do, except maybe make it permanent.”

“I haven’t gotten quite that far, Mom.”

“That’s all right, son. The Lord always answers my prayers, and I’ll be praying.”

He didn’t want his mother to be disappointed, but it would never occur to him to marry a woman to please her.

Chapter 11

“I
don’t know how I did it,” Allison said to herself when she returned home after three harrowing days with Jake in Connecticut. The strain of maintaining a professional demeanor during his nine public appearances, of working hard not to bare her soul to him whenever she looked him in the eye, and of finding excuses to avoid being alone with him had exhausted her. They had both realized the foolishness of making love at night and pretending a purely professional relationship during the day and, as if by mutual consent, had rejected that course. Knowing she was not alone in her frustration had done nothing to ease her stress.

Since it was only one o’clock in the afternoon, she still had time to visit Mother’s Rest, improve the quality of life for at least one child, and get back home in time to relax and dress for her evening with Jake. She defrosted and heated the last three of the crab cakes Jake’s mother had given her, baked a potato in the microwave, and ate it as quickly as she could. She put her kitchen in order, and even as she did so, her anticipation of the two hours that she would spend with a child at Mother’s Rest seemed to peel away her tiredness and help her put her need for Jake into perspective.

“Am I glad to see you!” Nurse Zena Carter said to Allison when she opened the door. “I’m short of help today, and I’ve got one little eleven-month-old girl who’s been fretting all day. I had the pediatrician look at her this morning, but the medicine he left hasn’t calmed her.”

“Does she have a fever?”

“She didn’t have one an hour ago when I last looked at her, but I have fourteen children here, two nurses other than myself, and four sick ones. The doctor said they’re suffering from different ailments, but no one is contagious.”

Allison scrubbed and changed, put on the medical mask, and followed Zena. “This is Letice. I certainly hope you’ll be able to comfort her.”

Allison took the child, whose large brown eyes and dimpled brown cheeks won her heart immediately. She noticed that although the baby stared at her, she seemed not to relate to the new person holding her, so Allison walked the floor, patting the child, singing a lullaby to her. When the whimpering continued, she sat in the rocking chair and rocked as she sang to the little girl. She appreciated that each of the three visitation rooms, as they were called, provided the substitute mother privacy in bonding with the child in whatever way she could. Most sang or talked with the children, offering loving gestures of affection while holding them.

The hour passed quickly for Allison as always, for she was loath to part with the child. The heaviness in her heart intensified each time she looked into the little face, for though the little girl no longer whimpered, neither was she animated. Allison rang the bell for a nurse.

“She doesn’t look right to me,” Allison told the nurse. She put her hand on the child’s forehead. “She’s warmer, too. I think we should get her to a doctor.”

“I don’t see any point in calling the same doctor who came to see her this morning,” the nurse said. “Put her in her bassinet and roll it to the side door. While I get my coat, call Nurse Carter on the intercom and tell her I’m taking Letice to the hospital.”

“All right. May I go with you? Please, I—”

“All right. But hurry. Don’t dress; just put on your coat.”

Allison sat in the backseat with the bassinet in her lap and prayed that it wasn’t too late for little Letice. For the next five hours, she waited and prayed with the nurse, whose name, she learned during the long evening, was Tiffany Jones.

“Tiffany, why don’t they tell us something? I see them going in and out of the room. Why can’t they give us just one word?”

“Yes,” Tiffany said. “I’ll be right back.”

Allison sprang to her feet when she saw Tiffany coming toward her, tears staining her face and a doctor clutching her arm.

“This is one of those cases in which God was really merciful,” the doctor told them. “If she had lived, she wouldn’t have developed normally and would never have walked. Trust me. Her leaving here was a blessing. I’ll send you the papers tomorrow.”

Allison sat down, trying to digest what had happened. She had bonded with that little girl, had become more attached to her than to any of the other children she had nurtured. She grasped her stomach, symbolically sealing the hole inside her. With effort, she controlled the quiver of her lips and rubbed her arms for warmth.

“I’d better take you back to Mother’s Rest, Allison,” the nurse said. “I have to report to Ms. Carter, and you can get your clothes. I know you feel terrible, and I do, too. This is the first one we’ve lost.”

Allison stood and forced a smile. “I suppose I should take comfort in what that doctor said, but—”

“You have to. It’s no telling how long she’d been failing. We got her day before yesterday. Someone left her at the door, and she was warmly wrapped and clean. Whoever did that knew she couldn’t make it.”

After their report to Zena Carter, Allison dressed and prepared to leave. “Are you sure you’re able to drive?” Zena asked her. “Maybe you should take a taxi. I can’t leave the premises, because Tiffany is the only other nurse here.”

“It isn’t far, and I’ll be all right. It hurts, but knowing she won’t grow up deformed and an invalid is some solace. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Allison drove home slowly because she didn’t trust her reflexes. She parked her car in her driveway and got out. Shock reverberated through her system, and her nerves rioted at the sight of a man standing at her door. Her first thought was of the man she saw when she and Jake were together at Rockefeller Center.

“Allison!” he called out to her, as if he knew he frightened her.

“Jake. What is it? Why are you...” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my Lord, Jake. Honey, I forgot.”

“Yes,” he said, having closed the distance between them, “and you’re going to tell me how you managed to do that. I mean, this night before I leave here.”

“Come in.” Inwardly, she was glad for his presence for she realized she hadn’t flipped the switch that automatically lit the downstairs and the master bedroom when darkness fell.

She unlocked the door, and letting her know that he remembered her fear of darkness in a closed place, he stepped in front of her and turned on the light.

“What? Good grief, you’ve been crying. Allison, what’s going on here?”

To his amazement, she locked her arms across her middle and bent over, as if in pain. Soul-rending pain. He picked her up, carried her into the living room, and sat with her in his lap, searching her face. What he saw were the tears cascading down her cheeks before she buried her face against his chest and sobbed. He rocked her and tried to soothe her while trying to adjust to his own perturbation at her loss of control.

“Talk to me, sweetheart. Let me help you.” But her sobs seemed to grow more tortured. He didn’t see how he could bear her suffering that way. Perhaps if he put her to bed or... He stood and went to her kitchen, still holding her as one would hold a baby, and set her on the counter.

“Did anything happen to Sydney?”

She shook her head, her puffed and reddened eyes devoid of expression. “Oh, Jake. It... She was...such a beautiful little girl.”

He put the kettle of water on the stove and turned on the gas jet as fear raced through him. What had she done? Thinking that she might have hit or, worse, killed a child with her car, he put an arm around her. “We can talk about it in a minute, soon as I make some coffee.”

Fortunately, her kitchen was logically organized, and he quickly found what he needed to make the coffee. “Let’s go back in the living room and talk,” he said, carrying the coffeepot and two cups and deliberately allowing her to walk without his help.

“I hope you can drink it black.” She nodded. He hated black coffee without sugar, but he’d drink it because his aim in making the coffee was to restore her calm. He put the coffeepot and the cups on the coffee table, poured a cupful for each of them, and took her hand.

“Did you have an accident?” She shook her head. “Can you tell me what happened?” he probed, nonplussed and increasingly apprehensive as to what she might tell him.

“I’ve never told anybody about this, not even my girlfriend Connie,” she began, increasing his anxiety. “I’m a volunteer at a home for foundlings called Mother’s Rest.”

He listened to her incredible story of loving and of finding an outlet for her own maternal instincts by mothering and nurturing infants who, for a variety of reasons, didn’t have mothers. His heart swelled with love for her as she recounted the joy she felt when the head nurse would place a child in her arms, hers for two hours.

“What happened today?”

“I got there around three o’clock planning to leave at five and be dressed and ready when you came for me at seven.”

He thought his heart would break for her as she told him about the child she had lost that night, communicating to him without explicitly saying so that she felt as if she had lost her own child.

“I don’t think I ever prayed so hard or so earnestly. I know I would be bitter if the doctor hadn’t told us what her life would have been like if she had lived. Still...” Tears pooled in her eyes as she looked at him. “Jake, she was such a beautiful little baby, and she was the only one I ever had who just wouldn’t respond to me.”

“You’ll have children of your own,” he assured her, “and I see that you will be a wonderful mother.”

“I’ve...stopped hoping,” she said, her listlessness returning. “I’ll be thirty-one in two months.”

He tried to digest that information along with the other things he had learned about her that night. Things that he realized were an ingrained part of her, that would forever change his opinion of her as a woman dedicated to her career and to that alone. He wanted, needed a family, children of his own and a loving wife, more than he wanted anything, including the prize of scholar-in-residence at his alma mater. Deep down in his gut, he knew then that she wanted the same and would willingly give him the children he craved. And she loved him.

He wanted to get on his knees and ask her to marry him, but until he no longer had to keep secrets from her and until she stopped keeping secrets from him, common sense told him to wait. Yet, in every atom of his being, the need to bond with her asserted a powerful stimulus: he needed her.

“I’m so sorry, I missed being there when you received your award, Jake. And to think that I didn’t even remember it. Did you make a speech? Tell me about it.”

He gave silent thanks that she had been able to take her mind off the tragedy she had lived through earlier that evening. “I waited here for you until twenty minutes to eight, and when you didn’t answer your telephone or your cell phone, I couldn’t imagine what had happened or where you were. I was disappointed, worried, and hurt, if one can experience all those emotions at once.

“I don’t remember much about the ceremony. I had a prepared speech, and believe me, I was glad I had memorized most of it. The trophy’s in my briefcase, and along with it I got a check for ten thousand dollars that I’m going to endorse and send to my mother.”

She was staring up at him now, her eyes wide with adoration, and something within him quickened. Without warning, she moved closer, rested her head on his shoulder, and placed her right arm across his waist.

“I wanted so badly to be with you tonight, and then...”

He stroked her back. He didn’t dare hold her to him and love her as he longed to, for he didn’t believe in exploiting a woman’s vulnerability. “You couldn’t be in two places at once, and I wouldn’t have thought more of you if you had walked away from that child. We have to be who we are. This has given me a new insight into the person you are, and I’m grateful.”

She sat up, leaving him bereft of her nearness. “We haven’t tasted this coffee. I’d better heat it and get you some milk and sugar,” she said.

She returned with the coffee and a plate of gingersnaps. “I didn’t have any dinner,” she explained.

“Funny,” he said. “I just remembered that I didn’t, either. I had planned for us to have an elegant supper after the ceremony. That’s water under the bridge. Hell, I love gingersnaps.”

* * *

Allison held the cup suspended in her right hand. “You love gingersnaps? Jake, you almost never see me without some gingersnaps in my handbag or my briefcase. You can’t imagine how I love these things. Crab cakes and gingersnaps. Wonder what else we both like to eat.”

Savoring a cookie as if it were the delight of his life, he raised his left shoulder in a slight shrug. “I don’t know, but I bet it’s plenty. I’m getting the feeling that we’re soul mates.”

She leaned toward him and kissed his cheek, and when he didn’t respond, she kissed the side of his mouth, happy to be with him.

He put his cup on the coffee table and locked his gaze on her. “Be careful, baby. I’m doing my damnedest to remember that you’ve had a rough night.”

The memory suddenly of his arms strong around her, and of him deep within her, sent heat spiraling throughout her body, and she sucked in her breath. She tried to pull her gaze from his fierce and knowing look, the look that said,
I know you, I have possessed you, and I will have my way with you because you want me.
As if he willed it with the strength of his masculine aura, pulling her to him as a magnet asserts its mastery over a nail, she admitted surrender and let his fiery, passion-filled eyes seduce her.

Thoughts of the child lost to her that night fled like a swift-moving engine as he filled her five senses. The rumble of thunder overhead could have been the beat of his heart, the rising wind his breath. Memories of the sweet taste of his tongue in her mouth, and the scent of him, aroused and masculine, beset her, and she felt the muscles of her love channel contract and expand.

When she swallowed hard and crossed her knees, his hand gripped her thigh, and his eyes darkened from brown to obsidian. “If you want me, open your arms to me,” he said, his voice dark and gravely. “I won’t impose on you, but I’ve never wanted you as much as I want you this minute.”