Lovers and Takers (22 page)

Because either way, she was getting back in.

Kara Wingate parked her Mercedes in front of the law center and stepped out hurriedly, her bag and her pumps matching to perfection.
 
She glanced over at Roni’s old Ford Taurus parked further up against the curb and shook her head.
 
A lawyer driving that old thing
, she thought to herself, and then headed inside the aging building.

And not just any lawyer driving it, she also thought as she entered the building, waved at the receptionist, and made her way up the side stairs to the second floor.
 
But Roni was a lawyer dating a very wealthy man.
 
What man like that would allow his woman to drive around in a Ford Taurus while he drove around in a hundred thousand dollar Audi?
 
Kara knew what kind.
 
The kind who probably asked Roni if she needed anything and Roni, being Roni, probably told the man no.
 
Kara shook her head again as she knocked one time, and then entered Roni’s office.

Roni was seated behind her desk on the telephone.
 
“I agree with you,” she said into the phone.
 
When she saw Kara come in, she waved her over.
 
“Yes, you’re absolutely right, Dan.
 
But I told you going in that our success cannot be quantified as easily as that.
  
The very nature of our work means that we will have far more misses than hits.
 
That’s always the case when you do what we do.
 
Check out the stats for the Innocence Project.
 
Nobody’s batting a hundred in this line of work.”

Kara sat down in front of Roni’s desk and rested her Michael Kors handbag in the chair beside her.
 
Now this was the Roni she knew: begging for sponsors to “stick with them.”
 
It was sickening to Kara.

Roni continued talking, as she thanked Dan for at least being there for them the year they did sponsor the work of the law center, and then hung up the phone.
 
When she saw Kara shaking her head, she frowned.
 
“What?” she asked her younger cousin.

“You and
your
begging, that’s what!
 
If I were you, I’d tell those sponsors what they could do with their little money, stop trying to help these criminals that are all guilty anyway, and get me some paying clients.”

“I do have paying clients,” Roni reminded her cousin.

“Yeah, but then you swamp all the money you make right back into this money pit.
 
It makes no sense, Roni.”

“Yeah, well, the idea of letting an innocent person rot in prison simply because they were poor and couldn’t get adequate counsel, when you could have done something to help them, is what makes no sense to me.”

Kara knew that she was fighting a losing battle when it came to Roni and this so-called “work” of hers.
 
“Then why don’t you at least ask your boyfriend to sponsor this place?
 
Then you wouldn’t need anybody else.”

“Who says I have a boyfriend, Miss Noisy?”

“Oh, come on, Veronica!
 
What man is gonna fly a woman half way across the world if he didn’t love her?
 
And call her every single day and night while he’s been away?”

“None of your business,” Roni sang out.

Kara exhaled.
 
“It doesn’t matter, anyway.
 
I’m just mad at Aubrey.”

Kara looked at her.
 
“And what has Aubrey done to make you so angry with him?”

“It’s the way he treats me.
 
I
don’t hardly
ever get to see him, and he just . . . He gets on my nerves, okay?
 
Like today.
 
You know what he said to me?
 
He said he wants to make sure that we understand each other.
 
He said that I’m his friend and that’s all I’ll ever be to him.”

Roni’s heart dropped.
 
“Are you for real?
 
Dang, Kay-Kay.
 
When did all of this happen?”

“All of what?”

“When did you guys go from boyfriend and girlfriend to just friends?”

“He tried to act like it’s always been that way, but that not even true.
 
He knows how I feel about him.”

Roni hesitated.
 
She knew her reckless cousin too well.
 
“But how does he feel about you?
 
Did he ever say you were his girlfriend, Kara?”

Kara hesitated.

Roni couldn’t believe it.
 
“Kara, please don’t tell me that man has never claimed to be your boyfriend.”

“Of course he’s my boyfriend,” Kara said.
 
“He knows how I feel about him.”

“And he feels the same way about you?”

“Yes!” she said with her own brand of histrionics.
 
Then she added: “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“Oh, Kay-Kay!”

“Don’t ‘oh, Kay-Kay’ me!
 
I love Aubrey, and I’m gonna marry Aubrey someday.
 
He didn’t discourage my feelings.”

“And he didn’t encourage them, either, though, did he?”

Kara wouldn’t respond.
 
“We’re getting
married,
I don’t care what y’all say.
 
I love him.”

“But,” Roni asked gingerly, knowing how defensive her cousin could get.
 
“Is this love of yours reciprocated?”
 
She asked this and then stared her big eyes at Kara.
 
She could see that depressed look appear in Kara’s eyes.

“It will be,” Kara said, “if his dad would just go on and give our relationship the green light.”

“His dad?”

“Yes, his dad, I’m not taking it back!
 
His dad needs to get out of the way and let Aubrey love whomever he chooses to love.”

Roni was aghast.
 
“Oh, Kay-Kay, you can’t possibly believe that!
 
Aubrey’s a grown man, and a very responsible grown man.
 
He doesn’t need his father’s approval to fall in love with a woman.
 
The reason he’s not in love with you is because he’s not in love with you.
 
It has nothing to do with Jake.”

Kara shook her head firmly. “Yeah, that’s what you think.
 
But I know Aubrey, all right?
 
You don’t know shit about him.
 
I know how his father’s approval means everything to him.”

Roni exhaled.
 
Enough was enough.
 
Kara had just told her, incredibly, that Aubrey had never declared her his woman the way she was running around declaring him her man.
 
She was playing with fire and somebody had to call her on it.
  

“Move on with your life, Kay-Kay,” she told her cousin pointblank.
 
“You just told me that Aubrey’s made clear to you from day one that you guys would never be anything more than friends, and you went along with that.
 
You may be a friend with benefits, but you’re still just his friend.”

“I never said that!” Kara said.

Now Roni was really confused.
 
“Did you or did you not just tell me that Aubrey said you guys will never be anything but friends?”

“Yeah, I said that.
 
But I don’t know where you’re getting that benefits part from.”

Roni frowned.
 
“Kara, that’s what they call it when you have sex with a man without him committing to the relationship.”

“And who says we ever had sex?”

Roni was floored.
 
She stared at her cousin. Normally she wouldn’t get all up in another woman’s business like this, but if what Kara just told her was true, then Kara’s love for Aubrey would be even scarier.
 
“Are you telling me,” she asked her, “that you and Aubrey have never had sex before?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you.
 
He says he’s saving himself for his wife.
 
Which is going to be me, anyway.
 
But he won’t do anything with anybody until he gets married.
 
It’s crazy, I know.
 
Can you imagine a man refusing to have sex with a woman that looks like me?”

It’s not crazy at all to Roni.
 
The fact that Aubrey hadn’t been stringing her along by having sex with her was a point for him, not against him, in Roni’s eyes.
 
But Roni’s eyes and Kara’s eyes were as different as open and close, black and white, day and night.
 

“But that only proves my point, Kay-Kay,” Roni decided to say.
 
“Everything Aubrey has said and done points to the fact that he’s his own man and is doing things his own way.
 
He told you that you guys would never be anything more than friends.
 
He told you that from the moment you guys met probably.
 
You can’t now say he’ll fall in love with you if only his father would approve, because he’s already told you how that wasn’t going to happen.
 
You have got to move on, Kara.
 
For your own sake, move the hell on!”

Kara just sat there.
 
Roni could tell she wanted to lash out.
 

“I’m not trying to be harsh,” Roni continued, “and I know how badly you want to be with Aubrey.
 
But you’re dreaming if you think Aubrey Varnadore wants you.”

This last sentence did it for Kara.
 
She looked at her cousin with pure hatred in her eyes.
 
“Oh, so you don’t think I’m good enough for him, either?
 
Is that what you’re telling me?
 
You think that because I only went to trade school and don’t have a law degree that I can’t get me a good man.
 
I have to settle for the users and abusers!”

“Nobody’s saying that, Kara, and you know it.”

“Well I’m not settling!” Kara said angrily, rising to her feet.
 
“I don’t care what this world says.
 
I don’t care if you don’t speak up for me when you’re giving it away to Jake Varnadore.”

“Kara!” Roni said, surprised that she would go there.

“It’s all about you, isn’t it, Roni?
 
It’s always all about you.
 
Forget Kay-Kay.
 
She
don’t
matter.
 
Who gives a shit about her?
 
She can get some old drunk somewhere and that’ll be good enough for some nobody like her!”

“Kara, stop it.”

“She’s just a loser, anyway.
 
Who gives a fuck about her?”

Roni just stared at her teary-eyed cousin.

“Well I’m not a loser,” Kara said.

“Nobody said you were,” Roni said.

“And when I walk down that isle as Mrs. Aubrey Varnadore, everybody who ever doubted me, especially you, Roni, is going to sit up and take notice.
 
Y’all are going to be stunned that the loser made it.
 
And you know what I’m going to do when y’all come running to me wanting to be my friend then?
 
I’m going to tell all of y’all, and especially you, Roni, to kiss my losing ass!”
 

Kara said this and then left Roni’s office, slamming the door as she did.

Roni placed her elbows on her desk and shook her head.
 
She was accustomed to Kara’s irrational beliefs and illogical conclusions.
 
But geez.
 
This was getting to be weird.
 
Even for Kara.

The limousine entered the electronic gates of Jake’s estate and drove along the winding driveway to the front entrance.
 
Jake stepped out looking and feeling like a million bucks although he’d just traveled nearly six thousand miles to make it home.
 
But he’d won.
 
That long-ass trip was worth every agonizing day of his stay there.
 
The deal was hard fought and many compromises had to be ceded, but it finally happened.
 
Varnadore-Berkshire was now a partnership that Craig Halprin and his takeover, even if successful, would not be able to touch.
 
Although, he also knew, he was going to do everything in his power to stop Craig’s hostile takeover attempt.
 
But the potential for catastrophic damage should it happen was gone.

But that was a fight, he thought, for another day.
 
He felt too good to fight.
 
He had showered on his private plane, and was freshly scrubbed and ready to get on with it.
 
He was sporting one of his best Armani sports jackets, a form-fitting beauty in an alkaline-blue.
  
He looked good and felt good.
 

His plan was to come home, see his children-whom he knew would be there, go by the office, and then spend the rest of the evening with Roni.
 
And just the thought of being with Roni again, and being able to touch her hand and her hair and her wondrously expressive face again, had him excited.