Passion's Price (14 page)

When at long last the public-address system announced the plane’s arrival, he headed down to the
baggage carousel where they had agreed to meet. After about fifteen minutes, he saw her. She’d probably think him crazy, but he ran to her. He couldn’t help it.

“Sweetheart, I’ve been so anxious. I didn’t know what to think,” he said as she dropped her bag and went into his open arms. Suddenly, he could feel himself tremble as tremors shot through him.

“What is it, darling? What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t know what happened to your flight. There was no announcement, no notice of delays. Nothing. I had to call Cody to get information. I was out of my mind.” He realized that he was holding her too tight and loosened his hold on her, but only a little. Her hand caressed his face, and then she reached up and kissed him. He didn’t dare trust himself to kiss her in that public place.

“We sat in the plane for almost two hours, waiting for the weather to clear. The pilot wouldn’t let us use cell phones because of the thunderstorms. But I knew that when I got here, you’d be standing where you said you’d be.”

He kissed her then with all the love he had in his heart for her. She parted her lips, took him in and loved him as if there were no tomorrow. He felt a stirring in his loins and remembered where he was. “I’d better get your bag.”

After he retrieved her bag, they walked out to the curb.

“I’ll get the car. You stay here with your bag. Okay?”

“I want to go with you. I don’t mind walking. In fact, after sitting for nearly five hours, I welcome the opportunity to walk.”

He looked down at her and could feel a grin crawling over his face. “You are one contentious woman, but, Lord, I love you.”

Her arms went around him. “You’re bossy, and I don’t love that, but I love you.”

“All right. Come on.” He grabbed the handle of the luggage, took her hand and walked with her to the car.

“We are not going to see Boyd tonight.”

“But, Mike, if we stop there on the way to your place, the rest of the weekend is ours.”

He thought about that for a few minutes. “You’re right. Somehow, we’ve become important to Boyd, and he’d be hurt if you came here and didn’t drop in to see him, if only for a couple of minutes.”

Twenty minutes later, they rang Boyd’s doorbell. “Darlene, how nice,” Boyd said when he opened the door. “You said you’d be here this weekend, and I was hoping you’d come by for a few minutes.” He hugged her. “Thanks, Mike, for bringing her to see me. I know you don’t have much time together, and I’m grateful for the few minutes you spend with me. Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

“We’ll take time,” Mike said. “Darlene’s plane was two hours late, and we haven’t been home yet.”

“And if you went there first, I wouldn’t see you,”
Boyd said dryly. “But that’s the way it should be. I’ll make the coffee according to Mike’s recipe.”

While they drank the coffee, it occurred to Mike that he had come to regard Boyd as a father figure and a dear friend. “I think it’s time you had a meal at my place,” he said to Boyd. “What do you say we do that after Darlene goes back? I’m sharing her with you now, but this is it on this trip.”

Boyd’s laughter floated through the house. “It may surprise you, Mike, but I have not always been old. I know precisely how a young man thinks and what he feels when he’s with that special woman.”

Darlene told them about the case she’d won. “I’m very excited. Already, my partners are treating me with greater respect.”

“Congratulations,” Boyd said. “Take it all in your stride. You may discover that while winning that case was important to you, there will soon be far more important things to consider.”

It occurred to Darlene that Boyd and Maggie were the only people she allowed to talk to her as her parents might have done. She made a mental note of his words and shoved them aside to be dealt with later.

“I’ll call you before I leave,” she said to Boyd, standing to let both men know that she was ready to go. She hugged Boyd, and they were soon headed for Mike’s apartment.

“Who takes care of this place?” she asked as they entered the exquisitely kept apartment.

“I have a weekly cleaning service and laundry woman. If she could cook, I’d have her full-time. But she can’t, and I don’t want to trade her for someone who I might not care for.”

“She’s an excellent housekeeper. Send her to cooking classes.”

“I could, but she doesn’t really want to cook.” He put Darlene’s bag in her room. “Do you want to change or freshen up? Tell me if you’re tired. I’ve made some plans for us, but if you’re tired, I’ll cancel them. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy, Mike. It’s when I’m away from you that life gets murky. See you in about half an hour.”

She brushed her teeth, combed her hair and slipped on some flat shoes, but she didn’t know what Mike planned, and she wasn’t going to change her clothes every two hours. When she flipped on the radio, a rueful smile floated over her face. The station was the same as the one she’d tuned in the previous weekend. What would she have thought if someone had changed it? She put her lingerie in a drawer and sat on the edge of the bed, intending to examine what she suspected was a run in her stockings. But she succumbed to a wave of tiredness and fell back across the bed. A pounding on the door awakened her.

“Yeah?” She rolled over and sat up. “Come in.”

“You okay? I didn’t know you planned to go to sleep,” Mike said.

“Neither did I,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “What time is it?”

“Seven. I had thought we’d check out Beale Street, get a good meal at Molly’s, and dance someplace, if that suits us. As we walk along the street, we can hear the music, go in and dance or just listen, whichever suits you. Do you feel like doing that?”

“I’d love it. I’m as surprised as you are to find myself waking up. I sat down here, realized how tired I was and woke up when you knocked.”

With a hand on each of her knees, he leaned forward and loved her mouth. “I was getting anxious. I knocked louder and louder before I could get a rise out of you.” “Well, I’m not sleepy now, so let me get some clothes on. Your plans seem to suggest something dressy leaning toward casual.”

“Right on.”

“I’ll be ready in half an hour or less.” His lips moved over her mouth, and when his eyes blazed with desire, she ducked her dead.

“Honey, if we start that, we won’t even get dinner.”

“You don’t know how right you are,” he said and hurried out without a backward glance.

Later, as they strolled along crowded Beale street in the direction of Molly’s, they met not one but three clowns, each of whom invited them to patronize certain places. One described the food in the place he represented as “bone-suckin’, soul-searin’ good.”

“We ought to go there sometime just to see what that’s like,” Mike said.

“I’ll bet it isn’t any better than Porky’s,” she replied.
“That barbecued shredded pork we had there was so good.”

“We can go there tomorrow for lunch, if you like.”

She squeezed his fingers. “You’ve already planned something, and I’d like us to stick with that.”

“All right.” His smile told her that the comment pleased him.

“Pork rules down here,” a waiter at Molly’s, who said he was born in Seattle, told them. “If you don’t like pork in Memphis, don’t order it anyplace else.”

“When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” Darlene said as she ordered roast loin of pork, grilled mushrooms, string beans and fried okra.

“I’ll have the same. Bring us a bottle of white Burgundy, please.”

He reached across the table and grasped her hand. “You never wear any kind of jewelry. You have beautiful hands. Don’t you like rings?”

She wasn’t sure what to make of that question, so she responded truthfully. “I haven’t seen a ring that I wanted badly enough to buy. The ones I like carry a heavy price tag. Anyway, I’m more likely to throw away money on shoes than on jewelry.”

He stroked her fingers in an absentminded way. “Hands like yours should be adorned.”

The waiter brought their food, and she was thankful, for she didn’t want to pursue that topic. Should she tell him that she was waiting for him to put a ring on her finger? No way!

“Thanks for choosing this place,” she said as they
rose to leave. “The food was delicious, and I enjoyed the waiters’ efforts to make us feel as if we were at home.”

“That’s some good jazz,” Mike said as they walked along Beale Street after dinner. “Want to go in?” She nodded. “I hope they’re dancing.”

They got a table, ordered lemonade and, after watching the dancers for a few minutes, Mike rose and held out his arms to her. “Dance with me, sweetheart, and don’t lay it on thick.”

“With that saxophonist wailing like Lester Young, honey, don’t expect me to be content with the two-step.”

“And don’t expect to move into me without some consequences.”

She brought his head down, tiptoed and kissed his mouth. “Consequences? Won’t bother me none.”

He missed a step. “Warn me when you plan to do something like that.”

“Then it wouldn’t be half as much fun. I’ve been here for, let’s see, six hours, and you have only kissed me once.”

“Twice. I kissed you at the airport and in your room.”

“In my room. You call that a kiss? Honey, that’s not the way
you
kiss.”

He stopped dancing. “Are you serious, teasing or what?”

He’d asked, so she’d tell him. “Both. This is new
territory for me, Mike, and I’m not handling it too well.”

He walked back to the table holding her hand and sat down. “Can you make that crystal clear for me, please?”

Would she be foolish to tell him exactly how she felt at night when she was all alone? No, he didn’t need that ammunition. She said, “I need you sometime.”

“Look at me, Darlene. Did I get that right? You’re telling me—”

“I’m not going to repeat it, so don’t grill me,” she said, still refusing to look at him.

“Why do you feel ashamed? I’m proud that you need me. I need you so badly that there are times when I can hardly bear it.”

She looked at him then. “It sounds terrible, but I’m glad.”

He stood, went around to her chair, leaned down and whispered, “Let’s go home.” His lips brushed her cheek, and she gazed up into the fiery passion exploding in his eyes.

“Yes. Let’s go home.”

Mike’s cell phone rang, but he didn’t want to answer it. Then he saw Boyd’s phone number and figured that the man had a good reason for calling him. “What’s up, friend?”

“I missed my opportunity earlier. Remember that I told you and Darlene last weekend that I wanted to talk with the two of you? I still do.”

“We’re just leaving Beale Street for home, and I…” He noticed that Darlene’s attention was elsewhere. “I don’t want to interrupt things just now.”

“I see. Can we have breakfast here at about eight-thirty tomorrow morning? Then the day will be yours. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

Mike walked over to Darlene. “Boyd wants us to have breakfast with him tomorrow morning at eight-thirty.”

“Fine with me. We promised to spend some more time with him, and I forgot about that. Yes, of course.”

“We’ll be there, but I’ll make the coffee.”

“The coffee I made this afternoon was good, wasn’t it?”

“It was delicious, but I don’t expect you to make that mistake on consecutive days. See you in the morning.”

He knew that Boyd wanted Darlene for him, but he couldn’t imagine how the man wanted to communicate it. He lifted his right shoulder in a quick shrug, brushing off the thought. He paid the bill, put an arm around her waist and left. Darlene’s quiet and uncommunicative mood as he drove them home didn’t bother him. Their relationship needed resolution. She had to be aware of that, and it was something that he planned to bring to a head before she left Memphis.

“I’ll see you inside the apartment,” he said to Darlene, “and then I’ll park for the night.”

“You’ll have to learn, Mike, that although I appreciate your graciousness, I don’t want you to get wet while I’m
dry or to walk a long distance when you’re as tired as I am. Nor do I want to sit in comfort while you park downstairs when I could have the pleasure of being with you.”

“All right, but one of these days you’re going to lose an argument with me, and it will probably happen over something you least want to lose. I don’t give in easily, so don’t let yourself believe I do. Another thing. I enjoy seeing to your comfort. It’s important to me.”

“Okay. I stand corrected. Let’s put the car in the garage. You got any good wine?”

“I think I have the same kind that we drank at dinner.”

“I’d like some. It’s time to unwind,” she said, her eyes sparkling with the mischievousness that he loved about her.
Just you wait, lady, just you wait.

His laughter warmed her. It was so musical, like the sounds of an expert harpist’s fingers flying over a great pedal harp. After parking the car, they walked hand in hand into his apartment, and it surprised her that he went directly to the kitchen.

“I’ve finished driving for today. Would you like white wine or something stronger?”

She lowered her lashes, laid her head to the side and said, “Stronger. But not from a bottle.”

He nearly dropped the bottle opener. “What did you say?” She let a long, slow shrug do her talking. “Woman, if I’m not careful, you’ll drive me crazy.” He
threw the bottle opener on the counter, picked her up and carried her to his bed.

“How do you know I don’t want to get prettied up?” “Not now. I don’t want to go totally mad. Ah, sweet heart, I love you so.”

She parted her lips and took him in. He locked her body to his, twirled his tongue into every crevice of her mouth, exploring every centimeter until, frantic for what she wanted, she captured his tongue and sucked it in, savoring the taste. And when she felt him bulge against her, she grabbed his buttocks and strained herself to him. When he gasped, she tried to climb his body, but he lifted her, and she wrapped her long legs around his hips and pressed herself to his genitals.

All those nights when she’d wanted to feel him inside of her… “Kiss me,” she moaned.