Present Danger (21 page)

“Presuming it’s him.”

“It is. At least … the probability that it’s him is a lot greater than that of it bein’ the Campus Caller or some other stranger. Well, actually,” she amended truthfully, “I did opt for the stranger theory until I found out that my lawyer’s office had been broken into. But not now.” When he didn’t argue, she continued, “Anyhow, it won’t be in Wesley’s natural territory this time. It’ll be in mine, and I’m gonna work on leanin’ it well.” She waited for him to scoff at her feeble plan.

“Damn straight,” he agreed to her surprise. “And I can help. I was born and bred here.” When she didn’t snap up his generous offer but sat there staring at him with those big, brown, noncommittal eyes, he said in a surly tone, “You say you aren’t stupid, right? If you’re so damn smart, then act like it. Just stow your effin’ independence for a while and accept all the help you can get. The trick is to survive.”

She pursed her lips. “I’ll think about it.”

Christ, she was stubborn. James surged to his feet, grabbed Aunie’s elegant little chin in one hand, and tilted her face up. “You do that,” he instructed crisply. “You think about it long and hard.”

He released her and stalked out of the room. Aunie could hear him gathering his tools together and then, a moment later, the click of the front door shutting softly behind him.

Once she was sure he was gone, she immediately got up to inspect her new peephole.

She had the opportunity to try it out first thing the following morning. The doorbell rang as she was tossing texts and notebooks into her book bag. Stopping only long enough to slip on a pair of shoes, she crossed to the door and peered through the peephole. She was greeted by the sight of a male chest and she quickly adjusted the swivel upward. James’s face was slightly distorted but still readily recognizable.

She opened the door. “Now what do you want?” she demanded ungraciously. “I’m on my way out.”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” he replied equably. “I wanted to catch you before you left. I need your key.”

“Why?”

“I’m gonna run some wires in here for an alarm.”

She immediately forgot her resentment over the way he was assuming command of her life. “Really? How will it work?”

“You got time for an explanation?” he inquired dryly.

“Oh!” She looked down at her watch. “No. Rats, I don’t.” She handed him her key. “How am I supposed to get back in?”

“This is not a speedy procedure, Magnolia,” he responded dryly. “It’s gonna take me awhile. Buzz up here when you get home and I’ll release the front door lock for you. If I’m gone, buzz Lola and get her spare key. I would have gotten it myself, but she and Otis aren’t home right now. Besides, I knew you’d have a tizzy if I let myself in without asking.”

“I think you’ve got that backwards, James.
I’m
not the one who got all bent out of shape the last time someone entered an apartment without permission.” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed her cashmere jacket, picked up her book bag, and sailed out the door.

James watched her depart, then shook his head and closed the door behind her with a low, sardonic laugh. Trust her to remind him of that.

The moment Lola had informed him about this newest travail in Aunie’s life—the phone calls and Aunie’s belief that her ex-husband was responsible for them—he’d been resigned to taking a hand in its resolution. He might have fought against his involvement in her problems from the first day they’d met, but somewhere in the back of his mind he’d always known that, one way or another, he was going to be roped into them.

She needed taking care of, and knowing that, he was incapable of leaving her twisting in the wind. It wasn’t, as she had suggested yesterday, because he considered her too brainless to fend for herself. She was about as bright as they came. What she wasn’t,
however, was notably streetwise; and if she weighed in at an ounce over a hundred pounds, he would eat his shorts. He’d seen how well she’d fared the last time she had come up against Wesley in a physical confrontation. He was determined to do everything in his power to improve her odds should the man ever turn up seeking a second round.

Whether little ol’ Magnolia Blossom liked it or not.

Hell, he was resigned to doing what needed to be done, and once having accepted the necessity of taking her in hand, he found it slightly irritating that she wasn’t equally as accepting. Wasn’t he backing down on every single vow he’d ever made—loudly and publicly—to remain uninvolved? Yes, he was, dammit, and the least she could do in return was not fight him every damned step of the way. It was her ass he was attempting to save here.

James spread out his plans on her dining room table. He’d been up until nearly three
A.M.
the night before working on them, but he counted the little bit of lost sleep worthwhile, for he was pretty pleased with the final result. Old Wesley was in for a surprise if he arrived here expecting to find Aunie all alone and helpless.

His main dilemma had been whether to put sirens in each hallway that were loud enough to turn Wesley on his ear once the switch was flipped or to go for the silent alarm method. He’d talked it over with Otis and ultimately they had opted for a signal that would sound in both their apartments without alerting Wesley. They had agreed that the man was unstable enough already. No telling how he’d respond to an obvious alarm, and they sure as hell didn’t want to risk precipitating an action in which Aunie would be the ultimate loser.

The corner of his drawing began to curl inward and James picked up Aunie’s little laptop computer and used the edge of it to anchor it. After studying the plan, he let himself out of her apartment and went to gather the tools be would need from his basement workshop. Once he had everything assembled, he made a pot of coffee and set to work.

Otis arrived at noon. “Here,” he said, tossing a long white bag at James, “I brought you a sub.” He crossed over to the table where the drawings were laid out. Planting his large fists on the tabletop, he leaned over to study them.

James joined him, dropping into a chair and pulling his sandwich out of the bag. The smell of vinegar wafted up as he unrolled the inner wrappings.

“This looks like a slick little arrangement, Jimmy,” Otis commented, glancing up at him. Then he turned his attention back to the set of plans. “I don’t see a place for the switches, though. Do you have ‘em marked?”

James leaned over and tapped a spot on the blueprint with one long finger. “Here, on the underside of the lip of her nightstand,” he said. “I haven’t marked the living room switch yet, because I’m still undecided. If he should somehow manage to get in here undetected, next to the door’s not gonna do her any good. He’s not apt to let her go in that direction. Kitchen’s a maybe. She’s got a nice set of knives in there that she could use to hold him off, but I don’t know … once in there, she’s also trapped—and given her weight and size, I’m afraid most weapons could be turned against her. I like the middle of the living room best … it gives her more options and more room to maneuver. But how do
we run the wires along the hardwood floors? They’re either noticeable or they’re a hazard.”

“How about drilling a hole and snaking it through?”

James shook his head. “Works going down. That’s what I’m doing in the bedroom. But coming up is another matter … we need a hole at least large enough to accommodate my hand. I haven’t checked yet to see if we can pry up a board. The subflooring’s not a problem. We can always knock a hole in that.” He balled up the waxed paper that had held his sandwich and pushed back from the table. “Thanks for the lunch. Let’s get to work.”

When James buzzed Aunie in later that afternoon, she raced up the stairs two at a time, anxious to see what progress he had made on the alarm system. She was smiling with anticipation as she barrelled through the front door, but she came to a dismayed halt just inside the entrance to the living room. “Oh, m’gawd! What have you done to my walls?”

“It was necessary, “ James informed her tersely. Raising his voice, he called, “Okay, Otis! Snake ‘er through.” He shined a flashlight into the hole he’d knocked in the wall, then spared a glance at Aunie’s stricken face. “I’ll fix it, Aunie. It’ll look good as new when I’m done; I promise.”

Dazed, Aunie sank down on the couch cushions. She hadn’t really considered how a person would go about installing an alarm. Staring at the black T-shirt stretched tautly across James’s shoulders and back as he hunched muttering to himself over the hole in her wall, she realized she had naively assumed it was merely a matter of hooking one up. Not one of her
brighter assumptions, obviously. The thing had to have a source of electricity and electricity meant wires, and James had
told
her he was going to run some wires, but… well, she simply hadn’t given the matter enough thought.

Lola breezed in moments later. She took one look at Aunie’s face and whipped across the room in a swirl of cotton skirts. Sitting down next to her on the couch, she reached over to pat her hand. “The mon didn’t warn you about the mess, woo-mon?”

“No. I guess I should have realized …”

“You’re not an electrician, girl, no reason you should. Come.” She stood and pulled Aunie up with her. “You come wid me. Load your purse wid money … we go do some shoppin’. Make you forget the mons turnin’ this place into a madhouse.”

“Oh, Lola, that sounds like an excellent idea.” Aunie picked up the book bag she’d dropped in her surprise and carried it to the dining room. She retrieved her purse from the bedroom—where she found Otis down on all fours next to the bed, feeding wire down a small hole in the carpet—then she returned to Lola. “I’m ready.”

The phone rang and everyone stilled.

Aunie picked it up, only to hear the party at the other end disconnect. Glancing at her watch, she noted the time on the pad placed next to the phone for that purpose. She looked up to find James regarding her tensely over his shoulder.

“That him?”

“Yes. At least … yes.” She supposed it remained to be seen if it were Wesley, but it was definitely her caller.

“Shit,” he whispered and turned back to his work.

Aunie and Lola spent the rest of the afternoon
shopping. They spent more than an hour in the infant department at one store, exclaiming over tiny little shoes and stretchies, narrowing down future choices for decorating a nursery.

Aunie insisted on cooking a special dinner for everyone as a partial payment for all the hard work they were doing on her behalf, and on the way home they stopped at a grocery store for the ingredients. She went to work in the kitchen as soon as they returned.

Dinner was finished, the alarm installed, and the walls replastered by eight o’clock. James watched Aunie gaze around her in dismay as they gave Lola and Otis enough time to reach James’s and the Jacksons’ apartments before testing the new system. “The plaster has to set,” he informed her gently. “I’ll touch up the paint tomorrow afternoon.”

She turned to him, reaching out to touch his arm. “Thank you, James,” she said softly. “For everything. You must think I’m spoiled rotten, but I really do appreciate—”

The phone rang.

When she answered it, it was Lola. “Flip the switch, woo-mon.”

Aunie glanced at James and he nodded. She flipped the switch that he had installed on the underside of the end table next to her couch.

Over the phone, she could hear a faint beeping and she laughed, turning to James. “It works!” Spontaneously, she threw her free arm around his narrow waist and hugged him tightly. “You are so clever!” Releasing him, she spoke excitedly into the phone.

Later that evening, Aunie thought a great deal about her relationship with the three people who had just left. It was her belief, generated by hard
experience, that adversity, more than any other factor, most accurately measured the depth of a friendship. When times were tough, one established rather quickly who one’s real friends were. That had been emphatically driven home when she had divorced Wesley and discovered herself to be quite without any, her many acquaintances nowhere to be found. For the first time, she’d been made to realize that, in spite of having been surrounded by people all her life, she’d never had a genuine friendship with anyone.

So when she’d started taking courses at the college in Atlanta, she’d been determined to change all that. She had forged a few tentative new relationships despite the hindrance of her shyness. She liked to believe they would have eventually progressed had Wesley’s actions not forced her to flee. She already knew, however, that she hadn’t been accepted as readily or as immediately by anyone back home as she had been by Lola and Otis Jackson. From the very first day when she had arrived bearing the fresh marks of Wesley’s beating, they had made her feel welcome. Without question or reservation … never once had she felt that their acceptance was conditional on the way she looked or the amount of money she possessed.

And then there was James, who, despite his many protests to the contrary, had nevertheless been there to offer his help every single time she was in need of it. She loved all three of them.

She was
in
love with
him.

As she sat curled up in the corner of her couch, staring at the raw patches of plaster that changed the appearance of her living room from upscale yuppie to tenement tacky, she didn’t know whether to laugh
hysterically or to cry. God. She’d never dreamed she’d fall in love with a man whose hair was longer than her own. She’d never thought she’d fall in love with a man who swore at her, ordered her around, and assumed command of her life when it suited him, without the least regard to her own wishes or protests.

And she certainly never dreamed she would fall in love with a man who repeatedly told her she wasn’t his type and refused the use of her body before she’d even thought to offer it.

But she had. Lord have mercy … she had.

She’d realized it this afternoon as she’d watched him working so competently on the installation of her alarm, but she had a feeling it had been brewing inside her, unacknowledged, for quite some time now. She should have considered the possibility the very first time she had wondered what it would be like to make love with him.

For, if the truth were known, she had a sneaking suspicion she was one of those depressing women who had to be
in
love in order to make love. It would explain why, in all those years when the subject of sex had filled her mind with erotic fantasies, she had always shied away from any actual opportunities to experience it for herself. It wasn’t until she’d fallen in love with Wesley that she’d truly felt prepared to seek carnal knowledge … and then she’d been raring to go.

For all the good it had done her.

But that was really beside the point. The question was: What was she going to do now?

How did she go about reconciling her need for independence with James’s propensity for barging in and taking over? She might love him to pieces, but never again would she relinquish her own plans and
dreams in order to fall docilely into line with some masculine vision of what was supposed to be.

But to be utterly fair, there
was
one fact she had to acknowledge. Both of the ideas that James had brought up thus far were indisputably viable. They were inventive, designed for her protection … and, dammit, she hadn’t thought of them on her own. Having admitted as much, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to take it one step further. In all likelihood, he’d probably known what he was talking about as well when he’d spoken of showing her ways to mitigate her helplessness. So, perhaps …