Present Danger (26 page)

Aunie pushed up from the floor and went into the bathroom to start a bath. In her bedroom, she picked James’s T-shirt off the floor and buried her nose in it, inhaling his scent. She found his shorts, shoes, and socks on the floor under the satin-and-lace spread when she pulled it up to make the bed. Gathering together the soiled items of his apparel, as well as a few discarded items of her own, she tossed them into her clothes hamper. Then she returned to the bathroom, shut off the steaming water, and removed her clothes. As she turned to drape her kimono and slip over a hook on the back of the door, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in its full length mirror and stilled.

“Oh … my … gaaawd.” She stepped closer and used her forearm to wipe the steam from the mirror’s surface. Lord have mercy. No wonder Will had felt free to voice those crude insinuations. She’d thought they’d simply come off the top of his head before she caught sight of herself in the mirror.

Talk about your morning afters. Caption her Tart on the Town. She’d always marked easily, so she didn’t give much consideration to the splotches of red that decorated much of her body. But look at her mouth—
look at those whisker burns! They made her look so corrupt, so … slutty.

Slowly, slowly, her reflection’s lips curled up in a wicked smile, the dark eyes took on a knowing cast.

Because, honestly, hadn’t she had the most wonderful time of her life getting in this condition?

She whipped her kimono back on and went to the kitchen to mash up a couple ice cubes. Returning to the bathroom with them in a plastic baggie, she wrapped them in a washcloth, slid into the steaming bubbles with a sigh, and held the ice pack to her mouth. Ah gawd, that felt good. Her head tilted back against the rounded edge of the tub and her eyes closed.

Would
James be back?

Or was she going to have to take matters into her own hands and go looking for him?

James was
not
accustomed to needing anyone, and he felt torn apart trying to deal with all the new emotions that kept surfacing. From his sixteenth year onward, his life had been spent catering to the needs of others, and aside from a growing desire for more privacy and fewer problems, he’d never questioned the rightness of his particular circumstance—it simply
was.

When he slammed out of Aunie’s apartment that Saturday morning, however, nothing appeared simple. Temper high, heart pounding, stomach churning, he paused indecisively in the hall for about six heartbeats; then he loped down two flights of stairs to his basement workshop. He crossed straight to the heavy-equipment rack, where he picked out a sledgehammer of considerable size. He was too damn
wired to work on his ‘toons. Might as well do something more in keeping with his mood.

It wasn’t until he bent a toe on the leg of his workbench that his attention was drawn to his lack of clothing … never mind proper work clothes. He slapped his jeans pockets, relieved to find his apartment key still intact. Well, thank God for small favors, at least. He sure as hell was in no mood to come under Lola’s eagle eye had he lost the damn thing in Aunie’s bedroom. He could swear, sometimes, that Lola was part witch. One look at him and she’d probably know exactly what was eating him.

And she’d offer a truckload of unwanted advice on what to do about it.

Hauling his sledgehammer with him, he went up to his place. He stood under the pounding spray of the shower for a long time, trying his damnedest to assemble a little rational thought. It proved to be a losing battle. He felt almost as if he had the flu: queasy stomach, aching head, and his mind was racing too rapidly to pin down any one thought long enough to deal with it. Climbing out, he dried off, dressed, and roughly towel-dried his hair. He took a brush to it, showing it no mercy, and rubber-banded it back. Hoping that the distress knotting his stomach was merely hunger, he padded into the kitchen, but nothing in his refrigerator appealed to him. He slammed the door shut. The hell with it. He’d eat later.

Digging through his files for the plans he’d drawn for the third floor, he collapsed cross-legged onto the floor and pored over them. He’d always planned to convert the four apartments up there into one large place for himself. It was a future project, but he decided he might as well start now by knocking out a wall or two. He could use a little catharsis.

He swung his sledgehammer at an interior wall in one of the upstairs apartments until his shoulders and arms burned in protest, but he failed to find a true measure of release for his bottled-up emotions. Usually self-aware and honest to a fault, he had built up a blind spot when it came to Aunie Franklin. A defense mechanism he refused even to acknowledge had guided his responses to her practically from the beginning … for somewhere deep inside of him lurked an instinctive awareness that she had the power to hurt him in ways he’d never been hurt before. So he stood within a cloud of plaster dust, angrily destroying the wall, and lied to himself, just as he’d been lying for months. He told himself that it was just because the sex last night had been so surprisingly good that he was feeling a little lost and edgy today. It had nothing to do with need. Nothing.

He ignored the fact that it wasn’t images of last night’s sex that were twisting his guts into a relentlessly agonized mass. Visual images flashed across his mind, all right, but they were images of her delicate skin marred by his careless handling, images of the expression on her elegantly structured face when he’d gone berserk with his brother. Oh God, that look. He kept seeing it. She’d stared at him as if wondering whether he had some latent penchant for destruction that she’d missed up until that moment, and he couldn’t shake that expression free of his mental viewing screens no matter how hard he tried.

Not for the world would he admit to a feeling of social inferiority when it came to her. Hell, he’d never felt inferior in his life, not to man, woman, or child, and he sure as hell didn’t now.

He was just having one of those days.

* * *

“Woo-mon! I’m so pleasured to see you … I thought you’d never get home!”

Aunie, who was barely through the oval-glassed front door, looked up to see Lola leaning out her open doorway. “Hi,” she said and smiled. Her tall, exotic friend was practically bristling with suppressed excitement. “What’s up? You look like you’ve just won the lottery.”

“Better.” Lola stood back, holding the door. “Please to come in.” As politely as she’d expressed it, it clearly wasn’t a request Lola expected to be ignored. Aunie went in.

“Sit, sit.” Lola waved her to a chair. “Would you like some tea? Coffee? A Coke?”

“What I’d
like,”
Aunie retorted, grabbing Lola’s hand and dragging her onto the couch beside her, “is to know what’s going on. You look as if you’re about to explode.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh gawd, Lola, is it about a baby?”

Lola laughed and hugged herself. “Yes! Our social worker at the agency called!”

Aunie snapped upright. “And …
and?”

“And she say there is a young woo-mon there who pick our family album!”

“Oh, Lola!” Aunie grasped her friend’s hands. “That’s marvelous news! Tell me everything.”

“She is young, only fifteen years old. She is due to deliver on June fifth.”

“That’s only a smidgin over two months to wait.”

“If she is on time. With a first baby, it’s just as likely she’ll be late. But, oh, I am so thrilled. I can bear the wait if I know that at the end of it we’ll be gettin’
our babe. I will fill the moments until then fixin’ a room for it.” Her laughter was deep and rich.

It was also contagious, and Aunie laughed with her. “Oh, Lola, congratulations. Otis must be terribly excited, too.”

Some of the laughter left Lola’s dark eyes. “He doesn’t know yet, woo-mon.”

“He doesn’t! Why?”

Lola bounced up from the couch, then sat down again. “The social worker, she call me ‘bout three hours ago. I call Otis immediately, but he’s ridin’ with the paramedics today. You were gone. James, he’s makin’ a racket up on the third floor like he has much on his mind, and from the sound of things, I think it best not to disturb him. I thought Otis should be here when I phoned his family to give them the news. I have been going coconuts with all this excitement and no one to tell. I’m so glad you finally came home.” She nibbled the skin around her fingernail. “I wish Otis would call me back.”

“I’m sure he will, the moment he gets back to the station. When does his rotation end?”

“Not until tomorrow afternoon. Look,” she leaned over to pick a heavy cookbook off the floor and flipped through the pages. “I thought I’d make this for dinner tomorrow night to celebrate,” she said, pointing to a colored photograph of beef Wellington.

“What a wonderful idea. I’ll bring down my crystal candleholders. They’d look pretty on the table.” Suddenly the couch vibrated and Aunie sat upright in apprehension. “What’s that?” She’d heard conversations among her fellow schoolmates about earthquakes and it flashed through her mind that this might be one. But if it were, the tremor quickly passed.

Lola squeezed her hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s
only James. He must have knocked a main support beam.”

“I thought it was an earthquake,” Aunie admitted. She glanced at the ceiling. “What is he doin’ up there?”

“Workin’ out a load of aggression, I’d say,” Lola commented. She leaned forward and gently twitched aside Aunie’s flipped-up collar, studying the small, blood-red mark that had been mostly concealed beneath it. “You wouldn’t hoppen to know anything ‘bout James’s aggressions now would you, woo-mon?”

Aunie opened her mouth to tell Lola everything but discovered somewhat to her amazement that she could not. Funny, she’d planned to do exactly that earlier. Unsure if Otis were at home, however, and knowing she’d be uncomfortable discussing something so personal in front of James’s best friend, she had taken a cab over to Mary’s instead.

Mary hadn’t been home. Perhaps she should have paid more attention to the relief that had mixed with her disappointment as she’d turned away from her door, but until now it hadn’t fully registered. All she’d known at the time was that she was too restless to return to her apartment. She had wandered the shops downtown for several hours and then killed additional time by walking home instead of calling a taxi. And during that entire time, she’d carried on mental conversations with Lola, in which she received encouragement and solid advice.

Now she discovered that what had passed between James and her last night was too personal, too important to her to discuss … even with Lola, who knew him well. This was one problem she simply had to unravel for herself. She bit her lip and heard herself say, “I’m not precisely certain what James is feelin’
at this moment; but if you’re askin’ if it has anything to do with me, then I’d have to say yes, I think it does. I can’t talk about it, Lola.”

Lola studied her quietly. Finally, she said, “Just tell me this. Did James give you that mark or is he up there tearin’ apart the third floor because someone else did and he saw it?”

“Don’t be silly. This is Jimmy’s handiwork.”

“Don’t be silly, she say. I’ve been watchin’ the mon twitch like a finger on a hair-trigger for some time now, so I don’t think it’s silly. I don’t want to see him hurt, woo-mon, so don’t you go breakin’ his heart.”

Aunie laughed wearily. “Oh, Lola,” she sighed, “you’ve got it all backward. I love that man so much it’s drivin’ me crazy. I couldn’t even
begin
to tell you what the heck it is that he’s feelin’ for me.”

She stood at the base of the stairway to the third floor for several long moments, trying to summon the nerve to climb the stairs and confront James once and for all about their relationship. In the end, however, she chickened out. She kept hoping he would come to her apartment. When seven o’clock came and went, when all had been still on the third floor for over an hour and still he didn’t arrive on her doorstep, she didn’t know what to do. This morning it had seemed so simple, so clear-cut, to say that if he didn’t come to her she would go to him.

Now nothing seemed simple.

Yet…

Was this what she wanted? This uncertainty, this stark insecurity? When his eyes seemed to give her one message and his words gave her another, did she stake her happiness on trying to
guess
what he wanted?
Or did she take the bull by the horns like a big girl and ask him what his intentions were?

Out in the hallway, James turned away from her door for the third time while he, too, argued with himself. He was unwilling to admit that he harbored any sort of need … and yet, he couldn’t seem to stay away from her. He lifted his hand to knock on the door, then let it drop to his side, its mission incomplete. What if she didn’t want to see him?

The thought brought his chin up. If she didn’t want to see him then that was just tough. She still needed his help, so she’d simply have to get used to having him around. He rang the doorbell.

The door was whipped open, and they stood face to face, hearts pounding. For several seconds they simply stared at each other warily.

Then Aunie launched herself at his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up his body, with the help of his hands on her bottom, until her legs were twined around his waist. “Oh gawd, Jimmy,” she mumbled into the warm contour of his neck. “I was so scared you weren’t comin’ back.”

James’s arms tightened around her convulsively. He stepped into the apartment with Aunie still clinging to his torso like a treed cat and bumped the door shut behind him with his hip. He leaned back against it. “You aren’t mad at me then?” he asked in a hoarse voice, rubbing his jaw against her silky hair. God, she smelled so good, felt so good.

She shook her head against his throat. “Why would I be mad?”

Christ, if she didn’t already know, he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her. But she had already raised her head, loosened her grip on his neck, and was leaning back from the hips to look into his face, so he admitted, “For leaving hickeys all over you like some no-class teenager? I thought you’d be furious.”

“Over those?” She laughed in astonishment, dimples flashing. “Sugah, I’ve had bruises the color of pansies and the size of your fist from merely brushin’
up against a hard object. I mark easily. A few little ol’ red splotches are not gonna throw me into a tizzy.”

The knots in his stomach, which had begun to unravel the minute she’d thrown herself into his arms, finally dissolved entirely. He pushed away from the door and maneuvered her around until she was riding his back piggyback style. He jogged into the living room.

“Want to go for a walk around the neighborhood? I can show you some of the lesser known hidey-holes you may have missed.”

“Mm.” She nibbled on his earlobe. “It’s dark out there. I wanna make love.”

“Stop that!” He dropped her like a hot spud on the living room couch and stepped back, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Don’t tease me, Magnolia. You know we can’t do that.”

“I do?” Aunie pushed up on her elbows and knuckled her hair out of her left eye. “We can’t? Why not?”

“Why not! I went overboard last night and this morning you were walkin’ around here like a cowgirl after a week-long roundup.”

Aunie grinned at him and pulled up her sweater, showing him a pale blue satin-and-lace bra. “Yeah,” she murmured, “but I was still walking, wasn’t I?”

“C’mon,” he growled, eyes glued to the pale curves of her breasts. “Don’t do this to me. I’m trying to be responsible here.”

“Well, don’t be. Let me be responsible for myself.”

“I don’t want to hurt you!”

“You won’t. I took a long, hot bath this morning and I feel fine James, honest I do.” She reached for the button on her waistband. “Wanna see my matchin’ panties?”

James grabbed her wrists and slammed them to the
cushions on either side of her head. Kneeling at the side of the couch, he glowered at her. “Yes, damn you, I do. Now, knock it off, will ya? I don’t have a whole lot of control around you, Aunie, and I don’t think I can stand another day like the one I just spent, feeling guilty and sick every time I thought of how carefully you had to walk because of me.”

“Let go of my wrists, Yank.” He did and she sat up, scooting into the corner of the couch. Pointedly, she pulled her sweater back down, picked up a throw pillow, and hugged it to her chest. “I think we’d better get a few things straight,” she said in a quiet voice filled with conviction. “First of all, nobody … not you, not some gynecologist with ten years worth of education …
nobody
knows my body better than I do. I’m tired of having you judge my endurance by my size, not to mention being less than thrilled when you make decisions that directly affect me without bothering to consult me first. I’m a grown woman, James, not a little girl.”

“I don’t think you’re …”

“Don’t you? You’ve made a quite a few insulting assumptions about me since we’ve met. Too fragile to
kiss,
remember that one?”

“Oh.” He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah.”

“And you could have saved yourself the repercussions of your guilty conscience today if you’d bothered to stick around long enough this morning for a little basic communication. You didn’t make love to me in a vacuum, you know! I was right there, participating my little heart out, and I think I find it offensive that you believe I’m so vain a few little love bites are going to throw me into a tailspin.” She eyed him sourly. “Or maybe that’s your own ego talking. Are you only gonna love me as long as I’m perfect?” Damn it,
anyhow. Was she destined to keep picking men who were less interested in the total package than they were in the gift-wrapping?

Who the hell said anything about love? James wondered warily. He opened his mouth to set her straight, to warn her against building fantasies out of thin air, and instead heard himself saying indignantly, “Dammit, Magnolia, it had nothing to do with physical perfection or the lack of it. It was more a matter of … class distinctions.” Somehow, that came out sounding stupid. Damn. It sure as hell hadn’t felt stupid at the time. It had felt painful and confusing.

“What?” Aunie tossed her pillow aside and faced him squarely, seriously provoked. “Are you telling me, Mistah James T. Rydah, that I’m not good enough for you?” But, no, that simply didn’t make sense. Not given the way he kept trying to protect her, whether she needed protection or not.

Glints of moss green glared out at her from between narrowed blond lashes. “Don’t toy with me, Aunie.”

She suddenly remembered the sting of his hand on her rear end and the tone of his voice last night when she’d called him mister. “You think
you’re
not good enough for
me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But his voice was stiff.

“I’m not being ridiculous. Explain what you mean by class distinctions.”

“We come from different worlds, Magnolia. Haven’t you figured that out yet?” He was annoyed at having to point it out to her. “While you were going to country club dances in pretty little party dresses, I was wallowing in the dirt, rubbing shoulders with hookers and drug dealers.”

“So, what’s your point, Jimmy? If you’re saying that people can’t or don’t change, then you’re full of it
up to your handsome green eyeballs.
I’ve
changed … and darn happy it makes me, too. I’m not the same person I used to be; I’m
better
because I’m useful now. And you … My God, look at what you’ve done with your life! You sure as heck aren’t associating with that sort of person now. You’re a famous cartoonist, for heaven’s sake; you own this beautiful building; you possess all sorts of skills that I can’t even begin to comprehend. The only thing the matter with you, James Ryder, is that damn overblown sense of responsibility of yours!”

“A sense of responsibility is a
liability?”

“It is when you use it to make decisions concerning my body without botherin’ to consult me first!”

“Oh, shit, Aunie, are we back to that again?”

“Yes, we’re back to that. How come only
you
get to decide when we make love? I want equal say-so! I didn’t move halfway across the country just to hook up with another man who thinks I’m too damn dumb to know what’s good for me.”

James hauled her to her feet and bent down to stand eyeball to eyeball with her. “Don’t you ever compare me to that asshole!”

The honest outrage in his voice drained Aunie of her anger. She raised a hand and stroked his smooth cheek with conciliatory gentleness. “No,” she agreed. “You are
nothin’
like Wesley. You’re such a fine man, James.” She cupped his jaw in her palm and raised her lips to bestow a sweet kiss on his mouth. Drawing back, she wiped a smudge of lipstick off his bottom lip with her thumb, looked at him with luminous brown eyes, and said sweetly, “But don’t you go expecting that my saying so entitles you to run my life.”

James laughed. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Aunie snorted, skeptical of his easy capitulation. Then with a shrug, she reached down, grasped the hem of her sweater and the polo shirt beneath it, and whipped them over her head. Her hands went to the waistband of her jeans, but she hesitated, looking up at him. One delicate dark eyebrow shot up. “So, how about it?” she inquired: “You wanna see my matchin’ panties now, or what?”

James wrapped his hands around her waist, lifting her; and as usual anytime her legs were in the vicinity of his torso, they spread apart to wind around his hips. Holding onto his shoulders with both hands, she arched back from the waist and practically purred when his mouth pressed kisses from her throat to her shoulders, to her collarbone, down to the little tab that held her bra closed between her breasts. “Yeah,” he finally whispered hoarsely, rubbing his face in the shallow valley of her cleavage, his big hands gripping her round little bottom to bring more of her into range. “Let’s see ‘em.”

It wasn’t until the following Thursday that Aunie realized it had been awhile since she’d received any disturbing phone calls. She checked the time and date sheet that she used to mark down each call and saw that the last one had been logged at 12:37
A.M.
on Saturday morning of the previous week.

She didn’t know what to make of it and was uncertain how to proceed. James, when she showed him the time sheet and explained the current lack of calls, did not share her indecision.

“We just keep on doing exactly what we’ve been doing,” he said peremptorily.

Her newfound, hard-won independence bristled at his tone. Chin elevated, she snapped, “There you go, trying to manage my life for me again! I’ll have you know, James T. Ry—”

The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back with James on his knees straddling her hips, pinning her wrists to the floor. He leaned over her until their faces were only inches apart. “This isn’t up for debate, Magnolia,” he informed her with cool finality.

Cheeks blazing with temper, dark eyes liquid and impossibly large, Aunie glared up at him. “Get off me, you lowdown, no-good, mannerless Yankee.” It was demanded in a tone loaded with well-bred disdain.

He grinned at her. He couldn’t help it; now that he knew she didn’t scorn his background, he loved it when she went all Southern belle on him. “Huhuh. Now quit squirmin’ around and listen up.” He rested more of his weight on her thighs when she ignored his command. “If your caller was from the college, it stands to reason that he was discouraged by the fact that you’re well-protected. Therefore, the escort remains.” He could tell by the way she quit bucking that she was beginning to think instead of react. He eased his weight a bit. “Now, if it’s old Wesley, the calls could have stopped for a number of reasons.”

“Such as?”

He really hated to say this, but it needed to be said. “Such as he’s in transit. And if he’s headed here, the self-defense lessons are more than necessary, Magnolia; they’re mandatory.”

She went perfectly still and the blood drained from her face. Her reaction made James wish he hadn’t
raised the possibility, which in turn made him feel defensive. Why did she have to be so damned stubborn? He hadn’t wanted to confront her with the potentiality, but she always had to push, push, push. Just once, he wished she’d simply accept something he said without arguing about it.

Still …

“That’s worst-case scenario … and it’s only one possibility,” he said gruffly, reaching out to stroke the velvet-smooth skin of her cheek. His finger brushed back and forth over the tiny mole above her upper lip. “If it is Cunningham, he has to be intelligent enough to realize that your lawyer informed you of the break-in at his office. It could be he also recognizes the likelihood of your calls being traced and he’s just lying low for a while.”

“I hate this, Jimmy,” Aunie said wearily.

“I know, baby.” James eased his weight off her and rolled to the side. She remained in the same position, only her head turning to maintain eye contact.

“Maybe,” she whispered in a voice that didn’t hold much hope, “it really was a chance caller who finally got bored.”

“Maybe it was,” James agreed without conviction. Propping his head up on one hand, he reached out his free hand to brush her dark, shiny hair away from her face. “But, Magnolia, honey, we sure as shit aren’t risking your safety on that assumption.”

Wesley pulled his Jaguar up to the curb and parked behind the realtor’s car. For a moment, he sat behind the wheel just staring impassively at the For Sale sign posted to one side of the walkway that led to the Atlanta house he had once shared with Aunie. Rage
built inside him. Drawing a deep breath to help him conceal it, he climbed out of the car and joined the real estate agent.

She preceded him up the walk, flashing him a smile over her shoulder. “As you can see, Mr. West,” she said with professional enthusiasm, addressing him by the fictitious name he’d given her, “this is one of Atlanta’s premier neighborhoods. You won’t find a more desirable address.”

That’s why I bought the damned house in the first place, you stupid bitch.

Wesley tuned out most of her sales pitch as they inspected the house. Fury was escalating inside him as they moved from room to room. “I thought the premises had been vacated,” he snapped in the cool, impatient tone he habitually reserved for employees and other inferiors.

“It has been,” she replied in confusion. Then understanding dawned. “Oh! The furnishings. Now, this is a real bonus! All of it”—she waved her hand—“can be purchased for a song. Isn’t it simply lovely? It was designed by one of
the
most exclusive designers.” She mentioned a name and gave him a coy smile. “Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

Heard of her? He’d
discovered
her. And the acquisition of every
furnishing,
as the realtor’s term was, had been personally supervised by
him.
This house had always been a showplace.

He had filled it with treasures and now Aunie had it all up for sale. At bargain basement prices, as if the acquisitions that were his life’s work were no more consequential than flea market castoffs. It was a slap in the face.

Just one more for which, very soon now, she was going to pay.

* * *

Several times during the past few nights she had told him she loved him.

James couldn’t be positive, of course, that it hadn’t been said merely to gain a little sexual relief. That certainly wasn’t outside the realm of possibility; after all, each time she’d whispered it had been in the heat of the moment. He brooded about it as he paced his apartment.