A Special Relationship (15 page)

 
Carrie smiled greatly and was so overwhelmed by Millie’s kindness, the only person to really show her any kind of compassion since she stepped foot on Florida soil, that she threw her arms around her in a big, bear hug. Millie laughed.
 
“I told you now.
 
I can’t promise you
nothing
.”

 
“Oh, Millie, you don’t have to.
 
Just the fact that you would even try is what counts in my book.
 
Besides, we’re saved, sanctified believers.
 
God is on our side.
 
That job is mine, you hear me?
 
That job is mine!”

***

Two weeks later and Jetson’s was so crowded that Carrie didn’t have a chance to take a break the entire time she’d been on duty.
 
And that was fine by her.
 
It was Thursday night, she had received her very first paycheck as a Jetson employee earlier in the day, and she could hardly contain her relief.
 
Her plan was a simple one.
 
She’d finally hush Mona’s mouth by paying her some rent, and then she’d begin the process of finding her own place to stay.
 
Maybe a nice apartment not far from her job.
 
Then she’d put in an application at Edward Waters, the historically black college on the north side of town, get her degree, and then get on with the life that was so unexpectedly interrupted six years ago when the high of her high school graduation turned into the low of her mother’s illness.
 

 
This job, just like that, had changed everything for Carrie.
 
That was why she didn’t bristle when customers yelled at her because they didn’t like the food, or didn’t like the atmosphere, or didn’t like each other.
 
That was why she didn’t complain when food was spilled, drinks dropped, or other disasters forced her to clean more tables than she waited, making her more of a busboy than a waitress.
 
She wasn’t riled at all, in fact, because she was determined to be the best worker in the building, somebody who knew how to appreciate an opportunity.
 

 
And she was well on her way until, later that same night, when she looked up from a table she had been clearing and saw what she just knew was a mirage.
 
So she looked again.
 
And it was him.
 
Robert Kincaid.
 
The only man to ever make her heart pound with excitement was standing at the entrance waiting to be seated.
 
And her heart pounded again as soon as she saw him.
 
He stood there in his fancy charcoal gray suit and tie, looking like the most impressive man in the room.
 
She almost smiled, seeing him again, and remembering the warmth of his touch as he held her in his arms.
 
That night when they talked in his office, and she was able to make him laugh, was a night she’d never forget.
 
He was unlike any man she’d ever known.
 
Even Dale Mosley with all of his houses and lands couldn’t come close to this man.
 
And for a brief moment, a brief, wonderful moment, it was Carrie, the girl from Attapulgus, who had his attention.

 
Her warm thoughts of Robert, however, quickly turned to chilly reality when a woman, a tall, beautiful, blonde woman, came up alongside him and possessively placed her hands around his big arm, as if to make it perfectly clear to all the other single females in the room that he was hers.

 
Carrie looked away, as Robert and his lady were being seated by the maître d.
  
Then she quickly gathered her scrub rags and cleaning canister and headed for the restaurant’s kitchen.
 
She felt ashamed and embarrassed to have had such comforting thoughts about an unavailable man, a man who could possibly be
married
, a man who could be sitting down to dinner right this very moment with none other than his
wife
.
 
His
wife
for crying out loud!
 
All she wanted to do was get away.
 
All she wanted to do was slip away as fast as she could.
 
Undetected.
 

 
But Robert had already detected her.
 
As soon as he walked into the restaurant he got this odd sensation in the pit of his gut, and then he saw her.
 
She was across the room scrubbing a table with total concentration, as if her life depended on a perfect shine.
 
He didn’t even have to see her face to know that she was the same woman that had literally run into his arms a couple weeks before.
 
Sojourner Caroline Banks.
 
Carrie
.
 
He hadn’t seen her since that night, although, to his own shock, he’d wondered about her countless times.
 
But he never really expected to see her again.
 

 
Now he was looking right at her, as she stood there in her snug-fitting purple waitress uniform, the skirt just the right length to reveal her short, shapely legs.
 
Robert stared at those legs, and the way her small body seemed so tight and tense as she scrubbed, and he found himself drawn to her again, the same way he couldn’t break away from her in his office.
 
He wanted to hold her, and protect her, and take her away from all of these tough, hard-luck jobs that no woman of his would ever have to do.
 
It was such a strange sensation, considering that he really didn’t even know this person he now wanted to rescue, that even Tyler Langley, his date, noticed his sudden unease.
  
      

 
“Something wrong?” she asked him, as they walked to their table, as she looked out over the restaurant to see if she, too, could see what (or who) had him suddenly so antsy.
 
All she saw were various unremarkable couples quietly eating their dinners. She didn’t even think to check out the help.

 
“I’m fine,” Robert said, looking directly into her eyes.
 
Then he placed his hand over her’s and followed the maître d to their seats.
 
When he glanced back at Carrie, she was heading, in what he took to be an unusually hurried gait, for the kitchen.
 
She walked on the tip of her toes, he noticed, as if she had been trained as a ballerina or some other classical dancer.
 
And even that walk of hers, that rushed, sexy walk of hers, made him want her more.
 
Want her more
?
 
He almost shook his head.
 
What was his problem, he wondered.
           
“It didn’t work out,” Tyler said almost immediately after they’d been seated.
 
Robert picked up the menu,
then
looked at her.
 

 
“What didn’t work out?”

 
“Me and Karl.
 
Remember?”
 
When Robert still seemed dumbfounded, she shook her head.
 
“I left you two weeks ago, Robert, in case you forgot to notice.”

 
He’d noticed.
 
He even considered giving
her a
call, but it would have only been a booty call since he had no intentions of getting serious with Tyler or anybody else, and he knew she deserved far better than that.
 
“So it’s off again between you two?”
 
he
said nonchalantly, to minimize the sentimentality.

 
“Yes, it is.
 
I don’t know why I even considered going back to him.”

 
“You said he was a changed man.”

 
“He was changed all right.
 
He wasn’t cheating on me five days a week, just one or two.
 
That wasn’t exactly the kind of change I had in mind.”
  
She said this with a painful laugh in her voice.

 
Robert tried to smile it off too, but he could tell she was hurting.
 
He looked at her with so much tenderness in his eyes that it made Tyler want to cry.
 
“I’m sorry, Ty,” he said.

 
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said almost snappishly.
 
“It’s not your fault that Karl was a jerk.
 
I mean, what can I do?
 
I tried.
 
I can’t make
no
grown man do right.”
 
Then she exhaled.
 
“It doesn’t matter anyway.
 
Karl’s okay.
 
He has some good qualities too, I’ll give him that.
 
But the real problem with Karl isn’t that he’s a cheating dog, although that’s a problem.
 
But the problem with Karl is that he’s not you.”
 
She said this and looked at Robert.
 
Robert looked away from her, toward the kitchen, and then he picked up the menu again.
 

 
“What’s for supper?” he asked.

***

Carrie stayed in the kitchen longer than usual, as she volunteered to help prepare the orders.
 
She couldn’t stop thinking about Robert, however, and that woman he had with him, and if that woman could really be his wife.
 
It wasn’t until she asked if he was married, after all, did he abruptly end their conversation.
 
Before then everything was fine.
 
They were laughing and talking like old friends from way back.
 
But she’d thought about that conversation a million times, and she had concluded over and over that he didn’t act like a married man, that he therefore wasn’t a married man, and her question was just coincidental to his sudden need to get to work.
 
But now, seeing him with that tall beauty queen who could easily pass for a model, made her wonder if she had been thoughtful in her conclusion, or just plain naive.
 

 
Millie Rawlings, who had grabbed a plate of food and was running out of the kitchen as fast as she had run in, looked at Carrie and smiled.
 
“What you daydreamin’ about, girl?” she asked her, but she was gone before Carrie could answer.

 
Alphonso, the manager, came into the kitchen holding two drinks he’d just picked up from the bar, and he called for Carrie.
 
Carrie, always the diligent worker, hurried to his side.
 
“Take these drinks to table twelve,” he told her.
 
“Take their order, but then I need you to go and clear off for Lizzie.
 
She’s backed up big time.”

 
“Yes, sir,” Carrie said as she grabbed the two cocktails, placed them on a tray, and then hurried out of the kitchen.
 
Her plan was to avoid Robert’s presence as much as possible, even if it meant walking in an around-about way to get to where she was going.
 
But when she realized who was actually sitting at table twelve, she stopped in her tracks, causing another waitress to just miss bumping into her.
  

 
The female was doing all of the talking, Carrie noticed, while Robert seemed to be only mildly listening.
 
His mind seemed somewhere else, as if at any moment he was going to glance at his watch and suddenly excuse himself.
 
But when he looked toward the kitchen area, and ended up looking directly into Carrie’s face, her heart pounded once again, and any composure she thought she was gaining by stopping before proceeding, was shattered.

 
Robert’s chest tightened when he looked into those big green eyes again.
 
They weren’t as terror-filled as they had been when he first saw her, but there was still that sadness there.

 
Carrie garnered enough nerve to walk up to the table and began placing down the drinks.
 
She even managed to smile.
  
“Here we are,” she said as she sat down one then the other drink.
 
She decided against asking Robert if he remembered her, since chances were he hadn’t even given her a second thought.
 
Besides, his wife would probably not appreciate the inquiry in any event.

 
Tyler was still talking to Robert, her mouth going a mile a minute, so Carrie pulled out her pad and waited patiently for her to finish.
 
Tyler, however, suddenly stopped talking and looked at this woman, this intruder at their table.
 
And she wasn’t even attempting to hide her displeasure.
  
“May we help you?” she asked.