Amanda's Blue Marine (6 page)
Read Amanda's Blue Marine Online
Authors: Doreen Owens Malek
Amanda looked back at him wearily. “You were asking so many questions and I didn’t want to talk.”
“I hear you,” he said quietly, with such intensity that she looked up at him. His heavy lashes lifted and he met her gaze directly. He smiled at her again and she realized that she wanted to throw her arms around his neck.
Maybe she was more confused than she knew. He was only doing what he would do for anyone involved in an accident. She was personalizing his intervention because she wanted to think she was important to him. And that was certainly foolish.
“I’m taking the cruiser to bring you home,” Kelly added.
“Am I getting special treatment again?” Amanda asked.
“No. You’re an accident victim and your car has been disabled. It’s standard procedure to make sure you get to your intended destination.”
“Okay.” She took Kelly’s extended hand and allowed him to lead her to the police car waiting at the curb. Kelly helped her into the back seat and said as he took the wheel and started the motor, “Can I bring you to your parents’ house? I don’t think you should be alone.”
Amanda moaned so pitifully that Kelly glanced into the rear view mirror, startled.
“Oh, please, not my mother,” Mandy said. “She means well but she will just make everything worse.”
“Scrap that idea.” There was a pause. “Should I call your fiancé?” Kelly then asked in a neutral tone.
“He’s in Harrisburg. Don’t call anybody. I just need a little time to calm down.” Please stay with me, she wanted to add. She didn’t understand it herself but his very presence made her feel better. She had started to recover from the crash the instant she saw him.
He sat behind the wheel, thinking. “I don’t want to just dump you off someplace,” he said. “It’s probably true that the reaction you had to the accident was emotional but I’d still like to watch you for a while.”
“I think I’m okay, Kelly,” she said quietly. “It’s kind of you to be concerned, though, especially after the shabby reception I gave you.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. People about to be arrested aren’t too cooperative. One guy hit me over the head with a beer bottle.” He shoved his hair back from his forehead to display the scar at his hairline to her in the rear view mirror.
“Lovely.”
“And some old dame with fingernails like a Chinese empress went after me with her talons, I thought I was going to lose an eye. She took a chunk of skin out of my jaw. By comparison with them your little snippy fit was chump change.”
He turned to grin at her and she smiled, relaxing.
“You look better,” he said. “Your cheeks are getting color again. What do you say we get you something to eat in the cafe across the street and then I’ll drive you home.”
Mandy nodded.
He drove the car the short distance to the coffee shop he’d indicated and then parked behind the building. They entered through the back door and the clerk at the cash register waved at him as they passed.
He seemed to know everyone.
They took a booth in the rear and Mandy went into the ladies’ room to comb her hair. She stalled for time before she had to face Kelly across the small table. As she had learned, he was very observant and would notice any chinks in her armor. She wanted him to get off her case and stop looking for her to break down or throw a fit or otherwise disgrace herself. She was going to show him that she had rebounded from her initial reaction to the accident and was now fine.
When she got back to the table a pot of tea with a little mug of milk was sitting at her place across from Kelly. A grilled cheese sandwich sat on a plate next to the mug.
“You ordered this for me?” she asked Kelly.
He nodded. “Isn’t that what you usually get for lunch?”
The thoughtfulness of the gesture almost undid her again. She nodded mutely, tried to take a bite of the sandwich and then put it down again.
“What is it, Amanda?” he asked her quietly.
“I was so mean to you when you showed up at the accident. You’d think that I would be able to handle a little crunched metal five years after the fact. And taking it out on you was unforgivable.”
“I forgive you,” he said, smiling slightly.
“I thought I was over it.”
“You’ll never be over it. You just learn to live with it.”
Mandy sighed. “So I’ve been told. I went through a lot of therapy just to drive again. Eventually I was able to do it in an emergency when my father was hurt and we couldn’t wait for an ambulance. I was the only one there to drive him to the hospital. After that I was all right. But of course I didn’t have another accident until today.”
“Losing your friends must have been hard,” he murmured.
She nodded. “I felt responsible. The kid who hit us was drunk and I checked out clean at the scene, but that didn’t stop my friends’ parents from filing a class action wrongful death suit against me.”
“Why?”
“For money. They weren’t going to get a nickel out of the drunken teenager who hit us, but if they could prove I was a negligent driver who contributed to the outcome in some way my daddy would have to pony up for some big bucks.”
He didn’t answer, merely studied her soberly.
“And then the judge hearing the case severed the actions, so I had THREE lawsuits pending against me.”
“And three dead friends,” Kelly said.
She nodded.
“What happened?”
Mandy shrugged. “In the end the suits got nowhere but I had to endure a lot of hostile questioning from the opposing attorneys. Their constant implication was that I was a spoiled rich girl out joyriding in my daddy’s expensive car who was somehow responsible for the deaths.”
“And you still finished school and became a lawyer,” Kelly said dryly.
“I realized from that experience that I could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Hold my own in the big leagues,” she said simply. “But I was worried the whole time that the suits were going to cost my father dearly, in terms of money, reputation, credibility. Just defending the cases was a fortune, and if I had lost it would have been much worse.” Mandy sighed. “Everyone involved knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. They only went after me in the first place because of the Redfield name. It made me a target.”
“Who knew there was a downside to having money?” Kelly said softly.
Mandy poured tea into her cup and added milk to it. “I learned that lesson the hard way,” she said.
A waitress arrived with a coffee pot and refreshed Kelly’s cup.
“
No ser un extraño, hermoso,”
she said to him. “Don’t be a stranger, handsome.”
“
¿Cómo es su marido, Rosa?”
he replied. “How’s your husband, Rosa?”
She stuck her tongue out at him and left.
“What’s her problem?” Amada asked, trying hard not to smile. His dismayed expression when the waitress showed up so suddenly had been amusing.
“I thought she’d quit her waitressing job,” Kelly said in a frustrated tone.
“Apparently not. What happened?”
He shrugged. “I got a little too friendly with her at the Christmas party here last year. They put on a spread for the cops at the holidays, it keeps the patrol cars checking on the premises and the riffraff away. I’d had a few drinks, she was a new hire and I didn’t realize she was married. When I learned that piece of information I didn’t pursue it any further. She’s still miffed about it.”
“It’s nice to know you have standards,” Mandy said lightly.
“Not too many,” he said. “But that’s one of them.”
“You speak Spanish,” Mandy said.
“Nah. I can barely speak English, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I had to do two summer sessions of it just to get out of high school. The Spanish I picked up on the job. I just get by with it, and Janet Grady helps me. Her mother is Mexican and her family speaks Spanish at home.”
“Your accent is very good.”
He looked at her. “Yeah?” he said, doubtfully. “You can tell that from one sentence?”
“Yes. You’re a good mimic. Most gringos don’t draw out the vowels and they clip the syllables too much. They sound like this.” She repeated the Spanish sentence with the wrong phrasing and he grinned.
“That’s how my partner Donatelli sounds,” he said. He sat back in his seat and surveyed her.
“So how many languages do you speak, professor?” he asked dryly. “Hindi, Croatian, Martian?”
“Just the two, English and Spanish. Oh, and Latin, if that counts, since I don’t think Julius Caesar is going to show up any time soon to discuss his ‘Commentaries’ with me.”
“I’ve read the ‘Commentaries’,” Kelly said. “Some parts, anyway. ‘De Bello Gallico.’”
Mandy’s eyes flashed to his face.
Kelly dissolved into laughter. “Look how amazed she is,” he said, delighted by her surprised reaction. “I’m telling you the truth, Amanda. I took a tactical class in combat training and we had to read the translations of all the journals: Caesar, Hannibal, Napoleon, Rommel.”
“No Americans?”
He nodded. “Lafayette, Daniel Morgan, Francis Marion, some others from the Civil War like Sherman and the major ones from World War II. I could hardly get through most of them, but Caesar was the easiest. It was like a diary and the language was simple.”
“Simple for you, maybe. You were reading it in English, not translating the damn thing for an entire year,” Mandy said darkly.
“I really liked that rebel who gave old Julius so much trouble. Caesar was always plotting to get him, and eventually he did, big time. His name was Lepidopterix or something like that. Sounds like a dinosaur.”
“Vercingetorix.”
“That’s him! That guy, he never gave up. Caesar would thump him and he would go away and hide, reassemble his boys or capture some slaves or annex some other tribe, and then come back at Caesar again. In the writing you could just hear Julius getting fed up with the whole thing. Didn’t what’s his name eventually surrender?”
“In front of all his followers he rode in on his decorated war horse, stripped off his armor, and knelt at Caesar’s feet. Caesar let him live for five years and then executed him. But first Caesar paraded him around in chains before all the locals to show them what would happen to them if they got similar ideas.”
Kelly nodded sadly. “Caesar should have shown more class there. A worthy opponent should be treated with respect.”
“Napoleon respected Vercingetorix. He built a statue to him some place in France, where his tribe lived in Caesar’s time. It’s still there, I think.”
“I can’t believe this conversation,” Kelly said. “How the hell did we get to ancient Rome from your car accident?”
“ I think you were trying to steer me off that subject,” Mandy said gratefully. “What do you usually talk about with …” she stopped.
“Women?” he supplied.
“Yes.”
“Them,” he said, grinning. “Their beauty, intelligence, sterling character, compelling personality. You know, fascinating topics like that.”
Mandy eyed him warily. She knew he was teasing her but she also knew there was an element of truth in what he was saying.
Be careful, she thought. And then, too late.
She was already captivated.
He patted his pockets and then stopped, sighing.
“Searching for cigarettes?” Mandy asked.
He looked at the ceiling. “I’m trying to quit.”
They both glanced around as a loud voice behind them called out, “Hey, Kelly, long time no see. Where ya been, kid? Shacked up with that blonde I saw you with in Old City?”
Kelly looked at Mandy and she saw his face tighten and a muscle begin to jump in his jaw.
“Oh, Christ,” he muttered.
Mandy’s alarm grew as he half rose from his seat to face the new arrival, who grinned obnoxiously at Amanda and added, “That blonde looked pretty hot.” He shot a parting glance at Kelly and moved on to the other side of the room.
Kelly was standing as Amanda said to him urgently, “Don’t do anything. It doesn’t matter, Kelly. Let it go.”
“It matters to me. He was saying that to make you uncomfortable.” Kelly’s gaze met hers. “He thinks you’re my date.”
“I’m not uncomfortable and I’m not that delicate. I don’t want any trouble for you.”
Kelly put his hand over Mandy’s fist, closed with tension on the table.
“I’m not going to do anything, Amanda. You’ve had a bad day and I won’t make it worse. But I will get rid of him. Just let me take care of this, okay?”
Amanda watched helplessly as he walked to where the new arrival was standing and engaged him in low conversation. The other man listened, gave a short reply, and moved away. Mandy watched as he crossed the room and left promptly through the front door.
Kelly rejoined her and signaled the waitress to bring him another cup of coffee.
“Who was that?” Mandy asked anxiously, watching the door as if Kelly’s antagonist might return.
“Chris Bailey, another cop from my precinct,” Kelly replied tersely. “He’s not too stoked about me.”
“Why?”
“He thinks I stole his promotion, among other things.”
“Did you?”
Kelly shook his head. “Manning recommended me for the detective’s exam, not him. There are only so many slots that open up each year. He’s older. He’s married and has a family. He thinks I jumped ahead of him. The truth is Manning didn’t think he could score high enough on the test to even be considered for the interviews.”