Crazy in Chicago (20 page)

Cody bit his tongue to keep back the angry retort. His stare dared her to prove her accusation, but she didn't flinch. Her chin jutted forward, but her gaze didn't quite meet his.

He took a deep breath. “You have an awfully low opinion of me, don't you? Both as a man, and as a reporter. An opinion based on nothing more than conjecture.”

“No, not conjecture.” Her stance grew more rigid. “History. You're the man who cheated on your fiancee, not me.” She smiled far too sweetly. “With Tiffany too, wasn't it?”

His control snapped. “Damn it, Bobbi! I told you I've changed. I don't know what you want from me. Why can't you just give me a chance?”

Roberta stared at him coldly. Finally her shoulders slumped. She looked older, wearier than she had only moments before.

“Because I'm not a fool,” she whispered. Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Because I don't like to be hurt. In your newspaper or in your bed.

“Because I just can't trust you.”

“Roberta, I . . .”

“Please go.”

Dumbfounded by her stricken look, by what she'd said and seemed to believe, Cody could only stand and stare.

Finally he reached for the doorknob. “All right. I'll leave now. But we need to talk about this again. Tomorrow.”

He left without waiting for a response.

 

Chapter 10

 

The sun had begun its slow slide below the horizon when Cody wheeled his Corvette from the street down the ramp into the light of his apartment's parking garage the next evening.

He had never intended to stay at work this long, but it had taken far longer to wrap up the last of the stories in his series on UFOs and aliens. Thoughts of last night's blow-up with Roberta had plagued him, interrupting him over and over again. Lack of sleep and another half dozen bouts of nausea had conspired to destroy what was left of his concentration. He'd been lucky to get anything done.

Yawning, Cody glanced down the first row of parked cars. He looked again. At the far end, a small figure he recognized struggled with several parcels.

Instantly alert, Cody jerked the car to the right, ignoring the squeal of hot rubber on cement. He sped down the row, stopping only three feet away from Roberta. She jumped back, and the paper bag of groceries she held in one arm ripped and slipped a notch lower, while the brief case and plastic bags she held in her other hand swayed ominously.

Cody leaned across the passenger seat and flipped open the door. He leaned out his own window. “Get in.”

Roberta flushed. She juggled her parcels. “Uhh. It's all right. I can manage.”

The bag ripped a little more. She raised her knee to support the bag and wobbled on one foot.

“No, you can't. Get in. I'll park and then I'll help you carry that stuff upstairs.”

A can of soup slid out of the bag, followed by a jar of peanut butter. They hit the floor with a thud, and rolled toward the car.

“Oh, all right,” she conceded, reluctance coloring every word. She half-walked, half-hopped to the side of his car, using her knee to prevent anything else from escaping.

She dropped her bags onto the seat, then turned to retrieve the soup and peanut butter. Cody redistributed everything onto the floor space and the shelf under the back window. Roberta slid in and shut the door.

Cody geared up, then glanced at her. In the damp heat, her curls had run riot and her coloring had heightened. She looked hot, weary, uptight. And wonderful.

He glanced ahead and then back at her. She had no idea how appealing he found her. But how to convince her?

He continued down the aisle, turned into the parking space and stopped. His hand still on the gear shift, he looked at her. He didn't want to talk. He wanted to kiss her, badly.

Roberta opened the door. He touched her arm. “Wait.”

“Yes?”

“We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“About us.”

Roberta's face flamed again. She looked at him, but didn't meet his eyes. “There isn't any us.”

“Yes, there is. You know there is. You're important to me. And I'm important to you.” He paused, waiting for her to acknowledge what he'd said.

Finally, she raised her chin. Her eyes clouded with pain, a pain that underlined the truth of his words.

Encouraged, he pressed on. “I'm not interested in Tiffany, or in any other woman. Just you. Only you. I know that wasn't true in the past, but I've changed. I'm not the same man I was a year ago. Maybe it's because of my disappearance, or maybe I've finally grown up. I don't know why, I just know that I'm not the same man I used to be.”

Her lip trembled but she said nothing.

“I—you've helped me a lot. Pushing me into seeing the psychic, being hypnotized. Looking into weird things that I don't like doing. I know it hasn't proved what you wanted it to prove, but I also know that you care about getting to the bottom of my disappearance. I like having your help. It means a lot that you care about me.”

“You didn't find out much,” Roberta pointed out. She fiddled with the bags on the floor.

“Because of you I've talked to Allie, too, about Erik and what the psychic said.”

Roberta sat up sharply to look at him. It was evident she wanted to ask him about it. Instead she returned to sorting out her things.

“I'd like to talk to you about it,” he said softly. “Nothing dramatic but still, Allie acted a little odd.”

She shoved the plastic bags at him. “You take these and my brief case. I can handle the rest.”

“Okay.” Nothing was working right. He tried again. “When we get upstairs, I'll tell you about it.”

“I don't think so.”

“Why not?”

“We already talked about it. Nothing has changed. You like fast and easy relationships. I don't. You like normal. I'm not normal, at least in my interests and my beliefs. And tomorrow, in your newspaper, you're going to trash SUFOW and my work.”

Awkwardly she gathered the paper bag and its contents together and wormed her way back to the front seat. She stood up, and hit her head on the door frame. “Ouch.”

Cody got out and looked at her over the top of the car. “What makes you think I'm going to trash SUFOW?”

Her eyes flashed. “Oh, come on, Cody. I heard the questions you asked Garnet during some of your interviews. At worst you think he's a money-grubbing slime. At best, a fool. And I heard what you said last night to Tiffany and Janet. Well, I can't be with someone who thinks everything I work for is foolish. Someone who thinks I'm a fool. Someone who's going to make me look like a fool in public any day now. Someone I can't trust, on any level.”

The words stung. “I don't think you're a fool,” he retorted. “Nothing about you is foolish. You've looked at the evidence and come to different conclusions than I have. You've also had the experience of having a friend who claimed she was abducted. None of that makes you foolish. Just different. It doesn't mean we can't share a lot of other things.”

“No. It's impossible. I can't trust you. Personally or professionally.”

Cody stiffened. “Are you sure it's me you can't trust? Or are you worried about yourself?”

Roberta's eyes widened. Then she pivoted and stalked away, the ripped bag clutched in her arms.

* * *

Squinting against the next morning's sunshine slanting through her windshield, Roberta ground her car to a halt by the cherry red newspaper box a block away from SUFOW's offices. She slipped out and dropped two quarters into the box, pulled it open and retrieved the second last copy of this morning's Streeter.

 
The headline screamed of yet another gang-related murder in the notorious Cabrini-Green housing development, but Roberta hardly gave it a glance. In a second she found what she was looking for: at the top of the “What's Inside” column, a teaser for the first of Cody's stories on UFOs and aliens. “Aliens among us!” read the boldface headline, under a color drawing of a so-called alien.

Roberta groaned and tossed the paper through the open car door onto the passenger seat. She followed, wishing she hadn't bought the paper, knowing she had no choice. Whatever Cody wrote, good or bad, she needed to know. She had to be prepared to deal with the fallout, everything from calls from the media and local abductees to Garnet's sure-to-be-foul mood.

Pain stabbed her temples and she gritted her teeth as she drove the short distance to the office. Bad enough she'd hardly slept last night after stomping away from Cody. Or the night before, for that matter. She'd tossed and turned, wondering if she'd been fair to him, wondering if she'd been kind to him.

After all, even if he hadn't been abducted by aliens, he certainly was suffering from the trauma of some kind of abduction. After all, his behavior towards her had generally been nothing but kind, polite and loving. After all, she had no real evidence he had reverted to his former playboy lifestyle, Tiffany's stated hopes to the contrary.

She'd tossed and turned for other reasons, too. Just when she'd managed to get him out of her thoughts, she'd brush her arm against the sheet, unleashing all-too-vivid memories of his touch. She hugged her pillow, wishing she was hugging him. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his dark hair, feel the texture and the heat of his lips against hers.

“Ohhh!” Roberta groaned. Why wouldn't her heart accept that she and Cody just didn't work together? Her mind certainly had, but her heart, her body, refused to accept it. Instead, they clamored for more, more, more. They pressed her into spending every waking moment thinking about him, wondering about him, dreaming about his touch, his smile, his love-making. She regretted the day she'd climbed over the hedge and into his arms.

She parked the car off the lane behind the office, grabbed the paper and her briefcase and headed inside. The sooner she read Cody's article the better. Seeing him trash SUFOW in black and white would douse her interests, make her see once and for all that they had little, if anything, in common.

Roberta hurried through the narrow space between SUFOW's offices and the neighboring building. She let herself in, dropped her briefcase and plopped onto the love seat. She checked the page number of Cody's article and flipped to it.

From the centerfold, a color photo of the painting in Garnet's office stared out at her, almost as menacingly as the original. She frowned. How she hated that painting. She wished Garnet would get rid of it.

She scanned the page. The major headline asked, “Are aliens visiting Earth?” In a box near the bottom of the right hand page, was a photo and story about a man from nearby Oak Park whose abduction Garnet had investigated last year.

Roberta sighed. There was nothing to do but read the article. She took a deep breath and began.

“Are aliens visiting Earth?” the article began. “Yes, no or maybe—the answer appears to depend on who you are, where you live, and how you decide to interpret puzzling signs and occurrences around you. Based on the “facts”, many of which are themselves disputed, it is impossible to prove, or disprove, absolutely or irrefutably, the existence of aliens, their visits to Earth, and abductions of human beings.

“According to several nation-wide UFO and extraterrestrial groups, including the local Society of UFO Watchers (SUFOW), sufficient evidence exists to . . .”

Five minutes later Roberta finished reading the two-page spread. Slowly she folded the paper and placed it on the coffee table, letting the enormity of what she had just read sink in.

Cody did not believe in aliens. She'd known that, and it was clear from his story. But neither had he disparaged or belittled those who did. He had laid out fact after fact, followed by even-handed commentary from both points of view. His article, from beginning to end, was thorough, and it was fair, leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind.

Roberta swallowed. A flush sizzled up her neck to her face. She'd misjudged Cody. She'd been wrong about him, and his professional motives, right from the start. Her own fears and misgivings—about herself, about what she did for a living, about the public reaction to SUFOW and its concerns—had lead her to misread everything he'd said and done.

She twisted her fingers in her lap and bit her lip, remembering everything she'd said, all her accusations.

Had she been wrong about everything else, too?

* * *

“Leave it be!”

Cody blinked. He looked up from reading the page proofs for the second part of his UFO series, scheduled to run tomorrow. No one stood in the doorway to his tiny cubicle. And the neighboring cubicles were empty, though at eight p.m.
The Streeter
newsroom still teemed with activity. He could hear the low buzz of voices, punctuated by loud exclamations and occasional bursts of laughter.

Cody resumed reading. In the opening stories that had run today, and the stories that would run for the next four days, he'd tried to find a good balance between the dry facts providing an overview of UFO theories and events over the past few decades and some individual, puzzling stories sure to attract readers' interest. He'd also tried to be as fair, and objective, as possible—something he knew he would have done whether he'd known Roberta or not. Reading the proofs now, he knew he had succeeded. But would it be enough to convince Roberta to trust him? He doubted it.