Last Chance at Love (2 page)

She told herself to remember the stakes. “Let’s start over, Mr. Covington. This assignment is important to me, and I’m sure you know that. Give me your ground rules, and I’ll try to follow them.”

He breathed deeply, as though resigned. “All right, Ms. Wakefield, nine to five, Monday through Friday, and whenever I’m lecturing, signing books, or being interviewed on radio or TV. At all other times I’m a private citizen. Okay?”

“Fair enough. Are you married?” He seemed taken aback at the abruptness of the question, and she could have kicked herself for having asked it in that fashion.

He winked again, and her heartbeat accelerated. “No. Was that question for the interview or personal use?”

She wished he wouldn’t look at her so intently, because she couldn’t use the pleasant weather to explain the moisture that matted her forehead. Self-consciously, she lowered her eyelids, annoyed at her warm feminine response to him.

He’s just a man, Allison,
she admonished herself, and recovered her equilibrium. “I know you’re thirty-five—the next logical question is marital status.”

He inclined his head slightly and quirked his brow, verifying her suspicion that he didn’t believe her, but she appreciated that he softened his voice and manner as if to put her at ease. “This isn’t a convenient time for your interview. I’m about to leave on the first leg of my national tour.”

“Why can’t I travel with you?”

“You couldn’t be serious, Ms. Wakefield. I don’t want the press chronicling my every breath.”

In her exasperation, she permitted herself a withering stare, but realizing that she might provoke him, she immediately changed her demeanor. “Mr. Covington, I am not asking to spend every minute with you, only for the chance to carry out my assignment as best I can.”

After seeming to weigh the pros and cons, he said, with obvious reluctance, “All right, if you can manage to stay out of the way.”

Boldly, she met his eyes straight on and tried to ignore the bouncing of her heart in her chest. “Would you please try to be less patronizing. I can’t observe you if I have to stay out of sight. I’m a professional, and I know how to do my job. It wouldn’t hurt you to remember that.”

He ran his fingers through the thick, silky black hair that belied his African heritage and told of his Seneca ancestors—traits that had once enhanced his value as an undercover agent; one couldn’t be certain of his racial identity.

“All right,” he said and grimaced, “but if it doesn’t work, we’ll have to drop it. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to leave.” At the bottom of the hill, he asked, “Are you driving, or should I help you get a cab? They seldom cruise on this part of Georgia Avenue at night.”

“I’m driving.”

“Then you can give me a lift?”

* * *

She stopped the car in front of his town house in an upscale section of Georgetown and turned toward him. “This is a lovely neighborhood,” she said, reluctant to voice the words that rested uneasily in her thoughts. He nodded and reached for the door handle. “Mind if I ask...” He stiffened, and she decided not to coat it. “You have a habit...I mean... Why do you wink at me?”

“What? Oh! I didn’t realize I’d done that. It isn’t something I control; it’s involuntary. I... It does whatever it pleases. Thanks for the lift. Good night.” Puzzled at his sudden diffidence, the man filled her with wonder as she drove across the Williams Bridge and took the Shirley Memorial Highway to Alexandria and her small, two-story frame house near Bren Mar Park.

* * *

Jake thought he’d been around so many indescribably beautiful women that one long-legged black woman with big eyes the color of pinecones and the shape of almonds and a come-to-me expression couldn’t knock him off balance. But like a freight train charging through the night, Allison Wakefield had done exactly that. For what other reason would he have given her permission to follow him around and record his every gesture? And why else would the damned wink have returned? That alone was positive proof that she’d gotten to him. The wink hadn’t bothered him since he overcame a short, feverish attachment to Henrietta Beech. He distrusted reporters and for good reason; the eagerness of one to expose his former State Department activities had nearly cost him his life. Covering up the incident and guaranteeing his protection for some months afterward had cost the government a bundle. And
The Journal!
Did he dare risk it? He secured the front door and leaned against it for a full twenty minutes, musing on the evening’s surprises. Suddenly, he strode into his office and lifted the phone receiver. He stopped. Why did he want to telephone Allison Wakefield? Nonplussed, he pressed the fingers of his left hand first to his right cheek, then to his temples, and closed his eyes. What the devil was going on?

Annoyed with himself for letting Allison get to him, Jake paced around in his bedroom, stopped, and swore; he needed a haircut. Nobody and nothing could have persuaded him to get one in that bastion of intrigue he’d just left, with a terrorist lurking in every other house, every store, and around any corner. In that environment, he wouldn’t be fool enough to sit in a barber’s chair and expose his throat to a razor. The ring of the phone jarred him. Wondering who would call him at half past eleven at night, he answered it.

“Covington.”

“Come in early tomorrow. I’ve got something for you. Can you make it in by eight o’clock?”

Jake held the receiver at arm’s length and glared at it. “You couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning to tell me? Did you forget I’m on a year’s leave of absence, chief, and that I just got back from a mission this morning?”

“No, I didn’t forget. I need your savvy. I want you to check these plans because if anything goes wrong on this job, Congress will have my head.”

“Eight o’clock,” Jake said and hung up. Right then, he hardly cared whose head came off. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in ten days, and who knew when he’d get another one if he had to worry about keeping Allison Wakefield out of his business?

* * *

Three days later, his job for the chief completed, he prepared for his first book-signing tour.

Rested, after a sound night’s sleep, Jake pulled himself out of bed, got a cup of black coffee, and tried to think. Considering the way he had responded to Allison Wakefield, all the way to the pit of his gut, he’d probably relax with her, slip up, and reveal more than he should. And she was bound to get suspicious if he periodically interrupted his book tour and disappeared for days at a time, as he would if the chief called on him. Any good journalist would want to know why he disappeared and where he went. He promised himself he’d get out of that commitment.

“I’ve rethought it,” he told Allison when he called her at her office later that morning, “and I’d prefer not to be encumbered on this tour. It’ll be tiring enough without having a reporter around to record every breath I take.”

He’d disappointed her, and he couldn’t help it, but when he’d looked down at the audience and had seen her there with her right hand at her throat and her lips a little apart, he hadn’t known what hit him. In his thirty-five years, he didn’t remember having had such a powerful reaction to a woman. He’d gotten through that lecture, though he didn’t remember how. Then she’d walked up to him and held out her hand, and for a moment he’d thought he’d conjured up a vision.

The extent of her frustration came through when she spoke. “If I can’t tour with you,” she bargained in a voice that lacked her previous toughness, “could you give me a list of people to interview who you’d trust to tell me the truth?”

“Your generosity astonishes me,” he said, clearly baffled. “I don’t get it.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she replied, her tone more confident. “I won’t have any trouble finding people who’ll do you in. If I put an ad in the paper, they’ll come running.”

“That’s blackmail, woman.”

“Tut-tut. Don’t be so harsh. There’s more than one way to ride a horse; you know that. So what do you say? Do I tour with you, or don’t I?”

She sounded tough, and she might be, but something about her reached him, and he didn’t want to hurt her. She inspired in him exactly the opposite response. But he had to protect himself from damage, too. And he didn’t doubt that, if she dug into his private life, she could twist what she found sufficiently to torpedo his dreams of becoming scholar-in-residence at his alma mater.

“Are you equating me with a horse?” he chided. “Your choice of metaphors intrigues me.”

“I didn’t mean... Well, n-no.”

He couldn’t resist a dig. “Don’t apologize, Allison. When you ride, be considerate enough to make it enjoyable.” Oh, if phone lines had mirrors! From her long silence, he knew she’d gone slightly out of joint. Still, he couldn’t help needling her. “It isn’t always what we hear that causes trouble, but how we interpret it. You get my point, I hope.”

“If you’re trying to convince me that six weeks of your company will be unpleasant, don’t squander your energy,” she replied. “And off-color innuendos are wasted on me.”

“Off-color innuendos? I didn’t insinuate anything; I meant what I said. Plain and simple.”

“Like your wink?”

“Like your handshake, lady. Meaningful.” She could hold her own, he saw, as he waited for her reply.

“When do we leave?”

If he hadn’t spent the last thirty minutes talking with her, his answer probably would have been, “We don’t.” But he suspected she’d be good company.
And face it,
he told himself,
you want to know whether that clap of thunder you heard and the lightning fire that roared through you when you first saw her signaled the real thing.

“All right. I’ll give it a shot,” he told her, “but please do your homework. I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had enough of fledgling reporters and their inept questions.”

“This is your first book, but I’ve worked as a reporter for six years. Which one of us is a fledgling?”

A warm flush spread through him, and he couldn’t help laughing; a woman who could hold her own with him was to be prized. And encouraged. “Touché. My publicist will give you my schedule for the next six weeks.” He hung up, and his smile faded. He’d have to make certain that she didn’t tail him on Friday and Saturday nights.

* * *

Jake couldn’t decide whether to rent a car, drive out to Rock Creek Park and spend a couple of hours horseback riding, or call a buddy for a game of tennis. He hadn’t had any useful exercise in ten days. He needed a good workout. “Dunc was always good for an early morning set or two,” he said to himself and telephoned his friend, a freelance journalist who worked at home.

“Jake here. How’s it going, buddy?” he asked Duncan Banks when his friend answered the phone.

“How am I? Man, I need a vacation. I just finished a piece on undertaker scams, and damned near wound up the victim of one of ’em myself. Don’t tell me you want a game. I just told my wife I needed some exercise.”

“I can be ready for a couple of sets in half an hour. How are Justine and Tonya?”

“Still spicing my life. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes.”

* * *

“You look as if you’ve been hanging out on a beach,” Duncan told Jake when he opened the door.

“Hardly,” Jake said. He didn’t discuss his work for the department, and especially not his trips, and Duncan never asked him where he’d been. However, Jake didn’t doubt that a news reporter of Duncan Banks’s stature had done his research, knew the answers, and kept his thoughts to himself.

“I hope you’re paid up with your club dues,” Jake told him, “because I forgot to pay mine.” He didn’t mention that the notice arrived while he was on a department mission.

“I forget sometimes, too,” Duncan said, “but they won’t throw us out.”

They practiced hitting the ball for several minutes, tossed a coin, and Duncan served first.

“Brother, that was one wicked lob you sent over here,” Duncan called to Jake after returning it for a point. After winning a set each during nearly two hours of play, they sat on a bench and helped themselves to the lemonade that Justine had made and sent in a cooler.

“You’ve been married to Justine how long now?”

“Two years. The happiest and the most productive of my life. I hardly remember who I was before I met Justine. Looking back—and I often do—I realize my first marriage was a sham.”

Jake stretched out his legs and leaned back against the bench. “Marriage is a risk any way you slice it.”

A frown slid over Duncan’s face. “Sure. And so is taking a shower. It’s simple, Jake; if you don’t gamble—I mean, take a chance—you can’t win. From the first time I looked at Justine, I was a changed man.”

Jake sat forward, remembering his reaction to Allison Wakefield. “You mean as soon as you laid eyes on her?”

“That’s just what I mean. Man, I did everything, told myself all kind of lies about how she wasn’t for me, even left my own house to stay at the lodge so I wouldn’t see her...trying to avoid the inevitable. I didn’t stand a chance.”

“Damn!” Jake sat back, put his hands in the pockets of his tennis shorts, and shook his head. “Man, I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Whoa! Wait a minute,” Duncan said, coloring his words with barely restrained laughter. “What’s her name?”

Jake shook his head again as if perplexed. “There isn’t any
her.
I am not even going to repeat her name. It’s too ridiculous. I am definitely not going
there!
” He spoke forcibly.

“Go ahead and convince yourself.” Jake didn’t like the laughter that spilled out of Duncan like water cascading from a mountaintop. “That’s just what I said,” Duncan told him. “I’d be honored to be your best man.”

With that, Jake stood, ready to leave. “You’re off your rocker.”

Duncan permitted himself a long laugh. “Whatever you say. In the thirteen years we’ve known each other, you’ve intimated a serious interest in one woman. One. And for that particular one, your youth was ample excuse.” He stood and looked Jake in the eye. “Getting a jolt at the age of twenty-two is nothing compared to being poleaxed at this age.”

A look of fond remembrance claimed Duncan’s face. “I’ll never forget the day and the minute I gave in to it; oceans roared.”