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Authors: Gwynne Forster

When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance) (25 page)

BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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Francine had hoped that Jolene would remain with her in the lounge for a while longer. She wasn’t ready to go to her room, and if she remained alone at that little table, it would appear that she was deliberately avoiding Richard, since no one avoided Judd. But she wasn’t so foolhardy as to think she could sit knee to knee with Richard Peterson and not take a whipping both from her heart and from her libido. She stiffened her shoulders, drained her cup and walked over to the table where Judd was teaching Richard how to play pinochle.
“Glad you decided to visit with your friends,” Judd said. “Do you know how to play pinochle?”
“Haven’t played it since college,” she told him, ignoring his barb.
“Good, I haven’t played it since I sold m’ business and moved here. It’s more fun with three than two or four. Want to join us for a hand? With you playing, Richard will learn faster.”
Richard got up and went to get a chair for her, brought it back and waited until she sat down. Then, he took his own seat, looked at her and said, “We can’t play tennis until spring. Would you like to learn to skeet shoot?”
In other words, would she spend time alone with him? “Thanks, Richard, but I’d rather not. Sports shooting goes against my politics. I’ll hike over one of those nature trails in Ocean Pines with you sometime.”
His gaze seemed to penetrate her flesh. “I don’t care what we do as long as we do it together.”
At her sharp intake of breath, Judd put his cards on the table and said. “I’m getting sleepy. I’ll see you in the morning, Richard. Good night, Francine.”
“Why did you say that, Richard? You embarrassed him.”
“Not by a long shot, I didn’t. Judd knows there’s something going on between us, and he is also aware that you avoided me this evening. I said that because I figured you didn’t plan to be alone with me, and I’m a man known for capitalizing on opportunities, however rare and however small. If you’re off this weekend, can we hike as you suggested? I want us to be together.”
“You’re not ready for a genuine relationship with me, Richard, and I am not going to accept what you offered.”
He leaned back in the chair and looked her in the eye. “And what did I offer?”
If he had the guts to ask, she had the guts to tell him. “You offered me sex.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
She let a shrug enforce her words. “Nothing, if that’s what suits you. It’s not what I’m about. If you’ll excuse me—”
His hand covered hers. “You want a commitment? I can’t give it. If I let myself go with you, I’d be a nervous wreck whenever I wasn’t looking at you, scared to death that I’d find you in a heap somewhere. Lifeless. I couldn’t bear it.”
“You care for me, and you don’t like the idea. I am who I am, Richard. If and when you come to me with your true feelings bared, I’ll welcome you with my arms wide open.”
He sucked in his breath, and she knew she’d struck a blow that hurt. “As recently as a year ago, I would have taken you merely because I could and thought nothing of it, but I’ve put that lifestyle behind me. I’m straight with you. Why can’t you take me for what I am?”
“Eventually, I will, and you will be precisely what I want and need.”
He stared at her. “What the devil does that mean?”
She smiled because a glow of happiness flowed through her body. “You’ll see. Good-night.”
Inside her room, she removed her revolver and cell phone from her purse and placed them on her night table. She wondered how long that red light on her cell phone had been flashing. A check showed three messages from her captain, who wanted her to call him.
“We’re holding a man who fits the description of one of those men you saw on the beach. Can you get over here as fast as possible?” he said.
The first call had come in more than an hour earlier. She didn’t have to hide her activities from Richard, but after what he’d said earlier, she didn’t want him to see her leaving the house at ten-thirty at night. She dressed in a gray sweater, black woolen pants suit, boots, and her storm coat, put her revolver and cell phone back into her pocketbook and prayed that she wouldn’t encounter Richard. After mussing up her bed to make it appear that she’d slept in it, she managed to get out of the house without encountering anyone.
“He’s not one of them,” she said when she saw the suspect, “at least not one of the three men I saw. Next time, could you please wait until the next morning. If any person in that boardinghouse had seen me leaving there at ten-thirty at night, no explanation would convince them that I’m a moral person.”
“Sorry, but we had to make a judgment. At least we know he isn’t the one.”
“I’m staying over here tonight in a motel. The boardinghouse front door will be locked by the time I get back there.”
“Say, I
am
sorry,” the captain said.
“Sure. From now on, please don’t expect me to come out so late unless it’s a genuine emergency. Okay?”
“Okay.”
 
 
Richard walked from one end of his room to the other one and back again several times, pausing occasionally to observe through his window the clear moon and the waves that sloshed and danced seductively beneath it. He plowed his fingers through his hair, punishing his scalp and exacerbating the pain in his head. Where the hell had she gone at almost eleven o’clock at night? And what was she doing? Would she try to handle those thugs alone? He couldn’t stand knowing that she was probably in danger and being helpless to protect her.
“If I get my hands on her, I’ll shake her. It’s too dangerous, and her superiors ought to know that.” He slapped his left fist in his right palm. “Of all the women in this world, I have to fall for a police—fall? Who said I’d fallen?” He dropped himself on the side of his bed, leaned forward and, with his forearms on his thighs, clasped his head in his hands.
For most of the night, he listened for her steps on the stairs and in the hallway past his room with no results. At daybreak, he rolled out of the rumpled sheets, dressed and went to the parking lot behind the boardinghouse, didn’t see her car and hurried to the beach, his heart in his mouth, as his fear for her well-being rose to frightening proportions. No sign of her, and he didn’t know whether to be glad or more miserable. Where was she? If any person had entered that house during the night, he would have known it.
He faced the ocean and let the frigid wind punish him. If she’d been out there, she would have frozen. As he headed back to the house, chills gripped his body, the wind drew tears from his eyes, and he blew his breath upward to warm his face. Hunched over against the elements, he began to run. Maybe she’d come home after he left. He checked the parking lot again. What had happened to her? What if she needed him? He couldn’t stand it. She wouldn’t stay out all night, unless she was in trouble.
If only he had remembered to get her cell phone number. He telephoned Dan, the taxi driver. “I need a couple of hours of your time, Dan, as soon as you can get here.”
“Be there in half an hour, Mr. Peterson.”
Back in the house, he paced the floor of the lounge until the dining room opened for breakfast. “I have a couple of errands to do,” he told Judd. “I’ll see you at supper.”
“Where to?” Dan asked him.
“Ocean Pines. Just drive slowly around the center of town. I’m looking for a white 2004 Cougar.”
“Yes, sir.”
He tried to relax, but knew he wouldn’t until he saw her safe and unharmed. When he saw that her car was not parked at the police station, he thought his heart had dropped into his belly.
It was about eight-thirty when he yelled at Dan: “Stop right here.”
A motel
? Why the hell was her car parked in front of a motel? His first inclination was to go in and check the register. He stood at the walkway that led to the motel’s office and stared ahead catatonic-like, immobilized.
“What is it, Mr. Peterson?” Dan asked him. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I’ve just verified my stupidity. Let’s go back to the boardinghouse.”
Chapter Nine
 
That evening after supper, Francine grasped Jolene’s hand and walked with her into the lounge. It was an act of desperation, Francine knew, perplexed and hurt as she was by Richard’s strange behavior. Not only had he ignored her, but when she did catch his eye, he looked right through her, as it were, unseeing and unfeeling. What had happened to dispel the warmth and caring that he evinced so clearly and so sweetly the previous evening? She didn’t want to go to her room, didn’t want to sit alone, and pride wouldn’t allow her to join Judd and Richard.
“Let’s sit over there,” she said to Jolene, pointing to a corner where two brown leather armchairs stood with a small table between them. Almost as soon as they sat down, Marilyn arrived to serve them coffee and truffles.
Marilyn treated Francine to a half smile. ‘Well, honey, looks like you struck out, too.” Francine didn’t trust herself to answer.
“Was she talking about you and Richard?” Jolene asked Francine after Marilyn walked away. “Barbara said Marilyn’s bitchy.”
“Yeah. She was being a smartass, but she can bet I’ll never fling myself at Richard Peterson or any other man the way she does.”
Jolene patted Francine’s hand, tentatively as if uncertain as to the propriety of doing it and of her right to such intimacy. “I hope nothing has happened to . . . to break up you and Richard. He’s a really nice man, and I thought he liked you a lot.”
Francine wanted to wipe the tears that dripped down her insides, tears that she refused to let fall from her eyes. “Something
has
happened, Jolene. Last night when we spoke, I would have bet my life that he cared for me, and deeply, too. Tonight, he looked at me as if he’d never seen me before. Cold as ice. He’s hurt about something, and he ought to tell me.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
Francine sipped the cold coffee without tasting it. “I love him, Jolene, but I will never prostrate myself on the altar of love. To do that would only earn a man’s contempt.”
Jolene stared at her, obviously failing to understand. “But if he loves you—”
Francine interrupted her, already aware of Jolene’s deficiency at understanding human emotions . . . “If he doesn’t respect me, he can’t love me. Besides, I have to respect myself. If I’ve wronged him, he ought to tell me and give me a chance to explain.
“Love is fragile, Jolene. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so precious. I could stand on my head and dance naked in the town square, and he would still want to take me to bed, but the same act would make him stop loving me.”
Jolene nodded. “You mean a man can want sex with you and not care for you?”
Francine smothered a gasp. “Honey, men do that all the time. Some women also, but I think it’s less common among us.”
Jolene gave the appearance of one shrinking by inches. “I wish I knew what to do. I like Gregory, and he liked me until I messed up. Still, I wonder if he ever liked me as much as Harper did . . . does . . . I mean . . . I don’t know.”
“Jolene, when a man loves you, you’d know it if you were blind. And you feel it even if you don’t reciprocate it.”
“I mistook it for weakness on the man’s part, and I exploited it.”
“But you’re a different person now. You’ve learned from your mistakes, so stop whipping yourself.”
“Whipping myself? I deserve it. Less than a week ago, I came close to making a receptacle of myself again. That’s what mama said men use us for. When I thought I was using them, they were using me.”
Francine held up her right hand, as if to stop the flow of Jolene’s thoughts. “None of that.”
“Francine, I get so lonely sometimes for someone who cares about me. Anyone.”
Francine placed her cup in its saucer and prepared to terminate the conversation. “Get it into your head that love and sex are not the same thing.”
Jolene nodded. “You’ve been saying that all evening, and I hear you.”
 
 
They walked toward the doorway of the lounge together and, when they reached the water cooler, Jolene noticed that Francine glanced back toward Richard’s table and sucked in her breath. She wanted to console her friend, but she knew that Francine was tough enough to withstand the ravages of unrequited love.
I wish I was like her, and not so stupid about men. It’s been two weeks since Gregory called me, and even then, he didn’t say much. If she were in my place, Francine wouldn’t call him. I won’t either.
The next morning, she stepped on the bus seconds before its departure time. “You’re cutting it close, babe,” the driver said. “If you weren’t such a doll, I’d probably be blocks away from here right now.”
“You’re not due to leave until eight o’clock.”
“What’s two minutes? Make it worth my while, and I’ll wait for you till the St. Martin River runs backward.”
Jolene paused beside him, her heartbeat accelerating and her blood running hotter. She looked down at him and saw the naked lust in his grayish brown eyes. Saw it and identified it. Harper had never looked at her like that. Shocked at the revelation, she told her ego to take a seat and refused to let his comment faze her. Only a few weeks earlier she would have been flattered and, even now, she found it hard to ignore him. Perhaps if she told him what she thought of his comment, he’d stop playing with her.
“You’re full of it, Mister. Pick another target, because this one is moving on. All I want from you is a safe ride to and from Salisbury every day. That’s all you can do for me.” She didn’t wait for his response, but headed to the back of the bus, sat down and opened a copy of
Whatever It Takes
. Francine had given it to her at breakfast that morning and said it illustrated the differences between sex and love.
She ate lunch with Vida and another hairdresser, and it occurred to her for the first time that the women who worked in the beauty shop talked only of men and of their personal problems with them. But she didn’t feel like sharing her problems and concerns with her coworkers. Vida reported that, the previous Friday, she sued the father of her children for child support, and Gina had a domestic-violence suit pending against her husband. As Jolene journeyed home to Pike Hill that afternoon, she wondered about the wisdom of casting her lot with a man who, it appeared, you didn’t know until after you married him or began living with him. Maybe she wasn’t too badly off.
Jolene thought of getting off the bus at the stop near the hospital and spending a few minutes with Harper but, fearing that he might regard her as more than a friend, decided against it. As fate would have it, when she rounded the banister to go up the stairs, the Reverend Philip Coles emerged from the lounge hurriedly, bumped into Jolene and sent her sprawling.
“Oh, my! Jolene! I’m terribly sorry. Here, let me help you up.”
She shook off his hand and pulled herself up. “You must be in a heck of a hurry! Oh! Reverend Coles! I didn’t realize it was you.”
“Well, yes. I thought I’d drop over and check on Fannie. How are you getting along?”
“The same. I’m fine. This is my home now.” Her elbow hurt, but she didn’t imagine that telling him would make it feel better. “I have to go up to my room, but I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
When she came back downstairs and went into the lounge, where she expected to see the Reverend, she found Judd sitting alone. She accepted his offer of a glass of ginger ale and joined him. They spoke for a few minutes, and she settled into the comfort of Judd’s presence.
“Your job still working out all right?” he asked her. She nodded and told him she’d even had another raise. He leaned back in the rocker and rocked, and she figured he was leading up to something. “Seems like every couple of weeks, the Reverend favors us with his presence. I’ve been here almost twenty years, and the first nineteen of ’em he came here less than a dozen times, not even twice a year. Lately, he’s here every two or three weeks. ’Course I guess that makes Fannie happy.”
“Maybe so,” she said. “I never saw much of him in Hagerstown, since I didn’t have time to go to church.”
“Hmm.You seen Gregory lately? Away from the library, I mean.”
“No, I haven’t, but that’s all right, too. He’s just one man.”
Judd accelerated the rhythm of his rocking. “Atta girl! Now you’re thinking with a clear head.”
Coles entered the lounge, talking with Fannie and joined Judd and Jolene. She didn’t know what to say to the man. They’d never been on a chummy basis, and she wouldn’t discuss with a preacher her dilemma about men.
Judd rocked slowly. “What brings you back to us so soon, Rev.?” Judd asked Coles.
Reverend Coles cleared his throat. “Well, you know Fannie is my only living relative, and I also like to look in on Sara Jolene as often as possible. She’s a long way from my church’s jurisdiction, but I still think of her as my charge.”
Somehow, that didn’t ring true to her, but Jolene bit her tongue and kept the idea to herself. He’d never paid much attention to her when she was struggling beneath the weight of Emma Tilman’s obsessive meanness, and she’d bet her life that he knew about it. The whole town knew about her mother’s wrathful nature. Suddenly, she wanted Philip Coles to know that in spite of what she had experienced back in Hagerstown, she had made herself into a person of whom she was proud.
“I’m sorry we’re not working with the computer classes, tonight, Judd,” she said. “I miss them, but I suppose the children need a few days off during Thanksgiving week.”
Philip’s eyes gradually returned to their normal size, though he continued to stare at her. Judd seemed to relish explaining Jolene’s contribution to the Monday afternoon computer classes at the library, and she certainly enjoyed the minister’s reaction.
Later, sitting alone with Judd, Jolene said, “You appeared to be wiping his nose with that bit of information. As if you were giving him his comeuppance. Why? What’d he do to get on the wrong side of you?”
“Just m’ instincts getting a little overactive.”
After thinking about it for a minute, she dismissed the comment as another of Judd’s cryptic remarks. If he wanted to explain it, he would; if he didn’t there was no point in asking him. A few minutes before the time for supper, Richard walked into the lounge, though without his usual purposeful gait.
“How’re you doing, friend?” Judd asked him in a disinterested sort of way, as if he didn’t expect or didn’t want an answer.
“Nothing’s changed, Judd. How’s your back?”
“Better’n an old man should expect. You seen Francine?”
“Naah. Hi, Jolene. How’s it going?”
She understood at once that Judd and Richard would not discuss anything of importance to Richard while she sat there, and she wanted to leave them, but didn’t for fear of encountering Philip Coles and having to sit with him through supper. Finally, she bade them goodbye and went to her usual place between Joe Tucker and Louvenia Munroe at table two.
“I see we got company,” Joe said, nodding his head toward Philip Coles when she sat down. “Wonder why he started coming so often?”
“You mean Reverend Coles? Maybe he’s just lonely and likes to be with his sister.”
“You mean he doesn’t have a wife and children?”
Jolene jerked her right shoulder in a careless shrug. “As far as I know, he never got married.”
Joe leaned back in the ladder-back chair and looked at her. “Maybe he’s interested in you. He never showed up so regularly till you came here.”
“You’re way off. He’s known me since I was born. If that was the case, he’d have made a move years ago.”
“He’s not after Francine, or at least he needn’t be, and I don’t think Barbara’s met him. She only eats breakfast here; she’s at the movie theater every night.” He took a sip of water. “No point in trying to guess. He’s probably just lonely and visiting his sister like you said.”
Jolene had begun to enjoy sitting in the lounge after supper and chatting with the other boarders and disliked going to her room instead. So she forced herself to join Judd at his usual place, at the only rocker in the lounge.
“I wonder where Francine is tonight, Judd? I suppose Fannie knows, but if I ask her, she’ll think I’m prying in another boarder’s affairs. She wasn’t happy last night. Do you think she and Richard will make up?”
“Sure they will, as soon as they get over their stubbornness. I wouldn’t waste time worrying about those two. What’s with you and Gregory?”
She pulled air through her front teeth and rolled her eyes. “I have no idea, and not knowing won’t kill me. I didn’t appreciate him when I had the chance, and he’s unforgiving, I guess.” She saw Richard heading their way and moved her chair aside to give him a place.
“Does Marilyn plan a Thanksgiving dinner with a big turkey, pumpkin pie, and all that?” she asked Judd, mainly to be able to include Richard in their conversation.
“Would Marilyn miss a chance to show off?” Richard asked. Suddenly, his head spun around. “I’ll see you two later.”
BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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