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Authors: Gwynne Forster

When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance) (33 page)

BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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“Richard! Judd told me you’d gone for a walk. In this weather?”
For an answer, he lifted her and twirled her around. “You’re going to drive me loco,” he said, locked her body to his, and lowered his head. As far as he was concerned, anybody who wanted to could watch; his joy at having her unharmed, with him, and in his arms was so great that he didn’t care about convention.
“Hmm. The times are changing,” Fannie said, misquoting Bob Dylan.
“Not to worry,” Francine replied. “We’ll keep it between the lines.”
“Humph. Doesn’t look like it, but you make sure that our senior ladies, Miss Louvenia and Miss Arnetha, don’t give me a hard time about what this house is coming to. I remember how it was with me and my dear husband, God rest his soul. Too bad I couldn’t get something going between Jolene and Gregory Hicks. He’s such a fine man.”
Richard draped his right arm across Francine’s shoulder. “Fannie, these things work themselves out. Jolene will do just fine. She’s a very gifted, very attractive woman; in fact, she looks a lot like you.”
Fannie patted her hair. “You think so? In my younger days, I didn’t doff my cap to no woman.”
Well, well
, he said to himself.
When you lift the lid, there’s no telling what you’ll find
. To Fannie, he said, “You don’t have to do it now, either.”
Her smile eclipsed her whole face. “Oh, you go way from here, Richard Peterson. I do declare!” She rushed off, her color bright and her spirits high.
“She surprised me. I thought she’d start spouting one of her rules,” Richard said to Francine.
“I did, too, and if we took it any further, I expect she would. Did you find a place for us to stay in Miami?”
“I did, indeed, and the plane tickets are upstairs in my room. I couldn’t possibly overlook a thing like that.”
 
 
Jolene greeted Richard and Francine when she emerged from the lounge on her way to her room. “Hi, you two.”
“We didn’t get a chance to talk,” Richard said, “but I want to hear about that corner you turned. Perhaps we can speak tomorrow at breakfast.”
“I’ll get down here a little earlier,” she told him.
Maybe she should explain to Richard her rudeness to Philip Coles, but somehow she didn’t feel compelled to do it. The more she learned about people, the lower her estimation of the preacher became
.
Chapter Twelve
 
On her lunch hour the next day, Jolene bought a cell phone, and when she went to the library after work, she asked Richard to program it for her, explaining that she hadn’t had time to study the manual.
“Did you lose the one you had?”
“No. Gregory gave me that one when I first came to Pike Hill, and I’m giving it back to him tonight.”
Richard looked hard at her, but she was neither embarrassed nor inclined to protect Gregory. “Because he presumed too much, and it’s my way of straightening him out. I bought my own phone.”
“An angle of the corner you turned?”
She nodded. “Harper wants us to be friends. He leaves the hospital today, and he wants us to see each other.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Like . . . maybe I’ll finally have a normal relationship with a man. He’s—”
“Are you attracted to him?”
“Uh . . . the last two times I’ve been with him, things have been . . . he just sort of swept me away. Richard, he’s the one man I ever felt anything with, and he’s always been respectful, even when he told me he didn’t want any part of me.”
“You told me.” He handed her the cell phone. “Do you remember my saying you were pining for the wrong man?”
“Yes, but—”
“Open your eyes, Jolene. When a man cares for a woman, and if she’s available, he’s not likely to hide it. Will you be at the children’s class?”
“Of course.”
 
 
She stood at the door while the children filed in, addressing them by name and patting their shoulders, letting them know she was their friend as well as their disciplinarian.
“You’re doing a great job with these children,” Gregory said to her at the end of the class. “You make teaching them easy.”
Thank God, she didn’t need his compliments or his approval. “I respect them, and they know that,” she said, looking him in the eye. “Every human being deserves respect. Good night.” She left him standing there, and went to the reading room to find Judd. How sweet it was!
Before she could reach Judd, she felt the weight of Richard’s hand on her shoulder. “Gregory said he’d drive us home. Is that all right with you?”
“Rough as that wind is? Sure. And thanks, Richard.” She had done it. She had faced Gregory Hicks with her head high and her shoulders straight. “From now on, nobody’s dragging me down,” she said to herself. “Not even
me
.”
That resolve prevented her from rushing to her room after supper and telephoning Harper on her new cell phone. Instead, she joined Judd, Francine, and Richard for coffee and the chocolate fudge that Marilyn had announced would be served after supper. She didn’t talk but sat quietly and observed the interplay between Francine and Richard in an effort to learn how a woman behaved with a man.
They just act . . . normal-like
, she said to herself.
Natural, like they’ve always been together
.
“Jolene,” Fannie called. “Telephone.”
She told herself not to run. Maybe it wasn’t Harper, but her boss. She remembered that her boss never called her at home and knocked over a chair in her haste to get to the telephone, which hung in the hall across from the lounge. She didn’t want him to know how excited she was, how impatiently she’d waited for his call, so she took a second to catch her breath and slow down her heart beat. “Hello. This is Jolene.”
“Hi. This is Harper. I’m home, and I ought to have my car by the weekend. Will you go to a movie with me?”
She hadn’t expected that. So much activity days after his release from the hospital didn’t make sense to Jolene, and she indicated as much. “The weekend? Aren’t you pushing it?”
“No. My doctor said the sooner I get back to a normal life the better.”
Maybe her ship had come in, and she would have a normal life with another person. “Harper, I’d love to see a movie with you.” They talked for a while, and then she said, “I bought my phone today, and I enjoyed giving Gregory’s back to him.” She gave Harper the number. “You can call me on my cell phone now.”
“I will. I’m glad you did that, Jolene, and I’m glad we’re going to be friends.”
 
If the course of Jolene’s life had begun to run more smoothly—thanks to her determination to mend her ways, to give to others, and to be less concerned for what she received—Richard was about to fall from his newly-found paradise and out of his state of grace. He answered his cellular phone shortly before noon that Saturday, and the sound of Francine’s voice soothed his ears and warmed his heart.
“How’d you like to go to a showing of paintings by African-American artists? It’s in a gallery in Ocean Pines, and the three-ninety-five entry fee is on me.”
Laughter rumbled out of him, and he fell across his bed, relaxed and happy. “We’ll fight about who pays later. What time?” She told him. “Okay. Meet you downstairs in twenty minutes.”
He could barely control his feet. Maybe he would fly. In his life, he had never before had that sense of completeness, of total well-being, had never felt so suffused with joy as when he walked out of Thank the Lord Boarding House that morning with Francine’s hand wrapped in his. And for the first time, he knew that what he felt was mutual. He was in love, and he had a woman who cared for
him
—not for his status and looks—and wanted him to know it. Not even the crisp Albemarle breeze could chill him, warmed as he was by her loving presence. He smiled down at her.
A tall, elegant woman jumped out of a white Mercedes sedan and rushed up the walk toward them. “Richard,” she called, suddenly running to him as if he were alone. “Darling, I’ve spent the past two years trying to find you. I know I said it was just a momentary weakness of mine, but after what we shared, I could never sleep with my husband again.” The woman stopped talking and looked at Francine. He tried to remember who she was, what, if anything, had happened between them, and where he had known her. Francine’s hand slid out of his, and he had a sudden sensation of drowning.
“I’m sorry, madam, but I don’t recall meeting you.”
“Please,” she begged. “I’ve given up everything for you. Everything.”
“But I don’t know who you are, and I’m sorry that you came here . . . for nothing. I have never deliberately seduced a woman, so if anything did happen between us, you engineered it with no strings attached.”
He stepped back from her when she grabbed his sleeve. “I know, but I fell in love with you. It was at that conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Don’t you remember?”
He remembered the conference, but he couldn’t recall ever having seen her before. “I’m sorry, Fran . . .” He looked around, but Francine was nowhere to be seen.
“What are you trying to do to me?” he asked the woman. “Do you want to ruin my life?”
Her face crumpled into a palette of despair, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “That’s what you did to mine. I . . . I know I asked for it, but . . . C . . . can’t we talk?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry if you’re disappointed and upset, but I’d appreciate it if you would leave. Right now.”
She persisted. “I can’t. Not after all the time, energy and money I’ve spent looking for you. Not after I left my husband for you. The Jamaican ambassador gave me my first clue as to where you were. Please, can’t we talk?”
He was probably guilty, because he didn’t remember most of the women he’d taken to bed. He did know, though, that he hadn’t given her a reason to expect anything of him, for he’d never tricked a woman; that hadn’t been necessary.
He forced himself to speak gently. “I have bedded more women than the average man will meet, but I have never seduced one or given one a reason to believe she was more to me than a moment mutually shared. I’m in love with that woman who was with me, and you’ve probably screwed that up. So, we’re even. Good-bye.” She didn’t move. “Lady, please don’t force me to have you arrested for harassment.”
He watched as she turned, walked to the car with wooden steps and got in the backseat.
We’ve probably been cursed with the same disease: she with the idea that her money could buy anything she wanted, including me; and me with the notion that my status and physical attributes could get me whatever and whoever I wanted. We’ve both had our day of reckoning. He shook his head. But for me, it’s the second time around.
The rising wind gathered leaves, sticks and other debris and flung them around his ankles, while the cold air seeped into his body, replacing the warmth that—minutes earlier—had suffused and uplifted him. He went to his room, closed the door and fell across the bed. From heaven to hell in less than a minute. He put his cell phone on the little table beside his bed with no intention of using it to call Francine. When she left him, judging him without giving him a hearing, she told him what he needed to know. And what could he say? He’d never given a moment’s thought to the effect that his practiced, precision lovemaking had on a woman beyond her multiple orgasms that made him feel like a giant of a man. He had thought losing Estelle was his punishment.
But if he lost Francine . . .
At one o’clock that afternoon, two and a half hours later, Richard forced himself to get up and go to the dining room. He hurt as he’d never hurt before, but he could not allow himself to sink into the bowels of despair as he had done when he read of Estelle’s marriage.
“What you so somber about?” Judd asked Richard when he joined his friend at the table for lunch. “First, Francine flew past me looking like somebody had just stolen her birthright. Never saw a woman so angry. And now you mope in here like you’re about to face the executioner. What is—”
“Knock it off, Judd. I’m . . . Look, I’m sorry. Just when I had the world by the tail . . . Oh, hell! What’s the use?”
Judd’s boney arm rested on his shoulders in what he recognized as a gesture of comfort. “Can you talk about it, son?”
Judd cared deeply for him and wanted the best for him, but he didn’t want . . . A long breath swept out of him. “Judd, I thought I’d paid for my days as a player, but it looks as if I’ve just begun.” He told Judd about the woman whose uninvited passion drove Francine from him. “I don’t remember the woman, but I’ve had so many that I can’t say she lied. Now, Francine will walk. She will, and I’m in love with her.”
“Talk to her.”
“How? She walked off without asking me whether what the woman said was true and whether she was justified in tracking me down. What kind of loyalty is that?”
“Slow down. You’ve got no reason to be self-righteous. If you want her, you gotta work for her. No woman wants another one to claim her man.” Judd rubbed his chin and let a grin flash across his whiskered face. “I hope that woman wasn’t too good-looking.”
Richard smothered a whistle. “Man, she was a knockout!”
“That’s a pity.”
“I was gonna give you a crab salad for lunch,” Marilyn said to Richard, as she stood at the table smiling at her own cleverness. “But I noticed you looked the picture of gloom when you walked in here, so I made you a crab soufflé. Everybody else gets salad.”
He was too far down in the dumps to reject her kindness. “Do I have to share it with Judd?”
She patted the back of her hair and lowered her lashes. “His is in the oven.”
“Well, thank you for remembering that I’m alive,” Judd said.
She swished off, patting the old man’s shoulder as she went. “Don’t worry. I know there’re still red coals in your bones, Judd. I just don’t know how much trouble it would be to fan the flames.”
Richard’s eyebrows shot up above widened eyes, but Judd let out an enormous belly laugh. “I hate to let her know I think she’s funny,” Judd said. “Before long, she’ll be clowning on cue.”
Fannie joined them and stared at Richard’s plate. “ I thought we were having crab salad for lunch today. Before you know it, I’ll be working for Marilyn. That woman does as she pleases.”
Richard placed a hand lightly on Fannie’s arm. “Please don’t give her hell about this. She was being fresh as usual, but this stuff is so good that I’m glad to suffer her foolishness . . . for now, that is.”
BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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