Книга - Last Chance at Love

Last Chance at Love
Gwynne Forster


How Much Will She Risk For Love?Fired from her prestigious job, journalist Allison Wakefield is now working for a tabloid newspaper and she’s desperate to find a way to get her career back on track. Her new assignment, an explosive story involving mysterious bestselling author Jacob Covington, could be the answer. When Allison first encounters the author while visiting her aunt’s home on Idlewild Lake in Michigan, she realizes that Jacob is one subject she wouldn’t mind getting to know more intimately…But as they work side-by-side during Jacob’s book tour, Allison finds herself falling in love—and in a dilemma about what to do. The exposé is her ticket to success, but revealing the truth about Jacob’s past as a State Department undercover operative could jeopardize his career—and destroy a summer romance that holds the promise of a lifetime of happiness.







How Much Will She Risk For Love?

Fired from her prestigious job, journalist Allison Wakefield is now working for a tabloid newspaper, and she’s desperate to find a way to get her career back on track. Her new assignment, an explosive story involving mysterious bestselling author Jacob Covington, could be the answer. When Allison first encounters the author while visiting her aunt’s home on Idlewild Lake in Michigan, she realizes that Jacob is one subject she wouldn’t mind getting to know more intimately.…

But as they work side by side during Jacob’s book tour, Allison finds herself falling in love—and in a dilemma about what to do. The exposé is her ticket to success, but revealing the truth about Jacob’s past as a State Department undercover operative could jeopardize his career—and destroy a summer romance that holds the promise of a lifetime of happiness.


Last Chance at Love

Essence Bestselling Author

Gwynne Forster




www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Acknowledgments

To the memory of my beloved husband, Professor George Forster Acsadi, and to my stepson, Peter, who, in spite of the tremendous demands of his own profession, supported and relieved me during the difficult time of my husband’s illness.


Contents

Chapter 1 (#uf2580d8f-cb17-55c9-a2a3-9f105b6c7234)

Chapter 2 (#u4653ab12-8633-57d3-a482-ee3c02e22cf9)

Chapter 3 (#uc4ad2fc2-c805-555c-998a-fe2ccba5a7c4)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter 1

“I want you to bring me a day in the life of Jacob Covington. He’s hot copy and I want your story to sizzle.” It was an order, and Allison Wakefield knew that Bill Jenkins, editor of The Journal and her boss, meant what he said. The Journal was known for its titillating accounts of the lives of celebrities.

“You said you wanted a story on a typical day in his life. Are you telling me to dig into the man’s privacy, to snoop? I’m a reporter, Bill, not a private eye, and I’m not interested in digging up anybody’s skeletons.” She’d heard that careers were destroyed hourly in Washington, D.C., and after her own experience, she didn’t doubt it. She brushed her long brown fingers back and forth beneath her chin and straightened her shoulders.

“I can’t stoop to that, Bill. I won’t.”

He lifted his shoulders in what appeared to be a careless shrug. “You said you didn’t want any more assignments on the wives of visiting dignitaries; you wanted hard news. Well, this is your chance. You’re after a story, and whatever you find had better go in it.” He paused, allowing a grin to slide over his face. “But if you’re chicken...” He let the thought dangle, but she understood what he didn’t say.

“Refusing to muckrake is not the same as being cowardly.” She knew she should hold her tongue, because she didn’t want to leave The Journal until she had another job.

Oblivious to the implied insult, his gaze swept over her. “A reporter has to be tough, Allison. So get used to it. If you don’t, the job’s not for you. Bring me the story.”

Allison turned away from her editor without thanking him for the chance of a lifetime. She collected her briefcase and pocketbook from her office several doors away and walked out of the building. Pausing in front of the eight-story structure at Fourteenth and H Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C., she breathed deeply of the warm, late June air. She hadn’t regained her status as a top reporter, but she still had her soul. Maybe she should have shown some gratitude, but why thank him for the double-edged gift when she knew it could be her undoing?

Jacob Covington had an impeccable reputation, or at least that was the opinion of other reporters who had interviewed him since he’d become a bestselling author. Cut him to pieces? She knew her uneasiness was well founded; Bill Jenkins kept The Journal afloat with scandal, searing his subjects, and if she let him, he’d treat this story no differently; he wanted the dirt. Muckraking was what he expected, and she’d need all of her wits to circumvent him. Top-of-the-line editors didn’t hire reporters who built their reputations on sleazy copy, and she wanted another chance at working for one of the best newspapers. But she couldn’t do that until she erased that blot from her record. She meant to show her detractors that she could reestablish herself as a journalist, and she wouldn’t trash Jacob Covington’s reputation to do it.

* * *

Warren Jacob “Jake” Covington paused in front of his town house near the Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown and took a deep breath of warm, dry, early morning air, appreciating the unusually low humidity for the nation’s capital. Returning from the steaming tropics, the type of climate he least liked, he walked into his house and dropped his luggage at the closet door in his bedroom. After hanging up his jacket and kicking off his shoes, he stretched out on his bed and gloried in the feel of his own hard mattress under his back.

He had just completed his first trip for the department in four years, and the experience increased his appreciation for his current job as the department’s chief policy analyst. He wondered how he ever thought of his former job as an undercover agent as exciting and fascinating. He wanted no more of it.

An hour later, at the beginning of the working day, he reached for the phone on his night table and dialed his chief. “I got home an hour ago,” he said. As a policy, he didn’t identify himself over the phone. “We can’t expect success with the present strategy. I’ll have to come up with a better plan. I’ve got some ideas.”

“All right. Glad you’re back,” the chief said. “Get some rest and check in with me tomorrow morning.”

Jake stretched out again and grasped at sleep, only to have it elude him. As always, hours passed while he tried to climb down from the emotional high that consumed him when he was on a department mission. Long before he changed assignments, he had begun to tire of the ever-present danger and to want a home and family, something that he couldn’t contemplate as long as he held that post.

“We don’t have anyone else who can do this as well as you can and get back here safely,” his chief had said, trying as usual to inveigle him back into his former job. Well, if he got caught or died, they’d find someone else; he wasn’t indispensable. He had paid his dues, and he was out, a fact of which he intended to remind the chief as soon as he saw him.

* * *

Allison had never feared an assignment; indeed, the prospect of digging into a topic or an individual and finding something new and interesting always excited her. But she hadn’t worked for a newspaper that touted the sensational or for a boss who reveled in it.

Roaming around her small town house in Alexandria, she considered giving her boss an ultimatum: take her off that assignment or accept her resignation. But until Bill Jenkins hired her a month earlier, she hadn’t worked in eighteen months, had lived off her now-depleted savings.

I’ll write the story, but I won’t scandalize the man, and I won’t cover up for him, either. That’s a lesson I don’t have to learn again.

The muffled sound of the telephone interrupted her musings. “Hello? Auntie! How are you?”

“Lazy. I just caught a huge striped bass, and that set me to thinking about you. Fishing’s real good right now. You ought to come up here for a few days. It ought to be nice this weekend.”

Allison thought for a second. “You know...that’s not a bad idea. I’ll be starting a new assignment in a few days, and it wouldn’t hurt to rest up. I’ll fly to Reed City, pick up a rental car, and get to Idlewild around eight Friday evening.”

At exactly seven-thirty in the evening, Allison’s rented Toyota stopped in front of her aunt’s house, a yellow frame structure built in the 1920s, but renovated and well preserved. Frances Upshaw, tall and regal at eighty, rushed off the front porch to greet her niece who, along with Allison’s brother, Sydney, constituted the total of the family members that she cared about. She made it a point to tell her friends that the other members of her family were “too supercilious” for her taste.

“We’ve got another hour before dark,” she told Allison. “You’re just in time for us to get our supper. Mr. Hawks passed here a few minutes ago with a good dozen catfish and pike. They must be jumping.”

“Okay,” Allison said, hugging her aunt. “Let me put on some sneakers. I have to wear leather soles when I drive.”

She followed her aunt to the northern end of Little Idlewild Lake, baited her hook, and cast as far as she could.

“I’m getting rusty at this, Auntie.”

“No such thing. Child, I’ve been rusty for years, but not when I’m fishing.” Her laugh emphasized the insinuation. “When are you and Sydney going to settle down?”

Here it comes, she thought. “We’re settled, Auntie.”

“You know what I mean. Find yourself a— Oops! Will you look at what I got?” She reeled in a pike of about four pounds, the gleam of her white teeth expressing her pleasure as she put the fish in her basket. In less than half an hour, they had three fish each, enough for the weekend.

Around seven the next morning, Allison got her copy of Flying High, a folding chair, a big straw hat and dark glasses, and headed for the beach. As she sat facing Idlewild Lake and enjoying the crisp morning breeze, she thrilled at the thought that she could be sitting in the same spot where Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, or W.E.B. Du Bois once reclined. In its heyday, Idlewild, known as Black Eden, was famous as a black resort area, the first in the Midwest, attracting the most prominent black entertainers and scores of black intellectuals seeking a place to unwind.

Allison had often wondered how such a charming place with its winding roads, virgin forests, and beautiful lakes could have fallen into decline. She’d heard that integration made it redundant. She dug her bare toes into the powdered sand, leaned back, and opened her book. She liked being there alone when the birds chirped in the trees, a few people sailed on the lake, and a kind of peace flowed around her.

At the sound of a bird singing, she twisted around in the hope of getting a glimpse of it and gasped. Who was that giant of a man with a mouthwatering body rising from the lake like an amphibious Adonis, clad in only the tiniest of swimsuits? As he neared her, she lowered her glasses for a better look and could see the droplets of lake water on his flesh. Long, beautiful legs, tapered waist. Openly, she ogled the man, happy to acknowledge that example of God’s perfect handiwork. He didn’t glance her way, and she had never been happier to be ignored.

She returned her attention to her book, but the hero of Flying High took on the image of the handsome stranger, teasing and mocking her on every page. She closed the book and wondered about the identity of that spiritlike Adonis. Too bad, she would probably never see him again. Besides, he was probably married.

“Aunt Frances,” she said, “I saw a really tall man, maybe six feet five or six, on the beach. He had a tan complexion and black silky hair. I’d say he’s African-American with some Native American ancestors, and a knockout.”

“Well, well, hit you where you felt it, did he? Sorry, but he doesn’t live here in Idlewild. Must be a tourist. Why don’t you stay for the week? You might see him again.”

“Believe me, I’m tempted, but if I do that I’ll probably lose my job, and you know how long I’ve been trying to get one. I have to leave here Sunday noon.”

Frances rinsed her cup and saucer and rubbed her sides to dry her hands. “I’ll keep an eye out for him, and you know I’ll walk right up to him and ask him about himself. When you get to be my age, you can get away with anything.”

* * *

On Monday morning, Allison telephoned Jacob Covington. The deep baritone voice invited her to leave a message but, struck by the beauty of his voice, she merely stared at the receiver. Recovering quickly, she said, “Mr. Covington, this is Allison Wakefield of The Journal. My editor says you’ve agreed to give us a story. Please call me at your convenience.” She gave her phone number, hung up, and pondered her next move. Later, checking The Journal’s calendar of events for a potential story, as she regularly did, she noted Covington’s scheduled lecture that night at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Chapel. She’d be there.

* * *

Allison took an aisle seat on the first row and nearly sprang out of it when Jacob Covington strode to the rostrum. Her awareness of him as a man surprised and disconcerted her, as her gaze caught the big giant of a man, who looked directly at her with long-lashed hazel eyes. With so little space separating them, he had to see that a glance at him had left her disoriented, so that she responded to him as surely as flowers rise to greet the sun. At the end of his lecture, she hardly recalled the gist of his talk, so intent had she been on concealing her feminine reaction. She stood in line for an opportunity to speak with him and stared in disbelief when he looked beyond those closest to him in the line and let his gaze linger on her. Common sense told her that she should tell Bill Jenkins to give the assignment to another reporter.

“Hello.” The deep, sonorous voice curled around her, and the hazel eyes that punctuated the elegance of his rich, brown face seemed to look into her soul. Without thinking, she extended her hand. And he took it. Nobody had to tell her that, at that moment, she dealt with fate.

“Hello, Mr. Covington.” She managed to keep her tone cool. “I enjoyed your talk, but I have a business reason for wanting to meet you.”

His left eyebrow arched. Then he winked, bewitching her. “What kind of business?”

She handed him her card. “I’m the reporter Mr. Jenkins assigned for The Journal’s story on you.”

He looked at the card, then at her. “Your name’s not familiar.”

“I hope you don’t have a case of gender insensitivity.”

That wink, again. “Hardly. My concern is for competence and experience.”

With so much at stake, she couldn’t afford to show vexation. “And you can look at a reporter and know whether she’s competent?”

“There are still a lot of people behind you. If you’ll step aside, we can settle this later.” Settle it? How? This was her chance, and if he had thoughts of refusing her interviews, he could forget it. Right then, she had the upper hand, because he didn’t need bad press just as he was about to begin a national book tour.

“Suppose we walk out together,” he suggested when the last of his audience had left. “I agreed to be interviewed reluctantly, because my publisher thinks a story in The Journal will widen my readership, but I have to tell you I have misgivings. What kind of story are you planning?”

She noticed that he shortened his steps to accommodate her and wondered at his height. “A day in the life of Jacob Covington. What do you say?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “A working day in the life of Jacob Covington is what you’ll get. My private life is my business, so if you’ve got plans to start on the day of my birth, and not miss a second of my existence until the day before the story goes to press, forget about it.”

As they reached the door, she stopped walking and looked up at him. “I can write the story without a word from you, or I can do the decent, professional thing and interview you. I’m giving my boss a story one way or the other.”

His hazel eyes took on a glaze, and his stare might well have been a laser, slicing through her. “Has some of Bill Jenkins rubbed off on you? A story at any cost? Damn the individual; the public has a right to know?”

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.”

“That was you. This is me. Tell Justine I want some of Mattie’s stuffed roast loin of pork and lemon-roast potatoes. That woman can really cook.”

“That, she can. When are you leaving on your book tour?”

“Monday, but I’ll probably be back home on weekends.”

“I thought most book signings were held on weekends.”

“Or at lunchtime, like mine. Thanks for the workout, Dunc.”

“My pleasure.”

“The guy’s a lucky man,” Jake said to himself later as he stood beside his kitchen sink, eating a ham sandwich. “One long year of trouble, and then his ship came in. I should be so fortunate.”

* * *

“Covington goes on national tour pretty soon, and he’s agreed to let me accompany him,” Allison told her boss.

“Atta girl.”

Without commenting, she turned to her computer and began to sketch the questions that would guide her interviews with Jacob Covington. She worked on them until two o’clock, packed her briefcase, and headed for her home on Monroe Avenue in the outskirts of Alexandria, Virginia, en route to her other life. Her boss and her peers thought her tough, and she had developed a crust of self-protection against their slurs and slights, had hardened herself. But not even for the sake of her ambitions would she step on anyone for personal gain. Let them think whatever they like. She had their respect, and that was what she wanted.

Allison changed into casual clothes and prepared to enjoy the happiest two hours of her week. She parked in front of the two-story redbrick structure whose colonial front gave it the appearance of a gracious private home. Mother’s Rest was a temporary haven for eleven children under the age of two who were awaiting foster homes. A child rarely remained there more than six months.

Zena Carter, the head nurse, greeted Allison as she entered the house. “I’ve got a brand-new one for you today,” she said. “Cute little tyke, too. She’s in a fit of temper, and I sure hope you can calm her down.”

Allison followed Zena down the hall. “Is she sick?”

“Doctor said she wasn’t. Just hates yet another environment and more strangers, I guess. Your things are in there.”

Allison stepped into the little cubicle, washed her face and hands, put on a white gown, and covered her mouth with a small mask. She took the baby, and her little charge stared up at her with big brown eyes that beautified her dark face. How could anybody... Quickly, she put a stop to that train of thought. Hadn’t the social worker warned her not to judge the mothers or to become attached to any of the children? It was one thing to give that advice; as far as she was concerned, the ability to follow it required superhuman command of one’s emotions.

For two hours, she coddled, stroked, and chatted with the seven-month-old baby girl who, like the other babies there, was awaiting a foster home or an adoption. The child’s bubbly personality tore at her heart, and when she sang, the baby clapped her hands and tried to join her. The time passed too quickly. To avoid bonding, the volunteer mothers, as they were called, were not allowed to stay for more than two hours, nor could they visit with the same baby twice in one month. Her coworkers wouldn’t believe her capable of those gentle, tender moments with the children, and she didn’t want them to know. But the hours spent there nourished her for the rest of the week.

She walked out into the warm summer drizzle and raced half a block to her car, shielding her hair as the moisture rid it of its elegance, dampening her and shrinking her rayon shirt. At Matty’s Gourmet Shop, she bought her dinner and two boxes of Arlington Fair Blue Ribbon gingersnaps and went home with the intention of preparing for her interview with Jacob Covington. She answered the phone with reluctance.

“Yes?”

“Hi, Allison. Want to go to Blues Alley tonight?”

Of course she did. Connie knew she never got enough of good jazz. “I’m all set to work because I didn’t have other plans. But it’ll be a while before I can get back there, so why not? Who’s there?”

“Buddy Dee, and Mac Connelly is with him tonight.”

“No kidding? I’ll meet you there at quarter to eight.”

“I thought that would get your juices flowing. First one there takes a table. Say, I ran into Carly Thompson this morning. She’s here sealing a deal with Woodie’s to carry a full line of her Scarlet Woman Cosmetics. Can you beat that? The girl is gone.”

“She sure is. Last time we spoke, she said she had some hot irons in the fire, but I thought she was talking about a man.”

“She’s headed for Martha’s Vineyard,” Connie said, releasing a sigh of longing. “Wish I could go with her.”

“Me too, but I’ll settle for my new assignment. See you later.”

* * *

Jake dressed in the style associated with jazzmen of the thirties and forties, picked up his guitar, and headed for Blues Alley. Half a block from the club, he put on dark glasses to hide his telltale hazel eyes, conceal his wink, and complete his masquerade.

When that curtain rose, he was Mac Connelly. He wasn’t ashamed of what he did, but he couldn’t afford to have his name associated with the jazz subculture. If his association with the musicians was known, the reputation could deny him his coveted goal of an appointment as scholar-in-residence at his alma mater. Furthermore, his boss at the department had warned him that, on a nightclub bandstand, he was a sitting duck for the enemies he had incurred in his former work, and the bullet wound in his left shoulder was a testimonial to his boss’s wisdom. He’d taken that bullet three blocks from the department, proof at that time—if he needed any—that his enemies knew where to find him.

When the lights came up, he was already seated, tuning his guitar and waiting for the six other band members to walk onstage. His blood accelerated its pace through his veins the minute he heard Buddy’s downbeat. As usual, the dance of his magic fingers up and down the strings brought cries of “Right on, Mac”, “Kill it, man” and “Take it on home, baby” from his devoted fans. And as they did whenever he played, the crowd clamored for his rendition of “Back Home in Indiana,” his signature piece.

The third and last set ended too quickly. As always, he remained seated while the band took a bow and the lights dimmed. Still high from total immersion in his music, he picked up the glass of iced tea that he’d placed on the floor beside him to resemble liquor, emptied it, and ducked out back. He’d had a ball, but uneasiness pervaded him because, unlikely as it seemed, he was fairly certain that Allison Wakefield had been in the audience. Allison wore her hair up, and this woman’s hair hung around her shoulders, but an African-American woman with big, almond-shaped brown eyes and long sweeping lashes in a flawless, oval-shaped ebony face was not the most common sight. Besides, he not only had the facial similarity for a clue, his reaction to the woman was similar to what he felt when he first saw Allison. He’d thought her the Bach fugue type; it wouldn’t have occurred to him that she’d pay to hear jazz.

He took every conceivable precaution to conceal his identity at the club, including never being seen standing, since his six-feet-five-and-a-half-inch height and 215-pound weight might give him away. His music was his life, and he cherished those few hours on Friday and Saturday nights with Buddy Dee’s band. He’d have to watch his every move, because a reporter could damage him almost irreparably.

* * *

“He got away again,” Allison grumbled to Connie, as they waited outside the club.

Connie scrutinized Allison’s face. “Are you sweet on Mac?”

Allison glared at her. “Of course not. With those black glasses, I don’t even know what he looked like. But pins and needles shoot all through me when that man plays, and he sits there, in his element. He’s so mysterious.”

Connie’s shoulders lifted in a quick shrug. “You reporters are all alike. You have to know everything. It’s a wonder you don’t walk up to the man and interrogate him.”

“Can you see anybody intimidating that big guy?”

“Yeah. You might not try to browbeat him, but you’d dig into his business just to talk to him. He’s your type.”

“My type?”

“Sure he is. You like a man who’s four or five inches taller than your five feet nine, and you could really luxuriate and feel tiny with this guy. He must be near six feet six. Of course, I’m just guessing; he’s always sitting down.”

“Yeah, he is,” Allison replied, bemused. He’d already taken his seat when the lights went up and remained sitting after they went down, while other band members walked in and out in full view of the audience. She could only conclude that he had a disability. Maybe he couldn’t walk. She dismissed the matter with a shrug. It was of no import. A jazz musician would be the last man who’d interest her.

She put on her Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong CDs as soon as she got home and sang along with them while she sorted out her clothes for the tour. With gentle strokes, her fingers brushed the once-yellow leather rose that had long since turned brown from her loving caresses. Half a dozen times, she’d thrown it into the wastebasket, only to retrieve it and return it to her little collection of treasures—the green quilted silk box in which she kept her first bra, the lace handkerchief she’d carried to her freshman high school prom, the empty perfume bottle that had held the first gift she received from a man. The yellow rose had nestled in the elegant bow on the box in which the perfume had been wrapped. Edna Wakefield hadn’t approved of a deliveryman for her daughter, and she’d let him go. But unlike opportunistic Roland Farr—her betrayer—that man had loved her, she now knew.

What of Mac Connelly? She couldn’t get him out of her mind. Tonight, she’d sensed in him a peculiarly erotic aura that she hadn’t detected the many other nights she’d seen him play. As she watched his fingers tease those strings, an unfamiliar heat had pulsated in her. A laugh rumbled in her throat. First Jacob Covington had poleaxed her, and now this. No doubt about it; she was a late bloomer.

* * *

Early Sunday afternoon, two days later, as Allison stepped out of her Jacuzzi, she heard Covington’s voice on her answering machine, interrupted it, and took the call.

“Don’t forget that our flight leaves at eight tomorrow morning, Allison. We might as well use first names. I’m called Jake. As I was saying, please be on time. I have a ten o’clock appointment, and I don’t want to miss that plane.”

As soon as her heartbeat returned to normal, she summoned her most professional demeanor. “Mr. Covington, I’m assuming that you don’t make these statements because you want to rile me, but because you’re deficient in the art of conversation. I will be on time, dear, and I will wash behind my ears before I leave home.” His uproarious laughter cooled her temper, and she vowed not to react negatively to every one of his incautious remarks.

“Did anybody ever try to blunt that sharp tongue of yours?”

“Now, you...” she began, remembered her counsel of seconds earlier, and stopped. “Jake, do you think we automatically rub each other the wrong way?”

That deep, dark, sexy laugh again. “I think we rub each other, but I’d be the last one to suggest it’s the wrong way. Rubbing with you gives me a good feeling.”

“Well, it irritates me,” she huffed.

“In what way? I’d be happy to soothe whatever I irritate. Just let me know what I’ve...uh...inflamed, and I’ll gladly cool it off.” His laugher caressed her. Warmed her. If she didn’t watch out, she could find herself enamored of... Was she out of her mind?

“I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that you can keep your thoughts to yourself.”

“It has, but doing that wouldn’t be fun.”

She could imagine that a grin covered his face. “You’re not going to tease me into letting you trap me with innuendos. I’m onto you. Aren’t you ever serious?”

“I’m always serious,” he shot back, “but I’m not a rash man. If I told you in plain English what’s on my mind, I could damage our relationship. I don’t want that.”

She wondered if her nerves would riot. After that comment, he might as well dump it out, but she refrained from saying it. “Thanks for being circumspect,” she replied instead, and she did appreciate it. “Having to suffer my boss’s coarseness is a big enough price for getting ahead in this business.”

“I can well imagine that. See you at eight in the morning.” As though he’d received an unpleasant reminder, his manner changed when she mentioned Bill Jenkins. Who could blame him? She told him goodbye, dressed quickly, and made her way to Mother’s Rest.

* * *

Allison took Leda from the nurse, looked into the child’s sad face, and told herself that, if she were ever fortunate enough to have one of her own, she’d love it so much that it would bubble with joy all the time.

“Leda,” she cooed to the solemn little girl, “smile for me.” She sang “Summertime” and was rewarded with the baby’s rapt attention. She cuddled Leda to her breast and paced the colorful, well-lighted room, singing as she did so. Leda quickly learned that a smile brought another chorus and, when the two hours had passed, Allison surmised that she had sung the famous song well over a dozen times. The nurses let her stay beyond the allotted two hours because the child fretted when she attempted to leave. Finally she managed to sing her to sleep, but for the first time, pangs of separation after leaving one of the children tore at her, and she vowed to have some of her own. But when?

She got home, saw the house’s dark windows, and realized she’d forgotten to set her automatic timer. She searched for the small flashlight that she always carried in her pocketbook, found it, and opened the door.

After sleeping fitfully that night, she arose before daylight, dressed in leisure, and stood leaning against the check-in counter for the Delta Air Lines Washington to New York flight when Jake Covington got there. Captivated, she watched him approach her, his gait loose and his stride lazy. Suggestive. He walked up to her and grinned. Then he winked. Unaccustomed to a promiscuous onslaught of desire for a man, she had to battle the frissons of heat that swirled within her, unsettling her. Six weeks of him could be her undoing.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, replacing the smile with a look of genuine concern.

She wasn’t so foolish as to tell him what seeing him had done to her. She turned to the ticket agent and handed him her credit card. “New York. One way, please.”

* * *

They took their seats in business class, and Allison immediately opened a newspaper, but Jake couldn’t resist closing the paper and relaxed when her inquiring look bore no censorship.

“I want us to get along well, Allison,” he began. “I grew up in a peaceful, loving family, and I’ve accepted that as the kind of life I need. I do not allow myself to spend a lot of time with contentious people. If you can’t stand my company, I’d rather we called this off before the plane leaves the gate.”

“I’m a little unsettled. It’ll pass over, I hope. In any case, Jake, contentiousness is not part of my disposition, so if that’s what you detect, you probably precipitated it.”

He ignored the remark. “What happened to you back there?” Whatever it was, it had plowed right through him. Oddly, he didn’t expect an explanation, because the incident had the appearance of spontaneity, a phenomenon unto itself and of its own power, so her answer held no surprise.

“I wish I knew. Don’t worry, though; I’m fine.”

He let his hand touch the side of hers; he couldn’t help it. Something in her called out to him, sparked a need in him, and it wasn’t one-sided. He knew she’d deny it, but there it was. She reacted to him exactly as he responded to her, and though he wasn’t anxious for them to get involved, he knew from experience that when nature decided to take a hand in such things, it didn’t ask permission. So he told himself he’d better take his mind off the matter, because the more he thought about her, the more she intrigued him. When the odor of fresh, perking coffee wafted into the cabin, he inhaled deeply, savoring its aroma, grateful that it overrode Allison’s tantalizing scent.

“I’d like some coffee. Sugar and cream,” he told the flight attendant.

Allison asked for plain black coffee and didn’t reply when he commented, “Unadorned, huh?”

She also hadn’t moved her hand from beside his fingers. What was he supposed to make of that?

Trying for a reaction, he teased, “Scared of gaining weight? From where I sit, you’re perfect.” He wouldn’t have thought that a simple blush could give him so much pleasure, but he relished the sight of her embarrassment as evidence that his compliment pleased her.

He sensed her uneasiness, too, but he didn’t think she’d want to be questioned about it, so he opted for impersonal conversation. “My network appearances will be taped at seven-thirty in the mornings and aired at nine-thirty,” he said, “and I have to be there an hour early. You want to go with me, or would you rather—”

That did it; immediately she removed her hand. “You’re not losing me, Mr. Covington, so please don’t try it. If I had wanted to watch you on television, I could have stayed home and done so in the comfort of my bedroom.”

His left hand went to his forehead. How did a man deal with such suspicions? He decided to ask her.

“Do you distrust everybody? Or just me? Allison, I cannot and I will not spend the next six weeks tiptoeing around your tender feelings.”

He watched her lift her chin in a display of aristocratic disdain. For heaven’s sake, not a stuffed shirt, he said to himself.

“My feelings are not tender,” she corrected him. “I want to make it clear that I won’t let anything or anybody prevent my carrying out this assignment, and that includes you.” Tired of hassling when he wanted to be gracious, he resorted to silence.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she said after a time. “I’m not usually so touchy, but you seem to... I don’t know... I haven’t been my best self this morning.”

He rewarded her with an obliging smile, though it wasn’t what he felt. She’d glanced up at him for his reaction, and he’d smiled because she needed to be absolved.

* * *

Allison hadn’t considered that the simple business of registering at their hotel could prove embarrassing. After determining that they really did want separate rooms, the Drake Hotel registration clerk asked if they were traveling together. Jake said no, but she said yes, not realizing that they were being asked if they wanted adjoining rooms with a door that opened between them.

“Which is it?” the clerk asked. Heat singed her face when Jake replied that they didn’t want to be together. Flustered, she looked everywhere but at him and cringed before the clerk’s knowing gaze. She’d rather neither of them had known that she’d never checked into a hotel in the company of a man, not that it was their business.

“I’ll be ready in twenty minutes,” he said when she walked out of the elevator. “Can you make that? We’re going first to my publisher, then lunch, after which I sign at Barnes and Noble. Okay?”

She nodded. It was one thing to be attracted to him, but if she wasn’t careful she’d like him more than was healthy. Her reaction to him in the Washington Airport had distressed her, and when he’d sensed her unease and almost covered her hand with his, he’d told her more about himself than she needed to know right then. She changed into a burnt-orange suit and brown accessories, refreshed her makeup, and met him in the lobby with minutes to spare. His smile of approval had nothing to do with business and everything to do with a man liking the looks of the woman who approached him.

He held the taxi door for her and took his seat beside her. “I may not be in this evening, Allison; bright lights hold a lot of fascination for a country boy.”

She turned her body fully to face him. “Did you say you’re a country boy?”

“Surprised?”

She nodded. “I am, indeed.”

He winked. Voluntarily or not, she couldn’t tell. “Yep. I was born in Reed Hollow, Maryland, about a mile from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. I was wondering when you’d get around to asking. Couldn’t be that you intend to stick to my present daytime activities, as you promised?”

She glanced down at her long, perfectly manicured fingers. “As a man of the world, you ought to know the folly of whetting a reporter’s appetite. The obvious is far less interesting than that which is obscure or hidden.”

She felt the tension in him, as one feels a speeding object just before it hits, and wondered at his anxiety. “Don’t get antsy. I promise to write nothing but the truth.” She watched in astonishment as he withdrew.

“Another person’s truth isn’t necessarily yours to tell. A man’s privacy is sacred.”

She refused to give quarter. “Public figures have to forgo some of their cherished privacy.”

He eased into the corner, away from her. “And the public has a right to know, damn the individual and what disclosure does to him. Right?”

Stunned, her breath lodged in her throat, and she stared at him. When she regained her equilibrium, she told him, “I’m not a monster, and I never write lies. Never.”

But her words evidently didn’t placate him, for he stared straight ahead, his expression grim. “That’s more than I’ve come to expect from reporters. Some of you can twist the truth to the point that...that love of country seems like a crime. I want to see your text as you go along, and if at any point it’s out of line, this deal is off.”

“In your dreams, mister,” she sputtered. “Not even my editor sees my copy until I’ve finished it.”

“We’ll see about that” was his dark reply.

Allison figured she’d better check in with her boss, though as always she dreaded talking with him.

“Jenkins.”

“Just checking in, Bill. We’re at the Drake.”

“We? Now you’re talking. Squeeze everything out of him. I’ve never yet seen a man that couldn’t be had if a woman played her cards right.”

She swallowed hard. Didn’t he ever elevate his mind? “I called to let you know where I am. My room number is eleven-B, and I believe Mr. Covington is in sixteen-H.”

She imagined his look of incredulity when he said, “You’re joking. I gave you credit for more than that.”

“I hope I didn’t misunderstand what you said, Bill.”

His snort reached her through the wires. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m in the business of scooping other papers. Play it any way you choose. Just bring me a good story, and if you find out that the guy smokes opium or sniffs coke, it had better be in your story.”

She didn’t know why she laughed, because his words hadn’t amused her. When she could control it, she asked him, “Have you ever met Jacob Covington?”

“No, and never wanted to. Why?”

“He’s a gentleman. If he’d heard your reaction to our room arrangements, he’d probably cancel this deal; he doesn’t trust The Journal. If you want this story, you’d better ease up and let me handle it my way.”

His long silence told volumes, but she waited. “I’ve been in this business thirty years,” he said at last, “and you’re a lamb born yesterday, but you know it better. Do what you please, but you get me that story just like I want it.”

A sense of foreboding seeped through her, and she wished she hadn’t called him.

While Jake met privately with his editor, Allison reviewed her notes in the publishing company’s waiting room. Keeping her mind on her work proved difficult; the friction between Jake and herself worried her because she sensed that they had on their hands an attraction that could erupt into full-blown passion. And she didn’t want that, at least not until she’d turned in her story. It was never far from her thoughts that she’d lost her first job because she’d fallen for Roland Farr, on whom she’d been assigned to write a story. She hoped Jacob Covington didn’t have any secrets and that, if he did, she didn’t find out about them, because whatever she discovered was going in that story. After covering for Farr, a gesture that had almost ruined her life, she had learned a painful lesson.


Chapter 2

Allison watched Jake fold his papers and prepare to leave the store after the first book signing. “You certainly know how to work a crowd,” she told him. “I never saw so much easy charm in my life. How could you smile nonstop for three hours?”

She supposed it was human to appreciate compliments, but his broad grin and warm flush suggested that her remark meant more to him than she’d anticipated.

“When people say nice things to me, I’m a sweetheart,” he offered in an apparent attempt to cover his embarrassment. Then he winked, not once but twice. “A real pussycat. Try me; you’ll like me.”

She had to laugh. This man had many sides to his personality, and every element of it fascinated her. “Try to stay humble, Jake,” she teased. “It won’t be easy, I know, with hundreds of women lining up for a glimpse of you and the chance to own your unreadable signature. But try. Otherwise, you might sail right up into the clouds, and I’ll be unable to reach you.”

This won’t be easy, she cautioned herself, as he continued to smile with hazel eyes that gleamed with pleasure. Worse still, she had to finesse his mesmerizing gaze while the scent of his tangy cologne teased her nostrils. Well, she was a big girl; she’d just make herself ignore it. Fat chance. Could that wink possibly be beyond his control, as he’d said? Built-in sex appeal, she thought, when he winked twice—a half smile playing around his full bottom lip, reinforcing his impact.

“You can reach me anytime you want to,” he assured her, responding to her comment. “And if you think you’re having problems finding me, just let me know and I’ll tell you exactly how to get to me. Come to think of it, you don’t need any advice about that.”

Her gaze took in his rough masculinity, set off with those mesmerizing eyes, rich tan skin, and thick black wavy hair. She feigned displeasure.

“Don’t you ever stick to the subject? No matter what I say, you manage to give it a double meaning.”

His left shoulder lifted quickly, as though by reflex. “I got where I am by taking advantage of every opportunity, and I haven’t found a reason to break the habit.” He stared directly into her face. “Oh, yes. And you’ll find that I’m a patient man. I’m willing to wait for what I want, but that doesn’t mean I’m not busy ensuring that I get it. If you’re ready, we can leave.”

He’d just given notice that he controlled his life and a good deal of what happened to him, and he’d apparently had more success at that than she’d had. She looked around, glad for the opportunity to release herself from his gaze.

“Let me get that bag of books I bought,” she said. “They’re behind the counter over there.”

The light pressure of his fingers on her arms sent heat spiraling through her body. God help her if she was going to react that way every time he touched her.

“I’ll get them,” he said, and left before she could reply.

“How many did you buy, a hundred?” he asked as he walked back to her with the bag. She reached for it, but he added her laptop computer to his burden and started off.

“Wait a minute. I can carry my stuff,” she called after him. He was not going to treat her as if she were helpless.

He stopped, turned, and looked at her, an expression of incredulity masking his face. “Allison, if you think I’m going to walk up Madison Avenue with a woman who’s struggling under thirty or forty pounds of whatever, while I carry my four-pound briefcase, you’re a few bricks short of a full load. Please be reasonable.”

“I’m not going to let you treat me as though I’m an incompetent little something or other. Hand me my things, please.”

He smiled in that special way of his that seemed to bless everything around him. “You have to realize that my father didn’t let my mother lift anything heavy, and he taught me to be protective of her and all other women. I can’t ignore my upbringing just because you’re out to prove you’re the equal of, or better than, any of The Journal’s other reporters. I’m carrying this stuff, and if you don’t like that, next time don’t bring it. What do you say?”

“Okay.” She said it grudgingly. “But I like bossy people about as well as you like contentious ones. And you don’t have to make such a big thing out of this, either. I wouldn’t want you to disobey your parents.”

“What?” His deep laughter rolled with merriment. She loved the sound of it, and if she knew how, she’d keep him laughing.

“I’m thirty-five years old,” he reminded her, “and at this age, I obey selectively. Does this mean you’re going to stop bickering with me and let us be friends?” The gleam in his eyes told her she’d be foolish to react, that he had her number and needled her out of devilment.

She laughed, though she was less assured than her manner suggested. “Bees will stop stinging long before we get chummy, pal.” If only she could be sure of it.

His gaze sauntered over her but, apparently not satisfied that his eyes had telegraphed his message, he told her, “Lie to the world if you must, but tell yourself the unvarnished truth. Self-deception can be dangerous.”

“I certainly hope you’re not speaking from experience,” she replied. But he’d come close to her vulnerable spot, and flippancy wasn’t what she felt, as the memory of Roland Farr’s cunning floated back to her.

In her room, she got a handful of gingersnaps and crawled into bed with Jake’s book, For the Sake of Diplomacy, hoping to find something of the man in his work. She didn’t relish the idea that her interest in him might exceed the professional preoccupation that she normally brought to her work and hoped she hadn’t set a trap for herself. Words danced before her in black-and-white confusion, challenging her to concentrate. When Jacob Covington’s face appeared among the tangled alphabets, she closed the book.

* * *

He’d been ungracious in not asking if she’d like company, Jake decided, and rang her room. “I forgot to ask whether you have friends here, Allison. I’d hate to think of your not taking advantage of this great town. So if you won’t be busy this evening, how about spending a couple of hours with me?”

“Sure. What will we do?”

He welcomed her honest, straightforward answer, because he disliked women who played games with him. She had nothing planned and didn’t pretend that she did have.

“After we eat, we can take in a show, go to one of the jazz clubs in the Village, watch the skaters in Rockefeller Plaza, whatever. Depends on how you want to dress.”

“I vote for food and skaters,” she said, causing him to wonder why she hadn’t suggested the music. He’d been certain she’d choose the jazz, and he’d have proof that he had indeed seen her at Blues Alley, but he didn’t exclude the possibility that her choice could be a ruse.

He hung up, made dinner reservations at a small West Side restaurant, and remembered to call his mother.

“I’ll be down there in a couple of weeks,” he told Annie Covington.

She’d be glad to see him, she said and then voiced what he knew was her real concern. “Son, have you found a nice girl? I hate to think of you always by yourself.”

“Not yet. You’ll be the first to know.” He wanted to get off the subject, because she wouldn’t hesitate to complain about the grandchildren he hadn’t given her.

“Married men live longer than loners,” she warned. “And don’t let your success keep you out of church, Jake; it’s prayers that got you where you are.”

“Plus hard work and my parents’ support,” he said, gave her his phone number, and added, “Don’t forget to keep my itinerary posted on your refrigerator, in the bathroom, and beside your bed.”

Her hearty laugh always filled him with joy, reminding him that she no longer struggled in abject poverty because he made certain that she had every modern home convenience, more money that she could use, and that she worked only if she wanted to.

“That falls pretty easily off your tongue,” she told him. “But don’t you forget that for the first forty-five years of my life—the refrigerator was a zinc tub filled with ice when we could get it, the bathroom was wherever you set yourself down, and the bed had to be moved when it rained. You send me more money every month than I used to make in a year. Your father would be proud of you, son.”

“Thanks, Mom. Tune in to NBC tomorrow evening between seven and nine.”

* * *

If Jake needed grounding, he could trust his mother to keep him in touch with the good earth, and later that evening he had cause to appreciate this. While still a child, Jake had learned tolerance. He’d discovered early that his size invited challenges from the tough boys in his school and even some of his teachers. The experiences had shaped his personality and taught him the wisdom of soft-spoken, nonthreatening manners. Gentleness came naturally, but it threatened to abandon him when the maître d’ at Dino’s rushed forward to assist Allison as though she were unescorted. He liked to know that other men found the woman in his company interesting, but when one after the other stared beagle-eyed at Allison, his temper began a rare ascent. Quickly, he clamped down on it.

She was seated at the small table for two, and he observed her closely. Jet-black hair cascaded around her shoulders, setting off her smooth ebony complexion and large dreamy eyes that promised a man everything. Her simple red dress heightened the beauty before him; and though she seemed unaware of it, she’d captured the attention of nearly every man present. He smiled to himself; at least he wasn’t the guy on the outside. He was about to remark that he liked her hair down, when it hit him that it was indeed she who he had seen in Blues Alley.

Watch it, Jake. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt the need to give himself that lecture. “You’re different with your hair down, softer and—”

“Approachable?”

She had more red flags than anybody he knew. “I was going to say vulnerable, but you wouldn’t like that either, would you? Let’s be friends for tonight and leave aside the one-upmanship, shall we?” He glanced up from his menu for a look at the smoke he expected to see, but to his surprise, he caught her in an unguarded moment, her vulnerability unsheltered. He folded the menu and put it on the table. She might make him eat the words, but he had to say them.

“You’re so beautiful. Lovely. I’d give anything if we’d met under more favorable circumstances.”

“Thank you...I think. We’re going to keep our relationship a business one, Jake. No one knows better than I the folly of doing otherwise.”

He took a few seconds to ponder what she’d revealed. “Nothing’s going to happen that we don’t want to happen. So, there’s no point in losing sleep over it.”

They gave their orders and ate in silence, each aware that he’d admitted the possibility of their becoming involved emotionally and that she hadn’t denied it.

Her gaze followed his hand as he brushed aside the black strands that hung over his eyes. “That’s the second time you’ve alluded to that,” she said as her soft musical lilt caressed him and he thought he heard a tone of resignation in her voice.

“Probably won’t be the last time, either. But, as I said, you’ve nothing to fear from me.” Her broad smile sent his heart into a tailspin, and he wondered, not for the first time, whether he shouldn’t cancel his agreement with The Journal. And with her. He aimed to find a caring woman who radiated peace, and that ruled out the contentious female before him.

They finished what he considered an average meal and he fished in his pocket for a credit card. “Do you have any pets?” he heard himself ask.

She knitted her eyebrows and shrugged her left shoulder, a habit that seemed like a protective reflex. “I have a one-eyed goose that follows me around, but she’s mean. When I don’t give her the attention she wants, she attacks me.”

He stared in disbelief. “You’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “Definitely not. I wear a lot of goose-inflicted scars as proof of her devotion.”

He grinned at the picture floating through his mind. “A half-blind goose that gets temperamental and turns on you. I’ll be doggoned.” Standing, he held out his hand to her, and after seconds of hesitation, she took it. Sensations raced from his fingertips to his armpits, and he knew he’d erred.

“What about the bill? I’m on an expense account, too, Jake.”

“I was raised—”

She groaned. “Don’t bother; I know the rest. And since I was taught not to draw public attention to myself, I’ll let it slide. For now.”

They walked toward Rockefeller Center, and he couldn’t help marveling at the change in her. She exuded youthful joy, unconsciously seducing him, alerting him to the softer, gentler woman who he suspected lived somewhere inside her and whom he’d like to know better.

* * *

Here and there in the crisp, calm night, Christmas lights still twinkled from trees that had been decorated with them almost a year earlier; a horn blared its impatience and a hundred others replied; a tall man wearing a white sheet draped over his body strolled along with a python slung around his neck and a sign in his hand that proclaimed The End Has Come and Gone; This is Forever. Why had she never noticed that walking along a street could be such an exhilarating experience? Allison wanted to laugh aloud at the shocked expression on a woman’s face when, thinking her a beggar, she reached into her coat pocket for one of the dollar bills that she’d put there for the beggars she met and handed it to the woman. The bizarrely dressed woman had stood with one empty hand outstretched while the woman beside her proffered a flier. When she and Jake stopped for the corner light, Allison glanced at the flier, saw an advertisement for a triple-X-rated show, and let the laughter that bubbled up in her throat have its way.

She’d barely recovered from her mistake when a painted man on stilts grinned down at her and said, “Hello, lovely thing. Come fly with me.”

Caught up in the fun, she surprised herself by answering, “Sorry. I forgot to bring along my wings.” She couldn’t refrain from laughing as he strutted on his way.

Jake’s fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around her arm, and she glanced up to see a smile aglow on his face. An intimate smile, not the studied brightness that he wore for his public. A pervasive contentment enveloped her, but when her mind warned of danger, she tried without success to push back the feeling. She’d traveled that road before, and she knew she’d better dispel the sense of rightness that being with this stranger, a business associate, gave her.

* * *

“What is it, Allison? Am I losing you already?” Jake asked her, resisting the temptation to sling his arm around her waist.

“Not...not really,” she said with seeming reluctance, and he knew he’d disconcerted her; she wouldn’t want him to understand her so well. Her unexpected feminine softness reached the man in him, and against his better judgment, he took her hand in his and clasped it tightly as they walked along Forty-ninth Street. At the Plaza in Rockefeller Center, they gazed at the flags of all nations, the chrysanthemums, lilies, and shrubs, and the crowds—people from all over the world—that milled around looking for something to happen.

“Oh, Jake,” she said, her voice warm with enthusiasm, “this is the first time I’ve seen Rockefeller Plaza at night with the lights and flags. It’s...like a fairyland. Gee, I wish I had my camera. Listen! That’s Gershwin’s ‘Love Walked In.’ Where’s it coming from? This is wonderful.”

She didn’t resist when he pulled her closer. But she’ll probably go into a rage if I try this tomorrow morning, he cautioned himself. The gaiety and childlike stars in her eyes played like tiny fingers on his heartstrings. Squeezing. Tugging. He gazed down at her, thinking of the change she’d undergone since they left the restaurant. How could a person have two such distinct personalities? “Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do in New York and haven’t done?” he asked her.

“Ride through Central Park in a hansom,” she blurted out. “I always dreamed of doing that, but...” To his amazement, she appeared shy. Was this the same woman with whom he had ridden up from Washington that morning? He could hardly believed what he saw.

“But what?” he prompted.

“I don’t...” She tugged at his arm. “Say, wasn’t that guy sitting diagonally across from our table back there in the restaurant?”

Jake controlled the impulse to whirl around and look at the man. “What guy?” he asked with all the nonchalance he could muster. “Where?” From the corner of his eye, he followed the direction of her gaze, but didn’t see anyone he recognized.

“The one who’s leaning against the railing just beside the stairs going down to the rink.”

He didn’t turn his head; best to let the man think he hadn’t been noticed. “What makes you so sure he’s the same fellow?” he asked her, knowing she’d give him the man’s description.

“Same gray suit, green-and-red tie and handkerchief, and the same dark, bushy eyebrows. Also, he finds us very interesting.”

He kept his voice even. “You can’t blame a man for looking at a lovely woman. What else does an out-of-town guy do on a night like this after he’s had a good meal? Go back to his hotel?” However, his concern far exceeded the casual interest that his voice and words suggested. She’d pegged the man correctly, and her description perfectly described a man he’d seen in the restaurant, but he didn’t share his thoughts about it with her. He would have dismissed the likelihood that he was being tailed if the man hadn’t fit the description of an agent. But who was he and what did he want? In the restaurant, the stranger wore glasses, though he removed them in order to read the menu, but he apparently wasn’t wearing them now, out of doors, which meant they were a disguise. Their ride through Central Park would have to wait; he had to call the chief.

“Let’s take a rain check on that horse-drawn carriage, Allison. I just remembered I ought to call a friend before too late, and his number’s in my briefcase.” A strange tightness squeezed his chest when a look of disappointment clouded her face, her expression suggesting that he was deserting her. He had the urge to put his arm around her but, as much as the effort cost him, he didn’t give in to it. He put his hands in his pockets where they were less likely to get him into trouble.

To her credit, he thought, she didn’t pout, nor did she insist. “Next time, maybe. But isn’t it a bit late to phone anyone?”

“No. He’s a night person. Shall we go?”

He walked with her to the door of her hotel room and made himself smile and appear casual, but the possibility that a man might be tailing him had dissolved the amorous feelings he’d had earlier in the evening. He held her hand for a second.

“You’re a woman of many sides, and I could get used to the one I’ve been with tonight. Thanks for a more than pleasant evening. See you in the morning.”

Her lips parted and then closed before she whispered, “Good night, Jake.”

What had she left unsaid? He walked off with the feeling that unfinished business remained behind, that they hadn’t dealt with something important, and from the look of disappointment that had clouded her face, he’d bet she felt the same.

He didn’t use his cell phone to call the chief at his home, so he made certain that he wasn’t being followed, took a taxi to the Hilton Hotel, and went straight to the bank of public telephones. He had to use a third set of codes before he could reach the chief.

“What’s up?”

Jake described the man he’d thought was following him. “I can’t figure out why a hit man would wear such a loud tie. And he must have had a few chances to take a shot, so why didn’t he?”

“Maybe he wasn’t a hit man. You haven’t been hanging out with anybody’s wife, have you?”

Jake snorted. “Your sense of humor’s getting rusty. Are you suggesting this is a coincidence?”

“Just checking. I’ve yet to figure out what blows your whistle. That business about the glasses intrigues me. Was he wearing them at Rockefeller Center?”

Jake thought for a minute. “No. And if he couldn’t read with them on and wasn’t wearing them out of doors, they were a disguise.”

“Right. I’ll put a couple of men on him. But watch your back.”

“Sure thing,” Jake said and hung up. He left by the side door, walked up to Central Park South, hailed a taxi, and went back to the Drake Hotel. Sometime later, he stood at the window of his room and stared down Park Avenue toward St. Bartholomew’s Church, almost ethereal in its solemn majesty as it stood shrouded in moonlight. The vision mocked him, dredged up his near-surface discontent over the loneliness of his existence. Did the emptiness that always haunted him account for his mistake in letting Allison accompany him on his tour? For he now saw it as a serious error, and he could only attribute it to the feelings she kindled in him. One way or another, that decision would one day haunt him. He closed the blinds and got ready for bed.

* * *

Allison stood where he’d left her, unconcerned about the ringing phone. Transfixed. Her gaze lingered on her room door long after she’d closed it. Jake had behaved correctly, precisely as she should have wanted. And she did want a strictly platonic relationship with him, didn’t she? Then why did she feel as though he’d let her down, had promised her what he’d later withheld? Why did she have that big hole inside her? She had to get Jacob Covington off her mind, and for want of a better method, she telephoned Connie.

“You’ve got that handsome hunk all to yourself, and you’re calling me?” Connie asked.

“How do you know he’s a hunk? Have you met him? Listen, Connie, the Kennedy Center Honors program is scheduled for next month, think you could get us some tickets?” The thought had just occurred, but she had called her friend in order to get her mind off of Jake, not to talk about him.

“The firm might be able to get us some. Say, guess who surfaced recently, all cloaked in respectability?”

For reasons Allison couldn’t fathom, apprehension gripped her. “You’ll tell me.”

“Roland Farr. I thought he’d be in jail by now, but he was at Chasan’s with Penelope Wade, Senator Wade’s daughter. I wonder where he’s been.”

“I don’t. I had hoped I’d heard the last of that man. What else is new?”

Connie’s chuckles would lighten anybody’s burden. “Plenty, I suspect, but nobody’s given me the lowdown. Hurry back.”

Allison hung up, pressed the red button on her phone, and got her message. Jenkins wanted her to call him. She looked at her watch. Ten-forty at night. Not on his life. She moved around the room, her thoughts on Connie’s news of Roland Farr. She shrugged. No point in wasting time wondering where the man got money to hobnob with Penelope Wade. She turned on the television, tuned to a local station, gazed at crowds milling around the streets of New York, and flicked it off. Restless. Such a magical evening as she and Jake had enjoyed should have had a different ending. And she’d thought...

Wait a minute. Jake had said that they would ride through the park, then he’d suddenly remembered he ought to call someone. Tension began to build in her, and she dropped to the edge of the bed and sat there. This wasn’t the first time she’d sensed something mysterious, even false about him. She telephoned his room. No answer. Air seeped from her lungs. Maybe the friend of whom he’d spoken was a woman, and maybe he’d spend the night with her. Not that she cared. She had no interest in him as a man, she told herself, reached for a notebook, and began recording the events of their day. But the image of a tall man with hazel eyes, the skin color of unshelled peanuts, and a wicked, out-of-control wink danced across the pages, daring her to fall in step with him and grab hold of life. She closed the notebook, opened the bathroom door and turned on the light, and went to bed. Her fear of a darkened room was absolute. It didn’t matter whether she was alone or with someone, a dark room terrified her, and she would neither enter nor remain in one.

* * *

Dozing off to sleep that night, Jake remembered their early morning program, sat up, and dialed Allison.

“Don’t tell me you were already asleep. I’m sorry if I awakened you, but I wanted to remind you that I have to be at the TV station no later than six-thirty in the morning. You remember that the taping is at seven-thirty.” Her soft groan—or was it a purr?—sent hot darts of sexual tension leapfrogging through his body, and he turned over on his belly. “Allison, wake up.”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t forget we’re meeting downstairs at six-fifteen. I’ll have a taxi waiting.”

“Okay. I’ll...okay. Night.”

“Damn!” He turned off the light and fought for sleep that wouldn’t come, thanks to visions of her thrashing beneath the covers, beckoning him to her with arms outstretched. The streaks of light that at last filtered through the venetian blinds had never been more welcome.

* * *

Allison crashed into Jake as she raced into the breakfast room for her life-giving cup of coffee. “’Scuse me, sir. Uh... Oh, Jake. You’ve already had breakfast?”

Jake regained his balance, picked up his briefcase, and shook his head. “The Washington Redskins might be interested in a good linebacker like you. Lady, you’re dangerous.”

“I didn’t expect to run into anybody this time of morning. Sorry about the pun. What’s the fastest way to get some coffee?”

He looked at his watch. “We’ve got eight minutes. I’ll get two cups while you find a table.”

She couldn’t believe he’d said that. Find a table? They could have any one in the dining room. Jake brought her a glass of orange juice with her coffee, and she told herself that it would be safer to hate him for causing her to get up before daybreak than to soften up and like him when he revealed this kind, thoughtful side of himself.

“Thanks, but I don’t have time to drink all this, do I?”

“We’ll take the time. It may be afternoon before we get anything else.” He sat facing her, waiting patiently while she sipped the juice and drank the coffee. A deep, dangerous feeling welled up in her. In all her life, only her brother, Sydney, ever placed her needs before his own.

After the taping of his interview that morning, Jake conferred with his publisher, leaving Alison with free time. She went back to the Drake and returned her boss’s call of the night before.

“Took your sweet time getting back to me. I wanted you to dash over to the United Nations and get an interview with the president of Ireland, who’s speaking this afternoon, and find out what that dame’s got going for herself. Well, it’s too late now. Next time return my call, even if it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I’ll do that.” And he could bet she’d enjoy it.

Later that afternoon, Allison sat at a corner table in the hotel’s breakfast room with a cup of hot chocolate and Jake’s book and concentrated on his words. After finishing the first three chapters—remarkable for the masterful use of words and knowledge of the subject matter—she went back to her room and made her weekly call to her mother, a woman whose world was a small town named Victoria, Vermont, where Allison was born, and who prided herself on being arbiter of social life among its eleven hundred African-American inhabitants.

“You mean to tell me you plan to travel all over the United States with this writer?” Edna Wakefield asked her daughter, and in her mind’s eye, Allison could see her mother’s pursed lips and knitted brow.

“Mother, this writer has written a book that commands the attention of both the literati and our government’s leaders,” she said, hating that she sounded as stuffy as her mother. She could imagine the gleam that entered her mother’s eyes when she heard that.

“Why, that’s remarkable, dear. Has he won the Nobel Prize?”

Here we go, she thought, hating her disloyalty. She’d always been fiercely loyal to her family, had grown up proud of her parents and respectful of their views, but their outlook on most things had seemed to narrow with the years.

“Really, Mother.”

Edna Wakefield cleared her throat. “Well, as long as he’s not a Democrat. What does he do now?”

Allison laughed. “He’s a published author, Mother, and I haven’t asked him about his political views, but he sounds pretty liberal to me.”

“We’d like to see you sometime soon, so come home when you can, dear.” It was always the same; they had nothing in common. She loved her parents, but by the time she’d reached school age, they had missed the opportunities for genuine closeness. She and her brother, Sydney, had clung to each other as children, and the bonds remained. She called her office at The Journal, retrieved her messages, and returned to Jake’s book, but the ringing phone interrupted her joy in it.

“You’re there?”

She controlled what she realized was excitement and anticipation and infused her voice with nonchalance. “Of course I’m here. You said you’d call me, didn’t you?”

If he detected coolness in her manner, he ignored it. “Allison. You may prefer watching the interview this evening on TV to accompanying me to my town hall lecture. If I were you, I’d catch the telecast, since your boss will probably see it. You saw us tape it, but it will appear very different on television.” It was good advice, and she might not have thought of that angle.

“Thanks, but I’ve been looking forward to being at your lecture, and I hate to miss the immediacy, that live quality of your talks. Where are you now?”

“Downstairs at the desk. Care to join me for coffee or something of that order? Nothing stronger, since I have to prepare for tonight.”

“I’ll be right down.”

She took in his lazy, disjointed stance as he leaned against the wall in front of the elevator door, waiting for her and smiling. What a man!

“Hi.”

“Hi. How’d it go?”

He ordered coffee, and she settled for tea with milk. “Great. Did I detect a little testiness in your voice when I called a minute ago? What was that about?”

Warm blood heated her face. “I appreciate your suggestion that I watch that interview on TV, but how do I know you didn’t make it because you don’t want me to go to your lecture tonight?” Shivers raced through her and her nerve endings rippled, but she brazenly returned his stare.

“You heard the same lecture that night at the Library of Congress. If you think you’ll miss something by not seeing me deliver it again, then please be my guest. The more information you get, the better your chances of turning in a thorough and accurate story.”

She lowered her gaze, remorseful for having thought unkindly of him without reason. “I suppose you mean that; after all, it’s to your advantage that I deliver a factual report.”

His expression hardened. “Have it your way. I have to make some notes.” He stood, and she wished she’d been more charitable. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and walked away.

* * *

Allison watched Jake’s taped interview, and she knew he’d been right. His suggestion brought unexpected bounty, for the camera caught what she hadn’t seen: his momentary hesitations, occasional looks of disdain and flashes of annoyance at the interviewer that had been imperceptible to the naked eye. He was not a casual man. At the end of the program, she put away her notes, remembered that she’d promised to telephone her brother, and dialed his number.

“I just watched that guy,” Sydney informed her when she told him why she was in New York. “I read his book, too. He’s a powerhouse.”

“What else is new?” She hadn’t intended to sound forlorn, but Sydney could almost read her mind, so there was no point in covering up.

“Is there something between the two of you?”

“We’ve just met, Sydney.”

“Yeah, but it only takes a moment. What do you think our mother has done to me? She’s signed me up for one of her fund-raisers, and I have to stand on a platform in front of a bunch of women to be sold to the highest bidder for one evening.”

She made no pretense at controlling the mirth. “Strut your stuff, Sydney. It’s just a local fun thing; only people who live in Victoria participate. Otherwise, it would be unsavory.”

“Sure, but I don’t live here. As far as she’s concerned, neither of us has left home. Her first and last question no matter how often we talk is when am I coming home?”

“I know. Are you going to participate in that rookery?”

“I don’t have a choice, but I think I’ll pay someone to bid high for me.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m smart, and you bet I won’t be the only man to do that. You might try being clever and pay attention to that guy you’re following around. That’s a good man.”

“I’m not blind, Sydney.”

“I’m glad to know that; I’d begun to wonder. You need a man who’s more clever than you are and who knows it. I have a feeling this one fills that bill.”

“What? How can you... Sydney, this is my call, and I’m terminating it.”

His laughter rang out. “You’ll never change. Get too close to your truth, and you close the door. When you come this way, bring him to see me. Bye.”

She hung up. Pensive. Not much chance of that.

* * *

“What kind of audience did you have?” she asked Jake when he called an hour later. She’d told herself that she waited up to interview him about his lecture, but when she heard his voice she had to admit that her true reason had nothing to do with work.

“Wonderful. Jacked up my ego. Can you come down to the bar?”

She dressed hurriedly in a green silk jumpsuit and met him a few minutes later. As thanks for her trouble, his slow gaze made a seductive trip from her head to her feet before resting on her face. To her disgust, she looked downward, flustered and embarrassed.

“Beautiful.” As though the word was for his ears alone, he barely murmured it. He gave her an account of his lecture, a list of the round-table members who discussed his talk and his work, and his views on the audience’s reaction. Stunned at his thoughtfulness and kindness, she relaxed, unaware that her tough reporter’s cloak had slipped a fraction.

In the bar, they talked and sipped ginger ale, and Jake didn’t question his enjoyment of those companionable moments. He couldn’t say why he told her about the woman he’d seen walking across Park Avenue backward, stopping traffic for at least once in her life. On the other hand, he didn’t mention the stranger who he was certain had tailed him; she didn’t need to know that.


Chapter 3

Jake walked the length of his hotel room, retraced his steps, and walked the same route again. He could not permit himself to fall for Allison Wakefield, beguiling though she was. Well, not all the time, he reminded himself, as when she wouldn’t acknowledge common decency on his part. He had a recurring thought that Allison hadn’t known much tenderness, at least not from a man, and that she didn’t expect it. She bet on her intelligence, her competence as a journalist as a source of status, and didn’t count on her womanliness. Fine when she was working; that was as it should be. But, hell! She wasn’t prepared to let him enjoy being a man with her, not even when she softened up. He pushed strands of hair out of his face, thinking back to those moments when she’d walked with him from the restaurant on Forty-ninth Street to Rockefeller Center, sparkling with joy and gaiety.

“I don’t believe her, and one day she’ll prove me right,” he muttered to himself as the phone rang and interrupted his musings.

“Covington.”

“How are you, son?”

His antenna shot up; why was his mother calling him? “What is it, Mom?”

“Nothing to worry about. The department wanted to know where you are, because they’ve left messages at your hotel that you didn’t answer, and they’d like you to call them soon as you can. You’re not going back to that, are you, son? It was so dangerous.”

“I don’t do undercover work any longer, Mom, but I’m on a leave of absence, and the chief may call me whenever he needs me. I’m a policy analyst now. Remember? Stop worrying.”

“Yes, but you made a lot of enemies in that other job, so you be careful. I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to get down to see you soon. Unless plans change, I should be back in Washington Thursday night.” Just what he needed, another break in his book tour. He dialed the special code number.

“I’ll check back with you later today,” the chief said in response to his question. “Be prepared to spend a couple of days here, briefing a new man.”

“I hear you.” He hung up. With each day that passed, his lifestyle bore more heavily on him, and he became more certain that he wanted a normal life. He had quit the spy business, but he still didn’t own his time.

* * *

Allison hurried down to the hotel’s breakfast room the next morning, hoping to enjoy her coffee at her leisure. She glanced over her notes, searched her mind for any small thing she might have missed, and shook her head in bemusement. Not one sensational thing about Jacob Covington had she uncovered, at least not anything to which she’d sign her name. His raw sexuality wasn’t material for her report. The man’s skill at revealing only what he wanted known was unequaled by any other person she had interviewed. Her sigh of resignation prompted her to consider the implications of her interest in Jake. If she’d already let his sizzling masculinity put dust in her eyes and cotton in her ears, Lord help her professionalism. She had definitely better watch it.

“Hi.”

Her head came up sharply at the sound of his voice. “Hi. You’re early this morning.”

He grinned as if he knew that was one way of disconcerting her. “My antenna said you’d be down here, so I got here as early as possible.” He unzipped his briefcase and handed her a sheet of paper. “Here’s the day’s schedule.”

He had turned off his cell phone to avoid answering it in Allison’s presence, but when he opened his briefcase and saw the flashing red light, he figured his plans were about to change.

He pasted a grin on his face. “Excuse me a second,” he said and headed for the men’s room.

“Tonight?” he asked his chief.

“Yeah. Get here by two this afternoon. Our man is flying out from Ronald Reagan on Delta 4113 at five this afternoon, and I’d like him to have a couple of hours with you. He’ll meet you in the men’s room.”

“Right. I’ll be there.”

He ambled back to Allison, let a frown on his face give her the impression that he’d had a sudden reminder of something important. He’d use any ruse to allay her suspicions about the interruptions in his tour. His work with State was top secret, and the department took every means possible to ensure that he didn’t fall into the clutches of terrorists or kidnappers.

“This is terrible,” he said and meant it. “I have an appointment in Washington this afternoon.” He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration. “I’m beginning to wonder if I need a social secretary; it wouldn’t do to—”

“What about your publicist?”

“Not the same thing. I’d like to take the one o’clock shuttle to Washington. Can you make that?”

She rolled her tongue around in her right cheek, and he wondered about her thoughts. A woman with her smarts and experience as a journalist had to question the sudden changes in his schedule.

“I can make it,” she said at last, “but won’t these interruptions prolong this tour?”

Her mind was at work all right, and he’d bet she hadn’t voiced her true thoughts. Quickly, he finessed the situation. “You’re probably right. See you down here at eleven, bags in hand.”

* * *

Jake put his briefcase in the plane’s overhead compartment and extended his hand for Allison’s. She spent a few seconds, evidently making up her mind, before handing him her briefcase. He took the aisle seat and got as comfortable as a man of his height could in a business-class airplane seat.

“What would you do if I held your hand?” he asked her and primed himself for a reprimand. It suited him best to get straight to the point. Besides, he liked to let a woman know what he thought of her and where she stood with him.

She glanced at him, then looked away. “I don’t know.”

So she had her own moments of truth, did she? What could he lose? He folded her left hand in his right one, and when she failed to protest, his heart took off, racing like a thoroughbred out of control. Spooked. He told himself to cool it, that it was nothing, that she was testing him. But he didn’t believe the lie. Unaccustomed to tripping around an issue, he gave life to his thoughts.

“You mean something to me, Allison. You could be important to me. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but—”

She interrupted him, her voice suggesting that she was afraid to hear more. “But in the end, we’ll go our separate ways. More’s the pity, because I have a feeling that you’re an exceptional man.”

Her fingers tightened around his, and she leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes. He stared down at her full, luscious mouth and sucked in his breath as frissons of heat rode roughshod over his nerves. Needing more than he’d probably ever get, he let his thumb graze over the tip of hers, rubbing gently and rhythmically until his action stunned him. He glanced down at her face—peaceful, seemingly unruffled—and wondered if she recognized the symbolism of what he’d just done. If she did, she had to be the world’s best actress.

* * *

Allison locked her lips together and squeezed her eyes tight. She didn’t dare utter a word, and nothing could have made her look at him, open and vulnerable to him as she was, for she knew what he’d see. His callused thumb staked a claim on her, its rhythmic friction filling her head with dreams and her body with desire. Yet she didn’t stop him and didn’t want him to cease. She hadn’t cried in five years, but if he kept up that...

His voice penetrated the haze of her thoughts. “Are you asleep?”

She shook her head, not trusting the voice that would surely betray her.

“Then I’d like to be inside your head. You haven’t moved a muscle in the last fifteen minutes.”

Her eyes flew open as if of their own will, and shivers beset her as she gazed up into his face and read his thoughts and feelings. Open and unsheltered. Eyes stormy and fierce with desire. “You... You’ve been looking at me?”

He released a long, heavy breath and plowed his left hand through his hair. “How could I not? Nothing and no one else in this plane attracts me.”

“Jake—”

He held up his free hand. “I know, I know. We must be circumspect. Heaven forbid we should admit to feeling anything.”

The wheels dropped and the changed sound of the engine told him that they would soon land. He smiled his pleasure and squeezed her fingers. “I don’t know when I’ll wash this hand again.” His left eye winked at her. “Must have magic powers. It’s been snug in yours for the last forty minutes, and I enjoyed it.”

She looked straight ahead. “Me, too,” she said and meant it. She figured she’d knocked him off balance, but hadn’t he done that to her? “What time are we meeting Monday morning?”

The plane taxied to a stop, and he stood and retrieved their briefcases. “Same time. Same spot.” He stared down at her, his gaze boring into her until she looked away. How could he, with just a look, tie up her insides and invade her soul?

“Stay out of mischief, Allison.” His voice, choppy and hoarse, lacked its usual sonority.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” she replied, groping for emotional balance.

After staring at her until someone behind them yelled “Let’s go,” he turned and headed for the exit.

* * *

Just before he stepped into the terminal, he glanced over his shoulder, saw that Allison was preoccupied assisting another passenger, and ducked into the men’s room. He didn’t feel right about slipping away from her without saying goodbye, and especially not after the warmth they’d just shared. But he had a job to do, and he meant to make it up to her if she let him.

They had been back on the tour for two days. His cell phone rang as he headed for the shower that Wednesday morning, and he dreaded answering it. Allison hadn’t treated the slip he gave her in the airport the previous weekend with anything approaching generosity, and if he had to abandon the tour again so soon, she’d ask some questions. And she’d be entitled to answers.

He pushed the button. “Hello.”

“We’ve got word that an unknown operator placed an order for a mother lode of dynamite. We don’t want it delivered. I hope you can come up with a plan. I need it, pronto.”

Jake leaned forward and rested his chin in his palm. This was not what he wanted to hear. “I’m in the midst of a tour.” He wondered why he’d bothered to voice it since the chief knew that. First the department, and now the agency knew his every move, maybe his thoughts, too.

“We know, but this requires priority.”

He canceled his Thursday morning interview and telephoned Allison. “I’ve postponed my remaining interviews for this week and tomorrow’s twelve o’clock book signing because I have to get back to Washington tomorrow night. Unless I let you know otherwise, I should be going to Boston Monday morning as planned.”

“Didn’t the same thing happen last week when you suddenly remembered you had an appointment? I’d give a lot to know why your schedule is uncertain all of a sudden.”

“And you’d pay too dearly, because there’s no mystery involved. I hope I haven’t spoiled your plans, but I’m learning that a six-week book-signing tour can be filled with glitches, changes, and disappointments. You’d better get used to it.”

Dissatisfied with the idea of sitting in his old office trying to put together a plan to foil delivery of a load of explosives, Jake phoned the chief. “Give me the particulars, and I’ll find a quiet place somewhere and work it out. This is a tough one.”

“What sort of place?”

He could tell from the chief’s tone of voice that the idea didn’t please him. “Someplace where I can swim, fish, and get fresh air. Idlewild, for example.”

“I’ll check out the place and get back to you in a few minutes.”

Jake knew his boss would do everything possible to accommodate him. Putting together that kind of foolproof plan would challenge the most shrewd intellect, and although he considered himself sensitive to criminal behavior, guessing a man’s moves could backfire. He needed a clear head.

“No problem,” the chief said when Jake answered his cell phone. “Get it to me as quickly as you can.”

Jake didn’t bother to tell Allison he had changed his destination; time enough for that Monday morning.

Jake phoned Morton’s Hotel in Idlewild and booked a flight to Reed City. Six hours later, he stood in an anteroom off the hotel’s lobby selecting a fishing rod.

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” the woman said as she approached his spot carrying a rod, a reel, and a tin box in which he assumed she stored bait or lures.

“I don’t suppose you have,” he answered, hoping to discourage conversation.

“Staying long?” She threw out her line, and he knew he was watching an expert. Few occasional fishermen could cast with such deftness.

“A couple of days.”

“Not very talkative, are you?”

“I’ve yet to catch a fish when I was talking,” he said, standing in order to cast farther from shore.

“Hmmm. Where you from?”

If the woman hadn’t been at least seventy, he might have answered sharply. He told her part of the truth.

“I just came in from New York.”

Within five minutes, the woman reeled in two pikes. “Well, I’ve got plenty for supper and some to freeze for winter. Stay as long as you like.”

He told her goodbye and left after pulling in a bass, which he presented to the hotel’s cook.

* * *

“It must be him,” Allison heard her aunt Frances say when she answered the phone that Friday night. “Who else could it be? When he stood up, he nearly knocked my eighty-year-old eyeballs out. And he had on his clothes. That one was a real looker. Just didn’t talk much. Closemouthed as a kid in a dentist’s office. Child, if he’s the one—”

“I’d better start spending my weekends up there instead of down here in Washington, D.C., where you see ten women for every man, and most of those are ineligible.”

A lecture was coming, and she’d brought it on herself with her thoughtless comment. Her aunt did not disappoint her.

“The older you get, the fewer men there are, Allison, and the city you’re in hasn’t got a thing to do with it. When you’re twenty, everybody your age is single; when you’re forty, you’re already sifting through has-beens and never-would-have-beens. At age fifty, you’re dreaming. So you watch out.”

After hanging up, Allison phoned Connie. “I’m bored. Want to go to Blues Alley?”

“Did I ever say no? Where’s tall, tan, and terrific tonight?”

“No idea. Meet you there ten minutes to eight.”

* * *

“Would you believe this?” Connie asked her when the band assembled on the stage. “No Buddy Dee and no Mac.”

The manager went to the microphone and addressed the patrons. “We have a real treat for you tonight, folks. Mark Reddaway will show you what the blues are all about, but don’t let the man fool you. Monday morning he’ll be in his office on Connecticut Avenue designing skyscrapers.” He put his hands over his head and applauded. “Give it up for Mark, everybody.”

“They must be kidding,” Connie said when the man, elegant in a gray pin-striped suit and with a twelve-string guitar strapped across his shoulders, began picking and singing “It Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do.”

“Close your mouth, girl,” Allison said as Connie looked as if she’d been stung by a bee. Allison didn’t remember having seen the polished and self-assured woman so attentive to anything other than her work as an engineer. Tall, svelte, and fashion-conscious, Connie was a woman at the top of her field professionally and with a tight grip on the remainder of her world. Allison couldn’t believe the lost look in Connie’s eyes. At least she wasn’t the only woman a man had poleaxed the minute she saw him.

For the remainder of Mark’s performance, Connie, always talkative and with a ready quip, didn’t say one word. The set ended, and Allison watched the man bowing to the prolonged applause and whistles, obviously pleased.

“What...” Connie’s chair was vacant, and when Allison looked toward the stage, she saw Connie standing there shaking hands with Mark Reddaway.

“What was that about?” she asked her friend when Connie returned to the table for the beginning of the second set.

“Uh...tell you later. Do you mind leaving alone? I...uh... I want a chance to get to know Mark. Thanks, friend.”

“Sure. Go for it.” In the five years that she and Connie had been friends, the woman dated frequently, but hadn’t become attached to anyone. “You think this has possibilities?” she asked Connie.

Connie lowered her gaze in an uncustomary show of diffidence. “I know it has. It... Lord, I hope so.”

At home later, Allison pondered her feelings for Jake and her increasing insecurity in regard to them. She had detected a mystery about the man, a puzzling demeanor that should warn her to steer clear of him, and it did. But then, he would show her how gracious, kind, and considerate he could be, or that wink of his would captivate her, and she’d forget her misgivings.

* * *

Jake completed the plan, faxed it to his chief, and was back in New York Sunday night. He imagined that Allison spent the weekend in Washington and quickly verified it. As he was about to dial her phone number, he received a call from the chief. “This is great. Congratulations on an excellent job. I’d like you here Wednesday morning for at least half a day, so we can discuss it with the secretary.” In his mind’s eye, he could see the chief throw up his hands, palms out, when he said, “Just half a day is all I’m asking.”

He figured that, as far as Allison was concerned, he’d just banged one more nail in his coffin, but this had to do with the welfare of the United States of America. His right shoulder lifted and fell quickly, almost as if by reflex. “I’ll be there.”

After his book signing at Borders Bookstore Tuesday evening, Jake admitted to himself that, at his signings, lectures, and interviews, Allison was a comforting and stabilizing factor, one who always seemed immersed in what he said and did.

He’d probably regret it, but before he left the next morning, he wanted to see her. “Have dinner with me tonight?”

“What time?”

“Seven okay? And, Allison, please leave your recorder and your notebook in your room. This will be a social occasion; journalist and author will be nowhere in sight.”

“You serious?”

He could imagine her brows knitted in perplexity. “I’m always serious.”

“Even when you’re supposed to be teasing?”

He kicked off his other shoe and stretched out on the bed, warming up to the inquisition that he knew would come. “Why not? You’re so skittish that I don’t dare use plain English, and if I spoke frankly, you’d accuse me of being unprofessional.” He wished he could see her face, because he could imagine her dilemma as to how sharply she should zing him.

“Well, thank you for not using the word abuse.”

He laughed. “Ah, Allison, I could—”

“You could what?”

“If I thought you wanted to know, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“All right. I don’t want to know, but I’m stubborn. Tell me.”

He didn’t believe in self-destruction and told her as much. “If the day comes when I think you can handle it, I’ll tell you.” She didn’t have to be told, he realized, when he heard her softly seductive reply.

“And if I come to that conclusion before you do, I’ll hasten the day. But don’t wait for it. Meet you downstairs at seven. Oh, and, Jake, what was the name of that cologne you wore on Monday? I liked it.”

So she’s decided to get fresh and shove him back into his place, has she? Well, he’d show her. “I never wear cologne,” he shot back, “and from what you just said, I take it nature did a decent enough job.” He hung up and headed back to the shower, Seven o’clock wouldn’t come fast enough.

* * *

What did he mean, he never wore cologne? She’d swear in open court that he’d been wearing a cologne so seductive that she’d been tempted to walk right up to him and sniff. She put on off-black stockings, a short red-beaded dinner dress, black silk slippers in size ten-and-a-half-B, picked up a small black silk purse, and glanced in the mirror. What she saw didn’t please her, so she removed the combs from her hair and brushed it out, then applied Arpège perfume in strategic spots, threw on a light woolen stole, and went to meet him. He’d said it was a social occasion; well, when she went to dinner with a man, she dressed.

What she wouldn’t have given for a camera. She’d never have expected to see his bottom lip drop, and the evidence was fleeing indeed, but drop it he did. He recovered quickly and stepped toward her as she walked out of the elevator.

“Lovely lady, have we met somewhere?”

“My dear man,” she retorted, head high and shoulders back, “if I had ever seen you, I wouldn’t have to ask that question.” With half-lowered eyelids, she let her gaze travel slowly from his feet to his head, allowed a half smile to curve her bottom lip, gave the appearance of being well satisfied with what she saw, and stepped ahead of him, a queen who didn’t doubt that her subject would follow. A glance in the wall mirrors revealed his wide grin and his delight in her frivolity. She swallowed a laugh when it occurred to her that she didn’t know where they were going and that she’d have to stop and wait for him. She spun around. The devil. That explained his amusement.

His head went back, his eyes closed, silent laughter seemed to ripple through him, and his grin glistened as though a bright beam had settled on his mouth. “I have a car waiting. We’re going to The Golden Slipper. Does that suit you?”





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