Last Chance at Love

“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.

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