Читать книгу Once in a Lifetime - Gwynne Forster, Gwynne Forster - Страница 10

Serving coffee in the den wouldn’t make Evangeline happy, because it meant sharing Telford with Tara and Alexis for what remained of the evening, but Alexis didn’t intend to ease the situation for him. They had agreed to keep their distance from each other, but he could at least have told her he’d have a woman guest for dinner if only because it was she who set the dinner table. With all the innocence that was natural to Tara, the child engaged Evangeline in conversation, or tried to, frustrating Tara and annoying Evangeline.

When Telford finally stood and Evangeline Moore sighed in resignation, the evening shot, Alexis walked over to her and extended her hand.

“It was nice meeting you, Ms. Moore. I hope you’ll visit us again.”

“Bye, Mr. Telford,” Tara said, raising her arms for a good-bye kiss and, at the same time, saving Evangeline a courteous reply to Alexis. “You coming back?”

“I’ll be back before long.” He smiled lovingly at Tara, but the look he gave Alexis had the explosive power of a ball of TNT headed for a target. She wasn’t afraid of the retribution his eyes promised; what he incited in her was as far from fear as east from west. She knew that her own face bore a glow of triumph, and she felt like a victor, because she’d taught him that he had to reckon with her. Tara walked them to the door holding Telford’s hand, but Alexis went into the kitchen to speak with Henry.

“Why did you serve that cabbage stew? I set a table fit for the president, and you serve cabbage.”

Henry’s head went back. Then he laughed until he doubled up and finally lost his breath. She had to pound his back. “Crazy, huh? Funniest thing I ever done. Miss Etta’s handkerchief linen and her best crystal and porcelain and things… Cabbage. Prissy as she was, I bet the poor woman turned over in her grave.”

“But why? Henry, I wanted us to have a nice dinner.”

“Humph. You didn’t want no such thing. You wanted to show off. Telford knows what I always serve when he done something I don’t like. And bringing that woman here… He shoulda knowed he was gonna have to eat cabbage stew.” Henry rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I bet that ain’t the only punishment he’s gonna get.”

“You’re getting very fanciful, Henry.”

“If you want to call it that. I wasn’t born this morning.”

“Why don’t you like Evangeline Moore?”

He turned out the light over the kitchen sink and leaned against the counter. “I lived a long time, and I know people when I see ’em. He ain’t serious about her, and that’s because he knows she ain’t for him.”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“’Tain’t difficult. She gets low grades in the manners department, and Tel can’t stand rotten manners. She ain’t bad, mind you, but these boys here…they come up practically by themselves, except for what raising I done and Telford when he got older… They been through a lot and worked hard.”

His countenance darkened with concern, and she could see that Telford and his brothers meant a lot to Henry and that he took pride in them.

“She ain’t got no appreciation for what they been through and what they’ve done with their lives, either,” he went on, “and she don’t care. She just wants a Harrington. Now you. You ain’t asking nothing from no man. My kind of woman, willing and able to make it on your own.”

“Thanks. That doesn’t explain why you don’t like her.”

“She just ain’t for him. I could stand her, maybe, if she wasn’t so supercilious, always pretending to be something she ain’t. She can’t fool me.”

And what about Alexis? Wasn’t she an imposter, an upper-middle-class educator posing as a housekeeper?

Her lower lip dropped. Henry was one surprise after another. “If she wasn’t so what?”

“Super…oh, you mean that? Well, I want you to know I finished high school, even if that was a couple a hundred years ago.”

She paused, wondering how he’d react to her next question. “Did you ever marry?”

He threw his hands up and looked at the ceiling. “I sure did, which is why I understand the Evangelines of this world. First time was plain stupid, but the second…well, the Lord decided he needed her more than I did.” He turned his back, but not before she glimpsed his lips trembling and his eyes blinking rapidly.

She patted the bones that protruded beneath his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’d better get to my room and see what Tara’s doing. Good night.” She didn’t wait for his reply, but rushed from the kitchen to allow him privacy. When she found Tara asleep in her bed, loneliness washed over her. She wasn’t jealous, and she didn’t want an affair with Telford, but seeing him with that woman wasn’t her idea of fun. She walked over to the window and stared at the garden, idyllic in its shroud of moonlight and its blanket of shrubs and flowers, the perfect setting for lovers. She yanked the blinds down and closed them. She might be alone, but at least she no longer had to suffer the indignity of a philandering, lying husband. Anything was better than that, she told herself as convincingly as she could.

What was that? This time the knock sounded louder and lasted longer. “Good Lord. Telford.” It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d be back in less than half an hour. “I’ll bet he’s mad as the devil.”

Anger barely described what he felt. Indeed, outrage more closely approximated his mood. She opened the door, and he looked at her standing there, a siren with the face of an innocent. If he hadn’t been so furious, he would have laughed. He’d never seen her so beautiful as she was that evening. Or sexier, with that décolletage proclaiming the richness of her treasure and her tight-fitting getup emphasizing her nicely rounded bottom. If Henry had cooked the lamb chops instead of the cabbage stew, he doubted he’d have tasted the difference.

A smile crawled warily over her face. “Hi. You wanted me for something?”

“Do I want… You knew I’d come after you, and don’t pretend you didn’t.” Her shrug didn’t fool him. She was strung tight as a bow.

“Did I do something to displease you? If so, I’m—”

He stepped into the room and stopped inches from her. “Of course not. You were the perfect hostess. I couldn’t have asked for a more charming woman to grace my home and entertain my guest, but—”

She interrupted him. “Isn’t that what a homemaker’s supposed to do?”

He stared at the rise and fall of her bosom, and when he let his gaze drift to her eyes, he didn’t doubt that she knew where he’d been looking and that his attention to her breasts excited her. She wet her lips, obviously without knowing she did it, and her breathing accelerated. She knows I’m here.

“You didn’t want Evangeline in this house, and you didn’t want her here with me. Oh, you weren’t rude; in fact you were sweet as sugar. I wanted to get my hands on you—”

“If you had, what would you have done with your girlfriend looking on?”

“I’d have—”

“She’s not looking on now.”

Of their own will, his left hand went to her sweet little bottom and his right one to her shoulder, and in a second he had her in his arms and his tongue deep in her mouth. Shudders plowed through him, and his blood pounded in his ears as she locked him to her. The hardened tips of her breasts rubbed against his chest, and when he heaved her higher to take one into his mouth and suckle her, she straddled him and rocked against him. Heat enveloped him like tongues of fire from a roaring furnace, as she pressed against the weight that hung hard and heavy between his legs. Her hips undulated in a pulsing rhythm. Wild and reckless.

Her whimpers heightened his need to have her thrashing beneath him with his name spilling from her lips, and when she pressed her crossed ankles against the small of his back, he nearly exploded.

“Alexis. Baby, I’m reaching my limit. Do you want us to—”

Her moans quickened, and her hands caressed his hair as she held his head to her breast.

“Tell me what you want.” She held on tighter, and he knew he had to loosen her hold on him and look into her eyes. This was not a time for a gargantuan error on his part. He took several steps away from the door, tripped and fell backward with her across her bed.

He rolled away from her. “Do you want me to leave or stay?”

She ran her fingers across her forehead, as if clearing away a patch of haze. “Both,” she said, sitting up. “I don’t understand how it is that when you put your hands on me, I stop thinking.” She frowned. “What were we talking about?”

He sat forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “You could drive me insane. You know that? One minute you’re setting a torch to me and the next you’re as cool as spring rain.” He’d leave, but he couldn’t stand right then. “Did you think I wouldn’t ever bring a woman guest here?”

“The other time when you kissed me, you went at me as if women were about to be banned. We backed off from that and said we weren’t going that way. But still, you should have told me ahead of time that you were bringing her here.”

“Come off it, Alexis. Henry told you. You want me to believe you dressed like this to have dinner with Tara, Henry and me?”

She had the nerve to grin. “I can do better than this. What’s wrong with looking nice at dinner? Did she like me?”

He threw up his hands. “Did she like you? Of course. Why shouldn’t she? She’s crazy about you.”

She looked at her fingernails, then polished them on the silk that covered her thigh. “Hmmm. Then it’s you she doesn’t like. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gotten back here so soon.”

“If I thought you meant that, I’d teach you a few things.” He got up and walked to the door. “I wouldn’t advise you to try that again.”

“What? You mean I shouldn’t kiss you if you kiss first? What do you expect from me? I’m human, and you’re…” She licked her lips. “You’re indescribable.”

“I don’t know what I expected to solve by coming here. You’re unreasonable.”

She gazed at him through slightly lowered lashes and served notice that she could give as good as she got. “You expected exactly what you got.”

He wanted to kiss her until she opened to him, surrendered and flowered in his arms, and he wanted to shake her. He did neither. “See you in the morning.”

“Sure thing,” she said with an airiness he knew she didn’t feel. “Good night.”

He closed the door softly and headed for the den. One of these times when we come together like that, I’m going to let her call a halt. If she doesn’t…

If that evening had been a bust, and it had, it was his fault. Evangeline Moore was not and never had been special to him; indeed, he could count three perfunctory kisses as the extent of their intimacy. It was the minimum a man could do when he took a fawning woman home after a reasonably decent dinner. Hell, he didn’t even know where her bedroom was and, unless she was confined to bed with a prolonged and serious illness, he didn’t expect to find out. He’d been so intent on covering his flank, on proving to both himself and Alexis that they didn’t have any ties and were free to do as they pleased and with whomever they liked, that he overlooked one simple thing: when a man and a woman fired each other up and came as close to all-out lovemaking as they had, they had solid ties whether they liked it or not. Besides, he hadn’t cleared that agenda with Alexis. She was right when she said he should have told her. He didn’t want to think of his reaction if she’d had a man in her room when he knocked on her door.

He sat in the darkened den with his feet on the coffee table and his hands locked behind his head. If he got Alexis out of his system, what would he do about Tara?

The next morning, Alexis opened the liquor cabinet, her heart in her throat. She needn’t have worried. Her whole being awakened, rejuvenated like new life in early spring, when her gaze took in the six bottles of dry white vermouth on the bottom shelf facing the door where Telford couldn’t have missed them. He had deliberately refused to give Evangeline the martini she asked for. When the woman mistreated Tara with her rudeness, she lost points with Telford, and he took steps immediately to shorten his time in her company.

Several afternoons later, Alexis walked with Tara along the road leading to what would soon become the new Harrington warehouse. They paused at the quaint bridge—logs grayed from the wind and rain and flat from having borne the weight of humans and animals for a century or longer—that straddled the small brook marking what was the end of Harrington land until the brothers bought the adjacent acreage for the warehouse. Tara picked up a few pebbles and tossed them into the moving stream. Lilies of different colors had sprouted up in the patches of briarberries and blueberries that grew on either side, and she wondered about lizards and snakes. A color picture of either one could give her nightmares.

Holding Tara’s hand securely, she walked on. With so much free time on her hands and none of the social obligations she’d had as Jack’s wife, she longed to take up once more the hobby she loved. She planned to begin by sculpting wood and hoped to find some hardwood on the premises. She stopped short when Tara said, “I’m going to ask that man over there if he has any little children for me to play with.”

“Honey, you can’t just…”

But Tara dropped her hand and ran to a tall man who was speaking with a much shorter one and told him what she wanted.

Obviously impressed, the man introduced himself to Alexis. “I’m Allen, and I work for the Harringtons. You have a charming little girl. It’s too bad they’re so fragile.” His eyes mirrored a sadness, and she knew at once that his hurt was deep-seated and raw. “I’m afraid I don’t have any little girls, and my boys are teenagers.”

She didn’t know why, but her heart ached for the man. “I’m so sorry we bothered you. Tara thinks the world is filled with people who love her, and she doesn’t hesitate to ask them for proof of it. She doesn’t meet many strangers.”

He looked past her into the distance. “Wouldn’t it be great if we were all like Tara?”

“Can’t I play with teenagers, Mummy?”

“No, dear,” she said, and explained why. She thanked the man and walked on. They’d walked almost to the construction site when she realized where they were.

“Let’s go back, Tara. Come on.”

Too late. A red Buick station wagon that bore the imprint of a lion’s head encircled by the words HARRINGTON, INC. ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS AND BUILDERS stopped beside them. She knew its driver before she saw him and could have kicked herself for going there.

“Howdy, ma’am. I was wondering when you’d find your way back.” He reached over and opened the front passenger door. “Hop in.”

She squashed the urge to smash his ego. “Sorry. We aren’t going your way.”

He smiled in a way she supposed some people considered captivating—so sure of himself—but he only made her flesh crawl. “You don’t know which way I’m going, babe.”

She took Tara’s hand and prepared to walk on. “No matter where you’re going, it’s opposite from where I’m headed. Come on, Tara.”

When it came to walking and looking backward, Tara was an expert. She stopped and turned Tara to face her. “I need your cooperation. So come on.”

“I’m cop-ter-ating, Mummy, but I don’t like the man.”

That squared it; if Tara didn’t like a man, he bore watching. Later, she mentioned it to Henry.

“You mean Biff? That fellow goes through women like water through a sieve. Tara got sense. As a foreman, he’s first-class, but as a man, he ain’t worth poop.”

“I’ll be happy never to see him again.”

“I hope your happiness don’t depend on that. He’s like a weed. Always shows up where you don’t want to see it.”

Tara barged in, ending that conversation. “Mr. Henry, do you have any little children for me to play with?”

“Nope, not a one. Sorry to say.”

Tara needed playmates. “Maybe I’d better get her into summer camp, or…” She couldn’t think of an alternative.

He sorted the potatoes according to size, selected five and began scrubbing them. “Ain’t no summer camp around here. This ain’t Philadelphia, you know.”

She dragged a stool over to the counter and began stringing beans. “There aren’t any children around here. What do you suggest I do?”

“The church school is open all summer. Telford teaches music over there a couple of mornings a week. Maybe he can tell you something.”

“Of course she can go with me,” Telford told Alexis at supper that night. “You want to learn the violin, Tara?”

“I wanna learn the keyboard. The piano.”

“I’ll teach you.”

Alexis imagined that she gaped at him. “I knew you played the violin, but the piano?”

“I studied that first, starting when I was about Tara’s age. I didn’t start the violin till I was thirteen, but it’s my real love.”

“You ain’t bad on the guitar, neither,” Henry said. “You gonna take Tara to church school with you, ain’t you?”

“Sure, if it’s all right with Alexis. In the fall, she’ll take the bus to school.”

She listened to them, weaving her more tightly into their lives. Closing the hatch. If she wanted to get away from them, she wasn’t sure she could. They gave her what she’d never had, a world free of ugliness and selfishness. Warmth. Peace. Chills streaked through her when she remembered that she was deceiving Telford, and he’d warned her that he demanded honesty.

“Mummy, what’s a unrest?”

“It means…well, it means someone is unhappy.”

“Mr. Allen told that man some was coming.”

Telford put his fork down and spoke in a voice that was unnaturally quiet. “Which Allen are you talking about?”

Alexis completed the story for him. His demeanor, tense and apprehensive, aroused her concern and compassion, for she had never seen him when he didn’t appear to be solidly in control.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to make a call. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Telford dashed up the stairs to his bedroom. He wanted absolute privacy for that call. “Allen, this is Telford.” He repeated the essence of Tara’s story. “What’s this all about?”

“Sparkman Manufacturing won’t negotiate with the union, and old man Sparkman’s got most of the other builders in the surrounding counties to side with him. If the union strikes on Sparkman and his cronies, it’ll force the rest of us into a sympathy strike.”

“I hadn’t heard anything about this. You know I’d be the last man to join Fentress Sparkman in anything.”

“Yeah, I know. I just got wind of it this morning, and I didn’t call you because it could have been a false alarm.”

“What’s your take on this?”

“Your employees don’t have any reason to strike; we have a good contract. But if the union says walk, we have to walk. You know that.”

Fentress Sparkman would paralyze western Maryland’s building industry to prevent him from completing that school building on schedule. Talk about dirty politics. He sank my father, but he’ll never trample on me.

“You’ll keep me posted?”

“You know you can count on me, Telford. I’d have called you if I’d been certain that what I heard was anything more than gossip.”

The men wanted more overtime work, so he’d give it to them starting tomorrow. If the union went on strike, he’d be ahead.

“Heard from Bob and Will?”

“Last week. Right after they got to Nairobi. Grace and I don’t know how to thank you, Telford, for giving our boys this summer in a place where they can walk tall among people black like them.”

He didn’t want thanks; he wanted to see the boys complete their education and succeed as men. “They’re my godchildren, and I intend to do what I can for them.”

He phoned Drake in Baltimore to alert him to the possibility of a strike, hung up and trudged back downstairs, weighed down by the prospect of a strike that would make restoring his family’s name a near impossibility.

When he returned to the table, Henry placed his warm food in front of him.

“Thanks, Henry. It’s when you’re thoughtful like this that I forgive you for those times you act as if I’m working for you rather than the other way around.”

“Humph. If you’re still hot under the collar about that cabbage stew I gave you when what’s-her-name was here, it wasn’t nothing more’n you deserved.”

He could feel her gaze on him. If he dared to look into those warm brown eyes with their inviting sparkles and long lashes, she’d learn more about him than he wanted her to know right then. But he felt the pull of her intense concentration; she willed him to look at her and he couldn’t help but obey. The tenderness, the affection he saw there sent his heart into a lurch, riveting him, and his fork remained somewhere between his plate and his lips, while he stared at the feminine heaven that faced him across his table. Immobilized.

He struggled to control his emotions, to put a damper on the hot currents that sizzled between them. The best he could do was open a topic that wouldn’t appeal to her. “It’s none of my business, but did you have a special reason for going down to the warehouse?” He wanted her to stay away from there, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate his telling her that.

He’d never seen anybody switch gears so quickly. She rested her fork on her plate, and he’d swear she took a deep breath. This woman was not a wilting violet.

“I thought I might find some wood that I could use for…for my hobby.”

He figured he’d better go slowly, since she didn’t seem anxious to tell him. A smile lit his face as he savored his chateaubriand. “Henry, you outdid yourself with this steak. It’s the top of the mountain.”

Henry put a fresh dish of roasted potatoes in front of Telford, stepped back and rubbed his hands together as one does when washing them, obviously pleased with himself. “All my food is first-class; it’s your taste buds that’s substandard.”

Telford glanced at Alexis partly to share some merriment, but mainly because looking at her pleased him. Now what was in that comment of Henry’s that embarrassed her? Her facial expression said she’d rather be anywhere than where she was.

“What kind of wood are you looking for, and how much do you need?”

“Hardwood.” She gestured with her hands. “About this much.”

“I’ll see what I got around here. You planning to whittle?”

“She’s gonna make people, aren’t you, Mummy?”

He admired her patience with the child, giving her every opportunity to express herself. Yet, Alexis was not a permissive parent. “I’m going to carve some people, honey.” To him, she said. “I’m an amateur sculptor, but I haven’t worked at it for a long time.”

Not since she married, he imagined. The woman was a bag of surprises. He tried not to appear astonished. “Then you want the wood seasoned. I’ll get you a piece tomorrow.”

He didn’t want her near Biff Jackson, but he dared not tell her that. Still… “Might be a good idea to avoid that area.”

“I didn’t like that man, Mr. Telford.”

Out of the mouths of babes. “What man?”

“The man in the red truck.”

He looked at Alexis and waited for an explanation. When she didn’t offer one, he leaned back in his chair, pushed his plate aside and stared her down.

Obviously irritated, she strummed her fingers on the table. Finally, she said, “Biff Jackson intercepted us, but we walked on. I can handle the man, Telford.”

“Be sure you know what you’re up against. He’s been known to show that he can’t handle himself.”

She hadn’t given him the right to warn Biff to stay away from her, so he had to stand back. But it wouldn’t be long before the man made a false step.

“Why the hell am I whistling?” he asked himself aloud the next morning after chortling through several popular songs. The answer awaited him at the breakfast table, where Tara sat ready for her first day of church school. When he walked into the room, her face bloomed into a smile.

“I didn’t want to make you wait for me,” she said.

“Where’s your mummy?”

“Getting dressed. She had to get me ready for school first. I already ate.”

He stared at her. “What time did you get in here?”

“I don’t know, but Mr. Henry said anybody would think I’m going to get my marriage license.”

Her giggles gave him such a…he couldn’t explain it, but some of her happiness always rubbed off on him.

He finished breakfast, and didn’t have an excuse to linger there longer, especially when he had to have Tara at the school by eight-thirty. But it pained him to leave there without seeing Alexis.

“Let’s go.”

“Mr. Henry, I’m gone.” To his astonishment, she reached for his hand and started for the front door without kissing either Henry or her mother good-bye. He’d have to give that a lot of thought.

“This is terrible, Henry. I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s the first time Tara’s ever been away from me. Do you know, she left here and didn’t even tell me good-bye?”

“She didn’t say nothing to me neither. You better be careful. That little girl’s adopted Telford for a father figure. If you leave here, she’s gonna be in bad shape.”

“She’s very fond of him.”

“She’s crazy ’bout him. She told me he’s gonna teach her how to play the piano. Where she gonna practice?”

“She has an electric keyboard.”

“Shucks. Get a piano. Plenty of space down in the game room.”

“Henry, if I had the price of a piano—”

“Rent one. She needs a piano.”

An hour and a half later, Alexis looked at her watch. Bennie, the cleaning woman, had a habit of coming to work late and leaving early, neglecting basic cleaning, and the house showed it. Alexis opened the door before Bennie could find her key.

“Morning, Miss Alexis. It sure is hot this morning. I declare, I’m wet with sweat. How ya’ll doing?”

“Good morning, Bennie. It’s air-conditioned in here, so you should be happy to spend the entire eight hours today. You’re supposed to be doing a thorough cleaning, but—”

“I know, I know. Day ’fore yesterday, I wasn’t up to snuff, and I just give downstairs a lick and a promise, but—”

“Bennie, you’ve been promising this house a cleaning ever since I’ve been here. Beginning today, I want you to make good on it.”

“Lord, child, you would talk like this today when my knees ’bout to give way and my back feel like it wanna go out.” She looked toward the ceiling. “Well, if I pass out in here, at least somebody’ll take me to the hospital. Where’s Henry?”

“It’s ten o’clock. Henry’s over at his cottage this time a day.”

“I was hoping for some coffee and a little bite to eat.”

She was doggoned if she’d let Bennie get the better of her. She would come to work two hours late, spend an hour in the kitchen with Henry, work a couple of hours and leave the house more or less as she’d found it.