Читать книгу Lead Me Not - James B. Johnson - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

HIM

Rudyard Kipling Six banked his aircraft. The Gulf of Mexico glittered beneath the Beech. He pulled back the yoke and performed his turn.

He settled back and sighed. His eyes swung back and forth metronome like. Too much traffic today. Up here with the muted engine noise and wind blowing past, he could think.

Rudd was obsessed. He didn’t want to think of his infatuation. He’d been alone for so long. His son was long gone, thank God, and Denise had a dorm room at Reynolds Hall on campus. She visited home to do her laundry and spend weekends away from school. And whenever she wanted to get away.

Aloha Blaze. What a name. It caught your attention. Just as she caught your attention. She was getting under his skin. Rudd knew she’d been a schoolmate of Denise’s, over at Leon High. Denise had graduated and gone on to FSU in town. Aloha Blaze was now a junior. A damn teenager in high school! He, Rudyard Kipling Six was having an affair. Forty-seven and she—? From something Denise had said, Rudd assumed Aloha was eighteen. Legal but—Rudd was a relatively moral man. He’d served in Southeast Asia, killed more than his share of fellow human beings and knew that life did not conform to any secular or moral rules. Whatever worked within the cultural dynamic. He groaned. He was starting to use uncommon terms as did Denise.

He’d not wanted to continue with Aloha after that first night; but he was trapped. God, she was so young. But he had no control over his own body, his own will. Not now. Not with her. Not anymore. A fatal flaw, he realized. She was an ache in the pit of his stomach, an ache which refused to go away.

It was something that had grown over the last few months, triggered one day by Aloha herself and her frank, appraising look. He liked her voice, her piercing green eyes, her hourglass figure, and the sensuous invisible smoke she exuded. While her unique attractiveness wasn’t enough to sway him, her character was. She was very bright; she had a quick, wide smile; and she had a special self-deprecating sense of humor.

And now he could not get her out of his head.

This attraction was against his will. He was a moth to her flame.

Denise had gone back to FSU Monday morning.

Monday evening there was Aloha, boldly knocking on his door and weaving around him as he stood astonished in the doorway. They had not talked. He was mesmerized. They made love for two hours. He fell asleep and she was gone when he awakened.

He did not see her on Tuesday and was relieved.

Wednesday night he’d already been asleep when she awakened him, naked body hard and demanding.

“How’d you get in?” he asked.

“You’ve a drawer full of keys,” she said into his mouth, her tongue slashing, seeking. Her supple hands moved, sought.

“We have to talk,” he mumbled, pulling her closer, surrendering his will.

“I’d rather do this.”

“Um, me too.”

She spent the entire night.

Never needing an alarm clock, he awoke at five-thirty, having an early charter to Birmingham. She was up like a cat when he rose. When he came into the kitchen, the coffee pot was perking and she was stirring oatmeal on the stove. She gave him an apprehensive smile.

“Domestic, huh?” she said, giving him a shy look.

She wore jeans and a denim vest buttoned twice. No bra, no shirt. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to suppress his desire. Under her champagne hair, her dark brows and deep-set forest-green eyes added years to her. The only makeup she wore was bright red lipstick. It all gave him a warm and fuzzy feeling: one he knew was more dangerous and damning than the gut level attraction he felt for her.

“Sit down. How do you like your coffee?”

He sat. He gulped air. Do it, he demanded of himself.

“Black.” He stared at her as she handed him the cup. “Listen, Aloha. We can’t....”

“Can’t what?” Her smile was impish.

“Can’t go on like this.”

“Why not?” Her voice innocent now.

“You don’t even know how I like my coffee, yet we’ve shared the most intimate of experiences.”

“Your point being?”

“We shouldn’t be having this affair.” Coffee scalded his throat, and it was strong.

“Why not? I like you. You like me, don’t you?” Coyly.

“Well, yes, but—”

“You like the sex, don’t you, darlin’?”

He wanted to snap at her not to call him darling. She hadn’t earned that right. But he didn’t say anything.

“It’s pretty obvious you like the sex, Rudd.” She sighed and shivered at a memory. “God, how you like it.”

She handed him a bowl of oatmeal. It was too runny but he shrugged it off and doused it with butter and sugar and cinnamon.

“You’re too young for me, Aloha—”

She turned away from him. “Eighteen is too young? Call a lawyer.”

He felt awkward. “It’s still very young.” She was eighteen? Except she hadn’t really said so. Did he really want to know?

“Again, your point being?”

“You’re younger than my daughter.”

“You got some sort of father-daughter hang up?”

“No, but it doesn’t seem right.”

“I like you a lot, Rudd. Do you like me?” Her eyes flashed brightly, alternating pure intelligence and sex.

“Plenty.” That’s the trouble, he thought, but could not say.

She moved behind him and began massaging his shoulders. “You’re tense. Let it go, darlin’. Let’s just enjoy.”

A last thought. “How about your parents? What do they think about us?”

“Who cares. I hate them. They named me Aloha.”

He didn’t know how to respond.

“They don’t care about me, they never have. I do anything I want.”

“Not here, not with me.”

Her smile was sly. “Oh?” She moved liquidly to the stove.

His face colored. “I have to fly to Birmingham and won’t return ‘til tomorrow and then Denise will be here for the weekend.”

“I can wait.” She ate oatmeal from the pan with a soup spoon.

“I don’t know if I can,” he said, pushing his chair back. “My resolve is dying.” He was surprised at himself for being honest—and vulnerable. He stood.

She came gently into his arms and he tilted his head and kissed her gingerly, licking a spot of oatmeal from her upper lip. She was inches short of his six one, but would grow three more inches in the next few years.

Her vest came open and he was late for his charter to Birmingham.

Rudd shook his head at the memory, checked his heading and the altitude controller. The trim wheel moved automatically.

He was staring himself in the soul. He had a growing realization that he cared deeply for Aloha Bonnie Blaze. Certainly, the sex was almost obsessive, but something deeper was beginning to emerge. Yet she was so goddamn young!

A game he enjoyed playing to himself: He’d imagine how a certain person would look and act in ten, twenty, thirty years. Aloha was not just interesting in those future terms, she was intriguing. He envisioned her at forty: The prime of her life, a knockout. And she’d be a Real Woman. Another game his mind played was to categorize people as a Real Man, a Real Woman, or not making the grade.

At forty, fifty, sixty, Aloha would be at the top of her game, a commanding presence, a woman with whom he’d love to be involved. Not a trophy, but a woman with her own agenda. Her future was bright—given the right opportunities. He could point the way for her, he realized.

At sixty, seventy, eighty, her hair would be more silver, her face smooth and classic, her quick wit and intellect still raging. This vision haunted him.

Long ago he’d made a pact with himself: Disregard what the woman looks like, it’s character which counts. But Rudd could not ignore Aloha’s regal beauty and her demanding presence. He had a gut-level, biological imperative for her. He was finding he had to be with her, not necessarily sex, but just be near her. He’d tried to tell her as much while dancing with her, but had become tongue-tied and decided silence was golden.

He landed in Tallahassee no closer to the answer.

Denise was already there when he got home.

After his shower, they settled in the family room, he with a gin and tonic, she with a glass of iced tea.

“Daddy, I’ve found blonde hair in my bathroom and a girl’s vest in the hall closet.”

“Champagne.”

“What?”

“Not blonde, but champagne.”

“Oh. I see. Well, we’ve always been frank between each other since you and Mother—”

“Tell me about Aloha Blaze.”

Denise sank back into the sofa. “Very frank. May the Lord have mercy upon our souls.”

“Our? Or just mine?” he asked.

“I was being diplomatic.”

“Who is she?”

“Just another kid in the group. Well, not really in the group. Part of it, but a loner. Gets along only with certain people. Not a part of the group-think, the teenage thing where they all want to be alike, but different. Deceptively smart. Very enterprising. She’s different. She doesn’t care what others think. Does her own thing.”

“Family?”

“She’s an only child. Her parents are what they call original hippies. They still have long, scraggly hair, wear beads, smoke dope, stuff like that.”

“Christ.” He remembered meeting them once or twice, just in passing.

“Daddy! Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“Sorry. I can never get used to you being—”

“Born-again?”

“Yeah, that.”

She shook her head. “I’m not one for self-analysis. But you know full well it’s your fault.”

“Because of me and your mother?”

“Yep. You both drove me to it, probably in self-defense.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Denise took a sip of tea. “You will have to, one day. It’s something which needs purging—”

“Pop psychology, young lady.”

“I’ve some of Buddy’s combativeness,” she said grimacing. I’ve tried to channel it into my love for the Lord Jesus....”

“Buddy will grow up one day,” Rudd said and prayed he was right, “and come to his senses. Take the edge off that boy and the world beware.” Buddy was something akin to a male Aloha: very sharp with a raw edge. That rawness Rudd hadn’t been able to blunt and had led to a falling out between father and son. Rudd and Buddy had butted heads too often.

“Even before I was born again and really took Jesus as my savior,” Denise continued. “Remember you always prayed with me?”

“I do. Not bad for a heathen.”

“I didn’t say you were.” Her tone was defensive.

“Your mother wouldn’t take any interest.”

“I know, Daddy, I know. It was your influence....”

How will I ever know if I did a good job? he scolded himself. But by God, I tried. He stirred his now-warm drink with his pointy finger.

“Every night it was, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep....’” Denise shifted her right leg under her left leg and faced him on the couch. “That was always a very special time to me. I liked praying.”

Well, how about this one, Rudd thought abruptly. Lead me not into temptation—

“We’ve always had that special relationship,” Denise continued. “That’s why I’m concerned now.”

“About Aloha?”

“Do you have any idea of her age?” asked Denise pointedly.

Now he felt defensive. He eyed Denise. His voice was level. “She is eighteen, isn’t she?” Aloha hadn’t really said her age. Her language had been evasive.

Why?