Читать книгу Meet Me in Paris - Simona Taylor - Страница 12

Atonement

I f Kendra was going to change her mind, she had a day in which to do it. Truth be told, she came pretty close. Half a dozen times she made it to the phone. Half a dozen times she reminded herself that, if this was a battle of wills, Trey Hammond wasn’t going to win. If it was a test of her character, he wasn’t going to find her wanting.

She was so determined not to be late on Saturday, she slept with one eye on the alarm clock, checking it periodically to reassure herself it was set for the right time. She was up with the chickens. She showered and dressed in sturdy jeans and a plain, long-sleeved, brushed-cotton shirt, throwing on a pair of rugged boots to show Hammond she meant business. She bolstered herself with a bagel and some cranberry juice and marched out of the house well on schedule.

The crumpled napkin bearing Trey’s address was a wadded ball in the front pocket of her jeans, but she’d read and reread it so many times she knew it by heart. His new house was in Augustine, a nice professional area favored by many of the black, Hispanic and Asian businesspeople in Santa Amata.

By bus, it was a convoluted trip. The ones that did the city circuit didn’t cross Falcon River. She had to go all the way down to the main bus station and change there, and even so, it was still a twelve-minute walk from the nearest bus stop. She stepped up her pace a little. It wouldn’t do to lose her time advantage as she was closing in on the finish line. Would he be beastly enough to dock her wages?

Wages. Of all the harebrained schemes. Here she was, a young, bright professional, about to ransom her soul back for the queenly sum of eighteen bucks an hour. She checked her watch. Four minutes to eight. She resisted the urge to run. The man wasn’t going to get her goat.

There was a storybook quality to his street. It was nicely laid out, with orderly rows of pastel-colored houses and duplexes. Yards were separated by neat hedges and filled with tree houses and kennels. Some of the swings and slides were occupied, even at this early hour. Children laughed and screamed, chasing excited dogs and each other. Then she was standing in front of Hammond’s house, double-checking the number on her beat-up paper napkin, although she knew she had the right place.

Surprise left her rooted to the sidewalk. This was the house he’d bought? A mild breeze could have knocked her over. She’d have bet good money Hammond would have chosen an environment as cold and stark as he was. She was expecting chrome, white paint trimmed with gray or black, and a precision-cut lawn. Instead, she got a new millennium version of Norman Rockwell. The air was filled with a hint of fresh paint. The two-story house was a blushing ivory, with doors, windows and gables trimmed in a pale, milky squash. The slanted shingle roof was a deep avocado, and the window panes stained in gemstone colors. Spring was springing up all over. In contrast to the other yards in the street, the grass was a knee-high tangle dotted with stray daisies. A seesaw and jungle gym stood in the far corner, all lonely.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers and copper-crested whatchama-callems flitted deliriously around, feasting on bugs—and on bananas that somebody had stuck on the branches of the fruit trees that were just pushing out new blossoms. Hammond, a nature lover? Nawww.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move in one of the curtainless ground-floor windows. Remembering her purpose for being here, she stopped gawking at the lawn and straightened her shoulders.

The front door swung open. “You going to stand there all morning, or are you coming in?”

Deciding the question didn’t warrant a response, she opened the waist-high wooden gate that led up the flagstone path and met him on his doorstep. “Good morning,” she said as amiably as possible. “Lovely day. How you doing?” Let’s see him try to grouch his way out of that one.

“Morning,” he answered, pleasant as pie. “And I’m fine and dandy, thank you.” He was actually smiling, and glory be, his face didn’t crack. “What about you?”

“Oh, I’m…” It was about then she noticed he had on the best damn fitting jeans outside the pages of a magazine, and a stark white, sleeveless undershirt that he’d probably just pulled from the package. She could still see the creases in it. His feet were bare. What a difference clothes made in a man! What had happened to the young Turk with his custom suit, striding around the office as if all of Wall Street depended on his performance? The man who stood before her was relaxed and comfortable in his glowing skin. His skin, while she was on the subject, made her think of hot toast done just right, dripping with melted butter and deep, rich honey. Oh. Food.

His lean, fit body spoke not of hours of pumping iron but of good health, natural grace and the kind of structure that only came from good genes. The dark brown hair that sprinkled his chest and peeked out from his armpits as he held the door open was slightly curlier than the crisp, well-tended mass upon his head. Kendra, Kendra, stop staring. Even though he was as dressed down as she, she felt almost grubby by comparison. She patted down the front of her shirt in a nervous gesture she hoped he didn’t spot. Fat chance. Those gray eyes didn’t miss a thing. “You look ready to get your hands dirty.”

“I am.”

“Good. Had trouble finding the place?” He almost gave her the impression he was interested in the answer.

She shook her head. “No, but it was a pretty long ride.”

He checked the time. “Still, you hit eight on the nose. What’d you do, sit up all night in a chair fully dressed, just to be sure you’d be on time?”

“Of course not,” she replied with a huge helping of scorn. Not exactly. She stepped in so he could close the door.

He slipped into tour guide mode. “The house is about fifteen years old, but in good repair. I’ve had some work done, but more to suit my taste and my needs than to fix any problems.” He led her into the living room, gesturing as he went. There were traces of workmen’s mess, bits of wood and rubble in the corners—and guess who was going to have to clean it. “I’ve knocked out a wall here to make things more airy, see?” There was a hint of pride in his voice, a homeowner’s excitement at the freshness and promise around him.

She didn’t begrudge him his satisfaction. He’d made this castle his own, and was proud of it. “I see. It’s very nice.”

“My den’s back there.” He pointed. “Bedrooms are upstairs, one master, one guest, and one’s for a…” He trailed off, and then started over. “One’s a child’s bedroom. I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with that one yet.”

“I saw a seesaw and some other kid’s stuff in the backyard. I guess a kid used to live here, huh?”

“I guess.”

She should have known better, by the look on his face and his noncommittal answer, but before she could stop it, she was cheerily saying, “It’d be a lovely house for children. Lots of space, places to play. Did you ever want children?”

He looked as though she’d whacked him in the gut with a four iron. He took an age to answer, and when he did, his eyes were steady on her face, as if he was afraid to blink. “My wife and I never had the chance.”

Oh God. The late wife. She hastened to apologize for her clumsiness. “Oh, I’m so…”

He shook his head, and the uncomfortable moment was past. “Forget it.” He started moving again. Motion. Good. He continued with his tour, as though she’d created no ripples on the surface of his pond. “Kitchen, of course.” He gestured through the open back door. “There’s a deck out there. The wood needs stripping, but I’ll have to get to that later, when the interior’s in order.” He laughed lightly. “If I ever make any friends here in Santa Amata, maybe I’ll hold a barbecue. I’ve been here only a few weeks and it’s been all work.”

Kendra peeped out politely, but her mind was still on her faux pas. “It’s…lovely.”

His spiel returned to the kitchen. “They delivered the appliances yesterday, but the gas isn’t hooked up yet. We’ll be ordering take-out for lunch. Gas people are supposed to swing by this afternoon, so maybe soon you can taste my hand, as my grandma used to say. Fridge works, though.” He opened it, partly to demonstrate, partly to offer her something. “Had breakfast?”

Last thing she needed right now was to see food. Being on the brink of a self-imposed sentence of community service was nerve wracking enough. “I’m okay.”

“Doesn’t exactly answer the question, but all right. How ’bout some juice?”

“Thank you.”

He reached into a cardboard box, rummaged through packing peanuts and retrieved a glass, which he washed and filled with pink grapefruit juice. “Ice maker needs about twenty-four hours to kick in,” he apologized, “but the juice is sorta cold.”

She sipped it. “It’s fine.” They were standing next to the marble-topped island in the kitchen, with him a little closer than she would have liked, given that she’d suddenly discovered that he had quite a body on him, and that as much as she didn’t cotton to him, her body wasn’t immune to the ripples she could see as he folded his arms across his chest. He looked at her, assessing, until she couldn’t stand it anymore. “What?”

“I half wondered if you were going to show.”

Smart aleck. “I said I would, and I’m here.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Just because I’ve got sticky fingers doesn’t mean that my word isn’t my bond.”

He nodded to indicate that her barb had landed well, but didn’t volley back.

She tried not to sound too disgruntled when she added, “You have to admit you have me over a barrel, Mr. Hammond. I don’t have many options open to me right now.”

“Trey.”

She frowned, puzzled, so he clarified. “Call me Trey. Please.”

In a bug’s eye. “At the office we called you Mr. Hammond.”

“We’re not at the office. In my home people call me Trey.”

She wasn’t in the mood for an argument, so she said, “Okay,” but she wasn’t going to call him a damn thing, if she could get away with it.

“Can I call you Kendra?”

“You’ve called me worse.”

He stepped maybe two inches closer, but two inches was enough for her to catch the slightest whiff of his scent. Sawdust and aftershave. And something else, something manly and warm, but she had to be imagining that. “If we’re going to work together, can we at least make peace?”

The swirly patterns the grapefruit pulp made on the sides of her glass suddenly held her attention to such an extent that she was unable to meet his gaze. Peace. He didn’t know what he was asking. He’d questioned her morals and mocked her values. He’d thrown her out in front of people who’d once respected her. He’d reduced her from a woman in a prestigious position to a scullery maid. Now he wanted peace.

He was waiting for an answer, but not in silence. “I’m not the enemy, Kendra. We’re just two people helping each other.”

She wasn’t so sure about that. “I don’t…”

“Try, at least,” his voice was low, encouraging.

She caved in like a house of straw. “Okay.” The concession took less effort than she’d expected.

“Okay.” His smile lit up his eyes. He held out his hand.

She took it, idly noticing how, although she didn’t have the most delicate hands in the world, his was still capable of engulfing it. She noticed, too, that his skin was as warm as his voice. This was probably the first time she’d touched him, and, considering what that brief contact was doing to her, she was going to do her darnedest to make sure it didn’t become a habit. She pulled her hand away and rubbed it surreptitiously on her jeans. “We should get started.” It was hard to get the suggestion past the little frog in her throat.

He conceded without any argument, easing the glass from her fingers and putting it next to the sink. “We’ll start with my den.” She followed close behind, and came to stand near a pile of cardboard boxes in a corner. He was a careful mover. On the sides of each box he’d clearly written the word “Den” with a fat, black marker. She didn’t need much of an imagination to visualize other piles of boxes elsewhere labeled “kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.” Just one more way in which this man kept his world under strict control. Just one more way in which they were different.

“I thought we’d fix this one up first,” he was telling her, “because I like to have a nice quiet place to work in at night.”

Odd reason, Kendra thought. When you live alone, isn’t the whole house a nice quiet place? Setting up a den in order to have a “quiet place to work” was like building an igloo on a tundra just to have a place to cool down. He was oblivious to the irony. She didn’t draw his attention to it.

“Back in a sec.” He disappeared, then returned with an armload of cleaning supplies—buckets, mops, brooms, cleaning fluids of all kinds—and set them down. She reached for a broom, but he beat her to it, and began to tackle the rubble left behind by the painters and repairmen. He caught her look of surprise. “Did you think I was planning on sitting back with a bourbon and watching you work?”

That was exactly what she was thinking, but she’d rather drink cleaning fluid than admit it. “No, not exactly,” she fluffed.

He stopped sweeping long enough to tell her, “I’m not a slave driver, Kendra. I expect you to put in a fair day’s work, and I’ll do the same.”

“I guess that’s reasonable.” Her surprise was being replaced by admiration for his decent gesture, but she wasn’t about to let him see that, either. “I’ll go fill this bucket, so when you’re done sweeping I can mop up.”

“Attagirl.”

By the time she was back, he’d produced a small CD player and was loading it with albums. “Music to work by. Hope you aren’t one of those modern girls who won’t listen to anything that’s not on the charts this very second, ’cause I’m old-school.” He certainly was. The player began belting out vintage funk, loudly and with great enthusiasm. James Brown. The Average White Band. Rick James. Chaka Khan. And he was right—it was music to work by. Before long, she forgot why she was here and focused on what needed to be done. She forgot that he was, if not the enemy, at least only a guarded ally. Together they found their rhythm.

When the floors were clean, the rug rolled down and the desk in place, they started to unpack his books. The walls of the den were lined on three sides with built-in, floor-to-ceiling shelving. When she first noticed them, she’d thought they were a little excessive; but now that his collection was being revealed, crate by crate and box by box, she was half-worried there wouldn’t be enough room.

She took her time unpacking, reading the covers curiously, trying to gauge the nature of this surprisingly complex man. He was sentimental: he’d kept books from his boyhood, reading primers and adventure stories. Hardy Boys and Treasure Island . He was an escapist. There were science fiction, murder mysteries and legal dramas—John Grisham, Peter Benchley, Stephen King and Walter Mosley. Even more surprising, he had a collection of books on maritime nonfiction. Wars, war machines, boats and planes. These made her brows shoot up.

He caught her look and shrugged. “We’ve all got our vices.”

Amen to that, she thought. At least his weren’t fattening. As she helped him mount a framed MBA from Howard next to a twenty-year-old certificate of excellence in piano, Kendra had the odd sense that the wall of cold air she knew him to be was condensing and warming up into a human being. It was as if he was a huge puzzle that needed solving, and the items in all these boxes were the pieces.

She opened a box of knickknacks and photos. The one on top was fairly faded. It showed a tall, well built, sandy-haired, golden man with slate-colored eyes. He was standing behind a small boy on a bright red bike, his hands steadying the handlebars. Kendra recognized the frown of concentration on the boy’s pointed face. She held the photo up. “You and your dad?”

He knew which photo she was referring to without having to look up. “Yeah. I was five. It was my first bike. I got it for my birthday. Well, Christmas and my birthday, I guess. They’re both on the same day.”

“You’re a Christmas baby?”

“Unfortunately. You know we get about forty percent fewer presents over the course of a lifetime than regular folk?”

She made a rueful face. “Sorry to hear that.”

He gave an exaggerated shrug. “You get used to it.”

She looked down at the photo again. “Your dad’s white?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly, but he could pass, if he’d had a mind to. If my mother had a mind to let him.”

“Which she didn’t.”

“Nope.”

She set the photo carefully down in the area of the bookcase they’d set aside for display items. “Are your parents…”

“Alive and kicking. Both retired, still living in the house I grew up in, a few miles outside of Atlanta. Been there ever since, until now.”

“You’re a southern boy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thought I heard something in your voice.”

“Can’t shake it. Wouldn’t want to.”

She rummaged in the crate and withdrew a larger, professionally framed photo. He was all grown up, embracing a beautiful, long-limbed woman on a boat. One arm was around her waist, the other cradled her cheek as she leaned against him. The woman had striking, exotic features, perfect Brazil nut skin and cheekbones sharp enough to draw blood. Her mouth was like a firm fruit, and her makeup looked as if it had been airbrushed on by a fine artist. She bore herself with the poise and elegance of royalty. Kendra felt the slightest chill ripple through her. Trey’s wife, no doubt. She peered closer. Trey was relaxed, happy, smiling, gray eyes full of warmth, humor and life. His lips were parted, teeth white, Adam’s apple faintly visible past the button-down shirt he wore. She almost couldn’t recognize him as the same man.

“My wife died six years ago. Her name was Ashia. She was from Somalia.” Somehow, he’d managed to stand behind her without her realizing he’d moved. Watching her watch the picture. In her embarrassment, she almost dropped it. “I didn’t mean…”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he took the photo from her fingers and placed it tenderly on his desk. When she glanced up several moments later, he was still looking at it. She couldn’t read his face. She went back to work, feeling as though she intruded. Trey left the photo alone and joined her.

The next few boxes were full of model airplanes and ships. “Wonders never cease,” she murmured.

He laughed. “A passion I haven’t shaken from boyhood. I used to love making model planes and aircraft. These were modeled after authentic wartime craft.”

“You made these? From scratch? No kits?”

“Some of the older ones are from kits. Look, this is a German Dornier Do-17. See the fat snub nose? They called it the Flying Pencil. I made it when I was thirteen or so. It’s one of my personal favorites.” He took up a tiny one emblazoned with a rising sun. “This one’s Japanese. A Mitsubishi A5-M. Very fast. I made hundreds of kit models before I got bored. Drove my mother crazy.”

“I’ll bet.” She was warmed by the pride in his voice, and enchanted by the glimpse he was allowing her into the boy he had been.

“My room was so full of models I could barely move about. We used to have ring-down battles twice a year or so. She used to make me throw half of them out. Wasn’t prepared to live in a junkyard, she said.”

“Pity. If you’d saved them you could have made a fortune selling them alone.”

“I’d sooner sell my own soul,” he countered. “You can imagine what it was like when I started making my own out of whatever bits and pieces I could drag home. My mother’s junkyard metaphor took on a whole ’nother dimension.”

She found herself chuckling with him. When the box they were working on was empty, she lifted the lid off another, and unpacked a heavy, wrapped object. Peeling away the layers of bubble wrap, she discovered a ship in a bottle. A rather old ship in a bottle. The shape, the feel of it, transported her back in time. She held it up to the sunlight. The ship inside was exquisite, its sails fully raised, even slightly curved, as though billowing in a gentle breeze. She didn’t know the first thing about models, but she could see it was handcrafted. “This one’s a beauty. It looks old. Where’d you get it?”

He was on her like a pouncing cat, snatching it from her hands. “Don’t touch that.” She watched openmouthed as he picked up a new piece of cheesecloth and rubbed it down, as though her fingerprints would contaminate it. There was a wooden stand in the box where she’d found the ship. He pulled that out, dusted it off just as carefully and placed the ship upon it on the main shelf, at the center of his collection.

She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to react, feeling awkward and ashamed, but still unable to determine the exact nature of her crime. “I’m sorry. I…”

He wouldn’t even look at her. “Maybe we should break for lunch.” Not waiting for her response, he threw the cheesecloth aside and walked off. She followed, not bothering to hide her confusion. What had she done? What had she said?

As the wadding on the kitchen chairs hadn’t been removed yet, they ate Chinese take-out, cross-legged on the floor. Throughout the meal, and after, Trey tried to act as if nothing had happened, but the camaraderie of the morning was broken. She was glad when the afternoon was over. At five o’ clock he called it a day, and walked her to the door.

He handed her a plain white envelope, and she knew without having to open it what it held: half her day’s wages. She took it, face and neck hot with embarrassment over all it implied. She shoved it into her jeans pocket, out of sight.

“Thank you,” he told her. “You were a big help.”

She nodded wordlessly. They stood there on the doorstep facing each other, Trey appearing even taller because he was one step above. It was as awkward as that charged moment at the end of a blind date when both parties wait for someone to say or do something to break the tension…except she wasn’t waiting on a kiss, she was waiting on an explanation—or an apology. She didn’t get one.

Instead, he asked, “Tomorrow? I know it’s Sunday, but I’ll be home all day, and I was thinking we could get the living room straightened out.”

Like I have a choice, she thought. But there was a pleading in his eyes that gave her the odd feeling he didn’t just want her for her work. He wanted her for her company. Damn. Handsome, smart, self-assured, top of his game Trey Hammond is lonely. Don’t that beat all. She nodded. “Tomorrow.”