Gwynne Forster - One Night With You

The second morning Kendra was in her new home, exhausted from moving and arranging furniture, the sound of drums, at least one bugle and a trumpet brought her to her second-floor window facing the street. She dropped the pillows she had been changing on the bed and raced down to the front door to see what she thought was some kind of ceremonial parade. Native Americans, some in full tribal regalia, danced along in traditional tribal steps, and as many African-Americans, including the bugler and the trumpeter, danced with them. When they stopped in front of Albemarle Gates, she was delighted, but when a neighbor standing nearby groaned, “Oh, Lord. Here they are again,” she got a feeling of apprehension.

“What’s the problem?” she asked the young woman.

The woman rolled her eyes and threw up her hands as if in exasperation. “Honey, you don’t want to know.”

“Oh, but I do.”

“They’re picketing the builders, Brown and Worley, because they built this community on top of sacred Indian burial grounds, and in this town, whatever riles the Indians upsets the blacks and vice versa. They stick together, and they get things done, but not this time. Nobody is going to tear down Albemarle Gates. Besides, I hear Brown and Worley are fixing to build another one of these communities over near the park. Where you been you don’t know about this?”

“I’ve been in Queenstown exactly ten days.” She turned to introduce herself, but the woman had left. Hmmm. Nice to meet you.

She went back into the house and sat down to con template what she’d just learned. How would the controversy affect her in her role as judge? Obviously, many local people would think that, by living there, she had taken sides with Brown and Worley. She didn’t like it, but she’d signed the deed and taken the mortgage, and she didn’t see a way out.

In the supermarket the next day, Kendra received a sample of small-town hospitality when she put her groceries on the check-out counter. “How are you today?” she asked the clerk. “Pretty cold out, isn’t it?”

“Push your stuff forward. The belt’s not working.”

She scrutinized the woman, making certain that she was a sister. “Do you live here in Queenstown?” Kendra asked her.

The woman stopped work and gazed at her. “I live here. My mother and father live here, and so did my grandparents and great-grandparents. Anything else you need to know?”

Taken aback and angered at the woman’s insulting tone, Kendra said, “Pardon me. I didn’t expect a nasty response to my graciousness. I don’t care where you live.” She paid for the groceries and drove home. In front of her house, she took the bags of groceries out of the trunk of her car, closed the lid and lost her footing, slipping on the ice. Her packages fell to the ice, spilling the contents, and she struggled unsuccessfully to get enough traction to heave herself to her feet. Not certain whether to laugh or cry at the spectacle she suspected she was, she relaxed and lay there.

To her amazement and eternal thanks, two large hands gripped her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. A smile began to spread over her face as she looked up at her rescuer, but it ended around her lips, as she practically froze. She had never seen such eyes, mesmerizing grayish-brown eyes that seemed ready to sleep beneath their long curly lashes. Eyes that didn’t seem compatible with the man’s strong masculine presence. She stared at him. Poleaxed. Stupefied and unable to pull herself out of it.

“Are you all right now?” he asked her, his voice deep and lilting.

She thought she nodded. He bent down to pick up an orange and was suddenly chasing oranges and lemons across the ice, music pouring out of him as he did so, in what she figured was a laugh. As he managed to retrieve the fruit, he stashed it in the pockets of his thick leather jacket. He seemed to be having the time of his life as he chased and recovered the fruit. He got a head of cabbage, looked at it, shrugged and handed it to her. She put it in the grocery bag. He played the game until the grocery bags were almost full. Then he took the fruit from his pockets and put it in the bags.

“Where do you live?” he asked her. “I’d better carry this for you, because I’m not sure I’m up to sliding around to pick this stuff up again.”

“I don’t know how to thank you. I’d probably still be trying to get up.”

“It was my pleasure. Best exercise I’ve had in a while.”

She opened her front door, and he put the bags on the floor in the foyer beside the door. “I’m Kendra Rutherford, and I just moved here.”

“I’m Reid Maguire, and I live in that apartment building across the street from here. Nice to meet you.” He turned and left, and she realized that he had shown absolutely no interest in developing a friendship with her. What a letdown!

Reid Maguire didn’t talk much, and he never spoke if silence would suffice. He didn’t know Kendra Rutherford, and his reaction to her was none of her business. If he’d learned anything, it was the virtue of feeding a good-looking, sexy woman with a long-handled spoon, as it were, so as to keep as much distance as possible between him and her. Kendra Rutherford might not be an aggressive man-eater, but her reaction to him was the same as his to her, and that spelled trouble.

There might not be another woman on earth like Myrna, his ex-wife, but he didn’t intend to start testing that theory. He’d had it with women, and he didn’t want one cluttering up his life pretending that she loved him, when she only loved what he could give her. At the moment when he had needed his wife most, she had walked out on him.

Tomorrow, he would begin work as an assistant with the architectural firm Marks and Connerly, Architects, Ltd. He didn’t intend to spread information about his former status. If his new colleagues guessed or knew who he was, so be it; if not, he didn’t care. He was back in his chosen field, and he meant to make the most of it.

But he was not to have the benefit of anonymity. “I’ve been doing some research on you, Reid,” Jack Connerly, the senior partner, told him when they met, “and I think we hit the jackpot when we hired you. We’ve contracted to design an airport terminal in Caution Point, about thirty miles from here. Would you like the job?”

“I’m stunned. How many enemies in the firm will this get me?”

“Who knows? Do you want it?”

“Absolutely. I’d like to see the site, but I don’t have a car.”

“You can take a company car. Make a list of what you need to work with and give it to the supply clerk. Your expenses are covered up to three fifty per day, excluding transportation, and you can’t put alcohol on your tab.”

“Thanks. I’ll give you two or three sketches.”

“Great. It’s good to have you with us. Your office is two doors down on the right.”

Reid walked down to the end of the hall and back. There were sixteen offices, eight on each side of the corridor, and only one office separated his from that of the senior partner. So far, so good. They weren’t paying him what he was worth, but when he finished the design of that airport terminal, they would.

In the drugstore about three blocks from his apartment, where he stopped in the hope of finding a felt-tipped pen, he bumped into Kendra, almost knocking her down.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m not usually this clumsy.”

“It was my fault. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” He allowed himself a smile, and headed for the aisle in which he’d previously found unlined tablets large enough for drawing, though he would have preferred bigger ones. Seeing no pens of any kind, he walked around until he’d satisfied himself that he wouldn’t find them in that store, and that he’d have to wait till the supply clerk at Marks and Connerly filled his order. As he started for the door, he noticed Kendra struggling with a large container of liquid soap and a few other items. After counseling himself to pretend he didn’t see her, because he didn’t want any involvement with her, he walked over to her.