Gwynne Forster - Secret Desire

“This has been wonderful. Actually, it’s my first night out since I’ve been here. And what do you know? I think I stepped out with the king of the hill.”

He had the grace to be embarrassed. “Come on now, Kate. You’re exaggerating.”

The waiter didn’t bring a bill, and she decided not to ask for one. Since he ate there regularly, he probably had an account with the restaurant or someone had slipped him the check. In any case, he didn’t seem the type who’d split the bill with a woman the first time they ate dinner together. A few April sprinkles dampened them as they strolled half a block to Luke’s car, but he didn’t hurry. She’d already noticed that Portsmouth inhabitants, like the Charlestonians among whom she grew up, took their time about most things. He walked with her to her apartment door, and her nerves started a wild battle with one another. She didn’t think he’d ask to come in, but…

“I’ve enjoyed this evening with you, Kate. I enjoyed it a lot. I hope we’ll get better acquainted.” Before she could say a word, he winked, turned around and headed down the hallway.

“Luke,” she called. “The dinner was wonderful, and so were you.”

He waved, opened the building’s front door, and disappeared into the night. She stared at the hall that led to the building’s lobby and shook her head. She knew herself as a conservative woman, one whom Nathan Middleton in his perverted gentility had taught to wait for the man to make the first move. In a flash, she realized that Nathan had discouraged, even rejected, her advances early in their marriage until she’d stopped making them. Ultimately, he had set the tone of their relationship and called all the shots. Ultimately, she hadn’t cared.

Maybe she was about to find out who she was, or to rediscover herself. She couldn’t figure out what had gotten into her. She’d dared Luke, flirted with him and challenged him, and she wasn’t even ashamed. Ashamed? She’d enjoyed every second of it. But he’d kept his counsel, and she suspected he’d just let her know that he didn’t go in for casual good-night kisses, not even pecks on the cheek. It was just as well. If he’d kissed her, she’d probably have landed on the clouds. She had always wanted to fly with a man, and the woman in her knew instinctively that Luke Hickson could take her with him on wings of ecstasy. However, she’d been certain of that once before, and in ten years of groping for fulfillment, she’d gotten nothing but emptiness, a painful kind of loneliness—a thousand disappointments, like a field of scentless roses or an orchard of flowering cherry trees that bore no fruit. She didn’t feel like retracing those steps.

Luke propped his left foot on the step stool he kept in his walk-in closet and pondered his sudden urge to look at his family album. Why, after a dozen years or more, did he need to see pictures of his late parents and of him and Marcus as growing boys? He put the photo album back in its place without opening it, clicked off the light and wandered into the den. It wasn’t a time for nostalgia. He’d loved and cherished Eunice, and until her horrifying demise, they’d had a wonderful marriage—a happy marriage, comforting and companionable. But, he realized all of a sudden, it had been unexciting. Kate Middleton exhilarated him. And she had a streak of wickedness that brought out something strange in him, a kind of wildness with which he was unfamiliar. He’d controlled it, but he’d give anything to know what would happen if he felt it again and let himself give in to it.

He knew the danger of taking up a woman’s challenge, and she’d practically dared him to show her the man that he was. Not that he was gullible; he’d walked away from more glittering pitfalls. What got to him was the thin layer of sadness beneath her jocular manner. That, along with her wit and charm, made him vulnerable to her, piqued his curiosity and made him want to know everything about her. He went to the refrigerator, got a can of beer and took a few swallows. An inner urging told him to bide his time, and he knew he’d better listen.

He snapped his fingers as he remembered her fear that her in-laws might be trying to prevent her from succeeding with the bookstore. It didn’t quite wash, but to be on the safe side, he’d assign a detective to watch that block first thing Monday morning.

When Kate walked into her living room, she found Madge Robinson snoring in front of the television and Bugs Bunny savoring a carrot while he plotted mischief. She awakened the woman by turning off the TV.

Madge jumped up. “I didn’t expect you’d be back in no two hours. If I went anywhere with Captain Hickson, I’d keep him half the night, too.”

She didn’t have much patience with busybodies. Madge Robinson had known she’d been with Luke because she’d walked to the edge of the garden and peered through the hedge, snooping. “Mrs. Robinson, it’s only nine-fifteen, and I’d hardly consider that half the night. Did Randy give you any trouble?”

Madge sat down and flicked the television back on. “I didn’t see the rest of Bugs. No, Randy didn’t give me a speck of trouble. I went to my place and got him some ice cream, and he went to bed as peacefully as a lamb, just like he promised.”

Just what Randy needed, someone else to pamper him and cajole him into doing what he knew he should do. “You mean, you bribed Randy to go to sleep?”

Madge glued her gaze to the television. “That tiger’s gonna catch Bugs if he ain’t careful. What? Oh. It was better for him to sleep than give me a hard time. Besides, he was tired, anyway. Poor kid said he hadn’t slept all last night.”

“How much do I owe you, Mrs. Robinson?”

“What? Fifteen. That’s my regular price, and call me Madge, like everybody else does. I’d rather not charge for keeping the tenants’ children, but everybody wants to pay. It’s a pleasure for me, ’cause I’m always by myself ’less someone wants me to keep the kids. I never had any, so I enjoys it. I ’spec you want to turn in, so I’ll go on home soon as Bugs is finished.”

Kate inhaled a long breath and sat down to watch Bugs Bunny. Within minutes she had closed her eyes and begun to relive the evening.

She opened her store the next morning at nine o’clock, the usual hour. Beside the doorknob, she noticed a buzzer that hadn’t been there before the robbery. She’d ask Luke about that. Half an hour later, she answered the buzzer and opened the door for a policeman.

“’Morning, Miss Kate,” he said, tipping his hat. “I’m Officer Cowan, and I’ve been assigned to patrol your area. I just wanted to give you my pager number, in case you have a problem. I won’t be more than eight or ten blocks from you at any time, so feel safe. You can turn this buzzer off till near dark. I doubt anybody’s gonna bother you in broad daylight.”

That air that whistled through his teeth with each word he uttered and the large patch of black hair beneath his left ear guaranteed that she wouldn’t forget him. She thanked him, and he left, but she wanted to ask somebody if Luke Hickson took such good care of every citizen in his precinct. The protection gave her a sense of security, but she didn’t want special favors. One way or another, you paid for them. She’d rather spend her precious funds on a store guard and keep her independence.

She rang up a sale, handed the change to the buyer. Then, as her gaze caught Luke heading toward her, she jammed her finger in the drawer of the cash register. She’d thought him handsome, but as she stared at him in his captain’s uniform she nearly swallowed her tongue. He glided toward her, his stride purposeful and powerful and his gaze fixed on her.

He stopped beside her customer and touched his cap. “Glad to see you’re up and out, Miss Fanny. You had a long siege.”