Gwynne Forster - Last Chance at Love

“The firm might be able to get us some. Say, guess who surfaced recently, all cloaked in respectability?”

For reasons Allison couldn’t fathom, apprehension gripped her. “You’ll tell me.”

“Roland Farr. I thought he’d be in jail by now, but he was at Chasan’s with Penelope Wade, Senator Wade’s daughter. I wonder where he’s been.”

“I don’t. I had hoped I’d heard the last of that man. What else is new?”

Connie’s chuckles would lighten anybody’s burden. “Plenty, I suspect, but nobody’s given me the lowdown. Hurry back.”

Allison hung up, pressed the red button on her phone, and got her message. Jenkins wanted her to call him. She looked at her watch. Ten-forty at night. Not on his life. She moved around the room, her thoughts on Connie’s news of Roland Farr. She shrugged. No point in wasting time wondering where the man got money to hobnob with Penelope Wade. She turned on the television, tuned to a local station, gazed at crowds milling around the streets of New York, and flicked it off. Restless. Such a magical evening as she and Jake had enjoyed should have had a different ending. And she’d thought...

Wait a minute. Jake had said that they would ride through the park, then he’d suddenly remembered he ought to call someone. Tension began to build in her, and she dropped to the edge of the bed and sat there. This wasn’t the first time she’d sensed something mysterious, even false about him. She telephoned his room. No answer. Air seeped from her lungs. Maybe the friend of whom he’d spoken was a woman, and maybe he’d spend the night with her. Not that she cared. She had no interest in him as a man, she told herself, reached for a notebook, and began recording the events of their day. But the image of a tall man with hazel eyes, the skin color of unshelled peanuts, and a wicked, out-of-control wink danced across the pages, daring her to fall in step with him and grab hold of life. She closed the notebook, opened the bathroom door and turned on the light, and went to bed. Her fear of a darkened room was absolute. It didn’t matter whether she was alone or with someone, a dark room terrified her, and she would neither enter nor remain in one.

* * *

Dozing off to sleep that night, Jake remembered their early morning program, sat up, and dialed Allison.

“Don’t tell me you were already asleep. I’m sorry if I awakened you, but I wanted to remind you that I have to be at the TV station no later than six-thirty in the morning. You remember that the taping is at seven-thirty.” Her soft groan—or was it a purr?—sent hot darts of sexual tension leapfrogging through his body, and he turned over on his belly. “Allison, wake up.”

“Hmmm?”

“Don’t forget we’re meeting downstairs at six-fifteen. I’ll have a taxi waiting.”

“Okay. I’ll...okay. Night.”

“Damn!” He turned off the light and fought for sleep that wouldn’t come, thanks to visions of her thrashing beneath the covers, beckoning him to her with arms outstretched. The streaks of light that at last filtered through the venetian blinds had never been more welcome.

* * *

Allison crashed into Jake as she raced into the breakfast room for her life-giving cup of coffee. “’Scuse me, sir. Uh... Oh, Jake. You’ve already had breakfast?”

Jake regained his balance, picked up his briefcase, and shook his head. “The Washington Redskins might be interested in a good linebacker like you. Lady, you’re dangerous.”

“I didn’t expect to run into anybody this time of morning. Sorry about the pun. What’s the fastest way to get some coffee?”

He looked at his watch. “We’ve got eight minutes. I’ll get two cups while you find a table.”

She couldn’t believe he’d said that. Find a table? They could have any one in the dining room. Jake brought her a glass of orange juice with her coffee, and she told herself that it would be safer to hate him for causing her to get up before daybreak than to soften up and like him when he revealed this kind, thoughtful side of himself.

“Thanks, but I don’t have time to drink all this, do I?”

“We’ll take the time. It may be afternoon before we get anything else.” He sat facing her, waiting patiently while she sipped the juice and drank the coffee. A deep, dangerous feeling welled up in her. In all her life, only her brother, Sydney, ever placed her needs before his own.

After the taping of his interview that morning, Jake conferred with his publisher, leaving Alison with free time. She went back to the Drake and returned her boss’s call of the night before.

“Took your sweet time getting back to me. I wanted you to dash over to the United Nations and get an interview with the president of Ireland, who’s speaking this afternoon, and find out what that dame’s got going for herself. Well, it’s too late now. Next time return my call, even if it’s three o’clock in the morning.”

“I’ll do that.” And he could bet she’d enjoy it.

Later that afternoon, Allison sat at a corner table in the hotel’s breakfast room with a cup of hot chocolate and Jake’s book and concentrated on his words. After finishing the first three chapters—remarkable for the masterful use of words and knowledge of the subject matter—she went back to her room and made her weekly call to her mother, a woman whose world was a small town named Victoria, Vermont, where Allison was born, and who prided herself on being arbiter of social life among its eleven hundred African-American inhabitants.

“You mean to tell me you plan to travel all over the United States with this writer?” Edna Wakefield asked her daughter, and in her mind’s eye, Allison could see her mother’s pursed lips and knitted brow.

“Mother, this writer has written a book that commands the attention of both the literati and our government’s leaders,” she said, hating that she sounded as stuffy as her mother. She could imagine the gleam that entered her mother’s eyes when she heard that.

“Why, that’s remarkable, dear. Has he won the Nobel Prize?”

Here we go, she thought, hating her disloyalty. She’d always been fiercely loyal to her family, had grown up proud of her parents and respectful of their views, but their outlook on most things had seemed to narrow with the years.

“Really, Mother.”

Edna Wakefield cleared her throat. “Well, as long as he’s not a Democrat. What does he do now?”

Allison laughed. “He’s a published author, Mother, and I haven’t asked him about his political views, but he sounds pretty liberal to me.”

“We’d like to see you sometime soon, so come home when you can, dear.” It was always the same; they had nothing in common. She loved her parents, but by the time she’d reached school age, they had missed the opportunities for genuine closeness. She and her brother, Sydney, had clung to each other as children, and the bonds remained. She called her office at The Journal, retrieved her messages, and returned to Jake’s book, but the ringing phone interrupted her joy in it.

“You’re there?”

She controlled what she realized was excitement and anticipation and infused her voice with nonchalance. “Of course I’m here. You said you’d call me, didn’t you?”

If he detected coolness in her manner, he ignored it. “Allison. You may prefer watching the interview this evening on TV to accompanying me to my town hall lecture. If I were you, I’d catch the telecast, since your boss will probably see it. You saw us tape it, but it will appear very different on television.” It was good advice, and she might not have thought of that angle.

“Thanks, but I’ve been looking forward to being at your lecture, and I hate to miss the immediacy, that live quality of your talks. Where are you now?”