by Sonia Icilyn
But Avril could not think. How could she when everything that had happened that morning was badgering against her nerves. The treachery. The deceit. Avril felt vile that she had not recognized or even ciphered for herself what was going on sooner. And how could she?
Maxwell was a bachelor with money, social connections and a place in the community. Like Reuben Meyer, he was part of that club of African-Caribbeans who made things happen. “Empire builders,” to coin a phrase.
Any woman would’ve fallen at his feet and welcomed the glamorous future he had to offer. She had been such a person. Maxwell was charming, charismatic and had casually invited her into his life. His proposal was something she’d accepted, too, without foresight or questioning her feelings. Had she done so, the truth would’ve become apparent.
Maxwell’s shows of affection were never genuine. They were often detached, if not standoffish. Perhaps this was why she sought refuge in Meyrick. Her surface attachment to him had simply given her roots to lodge her emotions. And Meyrick’s conciliatory response had made her more susceptible to him.
Had she only delved deeper into why Maxwell was behaving elusive, the fractures of his betraying her trust might have become more apparent. And with this thought, Avril felt worse. Maxwell knew he was the father to her brother’s wife’s child and not only kept this from her, but had proposed marriage to escape his responsibilities. Avril had never thought a man could stoop so low, to play with two women’s lives. It was all making sense to her now.
She stepped from the elevator with her mind racing. What now? As she stared down the long corridor that led to her apartment, she suddenly remembered she had a job to do that should rightfully have filled her morning. Avril sighed heavily and tried to plan her day. There was no agenda. Reuben Meyer had not set a brief on how or at what intervals she should report back to him.
Avril considered she could go and see Mr. McGregory to take her mind from probing on the matter of Elonwy’s baby. He had told her that he lived on the third level at apartment C15 and she had promised to call by for tea. As Avril walked toward her front door, she decided on bringing chocolate cookies.
A lively conversation with Mr. McGregory would definitely take her mind of the awful ordeal she’d undergone with Elonwy, she decided. She quickly entered her apartment, searched her cupboards for a packet of cookies and was out the door in one fell swoop. Avril decided to take the stairs two flights down in an attempt to keep her mind free.
But it strayed instantly to Dale Lambert. To her chagrin, she felt a burst of sensual excitement, followed by a tinge of pain for having ostracized him. Philippa had obviously been retained to represent her sister-in-law and that was in the course of her profession as a lawyer. It was nothing personal. The fact that Elonwy happened to be her brother’s wife was a coincidence indirectly related to her.
The anger she’d placed on Dale was unwarranted and Avril now worried whether they could reach a reconciliation.
After the night they’d shared—Dale kissing her and tormenting her body with blatant desire until she fainted—they should never have parted on bad terms.
Avril was awed that she’d put herself in such a predicament, especially when her body wanted more of what they’d shared the night before. On her next flight down, she pondered on whether she should call him, but she immediately decided against it. Now that would be tempting fate. Besides, she still hadn’t asked him for his number. When she alighted at level three, Avril felt a sense of panic.
What if Dale had decided he’d taken more than any man could chew with her latest tantrum. After reigning revenge on Maxwell Armstrong, her misplaced emotions with Meyrick following the aftermath of her wedding day and now the shambles that were suddenly around her because of her brother’s wife, could she blame him when she’d as good as thrown him out?
Mr. McGregory voiced it differently. “Do you really think this man you’re falling in love with still has his eyes set on this lawyer… Philippa Fearne?”
It was her worse fear since discovering that Philippa was not the mother of Maxwell’s baby. “I don’t know,” she sighed.
“What you need is to ask yourself if this is the man you really want for keeps?” he strongly advised. “Take some time out and put things into perspective.”
Easier said than done.
The days rolled by endlessly with no word from her brother or Dale, who remained a constant plague infecting her mind. There was no treatment. No remedy. The man was just there, infesting her every thought. Then there was the Elonwy epidemic. She’d wanted to call her mother about it, but decided on leaving that to Antonio.
Instead, Avril attacked her job with a vengeance. Cautiously at first, then later with increasing confidence. She felt a sense of accomplishment attached to the process of gleaning information. By the time the weekend dawned, her latest revelation came from an Algerian on the top floor.
“I believe this building can best be described as a ghetto,” he’d said with a stentorian flair—the homage of having moved from one ghetto in his homeland to another abroad.
She’d been taken aback by the remark. Surely not! A ghetto in the heart of Shepherds Bush? But such were the opinions of most everyone she’d spoken to. Sidled with her recent heartbreak, it was fascinating stuff.
At night when she returned to her own apartment alone, that was when the memories of Dale Lambert emerged like an infection that bugged her nerves. Did she really want him for keeps? What woman could make such a decision based on one earth-shattering moment? But Avril felt she could.
They’d planned to go to the Royal National Theater the following night, but given Dale’s silence throughout the week, she’d already begun to suspect he’d be a no show. That would be the final humiliation, she thought, unable to recall a time in her life where she’d been stood-up on a date.
And so the weekend arrived with Avril feeling lukewarm, if not cold, about her budding relationship with Dale Lambert. To her chagrin, there were no tears—at least not yet. To the contrary, her picture of him began to reshape. How little they knew each other, even after one night of hot passion—legs entwined, hearts united, lips locked and their bodies merged on the brink of ecstasy.
Avril began to tell herself it had to mean something, because if it didn’t, she would surely go mad. Yet she kept her rationality intact. Not wanting to fall apart at the seams should she never see Dale Lambert again, she washed the plates, mopped the floor, vacuumed her apartment and even emptied the trash by taking the elevator to a location at the back of the building.
Finding the half-full bottle of Cristal champagne, the empty tulip glasses and Dale’s lost sock brought back heady memories anew, but Avril kept on dusting. With a clean apartment, she looked around, feeling the strain. She fought it with every vestige of stamina. As the hours passed, she began to walk into the hallway and stare at the phone, willing it to ring. This was torture.
Dale could not do this to her and walk away. She had never allowed any man that privilege, in spite of having once immersed herself in a den of inequity—drugs, hell-raisers, menacing male vultures who passed themselves off as models. The Olympic-medal drinking and substance abuse had always, mercifully, taken precedence and provided her the escape route she needed.
Her skinflint boyfriends had been more interested in becoming inebriated than taking her to bed. But this was extraordinary, that she should be feeling so robbed of Dale’s touch when she had never demanded it of the other men in her past.
Another hour and she was glum. No phone call. Avril’s hands were trembling when she went to wash them in the bathroom sink. Then seconds later, she washed her face, too. The aroma of lavender filled the air, another reminder of the night she’d shared with Dale. Her reflection met her worried expression in the bathroom mirror. Avril stared at her image, hypnotized.
She looked sad. Rejected. Like a woman about to lose control and dissolve into a flood of tears. No way! Avril was determined she would not cry. She was not g
oing to be like her mother, giving up everything—her self-respect, her self-worth—for love, only to be emotionally destroyed by two men before she finally found Lennie.
She rushed to her bedroom and changed out of the lime-green jogging pants and yellow vest she was wearing and replaced them with a pair of Fubu blue jeans and a pale blue jersey appropriate for the slightly warm August afternoon. The casual look would probably encourage Kesse to join her on an outing to look at the shops, she thought as she pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail.
She also relished the thought of being absent from her home should Dale decide to put in an appearance. Tough, she acknowledged quietly. That should teach him to call. Then a thought struck. What if he’d wriggled out and broken free from her? What if he wanted Philippa Fearne instead, despite that she recalled her mention of having a boyfriend?
There it was again, that sense of panic. Beneath the surface gloss and mild layer of makeup, her emotions were in big trouble. Dale’s silence hurt, intolerably. Would he call? It’d been three days.
She took a black cab, hailed on the street, over to Kesse Foster’s house in Ealing, London. The guilt for having practically thrown Dale out of her apartment niggled against her insecurities. Her irritability worsened as she recalled her reaction to the news about Elonwy and Maxwell. Damn that woman!
Avril was wretchedly unhappy, attributing her misery to her sister-in-law’s conduct and its contribution to Dale leaving her alone. She needed to talk and saw this latest event in her life as an opportunity of bridging the gap that had widened between her and Kesse.
Her best friend was not expecting her and Avril had not wanted to call ahead of her arrival, fearful that all the troubles, which roiled and festered inside her, would spill over into tears.
She rang the doorbell, hopeful of achieving an instant rapport. Confident that Kesse would help her find a solution. Even optimistic that love would find a way. After all, things couldn’t possibly get any worse than the stockpile of suffering she felt burdened with already.
But when the door opened, Avril’s mouth fell agape. It should’ve been Rakeem standing in front of her in the lilac-colored towel wrapped around his waist concealing his lower body, with his masculine hairy chest exposed to her startled gaze. The man who faced her instead was starkly familiar.
“Meyrick!” Avril gasped.
“Who is it, honey?” Kesse’s voice echoed in the background. Within seconds, she was at the door behind him. “Avril!”
With her naked body covered with a twin lilac-colored towel, there wasn’t much left for the imagination to figure out. “You and Meyrick,” Avril rolled from her tongue, disgusted.
“It’s not what you think,” Kesse instantly began to protest.
“She’s not stupid,” Meyrick overrode, shamelessly looking at her with culpability mirrored across his face.
Kesse’s body shook. “It’s just a bit of fun,” she desperately explained. “None of us want to see Rakeem get hurt.”
“Really?” Avril goaded, unconvinced. She conjured up a swift vision of the lovers in Kesse’s bed. It fried her mind. How could they? And how could her best friend, the woman who’d been her maid of honor and the one person she’d sought out to help untangle her own love life, climb into bed with Rick Armstrong when she had a man of her own, and he a fiancé. Poor Rakeem. “Is this what you do when Rakeem is away on business?”
“Let’s talk about it,” Kesse suggested quickly, possessing an aversion to scenes. “Come inside.”
Avril refused.
“This was a mutual acceptance of each other’s company,” Rick added lamely, forcing a consenting slant to his explanation.
“Was it?” Avril questioned, having heard something similar said by Elonwy.
“Everybody dallies, right?” he appended.
Poor Delphine. She had no idea. “Like that little matter in Europe?” Avril prompted. “That young girl adored you because you gave a good show fighting the animal rights campaign you subscribe to, but deep down, you’re an animal yourself. In fact, you’re worse. You’re a slug.”
“Me?” Meyrick asked, offended. “C’mon, at least I never kept anything from you like that lawyer you’re dating right now,” he jibed.
“What?” Avril countered.
“The only reason you escaped from paying the wedding costs, leaving my family with the bill, is because he threatened my parents that he would dish the dirt on Maxwell’s fraudulent affairs,” Meyrick spat out. “And to top it all, he starts to date you himself to make the way clear for his partner to push Maxwell into a corner and force him to own up to his parental rights. Some lawyer you got there. Isn’t that why he’s called the ‘Wolf’? He bites hard and plays dirty.”
Avril was overawed. She stared at Kesse. “Is this what it’s come to, you joining the club, too?”
“Meyrick and I, it shouldn’t have happened, but it did,” Kesse said, helpless and weak. “You understand?”
No, she didn’t. Avril didn’t understand anything anymore. “I’ve got to go,” she whimpered, blinking back a tear. Stockpile? She was on emotional overload.
“Avril!” Kesse shouted. “Wait.”
But she didn’t look back. Avril took long strides and quickened them as fast as her feet could run.
Dale knew, as he watched Marcus Davy, his client, lamely attempt to answer the questions fired at him by the “Bulldog” as he sat in the dock, that it was going to be a telling afternoon.
All week, William Katz, the Crown’s prosecuting attorney, had painted a picture of Marcus as a dangerous man who’d relentlessly targeted the dead victim out of a jealous rage for love. It had been a stiff challenge to be up against such a formidable lawyer representing the Crown. And Dale had been able to take it on, arriving at court to face the judge and jury, and his impregnable opponent.
Whether he could plea bargain and have the charge reduced to manslaughter and not murder because the victim had died was entirely a different matter. He’d burned the midnight oil since he’d last seen Avril, trying to find something to encourage the jury to find cause for leniency, but to no avail. His young client was probably looking at a twenty-five-year stretch and in all likelihood, there seemed nothing he could do.
“And what happened when you knew the victim had taken your girl?” William Katz, the “Bulldog,” asked sternly.
“In my mind, he could have her,” Marcus returned. “I ain’t gunning for no chick who doesn’t want me.”
“Gunning,” William Katz picked up on the singular word. “Isn’t it safe to say that you reached for your gun?”
Dale rose to his feet. “Objection,” he said loudly.
“Sustained,” Judge Baines answered, throwing a warning expression at the prosecution. “You know better than that, Mr. Katz. Members of the jury, you are to disregard that remark.” He looked at the young black man in the dock, dressed impeccably in a gray suit. “Try to explain yourself in laymen, not ‘street’ terms,” the judge advised.
“I mean,” Marcus amended, as Dale sat down. “I didn’t want to pursue her no more. I let her go because she loves somebody else.”
William Katz accepted the explanation and moved on. “So you walked away?”
“I skipped,” Marcus answered, firmly. “Yes sir,” he quickly amended. “I let her alone.”
Dale’s mind wistfully diverted to his own predicament. He was wondering the same thing himself. Should he walk away, too? He had not expected Avril’s reaction to be so hard, where she’d asked him to leave on one sock. Where her voice had even changed to one of absolute enmity. He could hardly have believed it was the same woman he’d made love to the night before.
Their bodies wet, their minds melding as one, his manhood pumping inside her as she wriggled and squirmed beneath him, fighting the fire, battling the raw strength of emotion until she’d convulsed and was thrown into oblivion. It had been good lovemaking. Damn near perfect. And he wanted more.
But what kind of woma
n was he dealing with, really? Dale questioned whether Avril even liked him at all. He knew he liked her. Correction. He’d fallen madly in love with her. It was the sort of love he imagined only dreams were made of. The kind that came by once in a lifetime, where the chemistry, the social, mental and physical mix were so aligned, it’d be hard to pass on it.
So why was he now feeling unsure? Was it her temper, the predicament of her brother and Elonwy who’d retained his firm to represent her against Maxwell? Her mixed feelings for Meyrick or the fact that she was at risk of becoming entangled in the spiral that was intricately coiled around Reuben Meyer’s life? This unsettled him the most.
“But you still loved her?” William Katz was asking Marcus, seated upright in his chair patiently awaiting the next line of questions.
“I’ll always love her,” Marcus answered, “whether she stayed with the guy or not.”
“But that isn’t possible now, is it?” the “Bulldog” attacked, ready for a full pounce. “You took care of that by making sure she could never have him.”
“Objection!” Dale sprang to his feet again.
“Move it along,” Judge Baines ordered, pointing at William Katz with an accusatory finger. He turned to Katz. “Counselor, you’re walking a tightrope.”
The “Bulldog” was undeterred. “Miss Cassandra Moore’s lover was found later that night, after she’d told you she was not in love with you, with a bullet-wound to the chest, isn’t that right, Mr. Davy?”
He shrugged. “The police report says so.”
“She accuses you of hiring a gunman to do the job,” he barreled on.
“I didn’t hire nobody,” Marcus replied, struggling to keep calm.
“The victim, one Morris Yates, was alive when this case came to trial,” the “Bulldog” went on. “Now, he’s dead.”
“I was in custody when he died,” Marcus answered. “You can’t lay nothing on me. All I did was love the girl. That’s not a crime.”
