Getting Some Of Her Own

by Gwynne Forster

  “Thanks so much,” Susan said, “and thank you for the wonderful lunch.” She ignored Enid’s offer of friendship, because she didn’t think a friendship with her possible in the circumstances. Furthermore, she suspected that Enid thought mainly of her own words and needs, and not of anyone’s consideration of them or response to them.

  When she returned home a few minutes after seven, the light on her answering machine was blinking. She returned Lucas’s call first. “Hi. I just got in. What’s up?” she asked him.

  “Have supper with me,” he said. “Unless you’ve already eaten.”

  She shouldn’t do it. Nothing but misery could come of a deepening relationship with him. “I . . . uh . . . all right, but not any place fancy.”

  “But I want a decent meal,” he said. “I was thinking of Pinky’s.”

  “Pinky’s in the evening means I have to put on a decent-looking dress.”

  “You have to do that anytime of day. Besides, are you suggesting that I’m not worth it?”

  She detected the laughter in his voice, but ignored it. “Sweetheart, you’re worth far more than a dress.” At his long silence, she added, “Aren’t you?”

  “You’re flirting with me, but I rather like it, and especially since I know you never offer what you won’t deliver.”

  “You’re full of it, Lucas Hamilton,” she blustered. “What time do you want us to meet?”

  “I’ll be there in forty minutes, and keep yourself in check. I’m in the mood to believe everything you say and do.”

  She waited for him just inside her door with her raincoat on and her pocketbook on her arm. “Now, if I can keep him at a distance when he brings me home, I’ll pat myself on the back.” Through the dining room window, she watched him dash up the walk with his lips positioned as if he were whistling. She licked her lips as she watched his sexy gait. “He is some man,” she said to herself. “Everything about him screams man.” He rang the doorbell and, without thinking, she answered it at once.

  “Hi,” he said. “Hmmm. I certainly hope you were expecting me.”

  “What do you mean? Of course I was expecting you.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I’m glad to know it. From the expression of welcome on your face, I’d be happy to stay here and call out for supper.”

  She didn’t have to wonder what he saw on her face, because she knew what she’d been thinking. “No, thanks,” she said. “I dressed for Pinky’s, and that’s where I want to go.”

  He leaned down and kissed the side of her mouth. “Pinky’s, huh? You break my heart. Where’s your key? I have a lot to tell you. My life’s moving like a spinning top.”

  “Mine, too. Which one of us goes first?”

  He parked across the street from Pinky’s Restaurant, got out and headed around to the passenger door, but she had it open when he got there, held out her hand to him and eased out of the car only slightly hampered by her short, narrow skirt. “You tell your story first,” he said. “Mine will probably last all evening.” They followed the maître d’ to their table.

  “I dunno,” she said. “My story may be your story. I just left Enid Jackson-Moore.” His eyes widened and a frown replaced the smile he’d worn seconds earlier. “She wrote, asking me to decorate her house on Nags Head, so I went to see it. I’d just left there when I returned your call. I didn’t know who she was until she began complaining about her father, and his having given you ownership of his business. Lucas, that sister can talk. She told me all about the family meeting, her parents’ relationship over the years, and how her father feels about you.”

  Lucas leaned back in the chair. “And how did she say he feels about me?”

  “That you’re special to him, and she said any fool could see that that’s because your mother is his one great love.”

  “I suppose that should make me feel great,” he said, “but it doesn’t. Both of my parents have been miserable ever since mama told him she was expecting.”

  “Enid suggested that she’d like the two of us to be friends, but I don’t want that. I don’t want a running account of her fights with you and her attitudes toward you and her father. She’s a bitter woman, refuses to give her husband a divorce although they’ve been separated for four years, and I got the impression that she’s developed a negative attitude toward men in general. So, I’m going to keep her at arm’s length, as my dad used to counsel. I don’t want a personal relationship with her.”

  “How will you avoid it?”

  “What? You’re not serious. If I don’t want to associate with her, I won’t.”

  “If you tell her we’re lovers, that ought to nip it in the bud.”

  She glared at him. “We are not lovers.”

  “Don’t be silly, Susan. You’re the most wonderful lover I’ve ever had. If you don’t remember the first time—and considering how . . . er . . . impassioned you were, I don’t see how that’s possible—you’ve got to remember what you did to me the second time. I’m human. Are you trying to destroy my ego?”

  “Don’t make jokes, Lucas. Nothing I say will affect your ego.”

  He reached across the table and grasped the fingers of her right hand. “I was joking a minute ago, but I’m serious now. You are the only woman who can take the edge off my ego, so be careful, will you?”

  She hadn’t been prepared for that. “Look, I . . . hadn’t we better order?”

  He tightened his hold on her hand. “Why are you afraid of me now? I was a guest in your home and in your bed when you didn’t know one thing about me other than that I wore pants and was a few inches taller than you. Susan, I can solve E=mc2. You intrigue me far more, so you can bet that I will figure you out, too.”

  She withdrew her hands and searched for another subject, anything that would remove his focus from her. She should not have agreed to have supper with him, but she had wanted to tell him of her contract with Enid Jackson-Moore before he learned it from someone else.

  “Thank you for the lovely presents that Nathan and Rudy gave me. I was flabbergasted. How did you know that I love amber?”

  His facial expression told her that she hadn’t fooled him and that he would question her again about her reason for making love with him that first time. He explained how he happened to take the children shopping. “Nathan fell in love with that necklace, and I helped Rudy select something that matched it.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a small box. “This is from me.”

  She opened the box and looked at the oval shaped amber earrings that matched the children’s gifts. She hardly trusted herself to look at him. “You’re . . . these are beautiful.” Why would he do things like this to me? I’m not going to get weepy. “I’ll wear them often. Thank you.”

  “You started to tell me something about myself. What was it? I need to know, Susan.”

  She shook her head. “I—”

  “May I have your order now, sir?”

  After they gave their orders, Susan asked Lucas to excuse her and ignored his raised eyebrow as she left him to go to the women’s lounge to collect her presence of mind. He can do things like this, things that endear him to me even more, and I lose my resolve to get him out of my life. I won’t cry. I won’t. I swear it! She reached for the box of tissues that rested on the marble-top counter in the lounge and put a wad of it into her mouth, dampening the impulse to give in to her feelings. Calmer now, she applied some eye drops to clear her eyes, dabbed beneath them with a tissue and went back to the man who could upset her, electrify her, and put her on the defensive as no one else could. He stood when she returned to the table and walked around it to seat her. She would have preferred to seat herself without any assistance, but if she had so much as hinted at that, she would have incurred his annoyance.

  “You were gone a while. Everything all right?” he asked her, and to her surprise, his voice contained neither mockery nor sarcasm, but genuine concern.

  “I’m fine, thanks.” She thought she would force a smile, but whe
n she observed his relief, as if sunshine enveloped him, her smile came from her heart.

  “I love barbecued anything,” he said, after savoring a forkful of the barbecued short ribs of beef. “My mother can barbecue a sparerib until it dances. If you want to assure yourself an eternal niche in my heart, learn how to barbecue.”

  She itched to ask why she should have a niche in his heart, but restrained herself and didn’t ask him. Instead, she said, “I have other attributes.”

  With his fork suspended between the plate and his mouth, he said, “You’re damned right you have.”

  She gave up. “I don’t want to josh with you right now, Lucas. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t suit me right now.”

  “I wasn’t teasing. Okay? Have you thought of what you’ll do with Enid’s house?”

  She let her eyes tell him how grateful she was for his having opened a subject into which she could enter with pleasure. “The back of the house is a glass window with nothing between it and the ocean except the sandy beach.” She told him of her plans for it. “What do you think?”

  “Sounds good to me. It’s both decorative and functional.”

  “As to the rest,” she went on, “white walls and white floors, light or white wood and all upholstery and fabrics in sea green, pale blue and aquamarine. To break the monotony, the master bedroom will be in yellow and sand. I’ll make the sketches after I see what’s available in Woodmore and Winston-Salem and e-mail them to her.”

  “How long will it take you to sketch the plan?”

  “I’ll do it one evening at home. While I’m in Winston-Salem, I’ll finish shopping for Hamilton Village I. My biggest problem is that older people like velours, velveteens and velvets, but the most comfortable furniture around these days comes in leather. I’m looking for a good mix.”

  “And you’ll find it. Did it ever occur to you that we’d make a great team?”

  She held up her hands, palms out. “Don’t expect the truth out of me when you ask such questions, Lucas.”

  “So you have thought of it. At least I’m not crazy.”

  She declined his offer to lengthen the evening with a stop at The Watering Hole, pleading a long and taxing day. “But I enjoyed supper with you.”

  He parked in front of her house, a white edifice shrouded in moonlight. “What’s that sound I hear?” he asked her.

  “Fish jumping in the lake. They do that on nights like this when there’s a full moon and no wind.”

  “Walk with me to the lake,” he said. “I want to see it in the moonlight.” He took her hand and strolled with her to the water’s edge. Standing against an old pine tree and with her back to him, he wrapped her in his arms.

  “Today, my life changed forever. Enid told you that my dad gave me Jackson Enterprises to operate as I see fit.” He explained the conditions of his agreement with his father. But that enormous gift meant less to him than his father’s sentiments. “But you don’t know what it meant to me to hear him say that I’m special to him. You know . . .” He paused and looked into the distance. “I’m beginning to love my dad.”

  “I’m so happy for you, Lucas. Does he know?”

  “I haven’t told him, but at least I’ve begun calling him dad, and that seems to make him happy. If anybody had told me a year ago that I’d call Calvin Jackson dad and put my arm on his shoulder, I would have called that person a liar.” With his arms draped across her shoulder, he walked with her to her house.

  He held out his hand for her key, opened the door and stood in the foyer gazing down at her. “Aren’t you going to invite me to have a cup of coffee?”

  He stood too close to her. She could almost taste his breath. “You just had coffee.”

  “But I didn’t have this,” he said, and his mouth was on hers, his arms around her and the heat of his aura began seeping into her. “I need this. I need you!” He broke the kiss. “What was it that you didn’t say when you looked at those earrings? I’m not releasing you until you tell me.”

  Susan didn’t want him to release her. “That you’re wonderful, that you’re so loveable, that—”

  He swallowed her words and pushed his tongue into her mouth. She heard her moans and knew that she would capitulate to him. Right then, she didn’t care about anything but the way she felt in his arms. When he trembled, shaking her to the core, she held him tighter, and when she felt him hard and bulging against her, she grabbed his hips, the better to feel him.

  “Let me go, sweetheart. If you don’t want me inside of you, tell me right now.”

  She locked one hand behind his head and the other on his buttocks, sucked his tongue into her mouth and wrapped her left leg around his right one. He lifted her into his arms and raced up the stairs to her bed. An hour later, he separated his body from hers and fell over on his back, exhausted.

  “I wish I knew how this will end,” he said. “You can’t tell me that you’ll be content for us to go our separate ways, that you’ll be satisfied if I decided to spend my life with another woman. I sure as hell don’t want to see another man within ten feet of you.” Suddenly, as if driven, he bolted off the bed and stood beside it. “You didn’t get pregnant. Why did you pick me to go to bed with? You are not the kind of woman who . . . How many men other than me have you been in bed with since the first time you made love with me?”

  “None.” She put the corner of the sheet into her mouth to muffle the sounds that she knew would follow the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

  “Right. That’s what I thought. You’re damned near puritanical. I have a right to know why you did that.”

  “I t-told y-you, but you don’t believe m-me.”

  “That’s because it . . .” He rested one knee on the bed and leaned across it. “Good Lord. You’re crying. I didn’t mean to . . . Baby, for goodness sake, don’t cry. I wouldn’t hurt you for anything.” He wrapped her in his arms, kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her lips, and within minutes he was deep inside of her again, driving her to ecstasy. She cried out, oblivious to her words or what they meant.

  The following Saturday morning at daybreak, Lucas sat in the backseat of his town car pretending to sleep while Willis took his turn driving on their trip to Athens, Georgia. He had ordered the cabinets for his grandmother’s kitchen weeks earlier, and he hoped that the chair elevator would be installed before he and Willis left Sunday afternoon. If not, he would make another trip down there to inspect it before he accepted the job as finished. He stretched out on the backseat to the extent possible.

  He couldn’t get Susan off his mind. His hearing was perfect, and he understood the English language. Still ringing in his ears was the sound of her moaning, “I love you. I love you. Oh, Lord, I love you!” at the moment when she pulsed around him, squeezing and thrilling him until he thought he would go out of his mind. He couldn’t be wrong about that. If she loved him, why did she protest so adamantly that there could be nothing between them, that they were not and could not be lovers? According to Mark, his friend and Susan’s lawyer, she was not and never had been married. So what was her problem? Whatever it was, it definitely was not simple, and his mind told him he ought to connect it to something else, but he couldn’t figure out what. He’d get it, though.

  “We’re almost in Athens, Lucas. Let’s stop for some coffee or something. I don’t want to walk into that lady’s house and ask her what she’s got to eat.”

  “Don’t eat too much, though. We’re going to my grandmother, and food comes with the title.”

  When Willis parked in front of Alma Jackson’s house, she stood on her porch, her face enveloped in smiles. “I’m so glad to see you, Son,” she said to Lucas with her arms open to welcome him.

  He hugged and kissed her, then moved aside and said, “Nana, this is my best friend from my freshman college days, Willis Carter. Willis is my brother in all ways except blood. He’s a builder, and we work together.”

  He watched, delighted, as Alma Jackson opened her arms to Willis and hugg
ed him. “You’re welcome, Willis. I’ve got a big house and a big heart. You come see me any time you feel like a little change.”

  “I sure will, Gramma. I hope you don’t mind my calling you that.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. I like it. I haven’t heard it enough in my life. You all come on in. It’s not quite time for dinner, but I’ll give you some waffles and sage sausage. How about some nice fresh strawberries, just picked this morning?”

  Lucas looked at Willis. “I told you so. That will suit me perfectly, Nana. Can I help you? We didn’t come down here for you to wait on us.”

  She patted his back. “Sausage is cooked, and I’ll just warm it up. We’ll cook the waffles at the table.”

  He set the table, put the waffle iron on it, and sat down. While they ate, she told him that the cabinets were in the basement, and that the chair elevator had been installed the day before, but as he’d cautioned, she didn’t use it. “I’m waiting for you to inspect it. Have you seen Calvin since he had that family conference?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve gotten into the habit of visiting with him every Monday after I have my staff conferences. He’s well now, but . . . well, it’s a nice habit.”

  She looked at Lucas. “I suppose you can keep a secret.”

  Lucas raised his hand. “I can, but if you don’t want my mother to know it, don’t say it in front of Willis. They’re very close, and when it comes to her, he doesn’t always use his best judgment.”

  She looked at Willis. “Well, isn’t that sweet. She’s got two sons for the price of one.”

  Willis savored the waffles as if he hadn’t eaten for a long while. “I’ll make a good grandson, too.”

  A smile brightened Alma’s face. “I’ve already adopted you, Willis,”

  By the time Lucas and Willis were ready to leave late Sunday afternoon, the new cabinets gleamed in Alma’s kitchen, they had transferred the contents of the old cabinets to the new ones, and Lucas had satisfied himself that his grandmother could ride up and down the stairs in safety.