Disturbing the Peace (Sunday Cove)

by Webb, Peggy

  “I didn’t say yes,” she said.

  “That’s all right. I’m pushy as well as stuffy.” They were both smiling as they left the courtroom.

  Chapter 3

  Amy gazed at Todd across the table. It was only dinner, she told herself. After all, a girl had to eat. Besides that, she adored Italian food. Anyhow, he was practically her neighbor, and she did need to learn the town. She was totally unaware of the way her eyes sparkled over her wineglass as she rationalized her situation.

  But Todd was not. He couldn’t keep from staring at her. “Tell me about yourself, Amy Logan. I know that you throw a mean flower box and put on a great windowsill dying act, but I don’t know about your inventions.”

  “The musical bed is one of my inventions. You remember the bed?”

  “How could I forget?” He remembered more than just the bed. He also remembered her in those inflammatory baby doll pajamas.

  “My pride and joy is the robot,” she went on. “Herman is the prototype. Needless to say, I haven’t had much success marketing the bed, but my robots are used extensively in automobile factories in Detroit.”

  “You look more like an coed than an inventor.” He smiled. “I’m sure you’ve heard that before.”

  She laughed. “Dozens of times. Tell me, what is an inventor supposed to look like?”

  “Stooped shoulders, white hair and beard, bifocals.”

  “Except for the stooped shoulders, you might be describing Santa Claus.” She thrust her fork into her huge fresh garden salad. “You don’t look like a judge yourself.”

  “Your turn. What does the typical judge look like?”

  “Stooped shoulders, white hair and beard, bifocals.” Amy was enjoying the repartee with Todd. Just friendly conversation, she told herself. No disloyalty in that.

  He threw back his head and laughed. “Sounds stuffy.”

  “Do you have to keep reminding me of my stuffy old judge remark?”

  He watched her carefully as he said, “I like to remember that remark because it reminds me of what you were wearing when you said it.”

  Her guard came up immediately. “Don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t what? Speak the truth?”

  “Don’t get personal.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  He smiled. “That’s your favorite reply when you want to avoid answering a question, isn’t it?”

  “It usually works.”

  “Not with me. I want to know everything that comes before and after the ‘because.’ I want to know everything about you.” He reached for her hand across the table.

  Amy was still for an instant. His hand was big and warm and reassuring, and for a moment she absorbed its strength. Then she carefully slid her hand away from his.

  “I don’t want emotional entanglements,” she said.

  Todd noticed her hesitation in removing her hand, saw the brief struggle on her face. A woman running from love, he decided. Why? No need to press the issue now. Give her space. Give her time.

  He smiled. “Are you sure you’re not a lawyer? ‘Emotional entanglements’ has an obscure ring to it.”

  Amy was grateful that he chose to skirt the topic with humor. “My aunt is a writer, remember. While other little girls were learning the ABC’s, I was sitting beside her discussing characterization, techniques of plotting, and denouement. Aunt Syl didn’t believe in scaling down her conversation to fit a child. Total immersion was the best method of learning, she always said.”

  “Have you always lived with your aunt?”

  “Yes. From the time my parents were killed, when I was six, until I married.”

  Todd already knew without looking at her hand that she wasn’t wearing a ring. Bad marriage? he wondered. Emotional scars? He wanted to know.

  “Divorce?” he asked.

  “Death.” Her blue eyes were suddenly remote. “My husband is dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” He covered her hand in an instinctive gesture of compassion.

  This time she didn’t feel his warmth. She didn’t feel anything except the numbness that remembering always seemed to bring. “It was a long time ago,” she said, but at that moment it still felt like yesterday.

  Having said “I’m sorry,” Todd was at a loss for words. He looked at her forlorn face and decided she was still grieving. Except for the loss of a grandfather when he was fifteen, he hadn’t had much experience with death. The main thing he remembered was that he and his brothers had turned to one another for comfort. Having someone to hold had helped ease the grief.

  He wanted to walk around the table and take Amy into his arms, but he sensed that such a gesture would not be welcome. The usually decisive Judge Todd Cunningham was saved the further agony of indecision by the arrival of their food.

  He steered the talk to his own childhood.

  “My parents took great pride in our city and were constantly herding their rowdy brood of boys through tours of the Inner Harbor attractions—the Baltimore National Aquarium, the U.S. frigate Constellation, the World Trade Center, the McCormick Spice Plant.” With a sensitivity that was a natural outgrowth of his large and loving family, he sought to make Amy feel at ease.

  Amy smiled her gratitude to him. As Todd talked, her linguine and clam sauce began to taste less like cardboard and the remembrances of grief receded. Although she certainly had no intention of taking Aunt Syl’s advice, she reasoned that there was no harm in enjoying a good meal with a charming companion. And Todd Cunningham was charming. There was no doubt about it. Besides that, he was her neighbor.

  Suddenly Sunday Cove was a pleasant reality, and Tupelo seemed very far away.

  Before she knew it, dinner was over and Todd was leaving her at her door with nothing more than a kiss on the cheek. It was a friendly, neighborly kind of farewell, absolutely nonthreatening and vaguely disappointing.

  Aunt Syl looked up from the book she was reading. “Why didn’t you invite the judge in for tea and smooching?”

  “That’s not funny, Aunt Syl.”

  Aunt Syl must have taken up mind reading. Amy kicked off her shoes, padded barefoot to the window and pressed her face against the windowpane. She didn’t understand herself lately. Since moving to Sunday Cove she had been on an emotional seesaw, swinging between grief and giddiness.

  “I didn’t intend to be funny, my dear,” Aunt Syl said. “I simply intended to remind you of life. If being with me all these years has taught you anything, I hope it has taught you to live. Amy. Let go of yesterday, because today is all you have.”

  Aunt Syl rose from her chair and crossed to Amy. Putting her arms around her niece, she rose on tiptoe and kissed her cheek. “Good night, dear.”

  “Good night, Aunt Syl.”

  Amy hurried to her bedroom. It scared her when Aunt Syl made sense. She flung off her clothes and ran into the bathroom as if demons were pursuing her. Without waiting for the water to get hot, she stepped into the shower. The cold water stung her face and raised goose bumps on her arms. It was just what she needed to rid herself of ideas like smooching and forgetting the past. She gritted her teeth against the chill. She would never let yesterday go, she decided. It was all she had of Tim.

  She turned off the water and groped for a towel. As she wrapped it around herself, she struggled to conjure up Tim’s face. His eyes were there, the golden color of an autumn leaf, and his hair, shining in the sun. But the exact shape of his chin was blurry. Had it been round and cheerful or square and determined—like Todd’s? No, she thought. She wouldn’t let Todd intrude. She tried to force him from her mind and discovered that his blue eyes were superimposing themselves over Tim’s brown ones. What was happening to her?

  She jumped into bed and pulled the sheet up to her chin as if she were trying to keep her memories from escaping. She must not let them escape. Yesterday lived in her heart. As long as she had yesterday, she had Tim.

  The next morning Amy was grouchy and bleary-eyed from lack of
sleep. She tried to concentrate on her perpetual popcorn popper, but she kept dropping tools and forgetting what she wanted to do next. On top of that, Aunt Syl’s clattering typewriter bothered her. To her overwrought mind, the constant clacking of the keys sounded like a hundred woodpeckers attacking the apartment building.

  “I give up,” she muttered. “The world will have to wait for my next invention.”

  She stood and stretched. The afternoon still loomed before her. She realized that she had to do something, anything, to keep busy.

  “I’ll do the laundry,” she announced to nobody in particular.

  Having made that decision, she scurried around the apartment, snatching up dirty clothes and damp towels. Still not satisfied that she had enough to keep busy, she added a stack of spotless dishtowels to the laundry basket. She was in such a fizz to gather a huge wash load that she would have snatched the cover off Hortense’s cage if the old bird hadn’t stopped her.

  “Help! Murder!” yelled the parrot.

  “I’m sorry, Hortense. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Love,” intoned the parrot. “Holy cow, it’s love.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Hortense. It’s no such thing.” Amy clapped her hand over her mouth.

  “Listen to me. Talking to Hortense as if she’s human. She’s just a bird. What does she know?”

  “Love,” Hortense screeched.

  “What’s all this racket out here?” Aunt Syl asked, emerging from her room. Today her wig was as black as doom. “My muse has hopped a fast plane to St. Thomas. Are you talking to yourself, Amy?”

  “Mostly to Hortense,” Amy said.

  “It’s a sure sign.” Aunt Syl nodded, and the Cleopatra wig slid down over one ear.

  Amy knew better than to ask, but she asked anyway. “A sign of what?”

  “Love,” screamed Hortense.

  “Exactly,” said Aunt Syl. “She’s just like Poe’s raven— uncannily accurate.”

  “Good grief! I live in a madhouse.” Amy rolled her eyes and picked up her laundry basket.

  “Where are you going?” Aunt Syl asked.

  “To do the laundry. One of us has to be sensible.” She turned to her robot. “Are you coming, Herman?”

  The little robot didn’t reply.

  “Why don’t you turn him on first, Amy?” Aunt Syl asked, smiling with satisfaction.

  Amy huffed across the room and punched Herman’s computer panel. “Of course, I have to turn him on first. I was just testing you, Aunt Syl.”

  “Like I said, it’s love,” Aunt Syl called as Amy and her robot went out the door.

  Amy pretended not to hear her.

  The laundry room was located in the basement of the apartment house. The stifling heat smote Amy the instant she stepped off the ancient elevator.

  “Good heavens,” she said. “It’s hot enough to melt your insides, Herman.”

  The robot rolled along behind her, carrying the huge laundry basket.

  When they reached the machines, she took the basket and began to divide the wash. Since she had the entire laundry room to herself, she decided that she would use all the machines except one.

  “Just in case somebody comes,” she said to Herman. “Of course, nobody else is going to be foolish enough to do laundry on this blistering hot Saturday afternoon.”

  “Except those of us who are desperate.”

  She whirled around at the sound of that well-remembered voice. As she stared at Todd she almost drowned in those incredible blue eyes. They made her think of the Gulf and smooches and living for today.

  “Desperate for what?” she asked.

  “A clean shirt.” Todd walked to one of the machines at the end. “Are you planning to use this one?”

  “No. Help yourself. Herman and I have designs on these four.” She was glad there would be several washing machines between herself and the judge.

  “Herman does laundry?” he said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Herman does almost anything I program him to do.” She bent over the robot and pressed instructions into his panel. “Today, he’s going to add the soap.”

  Why had the temperature in the room risen ten degrees? she wondered. Was it possible that she was going to have a heat stroke, and did it have anything to do with a desperate judge?

  “Do you mind if I watch?”

  She jumped. She had been so busy with her own thoughts that she hadn’t realized Todd was standing right beside her.

  “Of course not. Be my guest.”

  Her hands fluttered uncertainly over the panel. Had she already instructed Herman to add the soap? She couldn’t remember.

  “The scientific mind has always fascinated me,” Todd said. “I’m afraid my knowledge of robots is gleaned from Star Wars.”

  Amy laughed. “Herman is somewhat more domestic than that.”

  She stood up and pushed her damp hair back from her face. Todd still had made no move to do his own laundry. She wished he wouldn’t stand so close. Being in a restaurant surrounded by other people was one thing, but being in a deserted laundry room was quite another. Her skin felt prickly, and it had nothing to do with the heat.

  She reached for her laundry detergent and placed it in Herman’s pronged hands.

  “Fascinating,” Todd said. “Absolutely fascinating.” He decided that doing laundry was going to take on an entirely new dimension now that Amy Logan had moved in. It might even become an erotic experience. Heaven knows, he was having a few erotic fantasies right now.

  “Do you always do laundry on Saturday afternoon?” he asked. You sly old reprobate, he added to himself. Why don’t you just come out and ask the woman for a real date?

  “No,” Amy replied. “I do laundry on whim.”

  “Saturday is my laundry day. I hope the whim strikes you on Saturdays.”

  “The whim rarely strikes on Saturdays.”

  He returned to the machine at the far end of the row to load his laundry. And not a minute too soon, he decided. He had progressed beyond the asking-for-a-date stage and was rapidly moving on to the passionate-kissing stage. Not so fast, Judge, he scolded himself. She’s a woman who doesn’t want emotional involvement. Remember? Finesse is needed, not bulldozer tactics.

  “I thought you had a butler to do your chores,” she said.

  “Justin doesn’t do laundry unless I’m desperate.”

  Amy was flinging her clothes haphazardly into the machines. She didn’t know if she had mixed whites and colors. And she really didn’t care. White blouses streaked pink were a small price to pay for finishing this job and getting out of this basement. The prickles on her arms had turned to goose bumps. It was that white, open-throated knit shirt Todd was wearing. He looked much too bronze and handsome in white. Why didn’t he do laundry in his judicial robes? It would have been much better for her peace of mind. But, then again, he looked awfully handsome in his robes too.

  The laundry room was silent except for the metallic clang of quarters in the machines. Amy and Todd struggled with their separate thoughts as they tried to look as if they were concentrating only on the laundry. The initial spurt of water in the machines sounded like the rush of Niagara in the screaming silence of the basement.

  “Well, that’s that,” Amy said after she had set the last machine in motion. She picked up the book she had brought to read, a gripping novel by Lawrence Sanders, and sat in a chair in the far corner of the room. She tried to concentrate on the words as her robot added soap to the machines. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Todd had also brought a book. It looked like a legal tome, enormous and heavy enough to hold down a tent in a tornado. She reread the same paragraph three times and wondered why she had considered this novel gripping and why she kept looking up for a glimpse of an all-too-handsome judge.

  Finally Todd slammed his book shut. “This is ridiculous,” he said. He stood up and strode purposefully toward her. “Legal precedents lose their attraction when you are in the room. Amy.�
��

  She looked up from her book and gasped. “Oh, my Lord!”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No. The soap.”

  “The soap?”

  “Look at the soap!”

  Todd turned around to see soap bubbles spilling from all four of Amy’s machines. As they watched, the bubbles cascaded down the sides of the machines and rolled across the floor. They continued to pour from the machine, iridescent and endless. By the time they were galvanized into action, Amy and Todd were ankle-deep in bubbles.

  “We have to do something.” Amy said. She jumped to her feet and skidded across the floor, landing bottom side down beside the row of washing machines.

  “Let me help you up,” Todd said.

  He waded carefully through the slick bubbles and discovered the hard way that even judges were not exempt from slippery floors. He landed with a whump. And there was Amy, her body soft and desirable beneath his, her China blue eyes wide and questioning. As he lowered his lips to hers he wondered how many kisses had started as good intentions gone astray.

  Chapter 4

  Amy was powerless to prevent the kiss. Not that she wanted to. She hadn’t been kissed in ever so long, and what harm would one do? She wound her arms around his neck and gave herself up wholeheartedly to the kiss.

  Todd was surprised by her response. He had meant the kiss to be a brief pleasure, a small yielding to temptation. He had meant merely to sample those tempting lips, to touch lightly and then get on with the business of the soap bubbles; but he was human. As he pressed his body closer to hers, he decided that no man alive could resist Amy Logan, soapy slick and passionate.

  He bracketed her face, and his mouth moved over hers, searching, hungering, taking the hot pleasure she offered. His tongue slipped into her mouth and her response electrified him.

  Time and placed slipped away, leaving only the two of them caught in one magic moment.

  Amy though these marvelous sensations had died with Tim. She felt the quick flush of heat, the familiar stirring of desire. It had been so long, she thought, so long. She wound her hands into Todd’s hair, crisp hair, wiry hair, not soft like Tim’s. She felt herself being hauled against a hard, muscular body, not at all like Tim’s. But it felt so good that the fleeting twinge of guilt wilted before it had fully blossomed.