Love's Own Reward

by Dana Ransom

“Jess—”

  The shrill sound of the phone startled her, shattering the taut mood. Without taking her eyes from his, she reached for the phone and muttered a hasty hello.

  “Charlene, where have you been? I’ve been trying all weekend.”

  The petulant tones were like a dash of ice water. “Alan.”

  Jess blinked and just like that erased everything she hoped she’d seen there in his gaze.

  “Well?” Alan insisted.

  Charley struggled for a way to answer Alan and hold Jess. But Jess was fading back, easing toward the door, his expression impossibly distant. “I was with my brother at the camp,” she said woodenly into the receiver as Jess stepped into the hall. She took a quick stride forward, but he raised his hand and mouthed, “Bye,” then shut the door. For a moment she couldn’t move. She could hear Alan’s voice but not his words as his tone grew more demanding. She hauled the old fashioned tethering phone across the room with her, the dragging cord tipping over stacks of journals and magazines she never had time to read. They made a glossy spill across her rug. From the window she could see him walking to his car, settling his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. He didn’t look back. Exhaust plumed and vaporized as the car backed abruptly through it, then sped from the lot. Aware only of the resounding emptiness around the region of her heart, Charley hung up the receiver.

  What was she going to do without Jess in her life? Was it possible that she had known him less than a week? It seemed a lifetime already. Everything about that week since the accident was intense, filled with concentrated emotion. He’d slipped so comfortably into her day-to-day existence that his absence left a gaping hole. How dull her routine was without the promise of his wide smile or just the simple expectation of seeing him at her kitchen counter. She found herself wondering how his lasagna tasted. She found herself dreaming of how it would have been had he come to her in the loft at her brother’s cabin. And it took two painkillers to forget.

  THE NEXT DAY she called a cab to keep an appointment with her doctor. He examined the burns and pronounced them free of infection and healing nicely. The scarring would be slight and full range of movement probable. After applying cortisone ointment, he redressed them with a lighter wrap and advised her to cut back to an over the counter to relieve pain. She smiled and thanked him, knowing full well that aspirin wouldn’t dull the hurt she suffered.

  Glumly she returned to her messy apartment, kicked the day’s stack of letters in next to the rest of them that lay piled and unopened inside her door, and went to pop the last of her microwave dinners in the oven. She could eat with relatively little distress now and, if she took her time, even manage buttons. There was scant satisfaction in these small successes. Faced with a lump of what might have been chicken and with her own swelling loneliness, Charley realized she had to do something fast if she was going to survive the loss of Jess McMasters.

  She never expected rescue to come in the form of Alan Peters. When she answered the buzz of her intercom, she was ridiculously grateful to hear Alan’s voice after the initial well of disappointment faded. And when she opened her door and found him standing there behind a bouquet of fresh spring flowers, she nearly burst into tears.

  “Thought you might like some company,” he murmured as his lips brushed past her cheek. Never had she cared for him as much as in that needy moment. She dragged him in out of the hall and, after some hunting, found an empty instant coffee jar to stick the flowers in. They drooped haphazardly, but she was pleased with the result. She was never any good at arranging flowers. She set them on her table and smiled at Alan, touched that he had made the gesture. That he would even think of it!

  “I was worried about you, Charlene,” he began in a crooning voice as she made them both coffee. “I was just about out of my mind when I couldn’t get a hold of you. You need to get a cell phone.”

  “I’m sorry if you were concerned. I had to get away. The news people wouldn’t leave me alone, and I knew I’d be no good to you unable to finish a day’s work.”

  “Forget about work, Charlene. There are more important things.”

  Her brows shot heavenward. That was news to her! It was the only thing that ever seemed to motivate him. First the unplanned visit, then the flowers, now this. She stared at him, agog.

  “We need to talk, Charlene. About the future. Our future.” He reached out to take her hand, not seeming to notice how she winced when he pressed the bandages. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you. It hasn’t been easy for me, either. I don’t want you to think that I was placing you second to my position. Everything I’ve been working for has been for us.”

  She continued to listen, but in the back of her mind a seditious whisper began. For us or for you, Alan? Their whole relationship could be reduced to work in the lab and hurried, heavy-breathing moments stolen as if in shame. She remembered using her hoarded savings to follow him to the annual American Diabetes Association’s scientific sessions. While he enjoyed the bounty of a nice hotel and dinners with the other MDs, she was trapped in a squalid motel, forced to feed herself at the free buffet tables at the nightly hospitality receptions. When he came to her room, it was late, and he was tipsy from the effects of socializing glass for glass with his peers. His fumbling passion made her feel as cheap as the room rate, but she’d said nothing, assuming it would get better. Now he was telling her it was about to. Why didn’t she believe him?

  His sudden move took her by surprise. And so did his kiss. He hauled her from her seat opposite him. His lips were thin, moist, and hurtful. With one arm locking her against his chest, his free hand sought her breast. Charley twisted free and scrambled back into her chair, dazed and panting. What on earth . . . ? He didn’t relent but, instead, went down on one knee before her chair.

  “Charlene, I want to be with you. Not just a snatch at a time but really be with you, like a true partnership. We can be. With your help we can be.”

  Charley blinked, totally confused by his intensity, by his direction. “Alan, I—”

  “Don’t you see, my darling?” he gushed as he took her hands. She gritted her teeth against the pain of that dramatic gesture. Perhaps it was that stab of hurt that cleared her mind and for the first time let her really look at Alan. “The obstacles to our happiness will be gone. We won’t need to worry about securing grants to move up in our research. We can go forward in our study of the auto-immune process. There might even be a Lily Award in it.”

  His eyes glittered as he spoke of the outstanding young researcher honor. It was a rapturous gaze. It was the way Jess had looked at her when she’d come to him on the couch. But it was prestige that moved Alan to a glaze of excitement, not passion.

  “Don’t you see, Charlene,” he went on to explain as if she were a dense child. And she felt as though she had been one. “We don’t have to apply for grants and pinch pennies. With your money we can make progress that will have the entire field taking notice. We can publish new quality findings. We can forget about scraping by on a university salary. With that kind of backing I can step into a position with a pharmaceutical house and jump right up into the one-hundred-thousand-dollar-plus bracket. I’ll have my own lab, my own name on publications, without having to give unearned credit to a bunch of overseers. Think of it, Charlene.”

  She was thinking.

  The money.

  That’s what this was about. The flowers, the unexpected visit. He was romancing her the way their superiors did the big drug companies to lure their financial support. Was any of that brightness in his gaze because of her, or was it all focused on what she could now give him?

  “I don’t know, Alan,” she began coolly, withdrawing her throbbing hands from his as she spoke. “I’ve been thinking of investing the funds in my brother’s camp.”

  “What?” It was a roar of sheer outrage. “Charlene, you can’t mean that! I’m talking
about the development of our theories. Our future!”

  “I’m talking about the future, too. A future that involves a lot more people than just you and me. You know how I feel about Robert’s work. Or do you?”

  He sighed and assumed an air of weary patience. “We’ve been over this, Charlene. We agreed that research will be of greater benefit. Can’t you see the money would be used to the best advantage if put toward my project?”

  She saw that he’d begun to say “my” instead of “our.” And she also wondered whose benefit he was concerned with—people like Robert or his own. “I’m not totally convinced of that, Alan,” she told him quietly, and she could see his surprise. She was surprised, too. But she didn’t want to back down. She didn’t want to give in to his pressure. Not this time. Not when she had the means to make a difference for a lot of people.

  “Convinced? About our future?” He gave her that perplexed smile meant to sway her from her purpose. Not this time.

  “What you mean by our future has never been clearly defined,” she pointed out.

  Alan studied her for a moment. His eyes narrowed the way they always did when he was challenged by a complex cell structure. He was angry, but for once she felt no urge to soothe it away. Let him be angry. He had to see that she was serious. Serious about having a voice in how the money was spent. Serious in her bewilderment over their relationship. But he was typically myopic.

  “You need convincing, Charlene? All right.”

  He shoved his hands up under her sweater. Her cry of objection was canceled by his wide, wet kiss. And everything inside her went stone cold. Everything about it felt wrong. His reason for pushing intimacy. Her reaction to it—a surprisingly vehement rejection of his touch. She wrenched her head to one side and braced herself against him with her forearms.

  “No!”

  Alan rocked back on his heels, panting, plainly furious. “No? It’s because of him, isn’t it?”

  She was so startled that her mind went as blank as her expression.

  “It is! Why else would he be answering your phone for you? Did you really go away for the weekend, or have you been holed up in here with him doing God knows what?”

  Only parts of what he was accusing her of clicked right away. “When did you talk to Jess on my phone?”

  He sneered and stood, brushing at his pant legs as if contact with her had left him soiled. “Friday morning. While you were . . . busy. Busy doing what, Charlene?”

  “But I wasn’t even here. I was at—” She broke off. She was at Jess’s. She clamped her lips shut. Alan would never understand that particular explanation in his frame of mind. Why hadn’t Jess told her he’d talked to Alan? If he had, she would have been prepared for Alan’s rage. Prepared with a convenient lie to cover up what she and Jess had been flirting with so dangerously? No. She’d never lied to Alan before and wouldn’t start now. But neither did she feel capable of explaining away Jess McMasters to her jealous fiancé. Was that what Alan was? She wasn’t sure of that anymore.

  “Alan, I think you should leave.”

  “But, Charlene, what about the money?”

  “I have to think about it. I have to think about a lot of things. Now, please go.”

  He didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue.

  And once he was gone, for all the confusion, Charley felt a wonderful sense of control coming into her life.

  THE CURSOR BLINKED impatiently against a bright field of blue. An empty field of blue. It beckoned for input, seeming to say, “Come on, Jess, put me to work.” For the hundredth time that morning he placed his fingers on the keys and willed the words to come. Usually his problem was not in how to start but when to stop. But this wasn’t a usual story. It was about Charley Carter.

  He’d seen her on the news. That’s what did it. He’d been fine until then—well, almost fine. Then he’d found himself mesmerized by her shy smile, by the modest lowering of her eyes that was seductive without being coy. He studied her mannerisms the way an art lover worshiped a Picasso and let the soft tones of her voice tease his senses into a restless frenzy. Worse, a sign of how far off the deep end he’d fallen, he’d recorded the interview. He lost track of how many times he played and replayed it from the comfort of his recliner, a beer in one hand, a roll of antacids in the other. He munched and swallowed into the late hours of the night with Charley’s image playing before him. Finally he turned off the sound and just watched her. From a wallow of remorse almost too deep to climb from, he dragged himself out of the chair and to bed. Not to his own bed but to the one in the spare room, on the sheets where she’d slept. God, he was pathetic. He would have laughed if he hadn’t felt so intensely miserable.

  A vivid dream plagued his sleep, of Charley and the accident. Only in this tormenting version he hadn’t reached her in time. He woke with the image of a fireball braised upon his eyelids and a film of sweat clinging to him. By daybreak he was a ragged mass of nerves, with every raw ending feeling exposed. Showering didn’t help. Breakfast wasn’t even remotely appealing. So with coffee gnawing away in his belly and a fresh pack of Rolaids in his pocket to quiet the ulcer that was threatening to growl back to life, he gathered his notes and went to work. That’s what he needed. Work. He was a journalist. He would purge Charley Carter from his system in front of a keyboard. Only not at home. Not where the memories of her were fresh and painful. He’d go to his university office, and he’d do his job.

  Only he couldn’t.

  For hours he’d sat in front of the blank screen. He’d gone over his notes. He’d listened to the recording from the restaurant, trying to block out the bittersweet sensations of longing the sound of her voice evoked. He had all the information he needed to write one hell of a story. All the elements were there—he just couldn’t seem to settle them to his satisfaction.

  Because the focus was wrong.

  He’d plunged into it looking for a harsh angle against which to contrast Charley Carter’s heroic deed. Only there wasn’t one. If anyone was guilty of selling out honor in the name of greed, it was him, Jess McMasters. He’d done it a long time ago when he’d turned from the kind of writing he wanted to do into the business of making money off lurid words. And he’d done very well. He could blame Sue for pushing him in that direction, but after their divorce he’d had no excuse to continue down that lucrative road. Except that the passion of words was dead inside him. He worked from skill alone, not heart. And it took a sweet soul like Charley’s to show him the difference.

  Now what the hell was he going to do?

  He picked up the phone on the table beside him and started dialing. He asked for the proper extension and waited, watching the cursor wink.

  “Matthew Bane.”

  “Matt, it’s Jess.”

  “Did you fall off the edge of the earth or something? Did you see that piece on the news last night?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What have you got for me? I need it now.”

  “Matt . . . I’ve been thinking about the slant of the story.”

  “What about it?” That was asked warily. Matthew Bane knew his best feature man well enough to know big trouble was coming.

  “The hardball angle just isn’t working out. I want to try something different, more of a human-interest piece.”

  There was silence. Then the line vibrated with the force of his editor’s reply. “Fluff? You want to do bleeding-heart crap? Jess, Jess, no one reads J.T. Masters to get in touch with their inner feelings. They love you because you shove the truth down their throats like the barrel of a loaded gun. You’re a hand grenade, Jess, and you’re asking me to settle for a water pistol? No way, man. You write the story the way we discussed it. You do it the way you always do it. Or I can get someone else to cover it. Are you listening to me, Jess?”

  Silence, then a soft, “I’m listening.”
>
  “All right, then. Give me something my readers can sink their teeth into. I want pure Masters gold. Or should I say brass.” He laughed at that, and when the other end of the line was too quiet, he asked in some concern, “Jess, are you all right with this one? This isn’t like you. You want me to pull you off? Say the word. You could give Harris your notes—”

  “No. It’s my assignment, Matt. I’ll do it.”

  “Attaboy, Jess. When can I expect it on my desk?”

  “By press time,” came the grim promise.

  Jess hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and began to type.

  Nine

  CHARLEY COULDN’T bring herself to watch herself on the news, but apparently she was the only one who hadn’t seen it. Interest hadn’t abated. If anything, it increased fivefold. The calls started again. A disgruntled postman left a terse message in her box that her mail would be waiting at the main post office—there was too much of it to deliver. She was overwhelmed and she didn’t want to be. She wanted control back. What she needed was a plan.

  First things first. There wasn’t so much as an ice cube in her refrigerator. She caught herself smiling at the thought of Jess’s scorn. Even the master chef himself couldn’t put together a meal with what she had on her shelves. Time to gird herself for a trip to the closest supermarket. Her doctor had given her the okay to drive, so she had no excuse to put it off. Oral surgery was the only thing that ranked higher on her list of things she hated than pushing a shopping cart. All those endless canyons of make-from-scratch items made her palms sweat. She aimed straight for the microwavable epicenter in the frozen-food section. Feeling a little more competent, she began loading up on prepared breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Then the glossy representation of an Italian entree caused her to pause. It was probably a crazy idea. But just in case she turned over the box and scanned the table of ingredients. She wrinkled her nose.

  “Excuse me,” she said suddenly to a woman pushing a cart past her. She had one child in the basket and one hanging on her coattail and a figure suggesting she knew a thing or two about cooking.