One Good Turn

by Judith Arnold

  He remembered thinking that the most beautiful thing in the world was Jenny.

  And she’d gotten away.

  PART ONE

  * * *

  July, seven years ago

  Chapter One

  * * *

  “RICH AND BLITZED,” Sybil drawled.

  Jenny turned and acknowledged her roommate with a fleeting smile. She had known Sybil only two weeks; they’d met the day they had moved into their summer sublet, a two-bedroom flat on 36th Street NW that housed a quartet of Georgetown students during the school year. Like Sybil and her other two apartment-mates, Jenny had learned about the sublet from an ad in her college newspaper. The luck of the draw had placed her in the same bedroom as Sybil, a theater arts major from Emory University. Sybil was clever, cynical, witty, and extremely Southern—everything Jenny was not. Despite their differences, or perhaps because of them, they’d become friends.

  It was thanks to Sybil that Jenny was at this party. Unlike the staid summer interns and G.S.-5 typists Jenny had gotten to know at the State Department, the folks over at H.U.D., where Sybil worked, were always throwing bashes. This party—the third Sybil had brought Jenny to—was being hosted by a group of guys from Dartmouth who were renting a town house from a Dartmouth alumnus who had packed up his family and moved to Maryland’s Eastern Shore for the summer.

  Jenny estimated that at least fifty people were at the party. By the looks of it, they were all college kids summering in D.C., accepting whatever temporary employment they could find for the privilege of living in the nation’s capital for a couple of months. Bright, articulate people in their late teens and early twenties circulated through the house, clad in crisp summer cottons and sipping wine coolers. In the elegant first-floor living room with its Chippendale furnishings, its plush Persian rugs, framed oil paintings and ornately carved mantelpiece, Jenny could scarcely hear the strains of the rock music being played at high volume on the stereo downstairs in the finished basement.

  From where she stood, just behind the open French doors separating the paneled dining room from the living room, she had a perfect view of the guy Sybil had diagnosed as rich and blitzed. Jenny wasn’t sure she’d concur in that assessment. The guy did appear to be out of it, but she didn’t think the glazed, unfocused condition of his eyes was a result of too much liquor consumption. Nor did she ascribe to inebriation his posture—he was slumped deep into the cushions of a wing-back chair, with his legs stretched before him and a beer bottle dangling from one hand—or the disheveled state of his long, tawny hair.

  His hair lent him the appearance of having just arrived from an exhilarating cruise on a sailboat. The side part was crooked and the shiny locks, the color of coffee with lots of cream in it, dropped past the collar of his rumpled oxford shirt in back. A sail on the Potomac, Jenny imagined, with him at the helm, facing the wind, solitary and free... For some reason it was remarkably easy to picture.

  Unlikely, though. College kids with summer jobs spent their Tuesdays working, not sailing. In the evenings after work, they burned off their stress at parties like this. The guy in her sights had probably mussed his hair by running his fingers through it too many times.

  They were nice fingers, long and graceful. He had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, revealing forearms that were long and graceful, too. So were his legs. He appeared lean and lanky, too tall for the chair but not nearly wide enough for it.

  It was his face, though, not his fingers or legs or hair, that had caught Jenny’s attention and held it. There was something stark about his features, something that put her in mind of polished marble—hard yet delicate, sensitive yet unforgiving. His eyes, glazed though they were, were the color of honey, and yet they had a coldness about them, an opaque, grainy quality—honey that had crystalized from too much refrigeration. He had a firm, jutting jaw, a sharp nose and thin lips, all of which came together in a singularly attractive way, but she kept going back to his eyes, eyes inhabited by too many emotions, all of them frozen and mute.

  “How do you know he’s rich?” she whispered to Sybil, who remained beside her by the dining room doorway, nursing a wine cooler and sizing up the man.

  “The shirt’s a Ralph Lauren,” Sybil explained in her savvy southern accent. “Also, he’s wearing deck shoes with no socks. That’s always a giveaway.”

  Jenny had noticed the absence of socks; in fact, her gaze had lingered for several long seconds on the naked, bony ankles visible beneath the hems of his cuffed khaki trousers. She’d never have guessed his shirt was a designer label, though. She was amazed that Sybil could identify the brand from twenty feet away.

  “As far as his being blitzed,” Sybil continued tartly, “that’s pretty obvious.”

  “I don’t think he looks blitzed,” Jenny argued. “I think he looks...troubled.”

  “Indeed. Troubled by demon alcohol. There are plenty of gents downstairs, Jenny, and I’d wager at least one of them is better looking than that boy. Come on down with me.”

  Jenny grinned and shook her head. Even if the family room in the basement were filled with contestants for the Mr. America pageant, she wouldn’t have wanted to go downstairs, at least not before she’d talked to the man in the wingback chair. If he slurred his words, if he donned a lamp shade or spilled his beer on her skirt, she would concede that he was drunk and dismiss him from her mind. But until she had absolute proof, she was determined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “I’m going to introduce myself to him,” she told Sybil.

  “Bring a plastic bag with you,” Sybil warned with a grin. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

  Jenny returned her grin, then entered the living room. She didn’t make a habit of accosting strange men; while not shy, she wasn’t overly forward, either. She knew that some men might consider an uninvited overture from a woman an act of aggression; she knew that other men might take one look at her short, girlish physique and her hot-lava hair and tell her to get lost. She was not a raving beauty. Men didn’t gasp for joy when she glanced their way. Usually she exercised caution at social gatherings, attempted to establish eye contact with a man, exchanged a few experimental smiles and then waited for him to approach her.

  Tonight was different. The guy in the wingback chair hadn’t once looked in her direction, but for some inexplicable reason she felt no qualms about marching across the room and imposing herself on him. If he rejected her, she wouldn’t be crushed—yet something inside her felt certain that he wouldn’t reject her. Some stubborn, self-confident part of her soul assured her that given a little time, she could thaw the icy crystals in his beautiful amber eyes.

  She reached his chair. He didn’t look up at her, didn’t move.

  “Hi,” she said.

  Slowly, as if he had to order each muscle into action individually, he twisted in his chair and tilted his head up. His eyes met hers and she sensed no overt hostility in them. On the other hand, he hardly seemed thrilled by the sight of her. A muscle twitched in his jaw, but he remained silent.

  “My name is Jenny Perrin,” she said.

  He stared at her.

  “I don’t think you’re drunk.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “I’m not,” he said, then raised the beer bottle to his lips.

  Before he could drink, Jenny added, “You shouldn’t have any more, though.”

  Surprised, he lowered the bottle. He appraised her five-foot-two-inch, one-hundred-one-pound body with a sweeping gaze, his expression one of suspicion laced with curiosity and begrudging amusement. “What are you, a bouncer?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “One of those born-again teetotaler types?”

  “No,” she answered, wondering whether he was as irritated by her as his words implied. Wondering why she didn’t care if he was. “I’m just a busybody,” she explained.

  His amusement overcame his suspicion and he chuckled. She had hoped to thaw him, but to her surprise
she was the one thawing, melting, feeling her innards turn to liquid at the sensuous sound of his soft, gravelly laughter. All of a sudden she felt flushed and feverish and utterly smitten. If she were a teenager, she’d say she was experiencing a powerful, instantaneous crush on this nameless stranger.

  She wasn’t a teenager, however. She was twenty one years old, and twenty-one-year-olds didn’t get crushes. What they got, she realized with some discomfort, was turned on.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, aware that her composure was on the verge of disintegrating. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.” She spun away, anxious to leave before he figured out why her cheeks had darkened from their usual creamy color to what she was sure was glow-in-the-dark red.

  With a swiftness and accuracy that offered definitive evidence of his sobriety, he reached out and grabbed her arm. His fingers met easily around her narrow wrist, and she prayed he wouldn’t detect her accelerated pulse. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I’m used to busybodies.”

  With a gentle tug, he urged her back to him. She was still standing, he was still seated, and she could have escaped from him the moment he released her. But she didn’t. She stayed beside the chair, unconsciously rubbing her wrist where he’d briefly clasped it. His laughter had disarmed her but his touch gave her courage. “Would you like to dance?” she asked.

  “I hate dancing.”

  What was she supposed to do now? Apparently he didn’t want her to desert him, but she felt ridiculous hovering awkwardly above his chair, gazing down into his haunting eyes and panicking over their profound effect on her.

  “Want to go outside?” he suggested.

  “Okay.” She was relieved that he’d taken the initiative just as her mind was going terminally blank. A few minutes in the fresh evening air might be just what she needed to clear her head and cool off.

  He placed his bottle in a clean ashtray on the table at his side, a gesture that implied he’d grown up in classy surroundings where people knew how to avoid leaving water stains on the furniture. But of course he’d grown up in classy surroundings; he was wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt and no socks.

  Still, Jenny found it easier to envision him on a scrappy wood-hulled sailboat than in a mansion. He’d looked decidedly uncomfortable in the majestic wing-back chair.

  As soon as he stood she suffered her own keen discomfort. He was nearly a foot taller than her. Ordinarily she didn’t mind her petite size, but now she did.

  He gave no indication that the drastic difference in their heights bothered him. With a wave of his hand he invited her to precede him out of the living room.

  A cluster of people stood in the front hall, arguing politics. Excusing herself repeatedly, Jenny inched through the crowd to the door and outside. This was something, she thought grimly: she was leaving a party with a gorgeous guy who towered at least ten inches above her and who had drunk some amount of beer, and she didn’t even know his name. One of these days, she concluded with a rueful sigh, her trusting nature was going to get her in trouble.

  But she couldn’t bear the possibility that the world had no room in it for trust. Let people like Sybil be cynical. Jenny was an optimist. She was certain she had nothing to fear from this handsome stranger.

  She waited until he had joined her on the brick front porch and the door had swung shut, cutting them off from the spirited debate in the front hall. Then she turned to him. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth and then closed it, as if he actually had to mull over whether or not to answer what she considered a very reasonable question. If he decided not to, she would go right back inside, elbow her way through the front-hall debate, head downstairs to the basement and dance herself into a sweat with a nice, uncomplicated man whose eyes weren’t sending out an SOS.

  “Lucas Benning,” he said.

  Lucas Benning. She rolled his name around in her mind and decided she liked it. He’d won himself a reprieve. “Should we take a walk?” she asked.

  He shrugged and stepped off the porch. She joined him on the sidewalk and they began a leisurely stroll toward O Street. The block was picturesque, lined with charming town houses, leafy trees and decorative street lamps that cast pools of golden light onto the cobblestone road. The sky stretched rich and blue overhead, not quite dark enough to reveal the stars. The evening air was like velvet, thick and soft and warm.

  Digging her hands into the pockets of her skirt, Jenny glanced up at Lucas and smiled tentatively. “Why don’t you tell me something about yourself?” she asked.

  He stumbled to a halt and gaped at her. Then he broke into a laugh, another low, throaty chuckle that had the same unfortunately arousing effect on her as his last laugh. “You really are a busybody, aren’t you.”

  She wished there was some way to explain that Lucas himself brought out the busybody in her. She didn’t make a habit of interrogating strangers at parties. But the minute she’d seen the odd, desperate look in his eyes she’d felt an inexplicable compulsion to rescue him.

  “Look,” she said self-consciously, “if you want me to leave you alone, just say the word and I’ll disappear.”

  He studied her for a several seconds. Behind him a car bumped along the cobblestones; across the street a trio of youths whizzed down the sidewalk on skateboards. “What’s the word?” he asked.

  All right. He wanted her to leave. She’d tried and failed. Not everybody wanted to be rescued. “The word is ‘Go,’” she told him.

  He scrutinized her for another long moment. “I’ll have to be careful so it doesn’t slip out accidentally,” he said. His lips skewed into a cockeyed smile and Jenny steeled herself against the unnerving surge of warmth it stirred inside her.

  He resumed walking, and Jenny fell into step beside him. They turned the corner onto another tree-lined block of preserved historical houses and quaint street lamps. She didn’t dare to look directly at him again, but a quick glimpse informed her that he, too, had buried his hands in his pockets. She recalled his tapered fingers, the way he’d held his beer bottle by the neck, the way his wristbone had protruded. She noticed the masculine hair, a pale brown shade, growing over the sun-bronzed skin of his forearms.

  To distract herself, she asked, “Where are you working?”

  “On the Hill.”

  “The Capitol? How exciting!”

  He shrugged nonchalantly.

  Eager to spend her last summer before graduation in Washington, she had taken the civil service exam for summer employees and sent in a general application, agreeing to accept a job wherever an opening could be found. The State Department had contacted her, performed a security clearance on her, and hired her as a floating clerk to replace the regularly employed administrative assistants when they took their vacations. Some of the college kids she’d met were in the city on special grants to do research at the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian, and some with financial resources Jenny lacked were involved in volunteer work for political parties and the like.

  But to work at the Capitol—that was where the glamor was. “What do you do there?” she asked Lucas.

  “I’m a gofer,” he said modestly. “I’m working in Senator Howard Milford’s office.”

  “Senator Milford? Wow!”

  He eyed her quizzically, and she realized she must be coming across like a hick. She refused to temper her enthusiasm, though. “My father got me the job,” he elaborated, as if that was supposed to make it less thrilling.

  “Does you father work in Washington?”

  “Not directly.” Lucas reflected for a minute, his gaze losing its focus again—or else focusing on something Jenny couldn’t see. “He’s a lawyer, representing clients who need access. He maintains contacts with a lot of people on the Hill. He does a fair amount of business here in town.”

  Lucas’s voice had taken on a quality of—not quite disapproval but distaste, perhaps. It was considered fashionable to frown upon influence peddlers like his father. But most people we
re secretly jealous of their power.

  Jenny wondered if Lucas was. She herself wasn’t. Raw power had never held much appeal to her.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Where are you working?”

  “State.”

  “Yeah?” He smiled. “Do you get to read any juicy communications?”

  She smiled back and held up her hand. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  “Oh, come on—one little leak won’t kill you.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.” Then she relented with a laugh. “To tell the truth, I don’t see much juicy stuff at all. I’m in the Western Europe division, which is about as un-juicy as you can get. It’s all friendly communiques.”

  “Not a single dirty little tidbit?” he goaded her.

  “You want a dirty little tidbit?” She leaned toward him, as if about to confide an earth-shaking secret. “One of the big policy makers in the Western Europe division—a deputy assistant secretary whose name you’d know if I ever mentioned it—is addicted to M&M peanuts.”

  Lucas feigned shock. “No!”

  “It’s the truth. He goes through a one-pound bag every couple of days.”

  “Is he fat?”

  “If I described him to you you might figure out who he was.”

  Lucas laughed again. And then she saw it—a tinge of warmth in his eyes, an almost imperceptible change but one Jenny recognized because she’d been searching for it, hoping for it. A flicker of light, a hint of hope, a glimmer of spirit. She saw it and felt as if the universe had all of a sudden become a better place.

  It made no sense. Why should this man mean anything special to her? Why should he have such a profound effect on her? Why was she willing to work so hard to find that spark of humor in him, that trace of warmth? Why, when there were plenty of other eligible guys in Washington, D.C., at least a score of them at the party Sybil had brought her to, did Lucas Benning matter?