One Good Turn

by Judith Arnold

  If she felt the least bit coerced by him, that would be the end of it. She’d scream, she’d hit him, she’d fight back with everything she had. Years of self-defense lessons had to be good for something...

  God, what was she thinking? That Luke was going to rape her?

  Yet how could she trust him? He was a man.

  A man who loved her.

  A low sob choked her throat as she confronted her deepest fear: not that she would never enjoy making love again, but she would never be able to trust a man again. She wanted to trust Luke. She wanted it more than anything in the world.

  “I’ll stay,” she whispered, then turned abruptly away so he wouldn’t see her tears. “I’ll stay.”

  * * *

  THE DREAM CREPT up on her subtly, unexpectedly. In it she was floating on an undulating cushion of warmth. Every fiber in her body was relaxed, lethargic. Her respiration was slow and deep, each breath filling her with an inexplicable serenity.

  Someone was with her in the dream, but she wasn’t afraid. He was a man, a friend, the source of the warmth. She had no idea how she knew this, but she knew.

  Lips on her breast, languorously sucking. It seemed so real, in the way dreams sometimes seemed more real than reality itself. The lips moved from one breast to the other, kissing, licking, bathing her in shimmering pleasure.

  If she woke up the feeling would stop. Keeping her eyes shut, she nestled her head deeper into the pillow and sighed.

  He was moving down her body. Luke. In her dream she saw him, his large, virile physique, his honey-brown skin and honey-sweet eyes. If she were awake she’d be alarmed, but she wasn’t awake, and she wasn’t afraid.

  He kissed the surface of her belly, then continued down.

  The warmth began to condense, to contract into a tight, localized knot of heat. She felt hands on her thighs, caressing them, spreading them. His mouth touched her and she jerked awake as the knot grew precipitously hotter and tighter. She felt Luke’s hair against her thighs, his hands cupping her hips, his tongue stroking her.

  A strangled moan escaped her. The sensations he elicited were excruciating, painful and blissful all at once. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Every bit of energy concentrated itself deep inside her, in a place over which she had no power.

  She fought for control, but Luke refused to cede it. A wave of dread swept through her and then evanesced.

  She couldn’t control this, so she stopped trying. She put her faith in Luke. She trusted him. She trusted him and let go.

  Her body shook with convulsions, profound, cataclysmic, ravishing pulses of ecstasy. She was floating again, held aloft on the healing current of her own liberation. Laughing and crying, she groped for Luke and urged him up onto her. With a powerful surge he fused himself to her, and her body erupted in more convulsions, mind-boggling, heart-stopping, soul-shattering spasms as he moved within her. She felt him stiffen, heard him groan, absorbed the tremors of his body cresting inside her.

  With a weary sigh, he sank into her arms. She clung to him, savoring his weight, the dampness of his skin, the uneven rasp of his breath against her cheek. After a minute she heard the low, throaty rumble of his laughter. Leaning back, she twisted to view his face—and saw that his eyes, like hers, were filled with tears.

  Chapter Thirteen

  * * *

  “AND HE SAID, ‘This wine tastes awful!’ So I tasted the wine, and it was magnificent. We’re talking about a ‘74 Bordeau. You could take a sip of this stuff and die happy. And he’s spluttering and wincing and making a big to-do until his wife finally smacked his arm to shut him up. Then she looked at me and said, ‘I’ll take the wine. Just bring him a Pepsi.’”

  Taylor laughed politely. So did the real estate broker at the far end of the conference room, where she was refilling the coffee mugs. Luke was too distracted to smile.

  This was supposed to be a preliminary get-together between Taylor and the owner of the restaurant in Yarmouth, a chance for them to feel each other out. The business looked good enough on paper, but Taylor was too shrewd to go forward with a purchase without ascertaining that all the numbers were true.

  Luke admired Taylor’s thoroughness. He had complete confidence in Taylor’s ability to assess the restaurant’s value. So what the hell was he doing at this meeting?

  He was here not only because Taylor had asked him to come but because Jenny had asked him not to come to Cambridge. “You’ll be bored,” she insisted. “There’s nothing to do but stand around biting your nails when the jury is out. I plan to spend the morning preparing my evidence for a grand jury hearing on Wednesday. I’d love to see you for dinner if you’d like to come up in the evening, Luke, but really—it’s deadly hanging out at the courthouse and waiting for a verdict.”

  He believed her. Yet he couldn’t imagine that hanging out at the courthouse would be any more deadly than listening to an over-the-hill restaurateur reciting limp tales about all the phony wine connoisseurs he’d encountered in the course of his career. Luke had been sitting with Taylor and the old coot in the realtor’s conference room for over an hour. He was restless.

  “Is there a telephone I could use?” he asked the broker as she returned to the table with the refilled mugs.

  “Right this way.” She led him out of the conference room and pointed him toward an empty office across the hall. “Press nine to get an outside line.”

  “Thanks.” He stepped into the office, shut the door, and smiled the smile of a newly released prisoner. When he spotted the telephone console on the desk, his smile expanded.

  Two minutes of Jenny’s time—that was all he’d ask of her. Just a brief bit of contact to keep him going until he met her for dinner. Just a chance to assure her that the love they’d found together over the weekend was real, that no matter what had happened in the past or would happen in the future, his feelings weren’t going to change.

  If Saturday night had been intense, Sunday had been no less so. He’d awakened in the early hours, glowing with the joy of having Jenny next to him. The moonlight spilling in through the window glazed her face in silver, imparting an exquisite delicacy to her features. Seven years after he’d lost her he had found her again. She was here, she was his, and for the first time since those tumultuous weeks in Washington so many years ago, he felt as if his life was complete.

  For the first time since then, he believed in miracles.

  She stirred beside him, issued a sleepy groan and opened her eyes. As soon as they came into focus on Luke, she returned his smile.

  “Did I wake you?” he whispered apologetically.

  “No.” She edged closer to him, letting her head come to rest on his shoulder.

  Her hair felt silky against his skin. He kissed her temple. “Let’s make love,” he said.

  “No.” At his surprised look, she explained, “I don’t want to press my luck.”

  “Jenny—what happened last night wasn’t luck. It wasn’t a fluke. It’s going to happen again and again.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you,” she teased, although he detected a strong hint of insecurity in her tone.

  “I’m sure of you, too.” He ran his hand down her side, following the narrow frame of her rib cage, the steep slope of her waist, the feminine rise of her hip. Then he slid his hand back up, detouring around her arm to fondle her breast. He stroked it seductively, taking pleasure in the instantaneous hardening of her nipple, the involuntary movement of her hips.

  She moaned softly. “Luke—don’t.”

  He immediately pulled his hand away. He was more perplexed than disappointed. She had enjoyed his caress, responded to it. Why did she want him to stop?

  “This is all so—so strange,” she answered his unvoiced question. “I’m not used to it.”

  “Neither am I. But I like it.”

  She smiled and shifted even closer. “So do I,” she murmured, brushing her lips against his neck. “Just hold me, Luke.”

>   He held her. He wove his legs through hers and wrapped his arm snugly around her narrow waist.

  “I’m still scared,” she confessed.

  “About making love with me?”

  She shook her head. “I’m scared because I have to—to relearn myself all over again. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but... It’s as if I have to rethink everything and figure out who I am all over again. It’s like...” She fell silent, evidently searching for a way to clarify her thoughts. “When I was a little girl, my grandmother wnet almost completely deaf. After about eight years this new surgical procedure was developed, and she had it performed on her, and suddenly she could hear again. It was a big adjustment for her.”

  “It was an adjustment she must have been thrilled to make.”

  “She was,” Jenny told him. “So am I. But it’s scary. I’ve spent so long getting used to not feeling certain things. Now I have to get used to feeling them again. The ground keeps shifting under my feet. I’m afraid the next shift might knock me over.”

  “There doesn’t have to be another shift. If you’re happy with the way things are now—”

  “My happiness can’t prevent earthquakes,” Jenny argued. “I can only control so much of my life. If it all starts shifting again—”

  “I’ll be there to catch you,” he promised.

  She sighed. “I have to be strong on my own, Luke. I have to know I can be safe even if you aren’t with me.”

  “I’ll always be with you.”

  She chuckled at his stubbornness. Her breath tickled his chest. “Be real. I still have to go out into the world every day. It’s a dangerous place. There are too many...” Again she drifted off.

  “Men?” Luke guessed with a self-deprecating grin.

  “You said it, not me.”

  “So you’ll go back to your office and keep prosecuting the bad ones. And each time you nail a creep the world will be a little bit safer.”

  “You make it sound simple,” she chided.

  He heard his own words mocking him. Hadn’t he complained, seven years ago, that things were never as simple as Jenny claimed they were?

  If things hadn’t been simple then, it had been because he’d refused to view them simply. Some things were simple, though. Seven years ago he’d learned the simple truth about himself: that he couldn’t earn his father’s love by subordinating his own desires in favor of his father’s, and that he couldn’t find true happiness unless he listened to his heart. And today, he understood some simple truths about Jenny: that she could enjoy making love, and that she needed Luke as much as he needed her.

  None of which altered another simple truth, which was that no matter how many violent men ended up behind bars, a few would always manage to escape the law. “Okay. It’s not simple,” he conceded. “But you’ll do everything in your power to bring the bad guys to justice. It’s your job. It’s what you’ve chosen to do, and you do it wonderfully. And I’ll do my job and try to set all the potential creeps straight before they leave school. Weren’t you the one who made that idealistic speech about molding children’s minds?”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be idealistic again,” she said sadly.

  “That’s all right. I’ll be the resident optimist. You can be the cynic. We’ll cancel each other out.”

  “A match made in heaven,” she declared with a laugh.

  A match made in heaven. Even though he knew she’d been joking, he’d liked the sound of that on Sunday. He liked it just as much today.

  He strode across the office to the desk, lifted the phone, pressed the “9” button and then the digits of Jenny’s office number.

  The receptionist answered, and Luke identified himself. “May I speak to Jennifer Perrin, please?”

  “I’m sorry, she’s in a meeting right now. Can I take a message?”

  His shoulders slumped. He’d gotten out of his meeting; why couldn’t she get out of hers? Didn’t she know how much he wanted to hear her voice?

  He chuckled at his own impatience. He’d existed for seven years without her in his life. Surely he could wait a few minutes to talk to her. “When will she be done with her meeting?” he asked.

  “Who knows? I guess when the press is done questioning her.”

  “The press?” His pulse accelerated slightly. The only reason he could imagine her facing the press right now was if— “Did the jury reach a verdict in the Sullivan case?”

  “Ten minutes ago,” the receptionist informed him.

  “And? What was it?”

  The receptionist hesitated for a moment, then said, “They voted for acquittal.”

  He cursed. It was bad enough that Sullivan would walk—certainly people guilty of worse crimes had gone unpunished. But this trial, Jenny’s trial... He couldn’t bear to think what losing might do to her. She had scars that even Luke couldn’t heal. She’d told him point-blank that she was still afraid, that she would never feel totally safe. Especially not with men like Matthew Sullivan at large, men who were nice-looking and well-educated, men who looked and acted and were viewed by society as totally normal.

  He never seemed particularly unbalanced to me, she had said, describing another Matthew Sullivan—one with a different name, living at a different time and a different place but suffering from the same brutal psyche. We were friends.

  Over the past weekend Luke had labored with all his might to teach Jenny how to trust. After a verdict like this, how could she ever trust anyone? How could she trust Luke? He was the epitome of mental balance, and he was her friend.

  “Is she all right?” he asked the receptionist.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  It dawned on him that by implying that Jenny might be unhinged by the verdict he was jeopardizing her position in the D.A.’s office. “Is Jenny disappointed?” he amended.

  Again the receptionist paused before answering. “Verdicts are a matter of public record, Mr. Benning. The personal reactions of our attorneys aren’t.”

  If the receptionist couldn’t tell him, it must be bad. Maybe Jenny had broken down in court. Maybe she was right this minute ranting and raving before the press corps.

  “I’m sorry to take up your time,” he said quickly. “Please tell Jenny I called.” Then he slammed down the phone and headed back to the conference room to say good-bye to Taylor and the others.

  He completed the trip to Cambridge in under an hour and a half, but never had a drive seemed so long to him. In his haste, he almost forgot to lock his car after parking it, and he ran to the courthouse building with the speed of an Olympic sprinter. Too anxious to wait for the elevator, he dashed up the stairs to the second floor. Emerging from the stairwell, he tore down the hall to the D.A.’s office and burst through the door. “Where is she?” he demanded of the receptionist.

  She peered up at him suspiciously. “Where is who?”

  “Jenny Perrin. I’m Luke Benning.”

  “You telephoned earlier, didn’t you,” the young woman said, her eyes narrowing on him. “I gave her your message.”

  If Jenny had tried to call him back she wouldn’t have been able to reach him. If she hadn’t tried... He didn’t even want to consider what that might imply.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in a meeting.”

  “Still?” An hour and a half fencing with reporters? Or had she told the receptionist to lie to Luke so she could hide from him? “When I telephoned, she was in a meeting,” he said, bearing down on the woman behind the desk, hoping to intimidate her into revealing Jenny’s whereabouts.

  “That was a different meeting,” she said placidly. “Right now, she’s with District Attorney Blair.”

  “Fine.” Not bothering to request permission, he barged down the corridor of partitions, searching for Blair’s office, ignoring the receptionist’s shout of protest. Through an open door he heard voices, and he peeked into the doorway to see Jenny’s genial, bald boss standing in front of his desk, two other men in business a
ttire facing him, and in the center of this trio of towering men, a petite red-haired woman in a chic gray suit and spectator pumps.

  Seeing how tiny she looked surrdounded by the men wrenched Luke’s heart. Not caring about the consequences, he stormed into the office and called her name.

  They all turned to stare at him. And then Jenny’s lips curved in an enchanting smile of surprise. “Luke! What are you doing here?”

  Her smile was the most reassuring sight in the universe. It banished his anxiety, slowed his pulse, neutralized the overabundance of adrenaline pumping through his body. She was okay. She had survived. She was stronger and tougher than even he had given her credit for being.

  “Hello,” he mumbled, abruptly embarrassed by his rude invasion of this professional confab. “I’m sorry to interrupt—”

  “No, that’s all right,” Jenny said. “We’re basically done here. You remember Steve Blair, don’t you?” She gestured toward the district attorney, who nodded at Luke in recognition and extended his hand. After they’d shaken hands Luke was introduced to Jenny’s fellow assistant D.A., Willy Taggart, and the third man, a police lieutenant from Sommerville. More hand-shaking, and then Jenny excused herself and led Luke out of the room.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked again as they walked down the corridor to her own cramped office.

  “I heard about the verdict,” he explained.

  “Really? How”

  “I called to talk to you, and the receptionist told me.”

  Jenny nodded and crossed to her desk, which was uncharacteristically messy, scattered with papers and folders. She eyed the disorder, then turned her back on it and faced Luke. For the first time since he’d found her, she didn’t look happy. “So. You know.”

  “You seem to be taking it well,” he observed, although his voice rose in a question.

  She took a deep breath and let it out. Then she shook her head. “It sucks,” she said tersely.

  “You did the best you could.”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “That’s what Steve and Mike were saying in Steve’s office. Willy was just there to offer moral support.” She sighed again. “We have no grounds for appeal. It was a fair trial. There’s nothing more I can do.”