Robert could hear the sniffles of her tears, a sound that caused him to languish in despair, and that was why he held her longer, pulling her closer and closer against him. Crying was a private matter, he’d always felt, it was not an activity for public consumption. The last thing she would want was for him to be gawking at her right now. She was in pain. He knew it the first time he saw her. Pain that probably began years ago, maybe as soon as she realized, after her high school graduation, that her dreams were not going to come true. And to leave that hell hole only to find herself in this one was undoubtedly getting to be too much for her. The love of a good man probably used to be her goal, now any man’s affections would do. Robert squeezed his eyes shut at the thought of some other man touching her, and he found himself, for the first time in a long time, praying to the Almighty to not let it be so. He silently prayed that God would place a hedge of protection around Carrie and keep all of those opportunistic, good-for-nothing, love’em and leave’em men as far away from her as their shiftless feet could take them.
When her sniffling seemed to fade into silence and it appeared clear that she now had her emotions back in check, he slowly released her from his arms. She was, at first, looking down when he released her, as she wiped her eyes, but then she looked up at him. And that look in her eyes, not of sadness or pain, but of a kind of courageous resolve, as if she was determined to not let her circumstances get the best of her, made him feel so proud of her that he wanted to pull her in his arms again. But he didn’t. He, instead, placed his hand on the side of her face and tried to comfort her with a smile. “You okay?” he asked her.
She nodded with a smile of her own. “Yes, I’m fine. I’m just. . . I’m just a little tired I think.”
“Tired?” he asked as his thumb moved from her cheek and began to rub across her lips.
“Yes, I think so.”
“What’s got you so tired?”
She smiled. “Eventful day,” she said.
He nodded. “Yeah. Know what you mean.” He said this and then removed his hand from her. “Go on inside and get you some rest.”
She wished it was that simple. She wished she could go into Mona’s apartment and find solace there, but she knew better than that. Mona’s apartment, and everything about this life of hers, was the cause, not the solution, of her weariness. But that wasn’t Robert’s problem, she decided. “I will, thank-you, Mr. Kincaid,” she said to him.
“Robert.”
Carrie looked at him blankly.
“My name is Robert. Call me Robert.”
Carrie smiled. “Okay, Robert. And thanks again for the ride home.”
Robert told her she was welcome, told her goodnight again, and then began walking away from her in a brisk stride. He felt as if he was going in the wrong direction when he left her. He felt as if he should still be at the threshold of that apartment holding her in his arms, but he hurried down those stairs anyhow. He was not the kind of man a woman like Carrie Banks needed right now, and no amount of tears or sentimentality would convince him otherwise. She’d eventually find the right man, somebody steady and stable, somebody ready to be there emotionally for her, he was certain of it. What he wasn’t so certain of, however, was why he seemed to be getting sick to his stomach at just the thought of her with another man, regardless of how right that man would be for her, regardless of how absolutely wrong Robert knew he was for her.
Even when he left the building and got into his truck, he still felt a pull back to Carrie. He had to fight, literally fight the urge to run back up those stairs, pull her into his arms, and never release her again. It was the strangest, strongest feeling he’d ever felt for anyone before, and it disturbed him. Even Gloria had never had this kind of pull on him. He leaned his head back against his headrest and blew out a sigh of anguish. What was it about this particular woman, who wasn’t his type, who was way too young for him, that kept him feeling so unguarded? It certainly couldn’t be love, he decided, since he hardly knew her. But it was something. Something so intense, so incredibly needy, that he knew the best thing for both of them was if he cranked up his truck and got his shiftless feet away from her too. So he did.
Back inside the building, however, Carrie closed the door of Mona’s apartment and then leaned against it. The last thing she wanted was for Robert to get away from her. He was such a sweet man, she thought. Such a kind, wonderful human being. He was bothered by those guys out front. As if he would hurt them if they tried to harm her. No man had ever shown that kind of concern for her. Not even Dale, who was once willing to marry her even though he knew she didn’t love him. And it was a wonderful feeling, she thought. A feeling that maybe, just maybe, despite all of their differences and stations in life, God had decided that it was not good for her to be alone either and that Robert Kincaid, of all people, just might be the man to make it so.
TWELVE
It was the sound of screaming. And it jarred Carrie awake with such a jolt that she jumped straight up from the mattress she slept on and ran out of her room. It was Mona’s voice, Mona’s horrified, screeching voice, and the terror in that voice caused Carrie to run lightning fast through the living room, to Mona’s bedroom, where she flung open the door. She saw a man, a tall, burly man she’d never seen before, standing over Mona beating on her mercilessly. Mona was trying to fight back, she was just that bold, but she didn’t stand a chance. Carrie, little Carrie, didn’t cower in a corner either. She ran up to the man and jumped on his back as if she was jumping on a horse to ride. She kicked him and punched him and tried to claw his eyes out, but he was too powerfully built. He slung her off of him as if she was a feather and she landed hard, rump first, onto the cold, wood floor. When she looked up, she was staring into hard, cold eyes.
“I want my money and I want it now!” he demanded of her.
“What money?” Carrie yelled. “What are you talking about?”
“I want the money y’all stole from me, don’t play no games with me! Y’all got me all drunk and drowsy and as soon as I fell asleep y’all robbed my wallet blind! I ain’t no fool, I know how much money I brung up in here!”
Carrie looked at her sister. This man had to be mistaken. Popena was a lot of things, Carrie would be the first to admit it, but a thief wasn’t one of them. Yet Popena wouldn’t even look at her.
“Just go, Grady,” Mona said to the angry man as she tried to smooth back down her wild hair and straighten back up her disheveled clothing. But she may as well had been talking to the floor because Grady wasn’t about to just go.
“Give me my cash, Mo, and I ain’t playing with you now. I ain’t leaving without my money!”
Mona sucked her lips and then angrily reached under her mattress. When she pulled out a wad of cash and tossed them at her visitor, Carrie couldn’t believe her eyes. “Here!” Mona yelled. “Now get out of my house and get out now!”
Carrie stared at her sister. Was it true? Did she try to steal that man’s money? Carrie knew her sister hadn’t had many breaks in life either. She knew how desperately she lived on the edge. But to result to thievery now? It didn’t seem possible that she would stoop that low. But then again, Carrie thought, anything was possible in this world.
Grady, however, was too busy picking up his cash to worry about Mona or anybody else. It wasn’t until he had gathered up every bill that he even bothered to look at Mona. And he smiled when he did. “Here trick,” he said, tossing a bill her way. “Five is about what you were worth anyway!” Then he dropped the smile. “You better be glad I got to get to work or I would have messed you up bad.”
“Just get out my house.”
He smiled again, and then he laughed. But he left.
Carrie, stunned, just sat there on the floor unable to stop staring at her sister. Mona, seeing it, frowned angrily. “Don’t be staring at me like that,” she said.
“You okay?” Carrie asked her.
“Do I look like I’m okay?”
“Why don’t you com
e to church with me sometime?”
Mona looked at her sister as if she’d just missed a part of the conversation. “What?”
“Why don’t you come to church with me and Millie Rawlings sometime? God can change your heart.”
“What are you talking about, Carrie? What God got to do with this?”
“He can change your heart. He can stop you from stealing and sleeping around and relying on men so much.”
Mona looked at her sister as if she was some self-righteous irritant, and her temper flared. “Now you look here, you little brat,” she said. “You in my house now, you understand me? My house! Where do you come off telling me what I need? You don’t know nothing about what went on between me and Grady so don’t even go there! All you gots to do is stay out of my way, stay out of my business, and pay me my rent! Got it?”
“I was just trying to help, Popena.”
“Stop calling me that! My name is not Popena. My name is Mona whether you like it or not. And I don’t need your help. All I need you to do is give me my money, that’s all I need from you.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about last night, but you weren’t here.”
“Don’t even try that, Carrie. Your butt got paid yesterday, I know that for a fact, so don’t even go there.”
“I’m not saying I didn’t get paid. I got your money. It’s just that. . . well, I don’t seem to have a job anymore.”
“What? No job? You mean to tell me you got fired again?”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
Mona shook her head in disgust. “This the second time you’ve been fired in two weeks, Carrie! What’s wrong with you?”
Carrie exhaled. Trying to explain it to somebody like Popena was a waste of time and she knew it. “Does Dooney still need a waitress at Simms?” she asked her instead.
Mona looked at her. “Why?”
“He said I could wait tables there and I need a job right now, that’s why.”
“So you really got fired again?”
“Is the job still available, Po . . . I mean Mona?”
“Yeah, it’s available. It’s always available, dang. I’m sure he’ll love to have you on board. Everybody loves Carrie, right? You can come with me tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“You wanna work or don’t you?”
“Yes. And I’m grateful but, I just.. . didn’t expect to be able to get started so soon.”
“Whatever. My money please.”
“I haven’t had a chance to cash my check yet.”
“I’ll cash it. Just give it to me.”
Carrie got up from the hard floor and headed for her bedroom. She was still feeling the effects of rising too quickly and too dramatically, as if she still wasn’t fully awake. And she was also still feeling the effects of last night’s drama. Two jobs lost in two weeks. Even Carrie had to shake her head on that one. What kind of Christian example was she displaying to a sinner like Popena? She prayed for work, God answered her prayers, and then she proceeded to mess up and lose the very blessings God had given her. Popena had a right to be weary of her. She was a disaster, not an example.
She was nearly panic stricken, however, when she went into her bedroom and was unable, after much searching, to find her purse. She searched frantically, turning over everything that could be turned over in the small space, from her pallet on the floor to her suitcase in the corner, but all to no avail. She’d be beyond disenchanted if she lost her purse too. And her rent money. Popena’s rent money. Oh, God!
Then she stopped. She stood in the middle of her bedroom and just stopped all movement. And instead of becoming hysterical with worry, she prayed. She asked God for guidance with a prayer for help. She immediately felt led of the Spirit to clear her mind of what the consequences of losing her purse could mean, and focus, instead, on the purse itself. She began to visualize every step she took last night with that purse. She knew she had it with her when she left Jetson’s because she reached in and got her paycheck out of it when Robert’s friend sped out of the parking lot without giving her a chance to apologize again. She had it when Robert drove her home too, she remembered that. They talked, she got out of his SUV, he walked her inside, they talked some more, he held her, which, she still remembered, was glorious, and then she came inside her apartment. And she didn’t have the purse with her! That was it. She had left her purse in Robert’s truck. Of all places she could have left it, she left it in that man’s truck! She shook her head. She wasn’t getting any breaks. Now she had to track him down to get it and she just knew he was going to think she left it behind on purpose, as if she was capable of playing the same games some of those silly women played when they wanted to see a man again. They’d leave a scarf, a necklace, an earring just to get back in that door. And he was the kind of man, Carrie could tell, who wasn’t going to like being played.
“Carrie!” Mona’s voice boomed out over the apartment. Then she came into the bedroom. “What’s taking you so long, girl? Where’s my money?”
Carrie exhaled. “You ain’t gonna believe this, Popena.”
“Don’t even try it.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Carrie! Where’s my money?”
“What I’m trying to tell you is that I missed my bus last night and Mr. Kincaid---”
“Mister who?”
“Robert Kincaid. He’s the CEO of the Dyson Corporation and he—”
“The Dyson Corporation? What the Dyson Corporation got to do with this?”
“Robert’s the CEO there and he gave me a ride home last night.”
“You need to quit.”
“No, it’s true. He gave me a ride home.”
“Girl, please, you must take me for the biggest fool in Jacksonville.”
“I’m telling you the truth, Po, Mona. I left my purse behind in his SUV.”
“Uh-hun. Well I tell you what. You better come up with my money by noontime today or you gonna be left behind, left right out in those streets with that suddenly missing purse of yours. But of course you’re friends with the CEO of Dyson, so I know locating that cheap-behind thrift store purse is not gonna be a problem for you at all! Now is it?”
Carrie was in a way stunned by her sister’s harshness, but in another way she wasn’t even surprised. Life had a way of stinging people, even when you do all you can to avoid the bee. Jacksonville not only had sucked the life out of Popena to where she just didn’t seem to care anymore, it was trying to suck the life out of Carrie too. But Carrie was a praying woman, she kept reminding herself, and with the help of the Lord she just knew it was going to get better for her soon enough. It certainly couldn’t get much worse.
THIRTEEN
Two hours later and Carrie was walking slowly across the polished floors of the lobby inside of the Dyson corporate building. She was wearing jeans, a cotton, frill-line blouse, and her loafers amongst the business suits and dress shoes that swirled even faster around her. But she wasn’t intimidated at all. She had phoned Dyson five times asking to speak with Robert Kincaid and she was denied access to him each and every time. Now she was determined. That cheap pocketbook that still sat in his truck may not have meant a thing to them, but it meant everything to her.
She took the elevator to the top floor where she knew Robert’s office was located. She looked around, hoping to remember the maze that led to his office, but a security guard standing at the massive reception desk began looking at her as if he just knew she didn’t belong there. He’d been laughing and talking with the receptionist that sat behind the big desk when Carrie first stepped off of the elevator, but now they both were looking at her.
“May I help you?” the receptionist finally asked as Carrie walked up to the desk.
“Yes, ma’am,” Carrie said. “I’m here to see Robert Kincaid.”
“Oh,” the receptionist said, picking up her desk phone immediately and looking at Carrie with more respect. “I’ll tell his secretary that you’ve a
rrived, ma’am. May I ask your name, please?”
“Carrie Banks, but she wouldn’t. . . I mean, I don’t have an appointment.”
The security guard smiled and then laughed. The receptionist sat the phone back down. “If you don’t have an appointment,” she said, “what sort of business would you have with Mr. Kincaid?”
Carrie looked from the receptionist to the smiling guard and then back to the receptionist. They wouldn’t understand if she told them. “It’s private,” she said.
“Yeah, I’m sure it is,” the receptionist replied. “And that’s why I can’t help you. Mr. Kincaid doesn’t take walk-ins.”
The guard let out a big laugh then. Carrie glanced at him angrily. “I need to see him,” she said to the receptionist. “If somebody would just tell him I’m here he’ll see me.”
“Girl, do you know who Robert Kincaid even is?” the guard asked her, amazed at Carrie’s boldness.
“Yes, I know who he is.”
“He’s the man around here. You know you can’t just go running in there to see him, you know better than that!”
Carrie sighed in exasperation. She could just see her sister now, tossing her clothes out onto those filthy streets when twelve o’clock arrived and she didn’t have that rent money in her hands. What in the world was she going to do then? Where was she going to live? At a homeless shelter? On the streets? Would she be forced to go back to Georgia where she didn’t really have a home there either? And how was she going to get to Georgia with no money?
She looked at the receptionist and guard again. They didn’t understand. “Look,” she said, trying desperately to impress upon them the urgency of her plight, “if you’ll just tell his secretary to tell him it’s me—”
“I can’t help you, Miss. Marva Cox doesn’t play that and if you knew anything about Dyson you’d know that.”
“Marva Cox? Who’s Marva Cox?”
The guard laughed again.
A Special Relationship Page 10
