by Mary Calmes
Aja, who had been in the public school realm when she first married my brother, as first a principal and then assistant superintendent of schools, had found herself unable to enact change at that level. Aja could not amend policy or allocate funds, but instead of growing bitter about what she saw happening around her—the apathy and deliberate ignorance—she decided to do something about it. In her present position as the associate dean of education at De Paul University, training and inspiring the next generation of teachers, she was preparing bright minds for the real world as well as toughening skins. She armed them and motivated them and made sure they knew she would always be a resource for them even after they graduated. All that plus parenting two children, being a wife, attending a myriad of social functions with her husband, and the result was a worn-out Aja Harcourt. I wanted to help lessen her load.
As I was driving back home after dropping off Kola and Hannah—they both went to the same Montessori school close to Oak Park—I called Aja from the car and offered to take her two short people off her hands instead of having her join us. I was immediately called a saint.
“Jory, I need some me and Dane time.”
“How ’bout I pick Robbie and Gen up next Friday after school and keep them until Sunday morning? We’ll all go to brunch and you can have them back. But that gives you Friday night and all day
Saturday. Whaddya say?”
I thought she was going to cry, she was so thankful.
“So is that a yes?”
“Ohmygod, yes, that’s a yes!”
“You’re starting to sound like me.”
“Thank you, baby.”
“What is family for?”
“But you’re the only one I trust.”
“That’s not true.” I smiled into the phone as I turned from the side street I was on into traffic on Harlem Avenue, heading for home. I went maybe ten feet before I and everyone else on the street came to a grinding halt.
“Yes, but since Carmen got her dream job globetrotting around the world and my folks fled to Florida and Alex to Delaware, you and Sam are the only family I’ve got here.”
“You have a lot of other girlfriends,” I told her as I tried to see what the problem was around the SUV in front of me.
“I know, but I would check in with the others, I don’t need to check with you and Sam. He’ll kill anyone that comes near my kids, and you worry more than I do.”
“I don’t worry.”
She snorted out a laugh over the phone.
“That was very undignified,” I said as I leaned back in the driver’s seat of the sleek black minivan I utterly adored. Everyone else I knew had SUVs that were, I was certain, helping to destroy the environment. My minivan was not part of Satan’s master plan, and I loved my car that proclaimed me married with children as well as safety conscious. I was looking forward to Kola starting soccer in the spring so the picture of domestic bliss would be complete. I had a sweater all picked out.
“You bring it out of me,” Aja cackled.
“Whatever, I’ll call you when I get back from the reunion on Sunday.”
She started snickering.
“What?”
“Family reunion.” She was laughing now. “Oh the horror!”
“It’ll be fine,” I told her as I noticed a man striding by my window. It was weird that he was walking down the middle of the street and not on the sidewalk, but since we were in gridlock, he was in no danger of getting run over. “Hey, your kids like Mountain Dew and Oreos, right?”
“They’re staying with you for two days. Feed them whatever you want.”
I was laughing when I hung up, but when the SUV in front of me suddenly reversed, crashing into my front bumper, I yelled and laid on my horn. But the car didn’t stop—it kept grinding metal, and I realized that he, or she, was trying to get enough of an angle to go up onto the curb to the right.
I took a picture of the license plate with my phone, thanked God that my kids weren’t with me, and was about to call the police to report the accident when I saw the passenger door of the SUV open. What was confusing was that the small woman who scrambled out had keys in her hand. It was like she had been driving but had not wanted to get out of the driver’s side door. When she flung open the back door, a little rocket seat was visible: she had a toddler.
I got out fast and went around the back of my van—even as the guy in the car behind me honked, leaned out, and told me to get back behind the fucking wheel—and darted to her side.
She whirled on me with a can of pepper spray in hand.
“Wait! I’m here to help.”
Her eyes were huge as she looked at me, shoved the can into my chest, and told me to look out for the guy so she could get her son out of the car. She had been too frightened to even open her door.
“What guy?”
“I don’t know, some psycho. I think he killed the man in the car in front of me,” she cried. “I think he has a gun or—oh God!”
Turning, I saw a man advancing on us. “Move your fucking cars!”
“Get inside!” I ordered her. “Lock it!”
She climbed into the backseat around her kid, and I heard the locks behind me as the man advanced on me fast.
He had a lug wrench, not a gun, and since I could run if I needed to, I went from terrified to annoyed very quickly. “What the hell are you doing?” I barked at him. “You’re scaring the crap out of this lady!”
“Move your cars! This whole street is just full of fucking cars!”
He wasn’t even looking at me; I doubt he could have told me where he was or what he was doing. Maybe the road rage had made him snap; perhaps something else. I didn’t know and I didn’t care—he was carrying around an automotive tool like a weapon. That was really my only concern. The lady in the SUV was freaked because her kid was in the car and this guy was acting crazy. If my kids were with me, I would have had the same reaction.
“Stop,” I ordered him. “Don’t come any closer.”
He kept coming, and he raised the wrench like maybe he was thinking of braining me with it. I aimed the nozzle of the pepper spray and made sure to get his face.
His scream was loud and wounded, but he didn’t drop the tool.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
It was the guy who had yelled at me earlier, whose car was in gridlock behind mine.
“You just attacked this guy?” he roared right before he hit me.
I went down hard, hitting the van as I bounced off it, but from my angle, I could see the guy I had sprayed coming at him.
Kicking hard, I knocked the guy who had just hit me off balance, and he tumbled to the ground beside me.
“What the fuck are you—”
“Look out!” I yelled as the guy with the lug wrench came after us.
“Oh shit,” he screamed, scrambling back away from me, moving to run.
“Drop the weapon!”
“Get on the ground!”
Normally, policemen—even though I’m married to an ex one— are not my favorite people. As a rule, they catch me doing crap I shouldn’t be but somehow miss everyone else talking on their cell phones, running red lights, and speeding.
But right at that moment, as I saw the uniforms, noted the drawn guns, and heard the orders being roared out, I was comforted.
The guy dropped the lug wrench and went to his knees.
“All the way down, face on the pavement!”
“You saved my life,” the guy who hit me said.
“I—”
But something slammed the back of my head, and everything went dark.
MY HUSBAND, my brother, family, and friends would say that yes, Jory Harcourt is a trouble magnet, but I think it’s more coincidence than anything else when fate decides to screw with me. Especially this time: I was going home from dropping off my kids, a trip I made Monday through Friday, normally without incident. How was I to know that I would end up in the crosshairs of accidental crazy?
&nbs
p; “A what?” the policeman who was taking my statement at the hospital asked.
“Trouble magnet,” I told him as I sighed deeply.
“How did you get knocked out?” he asked me.
“I guess the lady I told to stay in her SUV, she opened the door really fast and I was sitting right beside her car and… you know.”
He nodded. “I see.”
“That’s why vans are better, the doors slide,” I educated him.
His smile was patronizing.
“I—”
“Jory!” His yell bounced off the walls, and I winced.
The officer looked startled. “Who was—”
“Scooch back,” I ordered, and took a breath to get the required amount of air into my lungs. “In here!”
The curtain was flung open moments later and there was Sam, jaw clenched, muscles cording in his neck, eyes dark and full of too many things to soothe at once.
“Detective Kage?”
Sam turned to the officer.
“Oh, no, marshal.” He tried to smile at my glowering man.
Sam’s attention returned to me, and I smiled as I lifted my arms for him.
Moving fast, Sam closed the short distance between us and hauled me forward and crushed me against him.
It was not gentle; the entire movement was jarring and hard.
I loved it.
“Scared me,” he said as he clutched me tight.
I knew I had, which was the reason for the grab. I leaned into him, nuzzled my face into the crook of his neck, and slid my arms under the suit jacket and over the crisp dress shirt. He smelled good, a faint trace of cologne, fabric softener, and warm male. I whimpered softly in the back of my throat.
“Those calls take years off my life, you know?”
“What calls?”
“The Jory’s in the hospital calls.”
I nodded, and there was a rumble of a grunt before he leaned back and looked down into my face. His eyes clocked me, checking, making sure I was whole and safe.
“I’m fine,” I said as he lifted his hand and knotted it into my hair, tilting my head back as he examined my right eye and my cheek.
“Yeah, you don’t look fine,” he said, and his voice was low and menacing. “Who did this?”
“There was a guy behind me, and he didn’t understand why I sprayed the man with the lug wrench, and he—”
“Stop,” he cut me off, dropping his hand from my hair as he turned his head to the policeman. “Talk.”
I could tell from his change of tone that he wasn’t waiting on me, but apparently the officer could not. “Hello?” Sam snapped icily.
“Oh-oh,” the guy stammered and then recounted to Sam the events of the morning.
“So the lady in the SUV knocked him out when she opened the door?” He was trying to make sure he understood everything.
“Yes.”
Sam grunted.
“She’s really sorry about it. She told me that your partner there saved her life.”
That didn’t make it any better, at least for Sam.
“My van is—”
“We’ll take care of the van and get you a rental until it’s fixed.
Just don’t worry about it.”
“No, I know,” I snapped at him. Sometimes—a lot of the time—Sam treated me like an invalid. It was happening more and more lately, like I needed to be taken care of, same as the kids, because I couldn’t think for myself or reason things out. “I just wanted to know where my vehicle was towed to… Officer.”
I had turned to the man in uniform, pinned him with my gaze— my question was directed to him—and he was still looking at Sam to see if he should answer me.
“Officer?”
“I can find out where the—”
“No,” I shut Sam down, eyes wide as I waited. “Where’s my car?”
“We, um.” He coughed as he passed me a business card from his clipboard. “Had it towed to a garage downtown and—”
“Just stop,” Sam barked at me, snatching the card away. “Sit here while I go find your doctor and figure out if you have a concussion or—”
“Sam—”
“After I get you home, then we’ll worry about the damn van.”
“I can—”
“Stop,” he ordered again, and because I didn’t want to have a scene, I went still and quiet and stared at the clock on the wall.
The officer muttered something and left, and Sam told me that he had to go and find out about the other people in the accident and would see about my release at the same time.
I stayed quiet.
“You’re gonna sulk now?”
I turned my head and was about to say something when he lifted his hand.
“I don’t wanna fight with you. Just let me do this.”
“I’m not a child, Sam. I can take care of my own car. I can do—”
“So I shouldn’t be here? I shouldn’t have even come?”
“No, I just… lately it seems to be the Sam Show and not the Sam and Jory Show. You do everything, and I don’t get why that’s happening.”
His eyes searched mine.
“Sam? Do you think I’m helpless?”
The glare I was getting would have terrified most people. But this was the guy who loved me, and as always, when I stopped and actually used my brain, I understood what was really going on.
He was terrified.
I had scared the crap out of him that morning, and because he was waiting for the other shoe to drop anyway… it was almost like he was expecting bad news. And he was—he was expecting the worst.
“You think me and Kola and Hannah could get taken away.”
“What? No,” he said quietly, not a lot of force behind his words.
“No.”
He was such a liar.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, putting my hands on his heavily muscled chest, unable to stop myself from curling my fingers into his shirt, holding on. Yes, he was being overprotective, but not for the reasons I thought. He didn’t think I was stupid; he just didn’t want to let me, or his kids, out of his sight for any reason. Not ever. And because he was trying not to be suffocating, he was managing the exact opposite. “I wasn’t thinking.”
He took a breath. “What’re you talking about?”
“The more you work, the more you see, the more you realize that this, what we have, is not the norm. Most people don’t get the kind of happiness that we have, the home we have, so you get over protective and smothering.”
He furrowed his brows, and I smiled up at him as I hooked my legs around the back of his thighs. He leaned closer, hands on either side of me on the narrow hospital bed. “You think you know me?”
I nodded, my fingers unclenching from his shirt. “Yes. I know you well.”
He bent toward me, and I twined an arm around his neck to draw him close. His breath fanned softly across my face before his mouth settled over mine.
I loved to kiss him. Whenever, however, for as long as he’d let me or as long as he wanted to. I was his for the taking.
He swept his tongue in, mating it with mine, tangled, rubbed, pushed, and shoved. Our lips never parted, not once, even for air. I felt his arms wrap around me, crush me to his chest, and hold tight. I had a hand knotted in his hair, and the moan I couldn’t stifle was low and aching. When he suddenly shoved me back, breaking the scorching, devouring contact, my whine of protest was loud.
He was flushed and panting, his lips swollen, his pupils blown as he stared at me.
I was breathing hard, my lungs heaving for air as I smiled at him.
“Crap.” He finally managed to get out a word.
My smile was wicked.
“You’re not supposed to kiss me at work.”
“You kissed me,” I reminded him.
“Crap,” he said again and swallowed hard as he straightened up, stepping away from me, obviously fighting to get his body back under control.
“You can nail me
in your car.”
His frown came fast, and so did my grin.
“What?” I smiled wide.
“A Deputy US Marshal does not nail his spouse in the car.”
I arched an eyebrow for him. “Are you sure?”
He pointed at me. “I will take you home to our bed and nail you.”
“Oh yes, please.” I waggled my eyebrows for him.
“Just sit there,” he growled at me. “And wait while I get you signed out of here so we can go get the kids.”
“Not today, Marshal,” I told him.
He looked surprised. “You didn’t plan to pick up your children today?”
“No, your mom’s picking them up and then we’re going there for dinner.”
He squinted at me.
“You know she’s a planner,” I said cheerfully.
“Lemme get this straight,” he sighed. “We’re gonna be with them on a plane tomorrow, with them at a resort from Thursday to Saturday, and then with them again on a plane on Sunday coming home, but we’re still eating with them tonight because they won’t see us?”
“Your mom likes to coordinate and you know this, so just let it go.”
“Why?” He was annoyed.
“Why does she like to plan things or why are we indulging her?”
“The second one,” he grumbled. “Why do we do that?”
“Because we love her,” I said like it was obvious.
“No, screw that. I’m gonna call her and tell her we—”
“Why would you rock the boat? Why would you upset the delicate balance of all things Regina?”
I loved his mother, Regina Kage, with absolute abandon, and of everyone—her own children, their spouses, and all her grandchildren combined—she and I got along best. The reasons for that were twofold: first, because I’d never had a mother and craved one like a drug; second, and most of all, because I didn’t ever try to change her. We never fought; I allowed her to rearrange anything in my house she wanted, make suggestions on parenting—because really, her kids came out good, so where was the argument?—and most of all, when she fussed, whenever she fussed, I was at her disposal to lend a hand. We were good.
