Fools Rush In

by Gwynne Forster

  But for the ringing phone, she might have gotten into a blue funk. “Hello.” She nearly panicked as only silence greeted her ears. When it rang again, she asked Mattie to answer it.

  “It’s for you, Justine,” Mattie called out.

  “Big Al here. Loved your last column. Justine, I wish you’d sign those papers for syndication. You’ve already got a good local following, but in a few months you’d be the biggest name in the business. Feel like a personal appearance tour? I can get you ten thousand a shot if you syndicate, plus a six figure book deal within a year. So how about it?”

  “Al, you promised me six months, and I want to stick with that. I’ll let you know in April.”

  “All right, but you’re blowing good hard cold cash, babe. We’re speaking real money. But if you don’t wonna be rich…” He let it hang.

  Quadruple your income by syndicating. Go on a personal appearance tour at ten thousand dollars per one hour speech. Write a book for a six figure advance plus royalties. Get rich. And lose her child for the second time. Never! Yet she knew she could expect pressure from Al, for he, too, stood to gain plenty by syndicating her column.

  Her private phone rang. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Justine, this is Warren. How about dinner Sunday night?”

  She didn’t want to go out with Warren, because he’d take that as evidence of an interest in him. “Hi, Warren. I don’t want to encourage you, so let’s just be friends.”

  His silence telegraphed his disappointment. “All right, if you insist, but I’d like to have dinner with my friend.”

  “Warren, I don’t think so.”

  “Couldn’t you at least give me that much…for old times sake?”

  Maybe if she saw more of him, she could grow to care for him. “Oh. All right. Seven o’clock. Which restaurant? I’ll meet you there.”

  Another long silence spoke eloquently of his reaction to her suggestion. “I won’t ask you why, because I don’t think I want to know. The Willard at seven.”

  She breathed deeply in relief, though Warren’s ready acquiescence perplexed her. Duncan had said he wouldn’t interfere with her dates again, but she didn’t believe him, so she wouldn’t let Warren call for her at the house.

  She wrote a note telling Duncan that Tonya loved the stairs and asking him to install a gate upstairs so that she wouldn’t tumble down them. And she thought it time to work on his plans for her playroom in the basement. She added that it wouldn’t hurt to have a piano in the house.

  If he’d gotten uptight about the learning tools, she recalled as she placed the note on his desk, he’d care even less for the suggestion that they needed a piano.

  Thinking that he’d enjoy having Tonya meet him at the front door when he got home, she walked there with Tonya and stood her on her feet when the Buick turned into the garage.

  “Well, who’s daddy’s baby?” he asked, picked Tonya up and kissed her while his eyes adored Justine.

  If there had been any place to go, she would have gone there. He stared into her eyes until his reddish-brown orbs seem to blaze with fire, clearly oblivious to having his nose and ears pulled and his face rubbed and patted with baby fingers. If she’d been foolish, she’d have thought she was his world, but she wasn’t, and she couldn’t trick herself into believing that all was well when she knew her life could be capsized at any moment.

  “There are times,” he said, so softly that as close to him as she was, she could barely discern his words. “There are times, when I think I’ve known you before. Somewhere. Known you all my life.” He shook his head as though in wonder. “I don’t question my sanity, Justine, and I’ve always been sure of my hunches. But this feeling I have that I know you ties me in knots sometimes. Have I ever known you before you came here to apply for this job?”

  She wanted to grab her knees to make sure he didn’t hear them knock, but she stiffened her back and let him have the brilliance of a practiced smile. “Duncan, that is not flattering. If I had ever met you, trust me, I would have remembered it.”

  Obviously taken aback by her response, he nodded in a slow, deliberate movement. “It’s the darndest thing, but maybe that’s it. Maybe you’re in my subconscious somewhere.” His demeanor brightened.

  Was it possible to be jealous of a baby? Her own child? She watched the adoration that lit his face while he gazed at Tonya. Here was love. An almost overpowering desire to have that love, to belong to the two of them, gripped her, and she did the only thing she could. She kissed Tonya on the cheek and rushed toward the stairs.

  “Come back here, woman.”

  She whirled around, nearly missing the step. “Are you talking to me?” Her tone wasn’t what a boss could expect of the hired help, but he hadn’t spoken like an employer either.

  He started toward her with Tonya laughing happily in his arms, taking the stairs slowly and deliberately. “You bet I’m talking to you. You kissed Tonya, but you wanted to kiss me.”

  “Why you…How dare you?” He kept walking up the steps until he reached her. “I dare because you won’t deny it.” His eyes stroked her. “Oh, yes. You meant it for me, and I felt it.”

  She had to put up some fences before the situation got out of hand, and she was going to call Warren and tell him to come to the house for her on Sunday. “Don’t fool yourself, Duncan,” she said. “And don’t forget that I’m the hired help.” She left him standing there holding their daughter in his arms.

  Duncan admonished himself that he’d better behave more prudently with Justine. He was as certain as he was of his name that if he hadn’t been holding Tonya, he’d have gone after her, and when he left her, their lives would have been changed forever. She wasn’t responsible for the need that churned in him with increasing vigor and urgency, but he wished she’d learn not to post her feelings like a flashing neon sign. Trouble was, she had an aura of innocence that he suspected was anchored in reality.

  “Juju sing, Daddy.”

  “Yeah. And that’s not all,” he said, taking her into his office.

  He sat at his desk with Tonya on his knee, as she’d become too adventuresome to turn loose in the room, and his gaze dropped on Justine’s handwriting. He read the note three times, because he didn’t believe what he saw. The woman wanted to make a Mozart out of his child? He had hoped he wouldn’t have to do it, but she was going too far, and he’d have to put a stop to it. He’d tell her as much at dinner that evening.

  “You’re going to your room and get a nap,” he told Tonya. “Daddy has to work.”

  “Daddy work?” she asked. Her face crumbled into a frown. “Sing, Daddy.”

  He sang a few bars of “I Still Suits Me” as he walked her to her room. “Say, where’d we get this sweater?” He knew that only Justine would have given it to her; Mattie’s taste didn’t reach that level.

  “I’d planned to order gates for the stairway upstairs and the one down here that leads to the basement,” he told Justine at dinner. “I haven’t decided how I want that playroom. It seems to me we ought to know more about what interests her, but I’ll take ideas.”

  He didn’t like the frown on her face and braced himself for her argument. “You teach children what to value; you don’t wait ’til they’re not interested in anything but cock fights to wish they appreciated and enjoyed the ballet. You take them to the ballet and keep them away from cock fights.”

  “Shore do,” Mattie chimed in. “If you don’t give her no turnips, she ain’t likely to get a craving for turnips.”

  Duncan looked from one to the other. Justine’s stare almost dared him to disagree, and he sensed that she’d fight him on this issue. “You seem certain of your ground, Justine, but even if you’re right, I’m her father, and what I say goes.”

  She stopped eating, pushed back her chair, and folded her arms, and after one of the most pregnant pauses he’d ever witnessed, she looked him in the eye. “And what do you say?”

  “She’s not ready for the playroom and certainly
not for a baby grand.”

  He had to hand it to her. Her face seemed to crumple, but only for half a second before her shoulders went back and her chin out. “I’m not so foolish as to start Tonya on the piano. Nor did I ask for a grand. Tonya likes piano music, and I wanted a piano so that she could see and hear me playing it and learn where the music comes from. But if we’re back in prehistoric times with the dinosaurs, forgive me my twentieth century stupidity.”

  His left eyebrow shot up. “You know how to play hardball, don’t you? You play the piano?”

  The eyes that glared at him conveyed passion, but not the kind that usually sent blood rushing to his loins. She hardly bothered to suppress her annoyance with him. “Obviously, I do. If you’ll excuse me…”

  “Say, wait a minute. I shouldn’t have brought up this matter here. Please finish your dinner.”

  “Thanks, but I really have finished.”

  “Now y’all ain’t going to treat my dinner like this. My best roast veal, and you hardly touch it. I tell you, me and my Moe don’t talk about nothing at the table but what we eatin’. That way, we don’t get mad, ’cause I cooks good food. I declare—”

  “It’s okay, Mattie. We can eat it again tomorrow night,” Duncan said, hastening to appease her. “Wait a minute, please, Justine.”

  She stopped but didn’t turn to face him. “Yes. What is it?”

  “I’m sorry, and Mattie’s right. The dinner table is no place to discuss anything contentious.”

  She walked on. “You’re right. Good night.”

  He caught up with her as she headed for the stairs. “I said I was sorry, Justine.”

  “Thanks. That and thirty-three cents will buy me a postage stamp. Duncan, if I’m allowed to, I’d like to go to my room.”

  He took his hand off her arm and watched her rush up the stairs. Something had happened, and he didn’t think it was what they’d disagreed about. By then, she had to know that he was open to compromise. Frustrated, he stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and walked back to the kitchen.

  “That veal was excellent, Mattie.”

  “I know that, Mr. B.” She waved the scrub brush instead of her finger. “I been ’round a lot of people in my fifty-two years, and when I see a man and woman start arguing and fighting, I know that’s ’cause they’d rather be doing somethin’ else. ’Course, I ain’t telling you nothing you don’t know.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Y’all kept me here late tonight.”

  He looked at his watch. Seven forty-five. “Right. I’ll run you home as soon as I let Justine know I’m going out.”

  “Mr. B,” she called after him, “you ain’t gonna find nobody else to take care of Tonya and love her like Justine does. She treat that child like she was her own.”

  “I know, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”

  He took the stairs two at a time, stepped into the hall, and paused at Justine’s door. “I’m going to run Mattie home right now,” he said when she opened it, “and I’ve got a couple of errands to run. If you need me, call my cell phone.”

  “All right.”

  If only he knew what had caused her to fold up. “Justine, I know something happened at the table that upset you, and I know it wasn’t our argument. Maybe it was the tone of my voice. Whatever. I want you to know that I appreciate the care and love you give Tonya more than I know how to tell you. Like that sweater. When did you buy it and where?”

  Her obvious reluctance to answer baffled him. At last, she said, “It was mine. My mother knitted it for me, but she got sick and never put it on me. It’s one of the few things I have from her, and I wanted Tonya to have it.”

  He hesitated to say the obvious and wondered at his reluctance. Surely, she should have saved it for her own daughter. All he said was, “She looks so pretty in it, and it’s probably the only handmade sweater she’ll have. Thanks.”

  “It was my pleasure. Good night.”

  What could he do but leave? Yet it pained him to walk away from her not knowing what hurt her and unable to erase her forlorn expression. “Take care. See you in the morning.”

  He put his “street” clothes in a small bag, put on a pair of Nikes, and loped down the stairs. “Let’s go, Mattie.” He threw this bag in the back seat of the car and put Mattie beside him. As soon as he dropped her off, he’d park somewhere and change his clothes. Neither Rags nor Mitch had called him in the past few days, and he had to check on them.

  “I’m her father, and what I say goes.”

  Those words had been ice around her heart, chilling her until she’d barely been able to breathe. In that moment, she could have hated him, though she knew he had a right to say it, for he was the only parent to Tonya that the law recognized. She had wanted to scream, But she came out of my body with pains that almost broke me into pieces! Yet, she couldn’t say a word. They’d robbed her of that right. If she had known how much it would hurt, would she still have taken the job? She walked across the hall, went into Tonya’s room, and looked down at the sleeping child. Her hand reached out to touch the hair of the beautiful, happy daughter that she might never have known, but whose life she’d been given a second chance to help shape. It wasn’t an occasion for self-pity, but for gratitude. She’d just have to toughen her skin, swallow the pain, and enjoy what she could of the life she’d laid out for herself. Would she do it again? She left the room, counting the blessing that she had. Would she? In a New York minute! And she had to watch herself. Both Mattie and Duncan often inched so close to the truth that one more misstep on her part might open their eyes to her true identity.

  Chapter 7

  That following Sunday evening, Justine dressed in a green velveteen jumpsuit, knocked with nervous fingers, and peeped into Duncan’s office. “I’m going out to dinner. See you when I get back.”

  His quick frown and the sharp backward movement of his head confirmed that she’d shocked him. She closed his door, rushed downstairs, and got her coat from the closet just as the doorbell rang.

  She’d startled two men in less than five minutes, she realized, for Warren’s bottom lip dropped when she opened the front door, took his hand, and ushered him out, closing the door behind them.

  “What’s the hurry? I was hoping for some of your boss’s thirty-year-old scotch.”

  Irritation swept over her. Wouldn’t Duncan have loved that! “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “Well, no. Where is he tonight?”

  She didn’t plan to spend the evening talking about Duncan. “Upstairs.”

  In the car, Warren fastened their seat belts and leaned over to kiss her, but she held him off with both hands.

  “I see. So that kiss you pasted on my mouth the other night was for your boss’s benefit,” he said, in words that sounded as if they came through clenched teeth.

  He revved the engine, and the Cadillac jerked away from the curb, accentuating the atmosphere of hostility.

  She had regretted that impulsive kiss many times, but she refused to let him make an issue of it. “Warren, a simple kiss is customary after a pleasant evening.”

  He turned onto Georgia Avenue without waiting for the green light. “Yeah. Sure.”

  At the Willard Hotel, he left his blue Cadillac with a parking attendant and led her to their reserved table. “You say there’s nothing between you and…what’s-his-name? Dunbar?”

  So that’s the kind of evening it would be. “There isn’t, and his name is Duncan.”

  “Right. Glad to hear it.” He leaned back and assumed the demeanor of a man assessing a deadly opponent. “What happened between graduation and now, Justine? I heard you were involved with some big shot. Did you marry him, or what?”

  Thank God her shaking hands were in her lap where he couldn’t see them. “Dull as I am, I never dreamed I’d be the subject of gossip. I’m still wondering why you didn’t marry Wanda.”

  He pushed back his shirt cuff and examined his Rolex. “All right, if you don’t want to talk about it
. There’s such a thing as public records, you know.” He beckoned their waiter. “I take it Dunbar doesn’t know much about you. If he does and still hired you as his child’s nanny, he must think a whole lot of himself—considering who you are. My guess is he doesn’t know you’re Arnold Taylor’s daughter.”

  Her damp, cold palms gripped the sides of her chair. “Why is this interesting, Warren? I thought I’d be having dinner with a friend, not a private investigator. I’d appreciate your changing the subject.”

  His grin was just short of feral. “And if I don’t?”

  “I can get a taxi home.”

  He leaned back and smiled. “Home? Did you say home?”

  She stood to leave and his expression hardened. “No woman has ever walked out on me except you, Mrs. Montgomery, and you won’t do it again.”

  His words set her teeth to chattering as fear hurtled through her, and she groped for her chair and sat down.

  “I see I got a rise out of you,” he said, his voice a match for the iciness of his gaze.

  “What do you want, Warren?”

  He didn’t mince his words. “You. I want you, and I’ll take you any way I can get you. And when I unearth the rest of your secrets, you won’t be so hard to get.”

  So he’d resort to blackmail, would he? Anger crowded out her fear. “You want to make it big in syndication, broker for Big Al and other newspapers, right? Well, try something dirty with me, Warren, and you can forget your grandiose plans. You can also expect front page coverage in at least two major newspapers. Did you ever hear of Hugh Pickford?”

  He sat forward. “Who hasn’t? Why?”

  She stood. “Uncle Hugh is my godfather, and he carries a lot of influential people around in his pocket. Good night.”

  He stood and faced her, shaking with rage, though his calm voice belied it. “So Dunbar or whoever he is doesn’t know anything about you.” He placed both knuckles on the table and leaned forward. “The hell with Pickford. You do things my way, or your boss will hear from me.”