“Have dinner with me tonight,” Jason said before he had a moment to even think about saying it. The way he blurted it out seemed impulsive to Liz.
“Dinner?” she said.
“If you’d like,” he said, a little less bombastic this time. If she backed out, he would probably be grateful. Why he even asked her when he knew he was in the middle of a campaign launch and had little time for anything, let alone a dinner date that didn’t involve making a deal with some lobbyist in exchange for his interest group’s support. Liz, too, caught his sudden hesitation.
“Thanks, but no,” she said, although a part of her might have liked to go out on a date again. It had been one hellava messy divorce and a long time since she’d had the privilege.
“But thanks anyway,” she said again.
The deflated sound of her voice, as if she could sense his hesitation, pained him. The last think in the world he had wanted to do was hurt her. For some crazy reason even he couldn’t understand, he decided then and there that he couldn’t back down.
“How about eight?” he said.
“Eight?” Liz asked. “I think I just said no, Jason.”
“I know what you said, but I really need this favor, Elizabeth.” Liz frowned. “What favor?”
“I really need you to have dinner with me tonight.”
There he was with that need word again. Did this town have an unstable mayor on their hands, she wondered. “Why would you need me to do anything with you? You don’t even know me.” Then she blushed. Besides the Biblical sense, she wanted to say.
“But I need, I want to get to know you.”
“But why?”
Jason hesitated. Placed his hands back in his pants pockets. Staring at her. “I don’t know,” he finally admitted.
Liz, taken by his honesty, understood. She nodded her head. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay I’ll have dinner with you tonight.”
Jason smiled for the first time since his arrival and this was the Jason, the man, that she had liked. “Perfect,” he said, satisfied. AI have meetings up until after seven, so I’ll have to meet you at the restaurant if that’s okay? Do you know where to find Chevette’s?”
“Yes, but. . .”
“Great. I’ll see you there at eight.”
“I don’t, I mean, I don’t have my transportation right at the moment, it’s in the shop, and I can’t. . .” And she can’t afford a cab, she had wanted to say, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. “Never mind. I’ll get somebody to drop me off.”
But who, she wondered. There were only two people that she would ask, her aunt and Shameika, and they both led exceedingly busy lives.
“Nonsense,” Jason interrupted her thoughts. “I’ll send my . . .” He almost said that he would send his driver to pick her up, but he really didn’t want anybody else knowing about their date, especially not after the way his staff had acted about yesterday. He wanted this date to be completely private and separate from his public life.
“Tell you what,” he said, pulling out a set of keys and removing one from the chain. “You drive the car.” He handed her the key.
“Drive the car?” Liz asked, confused. “Drive what car?”
“My car. It’s out front.”
“But. . . how are you supposed to-”
“I’ll have your secretary call a cab. While I’m waiting I want to check out the Center. You stay here and finish your work. I’ll see you at Chevette’s tonight at eight.”
“But Jason---”
“See you tonight, Elizabeth,” Jason said so firmly that Liz was hard pressed to say anything more. Realizing this he smiled, and then he left.
Liz just stood there, not sure if she should welcome his attention or be repulsed by it. Then she realized she had a car key in her hand. She hurried to the window. No, he wouldn’t leave her with that great a responsibility, she thought. But he had. For sitting at the curb in front of the Center was what looked to her to be a spanking brand new, apple-red, Aston Martin sports convertible. At least the top, she thanked God, wasn’t down. But what if somebody dented it, or stole it? She probably couldn’t afford to replace a bumper on a car like that!
But then she exhaled. And even smiled. A man who would entrust her with a baby like that car, meant business, she thought, which somehow pleased her. Although, the more she thought about it, the less she smiled. Until she wasn’t smiling at all. He meant business, all right, she thought. But what kind of business did he mean, she wanted to know.
She forced herself to stop thinking about it, until some half an hour later, when Shameika walked in.
“I want the truth,” Shameika said, closing the door, “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Liz looked up from the file on her desk. “He wanted you to call a cab for him. Did you do it?”
“Why he need a cab?”
“Meika!”
“Okay. He asked me to call him a cab and I was about to, but when I told him that cabs didn’t exactly hang out in a neighborhood like this and that he could get one a lot quicker if I mentioned his name, he told me never mind. Like he didn’t want nobody to know he was here. I started to tell his little arrogant Republican butt something, too. Don’t look at me like that. I got more sense than that. He’s a Republican, he’s an a-hole, but he is the mayor. I ain’t crazy, girl. Besides, he pulled out his cell phone and called somebody himself. And a car was out there for him in less than fifteen minutes, girl, like they was scared we was gonna harm him or something. Now let’s have it: what did he want?” Liz leaned back in her chair. “I don’t think he knew himself.”
“But you know him, right?”
“We met yesterday, yes.” And ten years before, but that wasn’t Shameika’s business. “He gave me a ride home after I had to leave my car at the repair shop. But that was it.”
“And he just decided to drop by?”
“Seems that way. He invited me to dinner,” she added. “For me to meet him for dinner, that is.”
“Dinner? Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
“But wait a minute. He wants you to ‘meet’ him for dinner? Why he can’t pick you up?
And besides, you ain’t got no car to be meeting nobody!”
“I do have a car.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know. He knows. That’s why he left me his.”
Shameika frowned. “He left you his car? You mean, he . . . But I thought somebody had dropped him off, that was why he wanted a cab. But he wanted the cab because he had given you his car?”
Shameika stared at Liz and then hurried to the window and looked out. When she saw the apple-red Aston-Martin, she grinned. “Damn!” she shrieked. “That’s what I call a bad ride.” She looked suspiciously at Liz. “And he just handed over the keys?”
“He just handed them over, girl.”
“When’s the wedding?”
Liz looked at her assistant with alarm. “What? What wedding?”
“Yours and his, that’s what wedding. Ain’t no man no-where that’s gonna hand over keys to a car like that, and to a woman he just met, unless he’s either crazy or in love. There ain’t no in between on this one.”
“Then he must be crazy because love’s got nothing to do with this. And you best believe that.”
Shameika looked at her boss. That’s what you think, her look made clear.
SIX
Jason arrived early at Chevette’s and took a seat in his regular booth. The waitress who seated him returned immediately with his drink order before he could place the order himself.
“Your usual, sir,” she said when she placed the order down. Like many a single lady, this one, too, smiled overly broad at Jason and was so solicitous to him that he often wondered if they actually believed that their motives weren’t as obvious as the nose on their pretty little faces.
But they were wasting their time tonight.
Jason was preoccupied. That, too, was obvious.
When he didn’t engage her in small talk and wasn’t his usual flirting self, she left. He unbuttoned his suit coat and leaned back, his body drained from another day that was too busy, too long, and far too unfulfilling.
He sipped wine from his drink and looked out of the window beside him as the sun of the day was now replaced by the cool set of the evening. But that was the rub for Jason. He felt unfulfilled. He was busy, probably too busy, and he loved his job as mayor of his hometown.
But after the meetings, after the back slapping and promises and power lunches, he always went home alone.
He hadn’t designed it that way. He had every intention of being married with children by now. And there had been many women that he’d tested the waters with. But every time he was ready to take the relationship to that next level, every time he was sure he had found the right one, something would always happen, something eye-opening, that made him thank the Lord he saw the truth in time.
But that didn’t help his loneliness, he thought, as he continued to stare out of the window.
Which was probably why he didn’t phone up Liz earlier and cancel this dinner date, something he thought about doing many times as the day stretched on. Then he thought about his lonely home, and another evening of desperate silence, and he came early. He couldn’t wait to get here.
It was nearly twenty minutes later that Liz arrived. He saw his Aston Martin drive up to the anxious valet that stood in the front of the restaurant, and Jason smiled. There was something sexy about seeing her driving his car. And when she stepped out, in a gorgeous green pant suit, her silky hair blowing bouncily with the cool evening breeze, his heart raced. There was definitely something wonderful about her, about the way she handed the keys to the young attendant and walked so gracefully toward the restaurant’s entrance, about the way other men around took sly (and some not-so-sly) looks at her. It made Jason proud to have been her first, proud to have deflowered such a lovely human being. But it also made him antsy.
Because she was evoking feelings in him that were so strong that it was already making him wonder if maybe, just maybe, she could possibly be the one.
But then he caught himself. All of his previous women turned him on, too, every one of them, only to disappoint him in the end. So what made him think that Liz Morgan of all people, Hamp’s little girl, would be any different? They had a history, but it only lasted one night. But the more he thought about that night, and yesterday, the more he knew his slow and steady approach was seriously in jeopardy. He looked toward the restaurant’s entrance like a love sick school boy, and waited with baited breath for Liz’s sexy body to appear.
Liz entered Chevette’s feeling more apprehensive than sexy. Why in the world had she agreed to this date? She had nothing in common with Jason Rascone. The mayor for crying out loud! When he left the Center earlier today she’d hurried to her computer and Googled him, to find out all she could about him. Although there were some articles about his days when he was her father’s attorney and Mister Fix-It, the bulk of the articles concerned the big court cases he defended. Also well documented were his days as a politician, with talk about running him for Governor someday. And what she read, about a man born on the rough side of the tracks, about a man nicknamed Mr. Conservative because of his far right-wing, evangelical views, about a man who had never been able to garner more than a few percent of the town’s African-American votes, made it all the more clearer to her that this so-called date was a bad idea.
“May I help you?” the maitre’d asked in a way that seemed to suggest she didn’t belong there.
“Yes,” Liz said, focusing again, refusing to let the man’s attitude affect hers, “I’m here to meet the ma. . . a gentleman this evening.” She began looking past the maitre’d. “I’m not sure if he’s arrived.”
“You’re Miss Morgan? You’re the mayor’s date?” He asked this incredulously, as if no way she could possibly be Jason Rascone’s date.
Liz smiled, as if nothing could be less incredible. “Yes, I am,” she said.
The maitre’d cleared his throat. “He informed us that you would be arriving. Come with me, please.”
T he maitre’d escorted Liz to Jason’s back booth. When Jason saw her approaching he stood to his feet and greeted her with that disarming smile of his.
“Here you are, madam,” the maitre’d said, pulling out her chair. When they were seated, he took Liz’s drink order and left. When she and Jason sat down across from each other, he smiled.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for giving me the wheels to come. Wheels I will gladly turn back over to you.”
“What?” Jason asked, “Yours out of the shop?”
“Yes. I mean, my car is still in the shop, but---”
“But what? Keep it.”
“Keep it? Until when?”
“Until you don’t need it anymore.”
“Look, Mayor Ras---”
“I told you about that. It’s Jason.”
“Jason, I can’t just keep your car.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
Liz exhaled, exasperated. “Because you don’t know me like that.”
“Thus this dinner date. I want to get to know you.”
Jason said those last words in such a sensual tone that Liz couldn’t find the will to complain any further. Besides, a man says keep his Aston Martin, especially when you don’t have access to wheels of your own, was hard to turn down.
The same waitress who had given Jason his drink order, arrived with Liz’s. She sat glass in front of Liz, checked her out, Liz noticed, and then turned her attention to the mayor.
“Ready to order, sir?” she asked him with a grand smile on her face.
“Ready to order, Elizabeth?” he asked Liz.
Liz had only just picked up the menu, but she didn’t really care what was ordered. “I’ll have what you have,” she told him.
“Your usual?” the waitress asked him.
“There ya’ go,” he said, and the waitress left. Jason leaned forward. “Okay, now, what’s the deal? Tell me all you can about yourself. Other than what I already know.” Liz smiled. “What you already know? You don’t know a thing about me, except that my father is Hamilton Morgan.”
“And you’re a youth center director and have a gorgeous face and has the best tight ass I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Jason!” Liz said and quickly looked around to make sure no-one heard him. “You can’t say things like that,” she said in a whispered tone.
Jason looked perplexed. “And why not? It’s the truth. So go on, what’s the story behind Liz Morgan?”
“Nothing really. You’ve already touched on the main points.” Jason smiled. “What, that you’re gorgeous and have a tight--”
“Jason!” Liz didn’t bother to look around again this time, but she did smile and shake her head. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Why didn’t you make it to Harvard?”
Liz hesitated. The weight of her decisions were still raw, still having their affect. “I didn’t want to go to Harvard. I never wanted to go. That was Dad’s ego trip, not mine. And after that night . . . with you, I felt emboldened.”
This impressed Jason. “No, really? Emboldened how?”
Liz smiled weakly. “I felt that if I could affect somebody like you, like Bulldog Rascone, to where you could bend to my will in bed like that, then surely I was woman enough to stand up to my father.”
Jason laughed, although he also knew that what she said wasn’t that far off base. “Bend to your will?”
“It sounds silly now, but it’s how I felt at the time. It didn’t last long, my actions proved that, but that’s how I felt. So the first guy who came along with something more to my liking, I took it. Unfortunately for my father, that guy came along within hours of my arrival on campus. And I know it was a poo
r decision, I know it. I was young and dumb and made a lot of poor decisions back then, nobody can beat me up about it more than I already have beaten up myself.” She paused, as the raw emotion of her past actions begin to rise. “Anyway,” she went on, “I ended up in Philly.”
“Where you met Mr. Right?”
“More like Mr. Wrong, but yeah, I met him. Married him even. And we were happy for a
little while there.”
“But?”
“But it didn’t work out. That’s all.” It was still a sore subject with Liz, Jason could easily
see that, so he left it alone, too.
“Well, my story, if you care to know about it, is just like yours.”
“Like mine? From big time lawyer to big time mayor? How in the world is that like mine?”
“Because neither profession was probably the best way for me to go, either, but I went anyway.”
“You never wanted to be a politician?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I wanted it, but I just didn’t want it to turn out the way it had.” Liz smiled. “You mean you don’t like being Mr. Conservative?”
“Can you imagine? But that’s what I’ve become. Mr. Conservative. From Bulldog to Mr.
Conservative. It’s like sleeping with the enemy. But what can I do? I’m in too deep now.” This caused Liz to nod, to think about her ex when she discovered the truth about his drug dealing but had become so blind in their relationship, so entrenched, that it took her a long time to believe what was probably obvious all along. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Know what you mean.”
“So, you see, you and I aren’t that dissimilar after all. We’re both foxy as hell,” he said and then held up his hand for Liz to slap it, “come on, girl, you know it’s true!” Liz laughed.
“What? You don’t think I’m foxy?”
Liz slapped his hand, and couldn’t stop laughing. “What kind of mayor are you? You’re Mr. Conservative!”
“Only to people who don’t know me, my dear.”
“And who are you to people who do know you?” Liz wanted to know.
Romancing the Bulldog Page 7
