What could he say to that? How did a man say no to Phoenix? Though the truth was, he had no wish at all to say no. He was enjoying the game too much, even knowing full well that it was exactly that-a game. Even though he hadn’t forgotten for a minute what it was that had brought him there. Just for good measure he said it silently, like a mantra, Michael Parker, and his momma, Louise.
“Where is this brownish Japanese SUV?” he inquired as he allowed her to tow him along.
“All the guys park out back, where the loading bays are. This building used to be a warehouse, did you know that?”
“Never woulda guessed,” said Ethan. But he was smiling, and she laughed with him, a rich little chortle that warmed his insides like a slug of straight whiskey.
He was thinking, with a shameful absense of regret, about Secret Service Agent Carl Friedenburg, sitting in an anonymous sedan with tinted windows parked in a Handicapped zone just outside the building’s street entrance. He knew he should find a way to let his protection know there’d been a change in plans, as he’d done the last time Phoenix hijacked him. He also knew he wasn’t going to. Childish, perhaps. Foolish, undoubtedly. But…just this once.
Early in his father’s first term, chafing under the restrictions placed upon him by his family’s explosion into the limelight and resentful of the loss of his cherished privacy, Ethan had taken pleasure in finding ways to outwit the United States Secret Service and its agents charged with the responsibility for protecting his life. It was Dixie who had finally set him straight. On one of his rare visits to his family’s new and temporary home, she’d sat him down in the dauntingly elegant upstairs sitting room and told him the story of how his sister, Lauren, had been kidnapped on the eve of his father’s nomination by a militia organization bent on destroying the election process. Bent on, in effect, usurping the two-centuries-old peaceful transfer of power as set forth in the Constitution. In other words, a coup.
He’d understood for the first time then, what it would mean to the country-what it would mean to his father-if he or Lauren were to be taken hostage. Understood that it would render Rhett Brown incapable of fulfilling the obligations of his office every bit as surely as a bullet to the brain. He’d done his best, ever since, to cooperate in seeing that such a thing never happened.
He wasn’t sure how he was going to justify this, when it came time to face the music. He didn’t want to think about that right now, to tell the truth. For now he wasn’t First Son Ethan Brown, anyway, just some guy named Leroy Brown, out for the evening with a girl named Joanna Dunn.
“There-that must be it.” Pointing, she gave his arm an excited little squeeze as they hurried down the concrete steps that led from the loading docks to the parking lot. “Here-you have to press the button on that little key chain thingy. It’ll squeak if it’s the right one.”
Ethan pressed the button. A brown sport-utility vehicle parked with its nose against the dock not only chirped a response, but obligingly unlocked its doors and turned on its interior lights as well. Leroy and Joanna grinned delightedly at each other.
While Leroy was still wondering whether or not he should open the door for her, Joanna ran around to the passenger side of the SUV and hopped in. Leroy opened the driver’s side door and slid behind the wheel. He felt like a kid, holding back nervous laughter while the nerves in his belly jumped and twitched with a glorious excitement.
It took him a minute to find where the key went, but he finally got it inserted. “Well,” he said, “here goes.”
She gave a low chuckle. “You sure you know how to drive?”
“I did once.” He was trying to think how long it had been since he’d driven himself anywhere. Roughly seven years, he imagined. He fastened his seat belt, then turned the key. He felt unbelievably pleased when the engine fired. Throwing Joanna a triumphant look, he ran his window down and shifted into reverse. “Buckle up,” he said confidently.
The night was warm and muggy, the way it can be on the east coast in June. Humidity not yet thick enough to be called fog made halos around the streetlights, and the air felt soft on the skin. While Leroy backed the SUV out of its parking space, Joanna ran her window down all the way and propped her elbow on the sill. They went bumping off across the potholed parking lot and into a deserted street, and the wind reached in through the open windows and grabbed playfully at her hair. Instead of rolling up the window, she caught her hair back with her hand and, eyes closed, lifted her face to the wind.
Glancing at her, Ethan felt a clutching at his throat and a burning in his eyes, the way it did sometimes, once in a great, great while, when something overwhelmingly beautiful caught him by surprise. He drew a careful breath and looked away again. I wonder what she’s thinking…
I’m having fun, Joanna thought. It was so much easier than she’d expected, being Joanna Dunn. Why had she been so frightened by the prospect?
I haven’t been that person for so long, I don’t even know who she is… She’d said that to Doveman, and it was true. But if she didn’t know who Joanna was, then she could be anything she wanted her to be, couldn’t she? The thought made her feel almost giddy-carefree and young and slightly naughty, like a child playing hooky from school.
The car had stopped moving. Opening her eyes, she saw that they’d come to an intersection policed by a flashing red light. Instead of moving on again, for some reason her “date” was sitting motionless, frowning at the windshield in front of him.
“What’s happening?” she asked, her heart quickening. Was he having second thoughts already? Oh, but she didn’t want the game to be over! She didn’t want the evening to end.
Still frowning, he glanced her way but past her, looking up the street, then down the other way. “I’m not sure. Which way’s the river?”
She burst out laughing, half with relief. “I don’t believe it-a guy who asks directions!”
He waited a moment, then prompted with a touch of impatience, “Well?”
She raised both hands and shoulders in an exaggerated I don’t know. “You’ve been here twice, which way did you come?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t driving. When you aren’t driving you don’t pay attention.” He was obviously vexed by his ignorance-typical male. Oh, she liked this Leroy Brown. He was so much easier to understand than Ethan.
She nodded and murmured, “I suppose that’s true.”
He glanced at her. “How long has it been since you drove yourself anywhere?”
She didn’t have to think about it. “That would be…never.”
“Never? You mean you don’t-”
“Nope-never learned to drive. Don’t know how.” She stared defiantly into the intensity of his gaze, refusing to yield to the unspoken pressure to explain.
She could have told him that on her sixteenth birthday, the milestone that would have made her eligible for a driver’s license in California, the state she’d been living in at the time, Phoenix had performed before a sell-out crowd at The Forum, and that under the circumstances, learning how to drive a car had seemed pretty irrelevant.
But that had been Phoenix. Tonight she was Joanna, and didn’t want to think about Phoenix at all.
“What the hell, Leroy,” she cried, “let’s take a chance. Hey, we have a fifty-fifty shot at being right.” Clamping one hand over her eyes, she stuck her other arm out the open window and pointed. “That way!”
“That way it is,” Ethan said, and felt himself begin to smile as he pulled forward and made a hard right. Her laughter was impossible to resist.
He wasn’t really all that lost. Once he located the river he knew he could find his way back to his own neighborhood, and from there to the shopping center where there was a nice little Chinese restaurant both he and the Secret Service knew well.
“Water dead ahead!” she crowed. “Am I a good navigator, or what?”
“Best I ever had,” said Ethan. But he knew exactly where he was, now, and the knowledge was a heaviness inside him.
Guilt sat in his chest like a lump of clay.
They were coming to the traffic light at the intersection with the busy boulevard that ran along the riverfront. If he turned left there, they would come very shortly to the shopping center and the restaurant; from there it was a few blocks up the hill to his apartment on the second floor-the Secret Service occupied the first-of a modest row house in a moderately run-down middle-class neighborhood. But if he turned right…in an equally short time they would come to Church Street. Another right, then a few more blocks and they would be at the clinic. And beyond that, just a stone’s throw away from St. Jude’s Church, lay the boundaries of the urban jungle known as The Gardens.
It would be so easy. Phoenix wouldn’t even know where he was taking her until it was too late, and even if she did, what could she do? She couldn’t drive herself, and only a woman bent on suicide-or a raving lunatic-would dare venture out alone on those streets at night.
He’d wanted to get her down there to The Gardens to see the buildings she owned with her own eyes, and this was his chance. He might never have another one like it.
Not only his chance, he reminded himself. It was his duty.
Chapter 8
S o easy.
The silence in the car felt viscous. Ethan moved in the silence as if through heavy mud, or in the kind of nightmare where the arms and legs felt like lead and the heart pounded and lungs burned with futile efforts to make them do his bidding. In that same silence he watched his hand swim through the unforgiving substance that had taken the place of air and grasp the turn indicator lever.
He watched the arrow slowly blink: left…left…left…left.
“You know where you’re going?” Her voice sounded hollow to him, as if it came from a great distance.
Grimly, he nodded. The light changed, and he pulled out into the intersection. “I promised you Chinese,” he said as he made the turn. “The only place I know of is right down here a ways. It’s not far from where I live, so I eat there quite a bit.”
“Ah,” she said. But he thought she sounded wary, and he could feel her eyes on him, as if she sensed…something. Had heard something in his voice. Glancing at her, he saw that the fun and laughter had gone from her eyes, and where it had been now there was uncertainty, suspicion, even fear.
He tasted regret, a sharp bitterness on the back of his tongue. The game was slipping away. He’d lost Leroy, and didn’t know how to get him back. And if he lost Leroy, what would become of Joanna? Would he lose her, too? Forever? The thought filled him with an aching sense of loss. He suddenly knew with profound certainty that he didn’t want to lose Joanna.
“The food’s not bad,” he said, speaking rapidly, fending off despair. “But the best thing about the place is that it’s family owned and operated-very old-world. I’ve been going in there for about six months now, and I don’t know if they’ve recognized me or not, but if they have, they’re too polite to say anything.”
She said nothing for a heartbeat, then gave a sudden sharp cry and clamped one hand to the top of her head.
Ethan threw her a look, his own heart thumping. “What?”
“My hat-I forgot it. I don’t have anything-not even my glasses. And in these clothes- Oh…” She broke off, swearing under her breath. Ethan could see her struggling against the shoulder belt, tugging at her hair, trying to rake some order into it with her fingers.
“Hey,” he said, forcing laughter, “don’t worry about it. Like I told you, even if they do recognize you, they’re not going to make a fuss. They’re way too polite for that. Besides-” a break in traffic came and he made a fast left turn into the shopping center parking lot “-who’s gonna pay any attention to us? We’re just Leroy and Joanna, remember?” He glanced over at her and caught a wild, bright look in her eyes-a look that as a doctor he knew very well, had seen way too many times. Panic-pure panic.
He pulled into the first empty parking space he came to, silently cursing himself. Because it had just come to him that she was “just Joanna,” and that in a way, that was her problem.
As Joanna, she’d feel unprepared. Unprotected. Phoenix was comfortable with celebrity; she’d had a lifetime’s worth of experience in handling herself in public, coping with adoring crowds and pushy fans. Joanna Dunn, on the other hand-whomever she was-very probably had no experience with any of those things.
As Phoenix she knew how to wear disguises, keep the walls up, keep her distance. As Joanna she was vulnerable.
He put the SUV in park and turned off the key. Freed from his seat belt, he turned to her, smiling. “Here,” he murmured-or some such thing. He had no real awareness of the words he used. All he saw were her eyes, silvery in the dimness; all he heard was the distressed sound of her breathing; all he felt were the rounds of her shoulders fitting themselves sweetly into his palms. Her scent filled his nostrils, faint and heady as the first whiff of new grass in the springtime.
He saw her fleeting look of surprise when he indicated with the pressure of his fingers that she should turn, not toward him, but away. Then, with a slight giving in her shoulders and the accepting sigh of an exhalation, she bowed her head, let go of her hair and gave it into his keeping. He gathered it into his hands, concentrating on the warmth and weight and feel of it, mostly to keep himself from the paralyzing realization of what he was doing. The texture was unexpected-springy, not soft and silky as he’d imagined. But he shouldn’t have expected softness, not with this woman. She was much too vibrant, too full of life and energy for softness.
“What do you want to do with it?” he asked.
“Hmm…I dunno…braid it, I guess…” There was a pause, and then, “Y’sure you know how?”
Ethan laughed, a chuckle low in his throat, and began deftly to divide her hair into three parts. Under the heavy mass of hair her neck was warm, humid…damp with sweat. The desire to put his mouth there became so powerful he couldn’t breathe, and the lack of oxygen made him dizzy.
He had no way of knowing how many seconds passed before she murmured, “Hmm…guess you do know. Don’t think they teach that in med school. What was it, a long-haired girlfriend?”
He laughed again, not because he thought anything was amusing, but because he so badly needed the loosening effect it had on him. His body was tight with wanting her, every muscle tense with self-control. Slowly, slowly, his hands slid the length of each hank of hair, weaving in and out, exchanging, laying one over the other… Gradually, he felt the muscles in his jaws unclench and his breathing flow again.
“When I was little…” he began slowly, his voice gruff because talking about himself had never been easy. “My sister, Lolly-Lauren-had a horse. And she was nuts about that horse. It seemed to me she spent all her time brushing, combing, feeding and riding that horse. I was more than a little jealous, I guess-up to that time it had been pretty much just the two of us. Anyway, I used to hang around the stables, whining for attention, begging for something to do. Lolly was pretty bossy, and she really didn’t want anybody but her touching her precious horse, but once in a while she’d hand me a brush or something and let me help. Then, I guess she’d seen it in a magazine, or on television or something-I don’t know where-but she got this idea she wanted to braid the horse’s mane and tail. Well, she started out fine, all gung ho, but after a while…” he paused to smile at the memory. “Let’s just say, that horse had a lot of hair. And there I was, the perfect sucker. She put me up on a stool and showed me how, and I mean I stood for hours, braiding that horse’s mane. My arms ached, my back hurt, I itched… Anyway, that’s how I learned to braid hair.
“You know, come to think of it-” he leaned back to get a better look “-your hair’s just about the same color that horse’s tail was.”
She gave her rusty little guffaw. “A horse’s ass- I’m flattered.” And her voice was music to his ears. Because it was Joanna’s voice again-husky, playfully wicked.
She held herself still, head cocked at a listening angle, listening wi
th her whole body for any signals his might send her. The rhythm of his hands, the gentle tugging…there was something magical in it, she thought, like some mysterious eastern massage therapy, maybe. Except that, instead of sending her into a state of blissful relaxation, this massage seemed to have awakened every nerve in her body. Her scalp tingled; her breasts felt so tight they hurt. The skin on her naked back burned with awareness. Nerves in the sensitive ticklish part of her flinched in anticipation of his touch. I am tinder, she thought, waiting for the spark. All it would take is a touch. One…touch.
“All done.” His voice so near sent a shiver careening between her shoulder blades. “Got anything to tie it with?”
He lifted the end of the braid and passed it over her shoulder. If he touches me, she thought… All he’d have to do is lay a hand there now…brush the backs of his fingers down the side of my neck…stroke with one finger over the bumps of my spine…
She would turn, then, and it would be so easy… He was so near, so enticingly near. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, and was overcome with a terrible sense of longing at the scent of him, like an alcoholic, she thought, savoring the smell of whiskey.
What would it be like to kiss him? She’d kissed so many men in her lifetime, why should she imagine kissing this man would be any different? And yet, she knew that it would be. Somehow, she knew. And perhaps it was because of that knowledge that the thought of kissing him filled her with a longing so intense it felt like pain. Longing…and fear, too. Fear that it might not ever happen. Fear that, for the first time in her life, with this particular man, it might not be within her power to make it happen.
The Awakening of Dr. Brown Page 12
