Last Chance at Love

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* * *

Just before he stepped into the terminal, he glanced over his shoulder, saw that Allison was preoccupied assisting another passenger, and ducked into the men’s room. He didn’t feel right about slipping away from her without saying goodbye, and especially not after the warmth they’d just shared. But he had a job to do, and he meant to make it up to her if she let him.

They had been back on the tour for two days. His cell phone rang as he headed for the shower that Wednesday morning, and he dreaded answering it. Allison hadn’t treated the slip he gave her in the airport the previous weekend with anything approaching generosity, and if he had to abandon the tour again so soon, she’d ask some questions. And she’d be entitled to answers.

He pushed the button. “Hello.”

“We’ve got word that an unknown operator placed an order for a mother lode of dynamite. We don’t want it delivered. I hope you can come up with a plan. I need it, pronto.”

Jake leaned forward and rested his chin in his palm. This was not what he wanted to hear. “I’m in the midst of a tour.” He wondered why he’d bothered to voice it since the chief knew that. First the department, and now the agency knew his every move, maybe his thoughts, too.

“We know, but this requires priority.”

He canceled his Thursday morning interview and telephoned Allison. “I’ve postponed my remaining interviews for this week and tomorrow’s twelve o’clock book signing because I have to get back to Washington tomorrow night. Unless I let you know otherwise, I should be going to Boston Monday morning as planned.”

“Didn’t the same thing happen last week when you suddenly remembered you had an appointment? I’d give a lot to know why your schedule is uncertain all of a sudden.”

“And you’d pay too dearly, because there’s no mystery involved. I hope I haven’t spoiled your plans, but I’m learning that a six-week book-signing tour can be filled with glitches, changes, and disappointments. You’d better get used to it.”

Dissatisfied with the idea of sitting in his old office trying to put together a plan to foil delivery of a load of explosives, Jake phoned the chief. “Give me the particulars, and I’ll find a quiet place somewhere and work it out. This is a tough one.”

“What sort of place?”

He could tell from the chief’s tone of voice that the idea didn’t please him. “Someplace where I can swim, fish, and get fresh air. Idlewild, for example.”

“I’ll check out the place and get back to you in a few minutes.”

Jake knew his boss would do everything possible to accommodate him. Putting together that kind of foolproof plan would challenge the most shrewd intellect, and although he considered himself sensitive to criminal behavior, guessing a man’s moves could backfire. He needed a clear head.

“No problem,” the chief said when Jake answered his cell phone. “Get it to me as quickly as you can.”

Jake didn’t bother to tell Allison he had changed his destination; time enough for that Monday morning.

Jake phoned Morton’s Hotel in Idlewild and booked a flight to Reed City. Six hours later, he stood in an anteroom off the hotel’s lobby selecting a fishing rod.

“Haven’t seen you around here before,” the woman said as she approached his spot carrying a rod, a reel, and a tin box in which he assumed she stored bait or lures.

“I don’t suppose you have,” he answered, hoping to discourage conversation.

“Staying long?” She threw out her line, and he knew he was watching an expert. Few occasional fishermen could cast with such deftness.

“A couple of days.”

“Not very talkative, are you?”

“I’ve yet to catch a fish when I was talking,” he said, standing in order to cast farther from shore.

“Hmmm. Where you from?”

If the woman hadn’t been at least seventy, he might have answered sharply. He told her part of the truth.

“I just came in from New York.”

Within five minutes, the woman reeled in two pikes. “Well, I’ve got plenty for supper and some to freeze for winter. Stay as long as you like.”

He told her goodbye and left after pulling in a bass, which he presented to the hotel’s cook.

* * *

“It must be him,” Allison heard her aunt Frances say when she answered the phone that Friday night. “Who else could it be? When he stood up, he nearly knocked my eighty-year-old eyeballs out. And he had on his clothes. That one was a real looker. Just didn’t talk much. Closemouthed as a kid in a dentist’s office. Child, if he’s the one—”

“I’d better start spending my weekends up there instead of down here in Washington, D.C., where you see ten women for every man, and most of those are ineligible.”

A lecture was coming, and she’d brought it on herself with her thoughtless comment. Her aunt did not disappoint her.

“The older you get, the fewer men there are, Allison, and the city you’re in hasn’t got a thing to do with it. When you’re twenty, everybody your age is single; when you’re forty, you’re already sifting through has-beens and never-would-have-beens. At age fifty, you’re dreaming. So you watch out.”

After hanging up, Allison phoned Connie. “I’m bored. Want to go to Blues Alley?”

“Did I ever say no? Where’s tall, tan, and terrific tonight?”

“No idea. Meet you there ten minutes to eight.”

* * *

“Would you believe this?” Connie asked her when the band assembled on the stage. “No Buddy Dee and no Mac.”

The manager went to the microphone and addressed the patrons. “We have a real treat for you tonight, folks. Mark Reddaway will show you what the blues are all about, but don’t let the man fool you. Monday morning he’ll be in his office on Connecticut Avenue designing skyscrapers.” He put his hands over his head and applauded. “Give it up for Mark, everybody.”

“They must be kidding,” Connie said when the man, elegant in a gray pin-striped suit and with a twelve-string guitar strapped across his shoulders, began picking and singing “It Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do.”

“Close your mouth, girl,” Allison said as Connie looked as if she’d been stung by a bee. Allison didn’t remember having seen the polished and self-assured woman so attentive to anything other than her work as an engineer. Tall, svelte, and fashion-conscious, Connie was a woman at the top of her field professionally and with a tight grip on the remainder of her world. Allison couldn’t believe the lost look in Connie’s eyes. At least she wasn’t the only woman a man had poleaxed the minute she saw him.

For the remainder of Mark’s performance, Connie, always talkative and with a ready quip, didn’t say one word. The set ended, and Allison watched the man bowing to the prolonged applause and whistles, obviously pleased.

“What...” Connie’s chair was vacant, and when Allison looked toward the stage, she saw Connie standing there shaking hands with Mark Reddaway.

“What was that about?” she asked her friend when Connie returned to the table for the beginning of the second set.

“Uh...tell you later. Do you mind leaving alone? I...uh... I want a chance to get to know Mark. Thanks, friend.”

“Sure. Go for it.” In the five years that she and Connie had been friends, the woman dated frequently, but hadn’t become attached to anyone. “You think this has possibilities?” she asked Connie.

Connie lowered her gaze in an uncustomary show of diffidence. “I know it has. It... Lord, I hope so.”

At home later, Allison pondered her feelings for Jake and her increasing insecurity in regard to them. She had detected a mystery about the man, a puzzling demeanor that should warn her to steer clear of him, and it did. But then, he would show her how gracious, kind, and considerate he could be, or that wink of his would captivate her, and she’d forget her misgivings.

* * *

Jake completed the plan, faxed it to his chief, and was back in New York Sunday night. He imagined that Allison spent the weekend in Washington and quickly verified it. As he was about to dial her phone number, he received a call from the chief. “This is great. Congratulations on an excellent job. I’d like you here Wednesday morning for at least half a day, so we can discuss it with the secretary.” In his mind’s eye, he could see the chief throw up his hands, palms out, when he said, “Just half a day is all I’m asking.”

He figured that, as far as Allison was concerned, he’d just banged one more nail in his coffin, but this had to do with the welfare of the United States of America. His right shoulder lifted and fell quickly, almost as if by reflex. “I’ll be there.”

After his book signing at Borders Bookstore Tuesday evening, Jake admitted to himself that, at his signings, lectures, and interviews, Allison was a comforting and stabilizing factor, one who always seemed immersed in what he said and did.

He’d probably regret it, but before he left the next morning, he wanted to see her. “Have dinner with me tonight?”

“What time?”

“Seven okay? And, Allison, please leave your recorder and your notebook in your room. This will be a social occasion; journalist and author will be nowhere in sight.”

“You serious?”

He could imagine her brows knitted in perplexity. “I’m always serious.”

“Even when you’re supposed to be teasing?”

He kicked off his other shoe and stretched out on the bed, warming up to the inquisition that he knew would come. “Why not? You’re so skittish that I don’t dare use plain English, and if I spoke frankly, you’d accuse me of being unprofessional.” He wished he could see her face, because he could imagine her dilemma as to how sharply she should zing him.

“Well, thank you for not using the word abuse.”

He laughed. “Ah, Allison, I could—”

“You could what?”

“If I thought you wanted to know, you wouldn’t have to ask.”

“All right. I don’t want to know, but I’m stubborn. Tell me.”

He didn’t believe in self-destruction and told her as much. “If the day comes when I think you can handle it, I’ll tell you.” She didn’t have to be told, he realized, when he heard her softly seductive reply.

“And if I come to that conclusion before you do, I’ll hasten the day. But don’t wait for it. Meet you downstairs at seven. Oh, and, Jake, what was the name of that cologne you wore on Monday? I liked it.”

So she’s decided to get fresh and shove him back into his place, has she? Well, he’d show her. “I never wear cologne,” he shot back, “and from what you just said, I take it nature did a decent enough job.” He hung up and headed back to the shower, Seven o’clock wouldn’t come fast enough.

* * *

What did he mean, he never wore cologne? She’d swear in open court that he’d been wearing a cologne so seductive that she’d been tempted to walk right up to him and sniff. She put on off-black stockings, a short red-beaded dinner dress, black silk slippers in size ten-and-a-half-B, picked up a small black silk purse, and glanced in the mirror. What she saw didn’t please her, so she removed the combs from her hair and brushed it out, then applied Arpège perfume in strategic spots, threw on a light woolen stole, and went to meet him. He’d said it was a social occasion; well, when she went to dinner with a man, she dressed.

What she wouldn’t have given for a camera. She’d never have expected to see his bottom lip drop, and the evidence was fleeing indeed, but drop it he did. He recovered quickly and stepped toward her as she walked out of the elevator.

“Lovely lady, have we met somewhere?”

“My dear man,” she retorted, head high and shoulders back, “if I had ever seen you, I wouldn’t have to ask that question.” With half-lowered eyelids, she let her gaze travel slowly from his feet to his head, allowed a half smile to curve her bottom lip, gave the appearance of being well satisfied with what she saw, and stepped ahead of him, a queen who didn’t doubt that her subject would follow. A glance in the wall mirrors revealed his wide grin and his delight in her frivolity. She swallowed a laugh when it occurred to her that she didn’t know where they were going and that she’d have to stop and wait for him. She spun around. The devil. That explained his amusement.

His head went back, his eyes closed, silent laughter seemed to ripple through him, and his grin glistened as though a bright beam had settled on his mouth. “I have a car waiting. We’re going to The Golden Slipper. Does that suit you?”