A Promise to Cherish (15 page)

A darkly tanned woman of about sixty had entered the office and was moving familiarly toward the cluster of men and women. Most of them greeted her by name and exchanged anecdotal greetings. Obviously they all knew her. She was dressed in a classy looking summer suit with brown and white spectator pumps and a matching purse. She exuded an air of quiet confidence.

“I understand congratulations are in order around here,” she commented as she approached.

To Lee’s amazement, Sam broke away from the others and greeted the woman with a light kiss on the cheek.

“Hi, Mother. You out slumming?” he teased.

“I heard the news. Thought it was time I met your new estimator.”

“She’s right here.” Sam looped an arm around his mother’s shoulder and directed her toward Lee, who stood stock still with amazement.

“Mother, this is Lee Walker—Lee, my mother, Mary Brown.” He had placed his hands on his mother’s shoulders, and his dark, amused eyes twinkled down at Lee as color rose to her cheeks. Like a robot she extended her hand, which was clasped in very dark, coppery fingers with wide knuckles and several flashy diamonds.

“I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. Brown,” Lee managed, unable to keep her eyes from fleeing back to Sam, who stood as before, with his hands on his mother’s shoulders, an undisguised look of merriment crinkling the corners of his eyes.

“So you’ve won your first bid for Brown and Brown,” the woman noted in a friendly fashion as she studied Lee from a face with wide, high cheekbones and a blunt, broad nose. Her hair was graying now, but was unmistakably coal black underneath the lighter strands.

“I . . . uh . . . yes, but not alone. Frank and . . . and your son worked with me on it.”

“Sam wanted it quite badly. He mentioned it several times this week. Well, congratulations.” She smiled, then added, “And welcome to the company.”

As Sam’s hands fell from her shoulders, he grinned disarmingly at Lee, then turned to watch his mother visit with others before joining her. Just then the phone rang. One of the draftsmen picked it up.

“It’s for you, Lee.”

It was a salesman asking if she’d go out for a drink or dinner—standard procedure after winning a bid. The salesmen were always eager to write up orders. Lee was standing with her back to the room when she suddenly became aware that Sam had slipped quietly up behind her. She turned, glancing at him over her shoulder as she spoke into the receiver. “This afternoon ?” She paused for the salesman’s reply, then asked, “What time?” With the phone pressed to her ear, Lee watched Sam Brown reach for a pad and pencil and followed his movements as he wrote, “You owe me dinner . . .” He turned it her way and pierced her with a meaningful look as she tried valiantly to concentrate on what the voice on the phone was saying. Sam’s hand moved again, adding, “. . . tonight.” He punctuated the message with an exclamation point.

Lee turned her back on both Sam Brown and his message, stammering, “Ah . . . I’m sorry, Paul, what were you saying?” A quick glance over her shoulder told her that Sam had moved away again. “I’m sorry, Paul. Maybe we can make it Monday for lunch. I’m busy tonight.”

They made arrangements to meet then, and by the time Lee hung up, the office was starting to empty. She looked around for Sam’s mother, but found she had gone. Sam himself was coming toward Lee. She crossed her arms loosely over her chest and leaned against the desk as she watched him approach.

“Well, you’ve surprised me again, Your Honor.” Lee smiled.

“Have I now?” His grin was utterly charming.

“You know perfectly well that you have. Your mother is more Indian than I am.”

“Ah, you’re very perceptive,” he teased.

“Where is she?” Lee scanned the office again.

Sam shrugged, then smirked. “Probably gone home to clean the teepee.”

A picture of his “teepee” flashed before Lee’s mind, and she couldn’t help laughing. “Sam Brown, you’re impossible. Why didn’t you tell me before this?”

“And let you stop thinking I hired you so I could become a minority contractor? I’ve had too much fun laughing about it to myself.”

“At my expense?”

“It didn’t cost you anything, did it?”

“Except my unflappable cool. I think you could’ve driven a front-end loader in my mouth when I got a look at her and realized she was your mother.”

He smiled, but changed the subject abruptly. “What about that dinner?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “I take it you’re holding me to my promise that I go out with you when I became low bidder.”

“Exactly.”

“And I
am
low bidder?”

“Yes you are.”

“And I
do
keep my promises?”

His smile broadened. “I’ll pick you up at your place at seven. Wear something dressy.” He turned away, changed his mind, and returned momentarily to add, “And sexy.” Then he left for good.

 

 

L
EE chose white again—this time a sleek, lithe crepe de chine dress that slipped over her hips like water—not tight, not loose, but willowy. It was a simple cylinder, cinched by elastic above her breasts and at the waist, leaving her shoulders and upper chest bare, the perfect foil for a heavy turquoise and silver pendant shaped like a peyote bird that dropped onto her chest from a silvery chain. She touched it and looked at her reflection in the mirror, remembering Sam Brown’s mother. How like him not to tell her the truth, then let her find it out as she had. She smiled, then hurried to insert tiny droplets of dangling turquoise in her ears. On her feet went the briefest straps of white leather and high, high heels. She tricked her hair into a froth of sassy curls, their disheveled control confined only by a fine white headband that crossed her temples and disappeared amid the bouncy tangle on her head.

Just then the doorbell rang. Without thinking, Lee snatched the framed picture of her sons from the dresser top and stuffed it into a drawer. On her way out she took a moment to close the door to the second bedroom. Downstairs she paused and pressed a hand against her churning stomach, then took a deep breath and went to greet Sam Brown.

He was leaning against the railing again, but he seemed to unfold in slow motion, coming up off the wrought iron muscle by muscle. As his ankles uncrossed, as his hand came out of his trouser pocket, as he pulled himself to his feet, his eyes shimmered down the length of Lee, and a smile of undisguised appreciation lifted his sculptured lips. When his dark eyes met her even darker ones, he said flat out, “You look absolutely sensational, Cherokee.”

His approval brought a sweet ripple of pride up her spine as she took in the crisp lapels of his navy blue suit.

“Thank you, Your Honor, so do you.” Did he ever! His white shirt set off the rusty hue of his face like a well-chosen matting about a painting, and she wondered how she could have been so naive as to have missed the truth about his heritage all this time. Yet from the first, she’d realized he didn’t look like any full-blooded Scandinavian she’d ever known. He’d had his fun with her . . . but now, studying him, she couldn’t help rejoicing at the final outcome. Yes, he was stunning, his silk tie knotted so flawlessly that it stood away from his collar band as if aroused.

At the thought she dropped her eyes and turned to fetch a tiny beaded purse.

When he’d seen her solicitously to her side of the car and started the engine, he turned to study her again. She met his gaze levelly, unconcerned that he was undoubtedly reading the admiration in her perusal, just as she was in his.

“Tonight it’s the American. I, too, keep my promises.”

“But it was supposed to be my treat.” She knew she couldn’t afford the American Restaurant.

“Oh, you’re wrong about that.”

“But—”

“It’s a company dinner, on the boss. I’ll write it off as a business expense.”

“Oh, in that case . . . the American it is.” But Lee felt far removed from business concerns at the moment. And as the evening progressed, that distance widened.

 

 

T
HEY approached the Crown Center by way of its ten-acre square of terraced lawns and fountains, passing the massive tent pavilion and the thirty-foot-high umbrellas beneath whose yellow peaks they’d lost and found each other last Saturday. Alexander Calder’s stabile “Shiva” loomed up before them, and minutes later they were entering the luxurious Westin Crown Center Hotel.

Its multilevel lobby was carved into a rocky hillside of natural limestone, creating a dramatic garden of tropical foliage and full grown trees through which tumbled a sixty-foot waterfall. The rushing water created a refreshing background music for hotel guests, shoppers from the adjacent Crown Center shops, and sightseers who sauntered along the elevated catwalks above the lobby.

Had Hans Christian Andersen been alive to dream up a fairy tale setting, he could not have invented any more compellingly romantic than that through which they passed, Lee thought. She found it difficult to keep her eyes from Sam, and when they found themselves the only two people on the elevator carrying them up to the restaurant, she gave in to the urge.

He was leaning against the left wall, she against the right. They studied each other wordlessly, caught up in a sense of impending intimacy. Horizons lay ahead for them—it seemed understood—which would change their relationship forever. The knowledge intensified the moment, though to all outward appearances they were as casual as before.

Lee’s senses seemed honed to a fine edge. She was keenly attuned to Sam’s familiar scent, to his expression which grew more and more thoughtful and sexually aware as the night wore on. Seated in the restaurant’s lofty expanse with chrome and mirrors at her elbow and Kansas City spread out before her, Lee watched cars follow the arteries leading northeast toward the heart of the city. Yet time and again her gaze was pulled back to Sam’s. As if her consciousness had been fine tuned, she absorbed every detail around her with acute perception—the soft hiss of bubbles in her stemglass; the sleek texture of pickled mushrooms from the toothpick Sam teasingly held toward her; the brush of his pant leg against her bare ankle under the table; the bite of woven caning against her bare shoulders as she relaxed in her bentwood chair; the heat of the flame from their Steak Diane as the waiter performed his culinary act; the sharp, tangy taste of broccoli, suddenly delectable when she’d never liked it before; the scent of starch in linen as she wiped her lips, which grew impatient for what now seemed a certainty; the sluggardly passage of time as Sam drew out their anticipation by ordering Cherries Jubilee; the flash of fire as a match was struck to liqueur; Sam’s lips, tipped up only slightly at the corner as he slipped a scarlet cherry from a spoon and gave her a glimpse of his tongue stroking the succulent sauce from it; the heat flooding her body at his wordless suggestion.

Lee lounged all willowy in her chair, but she noted how often Sam’s glance fell to the ruched line where her dress met her chest, then lower to the discernible shadows hinting of dusky, bare nipples within her silken bodice. Each time it happened her stomach tingled. But she lounged on, playing his waiting game with a restraint that keyed their sensuality to a higher pitch.

From the restaurant, across the square, to the car, and all the way home . . . he never touched her. Not with his hands. But his eyes were as tactile as the brush of warm flesh as they lingered on her. The city was dark, alive, waiting . . . just like Lee.

At the curb in front of her house the engine stopped and his car door opened, then he opened her door and waited for her to step out. Again they moved up the sidewalk, up the steps to the door without a word, without a touch.

She had left the outside light off. The shrubbery and overhanging roof created deep shadows. Yet she turned to him, knowing his face without seeing it.

“Would you like to come in for a drink?” She remembered his preference for dry martinis with pickled mushrooms and added nervously, “I . . . I don’t have any pickled mushrooms, but I do have olives.”

A long, blank pause followed before he replied succinctly, “No, I wouldn’t care for a drink or pickled mushrooms or olives.”

Her stomach trembled, and she drew in a deep breath before asking softly, “What, then?”

She sensed him leaning toward her, just short of touching her as he answered in a husky voice, “I want you, Cherokee . . . you know that.”

His answer sent her pulse pounding, and suddenly she didn’t know what to say. She stood there in the dark, her nostrils filled with his scent, knowing the searching look in his eyes, though she could not see them. Then his voice came again, soft but intense. “Don’t invite me in unless it’s for that.”

Still he didn’t touch her, and though she wanted him to, she knew that once he did there’d be no turning back.

“You must know I still have reservations about it,” she admitted shakily.

“Then why did you wear that dress tonight with nothing under it?”

He knew her better than she knew herself; it seemed foolish to deny it. She dropped her chin and admitted artlessly, “It was shameless of me, wasn’t it?” She sensed him smiling in the dark doorway.

“Are you testing me, Cherokee, to see how far you can go before I make a move?”

“No . . . I . . .” Her hands fluttered and her voice grew unsteady. “I’m just nervous.”

After a thoughtful silence, he mused, “You’re an enigma, you know that? I’ve seen you in action at a bid letting where there’s a good reason to be nervous, yet there you’re as unruffled as can be. Out in the tough business world you scrap and fight with the best of’em. But what happens to that confident woman when a man finds her attractive?” His voice went softer. “What do you have to be nervous about?”

Suddenly there were tens of answers Lee could have given, any one of which would have been enough to stop her. But she withheld them all, realizing it had been half her doing that they were here together on the brink of something that would be splendid, she was certain. She did want him, and complications always went along with that, thus she suppressed her doubts and asked in a wistful way he could not mistake, “Would you like to come in for nothing so simple as . . . as pickled mushrooms or olives?”