Color of Love (26 page)

Leah had found out early in January that Jason also liked to jog. She’d awoken one morning in his bed and found him gone. It was not quite seven. She was bewildered as to where he had gone—obviously not far; he’d left his gun—when he’d come in sweaty but full of energy … and lust. They’d made love instead of breakfast, and both had been late for work. But it didn’t take long for Leah to also figure out that the running, the pushing of his body to the limit, worked off excess frustration, stress, and lingering sadness. When he began asking her to attend the short races he’d enter, Leah did. Except for the one time half a dozen of his fellow officers from the precinct signed up together and it was an occasion for male bonding.

“So what do you get for running a Ten-K and crossing the finish line in the top ten?”

Jason grinned as he used his forearm to wipe sweat from his face. “My ego stroked, a sore body, and a T-shirt.” He held up his other hand to show the white folded cloth. He gave it to Leah. “Here, this is for you.”

“I don’t wear T-shirts,” Leah reminded him.

Jason suddenly kissed her, leaving her mouth smudged with his salty dampness. “Use it as a nightshirt. You can leave it at my place.”

Again Leah smiled at him. She blinked behind the sunglasses, glad that Jason couldn’t see her whole face, her expression just then. She was sure that everything was hanging out, exposing her, leaving her defenseless against the pleasure of being with him.

They got into Jason’s car for the short drive back to her house. Every time they drove his car, Leah was reminded of that first time when they’d gone to the New Year’s Eve party at Joe and Nora’s. She glanced at his profile, thinking how far they’d come in four months. Still, they never really talked about where, exactly, they were, much less where they were headed. They hadn’t gotten much past wanting to spend time together. And wanting to make love.

She was suddenly acutely aware of his physical presence next to her. In her life, her dreams. Leah put her hand on his hairy thigh, feeling the muscle underneath, knowing every inch of his body and its responses, most especially when they were together.

“Cindy seems very nice,” she ventured quietly.

Jason detected the query in Leah’s statement. The unasked question. He’d never been involved with Cindy, but it had come pretty close once. Before she’d gotten married and left the force. He decided to skirt the broader issue in Leah’s remark. He laced his fingers with hers.

“I’m not into jockettes,” he murmured, amused. Leah chuckled and he squeezed her fingers. “I like my woman soft and concerned. And I don’t like them to run faster than I do.”

“Well, that certainly lets me out.”

“Except for the soft and concerned part,” he corrected.

He released her hand and slid his slowly up her denimed thigh. His fingers curved to the inside of her leg with a caressing firmness. At the traffic light Jason turned to look at her.

Leah finally took the glasses off, not caring what Jason saw in her eyes or in their bright gaze that opened up the window to her heart.

“Can I stay tonight?” he asked softly.

She thought about him asking. They still only saw each other three or four times a week. Sometimes there was a weekend at her house or his apartment. Once, a weekend away in March when Jason had attended a special class in D.C., Leah had known that it made her life feel choppy and disoriented, as though she didn’t have just one place to be, one place that was just theirs together. Jason seemed perfectly happy with things the way they were. And Leah knew it couldn’t be her to ask why it felt so incomplete and temporary. She liked that Jason asked, that he never took it for granted. Still, it was that very same thoughtfulness that made her feel that there was distance between them.

“Yes,” Leah answered his question.

While Jason showered, Leah made an ice pack in a Zip-loc bag, and wrapped it in a linen towel. On her way to the kitchen she’d passed Gail in the living room, making evening arrangements over the phone with Allen. They briefly acknowledged each other, but Gail was usually combative when Jason was in the house, and Leah worked at keeping them apart. However, as Leah was heading back to her room, Gail met her at the foot of the stairs.

“I hate it when you wait on that man hand and foot.”

“I’m only taking him a beer and an ice pack. I haven’t sworn servitude,” Leah said dryly.

“It’s early yet,” Gail responded.

Leah made an impatient gesture and started up the stairs.

“What excuse did he have for standing you up last night?”

The question, unfortunately, renewed the ambivalence Leah had been living with all day. Whether or not to make an issue with Jason over a ruined dinner, a postponed evening. A lonely night. She stopped to look down at her sister, momentarily tempted to tell Gail to mind her own business, but knowing that Gail would just ignore her.

“He didn’t need one. He said he couldn’t make it, and he must have had a good reason.”

Gail’s smile was satisfied, just short of an “I told you so” smirk. “I’m sure he had a reason. But will it be a good enough one?”

“You don’t have to deal with it, do you?” Leah asked, but didn’t wait for an answer as she continued to her room.

She was aimlessly sorting through several recent drawings when Jason returned from the bathroom. She didn’t turn around to face him.

“How was the shower?” she asked calmly.

Jason advanced into the room, toweling his hair and body. “Wet.” He tossed the towel onto the vanity stool.

Leah pointed to the ice pack. “You should sit with that on your knee for a while and let it—”

“Still mad at me?” Jason interrupted. He was right behind her.

She slowly shook her head, turned the sketches facedown. “About what?”

Jason wasn’t fooled. He came close enough to feel her shoulders against his chest, her buttocks against his groin. “About last night.”

“No …”

He put his arms slowly around her and pulled her to him. “Liar.”

“I wasn’t angry, really.”

“Disappointed?” She merely nodded. Jason kissed the back of her head and hugged her gently. “Me, too.”

Leah felt surrounded by him and, for this moment, safe and special. Jason began to rub and massage her stomach through the cotton fabric of her blouse.

“It was Slack. I didn’t have time to go into it last night. Something happened at his grandmother’s house. I got a call from her that Slack and one of his uncles were fighting. She was afraid that someone was going to get hurt. I didn’t want it to be her.”

Leah listened quietly and wondered if her doubts had been of her own making. She sighed and closed her eyes, reached down with her hands to just rest them on his legs.

“I didn’t really have a choice about last night. I wanted to be with you like we planned. I know I messed up, but when Slack messes up, it becomes my problem.”

“I know. You work twenty-four hours a day.” She repeated his often used explanation. But already her stiffness was melting.

Jason’s hands grew exploratory. He popped open the snap on her jeans and pulled down the zipper. He grew hard against her back, his penis rising. He slid his large hand into the opening of the jeans and splayed it over her navel and stomach. Jason leaned forward to kiss her ear and the side of her neck. “I’m sorry …”

“It’s okay.”

Slowly he turned her around and began kissing her as his hand released the buttons on the front of the blouse. His lips and tongue teasing and coaxing as he swept away her doubts, his guilt.

Leah let him capture her lips, needing him to be assertive and to show that he wanted her. Her tension quickly dissolved into desire. Jason kissed her with that purpose in mind. He stopped just for a moment, while he gazed thoughtfully into her face.

“I don’t want you to forgive me, Leah. I just need you to understand.”

She blinked at him, suddenly thinking that there was another meaning to his request, but only satisfied that Jason was comforting her and trying to make it better. She spread her hands over his chest, the hair now dry and springy, and his skin smelling of soap and shampoo.

“Of course I understand,” she whispered.

Jason smiled slowly at her and began to kiss her again. “Thank you.”

They got the rest of her things off, and there was finally nothing between their bodies but heartbeats and heat. When Jason lifted her from the floor, Leah held tightly around his neck and wrapped her legs around his hips. He turned, holding her, and made the short journey to the bed, where he lowered her to the mattress. Leah’s hold around his neck brought Jason down on top of her.

She absorbed his passion into her body and let it flow delightfully to all her limbs. When Jason drew his legs up slightly, as he buried himself inside her body and began to move slowly, she touched his face and sighed in concern.

“Jason, your knee …”

But he kissed her fingers, her nose, her mouth. He looked at her, his eyes slumberous with longing. There was still humor in his eyes. “My knee is not what you should be thinking about.”

He surged forward, and Leah moaned softly, undulating her hips against his entry. She decided to take his advice. She let her body take control and resolutely pushed her concerns to the back of her mind. She couldn’t deal with them at the moment. She didn’t even want to.

It was, nevertheless, overwhelming enough to accept that she and Jason did not belong to each other. That there might be competition for his time, attention, and loving: a sixteen-year-old youthful offender—and other women.

Leah squinted against the early evening light, but loved the warmth of it, which seemed to melt and flow over her skin. She closed her eyes and just listened to the babble of conversation from other diners, from passersby as she and Jason sat at a sidewalk café finishing dinner. She and Jason had discovered Milo’s shortly after it opened, and they both loved its pasta specialties.

Besides its good but simple food and its unpretentious ambiance, Milo’s had also become a neutral zone where many of their serious conversations took place. If a problem came up, Leah had discovered it wouldn’t get discussed at the brownstone or at Jason’s apartment. They always ended up in bed. Their lovemaking was always good, but it also masked everything else, delayed dealing with real issues. It was one of the things that had first concerned Leah about their relationship, that she and Jason might never really get beyond the purely physical.

They’d already finished dinner, and the conversation reached a lull. Jason was preoccupied. Leah understood enough about him to know that sometimes he mulled over things before deciding to talk about them.

Jason turned and smiled absently at her. Leah frowned. It seemed almost as if he wanted to say something. He hesitated, played with her fingers. She looked clearly into his gray eyes.

“What?” she quietly coaxed.

He glanced slowly at her, but he never had a chance to answer.

There was a muffled anguished cry that tore through the evening air. In unison everyone in the café turned their heads in the direction of the unmistakable sounds of pain and fright. At first there was nothing to see. Just a street off to the left that was lined with a number of older tenement buildings and local stores. At the far corner was a check-cashing establishment.

Leah frowned briefly at Jason as if to ask, had he heard something, too? Jason was alert and already his attention was carefully directed to the movement on the street. Then a middle-aged woman staggered from the check-cashing operation crying plaintively for help. The side of her face and head were red, the blood dripping onto the pink cardigan sweater she was wearing.

“Stop them! Help me! Help …” she cried in distress.

Several people hesitantly went to her aid as she pointed down the block. “Please stop them. My money …”

Jason was on his feet. “Stay here,” he ordered Leah, never taking his eyes from the dozen or so people on the opposite block.

He didn’t wait for her response, and she watched as he casually crossed the street, placing himself in the path of the flow of traffic away from the store where the woman stood.

Many people stood looking around, trying to figure out what was going on or trying to spot who was responsible. Only two young men seemed unaware … or indifferent. They were both wearing loose over-size denim coats. Totally unnecessary in the warm air of early May. Leah saw them and knew that Jason had picked them out as well.

Leah had never been able to tell an undercover or off-duty cop from anyone else in the street, and never understood how others picked them out so easily. But something about Jason must have alerted the two young men, because in a flash they broke into a sprint, separated, and dashed off in different directions.

Leah jumped to her feet, shocked and mesmerized by what was happening before her eyes. Adrenaline started to rush through her in excited disbelief. This was not a movie. This was not a report on the eleven o’clock news.

She knew Jason could not hope to catch both men, and he had to make an instant decision. She watched as he shifted positions on a pivot, shouted sharp, uncompromising orders. She next felt as though her heart had leaped into her throat with a forceful surge of anxiety.

Leah recognized what lay behind the woman’s screams for help. The terrible fear that forced the sounds past her throat and through her lips. For Leah, a long time ago, her sounds had been absorbed into gray walls with no one around to hear or help. Her heart constricted with the memory of calling for help and getting no answer. She suddenly recognized the pursuit being carried out before her as inherent in Jason’s life. He was totally concentrated on his efforts to apprehend the young men. Leah was breathless and shocked at his willingness to do so with no thought for himself. The potential danger began to tighten her throat.

The heavier of the two men cut across Jason and disappeared around the corner. Jason let him go, and went in pursuit of the smaller man, who held his coat closed with one hand as he tried to run.

Jason quickly shouted his orders to stop. He pulled his concealed gun and held it down as he ran. The young man jumped over the hood of a car, tripped, and fell on the other side. The coat fell open and two thick wads of currency tumbled to the sidewalk. He quickly scrambled up, forgetting the money as he awkwardly tried to regain his footing.