C's Comeuppance: A Bone Cold--Alive novel (24 page)

“And a rapid recovery you’ll make, too.” C felt Norm’s stare and finally opened his eyes. The old man had put his hands on his hips and was glaring at him. Now his finger wagged. “You going to give me an explanation?”

“I don’t think we owe you one, old man.”

“Jemma, are you—”

“Norm.” She took one of the empty white sacks and tore it to make a placemat. “Thanks for the burgers. Carolyn can pay you out of petty cash. And don’t let the door hit you in the rear. I can only handle one ailing client at a time.”

“Don’t you even want to know what’s going on in town about your tabloid debut?”

“I guess that depends on how many times I want to hear about it.” She munched on a fry and shot C a dirty look when he nudged her with his foot. “I imagine Mother will be able to give me chapter and verse this evening.” She continued to ignore C.

“So you’re just going to hole up here in your office with him?”

“If you’ll leave, I will.”

“Don’t know what it is about you, boy.” Norm fixed C with a look of contempt. “Don’t know what you and that brother of yours got, but by God, if Lyla didn’t start acting funny when he showed up.” He turned and strode to the door. “Come, Carolyn,” he took her elbow, “we have been dismissed!” He led them haughtily through the doorway, the click of the knob the only sound in his wake.

“Damn old man.”

“Well, cuss at him on your own time. I’m hungry, Jemma. Scoot out of the way so I can get up to the desk to my lunch.”

“You’re insufferable.” She picked up one of the burgers. “Wretched old man. They’ve both got onions and mustard.”

“Just the way I like it.” C set the ice bag on the floor and unwrapped his sandwich, took a big bite. “Not as good as Lyla’s.”

“Shall I tell her that?”

“I’ll deny it.”

C had rarely eaten in companionable silence with a woman. If their voices had been silent, their hands or feet hadn’t. He felt he could choreograph a food and sex scene that would have a movie audience in the floor between the seats. It would have to be rated ‘X’ for the aftereffects. But now Jemma sat on her desk and squeezed ketchup to the side of the fries. She paid more attention to the food than to him, which, he thought somewhat uncharitably, might be a cause of the extra ten pounds she carried. On the other hand, she carried them well, and she had curves in all the right places. He concentrated on the swell of her breasts, remembered the proportions of her hips as he’d curved her into himself, knew he couldn’t sit still much longer.

“So what do you want to do for dessert?” He rubbed her knee with his elbow, resisted the urge to wink.

She turned the remaining carryout bag upside-down. Two pieces of peppermint candy slid out. “Red’s signature.” A smile peaked the corners of her lips.

“You expect me to be satisfied with a piece of peppermint candy after hearing the words ‘I desire’ pass your lips?”

Jemma wiped her fingers with a napkin. “You may have them both.”

“You’re just taunting me. Like I would really eat both of them and leave you with onion breath.” He picked them up and slid them into his front pants pocket. “You want one, you’ll have to come get it.”

“If I wanted one, I wouldn’t have given you both of them.”

“You know,” he policed up his papers and the empty ketchup packets, “there may be something to your single status. You have got the sassiest damn mouth on you I’ve encountered since my sister-in-law’s.”

“I’m going to ignore that, seeing as you’re injured. How’s your bump, grumple-stiltskin?”

He started to reach back and touch it, stopped his hand just short. “Why don’t you check it for me?”

Her reply was stopped by the buzz of the intercom. “Jemma, James Thomas on two.” Carolyn’s voice held the slightest touch of exasperation.

“Thanks, Carolyn.” She reached across the top of the desk and hit the hands-free button. “James Thomas, everything okay?”

“And couldn’t I ask you the same thing?”

She winced at his tone and started to pick up the receiver.

C stayed her hand. “Let me hear, too. Bet I’m involved in this,” he whispered.

She nodded and straightened back up. “Everything’s okay here.”

“Um-hum. Well, what’s this I hear about you letting that pervert dance with Mandy Friday night? Have you lost your mind? Doree’s ready to take a plane home!”

“Tell her to come on. I bet Mandy’d love to take that new driver’s license and drive to the airport and get her.”

“She’ll do no such thing! And you didn’t answer my question.”

“It was Mandy’s idea for Charles to come to the dance. Sort of a favor.”

“In return for what?”

“Oh, honestly, James Thomas, get your head out of the gutter! If that’s all you wanted…”

She was distracted by C’s frantic scribbling on the paper sack. He turned it so she could read the words: Tell him the pervert will be appeased if you sit on his lap. He patted his knee.

She leaned down closer to him. “You are a pervert if you expect me to read that to him!”

“But you will do it?” She eluded his reach.

“Jemma, is that man there with you?” James Thomas’s voice became strident.

“If you are so concerned about how I’m handling my personal life, then I suggest you and Doree come on home.” C pulled himself close to her and put his head in her lap, placed her hand over the bump on his head. She rubbed it without even thinking what she was doing. “If that’s all you called about—”

“Oh, no, there’s more! Doree came back to the room at lunchtime with one of those fine newspapers your pervert friend specializes in. Guess who’s on page five?”
C started laughing in her lap and she slapped at his shoulder. “I have no idea. Why don’t you tell me.”

“Do you really not know?”
“James Thomas, nobody died and made you head of the family.” Her tone continued to darken. C raised his head from her lap and shot her a concerned look as she inched toward the speakerphone. “You have not been my protector—ever! Do not presume that I need from you what I’ve never received!”

“I’d say your memory is selective, Jemma.” He paused for effect. “Do you really want to go into it here? With him listening, because I’m sure he’s there?”

Jemma’s lips formed a straight line and her brow creased. C watched her hands turn red as she put all her weight on them and leaned in even closer to the phone. “Good-bye, James Thomas.” She pushed the disconnect button and slid off the desk.

He watched her bend to retrieve the tabloid from where he’d dropped it. Silently, she gathered the trash from the desktop and threw it away in the bathroom. “I don’t suppose you want to talk about this?”

“You have a brother. You really should understand.”

“Why don’t you come over here and sit on my lap and we’ll discuss it.” He rolled the chair away from the desk. “My head doesn’t hurt any more.” He spread his arms in welcome to her. “At least not that one.”

“You have a perverse side.”

“Like your brother said.”

“I have a closing at three at a bank twenty miles away. I have things to do before then. I suggest you leave.”

He watched her study the broken chair. “Shall I gather the pieces up for you? Make Norm glue them back together?”
“Well, that would be a fine piece of magic, and I don’t mean the act of gluing.” She tapped her toe, shook down her watch, looked at it. “Charles, you have to go. What if we compromise with supper?”
“What if we compromise with breakfast in bed?”

A smile played on her lips. “You are incorrigible.”

“One does not earn the reputation I presently enjoy by being otherwise.”

He pushed on the arms of the chair and stood. “When and where?”

“For supper.”

“Breakfast too.”

“Hope springs eternal, but you’re in for a big disappointment. Why don’t you pick me up at seven at the house? I’m sure Mother would like another shot at you. Particularly now.”

He moved to her side, put an arm around her waist, pulled her to himself. She came easily into his arms, as if they’d moved together for years. Could it be this simple, he thought, as he cupped her cheek with his palm and drew her lips to his. Could love have been eluding him all along because he refused to play by any rules but his own?

Her arms circled his neck and she pulled herself to him. It wasn’t a kiss of desperation—he’d been party to plenty of those—but a kiss of need and want. Desire, even. His hands roamed freely on her body, which arched to him and welcomed his caress. The ache he’d felt in his loins increased with each pass of her tongue. In another life, C would have taken her there on the floor.

And she’d still have made the three o’clock meeting.

But now he pushed her away, held onto her upper arms, massaged them. “Babe,” he began, “you have no idea—”

“I’m sorry, Charles. Hell, it’s been a rough day—”

“I’ve already said it. Don’t apologize. Ever. Not to me for sheer physicality. But I have to stop now because in another minute, I’d just prove your brother even more correct than he is.”

“Yes, well, that would be thrilling. It’s a cinch you wouldn’t get to prove it in private either, given this is Grand Central today.” She touched his forearms, looked straight into his eyes. “Charles, we need to get one thing straight.”

“Trust me, it is.”

“No. Not
that
.” She graced him with a look of womanly disgust. “I do not necessarily intend to sl—”

The strident tones of her car alarm burst through the office door along with Carolyn. “Jemma, Wiley’s making a fool of himself again!” Carolyn hustled on back through the office and to the front door.

“Like how can you tell?” C asked.

“Oh, criminey!” Jemma broke their embrace and stomped to her desk, reached below for her purse, dumped it to find her keys. C was right behind her as she walked determinedly to the parking lot.

“Wiley, what in the world are you doing?”
Wiley Rose stood sheepishly beside her vehicle. A copy of the tabloid fluttered in the slight breeze from where it was anchored underneath the driver’s side windshield wipers.

“Just giving you an extra copy, Jem-Jewel. You know, for the Christmas cards. I can’t help it if this claptrap hunk of trash—can’t you shut this noise off?”

“Well, at least you didn’t run away!” She started to aim the sensor at the vehicle, but C took it from her and did it instead. The alarm quit.

“Well, I’m not about to hide!” He sauntered over to her. “Entertaining in the afternoon, Jem-Jewel?”

“Wiley, you are about as low as they come.”
He looked C up and down. “Well, sister, you ought to know low.”

“That does it!” C started to grab the man, but Jemma stepped between them.

“Off my property, Wiley. Don’t believe you were invited over.”

“Can’t he fight his own battles?”

“Jemma,” C muttered, “step out of the way and this’ll all be over.”

“I’ve no doubt it’ll be all over the newspapers. I’ll not have it. Either one of you. Good day, Wiley. You are not
in loco fraternis
.”

“You made that up.”

“So go look it up in a dictionary. If you can spell it.”

“Jem-Jewel, you’re showing some mighty low class.”

“Better than not having any at all.” C could stay quiet no longer.

“I’m going, I’m going.” Wiley turned and walked halfway across the lot. Whirling to face her, he still stepped backwards in the direction of his office. “I’m sure this won’t be the last time you make the supermarket papers. Shall I save them all for you? Put them in an album?”

“If it’ll make you happy. After all, you need something to do since you don’t seem to have any business.”

“You’ll get yours, Jem-Jewel.”

“Not as fast as you.”

“Wha—” but he had already tripped over the curb on the next property, and Wiley Rose sprawled backwards onto the ground.

“The only thing hurt’s your pride, right? Pride goeth before a fall, Wiley,” C called out to him as he laughed.

“You’d better remember that, too, Charles.” Jemma punched a fingernail at his chest.

“Here, take your clarinet.” Carolyn came from the inside of the office and thrust the instrument at him. “James Thomas on one, Jemma, your mother on two, the bank on three.” She retreated abruptly, leaving them alone on the front stoop.

“Duty calls. Get out of here.” She bunched up the front of his knit shirt and pulled him toward her, kissed him quickly. “I hope the whole damn world was watching. See you at seven.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“O
h my God, Jemma, your mother is going to have a cow when she hears about this!” Carolyn was barely back to her desk when Jemma entered the office.

“Well, maybe it’ll loosen her up!” Jemma disappeared through her office door. “Tell Mother and James Thomas I’ve gone to the bank. I’ll take the bank’s call. Tell your dad he can have that old chair for scrap if he can use the wood for anything for the Christmas toy program.”

“Are you sure about your mother? She’ll just call back. James Thomas’ll never believe me. I think the clients are already at the bank, and Daddy never turns down good wood no matter how many pieces it’s in.”

The door clicked to.

Jemma paused before lifting the receiver and punching line three. She took a deep breath and savored the memory of the surprised look on C’s face as she’d pulled him down for that outrageously quick kiss. He’d hardly responded. She was having thoughts she’d never had about any of the local male populace. She’d
better get back to business. She sat in her chair and rolled up to the desk, rolling over and breaking the bag of ice water C had discarded to the floor. A puddle formed on her desk floor mat. She sighed, looked at it for a second, shrugged, and punched line three.

***

“So, what’s the purpose of all this?” C stood in the doorway to the main cabin of Bertie’s houseboat and surveyed it from one end to the other. In the middle, juggling a bouquet of red roses while clutching a vase in the other hand, was T. “You look about as domesticated as a neutered tomcat. Where’s your apron?” He watched T put the vase on the table, place the roses haphazardly in it. “They’ll do better with water.”