Daughter of Light (14 page)

“Morning. Hop in before it really starts.”

“Oh, I was going to walk.”

“ ‘Was’ is the key word in that sentence,” he told me. “C’mon. I promise I won’t bite.”

The rain was intensifying. I decided that I looked foolish even thinking of resisting. I opened the door, closed the umbrella, and slipped in quickly.

“Thank you,” I said. “How fortuitous it was that you happened along just at the right time,” I added as the raindrops thickened and began to patter on the windshield. Even the wind strengthened, and looking toward the far corner, I could see it toying with the downpour, sweeping small waves of water over the street and sidewalk, as if some invisible large hand were waving in the rain.

“Fortuitous?” he asked, not starting to drive forward. He held his charming smile. Now that I took a good look at him, I saw that he was blessed with a cinematic face, the sort of face never caught unawares by a camera or a glance. His features weren’t capable of becoming awkward, even for a second. They clung to their symmetry, and the light in his blue eyes didn’t diminish in the grayness thrown over us in the downpour. If anything, they brightened.

“Yes, fortuitous. You’re not intimidated by multisyllabic words, are you?” I asked.

“If I were, the word ‘intimidated’ would get me,” he replied.

I laughed.

“Good,” he said immediately. “I was afraid you were
one of those women hatched in one of my aunt’s favorite historical museums.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“You know the type, terrified of smiling or laughing for fear they won’t be considered seriously or something. Ask my aunt to let you look at one of her family albums. You’ll see that in not one picture is there a female smiling in front of a camera. They were taught that was too frivolous.”

“A lot about our lives now is too frivolous.”

He glanced at me. “Uh-oh. I suspected that you might have been sent by one of my aunt’s archaic friends to stay at the Winston House. Some of them swear they have conversations with John Quincy himself. Is that how you came to stay at the Winston House?”

“No,” I said. “No one directed me specifically to your aunt’s rooming house.”

“Just fate?”

“If you want to call it that. I saw the advertisement and called to see if there was any vacancy.”

“Then it’s all meant to be,” he declared.

“What’s all meant to be?”

“This,” he said, and turned at the corner. It was raining much harder now. I would never have been able to walk the whole distance without getting soaked. There was just too much wind.

“Even the rain?”

“Especially the rain,” he replied. “If it hadn’t started when you left my aunt’s place, I bet you wouldn’t have
gotten into my car. You’ve been told to stay away from me. Oh, don’t deny it,” he quickly added. “If I were any of them, I would probably have given you the same warnings.”

“So, you know you have a bad reputation and you don’t do anything to improve it?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Meaning?”

“I haven’t gotten up to go to work this early for weeks, maybe months. I can’t remember. You’re already a good influence on me.”

“Me? I hardly spoke to you.”

“Exactly, and as I said, I know why, so I woke up this morning and thought I’d win your approval as quickly as I could by turning over a new leaf. I intend to work harder today than my father or anyone else at the place.”

“One day doth not a life make,” I recited.

He laughed. “I know, I know. Anyone who uses multisyllabic words is no one who can be convinced of anything simply.”

“Why do it to please me? Why not do it to please your father? Or, more important, yourself?”

The soft smile withered on his face. “I’d rather do it to please you.”

“A stranger?”

“Anyone as beautiful as you are can’t be a stranger, at least to me,” he said.

“You’re right,” I said.

“What?”

“I can’t be convinced of anything simply, especially when prefaced with flattery.”

He laughed, like someone who understood that he
was laughing at himself. “All right, all right, but I’m not using my well-tested pickup lines on you. I’m speaking from the heart. True blue,” he said, and pulled into the parking lot and into his parking space.

The rain slowed to a steady pour as the wind diminished. He shut off the engine and turned to me.

“So, Lorelei Patio, where are you from? What was the stroke of luck that dropped you into Quincy and then into my world?”

“I wasn’t driven here by luck,” I said. If he had tried to find out anything about me from his aunt, she had obviously resisted telling him any part of the story I had told her and Mrs. McGruder. At least, until now.

“Oh? What, then?”

“I’ve got to go in and get to work,” I said. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Hey!” he cried when I opened the door and stuck out the umbrella to open it for the walk to the front entrance. “I didn’t bring an umbrella. At least let me share yours.”

I looked back at him. For a moment, my mind went into rewind, and I recalled the first time I had met Buddy. Ava had taken me to a bar to practice flirtation while following our own special rules concerning what to do and what not to do with men. She had assured me that I would have no trouble being served alcohol there. Someone old enough would surely buy us drinks. It was a bar frequented by college men, and when we had approached the bar, Buddy had stepped forward, bowed like some medieval knight would bow to royalty, and presented us with the bar stools. Ava hadn’t given him more than a glance, but I’d thought immediately that he was different
from the other young men around us. He had a sweeter, gentler face. Right from the moment of meeting him, I had trouble not being honest with him. There was something about him that cried out for sincerity.

Liam looked like that. Despite the bad-boy image he obviously had earned, I saw past it and saw that same vulnerability, that boyish innocence that every man wanted to keep safely and snugly tucked away in his heart to revisit when he felt it was safe to do so. Perhaps men were far less tolerant than women of any of that naiveté. It smelled and tasted too much of virginity and timidity. It threatened their manhood.

How complicated this was, especially for women, I thought. There was a part of us that was drawn to the gentleness and simplicity in a man. Maybe that was the mother in us that wanted to cuddle and soothe them and longed to feel that need in them, a need we also possessed. But there was also that raw lust in us that drew us to the aggressive, domineering, and demanding force in them. We wanted to be ravished and taken. For almost every woman, this was the conflict, the complication that made navigating in the sea of romance difficult and dangerous.

Suddenly, hesitating in Liam’s car and looking at him while all of this came rushing over me, I realized just what made my sisters so grateful for who and what they were. For us, the daughters of darkness, this conflict did not exist. That was why we weren’t supposed to fall in love. We were never to have the need to cuddle and soothe any man, and we were certainly never to surrender to any lust, only to use it as we would any other tool.

But this wasn’t true for me. I had fallen in love with
Buddy, and what was drawing me to Liam right now were feelings and instincts supposedly deadened in my father’s daughters. But they weren’t deadened in me. If I didn’t belong with them, where did I belong? For I didn’t yet feel comfortable in this world to which I had fled.

Seeing the puzzled look on Liam Dolan’s face while I hesitated and pondered this, I realized also how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to start a relationship with him, with Jim Lamb, or with any man I would meet while I was there. This was a difficulty that none of them would understand. I was confident that they would all lose patience with me quickly, and the problem for me would dissipate like smoke.

“Of course I’ll share my umbrella,” I finally said.

I stepped out, closed the door, and hurried around the car with the umbrella opened. He got out and joined me by putting his arm around my waist and stepping under the umbrella, so close to me that our legs touched as we walked and the aroma of his aftershave floated around my face. Laughing at how awkward we were while trying to stay dry, we stepped into the lobby and shook off like two puppies. I glanced around for a place to put the wet umbrella. He took it from me.

“Here,” he said, and put it behind a counter.

Those who had already arrived for work all stopped whatever they were doing and looked at us. Some of the women nodded or shook their heads slightly. I was sure they were thinking,
Didn’t take him long.
Some of the men smiled licentiously, already way ahead in their fantasies, imagining Liam and I groping each other in some motel or his bedroom.

This is why it’s so easy for the daughters of darkness,
I thought.
Look at them all assuming, imagining, lavishing in the erotic, all immediately caught on the sexual hook.

Once they were past puberty, nothing was innocent anymore, not a look, not a touch, not a whisper. And so we baited them with a suggestive smile, a shifting of our eyes, or an innuendo, and they were all ours, practically gift-wrapped for Daddy. Ironically, I had chosen to be like them, the vulnerable ones. I had left the security and the power inherent in Daddy’s world, but at the moment, I detested their weakness. I was still in that love-hate relationship and could feel the struggle for dominance going on inside me.

“Maybe I can see you for lunch,” Liam said. “You do get an hour,” he added, seeing my hesitation. “Dad’s phone goes on automatic voice mail. Didn’t Michele show you that?”

“No. She had so much to tell me that she probably forgot, but I’m sure she will this morning.”

“Great. I’ll stop by. There’s a nice café just down the street.”

“Let me see how things go,” I told him. I wanted him to understand clearly and immediately that I would not be rushed into anything.

“Sure,” he said. He was too proud to show his disappointment, but I could feel it.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said, loudly enough for the woman behind the reception desk to hear. “So fortuitous that you happened along,” I added, and I started quickly for Ken Dolan’s office.

Michael Thomas stepped out of a door to the warehouse.

“Hey,” he called. “I looked for you on my way to work, but I guess you got yourself a ride. You look dry.”

“Yes, thank you, Michael. I tried to walk to work. Liam came along just as it really began to pour.”

“Liam?” He looked down the hallway and saw him talking to the receptionist. “He just happened to come along?”

“I guess,” I said.

He looked at me skeptically, even, I thought, a little critically, as if he believed I was trying to deceive him. “So, you’re telling me it wasn’t something planned?”

“No.”

The lines in his face creased and twisted to form a mask of skepticism.

“That’s what happened. Why do you look so doubtful?”

“The Dolans’ house is on the other side of town. He wouldn’t be just coming along when the downpour started. Not that it’s any of my business,” he added.

“Oh,” I said, realizing that Liam must have planted himself on the street waiting for me to start out.

Michael shrugged, seeing the sincere surprise in my face. “Look at it this way. You got him here to work on time for a change. That’s something his father couldn’t do.”

He paused. I could almost hear his thoughts.
Maybe that’s why Ken Dolan hired you so quickly.

Maybe,
I thought, but I hoped not.

It would be like some other man using me for bait.

I simply couldn’t escape my destiny.

No one wants to feel used, manipulated. I decided that if I concluded that this was the sole reason Ken Dolan had hired me, I would quit and maybe move on to another town or city along the East Coast. Maybe I would even go to Europe, London, anywhere but Quincy. That morning, when he had greeted me, Ken Dolan did look as if he knew his son had driven me to work. One of his employees might have told him, or maybe Liam had told him. Although he didn’t say anything about it, he did look happy that I was behind the desk a few minutes early, perhaps because of Liam. I could almost hear Ava’s laughter.

Michele Levy was there early, too, so she could finish up what she wanted to show me with the office filing system and some other minor issues. I was impressed with her dedication and loyalty to Mr. Dolan. I knew she still had doubts that I could fill her shoes, despite the abilities I had demonstrated and the speed with which I had grasped the tasks. Maybe in her mind, it diminished her importance and achievements to have someone as young as I was fill her position so easily.

Periodically, other young men stopped by, ostensibly to welcome me to the company. From the smiles on their faces and the way they lingered, it was clear they were there to look me over. One of them was Terrence Stone, who managed the showrooms. I knew he was just thirty, but he looked older because he was prematurely balding. I knew he was a smoker, too. I could, as could any of my sisters, smell the scent even before the smoker arrived. All of our senses were sharper and keener. I wondered if mine would diminish with time. Anyway, Daddy didn’t want his daughters to bring him men who were heavy smokers. He didn’t like the taste of their blood.