Flying High (11 page)

I don’t want to be susceptible to him,
but, my Lord, I can’t wait to feel his hands on me again.

* * *

Nelson hardly recognized Audrey when she opened her door
that morning. In low-slung white linen pants, blue-and-white sailor shirt and
sneakers to match, she had the appearance of a teenager, and with her hair
swinging around her shoulders, she oozed glamour and sex. He didn’t for a minute
think that was what she intended, but it was definitely the effect she
created.

As he gazed down at her, liquid accumulated in his mouth and he
caught his breath as it escaped him in quick, short pants. What the devil was
happening to him?
She knows I want her, but, thank God, she
can’t guess how much.
He forced a careless smile. For his peace of
mind, he’d have been happier if she had greeted Ricky and him in one of her
usual buttoned-down outfits. The boy smiled up at Audrey and stretched his
little arms out to her, puzzling him as to the child’s affection for her.

“Looking at you puts me in the mood for...er...sailing,” he
said. Halfway through the sentence, his thoughts had swung from fun with her on
the Potomac River to a more intimate experience. “After we leave the library, we
could go for cruise on the Potomac.”

“Sounds good,” she said as she hugged Ricky. He wondered why
she seemed disconcerted and asked if she was sure she wanted to spend that much
time with them.

‘I’ve got the day free,” she said. “I was a bit surprised that
you
wanted to spend your Saturday
sightseeing.”

He did not, but he couldn’t take the chance that they might
become someone’s target and he wouldn’t be there when they needed him.

He forced a grin. “Are you suggesting I wouldn’t grab the
chance to spend time with you? You couldn’t be serious.”

He sat with the two of them in the library’s children’s theater
with only a small part of his thigh resting on the little chair. Almost
immediately, he found himself engrossed in the children’s reaction to the
stories and, especially, in their questions.

“If the cow can jump over the moon, how big is the moon?” one
girl asked.

“Silly,” a boy needled, “cows are so big they can jump over
anything they want to.”

“They don’t jump over the fence,” Ricky said.

“They don’t want to get out, maybe,” the girl said, “but that’s
stupid.”

Something, maybe an intuition, pricked his senses, and he
shifted his gaze to the door in time to see a tall, fair-complexioned, mustached
man ease away from the doorjamb and walk out of the theater.

He tapped Audrey’s shoulder. “Be right back. Take care.”

Outside the theater, he saw the man with his back against the
wall, using his cellular phone. Marilyn wouldn’t put such an obvious agent on a
case. More likely, she would send a man who wore a jogging suit and sneakers and
resembled a basketball player. This man’s clothes would have suited an
undertaker. After making a mental note of the man, he ducked back into the
theater.

“Unca Nelson, can we buy Audie some ice cream?” Ricky asked him
as they left the library. “At her house we had ice cream all the time.”

“Now wait a minute, Ricky. We had ice cream after lunch and
after dinner. Not all the time.”

“I thought it was all the time, Audie,” he said taking her
hand.

“I think we’re going to have to forego the cruise today,”
Nelson told them. “Something came up.”

“But I want to go on the cruise with Audie, Unca Nelson.
Please. Can me and Audie go?”

“Audie and I, you mean. Anyhow, we can’t do it today, but I’ll
try to manage it next Saturday if Audrey can make it.”

He had expected Ricky’s temper to assert itself, but instead,
the boy turned to Audrey. “Can you come with us next Saturday please, Audie? My
Unca Nelson has to do something now.”

“Anytime after twelve is fine with me.”

The child’s eyes beseeched him, begging him to promise. He
picked Ricky up and looked him in the eye. “Son, a serviceman can’t make firm
promises. I have explained to you that my first duty is to our country. If I’m
not needed for anything else, we can spend Saturday afternoon together. All
right?”

Ricky nodded, his face alight with an eagerness only a child
could show. Nelson glanced over Ricky’s shoulder at Audrey with an unspoken
question ablaze on his face, and his heart began to race, for her eyes told him
that whatever he wished was his if she could grant it. At that moment, Ricky’s
arms tightened around his shoulders, and he gave thanks for that buffer between
him and the desire that threatened to bolt out of control. Without taking his
gaze from hers, he set Ricky on his feet and took the few steps that separated
him from Audrey.

“Be careful about the messages you send me, Audrey. I won’t
forget them, and I will definitely hold you accountable. Can we go now?”

“Fine. See you Saturday.”

“Oh, we’ll speak before then. Come.” He took her hand. “Ricky
and I will take you home.” He wanted to free himself as quickly as possible. If
Marilyn had a security guard on Ricky, he hadn’t been able to identify the
person. One thing was certain: the man he’d seen was on someone else’s team.

* * *

“He isn’t our man,” Marilyn said when he called her,
“but we know who he is. So far, he is about as effective as a tub-thumping
rainmaker. However, that could be a ruse. Our gal was sitting two rows directly
behind you.”

He hadn’t seen a woman who... He gasped, and then laughter
rolled out of him. What a disguise! He’d thought he was fairly expert at
detecting spies, hit men and bodyguards. The woman in the chair two rows back
had had the appearance of a grandmother.

“How old is she really?” he asked Marilyn.

Marilyn’s laugh amazed him; he hadn’t heard it before.
“Thirty-four. She can also look eighty if the situation calls for it. Not to
worry. She’s first-class.”

He hung up feeling less confident about the mystery surrounding
Ricky’s young admirer. Marilyn’s actions were proof she suspected impending
danger. He hadn’t wanted to tell Lena about it, but he didn’t have a choice.

* * *

Audrey looked out of her kitchen window at the gathering
clouds that would wash out her jogging for that day. She didn’t remember having
witnessed so many storms in early June. She didn’t mind the rain, but she had
never overcome her childhood fear of thunder and lightning. She went to the
phone and dialed her younger sister.

“I have to postpone our Saturday afternoon shopping trip again,
Winifred. I had to promise Ricky I’d go somewhere with him.”

“What do you mean, you
had
to
promise him? You’re doing it because you want to. Is tall, honey-skin and
handsome going along?”

She loved Winifred, but the girl didn’t mind jumping into her
sisters’ personal affairs, though she kept her own to herself.

“Nelson is going with us, yes.”

Audrey imagined her sister’s face taking on its superior facade
when Winifred said, “Sis, you are really a case. You want the guy. Nothing wrong
with that. If you hadn’t gotten to him first, I would have given him more than a
passing glance. That brother is
it
. I mean, we’re
speaking fine, here. Jet-black hair, skin the color of honeycomb, dark brown
eyes and those long, silky-black lashes. If you tell me you’re not interested, I
won’t believe you.”

“You sound as if you are.” She didn’t like the trend of the
conversation.

“Not me. I don’t ride bareback, so to speak, but when I see
God’s perfection, girl, I bow to it. The only reason that brother’s single is
because some stupid woman did a real job on him.”

She thought of the way his voice made her tingle. “Winifred,
for goodness sake!”

“Hey! Don’t be so uptight. If he’s got the music that makes you
dance, go for it.”

“Listen, Wendy, if you knew as much as you sound like you know,
you’d own Microsoft, and I’d genuflect every time your name came up. What about
you? Pam told me Hendren introduced you to a great guy last Sunday night. What
happened?”

She knew the man impressed her sister when Winifred didn’t
shoot from the hip with a ready putdown. “He was...uh, he was okay.”

Audrey couldn’t help laughing. “Okay? That’s a rave coming from
you. I want to meet him. Something tells me the guy knocked you off your high
horse. What’s his name?”

“Ryan Addison, and don’t tease me about him.”

If a man had finally shaken her sister from head to foot the
way Nelson shook her when she first looked at him, maybe Winifred would be less
strident and more compassionate. Loving a man changed a woman. She couldn’t put
her finger on the time or incident that had precipitated it, but although she
still had her personal goals and meant to see them fulfilled, the prism through
which she viewed the world had altered.

She recognized in herself a gentleness that she used to think
of as milquetoast, as a lack of strength and self-confidence in others. And for
the first time in her memory, she didn’t avoid eye contact with the bedraggled
and the downtrodden.

“Let yourself get to know him, Wendy. You can’t imagine how
much happier you’ll be if you care for someone who feels the same way about
you.”

She heard a gasp. “That definitely doesn’t sound like you,
girl.”

She sat down beside the walnut, marble-top table on which the
phone rested, stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles. “That’s what I’m
trying to tell you. I know Nelson’s honorable, that he isn’t like Gerald, and I
know that if I can make myself trust him fully, I’ll be happy. He cares for me,
Wendy, but you were right when you said some woman did a job on him. He hasn’t
told me, but he might as well make a sign and plaster it across his
forehead.”

“What are you going to do?” Though bossy and sharp-tongued, her
younger sister loved her, was deeply attached to her and looked to her for
guidance.

She got up, walked to the window, saw again the black clouds
that were now lit by lightning streaking among them and drew the blinds.

“I don’t know, Wendy. We’re not lovers, and I’m convinced I’d
better keep it that way.”

“Yeah? You’d better hope he cooperates.”

“Tell me about it. We should hang up. It’s dangerous to use a
phone during this kind of storm. We’ll talk.”

After hanging up, she sat there musing over what she’d admitted
to Winifred.
Oh, hell! I’m not going that way. Daydreaming
when I should be working. The bottom falling out of my stomach every time I
look at him. I must be out of my mind. When I see him Saturday, I’m going to
act as if he’s just another man.

Saturday afternoon arrived and, dressed for the cruise in white
slacks, yellow T-shirt, white sneakers and yellow socks, she opened her front
door and looked into the eyes of Nelson Wainwright. Her heart went on a rampage
in her chest, and the bottom tumbled from her stomach.

He almost smiled. “Hi.”

She didn’t answer him; she couldn’t, for her jaws seemed wired
together when she attempted to speak. Saved by Ricky’s exuberant embrace, she
hugged the child, smiled and took her time locking the front door. But before
she could remove the key from the lock, his hand closed over hers and, as if
programmed, she turned into his arms.

“No greeting for me?” he asked.

“Hi,” she whispered, and let her lashes cover her all-revealing
eyes. But he tipped up her chin with his right index finger.

“This isn’t something you can shove into a corner, and there’s
no point in praying it will go away. Hell! I’ve stopped trying because I know
it’s going to nag us until it has its day. You have to deal with it just as I
do.”

She moved as far from him as the door at her back would allow.
“Are you telling me you’re going to pursue this...this—”

He cupped her face with both of his hands. “I may not have a
choice. I’m beginning to feel like the criminal who’s gotten tired of years on
the lam and gives himself up because the price of freedom is too high.”

She imagined her eyes grew to twice their size. “What an
analogy! Did you hear what you said?”

A grim, gray cast settled over his face. “Yeah. I heard it.
Let’s go. I got us tickets for the two-thirty cruise.”

* * *

“I’m taking the shortcut, and say your prayers that we
don’t get stuck in traffic,” he said as they headed down Wisconsin Avenue.

“I love the breeze back here,” Ricky said, “but I can’t see
anything.”

“You will see plenty, but you have to sit back there in your
car seat where you’re safe.”

“Can Audie sit back here where she’ll be safe, Unca
Nelson?”

What was he going to do with this child when he reached the age
of reason? “Audrey’s big enough to be safe up here.”

“Oh. I’m going to get big real soon, Unca Nelson.”

At M Street, Northwest, he crossed over to Fourteenth Street
and headed for the bridge that would take them to Alexandria. A sense of pride
pervaded him whenever he passed the Jefferson Memorial. Magnificent by day and
awe-inspiring at night.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a Marine officer sworn to give my life
for my country,” he said to Audrey, “that I almost choke up whenever I look at
this or when I see the Lincoln Memorial. I think of the countries I’ve been in
and the abject poverty of most people on this earth—in Asia, Latin America, the
Caribbean and especially Africa—and their enslavement to the past and to the
despots who govern them. All that ensures they may never have a better life.
Makes me humble. I’ll fight anybody and anything that threatens to take this
away from me.”

She shifted in the seat beside him. “I’ve never heard you voice
such sentiments.”

“Oh, I know there’s plenty wrong with this place, and I know
what it is and what should be done to fix it. But it’s almost heaven compared to
so many places I’ve been.”