Last Chance at Love (27 page)

“He’s as ordinary as they come,” Jake said.

They sat on the bench beneath the old maple, and he nestled her close to him. “What did you want to be when you were little or a teenager?” he asked her.

“I wanted to be a professional singer, but my darling mother said ladies don’t entertain people; other people entertain
them.
There went my dream. They wanted to send me to the University of Vermont to be a teacher, a proper position for a lady, but I rebelled and went to Howard University.”

“And you asserted your independence by studying journalism.”

“I guess so.”

“I dreamed a lot of things for myself,” he said, “but poverty is a master leveling agent. On the whole, I’m satisfied so far with the choices I made.”

And so it went. The little that they divulged hardly passed for personal. Disappointed that he told her nothing that relieved her quandary, and unable to bring herself to open up to him and tell him about Roland, she suggested that they visit her aunt Frances. When he readily accepted, she knew he also regarded their sojourn in Idlewild as futile.

* * *

During the flight to Washington, she grappled with the demons that had tormented her since the tour began, intensified by his mysterious behavior and culminating in the revelation of Mac Connelly. She would surely lose him, but she believed in being straight. Her mind made up, she spent the remainder of the flight dealing with the pain.

At the airport in Washington Sunday afternoon, he hailed a taxi, put her luggage in the trunk, and turned to her. “I imagine you’ll be busy writing your story—”

“Come home with me, Jake. Please. I have to talk.”

His raised eyebrow suggested that she had wasted the opportunity to do that when they were in Idlewild. She didn’t waver from his gaze, fierce and inquiring, as it bored into her.

“All right,” he said when the taxi driver honked the horn and yelled back, “You getting in or not?”

He brought her bags into the house, closed the door, but didn’t sit down.

“Have a seat, Jake. This may take a while. You wanted to know what happened to cool our relationship. Any journalist worth hiring is a sharp and constant observer. I always questioned the frequent alterations of the tour, because they were so abrupt, and your disappearances during that cruise heightened my interest, if not my suspicions.”

His expression didn’t change, but she couldn’t help noticing that he ground his teeth and a muscle in his jaw twitched, and she realized that he was either angry or anxious. But she had to tell him.

“Last Friday night, I realized that you and Mac Connelly are the same man, but you didn’t trust me enough to tell me. And maybe that was a good thing, because I have to include that in my report.”

He jerked forward. “You’d do that to me? The trustees at State University would never give their one seat of honor to a jazzman; they associate jazz and pop music with every sin known to man. You agreed to report on my nine-to-five activities plus all lectures, TV, and radio appearances. Now you tell me your word isn’t worth a damn.” He rose to leave.

“I haven’t finished, Jake. That was your part; this is mine. I was twenty-four and on my first job with a major newspaper, assigned to write a minibiography on Roland Farr, an up-and-coming business executive and man-about-town. He was thirty-five years old, and I was no match for him. He seduced me in what I could later see as the most cunning of ways, claiming he didn’t want us to get involved, but cleverly dragging me into his web. I noticed many suspicious things about him, but I was infatuated, so I told myself I couldn’t prove it.

“I came across information that he was a part of a smuggling ring, the main source of his considerable income, but I discounted that, too, telling myself that there had to be a mistake. I excluded it from my report, which began on the front page of
The Post.
The next day,
The Star
printed a story on Farr that included everything I omitted, and documented it. My boss called me at two o’clock in the morning and told me I was fired. Farr was never indicted. This is my first job as a journalist since that humiliating experience. I promised myself I would never again cover for a man, no matter how much I loved him. A repeat of that fiasco would damage my career irreparably.”

He got up and began walking the floor, his hands in his trousers pockets. “If you disclose my identity as Mac Connelly, I can forget about all I’ve worked so hard for. I’m sorry about what you’ve gone through with that poor excuse for a man, because I can imagine how you suffered.

“It’s your choice. I wish you well.” He walked out, taking with him her last chance at love, because she would never again allow herself to love.

A week later, she handed in her report to Bill Jenkins and left the office, not wanting anyone to see the tears that threatened to wash her face.

He telephoned her at home. “Great job, babe. There isn’t a man anywhere who doesn’t have a secret he wants hidden. Too bad you couldn’t find out what he did all those times he sneaked away from you. You’re in for a raise.”

Two days later, Sunday, she opened a copy of
The Post
—which, to her surprise, carried a front-page story on Jacob Covington—and gasped. Unable to read beyond the sentence that began
Jacob Covington has proved to be a man with many secrets,
she folded the paper and put it on the top step to be discarded.

The next morning, as she sat in her office trying to think of a hook that would justify writing a story about skateboarding, her telephone rang.

“Allison Wakefield,” she said in a disinterested manner, since she knew the caller would not be Jake.

“I’m Ron Parker, managing editor of
The Herald.
I’m impressed with that piece you did on Covington, sensitive and not out for the jugular. First-class reporting.” She grasped her throat as if to prevent her heart’s escape. “If you’re not satisfied over there,” he went on, “I’d like you to work for me.”

“Well...are you sure you’re Ronald Parker?”

“You bet. I’ll be here all afternoon, if you’re willing to discuss it.”

Her common sense restored, she assured him that she’d be there at two, closed her computer, and sat there looking at it. She didn’t want to climb up knowing she had pushed Jake’s goal beyond his reach. But she also welcomed the opportunity to leave Bill Jenkins’s smut mill. At five o’clock that afternoon, she walked into her house as features editor and occasional contributor to the features page of
The Herald,
one of the city’s most influential newspapers. Bill Jenkins had objected to her leaving, but because he knew she had no options when he hired her, he hadn’t given her a contract, only employment by assignment. Thus, he had no contractual hold on her.

She longed to share her good news with Jake, but she didn’t think he would welcome it. A phone call to Sydney went unanswered, and she didn’t call Connie because her friend was on vacation with Mark Reddaway. She roamed around her house until she couldn’t bear the sight of it, went out on her deck, and watched the autumn leaves drift to earth.

The occasion called for the best champagne to celebrate her return to the world of established journalists. Now, she could lunch at the Pen and Pencil, the Written Word, and other journalists’ hangouts with head high, knowing she belonged. Once more, she would carry a press card. She bit her lips to stop their quivering. Damned if she would cry. She hadn’t done that at the nadir of her career, and she wouldn’t do it now.

She didn’t examine the reason carefully; maybe she just wanted to know he was all right. She went to the telephone and dialed Annie Covington’s number.

“How are you, dear?” Annie asked after their first obligatory words of greeting. “I mean,
how are you?
”

“Awful, Mrs. Covington. You couldn’t imagine how awful.”

“Yes, I can, but you brighten up. Jake will get whatever the Lord has in store for him. Why don’t you come down here to see me this weekend?”

She didn’t think it proper; maybe Jake would want to visit his mother and wouldn’t want to see her. “Maybe Jake won’t like it.”

“He doesn’t say who visits me. Besides, he’s out on his boat. Been there for the last week. You come on.”

Allison pondered the idea while they talked. She couldn’t unburden her heart to her own mother, because Edna Wakefield knew almost nothing of compassion, but Annie Covington would welcome her with a mother’s warmth and listen with compassion to the hurt that spilled out of her. Hurt because she had lost Jake, and hurt for the pain she caused him. She decided to go.

“I’m so glad you came,” Annie said to Allison when she arrived the next day at noon, and locked her tight into her arms. “I’ve wanted to see you again. Now, you come on in here. I have something to tell you.”

“What is it? Is Jake all right?”

“Yes, and...well, no.”

Allison grabbed Annie’s arm. “What’s the matter with him? Tell me.”

“Stop worrying, child. He’s all right. Since yesterday, he’s been fine...or almost. Come on into the kitchen. I made crab cakes for you.”

Allison sat down before a plate of crab cakes and buttermilk biscuits and a glass of lemonade, but she barely touched her favorite food.

“Mrs. Covington, please tell me what’s going on with Jake.”

Annie pressed her palms to her thighs. “Well, seems a lot of newspapers picked up your story, they did some research, found out about his government work, and printed the entire story. So, thanks to the story you wrote, Jake’s a national celebrity. A man called here all the way from Hollywood wanting to make a story of Jake’s life. Looks like you did him a favor.”

Allison shook her head. Unimpressed. “But the thing Jake wants most isn’t a movie about his life, but an appointment as scholar-in-residence at his undergraduate university, and I ruined that for him. I wish I could... Did he mention me at all?”

Annie blew out a long breath and looked toward the ceiling. “You’re just as foolish as Jake is. You’re both miserable. He knows he’s unhappy, but he’s too stubborn to do anything about it, and you’ve heaped so much guilt on yourself—for no reason, I might add—that you can’t make the first move.”

“He won’t want to hear from me.”

“Really? Allison, I thought you were a smart woman. You only did your job, and he should be man enough to accept that fact. Eat your crab cake. His boat’s docked about four miles from here. Drive on down the road for about a quarter of a mile, turn left into that lane, and drive till you see the boat.”

“Can I take him some crab cakes?”

“Atta girl. Biscuits, too, and don’t leave there till he’s yours.”

Allison didn’t let herself think about whether or how Jake would receive her. No matter how it was resolved, she had to try, because she didn’t want to live without him. She parked at the dock, and with no other car in sight, she figured he didn’t have guests. If he did, she couldn’t help it; she might not get the courage again to try making amends.

She didn’t see a gangplank or even a board that she could use to get on the boat, so she picked up some pebbles and threw them at first one window, and then another. After about five minutes, when her arm had begun to tire, he stepped out on the deck and yelled, “Cut it out.”

For a second she merely let her eyes feast on him as he stood there barefoot in a pair of tan shorts and a white T-shirt, scowling in displeasure. He turned to go back inside, and she called to him.

“Jake. May I come aboard? Please. I have to see you.”

He whirled around and balanced himself against a post, as if groping for strength. “Allison. Where did you—”

“Jake, please hear what I have to say.”

He gazed down at her from the distance as if making sure she was not an apparition. “Wait a minute.”

He put in place a wooden plank, held out his hand, and waited for her to join him. “Don’t be nervous,” he said. “I’ll catch you if you fall.”

With those words ringing in her ears, the trip up to board the small yacht no longer unnerved her. She reached the boat, and he took her hand. She didn’t know how long they stood in the spot staring at each other. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but how could she?

Finally, in an effort to break the silence, she said, “I brought you some crab cakes and buttermilk biscuits.”

At last, a smile covered his face and he took her hand, went with her inside, and closed the door.

“Did you come just to bring me these?”

She shook her head and didn’t move her gaze from his. “I called your mother because I had to know where you were and how you were. She invited me to come see her, and I arrived this noon.

“If I asked forgiveness, Jake, it would be a lie. What I’m asking is whether there can be anything for us. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’ve been in pain ever since you walked out of my house.”

“Let’s go in here and sit down,” he said. “I didn’t expect ever to be here with you like this, although I’ve wanted it badly. Needed you like... I went over what you told me about Farr and yourself maybe fifty times. I called Duncan and asked if he remembered it. He did; he said the press ‘horsewhipped’ you, and that he was pleased to know that you were working with me, because I wouldn’t compromise you. He recognized you, but he wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t broached it to him.

“I couldn’t ask you to withhold information, because I would have done what you did.”

“But... Oh, Jake. It cost you so much.”

His eyebrows shot up and his left hand fingered his chin. “Haven’t you been reading the papers?”

“No. I haven’t looked at a paper since I saw that exposé in
The Post.
I read the first sentence and threw the paper away.”

“Then you don’t know that I’ve resigned my job, and I’ve been appointed scholar-in-residence at State University?”

She nearly swallowed her tongue.
“What?”

When he repeated it, she jumped out of her chair with her arms widespread, and he rose to meet her. “Thank God,” she said over and over. “I’m so happy.”

Until his arms tightened around her, being locked in them didn’t register, so great was her relief and her joy that he wouldn’t suffer because of her.