Love Me Tonight (9 page)

“I'd like to check out the churches to see if he belonged to any of them. Some of his fellow church members might still be in contact with him.”

“Good idea,” she said and went online and began writing the names of local churches, the ministers and phone numbers.

“We can check those after lunch,” he told her and phoned Cissy. “This is Judson. Are we late for lunch? If we are—”

“You come right on and bring that young lady. I want to meet her. Lunch will be ready when you get here.”

“Can't I go home and freshen up?” Heather asked Judson.

“Why? You want to put on an evening gown? You're wearing a white pantsuit and a yellow blouse, your hair is perfect, and you look beautiful, at least to me.”

“But she's the only one of your relatives I'll meet, and…”

He stood, took her briefcase and his in one hand and her hand in his other one. “Stop worrying. Come on. You're going to get a wonderful lunch.”

He put the briefcases in the trunk of his car and drove them to Cissy's house. They found her sitting on the front porch cooling herself with a church fan. When he parked, she got up and met them as they walked up the path to her steps.

After hugging Judson, she smiled at Heather and then hugged her. “There's a lot Judson didn't tell me about you, but now that I've met you, I can guess half of it. He's too smart to pass up a woman who's both talented
and
beautiful.”

Heather's pleasure showed on her face. “Thank you, ma'am.”

“Aunt Cissy, this is Heather Tatum.” Without thinking about it, he eased an arm around Heather's waist. “Heather, this is my aunt Cissy.”

“Yes,” Cissy said. “He left out a lot, but he's very proud of you, Heather. He told me you're a lawyer and a roving ambassador. Congratulations. I love to see our young women step up to the plate, educate themselves and do important things.”

“Thank you, Aunt Cissy. I appreciate your good
wishes. Getting the education was the easy part. The rest has been like walking barefoot on hot coals.”

“I'm sure of that. Anytime a woman gets into a man's world, the menfolk do their best to kick her right back into the kitchen. Till I got a job teaching math at the local high school, only men taught math and science here. For the next thirty-five years, the boys tried to put me back in my place, but I never gave in. You can freshen up in the powder room right there.” She pointed to a door off the living room. “I made sure to get the place nice and cool.”

They finished a meal of baked ham, corn fritters, butter beans, coleslaw, pickled beets, lemonade and apple pie à la mode. Heather looked at Cissy and Judson, patted her belly and said, “I could go to sleep right this minute. That was wonderful.”

“You can't sleep now,” he told her, “because we have to call these churches and find out whether Fentriss Sparkman belonged to one of them.”

“Okay.” She opened her pocketbook. “Here's the list.”

“Let me see,” Cissy said. She glanced over it. “He might have gone to Mt. Bethel or Shiloh Baptist, but not any of these other ones, unless he was Catholic. If he was Catholic, he was sinning up a blue streak and probably not going to church. I'd start with Bethel and Shiloh. Didn't you make any headway this morning?”

“We found him listed as being in Frederick, Maryland, five years ago, but we don't have anything on him after that. So my next search will be in Frederick.”

Sitting in Cissy's living room, he dialed Mt. Bethel
AME Church. “This is attorney Judson Philips. I'm trying to reach Fentriss Sparkman. Could he have been a member of your church?”

“No, sir. I've been preaching here for almost forty years, and I never heard of him.”

Judson thanked the man and made the next call. He dialed with shaky fingers, aware that the effort could move him toward success in his search or prove a waste of time.

“He used to come here years ago,” the minister of Shiloh Baptist Church told Judson. “I mean that was a
long
time ago. I was a young assistant minister. As I remember, he wasn't active in the church, just attended something like one or two times a month. Tomorrow morning I'll ask if anybody knows his whereabouts. Call me around three o'clock.”

“Thank you, sir. I'll do that. You've been very helpful.”

He told Heather and Cissy what he'd learned. “I'm wondering if it would make sense to go over to Frederick today. It would probably take us at least an hour to get there, and I don't have any leads.”

Cissy poured them each a glass of homemade lemonade. “Frederick's a big city. You could go there and waste a lot of time.”

“I know,” Judson said, “but I'll have some leads by next weekend. Still, it's as if I got to a brick wall and don't have a way to climb over it.”

“A
re you taking anyone to the White House reception?” Scott asked Heather the next Monday morning as they drank coffee in the coffee closet, the staff's name for the little room.

“Judson is my escort.”

“That's great. So you finally broke down and decided not to go alone and be a renegade.”

“This is the first time I had a man I was proud to go with.”

Scott pressed his right hand to the left side of his chest and covered his face with a hurt expression. “You wound me.”

“No such thing. I couldn't attend with a colleague. Besides, you never asked
me.
What happened to the woman you took to that last reception?”

“It was nothing serious—you remember.”

“That's a good thing. She wasn't right for you. Any tips on that situation in Colombia? I know you're dealing with Mexico, but I see some similar threads in these problems.”

“You're right. There are several, and they may be more closely connected than we think. I'll send you my notes on what I've figured out about problems in Mexico. When are you leaving?”

“Saturday morning. I want to speak with a few strategic contacts before I get down to business the following Monday.”

“Great idea but watch your back. Say, how are things going with you and Judson? My so-called friend doesn't tell me much.”

“He requires a lot of understanding, but I'm getting there, and we're slowly getting on the same page.”

“I was hoping for more than that. He's one hell of a guy, and he's decent-looking. What's the holdup?”

“Decent-looking, did you say? That's a laugh! Judson charts his own course. If I had my way, it would move faster because I'm always impatient. But in this case, it probably wouldn't last. To say the least, I'm learning something important, and I'm glad for it.”

“Don't waste it, friend. The postman does not always ring twice.”

She went back to her office thinking about Scott's advice. The more she was with Judson, the more she wanted to be with him and the more she admired him. He'd known the eight-four-year-old aunt of his adoptive mother for less than one month, and he'd taken her into
his life. It had astonished her to see that he regarded Cissy with genuine affection, which the woman truly reciprocated.

“He's like that with her,” she said to herself. “Imagine what he'd be like if he loved a woman.” She stopped walking when she realized that she badly wanted to be that woman.
When did I fall in love with him? I was being so careful and so clever. It happened anyway.

 

Thursday arrived, and Judson was at Heather's apartment at seven-thirty that morning for the drive to Washington, although they usually made the commute separately and by train. Because they planned to stay in Washington and not risk a late-night drive after a day of work and partying, they had arranged to stay at a hotel.

“Do you want connecting rooms?” the registration clerk at the Willard Hotel asked.

“No,” they said simultaneously.

He handed them their keys. “I'll send your bags up. Enjoy your stay.”

“Thank you,” Judson said.

“He was fresh,” she said to Judson as they walked to the elevator. “Twenty years old and fresh.”

“I remember when I was that age. I spent a lot of time imagining what it was to have sex all the time. Don't think too unkindly of him. That is definitely not the age of wisdom.”

“Girls think of moonlight and roses, a guy kissing you at sunset beside a running brook, whether your dad's going to let you out of the house the next evening
so you can see him, getting to the next party, stuff like that. Oh yes, we do think about sex and imagine that one day a guy will make the earth move.”

“That is definitely not what guys are thinking.” He laughed. “I'm in 618. Where are you?”

“Six nineteen. We're in rooms facing each other.”

“I'll meet you at the desk downstairs at five-thirty,” Judson promised.

She looked up at him. “I don't suppose I could get a kiss here in the corridor?”

He kissed her quickly on the mouth. “I'm not risking one of your sizzling sessions. A lot's facing me today. If we meet at five-thirty, that should give us plenty of time,” he said. “We have to be there at a quarter of seven latest. The car will be here at a quarter of six, and the traffic from these few blocks to the White House will be horrendous.”

 

Heather left the office early and returned to the hotel at a quarter of three. Official functions could be as grueling as they were glamorous, and she wanted time to rest. She headed for the elevator and stopped. Judson walked out of the hotel's business center reading a paper and nearly walked into her. Shocked at the near collision, he reached out to her, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “See you later,” he said, barely taking his eyes from the paper he'd been reading. “Don't oversleep.”

She caressed his cheek. “Don't
you
oversleep.” In her room, she inspected her dress and, satisfied that she would look her best, she put her underwear, evening shoes, gloves and bag on a chair. After a leisurely,
scented bath, she dried and powdered her body, checked her nails, rolled up her hair and crawled into bed. Remembering that she had to be ready in two hours, she asked for a wake-up call and went to sleep.

 

He'd fought with the idea of wearing a cummerbund, decided that it was inappropriate with his navy tux. He didn't spend a lot of time fussing with clothes, but when it came to women and formal attire, he'd learned that you'd better get it right. He leaned against the reception desk waiting for Heather, impatient, not because he minded the wait; he didn't. But because he simply could not wait to be with her, and he knew that no matter what she wore, she would suit him. She turned the corner from the bank of elevators and he glanced at his watch. Precisely on time. A smile lit her face the minute she saw him, and his heart fluttered. He stepped away from the desk and went to meet her, a vision in an elegant dark pink gown and silver accessories.

“Heather, you're so beautiful and so elegant,” he said. “You take my breath away.”

“Thank you.” Her radiant smile seemed to bless him. “I'm glad you like the way I look. I'll be lucky to leave that reception with you.”

“Why so?”

“Because I won't be the only woman there, and I'm sure some of those women will recognize the Lord's perfect handiwork. You look magnificent.”

He hoped his expanding chest wouldn't pop one of the buttons on his shirt. “I wanted to please you.”

 

He observed her throughout the evening as she introduced him with a show of pride. She didn't work the room during the cocktails prior to dinner, but moved to people with whom she seemed well-acquainted.

“I thought you'd be in Albania about now,” a senator said to her.

“I speak several languages, Dirk, but not that one. I don't see how one can serve effectively if one is saddled with an interpreter.”

“I couldn't agree with you more,” he said. She shook hands with the man and, with a finger at his elbow, she signaled to Judson to move on. He appreciated that; she never left him to trail behind her.

After dinner, he was ready to leave. He had met and spoken to the president and the first lady, and he'd had the company of the most desirable, elegant and beautiful woman there. And he was leaving with her.

“Do you want to stay and dance, or should we leave now?” she asked him. “It's been a long day.”

“I want to spend what's left of the evening with you.”

Something quickened in her eyes, and her hand reached out and grasped his arm. Her lips moved, but no words came. “Are you ready to leave?” he asked her.

She nodded, and as if she feared losing what she saw in his eyes, she didn't shift her gaze from his. He led her to the cloakroom, for he guessed that a ladies' room would be nearby. As he suspected, she asked to be excused and went in. He pulled out his cell phone,
phoned the hotel and placed an order to be sent to his room. Luck was with him, and he ended the call seconds before she came out of the women's room. He'd confirm the order when they returned to the hotel.

“If what you're going to do this weekend has a potential for danger, don't tell me,” he said.

“It doesn't have, though it has great potential for failure. We have an official ambassador there and two advisers, but the problem remains. Not that they aren't competent. They are. But if you have to socialize with people they sometimes don't take you as seriously as they should in business matters. I won't have a single drink with anybody.”

He stared at her.

“What is it, Judson?”

“I've just now realized that your work can be dangerous and that the thought unsettles me.”

“Don't worry, I get plenty of protection, more than I want, in fact. You may rest easily. But thank you for caring.”

“Of course I care!”

Their car arrived, and they settled into its luxurious comfort. He put his arms around her. “This is something I've wanted to do since you appeared in the lobby at five-thirty this afternoon,” he said and bent to her lips.

She melted into him as quickly as if she had been longing for him to possess her, parted her lips, took him in and feasted on his tongue, sucking on it, giving him unmistakable evidence that she wanted him. He sensed
the car slowing down, guessed that it approached the hotel and broke the kiss as gently as he could

“Sweetheart, we're almost there,” he explained.

The car stopped, he got out and assisted her, tipped the driver, and they headed to the door as news cameras flashed. “Who is the lovely lady you're with?” one man asked, microphone and pen in hand.

“We're nobody special,” he said and attempted to pass.

“Come on, Mr. Philips. Introduce your lady friend. ‘Nobodies' do not get invited to White House receptions.” He looked to Heather hoping she'd speak up, but she clung to him as if she hadn't heard the man's question.

“Good night, gentlemen,” he said and, holding Heather's hand, plowed through the mass of reporters. He stopped at the receptionist's desk and confirmed that he had ordered refreshments to be sent to his room.

“We may have to leave here separately tomorrow,” he said, as they got in the elevator. “A five dollar tip to a receptionist and Google will tell a reporter who you are. I'm sorry.”

She handed him her key card. “Would you like to come in?”

He opened the door, walked in with her and closed it behind him. “And thank you for inviting me to accompany you tonight. It was my first time in the White House, and I'll never forget the experience.”

“Judson, I've been to all kinds of formals and receptions, but I knew tonight was the first one I'd ever enjoy, so much the first in which I felt at ease and as if
I belonged. Being with you made it so special. I was so proud to be with you.”

“I'm the one who was proud. I had the cream of the crop. I knew it and so did every man there.”

She reached up, caressed the side of his face and, as if that weren't sufficient, she clasped his nape and brought his lips to hers. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, and fire shot through him. He heard her small silver purse hit the chair, realized that she'd tossed it away to gain full use of both hands, and he had a rush of excitement. Her right hand loosened a shirt button, stole inside his shirt and caressed his chest, the first time he'd felt her hand on his bare body.

He held her away from him. “Do you know what you're doing?”

“Probably not,” she said, “but I'll take my chances.”

He stared down at her. She was not an innocent. A virgin wouldn't kiss the way she did. But she was in some respects naive about male-female relations, and he'd better be careful.

She peeled off his jacket and laid it across the back of a chair. She removed her earrings, dropped them on the desk and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Kiss me as if you mean it.”

Watching her unskilled seduction efforts had already heated his libido to fever point, and he wanted to take over and love her senseless, but he knew that by letting her do it in her slow and almost torturous way, he'd be the winner in the end.

He brushed his lips gently over hers, teasing and testing until she seemed exasperated. “Stop teasing
me. Give it to me,” she said, parting her lips and he shoved it into her mouth. He knew how she wanted it, and he obliged, lifting her to fit him and with one hand on her buttocks and the other at the back of her head, he held her. When she began to moan softly, he increased the pressure of his hands on her buttocks, rubbing and stroking. She raised her dress, wrapped her legs around his hips, rocked against him and he jumped to full readiness. She tightened her legs around him and pressed his buttocks as if to fasten him to her.

“Kiss me,” she whispered. “You know I want you to kiss me.”

He increased his passion.

“I want your mouth on my breast,” she said, her voice urgent.

He released the part of her left breast that wasn't visible, sucked it into his mouth and enjoyed the sound of her cry. He loved the sweetness of her flesh, and he suckled her as if he'd never get enough. She began to undulate wildly.

“Do you want me? Do you?” he asked her. “Tell me.”

“Yes. Yes. Don't walk away from me this time. I couldn't bear it. I need you.”

He settled her on her feet, unzipped her dress, threw it across a chair, turned to lift her and gaped. She stood before him in the tiniest pink bra and string bikini. “My Lord, you're beautiful.”

 

“Put me in the bed,” she said. Adulation was not what she wanted. She wanted
him.

“Don't worry.” He walked over to the bed, threw back the cover, lifted her and laid her on it. He pulled off her shoes, leaned over and kissed her knees, and she could hardly control the movements of her body. He got out of his clothes with breakneck speed. She looked up at him standing above her nude but for the G-string that cupped him, pulled it off him, spread her legs and opened her arms. Like a drunken man, he stumbled into them and wrapped her tightly to his body.