Moments In Time (6 page)

“Hmmmmm?”

“Kiss me good night.”

He bent his head down to kiss her and was surprised to find her wanting more than just one kiss. He was extremely happy to accommodate her.

The next morning he awoke and reached for her instinctively. She wasn’t there. He half panicked. Had he dreamed what he had thought to be the best night of his life?

The sound of the hair dryer from the bathroom assured him that all was as he remembered. He lay back on the
pillow, glad that he had followed his instincts and stayed with her, despite a few early awkward moments. She emerged from the bathroom, fresh from the shower, looking squeaky clean and fresh-faced. It took every bit of his self-control not to reach out and pull her to him.

“Good morning. Sleep okay?” Her sunny smile dazzled him.

“Fine,” he replied, though he’d hardly slept at all. He wasn’t used to going to bed so early, and besides, he’d never had feelings for anyone like the ones she brought out in him. They kept him awake all night, terrifying him and making him blissfully happy at the same time. “How ’bout you?”

“Great.”

She probably had. She looked rested and terrific.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Almost seven.”

He groaned. “Middle of the night for some folks.”

She laughed. “Actually, this is a late morning for me. I’m usually up before six to run, which I obviously can’t do until I get a little more strength back in my ankle.”

“I have never understood why anyone would want to get up at the crack of dawn, use a full day’s worth of energy in the first hour, and then be exhausted for the rest of the day,” he said flatly.

“It doesn’t exhaust me. Actually, I have much more energy when I run in the morning. It feels good. And it gives me time to sort out problems, think things over. It more or less pumps me up for the day, gets my mind and body in gear.”

“Well, if last night was any indication of your body being in gear, then I say, don’t mess with success.”

She laughed and moved to the closet to select her clothes for work, on the way picking up discarded items from the night before. He went into the bathroom.

When he came out, she was sitting on the bed, chin resting on her knees, which were drawn up to her chest. Her robe had partially opened to expose her leg. He hesitated for a second, then sat down slightly behind her and rubbed her shoulders. He wanted to be near to her, to touch her.

“Penny for them,” he inquired.

She shook her head. He continued to massage her shoulders and felt the tension there begin to slip away. He could barely stand it, being so close to her. He felt the roller coaster take off inside him again and struggled to contain it. Finally, she turned herself around, put one hand on either side of his face, and drew his face to hers.
Sweet Jesus,
he thought,
thank you for giving her the ability to read my mind
…

“
O
h, my God, look at the time. I have to be out of here in ten minutes.”

His eyes opened slowly, his peaceful near slumber disturbed. “Don’t go to work. Stay here with me.”

“Can’t do it. I have a ton of things to do today.” She got up quickly, grabbed the clothes she’d earlier removed from the closet, and disappeared into the bathroom. Five minutes later, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking him.

“Jamey, you have to get up now if you want a ride to the hotel. Would you please acknowledge that you hear my voice?”

“Yes. I hear you. I just don’t want to get up.”

“Do you want to sleep for a while? I can drive back and pick you up at lunchtime.”

“At least until lunchtime.”

She laughed. “What time do you need to be back?”

“Before we go on stage,” he mumbled into the pillow, and they both laughed.

“Do you want me to call around four or five? I can pick you up after I’m done, at six. You’ll get back before the show, although it will be close.”

“Make it five. That’ll give me enough time to get myself together. If you’re sure you don’t mind, I would very much like to stay and go back to sleep.” He pulled her close to him again. “Sweet Maggie. I don’t know what it is that’s happening here, but God, Maggie, it’s so good.”

She smoothed his hair back from his face and kissed him and stood up. Reluctantly, he let her go.

He listened as her footsteps faded on the steps, heard the
downstairs door close behind her. He got up and went to the window and watched as she crossed the street and got into her car. He wondered if she had looked back before she pulled out of the lot. He turned back to the room and got back into Maggie’s bed. He wished she was still there, curled up next to him.

It was a long time before he was able to sleep, tired as he was. There was too much to think about this morning, and the faint scent of honeysuckle on the pillow distracted him. Before falling asleep, he found the phone book and placed a call to the florist he’d called the day before.

Funny, the way things go,
he thought,
you get into a routine and you just float along with it. Then in the blink of an eye, something changes, and everything looks different, feels different. The music’s good, the tour has been more successful than anyone could have predicted. And now there’s Maggie
…
He tried to remember the last time he’d felt this good about himself. Maybe the day Daily Times got its first recording contract. Maybe the day their first album charted. Nothing else had given him the satisfied feeling he had deep inside. For the first time in his life, all the pieces were there. He hoped he could put them together.

5

M
AGGIE HAD BEEN TOYING
WITH A PHOTOGRAPH
she’d absent-
mindedly picked up from the table to her right, pretending not to listen, though it had been impossible not to hear his voice. She glanced down at the framed image in her hand. She and Lindy. They sat on the beach at Cape May, New Jersey, back to back, Lindy’s long, white-blond hair wrapped around her by the wind, her expression cocky, sassy. Maggie was squinting from the sun, which pierced through the dark glasses she wore. The summer of 1974. The year before she’d met J.D.—and, of course, the year before Lindy had met Rick and the craziness had started. Maggie had always harbored a secret guilt, that had she not introduced them, if they’d never met, maybe Lindy’s life would have taken a different turn. And yet she knew with absolute certainty that disaster would have found Lindy one way or another. The woman was marked for tragedy just as surely as the beginning of every new day was marked by the dawn. And who could have foreseen it, back then when they were young and still awaiting something that would define their lives? Maggie was on cloud nine, caught up in a romance that had seemed to come from nowhere and to
blossom overnight. Lindy had been there with her practi
cally from the start of it…

“
M
aggie, you have to be the most difficult person in the world to catch up with. I’ve been calling you for days.” Lindy’s voice on the phone was half teasing, half concerned. “You’re not avoiding me, are you?”

“No, of course not,
” Maggie reassured her, absent-
mindedly shuffling through a file that lay open on the top of her desk. “And it hasn’t been ‘days.’ I spoke to you on Sunday morning.”

“And have been unreachable since. I called your apartment last night about four times. The last time the phone seemed to be picked up and hung up at about the same time. It worried me.”

“No need to worry.” Maggie yawned, then laughed. “Excuse me.”

“Oh, I see,” laughed Lindy knowingly, “sounds like a big night. Dare I be so presumptuous to ask if there was some action at the Callahan hacienda last night?”

“No, you may not.” Maggie knew that Elena, whose desk was immediately behind Maggie’s and who had seen her leave the bar the night before with J.D., was hanging on every word.

“Hmmmm, let’s see, I know it wasn’t Jake—I saw him this afternoon on Pine Street and he asked me if I’d spoken to you over the past few days. He’s been trying to call you, too. Let me think, who’s a likely candidate
…
Mitch? Not Mitch, Maggie
…
”

“What’s wrong with Mitch?”

“Nothing, except he’s just so serious all the time. Dull and dry and no sense of humor. He’s not a fun person, Maggie.” Lindy dismissed him.

“Well, actually, I did have a date with him last night, but it slipped my mind,” Maggie admitted.

“Then who was it?”

“Someone I met over the weekend. On Sunday. I’
ll tell you about it later…
”

“Wait a minute. Jake told me he was with you on Sunday,
j
ogging down on the drive
… said you had some sort of a
ccident
…
Oh, your foot. How’s your foot?”

“It’s fine. A little weak and sore, but okay.”

“…
and that he found you on the ground and carried you tack to the car
…”
Maggie
could tell Lindy was replaying
Jak
e’s conversation in her mind.
“
…
and took you home
…
When did you have time to meet someone on Sunday?”

“Lindy, give it a rest. I can’t really talk right now.” Maggie
dro
pped
her pencil on the desk.

Elena was rummaging in a
drawer of files immediately to h
er left. Maggie’s silence over her date the night before and he way she had tucked away the card from the florist’s
d
elivery of another huge bunch of flowers that morning—a
d
reamy look on her face—was driving everyone in the office
c
razy.

“I haven’t given up. I’l
l get it out of you one way or an
other,” Lindy assured her. “Before I forget, can you get
m
e
a ticket for the concert tonight? I know you won’t want
t
o go, but I’m dying to see
this group. Monkshood. A bunch o
f the girls from my office went
down last night, and all they coul
d talk about all day was this incredible band and this unbelievably hunky guitar player. A
nd can I have your p
arking spot?”

“Ye
s
to the ticket, but you’re on your own as far as the
pa
rking place is concerned. I’ll be using it.”

“You’re kidding. Do you have to work late?”

“No.”

“Don’t tell me you’re staying for the
show
…
Oh, I guess
you
heard about the guitar player, too?” she teased, knowing
t
hat other than dealing with the contracts and the reports
rega
rding box office receipts, Maggie, whose taste in music
was
limited to jazz, rarely gave a second thought to who was
perfor
ming.

“Something like that. I’ll get you the seat next to mine if
i
t’
s
available.”

“
Grea
t,” Lindy replied, wondering why she hadn’t had to
t
wi
s
t
he
r arm
as
she usually did.

“I’ll meet you for dinner,
how’s that? Probably around seven
,
so
we won’t have too much time.”

“Sounds great. I’
ll stop into your office…”

“No, don’t do that. Go in and get a table, and I’ll meet you. Gotta run.” Maggie hung up abruptly, not wanting to have to explain that she would most likely just be arriving back at the arena herself around seven after driving back to her apartment to pick up J.D.

She turned her attention to the file on her desk, and by the time she’d completed what she needed to do, it was 6:05. She cleared her desk and locked it, grabbed her jacket, and sped out the door, leaving a few startled co-workers puzzled by her quick departure without so much as a good-bye.

J.D. was outside sitting on the front porch steps, his jacket folded across his lap. He walked across the lawn whe
n he saw her pull around the corn
er, got into the passenger side, and leaned over, kissing her once, twice, three times.

“My neighbors will be talking about me,” she protested but only minimally.

“No doubt.” He leaned back into the seat, grinning, and rolled down the window.

They made some small talk in the car, but she could tell he was distracted, keyed up. He tapped on the console, and the expression on his face told her he was a million miles away. She wondered if he was always this nervous before a performance.

She pulled into the already jammed parking lot, the attendant waving her into the employees’ section, and she parked as close to the building as she could. They walked through the doors and were past the guard’s desk behind the glass partition before anyone in the crowded ticket lobby realized who had just walked by.

“Will you wait for me in the bar?” he asked, and she nodded. He leaned over and kissed the tip of her nose before following the hallway toward the dressing room area.

Maggie opened the door to her office and turned on the light. She hung her jacket on the back of her chair and sat down for a minute to compose herself. She’d been like this all day, everytime she thought of him. No man had ever affected her the way he had. Not Jake, not Steven, whom she’d almost thought she was in love with back in Septem
ber.
Not
Mace,
her former husband. It bothered her to feel
this way.
Tomorrow he’d be gone. She fingered the petals of
a ros
e. How
could he have known she’d preferred white to
red, the
usual rose of choice?

Seven-fifteen. Not much time for dinner. Maggie hurried
down
the hall and into the bar and found Lindy seated at a
table.

“Why so late? Where have you been?” Lindy asked.

“I got tied up.”

“Here’s your dinner. I ordered for you since we’re run
ning
out of time. Good thing you showed up. I couldn’t eat two of these myself.”

The waitress placed a plate of chicken salad in front of each woman.

“So, Margaret,” Lindy said, grinning, “let’s hear it. And don’t leave out any of the good parts.”

“Well, you know I fell on Sunday. Flat on my face. There I was, jogging along, then the next thing I knew, my ankle went out from under me, and I was headed toward the ground. It was so odd, I still can’t figure out what happened—”

“Maggie, while God knows I’m sympathetic that you got hurt, this is not really the recent history I’m interested in hearing about, you know? I mean, I already heard all this from Jake, and right now, the part I want to hear about
is—”

“What exactly did Jake tell you?”

Lindy put her fork down, sighed, and recited the salient points of the conversation.

“You went jogging with him down by the river. He took
the long
trail, you took the four-mile trail. You fell. He
found
you
on
the ground. You hurt your ankle. He came
down
the path and you were sitting there, and some scruffy
guy with long hair
was—”

“Well, he’s far from scruffy, and he doesn’t have long hair anymore.” Maggie laughed at Jake’s description of J.D. She should have guessed that, had Jake mentioned him, it wouldn’t have been in complimentary terms.

Lindy’s jaw dropped. “What are you saying?”

“He got a haircut,” Maggie said matter-of-factly.

“Who got a haircut?” Lindy’s eyes sparkled with curiosity-

“J.D.” Maggie continued to eat, barely looking up at her companion.

“Who is J.D.?” Lindy leaned halfway across the table.

“The guy I met on Sunday.” Maggie’s deliberate nonchalance was driving Lindy crazy.

“Let me get this straight. J.D. is the scruffy long-hair who came out of nowhere on Sunday and—?”

“He didn’t come out of nowhere. He came off a bus. Though I didn’t notice it at the time, I mean, I don’t remember seeing the bus, he just told me later—”

“What’d you do, give this guy your number while you were sitting there on the ground and—”

“No, he just sort of walked away.” Maggie looked at Lindy whose eyes were now saucer-sized. Maggie had enjoyed teasing her, but the lateness of the hour prevented her from carrying it any farther. She briefly related how she’d unexpectedly run into J.D. on Monday, how she’d seen him Monday night and then last night.

“Who’d ever believe it. Maggie Callahan, shacked up with the singer from a rock-and-roll band.” Lindy’s expression was sheer incredulity.

Maggie laughed and pushed her chair back. “It does sound a bit unlikely, I admit.”

“Unlikely isn’t even the word, Maggie. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of. He must be some guy.”

“He is.”

They walked back into the hallway and turned toward the steps. Hearing the opening drum solo and the wild response from the crowd, Maggie knew the band was onstage and beginning its performance. She half dragged Lindy, moving as quickly as she could through the congested concourse to the doorway to the box. They took their seats as J.D. began to play.

“That him?” Lindy whispered.

Maggie nodded.

“He looks short,” she observed, assessing the figure behind the keyboard.

“He’s not real tall,” Maggie nodded.

Lindy looked around the barely lit area. “Anyone here have binoculars, do you think? I want to
get a good look at this guy.”

“You’ll see him later. Do not humiliate me by asking if anyone has binoculars, please.” Maggie giggled. “Just shut up and listen.”

J.D. was singing now, and Lindy raised her eyebrows to signal she liked what she heard.

“Guy’s really good,” whispered Lindy, “I mean, really good.”

“Yes. Now be quiet.”

They sat and listened, then stood and applauded with the rest of the audience when the ninety-minute set had con
c
luded. The enthusiastic crowd was loath to let the band leave the stage, and they played two more songs, then stood at center stage one last time to acknowledge the screaming ovation they received.

“The band is great, Maggie. And the girls at work were right. The guitar player is stunning.”

Maggie laughed. “Rick Daily. He’s a real character. And just about your speed.”

“Let’s go get a drink, Maggie. I am positively dying to hear the rest of this story.”

Maggie was deep in conversation with Lindy when J.D. entered the bar, his hair still wet from the shower he’d taken hastily in an effort to waste as little of his last night in Philadelphia as possible.

“Hi,” Lindy said as he sat down, “I’m Lindy Burton.”

“J.D. Borders.” He smiled and turned his attention to Maggie, whispering, “How long do we have to stay here?”

She shook her head, seeing the light in his eyes and replied, “Not long.”

He ordered a drink, and Maggie watched as he furtively admired Lindy from across the table. When his eyes strayed
back to Maggie, she’d raised an eyebrow to let him know she’d caught him giving her friend the once-over.

“She’s Daily’s type, not mine,” he confided into her ear, “lean, mean, and flashy. And frankly, I’m wondering how we’ll get rid of her.”