One Good Turn (9 page)

“Do you have any plans for tomorrow?” he asked as they ventured into her neighborhood.

She peered up at him and smiled. “You tell me.”

He returned her smile, and her heart quickened at the unique beauty of his features. If it wasn’t love she was experiencing, it was something equally exciting—and whatever it was, she was thrilled by it.

“We could drive down to Mt. Vernon for the day if you’d like.”

“Would you like that?” she asked, frowning slightly. Last Saturday they’d gone to the Air and Space Museum; Mt. Vernon was like another museum. Just because she was appreciated all the historical tourist attractions Washington had to offer didn’t mean Luke wanted to spend every weekend staring at museum displays.

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t want to do it,” he assured her. They turned the corner onto her block. “I could even arrange for a picnic lunch, if you think you could stomach some more shrimp and chicken wings.”

“I think you’re plotting to make me fat,” she scolded.

“Found out at last,” he confessed, eyeing her petite figure and chuckling.

They drew to a halt at the foot of the stairs leading up to the front door of the brownstone where she lived. Still holding her hand, Luke turned her to face him. “All right,” she capitulated, scaling the first step so she was nearly standing eye to eye with him. “Make me fat, see if I care. We’ll go to Mt. Vernon and eat shrimp.”

“I’ll pick you up at eleven.”

“Great.”

Still he didn’t release her. She didn’t want him to. She concentrated on the shape and strength of his hand enfolding hers, the dry smoothness of his palm, the tapered length of his fingers, the light pressure of his thumb against her wrist. She wished he would take her other hand in his, as well.

He did. He held her hands at her sides and moved closer, close enough to brush his lips over hers. It was barely a whisper of a kiss, yet it ignited tiny shocks of energy throughout her entire body. Reflexively she gasped.

“I’m sorry,” he said, though he didn’t look the least bit repentant.

She meant to tell him she forgave him. She meant to clarify that, while she was fairly traditional about love and lovemaking, there were really no hard and fast rules about a kiss between friends.

What she did was lean forward until their mouths were touching again.

She heard a barely audible groan coming from him—or perhaps from her. Their lips fused, moved, opened, and then their tongues found each other. Luke let go of her hands so he could gather her in his arms. He wrapped them around her slim waist, then slid one hand up her back and beneath her hair to the nape of her neck. His tongue explored the tender flesh of her lips, the edges of her teeth, the dark sweetness beyond, moving in thorough, unhurried thrusts that sent fresh jolts of sensation through her flesh. Her thighs grew tense, her hips throbbed, her breasts burned at the luscious pressure of his chest against hers as he pulled her more intimately to himself.

Her hands had cramped into fists, and she willfully unfurled them and lifted them to touch him. Through his shirt she felt the bones and sinews of his shoulders, the supple muscles of his upper back. He angled his head slightly and his tongue moved deeper, absorbing her breath and melting her soul. She ached everywhere, ached for Luke, ached so much she couldn’t suppress the small, agonized cry that tore free from her throat.

Pulling back from her, he sucked in a ragged breath. She buried her face in the warm hollow of his throat, too embarrassed to face him. What a hypocrite she was, giving him that prim little speech about sex and love and how slow she tended to be about such things, and then dissolving into a seething mass of uncontrolled passion in the wake of one kiss.

His fingers twirled through her hair. She listened to his erratic respiration, to the frenetic drumming of his heart against his ribs. Several minutes elapsed, and then he spoke in a rough, breathless whisper: “Jenny?”

“Yes.”

Gently he urged her away from him, gripping her shoulders and holding her steady so he could look at her. She imagined she must look ravished—flushed and glassy-eyed, wanton and disheveled. His enchanting smile as examined her proved it.

“That was incredible,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Whose turn is it to apologize?”

She managed a feeble smile of her own. “Mine, I think.”

“Then we’re even?”

“I suppose.”

He brought one hand forward to her cheek. His fingers caressed her with such excruciating tenderness she let out a sigh. “My sentiments exactly,” he murmured. He traced the edge of her chin with his thumb, then let his hand drop. “I’d better leave.”

“All right.”

He took a step backward, and another, his eyes remaining on her. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, at last pivoting on his heel and striding down the block to where he’d parked his car when he’d come for her earlier that evening.

“Good night,” she whispered after him. The taste of his lips lingered on hers; the heat of his kiss continued to grip her body even after she watched him unlock the silver BMW, settle himself behind the wheel, rev the engine and maneuver out of the parking space. Not until he’d driven down the block and out of sight did she find the fortitude to go inside.

A small, neat pile of her things sat on the floor in front of the closed door to the bedroom she and Sybil shared: her pillow, her nightgown, her hairbrush and the dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice she was rereading in preparation for her senior honor’s thesis on Jane Austen. Jenny understood what the pile meant.

“Do you want to borrow my sleeping bag?” Fran asked.

Jenny spun around to see her solemn, bespectacled apartment-mate standing in the doorway of the other bedroom. She glanced down at the articles Sybil had left for her, then accepted Fran’s offer with a smile. “She put out my pillow but no blanket.”

“The couch is kind of uncomfortable.”

“If it’s that bad I’ll use the floor.”

Fran shrugged. “Sybil, Kate and I went to a H.U.D. party. All the guys Kate and I met there were dorks, but the guy Sybil brought back was pretty foxy-looking. Not that looks are everything, but he wasn’t bad. How was your date with Luke?”

“It was...very nice,” Jenny said vaguely, following Fran into the bedroom and taking the down-filled sleeping bag Fran pulled out of the closet. She wasn’t in any condition to describe her evening to Fran, who would no doubt enjoy analyzing it if Jenny gave her the chance.

After thanking Fran for the sleeping bag, she returned to the hall, where she spotted Kate emerging from the bathroom, dressed in pajamas and a robe. Kate took note of the sleeping bag in Jenny’s arms, then at Jenny’s shut bedroom door, and then at Jenny herself. “Men,” she said with a disdainful sniff.

Men,
Jenny pondered fifteen minutes later as, washed and clad in her nightgown, she crawled into the sleeping bag on top of the lumpy living room couch.
Men
. Sybil was right now sleeping with a man she’d met just hours ago, and Jenny would be spending the night alone instead of with a man she was practically in love with.

Far from condemning Sybil, Jenny envied her. All her old-fashioned sentiments couldn’t negate the fact that her body still simmered with arousal. Every time she closed her eyes she imagined Luke’s lips on hers, his arms around her, and her soul clenched with yearning. Kissing him had been both spiritual and carnal. If only she had Sybil’s nerve, she could be in his bed right now, kissing him again, allowing her body the full pleasure of his love.

But that was the problem:
love
. Did she really love him? Did he love her? Why rush when she wasn’t sure? She’d know when it was time to know. Luke Benning was a decent man; he’d promised he would wait until she knew.

That alone was reason enough to love him. And to her surprise, the restless longing that had been tormenting her from the moment she’d seen him drive away was replaced by a transcendent peace, an understanding that she’d done the right thing, that everything was going to work out magnificently, that the future held splendid things for her and Luke.

With a smile, she nestled into the pillows and drifted off to sleep.

“DID I MENTION
that I spoke with Jack Halliford? Seems an uncle of his contributed heavily to an endowed chair at Duke a few years back. The Halliford name has clout down in Durham, if we should find it necessary.”

Luke ground his teeth together to keep from railing at his father. He had already told the old man innumerable times that he didn’t want any strings pulled to get him into law school, and the old man had stubbornly ignored him. Why bother protesting anymore? Let James Benning prattle on about his networks and connections. Maybe in time he’d run out of steam, and then Luke could make himself heard.

He cursed the traffic. What strange spasm of filial duty had inspired him to offer to drive his father to the airport? His father had arrived in the city yesterday, dined with Luke and returned to the duplex for the night, spent all day today massaging some muckamuck at the F.D.A. on behalf of one his clients and then met with Luke for dinner prior to catching the shuttle back to LaGuardia. Luke had had to listen to him babble about law school all last night. He’d been subjected to more law school babble over breakfast, and still more over dinner. And like a fool, he had volunteered to drive his father to the airport, thereby opening himself to yet another half-hour discourse on the topic.

“Your mother said you called her during the day on Monday,” his father remarked, offering Luke a glimmer of hope that they were done discussing law school for now.

“That’s right,” he said. “There was an unexpected roll call on the Senate floor and I found myself with some time to kill, so I gave her a ring.”

“That was good of you. It made her happy.”

Perhaps it had, but it had made Luke uneasy. He would have understood if his mother had wanted to talk about Elliott’s prolonged absence. But she hadn’t seemed particularly interested in Elliott at all. “It’s you I’m worried about,” she’d told Luke.

He’d been flabbergasted. It wasn’t like his mother to contradict anything his father said, and his father had told him she was upset about Elliott.

“Luke, are you still there?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m still here. I’m calling because Dad said—”

“`
Dad said,
’” she’d echoed in a caustic tone. “Your dad said things and scared Elliott away. I’m worried that he’s going to scare you away next.”

“He hasn’t scared me away,” Luke had insisted.

“The man...” She’d sounded tentative to Luke, almost diffident. In the Benning family, it was considered heretical to voice criticism of James. “He’s like a bull in a china shop. He just stampedes through life, knocking over everything in his path...”

“Mom, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you. I’m afraid he’s going to stampede you the way he stampeded Elliott.”

Luke was afraid of that, too. More and more, he was afraid of that. But he’d never admit it, certainly not to his mother. “He’s a strong man,” Luke had said, “but I’m not exactly a weakling.”

He’d heard a faint giggle through the receiver, the nervous sort of laughter his mother succumbed to when she was feeling the first flush of a vodka-induced languor. And indeed, she probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to say such things to him if she hadn’t been drinking. “Your father goes on and on,” she’d said. “Every day. It’s, `When Luke does this,’ or `When Luke becomes that.’ He’s got your whole life planned out.”

“That’s his style.”

“He just... He railroads everyone.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors, Mom,” Luke had said, anxious to inject some humor into the conversation.

“I don’t want to lose you, Luke,” she’d murmured sadly. “I should have protected Elliott but I didn’t, and now I’ve lost him. And I’m too old and tired to protect you—”

“You aren’t old and tired,” Luke had argued, wishing he could convince himself as well as her. “And anyway, I don’t need your protection. I’m all right. I can handle him.”

“He says you aren’t eating enough.”

“I’m eating plenty,” Luke had assured her. “I’ve got to get off, Mom. They’ve just opened the doors to the Senate chamber.”

He hadn’t eaten plenty that night, he admitted silently as he followed the signs to the main terminal building and braked to a halt outside the entry. His father had wolfed down a well-aged Angus sirloin and chattered ad nauseum about the tough Con-Law prof he’d had at Yale and the strategies one needed for scoring high on the boards. Luke had sipped his iced tea and picked at his marinated chicken and wished he were somewhere else.

With Jenny. He’d wished he were with Jenny.

“No need to come in with me,” his father said as he swung open the passenger-side door and reached into the back seat for his briefcase. “Oh—has Howard done anything about switching your office yet?”

Luke sighed. Senator Milford couldn’t switch his office; there was no other office empty and available anywhere in the Hart Building. Luke didn’t care. The office he had now suited him fine.

Apparently James was able to sense his son’s indifference. “You may think the size of your office is a trivial issue,” he explained. “But people make judgments on you based on your office. Now, supposing you have to hold a meeting in that broom closet of yours, and—”

“A meeting? Dad, I’m an errand boy.”

“Bad attitude,” his father chided. “You’re a member of a senator’s staff, and don’t you forget it.” A quick glance at his watch and he swung out of the car. “I’d better go if I’m going to catch this flight.”

Yes, go. Please, just go.

“See you later, son.” His father shut the door and strode to the building’s entry. Luke watched until James had vanished inside, then released his tension with a shudder.

What kind of son was he, to want his father to make a fast exit?

What kind of father was James Benning, not even to thank his son for giving him a lift to the airport?

What kind of person could have health, a top-drawer education, tolerably good looks, a prosperous family, his own late-model BMW, a father who doted on him... What kind of person could have as much going for him as Luke did and still feel as if everything in his life was a sham?