Passion's Price (8 page)

He kissed her nose and held her closer. “The better we know and understand each other’s needs, the better it should get.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean you’re planning to make a sex fiend out of me?”

His eyes sparkled, and a grin crawled over his face. “I’m damned well going to do my best.”

She whacked his butt, raised her right knee and winked. “Two can play that game.”

“Right, but I’ve been playing it longer than you have.”
Her eyebrows shot up. He was hard and moving. She wrapped her arms around him and prepared herself for another trip to paradise.

Shortly after noon the next day, Sunday, she stood at the front door preparing to drive Mike to BWI Thurgood Marshall International Airport. Maggie joined them and handed Mike a package.

“Put this in your bag,” she said to Mike. “It’ll keep nice and fresh till you get home. When you coming back?”

“Next weekend.”

Maggie nodded her head as she gazed at him. “Good. Very good. You didn’t say so, but I can see that you straightened things out. Never throw God’s blessings back at him. It’s not a smart thing to do. Bless you.” She kissed his cheek and left them.

“If she likes you, she shouldn’t make it so obvious,” Darlene grumbled. “Anybody’d think she wants to get rid of me.”

“Look at it this way,” Mike said as they headed for the airport in her car. “She knows that sooner or later some guy is going to get you, and she’d rather I was that guy. Don’t park,” he said when they arrived at the airport. “Kiss me right here. I’ll see you next Friday afternoon, and in the meantime see that no man stops within thirty feet of you.”

“What?”

“Well, ten feet.” He pressed a hard kiss to her lips,
reached for his bag, jumped out of the car and didn’t look back.

In a moment of inspiration, she realized that he was vulnerable and hadn’t had much experience with vulnerability.
Well, neither have I, honey, and I’m learning to deal with it
.

Back in Memphis, Mike returned to his daily routine, although some of the spice had gone out of it, and he knew why. Minutes seemed like hours and hours like days as the week crawled by. He satisfied himself that Darlene’s client was connected to the Pickney woman in the sense that they had stumbled onto a family of polished thieves. Darlene’s client and her witness were unaware that one of their relatives was in a Memphis jail, or Darlene would not have been told to get in touch with her as a corroborative witness. Who knew what else this family of grifters was involved in?

Boyd Farmer was the lone witness who could bring the thieves to justice and Mike was determined that he make to trial. That evening. Mike drove out to Boyd’s house carrying two roast-beef dinners and a quart of butter-pecan ice cream.

“Come in. Haven’t seen you in ages,” Boyd said.

“I know,” Mike answered, although he didn’t consider eleven days such a long time. “I brought us some supper. Thought we’d play a little gin. You up to it?”

“What’d you bring to eat? The woman who looks after the place quit. She didn’t believe my story that
nobody was allowed to enter or leave here. I don’t much believe it, either.”

“Why not? That’s how we met.” Mike said. He went into the kitchen and put the food on the counter and the ice cream in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator.

“Darlene called me twice,” Boyd said. “She’s the sweetest woman I’ve met in years. I wish I had a daughter like her.”

Mike regarded Boyd carefully. “We’d better eat before this stuff gets cold. Who’s doing your shopping?”

“I am. Who else? I’m not a baby. At seventy-one, I’m a better man than some of these young Turks around here. I put a few beers in the bottom of the refrigerator in case you came by one evening.”

Mike cocked an ear. Young Turks, eh? One of these days he’d find out who Boyd Farmer really was. Foolish, he definitely was not, no matter what anybody said.

Boyd set the table, opened a bottle of beer and placed it where Mike was to sit. “I used to be a pretty good cook when I was young and entertained girlfriends, but I’m not doing fancy cooking for me to eat by myself. I just want to get full.”

“Solid reasoning,” Mike said and sat down.

After they finished the meal, Mike cleaned the kitchen and went into the living room, where Boyd was shuffling the cards. He put the cards down, looked at Mike. “I wouldn’t mind having you for a son, either.”

Mike swallowed rapidly and resisted the urge to pat the old man’s hand. “I’m pleased, Boyd.”

“Now, when I think of you, Darlene’s there with you. Aren’t you going to see her?”

Mike thought for a few minutes. Hadn’t he come to regard the man as a friend? Why shouldn’t he share his feelings with him? “I spent the weekend with her, Boyd. So stop worrying about us. We’re working on it.”

Boyd’s face beamed in a glowing smile. “Wonderful. I knew you could recognize a fine woman when you saw one. Deal.”

Mike drove home hours later thinking that no matter what game they played, be it gin, pinochle, or blackjack, Boyd managed to win. He had discovered that he enjoyed the man’s company, that he could relax and be himself. And in his line of work, that was a luxury. Boyd neither asked anything of him nor expected anything; he merely accepted such friendship as Mike had to give.

“The guy is growing on me,” Mike said to himself. Sometimes he wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn’t lost his parents four days after he went to college. A deep sigh flowed out of him. No point in reliving the past. His life was his job, and lately that hadn’t been so bad, he thought. He’d received three rewards from that job—getting to knowing Darlene and Boyd, and a promotion to chief of his unit. Not bad for six weeks of torture.

Friday finally arrived, and he wanted to fly on his own wings to Frederick, Maryland. “Calm down, man,” he told himself. “Put your feet on the ground and keep them there.” But when he saw her running to meet him with her arms widespread and a smile blooming on her
face, he said to hell with propriety, dashed to meet her, brought her to him and nourished himself on the loving she offered.

“This was the longest week I ever lived,” he said as they walked arm in arm to her car.

“It couldn’t have been longer than mine, Mike. I’m practically a basket case. Every night, I sleep for an hour, wake up and start waiting for daybreak.”

“Now it’ll be my turn, ’cause I don’t expect to sleep with you down the hall from me.”

She giggled, or he thought she did. “If Maggie’s so fond of you, maybe you can bribe her to go to the all-night movie, and I can—”

“I hope you’re joking. She’d send me straight back to Memphis quicker than you can say Michael Raines. No, sir. I’m staying on Maggie’s good side. How do you think she’ll react if we don’t eat at home tonight?”

“Oh. I’m sure she’s planned something for you.”

“I promised to visit Tyra when I came back, and something tells me I was a bit rash in making that promise. What do you say we drive there now? See if she’s home. We don’t have to stay too long, we can eat dinner with Maggie and—”

“Why not eat dinner with Maggie and then drive over to visit Tyra?” She gave him Tyra’s phone number, and he dialed it on his cell phone. “Hello. May I please speak with Mrs. Whitley?”

“Just a minute,” a deep male voice said. “I’ll get her.”

“Hello, Tyra. This is Mike Raines. I promised to visit
you and your family on my next trip here to see Darlene. I’m here to keep my word. Darlene suggests we see you this evening after dinner at home with Maggie. If that doesn’t sit well with you—”

“That will be fine, Mike. I hope you can get here before Andy, our son, goes to bed.”

He told her that he’d try, hung up and then turned to Darlene. “This is great. By midnight, when we come back home, we’ll be too tired to think about getting busy.”

She took a sharp turn, glanced toward him and let the Volkswagen speed past seventy. “I hope you know you’re speaking for yourself.”

He settled back in the soft, leather seat, comfortable and happy. “All right.
You
bribe Maggie. I’m doing no such thing.”

“Y’all not gon’ have good weather tomorrow,” Maggie said when they walked into the house. He dropped his bag, hugged Maggie and told her of their plans to visit Tyra.

“I’m so glad. I think you’ll like Byron. Go on up to your room and put your bags up there.”

Halfway up the stairs, he called down to Darlene. “What are you wearing this evening?”

“A long-sleeved red dress. You can come as you are.”

He got a shower, dried off and lay across the bed. A knock from somewhere in the distance awakened him two hours later. He scrambled into his clothes, rushed
down the stairs and joined Darlene and Maggie for dinner in the dining room.

“I haven’t been sleeping too well,” he explained. “The minute I touched that bed, I was out. Please don’t think I was being deliberately rude.”

“We don’t,” Darlene said. “I, for one, guessed right.”

“It wasn’t my business,” Maggie said. “I figured you were tired and you’d come down when you felt like it, though I
was
getting kinda antsy about my dinner spoiling.” She patted his shoulder. “I hope you got a good rest.”

“I did. Thank you.” He stopped eating and looked closely at Maggie, a woman who had openly scrutinized him on sight, then accepted him for whatever it was that she saw in him. “You’re not old enough to be my mother,” he told her, “but you’d make me the kind of big sister that I always wanted. I get a good feeling around you.”

“Those words mean a lot to me, Mike, more than I can tell you.” She looked away from them, and he knew she was trying to maintain her composure. “What time y’all supposed to be at Tyra’s?”

“About an hour and a quarter from now,” Darlene said. “I hope you don’t mind cleaning the kitchen tonight.”

“I don’t. Y’all have a good time, and give Andy a hug for me. I declare he is the most loveable little devil.”

It amazed Darlene that her brother-in-law, Byron, and Mike got on so well—too well, in fact.

“It must be a relief to be able to discuss your case with someone you trust. My firm pays good money for the services of a good private detective,” Byron said to Darlene.

She wished Byron had kept his thoughts to himself. The quiet that accompanied her non-response spoke volumes, but she was not about to change her attitude for the sake of pleasant conversation. And as she drove home, Mike commented on it.

“Byron was embarrassed when you didn’t agree with his comment about working with a detective who you trust. You surprised me, too.”

“I thought you and I had settled that,” she replied.

“So did I. But it seems that we haven’t.”

She did not want to beat a horse to death again. She slowed down and switched to the right lane. “Mike, let’s be clear that we deal with this working-together relationship on a case-by-case basis? Sometimes I will ask you for help, and at other times, I will rely on my own judgment. Incidentally, the questions you suggested I ask produced some telling results. It only confirms my belief that I should drop this case. I haven’t turned in my report to Sam yet, because I wanted you to read it.”

“Is it in your office?”

“No. I brought it home. My client’s alibi is his aunt.
I’ve learned a lot from this experience, and I plan to use those lessons from now on.”

“You don’t know how happy I am that I could be of some help to you. You don’t need me for much. But I want you to need me. I need that, Darlene.”

Why didn’t I realize that? It never occurred to me, and all I’ve done is show him that I don’t need him except to satisfy my libido. It’s a lesson I won’t forget,
she thought. She saw a big replica of an ice-cream cone on top of a building that she’d passed most of her life. She had never been there before but decided to pull into the parking lot.

“Are we going in for ice cream?” he asked.

“If you want to, but I drove in here so I could put my arms around you. Why do you think I don’t need you?” She turned to him, opening her arms as she did so. “I could hardly live through this week without you. You’ve changed my life, and I’m happy. When you’re holding my hand, the stress melts away. I can’t even describe it. I guess I mean that when I’m with you, whether walking side-by-side, in the kitchen, my office or in bed, I’m a whole person. I’m not the clinging-vine type, Mike. But I need you.”

He tightened his grip on her, bent his head and brushed his lips over her mouth, eyes, nose and cheeks. “You’re precious to me, Darlene. Don’t forget that.”

She kissed his nose. “I’d better get moving before I get a ticket for making out in public.”

“Don’t worry about that, sweetheart. I’ll show him
my badge and get some respect. Did I tell you I’ve been promoted to chief of detectives?”

“No, you didn’t. Congratulations. We’ll drink to that when we get home. What does the chief do? Does it mean you’ll be exposed to greater danger?”

“No. If anything, it will be less dangerous. Please don’t worry about that.”

She didn’t want him to know it, but she did worry. “Here we are,” she said.

Maggie met them at the door. “How are you two doing? I was on my way up the stairs when I saw your lights. Maybe you better put the car in the garage. According to the news, a storm’s heading this way, and it’s supposed to be a humdinger.”

Mike held out his hand for the car keys. “I’d say that’s a good idea. What about the windows?”

“All these windows are storm windows, but we can nail things down tomorrow morning. Good night.”

“Good night,” they said in unison.

“Darlene, do you have matches, candles and flashlights?”

“In the pantry.”

“Why don’t you round those up while I put the car in the garage?”

When he returned, she gave him a flashlight, took one for herself and left the candles and matches on the dining-room table. “Let’s sit in the living room for a while,” she said. “We have to toast to your promotion.”

“But only for a minute. I have a feeling that tomorrow
will be a difficult day. We’d better get some sleep.” After a glass of Tia Maria, they climbed the steps with Mike’s arms around Darlene’s waist and her head against his shoulder. She told herself that she could do that every night for the rest of her life. “Darlene, do you think you could kiss me without going for broke?”