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Authors: Gwynne Forster

When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance) (26 page)

BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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Jolene knew without being told that Richard had seen Francine heading up the stairs.
 
 
Richard took the steps three at a time, and caught Francine before she reached her room and grasped her by the shoulders. “Just tell me one thing. Where did you sleep night before last?”
She stepped back from him. “Hello, Richard. Why didn’t you ask me that last night instead of looking through me as if I were a sheet of plate glass?”
He stared into her eyes. “I was in no frame of mind to ask you
anything
. If you don’t want to answer my question, fine. You won’t get any more trouble from me.” He could see her wavering and knew she was weighing the cost to her of being without him. He held his breath and waited. Waited and prayed.
“I spent night before last at the Assawoman Motel in Ocean Pines.” At his gasp, she added, “Shortly after I left you, my boss called and demanded that I come to the precinct and identify a possible smuggler. I went under protest. If I had driven back here to spend the night, I would have had to awaken Fannie around one in the morning, so I spent the night at that motel. If you had ever given me your cell phone number, I would have called you.”
He inhaled a deep breath and let it out slowly. Never in his life had he been so relieved. And to think that he had believed her capable of duplicitous behavior! He wanted to take her to him and love her, but he knew she wouldn’t appreciate it. He opted for honesty. “I thought all kinds of things. Your car wasn’t parked out back, you weren’t on the beach, and I knew you weren’t in your room. Were you somewhere dead, or were you with another man? I nearly drove myself insane with worry. And then I got angry, but that quickly dissolved into pain. Pure pain.”
Her hand stroked the side of his face. “Can’t you accept what you feel? If you could . . . if only you would, it would be heaven.”
“I’m an honest man, Francine. I’ve done a lot of things that I regret, but I have never pretended more than I felt or offered more than I knew I could give. I never seduced women, because they were always willing; I accepted what they gave merely because it was there for me. But I no longer take just because it’s available. Oh, I’m tempted, but I’ve put that life behind me. I’m being straight with you because I care for you. You want the whole nine yards, and I don’t have it to give.”
To his surprise, she smiled. “That’s your story
now
.” She reached up, kissed his cheek and hurried off to her room. At her door, she turned and said, “Slip your cell phone number under my door. Good night.”
As Francine was about to crawl into bed, she suddenly pounded her right fist into her left palm and dropped herself on the side of the bed
. Am I crazy? What on earth have I been thinking? If I make love with him, show him the love, the tenderness, and the passion that I feel for him, he’ll be mine. He loves me, and everything he said to me tonight proves it. It’s up to me to make him turn that other woman, whoever she is, loose, to show him that he can love another woman. Me.
She turned out the light and fell asleep with a smile on her face.
 
Although Francine had begun to get her life in order, Jolene’s dilemma was only beginning. Philip Coles returned to Thank the Lord Boarding House on Thanksgiving Eve to spend the holiday with his sister.
“My, but you’re handy. You’re not the person who left Hagerstown last winter. I wonder what Emma would say if she saw you now,” he said.
Jolene hadn’t seen Philip enter the lounge, which she was decorating for Thanksgiving. On each side of the fireplace, she had placed a horn of plenty from which spilled colorful gourds, apples, pecans, chestnuts, and persimmons. In the act of attaching oak leaves in fall colors to the marble mantelpiece when Philip spoke, she put the leaves aside and turned slowly to face her mother’s pastor.
“If you want to know the truth, Reverend Coles, I don’t care
what
she would think or what she would say. You, the members of your church, and half of our neighbors, even my teachers, knew how mama treated me, and not one person called her on it. I survived it, and I haven’t mourned her for a minute.” She eyeballed him, enjoying the sight of his reddened face and relishing the normally articulate man’s sudden loss for words.
“I’m sorry you feel this way, Sara Jolene,” he said after the lengthy sound of his silence discomfited them both. “A child should honor her parents and certainly should cherish their memory, no matter what,” he went on. “The Bible says—”
She tuned him out and returned to her task of decorating. “I guess I ought to thank her for teaching me by negative example how not to be a mother.”
He didn’t comment on that, although from his facial expression, she thought the words pained him. As if to reinforce her point, she added, “What kind of woman refuses to tell her child who its father is? And don’t think I didn’t ask her many times.”
“Too bad, Sara Jolene. We have to play the hand dealt us. That’s life. Please try not to be so bitter.”
She stared at him, reflecting on his lame advice. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish this before supper.”
He seemed grateful for the opportunity to leave her. “I guess this isn’t the kind of work you can do while talking about serious things. I’ll see you at supper,” he said and rushed out of the lounge.
I never thought Reverend Coles was a phony, and maybe he isn’t, but he certainly acted strange in here a minute ago
.
Wonder why he’s coming here so often. Lord, I sure hope Joe couldn’t be right
. She whirled around at the sound of footsteps and saw the handsome preacher lean his big frame against the doorjamb.
“I meant to ask you, Sara Jolene, if you’ve met a nice young man since you’ve been here.”
Jolene laid her head to one side and looked hard at him. “I’ve met five men and messed up with every one of them. Anything else? Oh yes. My name is not Sara Jolene. It’s Jolene.”
With his hands out and palms facing her, he said, “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t ask out of curiosity. I’ll . . . uh . . . see you at supper.”
She put a straw man and two pumpkins in a corner near the fireplace, surveyed her handiwork and swept up the sticks, leaves, and other refuse. Having finished the lounge, she arranged orange and yellow chrysanthemums in vases for the dining room tables, placed yellow candles in Fannie’s crystal candleholders and stood back to admire the effect.
Ten months ago, Fannie wouldn’t have allowed me to decorate these two rooms, and I wouldn’t have had the nerve to attempt it. I may be moving slowly, but at least I’m not standing still.
She headed for her room and met Judd on the stairs. “Did Fannie say Thanksgiving supper would be earlier than usual?” she asked him. “I’d like to visit a sick friend tomorrow afternoon.”
As usual, Judd’s smile gave her a warm and comfortable feeling. “What a nice thing to do, visiting a sick friend on Thanksgiving Day. Why don’t you ask Marilyn for some goodies to take with you?”
“Would she do that?”
“Sure she will. Marilyn loves to show her authority.”
Jolene whirled around, went into the kitchen and spoke with Marilyn. To her amazement, the woman said she would prepare a hot Thanksgiving dinner for Jolene’s sick friend.
“Rodger can drive you to the hospital, and it’ll still be piping hot when you get there.”
“Really? What will Fannie say?”
Marilyn locked her hands to her hips and stared at Jolene. “You planning to tell her? Anyhow, she’s the biggest Christian in Pike Hill, so it shouldn’t freak her out to do good on Thanksgiving Day. Be in here at noon.” Jolene thanked her and raced up the stairs, happy and lighthearted.
 
 
A few minutes after twelve on Thanksgiving Day, Jolene knocked on Harper’s room door.
“Come on in.”
“Hi. Gee! You’re not in the wheelchair. Wonderful!”
“Hi. I don’t use it anymore. It’s been a while since you were here. I’m glad you came, Jolene.”
“I brought you some Thanksgiving dinner. It’s what we’re having for supper at the boardinghouse, and it’s hot. I was afraid you might have been discharged. I mean, I was thinking . . . well, you know what I mean to say.”
She wasn’t nervous around Harper, so why was she rattling like an empty wagon rolling over the potholes in Hagerstown’s back streets? She rolled the patient’s table to the chair in which Harper sat, spread two white napkins on it and set out the food that Marilyn had put in Fannie’s pretty porcelain dishes.
“This is wonderful, Jolene. A real home-cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Look at this.” He pointed to the different dishes. “Corn chowder, roast turkey with cornbread dressing, gravy, wild rice, asparagus, turnips, relish, pumpkin pie, grapes and coffee.” He looked up at her. “My mother has the flu, and she couldn’t come today. You’re a godsend. He ate lustily and cleaned the plates. “My goodness. A thermos of real espresso coffee. Man, this is
some
treat. Lean over here and let me kiss you.”
Then the scent of his spicy cologne wafted up to her nostrils, a command as it were. She nearly panicked, and her heart began to race like a thoroughbred horse out of control. She tried to catch her breath. “I don’t think you’d better do that, Harper.”
“O, yes, I
had
better do it, and I’ll be glad to take the consequences.”
Trembling, as fear of she didn’t know what streaked through her, she leaned down to brush his lips with hers. But he grasped her head, and for a brief, poignant moment, she stared into his eyes, and the expression in them nearly unglued her. She wanted to back away, but he held on, flicking his tongue back and forth over the seam of her lips until, without due thought to what she did, she opened her mouth for him, as hungry for loving, any loving, as he. He plunged into her, gently at first and then like a starving man testing every centimeter, every crevice of her warm, giving mouth and nourishing himself with the sweetness of her loving.
She savored his masculine taste and sucked him deeper into her mouth, needing all of him. With a groan, he plunged in and out of her, simulating the act of love. When heat settled between her legs, she fought against the rhythmic pulsations that pummeled her vagina and gripped his shoulder to steady herself.
Shocked at the force of his need and at her own response to him, she backed away. “What have I done? You’re going to accuse me of encouraging you, of leading you on. I didn’t, Harper. I swear it.”
“No, baby. I needed that. Maybe we both needed it.”
She glanced at the bed less than three feet away and closed her eyes. She had to get out of there. “I’d . . . uh . . . better go . . . as soon as I can gather up this stuff.”
“It’s all right, Jolene. Sit down over there and get yourself together. I know you didn’t plan this, and neither did I. Please don’t let what happened keep us from being friends. Your visits while I’ve been in this hospital have meant a lot to me.”
She packed the basket. “To me, too. I hope your mother is better soon. Uh . . . good-bye, and happy Thanksgiving.” She fled from his room, slipped into the elevator seconds before the door closed and let its wall take her weight. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she panted for breath.
What have I done? I know he thinks I’m using him again, but I’m not. I meant to give him a friendly peck on the lips, and then he put his tongue in my mouth and
. . .
Oh, Lord, am I one of those women who never says no to a man? If he hadn’t been in that chair, would I have
. . . ?
No, I don’t do that any more.
She dragged herself out of the hospital and dawdled along Ocean Road, unmindful of the bracing and frigid wind, trying to come to terms with what she had experienced with Harper. “But I enjoyed kissing him,” she told herself. Then, remembering the explosions in her vagina, she said, “His tongue sure worked its magic. But what should I expect? The only times I’ve ever had an orgasm, he was inside of me. So it’s nothing to worry about.”
As she reached the boardinghouse, one thought pounded in her head: How could she feel as she did about Gregory and respond that way to Harper?” She inserted her key into the lock, pushed open the door and inhaled the odor of the great feast that teased and taunted her nostrils.
BOOK: When You Dance With The Devil (Dafina Contemporary Romance)
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