Once in a Lifetime (25 page)

“So what? He wouldn’t care if it was three in the morning, and I don’t, either.”

She needed to know where she stood. “Does this mean you don’t blame me for…for anything?”

He’d started toward the stairs, but stopped and walked back to her. “I’m feeling too good to think about blame. You said you were hoping to remove one of the things that hampered our relationship. Honey, you did more than that. Get your coat, and let’s go.”

If only Allen Krenner’s verdict would be as generous.

“I know we’re bringing them good news, Telford, but, honey, it’s after midnight. Suppose they’re asleep.”

He could hardly believe she’d said it. “You’re kidding.”

He parked in front of 311 Hatch Drive in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Frederick and scrutinized the little green-shuttered white bungalow. Not a light.

“Come on, sweetheart. The only thing Allen and Grace can do to you is love you.” He walked with her to the door, rang the bell and waited. He rang it again, and after a while a light flooded the little porch.

The door opened slowly, as if the person inside feared the visitor. “Good Lord! Telford! It’s you. What’s the matter?”

Holding Alexis’s hand, Telford walked past Allen, who stood rooted to the spot as if in shock. “Good news, Allen. Is Grace asleep?’

“Good news? Whatta you talking about?” Allen grabbed the lapels of Telford’s leather jacket and jerked at them. “Talk to me, man.”

He laid a hand on Allen’s arm. “Sit down, friend. Alexis has found Melanie. She’s seen her and talked with her.”

“What?” Allen clutched Telford’s arms and attempted to shake him. “Don’t lie to me, man.” Suddenly, his hold on Telford slackened, and he sank into a chair.

Alexis dashed over to him. “Is something wrong, Mr. Krenner? You—”

“Allen, what are you doing down there? I thought you were asleep.”

A short, frail woman, aged well beyond her forty-eight years, Grace Krenner entered the living room tentatively, holding her powder-blue robe at her waist as if to secure it.

“Why, Telford,” she gasped. “What’s the matter?”

Allen pulled himself up with obvious difficulty, as if the weight of the world hung around his shoulders.

“Melanie is alive. Our baby is alive.”

He clasped his wife in his arms, as powerful sobs racked
their bodies. Alexis turned away, and he didn’t doubt that the scene moved her, because tears threatened to spill from his own eyes.

After moments of tearful reminiscences, expressions of gratitude, tears and laughter, the Krenners settled down and he recounted to them Alexis’s story.

“She’s in Nashville, Tennessee, and she and her husband assured Alexis that they’re coming to visit you soon.”

Allen shook his head, obviously perplexed. The fingers of his left hand moved back and forth across his chin as he gazed into the distance. “I just can’t understand it. She’s all right. She’s well, and I guess since she’s married to a doctor, she’s well-off.
Didn’t she know…didn’t she realize we’ve worried ourselves almost to death?
”

What could he say to that? To his amazement, Alexis went over to the sofa, sat between the two people and put an arm around each of them. He’d never known another woman who possessed such compassion. “Knowing the sacrifice you made to send her to college, when she flunked out, she was scared to face you,” Alexis said, “but that’s all in the past.” Her voice took on a huskiness. “When she comes, open your arms to her.”

There it was again, that feeling that he’d known her before. It kept cropping up, though it didn’t make any sense.

“Yes, of course we will,” Grace said. “Allen, I think we ought to call the boys and tell them.” She looked at Alexis. “God bless you, dear. Oh, my manners! Would you like some coffee or tea?”

Alexis stood and shook her head. “No, thanks. We’d better be going. I’m so happy for you.”

Telford was on a high, and he knew it was temporary, because he’d have to come down and settle at least one issue that remained between Alexis and him. He didn’t believe her role in Melanie’s disappearance accounted for the way in which she froze him out at that reception. How could it? She wasn’t culpable; a teacher is honor bound to give a student the grade
deserved, not more or less. He pasted a smile on his face, shook hands with Allen, kissed Grace, took Alexis’s hand and left.

“Russ is going to kill me,” he said, not without some glee at the thought of being able to disturb Russ’s sacred rest with impunity. “But I can’t help it. I have to wake him up and tell him.” He opened the door of Harrington House and stopped himself as he was about to lift Alexis and carry her inside.
I need to straighten out my head.
He hung his leather jacket and her coat in the guest closet near the door, remembered that her coat didn’t hang there and shrugged it off.

“I’m wrung out,” Alexis said. “I…uh…I’d better turn in.”

She lacked her usual aplomb, and he could certainly understand that. “I’ll walk with you to your room.”

They didn’t speak as they walked down the hall, slowly, as if by agreement, each seemingly in a private world.

At her door, she turned to face him and, with both hands braced above her head, he trapped her between himself and the wall. He hadn’t planned to do it, but his mind had suddenly begun a war with his feelings and emotions. And she knew it. Her eyes, her whole bearing said she expected him to pull back, and that she had prepared for it.

“I can’t tell you what this means to me, to all of us. Allen is like my third brother. But, Alexis, my head’s full of questions. I don’t want to detract from the importance of what you’ve done, so…we’ll talk tomorrow. Okay?”

She stood tall before him, gazing into his eyes, her dignity intact, but all at once that magnificent self-possession that set her apart, that always marked her every move was missing from her demeanor. His heart constricted, and he gathered her into his arms.

“Honey, is there…anything else you need to tell me about this?”

She shook her head, her eyes sad. It nearly unglued him. He loved her. No matter what. He loved her. His blood pounded in his ears, and when her glossy, unpainted lips parted and waited to welcome him, a groan dragged itself from the pit of his belly, and he plunged his tongue into her waiting mouth.
Heat sliced through him and aimed arrowstraight to his groin, as her beaded breasts rubbed against his chest and her fingers gripped his shoulders with unnatural force.

He wanted hot passion and fire, but she softened and gave him tenderness and sweetness in a gentle kiss, loving, caressing and adoring him as if he were the most precious person alive. He backed away from her seconds before he hardened to full readiness.

“Honey… Oh, Lord,” she whispered.

He needed her. He would always need her. The ache in his belly burned out of control, and he pushed open the door, picked her up and carried her to her bed.

As light filtered through the Venetian blinds, he looked down at the sweet woman in his arms and prayed that they could straighten out whatever it was that made them both reticent.

“Are you awake, sweetheart?” She only snuggled against him. He had never demanded so much of a woman, and none had ever given him so much. He kissed her eyes until she opened them and smiled.

“I’d better get out of here before Tara awakes, comes in here and finds me.”

She stretched her body like a sated feline. “Then you’d better go before I think of something for you to do.”

He couldn’t help grinning. “You’re the best medicine my ego ever had. See you at breakfast.”

She sat up, leaned over him and brushed his lips with her own. “Do we still need to talk?”

The somberness in her tone of voice was all the reminder he needed of their unfinished business. “When I get home from work. But don’t stew over anything. I think we just need to get rid of the remaining debris. Love me?”

“Oh, yes. I love you.”

His kiss was hard and swift. “And I love you.”

Drake was in Baltimore, thank goodness, because he could hear a footstep on any surface. Telford got to his room without
Henry or Russ having seen him. He took pride in Alexis’s love for him, but unless and until they spoke promises to each other, he’d soft-pedal the nature of their relationship.

A
lexis buried her face in the pillow and inhaled his scent, stretched, rolled over, pulled the sheet over her face and breathed in the musty scent of their lovemaking. She had to get up and get Tara ready for school, but his fingers teased her flesh and her body vibrated from his powerful, rhythmic strokes. He possessed her still.
I’m in deep trouble. He hasn’t quite forgiven me for not telling Allen Krenner of my relationship with his daughter. What will I do when he learns I’m that girl who humiliated him, that I lied because I was so embarrassed?
She crawled out of bed, half drunk on the memory of him in her arms.

“I’ll be in Baltimore today,” Telford told her at breakfast. “I’ll take Tara to school, but she’ll have to come back on the bus.”

“I can pick her up this afternoon,” Russ said. He looked at Alexis. “When do you think Melanie will get in touch with her folks?”

Alexis sensed in Russ an ally, and she expected to need one. “She should already have done that by the time I got back here
yesterday. If she doesn’t call them soon, I’m going to phone her.”

Telford concentrated on his grits, eggs and sausage, but Russ leaned back in the chair, sipped coffee and seemed to scrutinize her. Not that it made her uncomfortable; Russ always seemed to dismember people with his piercing gaze.

“You’ve done your part,” Russ said. “If she doesn’t call them today, I’ll buy them a ticket to Nashville. I can’t believe this thing’s solved. And she’s all right. Fantastic!”

“Phone for you, Tel,” Henry said. “It’s ’bout time you got one of those phones that goes from place to place.”

“Thanks. Tell me why I should walk around here with a mobile phone. I’ve got a cell phone.”

“Humph. Then give whoever’s calling your cell number. I’m not the butler. I’m the cook.”

“Yeah,” Telford said, getting up from the table. “And you’re getting cranky. Excuse me,” he said to those at the table. When he passed Tara, he pulled one of her braids.

Alexis had the feeling that Henry enjoyed needling Telford.

Tara giggled. “Mr. Telford likes to pull on my braids. Why don’t you wear braids, Mummy?”

Russ responded to that with prolonged laughter. “Do that, Alexis,” he said, gasping for breath. “I can picture Telford taking his frustration out on those braids.”

“That was Allen,” Telford said, taking his seat. “Melanie and her husband phoned, and they’ll be here on Thanksgiving. He’s so excited, I could barely understand him.”

He stopped Alexis in the hallway after they’d finished breakfast. “You okay this morning?”

“Other than being a little drunk, I’m fine.”

He stared at her. “Drunk? Did you say you’re drunk?”

He could behave like an innocent, could he? She lowered her left eyelid in a slow wink. “Honey, you pack the punch of straight tequila. I had a shot of that in college, and I’ve been an almost teetotaler ever since.”

A grin spread slowly from his lips to his wonderful eyes.
“Tequila, huh? Not bad. I’ve had a few of those. Remember we’ll talk when I get back this afternoon.”

She nodded. “Kiss me.”

Before she could prepare herself, he gripped her close to his body, and took her mouth in a quick, drugging kiss. “Tara’s waiting in the car. See you later.”

She blinked rapidly, staggering under passion-induced vertigo, and tried to regain her equilibrium. “I’d like to punch him,” she said aloud. “He knows exactly what he did to me.” But, Lord, it felt good. One minute in his arms was like pouring gasoline on a fire that was already burning out of control.

“I need to go to Frederick,” she told Henry later. She wanted to take the bust she’d finished to the foundry to have it cast in bronze.

Her phone rang as she was dressing to leave. “Hi, babe. What do you say I come over this afternoon?”

She took a deep breath. The man was hell-bent on driving her crazy. “Jack, that won’t be possible, unless you want to visit with Henry. Come tomorrow at four for half an hour. Tara will be here then.”

“You’ve gotten to be a hard woman. All right. See you tomorrow. Say, look, babe. I’m a changed man. Give me a chance.”

She didn’t believe he’d said it. “Jack, I can’t count the number of second chances I gave you in the four years that we were married. The lies you told me would fill up the New Orleans Super Bowl. Get real!”

Hard or not, he had no claim on her, and she intended to keep it that way. She got back from Frederick a few minutes before Russ brought Tara home.

When she met them at the door, Tara kissed her and raced to the kitchen to find Henry and black-cherry ice cream.

“Did I detect a strain between you and Telford this morning?” Russ asked her and, without waiting for her reply, added, “If he’s sore because you hadn’t told him you knew Melanie, don’t let it upset you. He demands a lot of people. He’ll get over it. Anyway, it’s time you two made up your minds.”

“Are you suggesting we…that we… I mean—”

He laughed at her obvious surprise. “Yeah. Get married and quit fooling around. It’s painful to watch.”

“Don’t
you
upset her.” She whirled around at the sound of Henry’s voice. “Russ don’t never bother to contain his opinions. Course, it wouldn’t hurt you none to build a fire under Tel.”

The grin on Russ’s face was that of a man savoring a tidbit. “Yeah, and I want to be there when you light that fire. That’ll be the day.”

“You’re such a loving brother,” she said, and his laughter followed her as she walked off to her room.

“Hi. I just got in,” Telford said a few minutes later when she answered her phone. “Can we talk now?”

“All right.” She agreed to meet him in the game room where the brothers played billiards, darts and table tennis and they were unlikely to be interrupted.

He walked in, kissed her on the cheek and cut to the chase. “Sit over here on this couch with me. I need to know what caused you to back off from me at that reception.”

She wanted to move her hand out of his so she could think straight, but he held it as if it belonged to him. “I explained it to you once. The setting, your friends, who I should have been and who I actually was—that, and what I’d just learned brought home to me forcibly that no matter how we polished it up, I was your housekeeper. A servant had no place in that company. I was playing a dangerous game.” She didn’t lie to him. Learning that he was Big Tip after the news she’d just received about Melanie had everything to do with it.

“I see. And what about last night? What changed?”

She was still trying to deal with the wild, possessive and explosive way in which he’d made love to her the night before, deliberately, almost as if he were teaching her a lesson. And then, he’d shattered in her arms as never before, giving her every bit of himself.

Shaken by the thought of what she’d experienced with him, her words came out in a whisper. “You know the answer to that. I…I needed you, and…and you were so near. I…” Why
should she explain it? Her temper threatened to break loose. “You know darned well how I feel about you, so that question doesn’t make sense.”

He released her hand, leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. “I can’t help feeling that there’s more to it. You’ve always been so open, so natural, and to suddenly clam up like that…” He shook his head as though perplexed. “This thing has to clear up sooner or later, and when it does, I’ll know it. I’m not giving up. You mean too much to me.”

Thank God for that!
“Jack’s supposed to visit Tara tomorrow around four,” she said, glad to get off that subject.

He slapped his thighs and looked toward the ceiling. “It’s so pathetic. If only he’d come to see her regularly and she could get to know him. Right now, she’s dead set against having anything to do with him. I can’t figure it out.”

“You implied that you weren’t crazy about your mother.”

“I wasn’t, but I was old enough to know why. Tara’s going with her instinct.”

“Jack’s superficial. He smiles readily and in many ways he’s charming. My guess is that children respond to sincerity and know when you’re faking.”

He took her hand as he stood. “Whatever. I’ll make sure I’m here, in case you need me.”

Jack’s visit the next afternoon didn’t improve his relations with his daughter. Where she’d previously been indifferent, she seemed to have developed a dislike for her father. Alexis decided that Jack wasn’t aware of it or, if he was, he ignored it.

“Why don’t you try talking with her, Jack?” she asked him when Tara used going to the bathroom as an excuse to leave Jack.

“She’s a child,” he said. “I’m not going to cater to her. You’ve spoiled her.”

“A single parent is subject to do that to make up for the other’s absence.”

Later, at Telford’s suggestion, Jack agreed to visit Tara every
Wednesday afternoon. “If she knows she can depend on seeing you, she’s bound to soften up. She needs consistency.”

“What’s your interest in this?” Jack asked him.

“I had a flighty mother who took off for weeks at a time whenever she got bored, and I bear the scars of one who, as a small child, couldn’t depend on a parent. I’d like to spare Tara that pain.”

“Maybe if you left the three of us alone to work out—”

“Don’t kid yourself, man. The only reason Tara stayed in this room with you as long as she did is that I told her she had to do it. Will you be here next Wednesday?”

“Yeah.” He looked at Alexis. “How about taking a ride, babe?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jack, but I’m not going to socialize with you. You’re here to visit Tara, not me.”

With a smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes, he saluted her. “See you next Wednesday, babe.”

He didn’t surprise her when, on his visit the following Wednesday afternoon, he proposed a different scenario. “Let’s you, me and Tara go for a ride, and let the big guy do his own thing. I don’t need him.”

“Sorry. The deal is that you visit with Tara in the living room, or the garden, and it’s too cold for her to go out in the garden. Tara,” she called, “tell your daddy the name of the latest piece you learned to play.”

With her eyes downcast, she leaned against Alexis’s knees. “‘Songs My Mother Taught Me.’”

“Tell him how you learned it.”

“Mr. Telford played it on his violin, and I asked him to teach it to me. I been practicing it.”

If she’d known Telford first played it on his violin, she wouldn’t have mentioned it. She had hoped Tara would tell him that she’d practiced it every morning before school and every afternoon. The little devil. She knew what she was doing. And so did Jack.

“We just can’t get away from the great
I am,
can we?” he said.

“Can I go now, Mummy?”

What was the use? “Ask your daddy to excuse you.”

Tara’s face bloomed into a smile. “Excuse me.” She ran from the room.

“We’ll see you next week?” she asked him with as much civility as she could muster. He hadn’t said one encouraging word to Tara about her playing; instead, he’d focused on his dislike of Telford.

“I’ll call you.”

She closed the door behind him and took a deep breath. Being with Jack for a mere half hour could ruin her entire day. As a man, he paled in comparison to Telford’s decency, sweetness and strength. She took the vase of withering flowers from the table in the foyer and went to the kitchen.

“Whatta we having for Thanksgiving?” Henry asked her. “It’s usually turkey, but I don’t know how you feel about turkey. Never did care for it myself.”

“I’m not crazy about it either. Tell you what. We’ll make it a gourmet feast. Let’s get a goose.”

Thanksgiving morning, she set the table with autumn flowers, candles and Harrington heirloom table appointments. Since all the brothers were at home, she finished upstairs later than usual, took Tara for a walk down Old Liberty Road halfway to the warehouse and returned with the view to getting some work done on the sculpture she’d just started.

“Want to watch some football games with us?” Drake asked her. “Around here, football is as much of a ritual as the Thanksgiving meal. We’ll be in the den.”

Henry put a large bowl of roasted chestnuts on the coffee table, sat on the floor in a lotus position and starting eating.

“Who’re we watching?” she asked.

“You can’t be serious,” Drake said. “We’re going to watch Howard University and Grambling at Howard’s homecoming. Tonight, we’ll watch UCLA and Cal Tech.”

She shelled a chestnut, savored it and reached for the ginger ale Henry had placed there for her benefit.

“What’s that?” Henry asked.

“They’re getting ready to show some clips of past homecoming activities,” Drake said. “They always do that.”

“Humph. Why don’t they just get on with the game?”

Her belly began to roll and a chill shot through her, though she sat three feet from flames that blazed in the fireplace. She put the ginger ale on the table.

“There you are, brother,” Drake said, his voice filled with pride. “Big Tip himself. Alexis, you should have seen Telford sling that football down the field.”

“Yeah,” Russ said. “Put Telford and Big Train out there together, with Telford throwing ’em and Big Train pulling ’em in like ordinary fly balls. Man, nobody beat Howard U in those days. You should have seen him, Alexis.”

Didn’t she know it, and hadn’t she seen his awesome feats with that football! “I’ll be doggoned” was as much as she could manage, and she made certain that she didn’t look any of them in the eye.

“He was so skinny and had all that long hair on his head and all over his face,” Henry said. “Used to make me want to take a pair of scissors to him.”

“Yeah,” Drake said. “Couldn’t see much of anything except his eyes and nose, but this brother could throw a football.”

The pregame ceremonies merged into the game, and the play melted into the halftime ceremonies. Finally, it was over, and the men raised their glasses to Howard’s twenty-one-to-seventeen win. She drank the warm ginger ale without tasting it. She couldn’t admit that she’d attended Howard, known him, fallen for him and loved him from afar, because he’d know who she was, and he wouldn’t forgive her. Secrets. How she hated them. Even more, she hated the thought that when Telford learned who she was, he would despise her.