A Love for All Seasons (2 page)

I Saw Her Standing There

A
licia
nearly gasped when she opened the door and saw him. She felt a jolt rush straight through her chest to her back, immediately followed by a sense of exhilaration, like she'd been pushed out of an airplane and was free falling in the few key seconds before inflating a parachute.

Her friend Rhonda Robinson had asked if it would be okay if she brought someone along to the party, her husband Pete's college roommate who was new in town and didn't know many people. Alicia had said sure, but for some reason she'd expected some nerdy type with glasses. She hadn't expected this tall, well-built man whose navy sports coat seemed tailor-made for him, and who appeared to be fresh from the barber's chair. My, my, my….

 

The moment she opened the door Jack felt thunder-struck. He could hardly believe it, but it was
her
, the same woman he'd glimpsed in the restaurant last spring, when he came to NewYork to meet the company brass face-to-face. Four months had passed since then. Spring had long since given way to summer, and now even the last vestige of that season had become a memory to savor until next year, going out with the annual Indian summer of unseasonably warm temperatures in mid-October. The air now held a hint of the cold weather that was to come. Last spring he'd only seen her for a moment, but he'd never forgotten her. He didn't realize she was a friend of Rhonda's, never even thought of the possibility. No new arrivals had joined them in the last hour, and while he had a vague memory of Pete and Rhonda discussing the possibility of another friend of theirs joining them, he didn't think it would happen, not that long after their meal ended.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Rhonda exclaimed. “Alicia Timberlake, Jack Devlin.”

Alicia promptly held out her hand. No one must know the effect he had on her. “Hello, Jack. Welcome.” She kept her expression impassive as he swallowed her hand with his and shook it firmly.

“Thank you, Alicia,” he said. “Glad to be here.”

“Jack's new in town,” Rhonda explained. “He's from Birmingham.”

“Really,” Alicia said, falling into step beside him as they moved into the apartment. “What brings you to New York?”

“Work. I just accepted a new position.”

He had a way of looking at her, directly, yet simultaneously roaming over her body, that struck her as almost too sexy to bear. It left her mouth dry, like she had a mouthful of sand. She struggled to keep up her end of the conversation. He'd just stated that he accepted a job here, but she felt it would be too forward to ask what he did. “How do you like it here?” she asked instead.

“I'm still learning my way around,” he admitted. “It's different from what I'm used to, but I like it. And it's nice to know at least two people here. Pete and I went to college together. Fisk University.” Jack frowned when someone called out to Alicia and she excused herself with a light touch on his forearm. He wished he could escort her into a corner and have her tell him all about herself.

Instead he went to the buffet, which had been set up on top of an attractive painted Bombay chest near the door, and helped himself to barbecued chicken drumettes, cheese puffs, meatballs and potato salad. He quickly joined Pete in a conversation with another man as they munched, keeping an eye on the whereabouts of Alicia all the while.

She mingled with her guests, looking chic in a long-sleeved off-white cable sweater that covered her hips, wool slacks the same color, and brown suede pumps. She'd brushed her hair back and applied a leopard print headband. He admired the way she moved easily between pockets of people, always with a cheerful word. He could barely tear his eyes away from her.

Not wanting anyone to notice him staring at her, Jack forced himself to check out her apartment instead. Rhonda described their destination as “a party at a friend's studio.” He knew one-room apartments existed, but never knew anyone who actually lived in one. He always imagined studios as claustrophobic little rooms with perhaps one window, but this
L
-shaped apartment seemed plenty large enough for one person to live in, even with fifteen people milling about. The outside wall—the bottom of the
L—
contained two sets of double windows, one at each end, with a Pullman kitchen neatly tucked into the opposite side. Between the kitchen and the window sat a small oblong cloth-covered table with rounded edges, holding an ice bucket, glasses, cocktail napkins, a large bottle of white Zinfadel, a half-dozen or so seven-ounce bottles of beer, and a tall martini pitcher.

The joint of the
L
had been set up as a sitting area, with a small sofa, coffee table, and two compact rounded back chairs. The apartment seemed to have everything, despite its small size.

Well, almost everything. Jack's eyes narrowed in thought as he realized there didn't appear to be a bed. He decided the sofa must open up.

There might not be a visible bed, but guests had a variety of choices for seating. In addition to the corner sitting area, two matching oval-shaped chairs flanked a small maple wood Parsons table in the corner by the bar. Also, an odd-looking, oversize European-looking couch, reminiscent of the days of King Arthur and Queen Guinivere with its high wooden sides, stood opposite the Bombay chest near the entrance to the apartment.

Jack finished his finger food and moved toward the kitchen, where he tossed the plate in the white plastic trash bin. He turned to see Alicia brush past him, watching with unabashed interest as she lifted a bag of ice from the sink and filled the brass ice bucket.

Possibly feeling his eyes on her, she looked up and smiled at him. “Finding everything all right?”

“Yes, I am, thank you.”

“Can I get you a drink?” she offered as she approached where he stood.

“Yes, I'd like that. What do you have?”

“Just the basics. Wine, beer, soda, and the drink of the evening, which, by popular demand, is a Kamikaze. It's in the pitcher.” She noted his surprised expression. “I'm afraid I'm a no-fuss hostess. I find that if I fix just one cocktail I can mix it up in advance and not have to worry about constantly replenishing this liquor or that mixer.” With a boldness that came from nowhere, she raised her lips toward his ear and lowered her voice. “Confidentially, when the drinks are pre-mixed as opposed to letting guests fix their own, the liquor goes a lot further.”

He liked having her stand so close to him. How nice it would be to imagine her whispering something much more intimate than what she'd just shared with him. He felt his arousal form and kept his voice even. “I imagine it would. And I think that's very wise.”

She took a deep breath. Somehow—she didn't know why—it mattered that Jack Devlin thought well of her.

“Would you believe I've never had a Kamikaze? I don't even know what's in it.”

“It's pretty simple. Vodka, triple sec and lime juice, all in equal parts.” She hoped she wasn't talking too much, but he did ask. From the moment she saw Jack Devlin standing outside her door she felt ill at ease, like she didn't belong in her own skin.

All Alicia's friends admired her hostess skills. They said she always knew the right thing to say, even to complete strangers. But something about this particular stranger made her nervous as a flickering flame. What could it be?

Surely not his looks, which were undeniably well above average, but hardly extraordinary in a city where a woman could barely walk down a city block without passing someone who looked like he belonged on the cover of
GQ
. Jack had a nice rugged look about him, which she preferred over the pretty boys, with a medium brown complexion, sturdy build, perhaps four or five inches taller than her own five-seven, and close cropped haircut, brushed forward, framing expressive brown eyes. Unlike many African-American men, he was clean shaven, and she thought she spotted a smattering of gray at his hairline and in his sideburns. He was quite attractive, but she saw good-looking men all the time and conversed with them without her tongue feeling too big for her mouth, so that clearly wasn't the reason for her unease. Her hands with their manicured fingernails felt awkward. As she picked up the tongs that rested on the ice bucket, it relieved her to have something to do.

To her embarrassment, Alicia had difficulty grasping ice with the tongs; the cubes kept falling out. She laughed to cover her nervousness as she tried repeatedly.

“Why don't you let me do that?” he offered.

Finally she managed to hold the cubes long enough to drop them into a highball glass. “No, that's all right. I've got it, Dev.” She gasped. Where had
that
come from? She'd just overlooked his first name and shortened his surname, and she hardly knew him well enough to be giving him a nickname.

Or did she? Could that be it? Had she met Jack Devlin at some time in the past? When? And if she had, why didn't she remember?

Jack grinned. No one had ever called him “Dev” before. He didn't know how he would feel if it came from anyone else, but coming from Alicia Timberlake he liked it. It gave the impression that he was special to her. A ridiculous notion for someone he'd just met, to be sure, but an appealing one nonetheless. He'd like to be special to her.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I don't know what made me say that.”

“Don't apologize.”

She handed him the glass and managed to get ice cubes into a glass for herself. Maybe if she had a Kamikaze instead of ice water it would help her nerves.

“So,” she said, careful not to call him by name lest she use the wrong one, “how does New York compare with Birmingham?”

“Actually, they're not all that different. I mean, Birmingham is a city. We have tall buildings downtown, just like any other city. And every place has the same services. Restaurants, bars, book stores, dry cleaners, McDonald's. I've also lived in Galveston and Houston.” He shrugged. “I guess you can say I move around a lot.”

“Have you been to New York before? You look familiar to me somehow.” If she could just figure out where she'd seen him it would all come back to her, and she could deal with it…whatever it was.

“Uh…I was here the second week of June.” He didn't know if he should confess that he remembered seeing her then, not when she so obviously didn't notice him. In an instant he made up his mind. “I did see you during that visit, but just in passing, up at that Cuban restaurant here on the Upper West Side.” He now knew enough about Manhattan geography to pinpoint the section of the city he had eaten in that day, which wasn't far from Alicia's apartment. “You came in as I was leaving. I held the door for you and cast you an admiring look, but I really didn't know you were coming to join Pete and Rhonda.” Again he chuckled. “Although I don't know why I didn't figure that out, since the size of our little group had already doubled.”

She looked embarrassed. “I'm afraid I don't remember. I was in a rush that day, trying to catch Rhonda before she left.”

“I didn't expect you to remember me. But that's the only time I saw you. Believe me, I would never forget you.”

Warmth spread to her nose and cheeks, and she didn't even try to hide her pleasure. “Well, thank you. But I was thinking in terms of something more than just passing by. I—” She broke off, realizing it wouldn't do to tell him that his presence unnerved her, but it did. She raised the highball glass to her lips and took a sip. Anything to steady her shaking hands.

“Alicia, the pitcher of Kamikaze is running low. Can I help you mix some more?” her friend Jenny offered.

“Oh, no thanks, I'll take care of it.” She turned to Jack, glad to have an excuse to get away from him. Being around him was simply too unsettling. Her stomach continued to behave like a contestant in an Olympics gymnastic competition, running and flipping all over the place. She couldn't take much more of this. “Excuse me.”

As she hurried toward the kitchen she said a silent prayer of thanks that the Kamikaze drink continued to be so popular among her guests. Mixing up a fresh batch gave her the perfect excuse to get away from Jack Devlin.

She concentrated on his name as she carefully measured the three ingredients.
Jack Devlin, Jack Devlin
. Where had she seen him before? And what had transpired between them? It had to be something major, or else she wouldn't be acting like such a fool. But why couldn't she remember? And why didn't he?

She stirred the liquors and lime juice together in the tall martini pitcher. “Here, I'll take that,” Pete Robinson said with a laugh.

“Ready for a refill, are you, Pete?” she said knowingly as she handed him the pitcher. She smiled as he immediately filled his glass.

Alicia's preference would have been to stay away from Jack Devlin until she identified their past history, but she knew that made for a poor hostess. Her friends brought him to her party because he didn't know anyone in town. The least she could do was introduce him around.

She found him standing with his plate near the buffet table, exchanging a few words of small talk with her old friend Derek Taylor. “Have you two met each other?” she inquired.