“I’m pulling for you. Kisses. Bye.”
“I kiss you, too, Sam.” She hung up wondering how long their careful behavior would last.
Ginny didn’t get as much from the old man as she usually did, and she spent all that he gave her on the football tickets and transportation for her and Asa to and from the game. Asa’s appetite for limousines rather than taxis had raised the cost of keeping him happy.
She stood beside one of the big square columns that flanked the entrance of the building in which Kendra lived and waited. Fortunately, a steady rain insured that the minute a woman stepped out of the door she would be distracted while she opened her umbrella. As she had anticipated, Kendra came out and opened her umbrella, and at that second, Ginny snatched her daughter’s pocketbook. But she had not considered Kendra’s athleticism—her excellence at track, basketball, and fencing. Before she could escape with the pocketbook, Kendra tripped her up, and she went sprawling across the sidewalk.
Kendra bent to retrieve the pocketbook and gasped. “Mama, for goodness’ sake! How could you!” The doorman had phoned for the police, but Kendra didn’t wait. She spun around and went back to change her wet clothing. Before she returned, the police arrived.
“You’ll have to come with us, ma’am,” the policeman said.
“Come with you? Get your hands off me. I haven’t done anything.”
“This doorman said you attempted to steal a tenant’s pocketbook. You’re coming with us.”
“I want to call my lawyer.”
“You do that after we book you.”
Kendra changed her clothes as quickly as she could, blow-dried her hair, and forced it into a knot at the back of her head. If she could get a taxi, she’d make it to class.
The doorman waylaid her. “Ms. Richards, the police want you to go down and press charges against that purse snatcher.”
She cringed, but the man didn’t know that he was referring to her mother. “I don’t want to press charges,” she said. “She didn’t get away with it, and that’s all I care about.”
“Yes, ma’am. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Could you please help me get a taxi?” He called a cab company, and while she stood at his desk waiting for the taxi, the full measure of what her mother had attempted hit her with the force of a sledgehammer, and she groped her way across the lobby and sat down. The doorman brought her a paper cup of water.
“I think you don’t feel well. Should you go out in this weather?”
“I’ll be all right, thanks. I’m going to class.” The taxi arrived, she got in, and, in spite of the traffic, she took her seat in class a minute before the professor closed the door. At the end of the fifty-five-minute lecture, she could not recall one word that the instructor had uttered.
When one o’clock arrived, the rain had ceased, but the sky remained overcast, and the rising wind signaled the imminent arrival of colder weather. When Sam drove up, her spirits revived, and she fairly skipped to the car. He got out to greet her.
“Hi.” He kissed her cheek, opened the door for her, fastened her seat belt, and closed the door. “You’re not your usually ebullient self. Is there something wrong?”
“You could say that, but it can wait till we’re at the restaurant or wherever we’re going.”
“We’re going to have a proper lunch. I hope you don’t mind that I ordered it in advance, but you don’t have time to wait forty minutes while a cook hones his skill.”
“I don’t mind. Sam, you’re such a thoughtful and considerate man. I like that about you.”
“That’s a sweet thing for you to say. Any news about the test?”
“Not yet. Three professors have to grade all of the papers. I’m not nervous about it. If I win, I win. If not, not.”
He parked a short walk from the Howell Building. “We’re close by, so you won’t have to rush.” He had reserved a table, and as soon as they sat down, the waiter brought them lobster bisque.
“Oh my gosh, Sam. I’m crazy about this. I’ve been promising myself to learn how to make it. It’s delicious.”
Midway through the second course, Sam said, “I’m having a hard time waiting to find out what upset you since we spoke last night.”
She stopped eating. “Brace yourself.” After taking a deep breath, she told him about Ginny’s latest trick.
He didn’t speak until he’d finished eating. “What’s her address?”
“No. You don’t want to get involved with her.”
“I
am
involved with her. She’s trashing your life. Give me her address.” She shook her head. “All right. Don’t. I can get it in five minutes.”
She shook her head as if rejecting the inevitable. “Last I heard, she was in jail. But since I refused to press charges, she may have been released by now.”
“She deserves permanent residence there. Are you airing the Holmes interview tonight?”
“Yes, at eight-thirty. Goodness, I forgot to tell Papa, and I’m not sure I’ll have time.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll call him when I leave you.”
He had asked her to slow down, but even though he wasn’t touching her, she was seeping deeper and deeper into him. She was so vulnerable, and he had a deep-seated feeling that she needed him.
“Have you told your father about this morning’s happenings?”
“No. I try not to mention such things to him when he’s working. I’ll tell him when he picks me up tonight.”
They finished the meal, and he walked outside with Kendra, kissed her cheek, and watched her go into the Howell Building. He had the feeling of one suspended over a precipice. As much as he cared for Kendra, he could not allow himself to become involved with a woman who would do what her mother did that morning. And to have such a woman as the grandmother of his children was unthinkable. He walked toward his car, passed a Starbucks, turned back, and walked in. After ordering a cup of coffee, he found Bert Richards’s card and telephoned him.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, sir. This is Sam Hayes.”
“How are you, Sam? Good to hear from you. What’s up?”
“Kendra wants you to be sure and tune in on her program tonight at eight-thirty. She forgot to tell you that she’ll be broadcasting her interview with Clarissa Holmes and playing Holmes’s recordings. She asked me to phone you.”
“Thank you. I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”
“She did a great job. I hope I’ll see you soon.”
“Same here.”
Sam threw the remainder of the coffee into the wastebasket and walked back to his car. He realized that he’d parked in front of a florist and, without giving it much thought, he went inside, bought a dozen long-stemmed red roses, and had them sent to Kendra. On the note, he wrote, “Thinking of you. Sam.”
I don’t know why I did that, but I did, and I feel good about it.
He was not confused about his feelings for Kendra; far from it. His problem was what he’d do about them.
At his father’s suggestion, he ate supper with Jethro and Edwina, after which they sat in Jethro’s living room sipping liqueurs and espresso coffee while they waited to hear Kendra’s program. At eight-thirty, Clarissa’s sultry voice began the soulful words of “Sophisticated Lady” and immediately faded into the background.
“Hey, all you Holmes fans, this is KT. Tonight is Clarissa Holmes night, and for the next two hours, we’re going to celebrate her in her own words and her own music.”
“This interview sounds as if it’s live,” Edwina said.
“What kind of recorder did she use?”
He didn’t miss his dad’s knowing look. “Probably the best small recorder available. She said Sam gave it to her.”
“I’ll have to ask her to let me see it.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jethro said. “I’ll ask Sam about it.”
It looked to him as if Edwina and his father were living together, but until his dad told him, he wouldn’t mention it. He closed his eyes and let the smooth tones of “When a Woman Loves a Man” flow over him. Listening to the famous singer express the meaning of that song got to him. He opened his eyes to see Jethro and Edwina locked in a torrid kiss and wished there was some way that he could give them the privacy that they needed. He doubted that they knew he was in the room.
At the end of the program, he was more than ready to leave them. He wanted to see Kendra, but her father would meet her when she left work, and he had no role to play. But whose fault was that? He went home, not merely disgruntled, but irritated at himself. Yet, he knew that where Kendra was concerned, he’d done the right thing. They were headed for a relationship in which sex was the end-all and be-all, and he’d realized—barely in time—that he wanted more with her. Something on the periphery of his conscience told him that he was ready to build a family, but he had two good reasons not to build it with her.
And at least two good reasons that favored her,
his niggling conscience reminded him.
He headed home. Maybe what he needed was a dog. He laughed at himself. No dog could substitute for the way her breasts felt against his chest the last time he held her close.
Clifton Howell flung open the studio door, his hand outstretched. “Kendra, you hit a home run. It was off the chain. The phones are ringing constantly. Do you have her address? I want to drop her a note, thank her, and tell her she has a home at WAMA Radio and WAMTV. You’re a wonderful interviewer. I can see you a few years down the road with your own TV show.” He sat down. “I can’t tell you how proud of you I am. And for WAMA to pull off a tour de force like that . . .” He beamed. “Let ’em eat humble pie.”
Kendra left the radio station feeling as if she walked on clouds. Howell had as much as told her he’d eventually shift her to his television station, but she didn’t want to be an overly made-up pretty face asking inane questions of the latest popular celebrities; she wanted to collect and report the news.
Her father parked as she walked out of the building. “Hi, Papa. Did you hear it?”
“I did, and it was great. You are a wonderful interviewer. You made that woman respond to you as if you were her best friend. I wish I could have seen that on TV. Your boss had to be pleased with it.”
“He was, and he came in and told me so.”
She waited until he parked in front of the building in which she lived. “Papa, I have something to tell you.” From his silence, she knew that he was preparing himself for the worst. She told him of her mother’s attempt to steal her pocketbook. “I think she’s losing her mind. Why won’t she work a steady job?”
“She’s done some awful things, but I would have thought that was beneath her. I’d like to know why she’s so desperate. She’s too self-centered to take care of a man . . . but, well, you never know. Is she in jail?”
“I don’t know. I refused to press charges.”
“When you finish school, get a job in New York or someplace where she can’t find you. It’s bad enough that you can’t depend on her and that you don’t have a mother–daughter relationship, but for you to have her as an enemy is horrible, and it’s painful for me to watch.”
“I’m tough, Papa, and I can thank her behavior for that. She isn’t going to drag me down. I won’t let her.” She hugged her father and went inside.
The doorman stopped her. “How are you, Ms. Richards? I have something here for you.” He handed her a vase of red roses wrapped in clear cellophane. She thanked the doorman, and when she got into her apartment, she unwrapped the flowers, thinking that Clifton Howell had gone overboard.
She opened the little envelope and read: “Thinking of you, Sam.”
Kendra sat down. Holding the crystal vase in her lap, she leaned her head against the back of a chair and let the tears cascade down the sides of her face. She had needed someone, and he was there for her. It was twenty minutes after twelve, but she had to talk with him. She went to her bedroom, put the roses on her night table, sat on the bed, and dialed Sam’s number.
“Hello, Kendra. I’m glad you called. Your show was great. I listened at my dad’s house along with him and Edwina.”
“Thank you, Sam. Your verdict is important to me, but I’m calling because these beautiful roses and the sentiments on your card are what I needed tonight. Thank you.”
“Did your father hear your show?”
“Yes, he did, and he enjoyed it. Well, I just wanted you to know that what I got from you tonight lifted me up at a time when I needed that.”
“Say, wait a minute. After the success of your show, you should have been happy. Oh, no. What happened to you this morning finally set in. Baby, do you want me to come over there?”
“I won’t lie and say no, but if anything ever happens between you and me, Sam, I want it to happen naturally. But knowing that you would come to me this time of night is one more reason why you’re dear to me. Good night.”
“You’re dear to me, too. Good night, sweetheart.”
She hung up feeling better. He may have slowed things down, but he cared for her and wasn’t loath to express it. She made up her mind to seek psychiatric help for Ginny, but she didn’t want any direct contact with her, so she would probably need the assistance of local authorities. She made a note to speak to a psychiatric social worker. There was no point in allowing her mother to destroy herself.