Authors: Sandra Kitt
“No, don’t leave yet. I’m sorry.”
“It’s late, and I—”
“It feels a little strange, doesn’t it?”
There was something in the hold Jason had on her arm. Leah glanced down at his strong fingers, then back at his face. There was something about his gray eyes and what she saw in them. Leah felt her heart begin to beat faster in agitation.
“Wha—what feels strange?”
Jason hesitated, but then he bent forward to swiftly kiss her.
As soon as Leah realized what he was going to do, she stepped back. “Don’t …”
Jason put up a hand to stay her. “Sshhh …”
They stood looking at each other, both of them asking, what next? Indeed, what next? It was an extremely important question because if there was to be a next step, it would begin now.
Jason reached out to Leah slowly. She wondered if he could see her confusion, could see she was poised for flight. But instead of saying a single thing to reassure her, Jason followed through on his impulse. Against her resistance Jason pulled her slowly toward him and kissed her.
Leah felt as though she were holding her breath. She closed her eyes and let a great sigh escape. It wasn’t really a kiss. Jason just pressed his mouth to hers. That is, until he began to move his lips and gently explored the shape and surface of her mouth. But just with his lips. Leah’s acquiescence was stiff at first and then softened. It loosened and became accepting, almost a natural response. With so much tenderness that she felt mesmerized, Jason coaxed her lips apart. His tongue quickly found hers and the touch was electrifying, although Leah couldn’t tell if it was due to the surprise or the feeling. It
was
a little strange, a little mysterious. But not careless.
Neither of them remembered they were standing in the street under a lamp post in thirty-five-degree weather. Leah felt overly warm. Limp. This had been an honest kiss. A real one. And Jason didn’t seem to be nearly as frightened of it as she was.
He finally broke the kiss and stood back to look into her eyes. It was impossible for Leah to tell what he was thinking. Jason’s face seemed blank for the first time since she’d met him. But his eyes were dark and intense and not without feelings of some kind. Leah just continued to stare at Jason, hoping he would say something first. Leah hoped that in the dark he couldn’t see her hands clutching together.
“I bet you’ve never had an evening quite like this one. Right?”
Leah merely shook her head.
“And never with anyone like me?”
She stared at him.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Jason said. He nodded in the direction of the corner and the market. “He was right about one thing.”
“What?” she asked. “Who was?”
“That kid.”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
“I would like to make love with you.”
Leah felt her stomach tighten. Jason raised his hand in a gesture of a wave, turned, and walked away.
He was decidedly shaken.
He hadn’t planned on doing that. But, after all, it wasn’t as if he’d never kissed a woman good night after a date. There had been a natural timeliness to the kiss. It felt really nice.
Jason took a deep breath and counted to five, and then slowly let the air out. No. It had been something other than nice. More. Different. Did he know what he was doing? God, he felt odd. Confused. He wondered abstractedly if Leah Downey’s silky brown skin had added a sense of the new and exotic to the experience. He didn’t know. He really didn’t want to know. He only knew that in that moment he wanted to really hold her much closer and let the chips fall where they may. He was too old to start questioning his judgment and instincts.
With an impatient shake of his head Jason wondered, what the hell was the big deal anyway? Joe had been on his case about Leah Downey from the moment he’d told his colleague about the woman who’d given him a cup of coffee. Joe’s cynicism was legendary and understandable. He didn’t trust anybody’s motives about anything. Not like himself, who gave much more latitude.
Okay. So they had met under strange circumstances. They had become, in a way, very unlikely friends. Maybe it couldn’t be called friendship at all. And now maybe they didn’t even have that. Had he ruined that, too?
Jason knew that he was comfortable with Leah. Any way he looked at it, questioned it, dissected it and tried to make it something else, he came back to the fact that he really liked Leah Downey. He could talk to her, and she listened.
She made him feel his age. Not old, just grown up. Like it was perfectly okay that he goofed up and made mistakes and showed weakness. He had a job that she hated, but she knew that the job had to get done. She didn’t have to hate him … just because. Together they’d managed to find this equal ground by more than mere chance, and deeper than just curiosity.
But Jason recognized that something else was happening.
In the ice-cold, now windless air of a December night Jason Horn had sweaty palms. That hadn’t happened since he was a teenager when he felt all hands and feet and uncontrollable glands. He wondered if he was, indeed, getting old.
Leah walked aimlessly around the house for more than an hour. She could still feel Jason’s kiss on her mouth, and it still made her feel strange. She was confused and just beginning to feel frightened. But she also felt light-headed. Too many possibilities flashed before her eyes. Leah knew that none of them were going to be easy.
She finally sat down in the den, melancholia descending upon her. She began remembering Philip and that summer in school. Fresh stabs of pain and humiliation assailed her, and she felt close to tears. She liked Jason. But she was not going to let this new thing with him, whatever it was, turn out the same way. She would make him go away. She would protect herself.
Above her a door opened, and there were footsteps on the second-floor landing.
“Leah? Is that you? It’s late.”
Leah got up and went to the door of the den. She called up the stairwell. “I know. Sorry I woke you up. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“See you in the morning.” Gail’s door closed, and it was quiet again.
Leah continued to stand in the doorway. The silence of the house settled around her. It should have been a comfortable and safe feeling but was neither. She experienced a strong anticlimactic hyperness that made her feel both excited and terrified.
The phone rang, scaring her. She stared at it. Finally, Leah picked up the receiver, already knowing who was on the other end.
“Hello?” Her voice sounded thin and breathy.
“Hi,” Jason said quietly. There was a silence while the mechanics of the New York Telephone company clicked in their ears. “I just wanted to thank you for the evening. I’m glad you came. It was fun.”
“Yes …”
“I’m not home yet.”
“I didn’t think so. Where are you?”
“At a pay phone.”
Leah wondered if she should be flattered. She didn’t know how to respond. What did it mean that he couldn’t wait to get home to call her?
“Are you okay?” he asked suddenly.
“No. Not really,” Leah answered truthfully.
“Me, either. Do you suppose that’s good or bad?”
Leah considered. She felt exasperated. “I don’t know. I have no idea.”
“Well, right now it’s not important. Am I still invited for dinner?”
“Dinner?”
He chuckled. “How quickly they forget. You talked about Christmas, remember? You said something like I shouldn’t be alone. Did you mean it?”
“Yes. Of course I did.”
“Good. I’ll bring dessert.”
“That would be nice.”
“Something chocolate.”
Jason paused again and Leah realized that he’d made a small joke at her expense. She didn’t know whether to be amused or suspicious.
“Leah?”
“Yes?”
“I meant what I said to you,” Jason almost whispered. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
The sudden tension in her chest was a dead giveaway that she did. Jason’s admission played back instantly in her head. Her stomach roiled with the reality of being wanted in that way.
“Yes, I know,” Leah finally whispered back.
For whatever reason Jason’s confession stayed stubbornly with Leah. She tried not to think about it, not to conjure up a visual scenario of her and Jason together actually being possible. It was enough that her imagination wouldn’t cooperate; neither would her senses.
I meant what I said
played over and over in her head. And over and over she felt an unexpected breathlessness at the clarity and boldness of what Jason wanted.
It had also seemed obvious that he had no intention of playing at seduction. She didn’t know what his game plan was. Maybe he didn’t even have one, which made his words seem like a promise. Or inevitable.
The very idea of it played in Leah’s subconscious, but rose to the surface more than a week later when Allen appeared early one evening at the brownstone. She’d just arrived home from work. When she answered the bell and found Allen on the other side of the door, Leah realized she hadn’t given him a thought since that night with Jason.
“Allen. What are you doing here?” she asked uncomfortably.
“I thought I’d surprise you,” he said, stepping past her into the hallway.
Leah kept the door open and watched in rising annoyance as Allen put his gloves in his pockets and unbuttoned his overcoat. He was expecting to stay.
“We talked about going to Raintree’s some night for dinner. I was free and I thought you’d enjoy it.”
“You should have called,” Leah responded flatly.
Allen straightened his shoulders. “You have other plans again?”
She watched him silently for a moment, debating her answer. Leah finally shook her head. “No. But I really don’t want to go out tonight. I have some artwork I want to get done.”
Allen pursed his lips. “Is that anything like having to wash your hair or something like that?”
“Allen …” she began patiently.
“Okay,” he interrupted. “We can stay in. Look. I just wanted to talk to you.” He gestured toward the door, and Leah closed it.
“About what?”
“You know, you’re making it damned hard for me. I wanted to talk about the future. You and me. There’s talk about moving me up into the international division of customer service, possibly as a V.P.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Congratulations.”
“It makes the company look good. Black male, Brown undergraduate, Yale MBA. Things are happening, Leah. And I thought it was time to—”
She began to feel hot. She felt her heart begin to race in anxiety. “You’re pushing me, Allen. I’m happy about your prospects, but—”
Allen suddenly exploded. “Dammit, Leah! How do I get through to you? How long are you going to make me keep apologizing?”
“Don’t yell at me. I’m not making you do anything.”
The door swung open, and Gail stood on the threshold.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her gaze going back and forth between them. “I could hear you before I got to the door.”
Once Gail decided that her sister was being bullied by Allen, she turned on him like a tigress protecting a cub. Gail misunderstood the tone of the encounter, and put her own spin on it. Leah wondered what the devil Gail was thinking to come at Allen, practically with her claws drawn, to demand that he leave her sister alone. She found herself between Gail and Allen acting as referee. If it wasn’t so surprising it would have been comical to Leah—both of them fighting over her. She watched her sister’s response, stunned.
Leah sighed and rubbed her temples. Another headache. And she felt tense. She knew Allen had tried to explain, before Gail had appeared with her righteous indignation, that he’d been thinking about them. It wasn’t a discussion that Leah wanted to have just then, but as skittish and uncertain as she was about Allen, she didn’t know how to make him stop. Leah grabbed Gail’s arm.
“It’s okay, Gail. Stop it. We weren’t fighting.”
Gail turned on her. “Don’t let him treat you this way.”
“You should talk,” Allen shot back. “This is all your fault.”
“Okay, enough! Gail, if you don’t mind I can handle this. Allen’s not staying.” She looked pointedly at him.
“Good,” Gail muttered. “Can’t do anything right.” She pushed past them into the house.
Allen stood controlling his anger. “You want me to go.”
“Yes. I appreciate that—that you need to talk. But not now. Not tonight. I’m not prepared to.”
“Then when?”
“I don’t know,” Leah said helplessly. “Soon.”
He stared at her. “I’ll call you,” he muttered. He pulled open the door and left. The door rattled closed behind him.
Leah looked through the window next to the door, watching Allen’s departure. He’d left his car farther down the block, and his purposeful strides, long and angry, carried him away from her in that direction. She felt sorry, but also relieved.
Leah approached the kitchen entrance and stood cautiously watching her sister. Gail was sitting at the table with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. Leah wondered if Gail had put vodka in it.
“What was that all about?” Leah asked.
But Gail glanced over her shoulder to give Leah a look with just the right amount of indignation and surprise.
“You tell me. I come home to find Allen looming over you, and I thought he was going to do something stupid.”
“Temporary insanity?” Leah questioned sarcastically.
“I thought you two were fighting. I thought he was going to … well …” She shrugged.
“First of all, Allen wasn’t looming over me, and second of all, we weren’t fighting. ‘Leave my sister alone’?” Leah repeated, both skeptical and incredulous. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Okay. So I overreacted,” Gail said, more skittish than contrite. “It sounded like he was about to say something to … to hurt you.”
Leah didn’t know whether to be touched, confused, or amused. Confused won out. “Like what?”
Gail drew deeply on her cigarette and delicately blew it out in a thin, vaporish stream. “Since he obviously didn’t say anything significant, it doesn’t matter.”
“We’ve known Allen more than two years, and you’re just now getting protective? He and I have had arguments before.”