“I really hate this machine. I’d much rather talk to you in person. Please call me when you get in. Oh, and use my private number. It’ll ring here at the office and at home. It’s...”
“Oliver? This is Holly. I’m relieved to know that your private number doesn’t ring
everywhere
you go.” She giggled. “I’ll be home until six, then I’m off to Berkeley. Did I tell you that I go to school on Monday and Wednesday nights? I’m getting my master’s... to impress the money people. I mean, it’s not like I’ll be able to do more, or be more qualified to do what I already do. It won’t even get me a pay raise. I guess the theory is that the more degrees you have, the more trustworthy you are to handle grant money. I don’t know. Anyway, I’m not sure when I’ll be home after that, so try and call before six. I miss your voice.”
“Holly, I had a dinner meeting. I didn’t get home until just now. It’s... seven-thirty. Damn.” He sighed heavily. “I’ll call you first thing in the morning. I’d rather talk to you tonight, but you’ve been out all day and I know you didn’t sleep last night, so get some good sleep.” A long pause. “I wish I were with you.”
“H’lo.”
“Hi. Wake up, sleepyhead. It’s first thing in the morning already.”
Oliver squinted at the clock. “Six-thirty.”
“That’s right. I’m on my way to work, but since my first thing in the morning and your first thing in the morning are obviously
worlds
apart, I thought I’d call you. Good morning.”
“Hi.” He sat up in bed and pushed the hair out of his face. “Jeezus, when do you sleep?”
“When it’s convenient.”
“You’re going to get sick. You work too hard.”
“I never get sick, and I have to work hard.” There was a smile in her voice. “Say something nice so I can leave for work. I hate being late.”
“Nice, huh... I got tickets for Debussy yesterday. For January sixteenth. Is that good for you?”
“I’ll make it good for me...” she lowered her voice to be blatantly sexual, “...I’ll make it good for you too.”
“Holly...”
“Oliver, I have to go. I’m going to be late.”
“What about tonight? When do you get home from work?”
“About six-thirty.”
“Dinner, then. I’ll meet you for dinner.”
“Oh, Oliver, I can’t. Tuesdays we do condoms and needles.”
“You do what?” He sat straight up. “Holly?”
“We pass out condoms and needles to the prostitutes and addicts downtown.”
“On street corners?”
“That’s where they are. Some of them come to us, but most of them don’t. So we go to them. I have to go. Please, Oliver. Have a good day, okay?”
“Holly?”
“Yes, Oliver?”
“Be careful.”
“I promise.” The line went dead.
“Holly, it’s ten-thirty. I was hoping you’d gotten to every drug addict and prostitute in Oakland by now. I guess not.” A heavy pause. “I hate sitting here and thinking of you out there. Aren’t there karate experts or sumo wrestlers to deliver stuff like that? Couldn’t you drop off boxes of condoms and needles on every street corner and let them help themselves?” He sighed. “Sorry. I know better. I just don’t like it. Call me.”
“Oh, no. You’re sleeping,” he said to the muffled noise on the other end of the line. “It’s six-fifteen. I thought you’d be up.”
“It’s what?”
“Six-fifteen.”
“Oh, gawd! Oliver, I overslept. I never oversleep. I’m late. I’ll call you tonight. I promise. Bye.”
Enough was enough. Oliver was in love and he could hardly keep the woman of his dreams on the telephone long enough to tell her—that is, if he could get her on the phone at all.
He needed to see her. He had to touch her. A single kiss would put him into orbit. Damn her. Didn’t she know?
He spent the afternoon plotting, but it was hard to figure a woman like Holly—a selfless, dedicated woman. It was just his rotten luck. An imperial command was out, she had no respect for his money or his power, and he had no authority over her—yet. Whether or not he ever would was something to consider—but maybe at a later date. No, at this point he was going to have to show his flexibility; his willingness to yield to her cause; his receptiveness to her work.
On the other hand, complacency stuck in his craw. He was not the most malleable man alive, nor was she the most judicious. She needed him to make her see reason. If she wasn’t more careful, she’d work herself to death, or get hit in the head for the loose change in her purse, or fall through the floor of that run-down apartment building and break her damn neck—and miss out on the most incredible sex of this century!
Sex. She definitely needed him.
He didn’t care what it took. He was going to make her make time for him. He’d collect appointments. Set up dates a month in advance. Move in with her and catch her fifteen minutes at a time if he had to. But he was going to see her.
At six-thirty he was parked in front of her apartment building waiting for her to come home from work. They needed to talk. Really talk. And phone tag wouldn’t cut it. It was going to have to be face-to-face.
An hour elapsed before he took a piece of paper from the breast pocket of his suit and with his gold pen scribbled,
Must have regular, consistent work hours.
Two hours. He wanted coffee and needed a facility, but knew she’d be home any second now...
Three hours.
Four hours. It was dark. It had started to rain. It was chilly... and he was hotter than hell.
At eleven-fifteen he used his rearview mirror to watch the municipal bus pull to a stop at the other end of the block. A woman stepped off and the bus pulled away. She was wearing a long, dark raincoat, passing in and out of the shadows along the street, heading in his direction. Her head was bent and her step was weary—some poor woman who had to work dawn to dusk to support her children, no doubt. She was tall and thin and—
“Where the hell is your car?” he bellowed, jumping out of his, slamming the door and stomping toward her.
“Don’t come at me in anger, Oliver. I have ten brothers. I can hurt you till you cry,” she said simply, unafraid, unperturbed, un-everything—except depressed and worried and tired.
He was hardly intimidated.
“You don’t even own a car, do you?”
“They’re bad for the environment.”
“And...” he said, his voice still rising.
“And I can get to wherever I want to be by bus or BART.”
“And...”
“And I can’t afford one.”
“I knew it. I knew it. And this is California! How can you not afford to have some sort of a car? Everybody and their mother’s cousin has a car in California. Except you. No. You have to walk the streets at night and at the crack of dawn and God only knows when else, to catch buses and trains, to spend time with degenerates and prostitutes and drug addicts, and... What?”
“Are you finished?” she asked, having come to a standstill in front of him. She had to tip her head back a little to look him in the eye, and she did so calmly and without flinching.
“No. Dammit. Where have you been? I’ve been sitting here since six-thirty. I thought that was when you got home from work.”
“It’s Wednesday. I had school.”
“Don’t you come home first? Don’t you ever come home? You’ve been gone since six this morning.”
“I went to the hospital. There was an incident last night.”
“An incident?” He scanned her from head to toe. She looked to be in one piece. “What sort of an incident.”
“A pimp beat up one of his girls, so I took her to the hospital. I stopped by to see her.” She turned and started up the stairs to the door.
“For Chrissake, Holly, what if he’d decided to beat you up too? Don’t you think of things like that?”
“If I did, I wouldn’t be there.”
His jaw worked erratically, but nothing came out of his mouth. With an effort he pushed out a growling noise with a tail of four words: “Hold it right there.”
She released the door handle and turned to face him. He was being a pain in the butt and getting on her nerves—nerves that couldn’t take much more stress.
Semicomposed, like a man talking to an idiot, he held out his hands and slowly asked, “If you know that it’s dangerous to be in places like that, why do you go?”
It was a fair question, but she didn’t like his attitude. She stood on the top step and leaned forward, into his face, to say, “Because
you
won’t go.”
“Me?”
“You. And all your snooty friends. And all the damn politicians and bankers. All those middle-class people out there who think that life at Roseanne Conner’s house is as bad as it gets. Wake up, Oliver. If stupid people like me don’t go, who the hell will?”
Her outburst stunned him. Good. She took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself and lowered her heavy satchel of books to the ground.
“What do you want from me, Oliver? Do you want me to get all decked out in silk and go to fancy restaurants with you? I’ll do that. Do you want me to stand around at elegant cocktail parties and pretend to be brainless and beautiful? I can do that too. Or would you like me to stay home and rub your feet and cook your meals and wash your clothes? Well, I can do that, too, but not all the time. I have a life, Oliver, and I want you to be a part of it. You have a life. And I want to be a part of that. But I can’t choose one over the other.”
“I won’t ask you to,” he said, accepting the truth as he heard it. It was all of her or none at all, and that included her work. “I’m not even too sure I’d want you to. I don’t like what you do. To be honest, I hate what you do. But I respect and admire it. Can’t I be proud of you and worry about you at the same time?”
“Sure you can. I’m glad you are, but...”
“All I want is time, Holly.” He took one step up to be at eye level, to show her how much he needed her. “Not a message. Not a phone call. Real time. With you. I’ll take what I can get... but I’ll get what I can take too.” His mouth closed hard and fast over hers, a shattering contrast to the soft, slow sweep of his tongue. He cinched her in his arms.
Oh, to be lost in the sweet bliss that was Oliver, she thought. She pressed close, as if she were stuck to him. She was his fare, ready and willing to be eaten alive.
“Oliver,” she said, her voice faint as she held him off with her hands, her forehead to his. “Oliver, wait. I need to know...”
“What?” His body was screaming for her, and his mind wasn’t going to be much of an obstacle. She’d have to talk fast. He urged her on. “What?”
“The money, Oliver. Why’d you do it?”
“The...? Oh. I...” Okay, a slight detour, his mind insisted. He took a deep breath and let it go. Then he shrugged. “It’s money. A donation. I didn’t think you’d hear about it so soon.”
“But why?”
“I wanted to. Don’t you need it?”
“Of course we do, but why the stipulations? Why is it for the clinic only? For management and maintenance?”
“Because you said the place was falling down.” Plainly, her standards weren’t all that high, so he’d imagined it as a heap of rubble already. “And I know for a fact that you don’t get paid enough for what you do.”
“But the building’s not all that bad, and I get paid enough. The people who come there need it more.”
“You don’t get paid enough.”
“I do,” she persisted. “I make plenty of money.”
“Then what do you do with it? Spend it all on your flashy cars and your swanky apartment? Holly, come on. You deserve more. So do the others.”
“So, you did do it because of me,” she said in an odd voice.
“Well, not
just
because of you,” he said, hesitant, unsure of her direction. “But it’s certainly because of you that I knew about the place and what’s happening there and that it needed more money. Is that what you mean?”
Relief and happiness lifted the weight in her chest and the tightness in her abdomen. He didn’t know. He really didn’t know. She had suspected as much. She’d hoped. But it was good to know for sure.
“Wait a second now,” he said, alarmed, setting her back an arm’s distance. “You’re not thinking it was a bribe or an inducement for...” Oh, Lord. It did look bad.
“For what, Oliver? Sex?” The dim porch light showed every nuance of his expression. It made her heart ache in the nicest way, but she couldn’t help laughing. “We both know you’re too smart to try to buy me.”
“It isn’t something I’d put past me, you know.”
“But why buy what you know you can have for free?”
“When?” he asked pointedly, his hands tightening the hold on her shoulders.
She took both of his hands into hers and held them to her breast.
“Well, that depends,” she said.
“On what?”
She broke loose and ran, saying, “On who gets to the bed first.”
She went through the door, and he tripped over her satchel. He grabbed up the bag and followed. She was past the first landing, taking the steps two at a time, and she was laughing. It was a sound that made the old building seem bright and new again. It banished the gloom and covered the creaks in the stairs. It was a joyous noise, a titillating noise, a noise he’d have followed to the end of the universe.
H
E STUMBLED THROUGH THE
open door breathlessly, just in time to catch pillows flying and the sofa unfolding. She threw herself down in the middle of it, trench coat and all, panting and declaring, “You lose, Oliver.”
Three flights of stairs weren’t what they were in college, he determined, his hands on his knees as he sucked in air. And Holly was as slick and sly as an eel. This was a good thing to know about her.
“So what must I forfeit?” he asked, an all-American good sport when he wanted to be—and when sex was imminent.
“All your clothes.”
He came slowly upright. His startled gaze met the bold challenge in her eyes.
“You want our first time to be like this?” he asked, just this side of stunned.
Her body was out of control with excitement.
“I want every time to be like this,” she said.
Her smirk was provoking. And there was something keenly uncomfortable in the idea of standing naked before a woman he was attracted to, who still had all her clothes on. He amended his notes on her strange perception of romance—this was beyond anything he had imagined. But then again, so was she. He deliberated a second longer, then easily decided his ego was manly and proud, and prepared for any challenge.