Fools Rush In

“I’ve enjoyed our talk, Duncan, but I’d better do a little writing before I turn in.”

“Don’t forget, journalists are professional writers. I’ll be glad to read your stuff and give you some feedback.”

“Thanks,” she threw over her shoulder, petrified. She couldn’t show him her writing, which was actually a newspaper column, because she’d taken an oath not to divulge Aunt Mariah’s identity. And if he knew she worked for a paper, he could easily trace her to Justine Taylor Montgomery, daughter of the Virginia State Assemblyman and widow of Kenneth Montgomery, double-dealer and adulterer.

She stopped in Tonya’s room, and her heart pounded as though to burst with the joy that suffused her as she looked down at the sleeping child. She thought of the horrifying feeling that had engulfed her when she’d come to herself, realized what her therapist, the social worker and nurses had allowed her to do and fought the threatening tears. They said she’d rejected the baby and gave that as their excuse, when they knew she was ill. She resisted the urge to lift Tonya to her breast and know again the happiness of holding her. She secured the baby’s blanket, turned and looked into the shining eyes of Duncan Banks standing in the doorway. She had to pass him, and she didn’t like the tension that danced between them like an unharnessed electric current, wild and dangerous. She suspected that he could get to her if she wasn’t careful, and she wasn’t going to tempt fate with a wrong move, because she didn’t plan to let anything destroy her chance to be with her child.

Stiffening her back, she approached the door. “Excuse me, please.”

When he didn’t move, she had to stop. “Uh, would you please excuse me, Duncan?”

He glided in with the litheness of a wild animal on the prowl and gave her the door, but not without teasing, brushing close enough to let his heat envelop her like hot quicksand, signaling the certain coming of disaster. She opened her bedroom door and closed it, never glancing his way. Duncan Banks was honorable, she was sure of that, but he’d just let her know that he was a man—with limits. She couldn’t imagine what she would have done if he’d decided to let her squeeze past him in that doorway. She hadn’t felt lonely while in the grip of that terrible postpartum psychosis; she hadn’t felt anything, and as a psychologist, she understood that she was only now experiencing the loneliness that she should have felt following Kenneth’s death. Her need to reach out to someone, to have someone care, meant that her health had been restored. But she’d deal with it. One way to exorcise feelings for one man was to develop an attachment to another one. She rubbed her arms. Maybe Duncan wasn’t her type; maybe she was only lonely. Her loud laughter confirmed for her the hopelessness of it.

Chapter 3

Duncan fed Tonya and rocked her to sleep. Now what? His notes on Buddy Kilgore’s scam operation didn’t entice him. He couldn’t recall a time when his work had failed to excite him, when the lure of his next winning headline didn’t light him up like gasoline dumped on an open fire. He wandered back down to the basement and put on a stack of his old Ray Charles records, but after a few minutes, he switched off the record player, ambled over to the window, and looked out at the night.

What the devil had come over him? He’d flirted with her. In a way, he’d even challenged Justine. Thank god, she hadn’t taken him up on it. He didn’t know her, and even if he did, he wasn’t letting another woman embroil him in an emotional web as Marie had managed with such wily finesse—withholding affection and sex to get what she wanted and pulling out the stops in wild, frenzied lovemaking if he capitulated. It had taken him months to develop an immunity to her brazen bargaining. Love. She hadn’t known the meaning of it. He recognized something special and different in Justine, but he’d take an oath of celibacy before he’d get involved with his daughter’s nanny. Besides, he liked his women willowy, svelte. Or had. After his debacle of a marriage to tall, slim Marie, he’d be the first to admit the folly of picking women by their size.

Clouds covered the moon momentarily and raced onward. Somewhere a dog barked, not because of the moon’s enticement, it seemed, but in furor, and he wondered at the intruder’s fate. Disgusted with himself for his mental meandering and the images he conjured up to avoid thinking of Justine, he knocked his left fist into his right palm and let out a deep breath. His mind wouldn’t be shackled, however, and he gave in to his thoughts. Something about her had gotten to him the minute he saw her. Her eyes seemed to…He couldn’t name it. His hands moved ruthlessly over his tight curls. Had he known her before? And where?

Still restless, he closed the blinds and started slowly up the stairs. Was a failed love-marriage any reason for entering into one that was strictly a business deal? He had loved Marie, but soon after their marriage, he’d begun to wonder if she’d traded her freedom for financial security. She’d sworn that she loved him, but he’d never felt deep down that he was her world, her priority.

“I’ve never been anywhere or done anything,” she’d announced, “but you’ve been everywhere and you’ve got your life the way you want it. I didn’t want a baby, but you insisted on us adopting one, and I gave in. You love that baby more than you love me.”

“If you’re looking for excuses,” he said, “that one will serve as well as any.”

She’d merely shrugged and looked at herself in the mirror while she perfected her makeup.

“What’s your bottom line?” he’d asked her, dreading the answer.

He had marveled at the smoothness with which her reply slipped through her lips. “I’m checking out. You’ve got your life. I have to make mine, and I can’t do that tied to another woman’s child. I’m sorry, Duncan, but this scene’s not for me, and I’m tired of pretending. I wish you the best.”

The finality of those words had slammed into him with the loud finality of a hangman’s trapdoor. He glanced toward Justine’s bedroom door, and a rueful smile claimed his face. That woman would show him what he was made of, sure as his name was Duncan Banks.

Justine read the last of the Aunt Mariah letters and decided to answer the least serious one first. “If you love this man and you’re sure he loves you,” she wrote to a senior citizen, “you don’t need my advice. You want me to agree with your decision. If it feels right, go for it.”

To the twenty-seven-year-old woman who complained that her father allowed her twenty-five percent of her earnings, saved the remainder, and kept her bankbook, she advised, “Grow up. Take your bankbook and your clothes and move into your own apartment, preferably in another city.”

Wife abuse required more careful consideration. She wrote to a Washington, D.C. woman, “Eleven years of beatings and your husband’s numerous other acts of mistreatment always followed by his bent-knee apologies should tell you that he will not change. You have no children and no excuse for putting up with his pathological cruelty. Leave him, get a job, and take care of yourself.”

The sound of Duncan’s footsteps as he loped up the stairs sent shivers from her armpits to her fingertips. His door closed and she let herself breathe. It had to work; this was the only way in which she could be with her child.

The next morning, she got Tonya settled and began to organize her day around the child’s eating and sleeping schedules. She couldn’t have been happier that Duncan wasn’t around to disconcert her. She made a list of things she’d need—a child’s record player, records, blackboard, little musical instruments, crayons, drawing paper, and books for Tonya—and shoved the note under Duncan’s door. Then she called her editor.

“Big Al speaking. What can I do for you, Justine?”

She told him she preferred each column to have a general theme and answers to five letters. “I’ll mail my first one this afternoon.”

“Right on. Think you could come in for a conference Wednesday morning? We wanna talk syndication. If I can swing it, you’ll make some money.”

Money was not her first priority, but it wouldn’t pay to say so. “Mind if I bring my little charge?”

“Sure, baby. Long as she’s quiet. Eleven o’clock.”

“Sweetheart, the sight of you still gives a guy palpitations,” Al greeted Justine that Wednesday morning. “A nanny, huh? Well, honey, things are about to change. You won’t be doing that for long. Warren Stokes says he can syndicate you easy as that.” He snapped his long, thick fingers.

Justine gaped at him. “Warren Stokes? Is he the Warren Stokes we knew at Howard U?”

“That I am. Hello, Justine. Still beautiful, I see. And what a beautiful little girl you have there!”

That couldn’t be regret she heard in his voice. “I’m her nanny.”

His raised eyebrows and pursed lips didn’t surprise her. He’d have been less astonished to see her get out of a chauffeured Town Car. “Nanny, eh? I suppose you’ll explain that.”

Their conference ended with Justine’s agreement to syndicate after six months if the public’s reception of her column warranted it.

“Have lunch with me, Justine.”

She shifted Tonya to her hip. “That may not be wise, Warren. Best not to revisit the past.”

His gentle grasp of her left arm was her clue that the old Warren hadn’t changed. He still had the tenacity of an irritated bull. “I never married, because you have my heart. Always did and always will. We shouldn’t have let a stupid misunderstanding separate us. Is there anyone in your life right now? A husband?”

She shook her head. “If we pursue this syndication deal, I suppose we’ll run into each other. It’s been nice seeing you again.”

It didn’t surprise her that he wouldn’t be put off. “I’ll call you. You won’t get away from me this time.”

Something began to roll like rough ocean waves in the pit of her stomach. Warren never let anything get between him and what he wanted. She liked him, but she hadn’t suffered when, in a fit of jealousy, he’d broken their friendship because she’d regarded him only as a friend. She didn’t want a romantic entanglement with him or anyone else, and especially not now when she was trying to put order into her life.

She looked him in the eye. “Those were college days, and we were children. Let the past lie.”

Tonya called “bye bye” to him as Justine walked away. The years could have whittled down Warren Stokes’s ego, but she doubted it. As students, they’d talked of their future and shared their dreams. She had admired his dogged pursuit of his goal, loved his hip-swaggering way of dancing, and enjoyed arguing against his conservative views, but she hadn’t wanted him as a man. This older Warren wasn’t the man to be a woman’s pal, and she didn’t want a lover. She didn’t intend to give Duncan an excuse to fire her. If necessary, she’d don a nun’s habit.

Justine opened the front door and raced down the hall to answer the telephone. Mattie would let it ring indefinitely. No one had told her to identify Duncan’s home, so she picked up the phone and said, “Hello.” She couldn’t find her voice when the caller, a woman, wanted to know whether GDB was still looking for a wife. She seemed to panic at Justine’s dumbfounded silence, and an explanation of the notice in Dee Dee’s column spilled from her mouth. So he’d advertised for a wife. She couldn’t believe he’d need to resort to that. Unless…She promised the woman that she’d deliver the message.

Perplexed, she asked Mattie to watch Tonya for a few minutes while she went to the nearest drug store. She bought a copy of The Maryland Journal and scanned it until she found Dee Dee’s column. Stunned, she threw the paper into a refuse bin and drove home. Why would he do such a thing?

“I’m so sorry. The position has been filled,” she told the next caller.

The woman’s disappointed, “Oh no. Oh no” didn’t give her a sense of guilt. If Duncan married, Tonya wouldn’t need a nanny, and she intended to be the woman who took care of her child. Besides, what kind of an environment would an arranged marriage be for a baby?

She put Tonya to bed, ate a sandwich, and settled down to work. To the next four women callers who wanted to marry GDB, she responded, “The position has been filled,” reasoning that she hadn’t lied, since she hadn’t said which position was no longer open.

Several weeks later, leaving the house, Duncan collided with Justine as she raced out of her bedroom to answer the hall telephone. He couldn’t have said when the phone stopped ringing, and he’d have sworn that she couldn’t either.

“Sorry.”

“I…I…Please, I didn’t see you. I hope I didn’t…”