Romancing the Bulldog Page 4

  But Jason couldn’t let it be. The idea that she would have taken up with some guy nobody seemed to know any substantive thing about, disturbed him. He hired an investigator. Within a couple months they’d found her, living with some young hot shot activist in Philadelphia.

  They had pictures. She looked happy, thrilled to be with the crowd she was now running with, all hugged up with her new, young, gorgeous, African-American beau. And here was Jason: older, white, not exactly a man she was in love with. He left her alone.

  Liz looked at Jason, wondering why his already staring look had changed. Now he seemed to be searing into her. “Do I have a growth on my nose or something?” she asked him. Didn’t he know it was rude to stare?

  Jason smiled, tried to grin but couldn’t pull it off. “You don’t remember me, do you?” Liz’s heart dropped. He was going to go there. “Remember you? Why should I remember you?”

  “I’m Jason Rascone.”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  “And you don’t remember?”

  Liz hesitated. She wanted to lie, but she didn’t. “I remember you,” she said.

  It hurt Jason to his core. She said it almost coldly, like what they shared meant so little to her. But he had perfected the art of playing along, too. He grinned.

  “How about that?” he said. “You went away to Harvard, met some duffus, at least that’s what your father called him, and followed him to the ends of the earth, aka Philadelphia.” Liz continued to stare. This was Jason. This was the man who she allowed to. . . She blinked.

  “Hamp told me about it,” Jason continued, seeing her discomfort. “That was something like a decade ago, but I remember he was quite pissed about it. He wanted you at Harvard, not slumming around with some loser.”

  “I wasn’t slumming around and he wasn’t a loser,” Liz said and continued to stare at Jason.

  He was older now, and he no longer had that mustache, but yes, it was him. It was Jason Rascone, the man she had allowed to take her virginity. After it happened she just knew she’d never forget him. But as the months came and went she could hardly remember anything about him, except what they’d done that night, and even that became shrouded in fog and mirrors.

  “So, of all the dames in all the world you, Hamilton Morgan’s daughter, ends up on the same street corner at the same puddle at the same time that I happen to travel past and splash.” Stephen, astounded, looked up from his Blackberry. “You have got to be kidding me,” he said. “She’s Hamp’s daughter?”

  Liz looked at Stephen and then back at Jason. And suddenly she felt awkward, exposed.

  She remembered his nakedness, the way he held her, entered her, and she blushed to the roots of her hair. “Yes,” she said, refusing to say any more.

  “Remember? I worked for him back in the day,” Jason said, deciding it best to not go there either.

  “Of course I remember that,” Liz said with some irritation. “You’re his personal attorney.”

  “Was his personal attorney, that’s right. We severed ties years ago. In fact, it was the same year that we. . . that you left for Harvard,” he said and Liz thought she was going to faint. “I am not one of Hamp’s favorite people at present.”

  Neither am I, Liz wanted to say, but didn’t bother.

  “Maybe we should phone your father,” Stephen suggested. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want his little girl stranded like this.”

  “No,” Liz said quickly. “Thank-you, but no.”

  “What do you mean no?” Stephen shot back. “Hamilton Morgan looks out for his own.

  He’s a tireless defender of his people. And trust me, we know. We’ve been the brunt of his defenses far too many times for my taste I can tell you. And a lot of it wasn’t fair. But when did Hamp care about fairness?”

  “That’s enough, Stephen,” Jason jumped in. “We aren’t going to bash her father.”

  “He has no problem bashing you every chance he gets.”

  “Why don’t you want to call your father?” Jason asked Liz, ignoring Stephen again.

  “I just don’t,” Liz said and said it in such a way that Jason knew to leave it alone.

  “So,” Jason said, seeing her discomfort, looking down at her body and remembering it, “you came all this way from Philadelphia, back to good old Jacksonville, to become the youth director of an inner city Center? Hamp Morgan’s daughter?” Liz nodded. “Something like that.”

  “Nothing like that,” Jason said as if he knew her like a book. Liz looked at him, amazed by his smugness.

  “I beg your pardon?” she asked, astounded.

  But Jason would not relent. “Nobody leaves a place like Philadelphia to come back here unless they have no choice. Bottom line. Point blank. Not that J-ville is a bad place to live, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great place to live. But it’s no Philadelphia.” Liz stared at Jason, and she wondered if he was seeing more to her than he could possibly know. But then she dismissed it, and leaned back. She then closed her eyes.

  Jason felt a tinge of something shoot through him when she closed her eyes. Her gorgeous, smoky brown eyes, he noted. He, in fact, couldn’t take his own eyes off of her. She’d grown into a beauty, he thought, with her short, bouncy hair, her smooth, cocoa brown skin, her long, elegant neck, her slender, athletic-looking body. Everything about her turned him on.

  But she looked so defeated when he first had Boris back up the limo after realizing they had splashed her. And why was she rushing to catch a city bus anyway? Hamp’s daughter of all people? How could his daughter be a woman without wheels? And why, he wondered, was she sitting across from him in her muddy white pantsuit and damaged high heels looking, not like the smart, sophisticated lady she should have been, but like somebody at the end of her rope? What has happened to her? Why did she have to leave Philadelphia and accept what he was willing to bet was a significant step down position in the first place?

  She had a story to tell, he knew. But he also knew she would never tell that story to him.

  And for some odd reason, that saddened him.

  As if she could feel his eyes assessing her, she opened hers. He smiled, although he was shaken by that almost dull look in her eyes. “Comfy?” he asked her.

  She immediately took offense. “You’re the one who insisted on giving me a ride when you knew I was dripping wet and looked like a mud pie. So don’t even try complaining about it now.”

  Although he didn’t like her testiness, he was nonetheless pleased that she was beginning to show some life. “I’m not complaining, Elizabeth. I’m glad to have you.”

  “And why’s that?” Liz asked him, genuinely curious. Stephen apparently was too, because he also looked at his boss.

  “Why’s what?” Jason asked, as if he didn’t get it.

  “Why would you be so thrilled to have a dripping-wet black woman riding around in your fancy limousine? What could possibly be in it for you?”

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “That Philly side of you is beginning to show. And here I was thinking I had a nice, sweet little virgin girl on my hands.”

  At first Liz was mortified that he would go there. She even glanced at Stephen to see if he caught the reference, but Stephen was too busy pecking away into his Blackberry to catch anything. Then Liz found herself laughing, her head leaned back revealing her long, attractive neck, her once-tensed body now slumped into a relaxed posture. Jason smiled too, although he viewed her reaction as a little excessive. Was his comment, which was meant to be a mild joke at best, that far off base? She was reacting as if calling her innocent was like calling a prostitute virtuous. He took her virginity, yes, but that didn’t mean she had lost all innocence.

  At least he prayed it didn’t.

  “You okay?” Jason asked when her laughter wouldn’t cease. She even began coughing, as if she’d never heard anything so outlandish.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, between gulps of laughter. “I’m sorry.” But when she still wouldn’t let up, he said: “I don’
t think it was that funny, Elizabeth, come on.”

  “No, it wasn’t that funny,” she said. “It wasn’t that funny at all. It’s just that. . . it was needful.” She looked at him and cleared her throat. And in just that moment, that quick, ephemeral moment, they communicated something. Her forgiveness, perhaps, for splashing her, for taking her virginity, maybe? But what was he communicating? He nor she could say.

  But something transpired between them.

  Neither bothered it again and they settled down into quietness. Stephen continued pecking away into his Blackberry, and Jason continued staring at Liz. But Liz felt better now. She couldn’t say why. She was still drenched. She was still living in a town that was almost as harsh as Philly had been to her. And she still had no car, even though one of the duties of her job required that she keep reliable transportation.

  When Manny, the repair shop owner, had told her that it would take three thousand dollars to get her beloved Mustang back on the road, she couldn’t do anything but stand there. He may as well had told her that it would take three million dollars to repair, because she didn’t have that either.

  And then he suggested that she go to her local bank and take out a loan, that many of his customers take care of their repair costs that way. Liz nodded, and stated that she would do just that, although she knew, thanks to her ex in Philly, and many other problems, that no bank in America would so much as lend her a hand, let alone three thousand dollars.

  When the limo stopped in front of the Meyers Center, she thanked Jason and then quickly moved to get out. When she slid toward the door and was about to stand, however, she winced as pain shot through her side. Jason saw it.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, reaching for her without touching her.

  “Just a little ache, that’s all,” she said, getting out of the limo.

  Jason, however, quickly got out behind her and they stood there, with Boris the driver still holding the door open.

  “I’m fine, Jason.”

  “Then why did you wince?” he asked, looking down at her body. “Did that fall hurt you somewhere? You fell on your behind.” Then he smiled, looking toward her backside. “I thought that would be a pretty good cushion for you.”

  Liz, mortified that Jason would say such a thing in front of his driver, began to move away.

  Jason grabbed her arm, concern piercing his face. “Wait a minute. You think you need to go to the hospital?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “That was a hard fall, Liz. Maybe--”

  “It wasn’t from that fall, okay?” She said this, removed her arm from his grasp, and then began heading toward stairs on the side of the Meyers building.

  “Where are you going?” he yelled after her.

  “Home,” she said, without breaking her stride.

  “Home? Home is up there? I thought this was the Meyers Center.”

  “I work at the Center,” Liz said as she began heading up the stairs, “and live in the apartment upstairs.”

  Jason stood there stunned as Stephen also stepped out of the limo. He buttoned his expensive suit coat as he looked around the neighborhood as if he had just stepped into a third world country.

  “Get a load of this place,” Stephen whispered to him, as if confirming what Jason already knew: there was nothing livable about these surroundings. Even the Meyers Center was nothing but a hole-in-the-wall facility in a rundown building in need of a paint job. It was more a dilapidated, industrial area rather than anything that would suggest residential. From what Jason could see, in fact, this apartment of Liz’s was about the only non-business, non-warehouse-type building on the block.

  He looked at Liz as she walked away, looked at this woman who once had everything, and something pricked him deep inside. Before he could even think about it, he began to hurry behind her. Stephen, however, attempted to stop his progress.

  “Sir, you can’t,” he said in a panicky near-whisper.

  “Let me just---”

  “Sir,” Stephen said firmly, “you know you cannot afford this kind of publicity. We’ve got to get away from here and we’ve got to get away from here now!”

  “Let me just make sure she’s okay,” Jason said, a little miffed at Stephen’s hysterics. He removed his elbow from Stephen’s grasp and hurried up the rickety stairs that led to the upstairs apartment, taking two at a time to catch up with Liz.

  Stephen could not believe his eyes. The great Jason Rascone, Mr. Conservative himself, was in the middle of the hood chasing a skirt! And the skirt was Hamilton Morgan’s daughter!

  The press would have a field day if they found out about this. That was why Stephen, alarmed by the prospect and powerless to do anything about it alone, pulled out his Blackberry as he hurried behind his boss.

  But Jason wasn’t thinking about Stephen. Liz was on his mind. All he knew was that she was in pain, and he wasn’t leaving until he found out why. Because if that fall didn’t do it, as she claimed, he had to know what did.

  Liz had unlocked her door and was about to enter her apartment when Jason made his way up.

  “I told you I was all right. I just need a warm bath.”

  “Good,” Jason said, stepping past Liz and entering the apartment ahead of her, “at least we know the cure. Now tell me what caused the need for the cure.” Liz was about to object to his intrusion, but Stephen came up the stairs too quickly.

  He looked past Liz at his boss. “Sir, we need to get going. The Chamber of Commerce--”

  “--won’t even miss me,” Jason finished.

  “But, Jace, think how this will look.”

  Liz frowned. “How what will look?”

  “This! Jason Rascone in this neighborhood, with Hamp Morgan’s daughter, that’s what.”

  “What does this neighborhood and my father have to do with anything you’re talking about?”

  “News flash,” Stephen said, “you live in the ghetto. Hello? And the mayor of this town does not need--”

  Liz was stunned. “The mayor?” she said and then turned to Jason. “You’re the mayor?

  You’re the mayor of Jacksonville?”

  “Yes, he’s the mayor,” Stephen answered, “and as I was saying, the mayor of this town does not need to be implicated in this.”

  Liz looked at Stephen. What was he talking about? “Implicated in what?”

  “This,” Stephen said, looking around at the peeling paint on Liz’s building, at the group of rundown buildings beside hers. “Sure, if the media gets wind of it we can claim that the mayor was just getting to know his constituents, checking in with our less fortunate citizens. We can play that up. But it could backfire on us, too.”

  Liz shook her head. It was as if Stephen was talking in riddles. “What are you talking about? Play it up? Play what up?”

  “The fact that the esteemed mayor of our wonderful city is standing in the middle of a rundown apartment in the middle of this, this God-forsaken place, that’s what.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “That’s southern politics, ma’am,” Stephen corrected her. “And that’s why we need to get the hell out of here, sir, before the media shows up and starts tossing around real questions.”

  “What kind of real questions are you talking about?” Liz asked him.

  “Like why was he driving around in the ‘hood to begin with.”

  “Maybe because the ‘ hood, as you call this hard-working community, is his constituency too.”

  Stephen laughed. “Yeah, right. He’s received less than six percent of the African-American vote in his last two elections. Less than six percent. And that’s both elections combined.

  Some constituency!”

  “And you blame the African-Americans, I take it?”

  “Well it sure ain’t the mayor’s fault that they won’t vote for him.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t done anything to earn their votes.”

  “Maybe I haven’t at that,” Jason said and Liz got the fe
eling it was a way to effectively end the conversation, rather than to add to it. Liz, frustrated enough, shook her head and moved further into her apartment, leaving Jason at the door to school his obnoxious aide.

  “Stephen, I want you to do me a favor.”

  “But sir--”

  “I want you to go back to the office and round us up a, shall I say, less conspicuous, set of wheels?”

  Stephen seemed lost.

  “Since you’re so concerned about how this might look,” Jason added.

  It finally dawned on Stephen. “Yes, of course. But surely you aren’t staying?”

  “I’m going to make sure she’s okay.”

  “But look at this place,” Stephen said again, looking around.

  “The longer you stand here arguing with me, or pointing out the flaws of this area, the longer I’ll be here. Go get a car and come back and pick me up. I’ll be ready by then.” Stephen didn’t like it, but he didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. He left.

  Jason smiled and closed the door. “That guy,” he said with a grin as he turned toward Liz.

  Liz was by now in the middle of her living room, her arms folded.

  “Look, I really thank you for the ride, but you don’t need to stay here. I told you I’m fine.” Jason, however, began moving toward her. “Why did you wince when you were getting out of the limo?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Why did you wince, Elizabeth?”

  Liz rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to relive the moment. “Because I had fallen earlier and I’m a little stiff, okay?”

  “But you said that fall didn’t cause this,” Jason said, lightly touching her side.

  “Not that fall. Earlier. When I was being mugged.”

  “Mugged?” Jason could hardly believe his ears. “You were mugged?” Liz nodded.