Gwynne Forster - One Night With You

“Are you all right now?” he asked her, his voice deep and lilting.

She thought she nodded. He bent down to pick up an orange and was suddenly chasing oranges and lemons across the ice, music pouring out of him as he did so, in what she figured was a laugh. As he managed to retrieve the fruit, he stashed it in the pockets of his thick leather jacket. He seemed to be having the time of his life as he chased and recovered the fruit. He got a head of cabbage, looked at it, shrugged and handed it to her. She put it in the grocery bag. He played the game until the grocery bags were almost full. Then he took the fruit from his pockets and put it in the bags.

“Where do you live?” he asked her. “I’d better carry this for you, because I’m not sure I’m up to sliding around to pick this stuff up again.”

“I don’t know how to thank you. I’d probably still be trying to get up.”

“It was my pleasure. Best exercise I’ve had in a while.”

She opened her front door, and he put the bags on the floor in the foyer beside the door. “I’m Kendra Rutherford, and I just moved here.”

“I’m Reid Maguire, and I live in that apartment building across the street from here. Nice to meet you.” He turned and left, and she realized that he had shown absolutely no interest in developing a friendship with her. What a letdown!

Reid Maguire didn’t talk much, and he never spoke if silence would suffice. He didn’t know Kendra Rutherford, and his reaction to her was none of her business. If he’d learned anything, it was the virtue of feeding a good-looking, sexy woman with a long-handled spoon, as it were, so as to keep as much distance as possible between him and her. Kendra Rutherford might not be an aggressive man-eater, but her reaction to him was the same as his to her, and that spelled trouble.

There might not be another woman on earth like Myrna, his ex-wife, but he didn’t intend to start testing that theory. He’d had it with women, and he didn’t want one cluttering up his life pretending that she loved him, when she only loved what he could give her. At the moment when he had needed his wife most, she had walked out on him.

Tomorrow, he would begin work as an assistant with the architectural firm Marks and Connerly, Architects, Ltd. He didn’t intend to spread information about his former status. If his new colleagues guessed or knew who he was, so be it; if not, he didn’t care. He was back in his chosen field, and he meant to make the most of it.

But he was not to have the benefit of anonymity. “I’ve been doing some research on you, Reid,” Jack Connerly, the senior partner, told him when they met, “and I think we hit the jackpot when we hired you. We’ve contracted to design an airport terminal in Caution Point, about thirty miles from here. Would you like the job?”

“I’m stunned. How many enemies in the firm will this get me?”

“Who knows? Do you want it?”

“Absolutely. I’d like to see the site, but I don’t have a car.”

“You can take a company car. Make a list of what you need to work with and give it to the supply clerk. Your expenses are covered up to three fifty per day, excluding transportation, and you can’t put alcohol on your tab.”

“Thanks. I’ll give you two or three sketches.”

“Great. It’s good to have you with us. Your office is two doors down on the right.”

Reid walked down to the end of the hall and back. There were sixteen offices, eight on each side of the corridor, and only one office separated his from that of the senior partner. So far, so good. They weren’t paying him what he was worth, but when he finished the design of that airport terminal, they would.

In the drugstore about three blocks from his apartment, where he stopped in the hope of finding a felt-tipped pen, he bumped into Kendra, almost knocking her down.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m not usually this clumsy.”

“It was my fault. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” He allowed himself a smile, and headed for the aisle in which he’d previously found unlined tablets large enough for drawing, though he would have preferred bigger ones. Seeing no pens of any kind, he walked around until he’d satisfied himself that he wouldn’t find them in that store, and that he’d have to wait till the supply clerk at Marks and Connerly filled his order. As he started for the door, he noticed Kendra struggling with a large container of liquid soap and a few other items. After counseling himself to pretend he didn’t see her, because he didn’t want any involvement with her, he walked over to her.

“Let me help you with that. I hope your car is around there in the parking lot.”

“It is. Thank you.”

He lifted the container of liquid soap. “Did you think you could carry this?”

“I was hoping that I could.”

“Uh-huh. Come on.”

Kendra’s eyebrows shot up. The man’s attitude was as masculine as his looks and aura. His “come on” was nothing short of a command. She walked with him to the car, not in obedience but in gratitude for not having to carry that heavy load.

“You’re very kind to me, Mr. Maguire.”

“It’s the way I was raised. I’ll ride home with you.”

He made no effort to be ingratiating, she saw, and she appreciated that. It had begun to dawn on her that Reid Maguire knew who he was and didn’t have a need to curry favor or to shine up to anyone. Well, neither did she.

She parked in front of her house, opened the trunk of her car and, unwilling to wait for him to do it, walked around to remove her purchases. When she got to the trunk, Reid Maguire stood beside it with both hands on his hips. She glanced up at him and felt as if she would shrink beneath the assault of his withering stare.

“If you’ll go ahead and open your door, Ms. Ruther ford, I’ll bring these things in for you.”

“Thanks, Mr. Maguire.” She did as he suggested, feeling as if she’d had a parental tongue lashing. She was not used to his kind of man. Besides, she didn’t expect men to do things for her just because she was a woman.

“Where do you keep this?” he asked, referring to the big container of liquid soap.

“In the laundry room, but that’s down in the basement.”

“Ms. Rutherford—”

She held up her hands, palms out. “All right. All right. On that shelf to your left, please.”

He put the soap on the shelf, came back upstairs and headed for the front door without saying anything.

“Mr. Maguire!” She spoke sharply, and he stopped, turned and looked at her with an expression that questioned her impudence. “Sorry, but I wanted to get your attention. Thank you for helping me. You were raised to be gracious. So was I, and I’d appreciate it if you would at least accept a cup of coffee or tea, or a glass of milk, in case you don’t drink tea or coffee.”

He stared at her for nearly a minute, and when a half smile formed around his lips, she nearly grabbed the banister for support. What a mesmerizing man! “Thank you for a cup of coffee. I hope it isn’t instant. I get that at home.”

She took a deep breath, recovered her equilibrium and said, “You’ll smell it in a minute.”

To her surprise, he followed her to the kitchen and took a seat. He pointed to a loose board at the base of the radiator. “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

“What? Why doesn’t what surprise you?”

“That board hanging loose down there in a brand-new house. This builder is known for his shoddy work. I’ll bet if I went through this house, I’d find a dozen things wrong with it.”

She got two plates, cut two thick slices of chocolate cake, got forks and napkins and put them on the table with the cake. “The coffee will be ready in a minute. What do you know about Brown and Worley?”

“Plenty.”

She put the coffee in front of him. “Would you like milk and sugar?”

“Milk, please.”

Something wasn’t right, and she had to find a way to pry from him the information that he was obviously in no rush to provide.

“Did you buy a house from Brown and Worley?”

“This cake is delicious. Did you make it?”

“Yes, I did. You didn’t answer my question. But if you’d rather not…”

“Brown and Worley built an apartment house that I designed.”

She stopped eating the cake and looked at him. “So you’re an architect. I gather they did a poor job. Tell me what happened.”

“Part of the building collapsed, injuring a number of people. The builders swore in court that they followed my design to the letter and brought numerous witnesses who attested to their competence. One man could not stand up to some of the most exalted building firms in this part of the country, at least two of which were owned by Worley’s cousins. I lost a class-action suit, my home, my wife and every dime I had.”

“Especially not one black man,” she said under her breath, but he heard her.

“That, too.”

“How long ago was that?” she asked him.

“A little over six years.”

“Did you know at the time that the witnesses were Worley’s blood relatives?”

“No, and neither did my lawyer. I discovered it a couple of months ago while surfing the Internet for anything that would help my case.”

“Did you print out what you found?”

“Yeah. Of course I did.”

“Then you can reopen the case, but you have to do it within a year of the date on that printout. You may claim the Discovery Rule, which says you may appeal on the basis of new and relevant information. If you were bankrupt when the statute of limitations applied, you may appeal as soon as you get funds.”

“Thanks. That’s good to know. Mind if I ask how you happen to have this information?”

“I’m a judge.”

His whistle split the air. “Where do you preside?”

“Beginning Monday, I will be the presiding judge at the courthouse up the street. I’m looking forward to it. Would you like some more coffee? I made a full pot.”

“Thanks.” He drank the second cup quickly.

“I expected that, in a town this size, people would be friendlier,” she said and related to him her experience with the store clerk who resented being asked if she lived in Queenstown.

“They’re hospitable, Ms. Rutherford, but you walked into a problem.”

“What do you mean?” she asked him, and at the memory of her neighbor’s comment about the group that marched up to Albemarle Gates, its members beating drums and blowing a bugle and a trumpet, fear seemed to settle in her.

“This building is sitting on sacred Native American burial grounds, and sixty percent of the people in this town and the surrounding areas think you’ve sided with the builders who committed this sacrilege.”

“What will I do? I didn’t know anything about it.”

“Be careful, especially when you’re out at night.”

She sank into her chair, unaccustomed to the feeling of defeat that pervaded her. With a deed and a mortgage, she couldn’t walk away from the house. “Thanks for the warning. I’ve been here barely two weeks, and I’m in trouble. I don’t like the sound of this. Tell me, what do you do now?” she asked him.

“I just got a job with Marks and Connerly, my first job as an architect since that debacle, and I’m lucky to have it. I’d better be going. Thanks for the coffee and cake. Both were delicious.”

She wanted to detain him, but she knew instinctively that it would be the wrong move. Reid Maguire was a loner, and every sentence he uttered seemed to struggle out of him. Grudgingly. “Thanks for the company,” she said as she walked to the door with him, “and for the help.”