One Night With You. Gwynne Forster

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СКАЧАТЬ won’t be the same here without you, man. We’ll all miss you. Good luck to you.”

      “Thanks, Max.”

      Two hours later, Reid sat on an interstate bus headed for the next chapter in his life.

      Kendra drove through the sleet and slush to get to the post office. No matter how many times she asked the court clerk to send her mail to her home address, the man sent it to the post office box that she used only to prevent certain people from knowing where she lived. To her delight, she found the clerk’s letter and opened it before she closed and locked her box. “Dear Judge Rutherford,” he wrote.

      I am happy to inform you that as of January eleventh, you will preside at criminal court in Queenstown. If I may be of any further assistance, please let me know.

      Ethan Sparks, County Clerk

      Hmmm. So she had only to ask. It was a lesson she did not plan to forget. Inasmuch as she’d had few reasons to spend her salary, apart from rent and a few personal items, she decided to buy a house. She packed her belongings, had them stored, drove to Queenstown and rented a room in a bed and breakfast, then began her search for a house. After a week, she settled on a town house in Albemarle Gates, a new, elegant Queenstown community on a hill overlooking the Sound and within walking distance of Courthouse Square where she would work. The back of the house afforded an un-obstructed view of the Sound. Delighted with her choice, she signed and received the deed, had her furniture and other belongings moved to her new home and settled in at Number 37A Albemarle Heights, Albemarle Gates.

      The second morning Kendra was in her new home, exhausted from moving and arranging furniture, the sound of drums, at least one bugle and a trumpet brought her to her second-floor window facing the street. She dropped the pillows she had been changing on the bed and raced down to the front door to see what she thought was some kind of ceremonial parade. Native Americans, some in full tribal regalia, danced along in traditional tribal steps, and as many African-Americans, including the bugler and the trumpeter, danced with them. When they stopped in front of Albemarle Gates, she was delighted, but when a neighbor standing nearby groaned, “Oh, Lord. Here they are again,” she got a feeling of apprehension.

      “What’s the problem?” she asked the young woman.

      The woman rolled her eyes and threw up her hands as if in exasperation. “Honey, you don’t want to know.”

      “Oh, but I do.”

      “They’re picketing the builders, Brown and Worley, because they built this community on top of sacred Indian burial grounds, and in this town, whatever riles the Indians upsets the blacks and vice versa. They stick together, and they get things done, but not this time. Nobody is going to tear down Albemarle Gates. Besides, I hear Brown and Worley are fixing to build another one of these communities over near the park. Where you been you don’t know about this?”

      “I’ve been in Queenstown exactly ten days.” She turned to introduce herself, but the woman had left. Hmmm. Nice to meet you.

      She went back into the house and sat down to con template what she’d just learned. How would the controversy affect her in her role as judge? Obviously, many local people would think that, by living there, she had taken sides with Brown and Worley. She didn’t like it, but she’d signed the deed and taken the mortgage, and she didn’t see a way out.

      In the supermarket the next day, Kendra received a sample of small-town hospitality when she put her groceries on the check-out counter. “How are you today?” she asked the clerk. “Pretty cold out, isn’t it?”

      “Push your stuff forward. The belt’s not working.”

      She scrutinized the woman, making certain that she was a sister. “Do you live here in Queenstown?” Kendra asked her.

      The woman stopped work and gazed at her. “I live here. My mother and father live here, and so did my grandparents and great-grandparents. Anything else you need to know?”

      Taken aback and angered at the woman’s insulting tone, Kendra said, “Pardon me. I didn’t expect a nasty response to my graciousness. I don’t care where you live.” She paid for the groceries and drove home. In front of her house, she took the bags of groceries out of the trunk of her car, closed the lid and lost her footing, slipping on the ice. Her packages fell to the ice, spilling the contents, and she struggled unsuccessfully to get enough traction to heave herself to her feet. Not certain whether to laugh or cry at the spectacle she suspected she was, she relaxed and lay there.

      To her amazement and eternal thanks, two large hands gripped her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. A smile began to spread over her face as she looked up at her rescuer, but it ended around her lips, as she practically froze. She had never seen such eyes, mesmerizing grayish-brown eyes that seemed ready to sleep beneath their long curly lashes. Eyes that didn’t seem compatible with the man’s strong masculine presence. She stared at him. Poleaxed. Stupefied and unable to pull herself out of it.

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ