Midnight Train from Georgia
Автор
Glenda Sanders
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1
“CHECK OUT the strawberry blonde at the deli counter.”
“I have been,” Sean O’Leary told the man seated next to him. He’d been hoping no one else would notice her. “I don’t think she’s with our group.” He would have remembered if he’d seen her before.
“If I weren’t in a monogamous relationship,” Michael mused aloud.
“But you are,” Sean reminded him.
“You’re not,” Michael said. “Why not try to strike up a conversation? She’s not wearing a ring. I can live vicariously.”
“What’s the use?” Sean said. “It’s after midnight.” The train had been almost an hour late pulling out of Savannah.
“So? You turn into a pumpkin at midnight, or something?”
“It’s just a little late to be striking up a conversation.” Too bad he hadn’t seen her earlier.
“Hell, Sean, with that attitude, you might as well not have booked a sleeper.”
“I booked a sleeper because I have to be in Judge Finkbein’s courtroom tomorrow afternoon,” Sean said.
“Finkbein?” Mike said. “Jeez, if you’re squaring off against Finkbein tomorrow, you owe it to yourself to give the blonde a try.”
Sean was listening to Mike, but his attention was focused on two men in their group who were eyeing the woman with drunken intensity. Two married men who’d both had too much to drink and were on the verge of making total asses of themselves if someone didn’t beat them to it.
“You have a point,” Sean said, rising. “Even a condemned man gets a final meal.” It was only a matter of time before someone gave the strawberry blonde the rush. Better one sober single man over two married, obnoxious drunks.
Of course, the magnanimity of his rescue would probably totally escape the attention of the lady.
Up close, she was shorter than he’d have estimated from across the car. The top of her head was an inch or two below his shoulder, which would put her on the short side of fivefour or so. She’d pulled a caffeine-free diet cola from the cooler case, and was deliberating over the rack of candy bars near the cashier’s stand.
“Caffeine free, huh?” Sean asked.
“Caffeine makes me hyper and I need—” she turned and looked at him before adding “—to get some sleep tonight.” Her soft features blended into an interesting face—until she smiled. The smile, and a small dimple that appeared just to the right of her mouth, transformed “interesting” into “fascinating.”
Sean swallowed as his heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t meant for the comment to be suggestive, he was sure, any more than he’d expected to respond to her like a testosterone-charged teenager. He drew in a breath and released it slowly, a calming device he frequently used in the courtroom, then returned her smile. “A glass of wine would relax you.”
“Wine? I don’t think—”
“The bar’s still open,” he said. “Just one?”
She considered the invitation before replying haltingly, “Thanks, but. no, thank you.”
Sean frowned charmingly and bent to speak confidentially, “I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but you see those two shady-looking characters over there?”
She followed his gaze. “The ones in the Kiss Me. I’m An Irish Attorney sweatshirts?”
Sean nodded. “They’re the real reason I came over here. You see, they’ve had a lot to drink and they’ve been staring at you ever since you came in. I thought if you went to the bar with me, they wouldn’t come over and bother you.”
Her lips compressed in irritation.
“They’re pretty lecherous types,” Sean pressed.
“They’re attorneys,” she said, as though that explained everything.
Sean grimaced. “You aren’t with the association, are you?”
“Association?” It was obvious she had no idea what he was talking about.
“The Association of Irish-American Attorneys,” he said. “We just took in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Savannah.”
“I’m half-Irish, but I’d rather be a carnival barker than an attorney,” she said sharply. “So, while I appreciate your concern, I’m really not interested in a drink. It’s late and. I’m not in a drinking mood. If you’ll excuse me—”
She turned away from him abruptly to pay the cashier for her soda and hastily exited the lounge car. Just when she’d thought the longest, worst day of her life couldn’t possibly get any more frustrating, a gorgeous man tries to pick her up when she’s too exhausted and distracted to think about getting acquainted. And to make matters worse, he’s a lawyer.
A lawyer! Wasn’t having to rush to her grandmother’s deathbed bad enough—did she have to get there on a train filled with lawyers?
Thank goodness she’d been able to get a sleeper. With what she was facing when she reached Baltimore, she desperately needed privacy on this trip. And comfort.
Her compartment was three cars back. Once inside, Erica kicked off her shoes, wiggled her toes, leaned back in the seat and sighed, offering silent thanks to whoever had canceled their reservation at the last moment. Pressing her forehead against the window, she peered at the stars dotting the blueblackness of the midnight sky. How many times had she and her grandmother looked up at the stars, her grandmother pointing to constellations, calling them by their mysterious Latin names and telling about the ancient gods for whom they’d been named?
She blinked back a tear, afraid that if she let even one escape, the dam inside her would burst. Her grandmother was dying. The message to call her grandmother’s doctor had been on her answering machine when she’d gotten home from work. Her grandmother had no more than a few days, a week at most.
Erica had immediately launched into action, reserving a seat on the train, packing, doing laundry, arranging for her neighbor to bring in the mail and watch her cat while she was away. Now, after all the rushing around and the frantic race to catch the evening train, she was finally on her way. There was nothing more she could do about her grandmother until she reached Baltimore. Nothing—except think and pray. Think of all the things she should have said through the years, all the thank-yous and apologies that had gone unspoken. Pray that by the time she arrived, her grandmother would be alert enough to hear and understand her.
She opened the packaged “lunch” Gary had given her and the canned soft drink she’d just bought. Good ole Gary. How like him to be both thoughtful and pragmatic. Food had been the last thing on her mind as she rushed around trying to make the train. But now that she’d slowed down, the crackers, cold cuts and cheese were a godsend.
And how like Gary to call and offer to drive her anywhere she needed to go. He would have probably driven her all the way to Baltimore but she’d asked merely that he drive her the fifty miles into Savannah to catch the train, since she had been unable to book a flight. She’d fidgeted all the way, worrying that she’d forgotten something essential even as she anxiously scribbled out lesson plans for Gary, the vice principal at the school where she taught third grade, to give to the substitute teacher who’d take over her classes.
Spooning the chocolate pudding dessert into her mouth, Erica reflected that she had gotten the better end of the bargain when she and Gary, after dating briefly, had chosen friendship over romance. Gary always came through when she needed a friend, sometimes even before she realized she needed one.
After finishing her meal, Erica pulled her bed down from the wall and bolted it into place, pleasantly surprised at how much wider it was than the sleepers in coach class, which she normally traveled. The mattress was thicker, too. Good. She could use every shred of comfort she could get tonight.
With the bed down, the compartment was narrow, restricting her movement as she changed into her flannel nightgown. Once she was covered by enough flannel to keep a nun chaste, she slid the metal door halfway open so she wouldn’t feel so confined. The dark, Velcro-closed draperies beyond provided more than ample privacy while she ran a steaming washcloth over her face and brushed her teeth at the small sink.
Wearily, she climbed into the bed, and shoved the rigid plastic window cover up. For several minutes she stared into the velvet night while memories of past trips played through her mind—all the trips from Georgia, where she’d lived with her father, to Baltimore, where she’d gone for her courtenforced visits with her grandmother. Usually, her grandmother had come for her, and they’d made the trip back to Baltimore together on the train. Her grandmother had called their travels “grand adventures.”
“We’ll have another grand adventure as soon as school’s out for the summer,” she’d whisper in Erica’s ear before grudgingly turning her over to her father.
Erica closed the window and rolled onto her side, turning her head away from the night-light next to the window and pulling the covers up over her shoulders. Spring break, seven weeks of her summer vacation, the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day and no less than five weekends a year by arrangement with the custodial parent—it had taken a cadre of lawyers and judges over the years to come up with justice for a grandmother who disliked and mistrusted the man her only child had married.
Although everyone tried to shield Erica from their legal feuding, the enmity between the two people she loved had seeped into her life. Her father had prepared her for the courtdirected visits with ill-concealed resentment, and her grandmother’s reluctance to return Erica to her father had been hidden beneath a thin veneer of civility. Through the years, Erica’s attitude toward being fought over had run the gamut from bewilderment to bitterness, particularly when her “grand adventures” with her grandmother had widened the gap between her and the step-siblings from her father’s second and third marriages. It wasn’t until she approached adulthood and her father’s messy divorce from his third wife had turned her life upside down that she had come to appreciate the stability her grandmother represented in her life.
Erica choked back a sob. So many years! Oh, Gram, I didn’t understand that it was because you loved me. That you felt you had to do what you did in order to protect me. Why couldn’t I have seen it sooner?
She could almost feel her grandmother’s gentle fingers brushing her forehead, almost hear her grandmother’s sweet voice answering, “Because you were a child, of course. You couldn’t be expected to understand then. The important thing is that you understand now.”
Erica closed her eyes, hoping that she would have time to stroke her grandmother’s forehead soothingly and tell her that, finally, she understood. To thank her for being there to watch out for her, for not giving up, for filling her life with grand adventures. To thank her. for everything.
The motion of the train was like a rocking cradle, the claclick, cla-click of the wheels a lullaby. Erica snuggled into the warm bedding and slept.
STIFLING A YAWN with a soft groan, Sean laced his fingers together, extended his arms above his head and stretched. “I’m beat. I’m going to call it a night.”
“Party pooper!” Michael teased. “It’s only—”
“Two o’clock in the morning,” Sean said, rising to leave. “I’m not used to these wild weekends anymore.”
“Whatever you paid for that sleeper, I’ll double it.” Michael shielded a yawn with his hand.
“Not a chance,” Sean said. “The last time I slept in a coach seat, I had kinks in inconvenient places.” The drop-down sleeper was small compared to his king-size bed at home, but at least it was flat and soft.
“As if anyone could get any sleep in the car we’re in, anyway,” Michael grumbled. “They’re still partying heartily.”
“See you at breakfast,” Sean said without a lot of sympathy. Fatigue rode on his shoulders as he moved from car to car, each quieter than the last. Thank goodness! Four days of noise, silliness and chicanery had left him craving peace and quiet.
He found his compartment easily enough. Evidently the car attendant had gone in to make the bed, because the outside curtains were pulled and the metal door was halfway closed. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the frail glow cast by the night-light before attempting to locate the switch for the overhead light. When he finally made the move, his foot collided with something in the center of the floor, and as he regained his balance, he caught sight of the bed in his peripheral vision. His mind identified the form of a human being resting there.
A woman, he discovered after taking a closer look. Blond hair splayed across the small pillow, and the blanket molded around a distinctively female hip.
His guts constricted as he stared at the sleeping figure. He must have entered the wrong sleeper—how could he have made such a mistake? If this woman woke up and found a strange man in her room-He shook his head as if to clear it. He hadn’t made a mistake. He’d checked the number on both the car and the room. This was his compartment, and the sleeping woman was in his bed.
So what was a woman doing there?
With the softest of sighs, the woman in question shifted in her sleep, settling with her face toward him. Sean swallowed a gasp when he recognized the blonde from the lounge car.
Realization dawned with lightning-strike intensity. The privacy door hadn’t been latched. He’d been set up—big time. What woman would go to sleep without locking every door within reach?
Only a woman who wanted to make it easy for him to find her. Sean looked at that pretty face, angelic in repose, and fumed.
“Check out the strawberry blonde at the deli counter.”Indeed!Michael and this little strawberry shortcake must have cooked up this whole scenario. Who else could have given her the number of his compartment? Michael must have been close to convulsions holding back laughter, knowing Sean would find her in his bed after she brushed him off in the deli.
Sean set his jaw. He was going to inflict bodily harm on Michael the next time he saw him. But first, he had to deal with this unlikely interloper.
He scowled at her, wondering who she was. He was fairly certain she wasn’t with the association. So who was she? A hooker? He discounted that possibility immediately. Not unless she was damned good at appearing unhookerish. No, she was just some woman Michael had run into. She’d probably given him a sob story about wishing she had a sleeper. She might even be a stowaway, hiding in his room without a ticket.
The situation was not without possibilities. If he hadn’t been partying for four days and didn’t have to face Finkbein tomorrow, he might have seen the humor in it. He might even have been tempted to play along. But he needed a good night’s sleep. In private.
With a moment’s regret for what might have been, he raised his hand and gave her shapely rump a whap. “Okay, Shortcakes! Game’s over. It would have been fun, but—”
She awoke with a dazed groan that turned into a gasp of alarm. If he hadn’t been so certain he’d been set up, he would have believed her incredulity; instead, he attributed her stel lar performance to the natural reaction of a person rudely awakened from a deep sleep.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, instinctively clutching the bedding to her chest.
“That’s my line,” he replied. “At the risk of sounding like Baby Bear, I’ll point out that someone has been sleeping in my bed, and she’s still there.”
“Your bed?” she said. “This is my compartment. And if you don’t get out right this minute, I’m going to buzz for the car attendant.”
“Be my guest,” Sean dared, gesturing toward the call button. Spying the overhead light switch, he flicked it on, and light flooded the small enclosure. He fished his ticket from his pocket. “You’re going to feel awfully silly when I show him this and he bounces you out on that cute little behind of yours.”
“Is that a ticket?”
“Thought that might wake you up,” he said.
“For this room?” She sounded dismayed.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. So why don’t you just climb out of my bed and—”
“Let me see it.”
Sean held up the ticket, but when she reached to take it, he snatched it away. “Look, but don’t touch.”
Her features tightened with irritation. “I wasn’t going to steal it.”
“Technically, by occupying that sleeper, to which I hold a ticket granting me exclusive right of occupation between Savannah and Baltimore, you are already stealing it—or at least, usurping the exclusive privilege it grants me.”
“Attorneys!” she grumbled. Then, as he held up the ticket again, she read aloud, “Eric S. O’Leary.” Her eyes fixed on his face in surprise. “That’s your name?”
It was also her name—almost.
“Same as me dear old dad’s,” he said, adopting an exaggerated Irish accent.
“Oh,” she said, unable to keep her disappointment out of the word. Eric S. O’Leary. Erica S. O’Leary. The computer must have spit out his reservation when she told the ticket agent her name. There hadn’t been a cancellation at all, only a crazy mix-up based on an uncanny coincidence.
“Everyone calls me Sean,” he said. “That’s what the S is for.”
“Well, Sean, obviously there’s been some mistake, because I also have a ticket for this sleeper.”
“I don’t suppose you’d want to show it to me.”
“Not particularly,” she said, settling back on the pillow. “I’m comfortable, and getting it would be extremely inconvenient.” And it would take him about five seconds to figure out what had happened and deduce that he was the rightful occupant of the compartment, since he’d bought his ticket first. For all she knew, in the state she was in when she’d given the ticket agent her name, her ticket could have Eric instead of Erica on it and she wouldn’t have noticed.
For a moment, he looked as though he might argue, but finally he shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Erica felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders and neck. He was going to leave without an argument.
Or so she thought. Instead, he opened his briefcase and took out a toothbrush and travel-size tube of toothpaste. Then he turned the knob that freed the sink from the upright position and turned on the water. He squeezed a strip of toothpaste onto the bristles of the brush.
Erica watched him run the brush under the tap to wet it before poking it into his mouth. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in the tone of voice she saved for unruly students.
“Brussing muh eeth,” he said, his mouth full of lather. He plucked a paper cup from the dispenser above the sink, filled it and rinsed.
“Do you always carry a toothbrush in your briefcase?”
Sean spat out the rinse water. “Only when I travel.”
“Now what are you doing?” Erica asked, although it was perfectly obvious that he was taking off his shirt.
“Undressing,” he said, folding his shirt with meticulous care.
“Well, stop it this instant!”
He cocked his head. “You sound like a schoolteacher.”
Erica’s lips compressed briefly in irritation before she replied tautly, “That’s totally irrelevant.”
His chuckle grated over her nerves. “You are a schoolteacher! I love it! Where did Michael link up with you?”
“Who’s Michael?”
He grinned. “Nice touch, Shortcakes, but you don’t have to pretend. I know the two of you cooked this up.”
“You’re delusional,” she said. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, and I haven’t cooked anything up with anyone.”
“He’s the only one who could have given you the number of my sleeper.”
“The ticket agent gave me the number of my sleeper,” she said. “And I didn’t cook anything up with him. I just bought a ticket.” It wasn’t the whole truth, as she knew it now, but it was the truth.
He balanced on one leg, folding the other across his knee, and removed his right loafer, then reversed the process. A moment later, he reached for the waistband of his slacks.
“What are you doing now?” Erica screeched as the grate of the fly zipper reverberated through the compartment.
“Taking off my pants.”
“Don’t you dare!”
He pushed down his pants, pausing as he stepped out of them to say, “I always take off my pants before I get into bed.”
Erica’s jaw dropped when she saw the boxer shorts he had on. “Do you always wear underwear with shamrocks and leprechauns on it?”
Sean looked down at the boxers and frowned. “Only when my housekeeper forgets to do my laundry before I take a trip. I was going to duck into a department store to buy some briefs, but I saw these on a street vendor’s cart and couldn’t resist.”
“They’re ridiculous,” Erica said, noting that his body wasn’t. His chest was broad and beautifully muscled and generously sprinkled with hair that tapered down a reasonably flat midriff before tucking into the elastic waist of the boxers.
“Probably,” he agreed. “But I’m not sure I’d be too quick to point that out if I was wearing a nightie with fuzzy little sheep all over it.”
Erica pulled the covers up to her chin again and snapped, “I wasn’t dressing to impress anyone.”
“Trust me, Shortcakes. I’m not impressed.”
“Why don’t you just leave,” she groaned.
“Because I need a good night’s sleep.”
“Well, you’re not going to get it in this sleeper.”
“I don’t know why not. I have a ticket that says I’m entitled to sleep in that bed.”
“So do I,” Erica said. “And I’m already in this bed.” She wiggled under the covers and tried to sound confident. “You know what they say—possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“I’ll bet your dear old granny taught you that.”
The cavalier mention of her grandmother cut Erica to the quick. “Yes,” she said. “She did.”
“Well, granny and I don’t practice the same law,” he said. “My law is that I have a ticket. I also have a tough afternoon in court tomorrow. So I am getting in that bed.”
For a man wearing nothing but a pair of leprechaun-andshamrock boxer shorts, he spoke with an impressive amount of authority. “But—”
“You, on the other hand, may or may not have a ticket, which means that you may or may not have a right to be here. And in the immortal words of dear old Rhett, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’ The bottom line is that I’m getting in that bed. Whether or not you wish to remain there is up to you.
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
He grinned. “Aisle or window, Shortcakes?”
