9781631050183CrossingBoundariesValiereNC Read online

  “This is Bill Smith from right here in Indian Springs, and I want to talk about global warming. I have a plan.”

  There was hardly a lull in callers through the two hours that they were on, but when there was no one on the line, Cassie and Ginger filled the airwaves with lively chatter. The show was over faster than a small child finishes a candy bar. As soon as Ginger and Cassie had signed off, Todd waved a piece of paper at Cassie. “I’ve written down the address of my lair…er, uh, my apartment,” he said with a wink. He stepped out of the booth and into the studio.

  Cassie took the paper from him and read—

  ADMIT ONE. Good for dinner this Thursday (but only if the bearer is Cassie Danton) at 6 PM sharp (no “fashionably late” bullsh*t) for drinks before dinner at 702 Crestview Avenue, Apt. 304.

  “So, what’s your preference in cocktails, and what are your food hates and allergies?” Todd asked.

  “I drink scotch. I have no allergies, but I’m not fond of crabmeat or scallops or sweet potatoes or really bland foods.”

  Todd made a checkmark in the air with his right forefinger. “Duly noted,” he said. “No crabmeat or scallops or sweet potatoes or really bland foods, on pain of excommunication. And the lady drinks scotch. That one’s easy. I’m a scotch-drinker too. I already have plenty. How about a chicken curry with mango salsa, baked herbed rice, and a salad with Thai-style peanut dressing?”

  “Careful. I’m drooling on the microphone. I might short it out.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Is six o’clock an okay time for you?”

  “Fine.”

  “And when are you having me over in return?”

  “Whoa, buster. Not so fast. Let’s see how this date works out first.”

  “I think it’s going to be just great.”

  “I think I’m the fifth wheel here,” Ginger said, gathering her things and slipping out of the studio.

  “Bye,” Todd said as the door started closing behind her.

  “See you tomorrow,” Cassie added.

  Just before the door closed, Ginger turned, winked at Cassie, and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Cassie looked Todd over. His blond hair was charmingly disheveled over brownish-blond eyebrows, below which he had green eyes and a snub nose. He was, in a word, cute. His personality was a winner too. Cassie wondered what she was getting herself into. She had dated a couple of other white guys but had never gotten serious about one. Was she looking for trouble by agreeing to dinner with Todd?

  Well, accepting a dinner invitation, even two dinner invitations, was not the same as getting serious. Why not just kick back Thursday and enjoy the evening?

  Chapter Two

  Cassie wasn’t usually nervous before a date, so why, she wondered, had those darned butterflies invaded her stomach? As she drove to Todd’s house, she wondered what she was letting herself in for. Not only was there the issue of what would happen if she got serious about a white guy, but there was also the opposite side of the coin: What would happen if it didn’t work out, they broke up, and she still had to work with him every day? Would things be too tense for her comfort during the daily broadcasts? Was this a bad idea? Should she pull her cell phone out of her purse, call Todd, and beg off? Surely saying she had an upset stomach wouldn’t be that far from the truth.

  But he certainly had dinner well underway, and it was impolite for her to cancel short of a genuine emergency. Besides, he would only reschedule the date for another night instead. No, she had better just keep driving and show up when expected.

  In fact, she was five minutes early as she pulled into the parking lot of Todd’s apartment building. She took the time to check her hair and makeup in the mirror, then—still nearly four minutes early—she got out of the car and started looking for Todd’s apartment.

  All she had to do was follow her nose. The smell of the chicken curry, simmering on Todd’s stove, extended its fingers out into the hallway and beckoned to Cassie from down the hall. She followed the scent to the correct door and, seeing no doorbell, knocked loudly.

  Todd opened the door instantly, as if he had been waiting for her, but his body blocked the door. “What’s the password?” he asked.

  Cassie thought fast, then remembered the radio station’s tagline: “WAAA all the way,” she said.

  Chuckling, Todd let her in. As she walked past him, he brushed her cheek lightly with his lips. “Good evening, honored guest,” he said.

  “Good evening, honorable host,” she replied.

  “Let me get the other cheek. I don’t want to leave you unbalanced,” he said, bestowing a soft, quick kiss on her other cheek. “Now let me fix your drink. I know it’s scotch, but how do you take it?”

  “One cube, nothing else.”

  “Do you want water on the side or anything?”

  “Nope. But thanks.”

  “Get comfortable in the living room. I’ll be right in.” He bustled into the dining room, and Cassie heard a cabinet door close twice. Then Todd returned with two drinks in hand. Handing one to Cassie, he raised the other drink toward hers and said, “To whatever grows between us.”

  Cassie raised her glass and responded with, “To a bright future.” They each took a sip. Then Todd sat down next to Cassie.

  “I planned dinner for seven. That’ll give us time for a couple of drinks beforehand.” He took a sip of his drink and put it down on the coffee table. “So tell me about Cassie,” he urged.

  “I’m thirty-four—”

  “A lady who tells her age! Astounding!”

  “—and I work in real estate with Ginger. That’s how we got to be friends. I always thought it would be neat to have a talk show, and Ginger agreed. She whomped up a presentation—she called it a ‘one sheet’—and sent it to the station manager at WAAA. He asked us to come in and meet him in person.”

  “You’d never done radio before?”

  “Total novice. But I’ve done modeling and other public appearances, and I once filled in for a friend who was supposed to give a seminar and got violently sick to her stomach. She gave me her notes and said, ‘Fake it till you make it,’ and somehow I got through the seminar without knowing much about the subject.”

  “Which was—?”

  “Break Those Bad Habits.”

  “You’ve never broken a bad habit?”

  “Well, yes, by pure self-control, but not through a whole formal five-step process.”

  “Ah, marketing.” Todd took another sip of his drink. “So you got a yen to be on the radio?”

  “Yes. Well, actually I’d had that desire for quite some time, but I thought it was just a pipe dream till I met Ginger and she convinced me we could make it a reality.”

  “Good for Ginger!”

  “How did you get into radio?” Cassie asked.

  “I went to school for it, actually. It’s been my occupation since I got out of college. I always had a yen to be part of broadcasting, but I never aspired to be behind a microphone.”

  “Where do you come from? Are you a local boy?”

  “Yup. Born and raised in the area. My family still lives here. My dad’s gone. Heart attack. But my mom and my two brothers all live around here. And you?”

  “My family lives in Albuquerque, which is where I spent most of my childhood, although I was born in Schenectady, New York, and lived there till I was four and a half.”

  “How in heck did you wind up in Indian Springs?” Todd asked.

  “Early on I had literary aspirations. I was working on a book and needed to interview Gareth Solomon, the artist. If you know the name, you know he retired to Indian Springs some years ago. I came here to spend a day talking to him and was charmed by the town. I was living in L.A. and didn’t like it at all, and on a whim I picked up and moved to Indian Springs.”

  “You’re an adventurer.”

  “I suppose, although I don’t think of myself that way,” Cassie said.

  “You’re bold, daring.”

  “Nah, I j
ust didn’t like L.A. I’d be a fool to stay in a place I wasn’t happy in.”

  “So tell me what you like to do when you’re not working,” Todd asked.

  “I like to go over to Marshalltown to the art museum or the zoo a few times a year at least. I paint and draw. I create word puzzles. Not crosswords but other types of word games. Actually I recently started selling them, so maybe to you that counts as work, but for me it’s very relaxing, like a hobby. It’s only in the last eight months that I started trying to sell them. And they don’t bring in that much. It’s just pin money, nothing I could support myself on. What about you?”

  “I’m into art too, but not painting or drawing. I work with clay. This is a two-bedroom apartment, but my supposed second bedroom is my studio. Sometimes in the evening I go hang out at the jazz club. I play sax, and sometimes I bring it along and sit in with the band, although mostly I just listen. Do you like jazz?”

  “Yes. Jazz, classical, and soft rock,” Cassie said.

  “Good. I’ll take you to the jazz club one night. Well, I hope I get to take you more than just one night, but I meant one night soon. Oh, hell, you know what I meant.”

  “You’re planning ahead again. We’re just beginning our first date, and you’re already planning for the third one.” Cassie laughed at his audacity, then took another sip of her drink.

  “Ready for a refill?” Todd had finished his and was headed to the dining room for another. He stood up and waited to see if Cassie wanted more scotch too.

  “Not quite. But thanks.”

  “Let me check on the dinner while I’m up. I’ll be back shortly.”

  By the time he returned, Cassie had finished her drink. “If it’s not too much trouble,” she said, holding out her empty glass.

  “Glad to oblige,” he replied, taking the glass and returning to the dining room.

  “Dinner should be ready in about twenty-five minutes,” he said, when he came back with a fresh scotch for Cassie. “Want to spend part of that time telling me more about yourself? For example, ever been married or engaged?”

  “Married, no. Engaged? No, but I had a boyfriend who was very serious about me and kept talking about the future as if we were going to be married one day.”

  “What happened?”

  “I liked him. In a way, I guess I even loved him. But I wasn’t in love with him, and I just couldn’t see myself married to him for the rest of my life. The thought was frightening. Finally I broke it off. He was heartbroken. I missed him afterward, but yet I knew I had done the right thing. Marrying him would have been such a mistake.

  “He stalked me for a while. He sent me so many emails, and he kept ‘running into me’ at various places. He knew my routine, and he’d be lurking outside my building or waiting for me when I went to the supermarket or be standing in front of the building where my yoga class was held when I came out of the class. Finally I told him if he didn’t stop I’d get a restraining order against him. That threat was enough to almost stop him. I still got occasional emails from him but not nearly as many, and he stopped ‘running into me’ when I went places. Eventually he gave up altogether, but it took almost half a year.”

  “Wow! I promise you I’m not like that. If we ever break up I will absolutely not haunt you or make your life miserable. I’ll just quietly throw myself in front of a bus. Not! I am not the suicidal type either. You’re safe with me.”

  “That’s good to know.” She patted his hand, which was resting on the sofa between them. He took her hand in his and squeezed it gently. When he relaxed his squeeze, though, he kept her hand in his.

  After a while, as they sat and talked and got to know each other even better, he let her hand go and put his arm lightly around her shoulders. “I like you,” he said. “I think we’re going to go well together.”

  “I like you too, so far,” she replied, “but it’s still way early. One of us could have a habit that would bug the other one terribly. Or—do you have a bad temper? I broke up with a guy once because he lost his temper easily.”

  “You’ll find me to be the most even-tempered guy you’ve known,” Todd said. “Kind, loyal, brave, reverent, and a brother to every other Scout. Or something like that. But right now I need to go scout in the kitchen. My suspicion is that dinner’s ready.”

  “You’re suspecting stuff. Were you a detective at one time?”

  “Not guilty. I have never been a private eye, ear, nose, and throat. But I will be judged a poor chef if I don’t serve dinner timely. Come—let’s eat.”

  The dinner was delicious. Cassie offered sincere compliments to the cook. She offered to help clear the table and load the dishwasher, but Todd would hear nothing of it. So she stayed in the dining room to keep Todd company while he did all the work. When they returned to the living room, Cassie was as full as a tick, and when Todd said, “Now, about dessert,” Cassie cut him short with “Only if you have an auxiliary stomach to provide me with. I haven’t got room for so much as a blueberry.”

  “Now about dessert,” Todd repeated patiently, “we can wait till our dinners settle, and then we have two choices. I have butter pecan ice cream and fudge ripple ice cream in the freezer, and butterscotch syrup in the fridge, or we can go around the corner to Java Jive, where they not only have every variety of coffee known to humankind but also sell the most marvelous cannoli and a killer tiramisu.”

  “Ohhhhhh! It all sounds good! Butter pecan with butterscotch is a wonderful combination, but both cannoli and tiramisu sound divine too.”

  “The decision is yours, my dear. I’m happy either way. But remember Java Jive sells coffee of all sorts, whereas all I can offer is a basic hazelnut coffee.”

  “Well, coffee doesn’t tempt me at this hour, unless it’s decaf. I do treasure a good night’s sleep, and coffee after dinner is definitely not conducive. But choosing between the sundae or two of my all-time fave bakery products? You do know how to make it tough on a gal, don’t you?”

  “Call me the torturer,” said Todd with a fake sneer on his face as he twirled an imaginary moustache, old-time movie villain-style.

  While their dinner settled, they sat and talked some more, getting to know each other better. Cassie still had misgivings about entering into a relationship with a man she would have to continue to work with even if they broke up. Wouldn’t it be smarter to let this evening be a stand-alone event and not the first of a series of dates, such as Todd already seemed to be planning? Wouldn’t it be brighter to end it with this one admittedly enjoyable evening and keep things on a strictly business level from here on out?

  That bothered her even more than the interracial aspect of their relationship. Nonetheless, she was hardly blind to the fact that, even in the twenty-first century, and certainly in a relatively small town such as Indian Springs, which called itself a city but was no metropolis, there was still a lot of opposition to black girls involving themselves romantically with white guys.

  But when Todd turned his face toward hers and softly pressed his lips to hers, she found herself responding to his overtures despite all her misgivings. When his tongue slithered purposefully into her mouth, she felt her body respond with a surge of passion as she sucked his tongue deeper into her mouth and shamelessly pressed her lips more fervently to his. His hands reached for her shoulders and then stroked their way down her arms, and she reached for his face and palmed his cheeks, then placed one hand on the back of his head and pulled his face even tighter to hers as their passionate liplock continued.

  Todd’s right hand stole to her breast and cupped the delicate mound. His fingers stroked her nipple lightly till it stood up stiff and straight, jutting out despite the confines of her bra and blouse. The electricity from his touch traveled a direct path from her nipple to her cunny, causing it to quiver and moisten. Cassie shifted her position on the couch as the sensations grew within her cleft. She stole a quick glance at Todd’s crotch and saw an impressive bulge there. His tented pants were testament to his obviou
s desire for the woman whose eyes were feasting on the sight of his clothed yet clearly swollen organ.

  Todd removed his lips from their happy entanglement with her lips. “Why don’t we go inside?” he suggested in a voice thick with lust.

  A corner of Cassie’s mind held fast to the thought that it would be smart to avoid getting in any deeper with Todd, but even while her common sense argued in favor of getting up and going home, her body overruled that thought. When she stood up from the couch it was not for the purpose of heading to the apartment door but with the intention of accompanying Todd into his bedroom.

  As they stood beside the bed, Todd reverently unfastened the buttons of Cassie’s blouse and drew it off her, revealing her lacy demi-bra. He gently eased one breast out of its lace protection, exposing the cocoa-colored swell of flesh capped with a cinnamon nipple, stiff with excitation. Todd bent to that nipple and carefully latched on to it with his teeth, grazing hungrily yet taking evident care to be gentle. Cassie squirmed under this sensory assault and felt her cunny growing wetter the more his teeth toyed with her nubbin.

  When Todd finally stopped grazing the nipple it was so he could draw her entire breast into his mouth and suck on the resilient flesh. Cassie looked down at his face juxtaposed with her chest and once again was made aware of the pale color of his face against the deep brown of her own skin. Once again she wondered if she was getting into a situation that would be more trouble than pleasure. Then her nipple touched the back of his palate as he sucked deeply on her responsive breast, and all she could think of was how much she wanted Todd inside her.

  To hell with the problems of the future. Why shouldn’t she enjoy herself now?

  Even as he continued to suckle at the swell of her boob, one of his hands found its way to the zipper of her pants, and the top button, fumbling to release the closure so he could draw the pants down. Her panties followed. “Let me get this bra off you,” Todd said, unfastening the bra’s closure and totally denuding Cassie. She fell backward to the bed, lying atop the bedspread, and watched as Todd hastily shucked his own clothes. His dick was formidable, pale with a crimson head, curved noticeably, impressively thick and no slouch in the length department either, and already oozing pre-cum.