she responded to him as surely as flowers rise to greet the sun. At the end of his lecture, she hardly recalled the gist of his talk, so intent had she been on concealing her feminine reaction. She stood in line for an opportunity to speak with him and stared in disbelief when he looked beyond those closest to him in the line and let his gaze linger on her. Common sense told her that she should tell Bill Jenkins to give the assignment to another reporter.
“Hello.” The deep, sonorous voice curled around her, and the hazel eyes that punctuated the elegance of his rich, brown face seemed to look into her soul. Without thinking, she extended her hand. And he took it. Nobody had to tell her that, at that moment, she dealt with fate.
“Hello, Mr. Covington.” She managed to keep her tone cool. “I enjoyed your talk, but I have a business reason for wanting to meet you.”
His left eyebrow arched. Then he winked, bewitching her. “What kind of business?”
She handed him her card. “I’m the reporter Mr. Jenkins assigned for The Journal’s story on you.”
He looked at the card, then at her. “Your name’s not familiar.”
“I hope you don’t have a case of gender insensitivity.”
That wink, again. “Hardly. My concern is for competence and experience.”
With so much at stake, she couldn’t afford to show vexation. “And you can look at a reporter and know whether she’s competent?”
“There are still a lot of people behind you. If you’ll step aside, we can settle this later.” Settle it? How? This was her chance, and if he had thoughts of refusing her interviews, he could forget it. Right then, she had the upper hand, because he didn’t need bad press just as he was about to begin a national book tour.
“Suppose we walk out together,” he suggested when the last of his audience had left. “I agreed to be interviewed reluctantly, because my publisher thinks a story in The Journal will widen my readership, but I have to tell you I have misgivings. What kind of story are you planning?”
She noticed that he shortened his steps to accommodate her and wondered at his height. “A day in the life of Jacob Covington. What do you say?”
He didn’t miss a beat. “A working day in the life of Jacob Covington is what you’ll get. My private life is my business, so if you’ve got plans to start on the day of my birth, and not miss a second of my existence until the day before the story goes to press, forget about it.”
As they reached the door, she stopped walking and looked up at him. “I can write the story without a word from you, or I can do the decent, professional thing and interview you. I’m giving my boss a story one way or the other.”
His hazel eyes took on a glaze, and his stare might well have been a laser, slicing through her. “Has some of Bill Jenkins rubbed off on you? A story at any cost? Damn the individual; the public has a right to know?”
She told herself to remember the stakes. “Let’s start over, Mr. Covington. This assignment is important to me, and I’m sure you know that. Give me your ground rules, and I’ll try to follow them.”
He breathed deeply, as though resigned. “All right, Ms. Wakefield, nine to five, Monday through Friday, and whenever I’m lecturing, signing books, or being interviewed on radio or TV. At all other times I’m a private citizen. Okay?”
“Fair enough. Are you married?” He seemed taken aback at the abruptness of the question, and she could have kicked herself for having asked it in that fashion.
He winked again, and her heartbeat accelerated. “No. Was that question for the interview or personal use?”
She wished he wouldn’t look at her so intently, because she couldn’t use the pleasant weather to explain the moisture that matted her forehead. Self-consciously, she lowered her eyelids, annoyed at her warm feminine response to him.
He’s just a man, Allison, she admonished herself, and recovered her equilibrium. “I know you’re thirty-five—the next logical question is marital status.”
He inclined his head slightly and quirked his brow, verifying her suspicion that he didn’t believe her, but she appreciated that he softened his voice and manner as if to put her at ease. “This isn’t a convenient time for your interview. I’m about to leave on the first leg of my national tour.”
“Why can’t I travel with you?”
“You couldn’t be serious, Ms. Wakefield. I don’t want the press chronicling my every breath.”
In her exasperation, she permitted herself a withering stare, but realizing that she might provoke him, she immediately changed her demeanor. “Mr. Covington, I am not asking to spend every minute with you, only for the chance to carry out my assignment as best I can.”
After seeming to weigh the pros and cons, he said, with obvious reluctance, “All right, if you can manage to stay out of the way.”
Boldly, she met his eyes straight on and tried to ignore the bouncing of her heart in her chest. “Would you please try to be less patronizing. I can’t observe you if I have to stay out of sight. I’m a professional, and I know how to do my job. It wouldn’t hurt you to remember that.”
He ran his fingers through the thick, silky black hair that belied his African heritage and told of his Seneca ancestors—traits that had once enhanced his value as an undercover agent; one couldn’t be certain of his racial identity.
“All right,” he said and grimaced, “but if it doesn’t work, we’ll have to drop it. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to leave.” At the bottom of the hill, he asked, “Are you driving, or should I help you get a cab? They seldom cruise on this part of Georgia Avenue at night.”
“I’m driving.”
“Then you can give me a lift?”
* * *
She stopped the car in front of his town house in an upscale section of Georgetown and turned toward him. “This is a lovely neighborhood,” she said, reluctant to voice the words that rested uneasily in her thoughts. He nodded and reached for the door handle. “Mind if I ask...” He stiffened, and she decided not to coat it. “You have a habit...I mean... Why do you wink at me?”
“What? Oh! I didn’t realize I’d done that. It isn’t something I control; it’s involuntary. I... It does whatever it pleases. Thanks for the lift. Good night.” Puzzled at his sudden diffidence, the man filled her with wonder as she drove across the Williams Bridge and took the Shirley Memorial Highway to Alexandria and her small, two-story frame house near Bren Mar Park.
* * *
Jake thought he’d been around so many indescribably beautiful women that one long-legged black woman with big eyes the color of pinecones and the shape of almonds and a come-to-me expression couldn’t knock him off balance. But like a freight train charging through the night, Allison Wakefield had done exactly that. For what other reason would he have given her permission to follow him around and record his every gesture? And why else would the damned wink have returned? That alone was positive proof that she’d gotten to him. The wink hadn’t bothered him since he overcame a short, feverish attachment to Henrietta Beech. He distrusted reporters and for good reason; the eagerness of
