CHAPTER TEN
It was nearly six in the evening and pouring sheets of rain by the time Marti made it all the way out to the chief’s home. Or was it a mansion?
She couldn’t believe how massive his house was. And for the first time she realized this man might have a huge family living there. A wife and a ton of kids. For some crazy reason that never even occurred to her. He looked like a man alone from the first moment she laid eyes on him. Now she realized how shortsighted that was. As if she was projecting onto him something or somebody he wasn’t. Which she never did. But she did in his case.
But none of that mattered anyway. She needed to meet with the chief and no way was she driving all the way back to town without having an understanding from him about the parameters of her job and how he was technically her boss because she was in his jurisdiction, but he wasn’t actually her boss. She was independent. Her only boss was the Assistant Attorney General for the great state of Florida.
But as she sat out in her car and watched the rain get worse, not better, she decided to make a run for it. She had no umbrella, but she had a briefcase. She placed it over her head as she got out of her car. But as soon as that heavy rain hit her in her face like shards of needles puncturing her with every step she took, she realized it was a mistake. As soon as she realized it was raining, she should have taken her behind back to the hotel and waited to meet with the chief tomorrow.
But she was in it now. Too late to turn back now. She ran all the way from the driveway to the steps, and then all the way up onto his wraparound front porch whose under-hang gave her the first respite from the rain. But she was drenched already from just that little run, and that briefcase had done nothing to shield her hair. She was coming to the man’s house looking like Little Orphan Annie ready to burst out and sing: “ The sun’ll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, they’ll be sun!”
It was all she needed, she thought, as she removed her blouse from tucked inside her slacks and tried to ring the water out of it, and then she tried to fluff-up her fallen hair. But it was no use. She looked like a throwaway. Like Annie. Even her hair had curled up! So she forgot about her appearance and kept her mind singularly focused on why she was there in the first place. She rang his bell.
Inside the house, Grant was in jeans and a sweatshirt preparing his dinner. He loved cooking. It eased his troubled mind. And when it was raining? Heavenly! He loved the rain too. Something about the sound of rain hitting against the windowpanes and to watch it slant through the air reminding man of how powerless and nothing they really were, comforted him. But when he heard his doorbell rang, something he rarely ever heard, he was confounded. Nobody in town had the gall to just drop by his house!
He turned off his pot of stew and made his way around his formal dining room, through his living room, and all the way to his front door. When he saw that consultant through his peephole, he was shocked. What on earth was she doing at his house? Why was she bringing that shit to his home???
Angrily, he flung open his front door.
But as soon as he saw Marti standing there, dripping wet, his heart softened. And as soon as his eyes roamed down to her chest and he saw her nipples full and proud through the wetness of her thin, silk blouse, his midsection went rock hard. Just like that. And those deep feelings that overtook him first at the station the first time he saw her, and again at the Wafer House just from watching her, returned.
Marti saw that flash of anger and annoyance on his face when he first opened that door, and she tried not to focus on anything else. He was pissed by her intrusion at his home and she didn’t care that he had softened or gotten excited or any of that. The first impression was always the right one as far as she was concerned. He didn’t want her there. He was pissed that she was there. Another place in this world she wasn’t welcomed. She couldn’t fathom why she thought she just might be welcomed to begin with. But apparently somewhere, in the deep recesses of her heart, she had hoped so.
She put her game face back on. Hardened her exterior. And got on with it. “Hello, Chief. I came because,” she started saying, but then she sneezed.
Grant was still trying to digest all that was thrown at him at once: the fact that somebody was standing on his front porch. The fact that she was standing on his front porch. The fact that she was turning him on to such an extent that he had to pinch his penis right in front of her to try to settle it back down. The fact that those other, deeper feelings he couldn’t even understand himself had returned. He had too much going on to even hear her say a word to him.
Until she sneezed again.
That angered him. “What are you doing out in this kind of weather anyway?” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her inside his house. “You’re catch your death out there!”
Marti was confused by his reaction. Why would he care if she caught her death , as he put it? “I went by the station,” she said, “but your sergeant told me you were gone for the day. I would not have bothered you at home except we really need to go over how we’re going to handle my time within your department.”
But then she sneezed again. And he seemed angry about that too. “Come here,” he said to her and began walking away.
She wondered if she should close the front door since he didn’t seem to care, but she didn’t come from a place where she could leave doors opened or unlocked. She closed the door, locked it, sat her soaking wet briefcase on the floor in the foyer, and then hurried behind the chief.
She hated that she was dripping onto his hardwood floors, but he didn’t seem to mind that either. So she continued to follow him down a long hall that led to a bathroom. “Get out of those clothes,” he said to her as he grabbed a robe that was hanging on the bathroom door and tossed it at her. She caught it. “I’ll run them through the dryer.”
Then he opened the drawer from the fancy dressing table and grabbed a pair of unopened bootie socks and tossed them at her too. “Put these on. Those shoes are soaked through.” Then he walked out of the bathroom and closed the door, with her inside.
She was so caught off guard that she didn’t know what to make of this man. He was going to dry her clothes for her? It would have made more sense for them to just sit out on the porch, have their little meeting, and then send her on her way. And she was about to open that bathroom door and suggest that very thing.
But then she sneezed again. And she knew she had to get those wet clothes off of her.
It was unorthodox. It was stupid-crazy considering how she knew he felt about her and that anger she saw when he first opened his front door. But she got out of those clothes, anyway, feeling strange to be naked in that man’s house. But when she thought about the position she was really in, she nearly fell on her face as she began putting on that robe so fast.
Then she smoothed her wet hair with a backward stroke of her hands, found a hair tie she always kept in her pocket, and put her hair into a thick ponytail. And then she just stood there, staring at herself in the mirror. What on earth was she doing? And even as she sneezed again, she wondered why did she agree to this? Was it because it was him ? Was that really the reason? Did he pull her into his house because it was her ? Was that really his reason?
She didn’t know. But when she began to imagine him bursting through that bathroom door demanding something from her she wasn’t willing to give to him, she hurried out of there.