Page 17 of Flirting With Disaster

Eight

“Never do anything against conscience

even if the state demands it.”

Albert Einstein

Jude shoved her bag from Between the Sheets to the bottom of her closet behind her suitcase. Thank goodness she’d had time to go back and collect her research materials.

A maintenance man. A widower, for Christ’s sake. He’d deceived her. She needed a man with no morals, no heart. One she could simply exchange monetary funds with, for the excitement of learning about sex and, as a bonus, a pregnancy he’d never care about. Not some charming, grieving artisan.

“You don’t look very thrilled about dinner.”

Jude jumped at Nola’s mysterious appearance in her room, once again. She shrugged and turned back to her frumpy clothing. “It’s not that.” She ran her hand over a celery cashmere sweater and sighed. “I had everything planned. He was perfect, but he went and ruined it. Now I need to start over.” A smidgen of guilt knotted in her chest, but she pushed it away.

“I’m not sure if I want to hear this.” Nola sat on the bed and crossed her legs.

Jude’s lips twisted. “I had this plan, you see. A harmless one, if all went well. I was going to sleep with Mr. Beckette, the profligate one, and check off two birds with one stone. I’d finally understand what all the fuss is about regarding sex, and I’d most likely get pregnant, considering my current menstruation schedule.” Jude glanced away. The loneliness in her heart pushed a tear from her eye. “I know this is ludicrous, unscrupulous even, but I may never get another opportunity like this. I’ve always wanted a child. Someone to love and nurture and spend my life with. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll be alone forever.”

“Aw, honey.” Nola stood and wrapped her arms around Jude. She pulled back, holding Jude’s shoulders. “But tell me. Why not Mr. Beckette?”

Jude bent to gather a tidy pair of pumps to match her outfit. She walked toward the bed and laid out her staid, stodgy suit, then stared out the window, defeat permeating her being. “He’s real now,” she whispered.

“He’s always been real, Ms. Duffy.”

“He was just an unfeeling playboy before.” Jude walked into the adjoining bath. “Nothing but a mindless body I could pay for sex and leave with no further compunction. Now…” She dropped her arms from trying to reassemble her French twist. “Now, he’s a real man with a real past and real emotions. He’s a widower, for goodness sake. And smart and funny, and I find myself inexplicably emotionally attracted to him.” She stared at her pale features. “And I can’t have sex and get pregnant when my emotions are involved. I need an emotionless, indifferent specimen.”

She touched up her makeup and brushed her teeth as Fantome’s taut, tan face popped into her mind. She reentered the main suite to dress. “Someone who doesn’t have the power to hurt me.”

Nola sat on the bed, eying her. “Believe it or not, I understand your crazy thought pattern here. But don’t you want to find love?”

Jude laughed. “Love? For me? Nola, look at me. I’m boring, aging and suffering from a slight case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Nola’s eyebrows rose.

Jude slumped. “You see what I mean? I fall, they don’t, and I get hurt. Love is not, and never has been, in the forecast for me. But a child…” She glanced longingly at her make-believe Fairy Godmaid.

Nola smiled. “Anything is possible, Miss Duffy. You just have to believe in yourself.”

Jude did believe in herself…the few times she’d been with Beckette. She didn’t even know him but, in the short time they’d been together, she’d felt different. Safe and secure and worthy. Those were all things she’d never had before in any relationship. Except with Aunt Aggie, but that didn’t count. She was gone now too.

In all her previous relationships, Jude had been required to prove herself, consistently feeling less, not part of the crowd, as if she were an afterthought. “Well, regardless, there’s no harm in a single woman wanting to have sex with a single available man. It is the twenty-first century. Anthropologically speaking, casual sex has been around since the beginning of time. Only since the development of religious organizations and their doctrines to control societies, has sex been looked down upon when not practiced within the confines of a marital situation.”

Nola’s innocent eyes widened. “But you do want love, don’t you?”

Jude sank to the bed as a small tear slipped down her cheek. For all her bravado, she did want love. “Yes. It would be nice. But, statistically speaking, an illicit pregnancy is so much more attainable for me. I have to take what I can get.”

* * * *

Beck stood in his room, examining the skin graft scars along the left side of his back and arm. He’d never have any feeling there, which was fine by him. He didn’t deserve to feel. He’d been cursed long ago for the transgressions of his youth. The plane crash that had killed a young Jude Duffy’s parents, his first flight as a new pilot, was only one sin that would haunt him forever.

Being an angry, rebellious, twenty-one-year-old son of a bitch, he’d been busy partying and screwing the airport manager’s daughter. He’d rushed his pre-flight check and they’d encountered problems at ten thousand feet. He’d lived, scarred and burned for life, but his trusting cargo had died, his drunken secret kept hidden behind his guilt all these years.

Sixteen years later, he’d killed his wife with his deadly, heartless curse.

Beck rammed his arms into his shirt and tugged it closed. Regardless of the last year of rehab, he was still cursed, still making bad choices.

Like getting involved with Jude Duffy while misleading her about his identity.

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