Knight In Black Leather Read online

  "You want the money? Take it." He fumbled in the blanket till he found the wallet down by his hip and thrust it at her. "I'll give it to you."

  "Eli, no." She pushed it back.

  "Look." He tossed the damn wallet in the direction of his boots still against the wall by the door. "Do what you want with it. Keep it, don't keep it, give it to the drunk out in the hall. I don't care."

  "Okay, okay, relax." She took his hand again, holding it tight. "Calm down, Eli. You're going to hurt yourself."

  "Why should you care?" He slumped back onto the bed, trying not to cling as tight to her hand as she clung to his.

  "I don't know. Probably I shouldn't. But I do."

  A whole new set of people dressed in purple scrubs smacked the door open and invaded the room. "Ready for your ride to x-ray, Mr. Court?"

  "I guess." But somehow he couldn't make himself let go of Marilyn's hand.

  Not until she gave his hand a squeeze and said, "I'll be waiting."

  As they shoved him out the door on his rolling bed, Eli saw Marilyn gathering up his things. She'd take care of them. She was going to wait.

  After the x-rays, which required more waiting before they were taken, and a couple of new kinds of torture, Eli finally got some Tylenol. It didn't help a whole hell of a lot. They wheeled him back downstairs to the ER and parked him in the hall to wait until the pictures were developed and the doc could get back to him. At least they let Marilyn come back and wait with him.

  She told him she had put his clothes in the trunk of her enormous car for now, and she had his wallet in her purse which was hanging from a strap over her shoulder. Then she stopped talking and just held his hand. Sometimes she ruffled up his hair, mostly she didn't. Eli lay there, holding her hand, trying not to hurt, trying not to think about how good it felt not being alone.

  Eventually the doc came in, looked at the x-rays and told Eli he was lucky. He wouldn't have to have any pins put in to hold the bones together. He had a small bone in his right wrist as well as the stationary bone in his forearm broken. One cast would take care of both fractures. As the doctor had suspected, he had a simple fracture of the left tibia. The bone was broken all the way through but not displaced.

  He would be in casts for at least six weeks, at least part of the time in a wheelchair. The broken arm and wrist meant he couldn't use crutches. Depending on how well he healed, he might get a walking cast after a month or so, if he followed all the doctor's instructions.

  Eli tried to pay attention but he was hurting too damn bad. The adrenaline, or whatever it was that had allowed him to walk most of the way into the hospital, had worn off hours ago, and the pills they'd given him were doing fuck-all to help.

  They let Marilyn stay in the room while he got his casts on and she helped him into his jeans afterward. One pants leg got cut to go over the cast but they were still wearable. She counted out the cash at the desk when he checked out and took the pages of instructions from the nurse. She snapped his coat closed over the sling. Finally, one of the aides wheeled him outside and helped him into the oversized car. They were back on the freeway before it occurred to him to ask where they were going this time.

  "I'm taking you home," Marilyn said.

  Eli peered into the after-midnight darkness. "This isn't the way."

  "Yes, it is. We're going to my place."

  What the hell? Eli gathered his attention and focused it on the woman driving the car. A harmless hospital flirtation with Marilyn was one thing. Going home with her was something else entirely. He was a loner and liked it that way. Getting too close to people created complications he didn't want.

  "Bad idea," he said.

  "Did I ask for your opinion?"

  "I'm giving it anyway. This is a real bad idea."

  "It's the only option you have. You've had the hell beat out of you. You have a concussion. You need somebody to make sure you don't fall into a sleep you don't wake up from. You also have three broken bones. You need help, mister, and I'm it. If you don't like it, that's just too damn bad."

  Marilyn kept her eyes on the highway and the big trucks that were their only companions while Eli stared at her, trying to decide how he felt about her little speech. "Has anybody ever told you you're a little bossy?" he said finally.

  She glanced at him. "I'm a lot bossy when I have to be."

  "You're right." He wanted to be mad, wanted to rebel against the command in her voice, wanted to feel trapped. He didn't want to be glad he didn't have to say goodbye.

  He didn't want her to be right about more than her bossiness, but she was. He needed help. He didn't like knowing it. He felt relieved that she was providing the help he needed and relieved he didn't have to ask for it, and he didn't like feeling that way either. He was supposed to be the one who rode to the rescue, not the one who needed rescuing, and it annoyed the hell out of him to be in this position.

  "Are you going to give me any more grief?" she asked, as she took the next exit.

  "Probably." He couldn't help it. It was in his nature, like digging holes to a dog. "But not right now."

  "Fair enough."

  Marilyn lived in a modern-looking building with pretty good security for what you got without a live person on a desk in the lobby. She parked in the no-parking delivery zone out front to walk him inside with her shoulder under his left arm and her arm tight around his waist. It hurt his bruises, but he didn't have to put any weight on his broken leg.

  "We'll see about renting a wheelchair tomorrow," Marilyn said, when she'd deposited him on a bench in the lobby.

  Eli hurt too much to argue, though his dignity felt dented at the thought of a wheelchair. He sat there and waited for her to come back from parking the car in the lot out back. Marilyn hustled in, her face pink from the cold, her waves of hair tumbled by the wind, and Eli drank in the sight.

  "Ready?" She sat down beside him and slipped her arm around his waist.

  His coat had ridden up over his sling, so she set her hand on bare skin. Eli hid his reaction to her touch. Marilyn didn't have one from what he could tell.

  He draped his good arm over her shoulder. "Let's get it done."

  She stood first and provided lift, balance and support while he struggled upright. "Not much farther," she promised.

  Eli didn't have breath to reply. He let her half-carry him to the elevator, which was waiting for them, and rode up to the fourth floor. They were both breathless by the time she unlocked her door and got him into the high-backed armchair just inside.

  The phone was ringing. Marilyn ignored it as she crossed to the green-and-navy-plaid sofa and started pulling off the cushions. She knew who was calling and didn't want to talk. The phone stopped while Marilyn was hauling the hide-a-bed out of the sofa frame and unfolding it. She straightened, rolled her eyes heavenward and breathed a fervent "Thank you."

  But her gratitude came too soon. The phone started ringing again before she'd made it halfway to the closet. Her patience at its last frayed end, Marilyn snatched up the portable handset. "Do you know what time it is, Mother?"

  "Do you? It's almost two o'clock in the morning. Where have you been?"

  "Out." She took the phone away from her ear and glared at it, tempted to hang up, tempted to throw the thing out the window or against the wall. But that would only annoy the neighbors even more, because Mom would only call back. Or call the police. She'd done that more than once after Marilyn had moved in here just over three months ago.

  She put the phone back up to her ear, pulling pillows one-handed out of the closet.

  "Marilyn? Talk to me, Marilyn. Where have you been? Are you hurt? Do I need to come over there?"

  "Don't you dare. I'm fine, Mom. I've been out." She tossed the pillows on the folded-out bed and looked at Eli sitting slumped in the dining room chair. She didn't have the energy to get him back up right now. She needed a little rest, and from the looks of him, so did he.

  "Out where?" Mom was saying. "You don't go out."


  "Well, maybe it's time I started, huh? Bill's been dead four years, and I'm not forty yet. I'm not ready to curl up and die." In the kitchen area, Marilyn got the old wooden stepstool Bill had made when Julie was little and shoved it toward Eli with a foot.

  "Who were you with? Your girlfriends? A girls' night out can be good fun. Where did you go? That new romance movie with--oh, what's his name? The cute one."

  Marilyn got a small ruffled pillow, set it on top of the stool and maneuvered the assembly into position under Eli's cast while she held the phone in place with her shoulder. His eyes opened when she lifted his broken leg, but he didn't say anything. Just watched her.

  "Not that it's any of your business, Mom, who I was out with or what I did, but I wasn't with the girls and I didn't go to a movie."

  "A mother has a right to take an interest in her daughter's life--"

  "Not at two o'clock in the morning."

  Marilyn's interruption might never have happened. Mom kept talking. "Especially when that daughter all of a sudden starts acting crazy, quitting her job, moving out of her perfectly good house into an apartment without enough room to turn around in, staying out till all hours of the night. I worry about you, Marilyn. I got a right to worry, I think."

  "Okay, okay. Maybe you do have a right to worry, but ringing the phone off the wall at two a.m. is only going to annoy my neighbors." Marilyn pulled one of the side chairs away from the table and sank onto its padded seat.

  "So, where were you all night?" Mom never let go of a question until she got the answer she wanted.

  Marilyn looked at Eli, looking back at her from scarcely an armslength away. She might as well tell the truth. Some of it, anyway. "I was with a man."

  Three

  ***

  "A man? On a date?" Mom's shock was expected. Marilyn hadn't been out on a date since Bill's death.

  "More or less."

  Eli's lips twitched in a grin and Marilyn had to grin back. She already knew he liked to play games.

  "What does more or less mean? Was it a date or wasn't it?"

  "Well, I don't know, Mom. How do you define a date? He didn't pick me up at the front door or bring me a corsage, but we spent the evening together. We talked. We had a drink."

  The hospital had allowed Eli one of those little cans of juice once they decided he didn't have any internal injuries. She'd had one with him.

  "So, who is he? Do I know him? Is it that nice doctor who lives on the third floor?"

  The nice doctor only dated bimbos with lots of silicone. "No, Mom, you don't know him." She exchanged another grin with Eli as she stretched her legs out in front of her.

  "What's he like? Is he nice? Handsome? Is he rich? How old is he? You want one young enough he's not going to have a stroke and need you to push him around in a wheelchair."

  "How about twenty-five? Is that young enough?" She'd seen Eli's driver's license and done the math. He had just turned twenty-five in November, not quite three months ago.

  "He's--what?"

  "Twenty-five. Nice looking, good bone structure. Great butt."

  Eli's grin got bigger, splitting open one of the scabbed-over cracks in his lower lip. Marilyn got a tissue from the box on the table and passed it to him.

  "He has brown hair and blue eyes. He's about five foot ten, I'd guess." She paused as Eli pointed his thumb upward. "Or five-eleven."

  He nodded and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

  "Yes, five-eleven. Not too short, not too tall. He wears a cool black leather jacket and--" Marilyn paused as Eli popped open the snaps of his jacket, spread it open and pointed.

  "--And he has a pierced nipple." How had she missed that? The technicolor bruises must have distracted her.

  "You've seen his nipples?" Mom's voice rose so loud and so shrill that Marilyn had to take the phone away from her ear.

  One glance at Eli convulsed in silent laughter had Marilyn struggling for composure. She couldn't let Mom hear her laughing or she'd be in for it. Mom could devise tortures that rivaled those of the damned.

  "Well, he didn't wear a shirt under his jacket, so yeah, I saw his nipples." Marilyn made a face at Eli and held her finger to her mouth, shushing him. He was making too much noise.

  "Marilyn Frances, you should be ashamed of yourself."

  "For what? Going out on a date?"

  "For making up such terrible lies. It isn't funny. I almost believed you. Do you want to give me a heart attack?"

  "Of course not. Why else do I keep telling you to get out and walk more. But I didn't tell you one thing tonight that isn't absolutely true." Of course she didn't tell Mom all the truth, but Mom didn't need to know that.

  "Marilyn Frances Franks--"

  "Ballard," Marilyn interrupted.

  "You were Franks before you were ever Ballard. I don't know what delusional fantasy world you've wished up--"

  "It's no fantasy, Mom."

  "Oh, please. Do you honestly expect me to believe that you went out tonight with some twenty-five-year-old in black leather and pierced--pierced--and no shirt--"

  "Nipple, Mom. He has a pierced nipple. And three earrings. Two on one side. Believe it. You want to talk to him?"

  "He's there? At your apartment?" Mom's voice went back up to glass-shattering level.

  "Sure. Sitting right here."

  Eli already had his hand out, begging for the phone.

  "Sure. I'll talk to this make-believe Romeo of yours."

  "It's Eli, not Romeo." Marilyn handed Eli the phone. "Be gentle," she whispered. "She's old."

  He sat up as straight as he could and wiped the laughter from his face before he put the phone up to his ear. "Hey. Whassup? Is this Marilyn's old lady?"

  Marilyn knelt by his chair and he turned the phone out so she could hear her mother sputtering.

  "Yeah, Marilyn's da bomb," he went on. "We're gonna get matching tattoos, did she tell ya? We were thinking about hearts that say 'Eli and Marilyn,' but hearts are so last year, ya know? I thought snakes maybe, twining snakes--"

  Mom finally managed to form words. "You put my daughter back on the phone this instant. Do you hear me, young man? Marilyn? Marilyn!"

  She couldn't keep the torture up any longer. Marilyn took the phone away from Eli, but she had to hold it against her leg until she could stop laughing.

  "Yeah, Mom?" She was still a little wheezy.

  "Who is that dreadful young man? You get him out of your apartment right now. Right this minute, do you hear me?"

  "Relax, Mom. Eli's really very nice. He was just messing with your head. We're not getting any tattoos. Especially not snake ones."

  Eli made a pouty face, mourning the snake tattoos, and Marilyn turned her back on him before he got her laughing again.

  "I don't care if he's the archangel Gabriel," Mom said. "I want him out."

  "Well, guess what, Mom. This is my house and I'm a grown woman. You don't get to tell me who I can and cannot invite into my home. And before you threaten to call the police, let me tell you that I will call them first and tell them you're having a senior moment. You've done it before. They'll believe me. You know they will."

  "Oh, all right, I won't call the police."

  "Thank you."

  "But I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. This is crazy, Marilyn. I just don't know what's got into you."

  "I don't either, Mama, but I like it."

  "I don't. You tell that boy to go home."

  "When it's time for Eli to go, he'll go. Until then, it's not really any of your business, is it?"

  "Marilyn--"

  "I have to go, Mom. You should go to bed. You should have been in bed hours ago."

  "How could I sleep for worrying about you? Marilyn, I just--

  "I have to go, Mom." She hit the disconnect button on the cordless phone with a sigh.

  "Hey, at least she cares," Eli said, watching her through half-closed eyes. "Some moms don't."

  "I know." Marilyn laid the hands
et back in the cradle to recharge, then she disconnected the phone line. She didn't want the phone ringing before she was ready to get up. "She drives me absolutely nuts sometimes, but I know it's because she cares. I don't fit into the ideal daughter mold any more. I've gone off track, according to her, and she wants to shove me back on it."

  "Ideal daughter?"

  "You know--" Marilyn waved her hand in the air as she came back to sit in her chair. "Husband, kids, house in the suburbs with petunias out front. Nice little job to keep busy with while the kids are in school. And when the husband dies, nothing's supposed to change. Everything stays just the same in its nice little rut." She shrugged. "I had to get out of my rut. Mom doesn't understand that."

  "Do you miss him? Your husband?"

  She looked up at Eli. He leaned back in the chair, head against the wall, his broken arm cradled on his bare stomach, broken leg propped on the stool. His relaxed posture belied the intent watchfulness of his eyes. He really wanted to know.

  Marilyn didn't understand why, but she didn't see any reason not to tell him. Except she wasn't sure what the answer was. "He was a big part of my life for a lot of years. But he's been gone four years now. My daughter went away to college last fall. I miss her more."

  "But she can come home weekends."

  She laughed. "Yes, but does she? College is much more interesting than her mother. Come on. Let's get you settled."

  She had to help him into the bathroom, but Eli managed on his own from there. When he called her back in, he was stripped down to the black briefs again, his jacket hanging on the door hook with her nightgown, the jeans crumpled on the floor.

  Eli looked different standing balanced in her bathroom in nothing but his underwear from how he had looked dressed the same way in the hospital. Maybe because he was upright, or maybe because he was in her house. He looked bigger, broader, inches taller than she was, the muscles well-defined on his lean form. She tried to focus on the purpling bruises marring his winter-pale skin. Instead, she noted the tracing of light brown hair across his chest from nipple to pierced nipple.