One Fine Day

She opened the door and fell into Frannie’s arms.

Chapter 2

Frannie made Sara shower and dress, after which they got in a cab and went across town to an apartment building on Amsterdam Avenue. On the cab ride, Frannie didn’t say a word about the thick bandage covering Sara’s wrist, for which Sara was grateful.

She’d told Frannie that she’d cut herself while trying to split a breakfast bagel.

The building was quite old but well maintained. It had a redbrick facade and a dark green awning over the entrance. Sara guessed that Frannie must have been a frequent visitor because the elderly gentleman at the desk in the lobby waved them past without first inquiring after their reason for being there.

As they waited for the elevator, Frannie said, “I’ve been wanting to introduce you to this group of women for a long time but, the fact is, you haven’t needed them until now.”

“What do you mean?” Sara asked.

“You’ll see,” said Frannie with a mysterious smile. “One more thing, try not to stare at them. Some of them are very well known. I’m counting on your discretion.”

“Ooh,” intoned Sara. “What is this, a secret society or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s simply a group of women who want to change the world by helping other women. We’re hoping that you’ll consider joining us.”

“What if I don’t want to join?”

“After you hear what we’re about, you will,” Frannie said with confidence.

“I’m not big on joining clubs,” Sara said as a warning. “I was wooed by four sororities when I was in college and managed to avoid signing up with any of them.”

“This is nothing like a sorority,” Frannie told her.

“It’s a charitable organization?”

“Of a sort,” Frannie said.

A couple of minutes later, Frannie was knocking on the door of the penthouse.

“Wow,” said Sara. “Are you sure all the funds you collect go to unfortunate women? Or does the person who lives here get kickbacks?”

Frannie laughed. “All of your questions will be answered soon.”

“You’re not a secret organization of call girls, are you?”

“If I weren’t so glad to hear you cracking jokes, I’d bop you upside the head for that,” Frannie said, laughing.

Sara was about to respond to Frannie’s threat of violence when the door was opened by the Honorable Secretary of State, Eunice Strathmore. Sara had to mentally command herself to close her mouth because it was suddenly hanging open in surprise.

“Francesca!” the secretary of state cried, obviously delighted to see Frannie.

The two women warmly embraced.

A gentleman in full butler regalia closed the door and stood aside as if awaiting further instructions.

“Ladies, we’re lunching in the next room. The food is buffet style, but Avery is mixing the drinks. What will you have?” said the secretary of state.

“A mimosa,” Frannie said at once.

“Iced tea, please,” Sara said, trying to keep her tone relaxed.

“My pleasure,” said Avery, a tall African-American in his late sixties. His silver hair was thick and wavy, neatly trimmed, and combed back from a handsome coppery-brown face.

The secretary of state watched him go. She was in her midfifties, though she looked not a day over forty-five. Trim, attractive, she wore her short dark brown hair in a tapered cut that always looked freshly styled. A minimum of makeup graced the face that was known the world over.

Around five-five, she was rumored to jog every day and work out with weights three times a week, all to relieve stress. Sara guessed it was working for her, because her face was free of worry lines, and the twinkle in her eye appeared genuine.

Turning to Sara, she grasped her by both hands and peered up at her. “Welcome, Sara. Frannie has told me all about you. May I express my sympathy on the loss of your husband, Billy? My heart goes out to you. I, too, was a young widow.”

Sara remembered that the secretary’s husband had been in the military and had been killed in action more than twenty years ago. They had two children, a girl and a boy, both adults now, of course. She had chosen not to marry again.

“Thank you, Madam Secretary,” said Sara.

“Call me Eunice, dear. We’re all just women here.”

Eunice warmly placed Sara’s hand through her arm and led her into the next room where perhaps twenty women were sitting on couches and chairs enjoying luncheon on china plates and drinking from crystal champagne glasses. Conversation and laughter was heard throughout the room.

All conversation ceased, however, when Eunice reentered the room with Frannie and Sara in tow. Frannie was greeted with more warm hugs, after which she introduced Sara to everybody.

Sara knew she would not recall all of the names of the women who formed a multicultural group. They were of African, Asian, Hispanic and Caucasian extractions. Their membership was obviously not limited to African-Americans.

She recognized several famous faces. A couple of actresses; a CEO of a major company; a multimedia magnate who could have bought and sold all of New York City, she was so fabulously wealthy. Sara was slightly in awe of them but recalled Frannie’s admonition not to stare and tried her best to keep her eyes in her head.

She and Frannie were encouraged to partake of the buffet. Sara was glad for the opportunity to speak with Frannie in private. So, as they filled their plates at the buffet table, she whispered to her friend, “Oh, my God, that was Eunice Strathmore. I read she was in New York! But she’s supposed to be attending a summit.”

“She can’t be in meetings every minute. Whenever she’s in town, we get together to discuss business. Occasionally, one of us brings someone to be considered for membership. Today, that’s you.”

“But, why didn’t you ever tell me you knew the secretary of state and,” she looked around them, “Phylicia Edwards, my favorite actress, for God’s sake?”

Frannie bit into a large shrimp and closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Like I said earlier, all of your questions will soon be answered.”

As they turned away from the buffet tables, Phylicia Edwards called out, “Sara, Frannie, join me, there’s room on my couch.”

Holding their plates and placing their glasses atop coasters on the coffee table in front of them, they got comfortable.

Sara observed that Phylicia was every bit as beautiful as she looked in the movies. In her late thirties, she was petite and had delicate bone structure. Her golden-brown skin was unmarred by age or injury and her dark, liquid brown eyes seemed as guileless as a young child’s.

Sara knew her estimation in that instance was faulty. Phylicia was not innocent by any means. She had fought her way to the top in Hollywood. She was not one to mince words about directors and producers whom she’d left whimpering like babes in her wake. Nobody messed with Phylicia Edwards and got away with it.

She was a warrior.

“How old are you, darlin’?” Phylicia asked Sara.

She was eating fast, obviously enjoying her food. But she didn’t talk with food in her mouth. She swallowed first, then spoke.

“I’m twenty-four,” Sara told her.

Phylicia’s eyes stretched. “I would have guessed twenty-one. You look fresh out of college.”

“I graduated from college at twenty. I saw no reason to stay any longer than three years if I could get my bachelor’s degree in three years’ time. I went to graduate school at NYU once I came here. That’s where I met my husband.”

“I never went to college,” Phylicia told her. She speared a piece of melon, chewed it thoroughly, swallowed, and said, “By the time I was twelve I was an expert at avoiding the hands of my lecherous stepfather. Two years later, I left home because he became more aggressive. I went to L.A. to live with my older sister who knew all about the bastard. She hadn’t been as lucky. But she refused to allow that episode in her life to define her. She went to school and became a teacher. I got to go to high school in L.A. and when I was sixteen I went to test for a role on a sitcom, got it…”

“Hocus Pocus,” Sara said excitedly. “I used to love it when I was a kid.”

“Be careful, you’re dating me,” Phylicia joked.

Hocus Pocus had been a sitcom about a family of African-American witches. Kind of like Bewitched, but with more flavor.

“It didn’t last very long,” Phylicia went on. “But at least I got my foot in the door and the rest, as they say, is history, or herstory. Now, tell me, Sara, do you want to be in advertising for the rest of your life?”

“What did you all do, read my file?” Sara joked.

“Something like that,” Phylicia confirmed. “We all got the memo on Sara Minton.”

“I don’t really know,” Sara said wistfully. She had yet to put a morsel of food in her mouth and didn’t know how in the world Phylicia managed a conversation while consuming everything on her plate.

Phylicia saw Sara’s eyes on her plate and laughed. “After loads of Hollywood lunches I’ve learned to eat fast and talk out of the corner of my mouth. Especially in the lean years when somebody else was paying. You also learn how to pack your purse with food without being found out. Girl, I could eat for days on what I pilfered at a party. Sorry, you were telling me what you want to do with your life.”

“I don’t really know,” Sara said again. “Before Billy died I thought I was reasonably happy working at the ad agency. But now, I’m not so sure. When I was a kid, I dreamed of owning a bookstore probably because I loved books so much, but I haven’t entertained that notion in a long time.”

“You know,” Phylicia said. “Our childhood dreams often tell us things about our personalities that we sometimes forget when we become adults. I’m not saying a grown man should go be a cowboy because he wanted to be one when he was a kid. But I do believe everybody should do something adventurous every now and then.”

Emboldened, Sara asked, “What have you done that was adventurous?”

“Last month, when I was filming in Ethiopia, I helped the wife of a government official escape out of his clutches. We went into his compound dressed like visiting nuns and when we left she and her two children were likewise attired. They were safely in Sudan before he realized they were missing.” Her tone was conspiratorial the whole while.

She’s talking about a movie role, Sara thought skeptically. However Phylicia, as she would soon learn, was telling the absolute truth.

A few minutes after everyone had finished eating, Eunice got up and went to stand in front of the huge fireplace. All of the ladies gave her their undivided attention.

“I’m so happy to see you, my sisters,” Eunice began, a warm smile on her face. “This year we celebrate over one hundred and forty-one years of existence, ever since an ex-slave woman who was a member of the Underground Railroad started a secret organization of women, black and white, who would aid women and children by helping them escape dangerous situations. Her name was Celestine and in 1860 when she started her secret society she referred to the members as Aminatu’s Daughters after the Nigerian princess, Aminatu, who gained wealth and fame by being a fierce warrior and who built walls around the city of Zaria in order to protect her people from invaders. We are still fierce warriors and we are still protecting the people!”

There was uproarious applause. The ladies got to their feet and gave their leader a standing ovation.

Eunice smiled benevolently and gestured for them to sit down. “Francesca has brought her best friend, Sara, to meet us. Sara is recently widowed, and some of us know what an emotional time that is, how we’re suddenly unsure of our direction in life.” She looked directly into Sara’s eyes, her own hypnotic. “The one thing that saved me, Sara, when I lost Zachary, was getting out of myself. I volunteered in the neighborhood, at my children’s school. It was at that time that I got involved with politics and I also went back to school and got my doctorate. I became an expert in foreign affairs. With my first assignment overseas I got to witness firsthand the subjugation of women in the country I visited. I won’t name the country. There are so many like it, where women are considered second-class citizens or, worse, as chattel. Women in the United States don’t know how good they have it compared to a lot of other women all over the world. So, after some research, I discovered Celestine and her story. And I realized that with the help of good friends, I could finish what Celestine had started. So, we pooled our resources, both financial and intellectual, and we started to do something about our sisters in countries where they had no rights. And since 1999, we have aided over five thousand women and children by educating them, where needed, and relocating them. Not always to the States, either. We have branches in over twenty countries.”

Her curiosity up, Sara asked, “But how do they contact you? How do you know who needs your help?”

“I’m the secretary of state,” Eunice said without bragging. “Special reports come across my desk all the time. Plus, we have people in governments all over the world who report cases of abuse. For example, I suppose you read about the Ethiopian woman who was going to be stoned to death for adultery while the man she had sex with, and whose child she gave birth to, got off scot-free?”

Sara nodded in the affirmative. The case had been in the news for weeks. Many countries expressed their outrage at the severity of the punishment, but apparently none of them had the authority to step in and remove the poor woman. Three days before her sentence was to be carried out, she disappeared from her prison cell. No one knew how she had escaped. Officials claimed the prison guards were guilty of taking a bribe to let her go. Prison guards swore they were innocent of such dirty dealings.

At any rate, she was not apprehended. The Ethiopian government had no proof of a conspiracy, so they let it go. They had bigger problems to worry about. They did, however, promise to keep an eye out for the young mother and if they ever caught her, she would then be put to death for her crime.

“She’s living in France now,” Eunice said. “She’s getting training to become a nurse and she and her child, whose father is still in Ethiopia and enjoying his freedom, are happy and healthy.”

For the first time since Billy’s death, Sara began to feel as if her life might still have a purpose. That day, sitting among so many accomplished women, she felt as if her spirit had gotten a much-needed boost.

She started asking questions, and the ladies were delighted to answer them.

“Do you have to be a Republican to get involved?” was her first question. She knew the secretary of state’s political affiliation, and she assumed that many of the women who were undoubtedly well-to-do shared their leader’s political views.

“I’ll answer that one,” Phylicia said. “Honey, we don’t care how you vote. Or if you vote at all. Politics don’t enter into it. I can’t stand Eunice’s boss.”

Some of the ladies laughed.

“Well, it’s true,” Phylicia said. “And Eunice knows it. I’ve told her often enough. My point is, we only care that you’re passionate about what we’re doing, and that is saving innocent women and children.”

“Where do I sign up?” Sara asked.

The ladies laughed good-naturedly

“You don’t sign up,” Eunice told her. “You’re branded.” And she went to Sara, turned around, lifted the right corner of her blouse and showed her the tiny, black crossed spears that had been tattooed just above her right buttock. “The spears of Aminatu.”

Sara’s tattoo was on her chest, on the top of her left breast.

Jason thought it had been done on a dare when she was in college.

Sara didn’t join Aminatu’s Daughters the day the secretary of state flashed her. She was advised to wait at least thirty days before deciding. It wasn’t a decision to be made lightly.

She didn’t change her mind, though, and a month and a half from the day Frannie introduced her to the organization she was tattooed in a ceremony in the same penthouse apartment on Amsterdam Avenue. Shortly afterward she was given an assignment.

Today, six years later, she had assisted in the liberation of more than a hundred women and children. And even though her actions could be considered outside of the law, she had no regrets.

“Hey, Jake, how’s it going, my man?”

Jason was in the produce aisle at the supermarket when he heard Erik Sutherland’s voice behind him. His eyes narrowed slightly as he considered the yellow squash in his hand. Jake was what he’d been called by his football pals. Erik had been leader of the pack back then.

In a sense, he still was. He was the richest man in town, and he was running for mayor.

“Hello, Erik,” Jason said as he turned to regard the hefty six-foot-four redhead.

“You cook?” Erik asked. “You don’t have a woman to do that for you?”

“No,” Jason said, trying to keep the annoyance out of his tone. “Unlike some men who are barely beyond the knuckle-dragging caveman stage, I know how to cook.”

Erik was thirty-six and had the beginnings of jowls and a beer gut. Jason supposed he didn’t get much exercise these days. He was too busy ridding the streets of Glen Ellen of illegal aliens. Not that Glen Ellen had a huge illegal alien problem. It had none, as far as Jason could see. But Erik was from the alarmist school of politics. There were only so many jobs for permanent residents to begin with. Imagine the panic among citizens if they thought illegal aliens were after their source of livelihood?

Erik picked up a peach and bit into it. “I heard you were dating Sara Johnson. She sure turned into a beauty, didn’t she? Talk about your late bloomer. Remember how awkward she used to be?” He still called Sara by her maiden name.

“No, I can’t say that I do,” Jason said. “If she seemed awkward to you it was probably because she was trying so hard to get out of your path. You never passed up the opportunity to make pig noises at her or call her out of her name.”

Erik licked peach juice from his lips. “Yeah, I was a real prick. I admit it. Now, God is getting me back because my own daughter is a little chubby and she’s getting picked on at school.” He finished off the peach and had the nerve to place the pit among the other peaches in the display. “To make it worse, she’s a bookworm and spends more time at that bookstore of Sara’s than she does at home. I can’t blame her. Since her mom divorced me and gave me custody I haven’t been much of a father.”

Jason found himself feeling sorry for him. He supposed even for blockheads like Erik life had a way of forcing them to readjust their way of thinking.

Okay, he gave Erik the benefit of the doubt where his daughter was concerned. But what was up with ridding Glen Ellen of illegal aliens?

“I have to ask,” he said. “Where exactly are all the illegal aliens you’re hoping to run out of town on a rail?”

Erik laughed softly. “Now, there, my friend, is a conundrum. But the fact is I don’t have to produce the illegal aliens. Simply the threat of them will make folks vote for me.”

“So you’re trying to get elected on a platform of fear,” Jason deduced.

“Hey, just because we don’t have the problem now doesn’t mean we won’t have it in the near future. The government’s plan to crack down on illegal aliens hasn’t exactly been foolproof. Once Southern California is full of ’em, they’ll be coming north.”

“You really are an idiot,” Jason said, shaking his head.

Erik laughed louder. “You need to borrow a sense of humor, my friend.”

“And you need to grow a conscience,” Jason countered.

“Oh, that’s right,” Erik said, remembering a salient point about the Bryant family. “You have Haitians working for you. Tell me, are they American citizens?”

“You know damn well they are!”

“Calm down, I only asked a question.” His blue eyes narrowed. “When did you get to be such a tight-ass? You used to be one of the guys.”

“This isn’t high school, and this town is not one of your cliques. You can’t rule everyone simply because you’re the biggest guy or the richest guy around anymore. Grow up, Erik.”

Jason had been filling his handheld basket while he’d been talking to Erik. Finished shopping now, he turned to leave. “Have a nice day.”

Erik picked up another peach and bit into it. “Yeah, you too, old buddy. And be sure to tell that pretty Sara Johnson I said hello.”

Chapter 3

If Sara had had any shame at all where Jason was concerned she might have second-guessed herself to the extent that she would have stayed home that night. But she wasn’t going to pass up the chance to see him again, even if it meant a continuation of the strained conversation they’d had earlier that day.

After work, she went home and showered, changed into a pair of loose-fit jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, put on her boots, brushed her braids, grabbed her jacket and sped over to the Hacienda in the Mustang.

The Mexican-inspired architecture of the Hacienda gave the 3000-square-foot house romantic appeal. Every time Sara drove up to it, she expected Zorro to come riding up on Tornado, his black steed, and sweep her up behind him.

No wonder she melted whenever Jason pulled her up behind him on his equally handsome black steed, Indigo. Jason had named the three-year-old Indigo because the stallion was so black it had a purple-blue sheen to its coat.

Sara knocked on the door with not a little temerity. Reckless confidence might be the death of her, but a fainthearted maiden wasn’t liable to win her true love, was she?

Jason pulled the huge door open and looked down his nose at her. He was wearing jeans and nothing else but he still managed to look haughty, as if she were the one who had to pass muster to enter his sanctum.

Sara smiled at him. “Am I welcome?” She took a step backward. “Because I can leave if you don’t want me here.”

His hand shot out and firmly grasped her by the arm.

Sara turned and went into his arms. They made a half turn as they embraced, and he shut the door. He bent his head, she raised up on her toes, and they kissed passionately.

“I told you I was easy,” he murmured when they parted. He smiled enigmatically.

Sara couldn’t detect any leftover hurt feelings in that confident gaze of his. Sometimes his mercurial nature confused her. He definitely kept her on her toes.

She wondered, for example, how much longer he would put up with her lack of communication? She asked only that his patience lasted long enough for her to get Elizabeth, her new charge, placed in a suitable situation. After that, she was going to resign from the organization.

Hopefully that shouldn’t take more than a few weeks. Eunice had assured her they were working hard to get Elizabeth placed.

She smiled brightly up at him. Their lower halves were pressed firmly together and she, being highly susceptible to his nearness, was becoming more and more aroused.

“Are we going for that ride you promised me?” she reminded him.

“Yes!” His teeth flashed in a gorgeous smile. He loved their rides together in the moonlight. “I’ll get dressed.”

He gave her a quick buss on the lips and was gone.

Sara went to the kitchen to see what that divine smell was that had been enticing her since she’d stepped foot in the house.

The house was made of very thick stone and was cool in summer and drafty in the winter months. There was Mexican tile, a different shade in each room, throughout the house. Handmade rugs offered some relief from its stark beauty. The furnishings were good solid wood and leather pieces, the colors in earth tones with splashes of bold color here and there. Simone Bryant had truly designed a beautiful family home over the years. Sara could imagine living there and putting her own stamp on it.

The kitchen, Simone’s pride and joy, obviously, was equipped with everything a chef could want—durable and reliable cookware, lots of counter space, a double oven, and a restaurant-size Sub-Zero refrigerator.