She gazed up at him with a slightly baffled expression, so unlike her useful self. “I’m… Drake, I’m overwhelmed.”
“I am, too,” he said and it was true. He glanced around him and saw that the sun shone brighter, the children—black, white, Latin, Native American and Asian—made a ring around the swings, singing and dancing, and the sky was a vivid blue without a single cloud. Beauty in front of him and all around him. It was as if he saw the world for the first time.
He took her hand. “Let’s walk over by that brook. I imagine it’s quiet over there.”
If she was dreaming, she didn’t want to awaken. Surely, this change in Drake did not occur suddenly, for she had learned that he deliberated over his every move. She didn’t believe that he would toy with her. Throughout their relation ship, he had taken great pains to let her know where he stood. Today, however, he was taking them in a new and different direction, and she couldn’t stand a disappointment. She should demand to know precisely where she stood with him, but her instinct told her that she would gain more by trusting him. At the bank of the river—known locally as Rolling Brook after an old man named Rolling, who lost touch with reality panning for gold there—he took off his beige linen jacket and spread it on the grass beneath a grove of blooming crepe-myrtle trees.
“Let’s sit here,” he said, motioning for her to sit on his jacket.
“I wouldn’t want to wrinkle it.”
“I’m going to sit on it right beside you. Have a seat.”
She did, and he sat beside her, put and arm around her and rested her head against his chest. She didn’t speak. She couldn’t. What had caused the change in him? She needed to know. But she told herself to be patient, a trait that she had never mastered. She willed her heart to slow down to its normal beat, draped her right arm across his chest and relaxed. The brook, which was high from the recent rains, rushed along, headed for its rendezvous with the Cayman Lake. Fascinated by the moving water, she stared at it until he asked her whether she was asleep.
“I’m not sure. If I am, I’d rather not wake up.”
His arm drew her closer. “Why? Are you happy?”
She sat up in order to see his eyes while they talked. “I am, but I’m afraid to be happy. I feel the way I do when I have a glass of fresh cold coconut milk. I enjoy it so much that I begin to dread the moment when I’ve drunk the last drop.”
He didn’t respond for a long while, and she knew he was measuring his words. At last he said, “Considering how things have gone with us, I’m not surprised that you feel this way. I’m happier right now, Pamela, than I remember ever being. Trust me and let yourself be happy with me.”
She kissed his neck and laid her head against his chest. “I do trust you. I’m…I’m just scared. I welcome daily challenges at work and in life in general, and I don’t fear the new. I welcome change when it is good. But…but Drake, I’ve been hurting. Come here, stay away. Possessive kisses followed by goodbye. I don’t want that anymore. It…it pains me.”
He shifted her so that she sat facing him, and she caught her breath at what she saw in his eyes. “What is John Langford to you?”
“He’s a third cousin on my father’s side. That’s all.”
“You’re more than a cousin to him. I’m certain of that.”
She didn’t want to talk about John. “Maybe, but that’s all he is, ever was or ever will be to me.”
“I want more than anything to kiss you,” he said, “but I can’t risk it here.” His lips brushed her cheek. “I knew you were Texan, but I hadn’t realized you were from this part of the state.”
She didn’t want to talk about Texas. She wanted evidence that she meant something special to him, that she was the woman he cared for above all others. Saying he was hers was as easy as pouring water from a glass. She needed more.
“You’ve given me a lot today, far more than ever,” she whispered. “But Drake, I need more, and I need you to kiss me. Right now, I need it.”
His arm tightened around her, and with his lips inches from her own, he gazed into her face with eyes that had become stormy with desire and stared until she sucked in her breath, wilting as it were from the heat of her libido. With a groan, his tongue plunged into her mouth; the fingers of his left hand gripped her thigh, and he supported her back with his right one. The air around them snapped and sizzled, crepe myrtles swayed in the hot breeze and her blouse clung to her skin, dampened with the effects of her repressed desire. Nearly out of her mind with need of him and not caring that he knew it, she grabbed the hand that gripped her thigh and placed it inside her blouse.
He broke the kiss. “Pamela. Sweetheart, please don’t tempt me. I—”
She interrupted him, pressing his hand to her breast as she did so. “Kiss me. Darling, I need it.”
His big hand, warm and strong, lifted her breast from the confines of her bra, and his hot breath anointed it seconds before his warm mouth closed over her nipple, and he began to suck it.
“Oh, my Lord,” she moaned. He nipped the tiny bud and closed her blouse.
“I didn’t want this to happen now,” he said, “because I knew I’d be half-mad with desire for you. I want to make love with you right now, more that I want to breathe.”
She traced the side of his face with her fingers. “If we were alone, totally alone, would you?”
His gaze, intense and electrifying, like the sun going down, held her captive. Then he said, “If we were totally alone in a private place, I’d be inside of you right now.”
It was what she needed to hear. She knew that if he felt that way, his attitude toward their relationship had truly changed. She sat up to adjust her bra and button her blouse, and saw a squirrel gazing at them.
“I feel as if I could eat an entire pig. Let’s go back to the picnic area.”
His wholehearted laughter surprised her, and she turned to face him fully, for he was most handsome when he laughed that way. “I wonder how hungry you’d be if we’d gone all the way,” he said and pulled her to her feet. “I just realized I’m starved.”
“Should I ask you the question that you just asked me?”
He took her hand and headed them toward the picnic area. “I don’t mind telling you I’d be starved to death and greatly in need of energy replenishment.”
“I know you were born in Texas, but where?” he asked her later as they sat on the bench in the shade of the tent eating barbecued shrimp, biscuits and coleslaw.
“I was born about five miles from here on the outskirts of Waverly, and my parents still live in the house in which I was born.”
Both of his eyebrows shot up. “Really? Then you’re staying with your parents while you’re here?”
She nodded. “My father would explode if I stayed anywhere else. I don’t get home often. When I do, I humor my parents and spend all of my time with them.”
She wondered at the frown on his face until he asked, “Are they here at the picnic?”
“They always come, but my mother had stomach cramps this morning from the cucumbers she ate last night and which she knows she’s allergic to. My father wouldn’t consider leaving her for a second, not even if all that ailed her was a splinter in her finger.”
He sipped the lemonade as he seemed to ponder her words, but she’d grown used to his way of thinking through a situation or idea before commenting on it. “I gather they’re very close. How long have they been married?”
“Thirty-three years, and they’re still lovers. Sometimes the fire between them is so intense that I have to look the other way. Drake, they’ve had a difficult time with friends, neighbors and especially with my father’s family. They are white and they have never accepted my mother.” She continued in spite of his gasp. “My maternal grandparents objected to my mother seeing my father. But when Daddy went to my grandfather and told him he wanted to marry my mother and that he’d take care of her for as long as he lived, my mother’s parents accepted him. Now they love him as if he were their own son.”
“Your father’s family hasn’t relented at all?”
Her right shoulder lifted carelessly in an easy shrug. “I’m an only child, as is my father, so I’m their only grandchild. My father always took me to see them, and they care about me, but they don’t accept my mother. Maybe it’s because she’s so dark, or maybe they’re just stubborn. I was around twelve years old when I heard my grandfather Karl tell my father that he would have been rich by then if he hadn’t married a black woman. Daddy says their attitude doesn’t hurt him any longer because they’re old now, alone and suffering from their own bitterness, when they could have had a loving, attentive daughter-in-law."
“So they accept you, but not your mother. That’s weird.”
“Not really. I’m part of them.”
“I want to escort you to the ball tonight. May I call for you at your parents’ home?”
“Of course. Do you have anything I can write on?” He gave her one of his business cards, and she wrote her parents’ address and phone number on it.
“Thanks. What kind of work does your father do?”
“He’s a computer scientist, and he designs specially coded programs. He’s well-known in his professional circles. My mother teaches math at the community college.”
He sucked in his breath as he remembered the black hole in his life. “My mother was a gadabout, and I could wake up any morning and she wouldn’t be there. She’d be gone for weeks, and we wouldn’t know where she was. Henry’s wife was the only person who ever sang me a lullaby when I was little. When my mother finally came home to stay after my father died, it was too late as far as I was concerned. I didn’t give a damn what she did.”
Shocked at what he’d revealed, she put her plate on the table, swallowed her food and cleared her throat. Then, she put an arm around his waist, leaned close and sang Brahms’s “Lullaby” in soft gentle tones. He turned so that he could see her face as she sang, but she couldn’t read his facial expression and didn’t try.
She finished singing, and with his hands gripping hers and in a voice that shook, he told her, “That’s the most precious gift I’ve ever received. I won’t try to thank you. Just know I won’t forget it.”
They finished eating and walked through the crowd holding hands and greeting the people that she knew, some relatives and some who were old friends.
“Where’d you find him?” asked Bridget, a woman about Pamela’s age whose facial expression read like a sign that said Man Hungry.
“I don’t quite remember your name,” she said to the woman, knowing that it was a put-down. But she had become sick of women gushing over Drake, and the fact that he disliked it didn’t make her feel better.
To her amazement, Drake’s face lit up with an engaging smile and lights danced in his dark, sleepy eyes. “She didn’t find me,” he said. “I found her, and I consider that day a blessed one.”
Crestfallen, the woman looked first at Drake and then at Pamela. “You get outta here, girl.” She left without saying goodbye.
“Can’t much blame her,” Pamela said. “When women around here see an unmarried man who’s eligible, he’s usually on his way someplace. There isn’t much for a man to do if he doesn’t want to farm or work on a ranch. There are several large ranches in this area that are owned by African-Americans, but if a black man isn’t skilled with horses and cattle, can’t teach and isn’t in the medical field, he’s likely to be limited to whatever unskilled work he can find. Jobs are just as scarce for African-American woman. I left because I didn’t see a future for me here.”
She looked at her watch. “It’s four o’clock. I’d like to leave now. It’s getting hotter, but you stay, because the entertainment starts around five. The ball begins at ten, and if you get to my place at a quarter of ten, we’d be here in good time. If I leave now, I can get a shower and a good nap.”
“Don’t you want to see the entertainment?”
“It hasn’t changed since Magnus bought this ranch fifteen years ago.” She reached up and brushed her lips across his cheek. “What are you wearing tonight?”
“White tux, black tie. Does that suit you? How’re you getting home?”
She couldn’t help grinning. “I drove my father’s car. A tux suits me perfectly.” And to think that she had almost forgotten to bring a formal.
He walked with her to her car. “Hand me your car key,” he said, and when she gave it to him, he opened the door, ignited the engine and turned on the air conditioner. “Wait out there for a couple of minutes. It’s a furnace in this car.”
When the car had cooled, he got out and kissed her lips quickly. “See you at a quarter of ten.”
Drake left the parking area and walked around the picnic grounds looking for Magnus. He found him at the far end of the tent passing out glasses of lemonade. “I’ve been enjoying myself,” Drake told his host. “This environment makes me wonder whether some of my plans are what I really want.”
Magnus dried his hands on a towel tucked into his belt, put the towel aside and walked away from the tent with Drake. “Let’s go this way,” he said and began walking toward the stables. “This is not an idyllic life, Drake, though it certainly could be if a person wasn’t sensitive. When I walk through that gate, I’m on my ranch, my own property, and I’m sheltered from the injustice that’s all around me. In less than a mile, you can see abject poverty and hopelessness that seems to worsen with the years.
“I’ve instituted programs for children and for seniors, but that’s minuscule compared to what’s needed. Sometimes, when I look around, I feel helpless.”
He saw in the man a kindred soul, and said as much. “I don’t see it that way, Magnus. I’ve found that each time I help someone, that person is likely to help someone else. But most of all, it seems to come back to me.” He told Magnus the story of his relationship with the Jergens family. “I hired that man on faith. I’ve had only one day in which to observe his work and his attitude toward it, and I have concluded that when I hired him, an angel must have been sitting on my shoulder. He is precisely what I needed. He seems to energize my crew, to put grit in their craw. An unexpected blessing.”
“I don’t look for payback,” Magnus said. “But if that happens, I’ll be grateful. I saw that you spent a lot of time with my cousin Pamela Langford, and I remembered your cryptic response when I asked if you knew her. I haven’t seen much of her in recent years, but she and Selena have formed a pretty good friendship. They’d be much closer if they saw each other more often.” He leaned against a hitching post. “Is there something serious between you two? Looked that way to me.”
The question called for a straight answer, an honest one. With his hands in his trouser pockets, he propped his right foot on the bottom board of the white fence beside him. “When we were on that plane, I wasn’t sure where I was headed with Pamela. She’s practically told me to take a hike. Each time we separated, we thought it was over, but soon, we’d be back together. The problem was my unwillingness to settle down and start a family when I hadn’t reached my goals, hadn’t realized my dreams.
“Seeing her here this morning was a shock, and as the day progressed, it became increasingly clearer to me that I’d have to find a way to reach my goals without losing Pamela. It’s something I’m going to work toward with full fervor.”
Magnus slouched against the post and kicked at a pinecone that rolled near him with the help of a rustling breeze. “I know from experience that fervor is what it takes with a strong-minded, independent woman. They give you a hard time, man, but any other type will bore you to death.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I wish you luck.”
“Thanks. What do you think of a ranch with horses and no cows? I’m from Maryland, horse country, and I’d like to have a few horses, but I don’t really want to breed them as an investment.”
“Keeping horses is expensive. When you raise cattle, as I do, you have to have them. Pamela loves to ride, if I remember properly,
so if she’s in your life, you’d need a mare. From the way you rode Bingston yesterday, I figure you’d want a stallion.” A grin formed around his lips and spread to his eyes. “You know the rest. In no time, you’d be breeding horses.”
“I’ll deal with that if and when I have to. I’m bringing Pamela to the ball tonight, and I’ll—”
Magnus interrupted. “You’ll find the keys to my town car on a marble-top table in the foyer. Turn left from the gate, drive until you see a white brick church on the left side of the road, about four and a half miles. Turn left at the next exit and drive straight for about half a mile. You’ll see a big brown-brick Tudor house on the right side of the road. There are no houses close to it. That’s the Langford place. I assume you brought your driver’s license.”
“You bet I did. And thanks for the loan of your car. I’ll take good care of it.”
They walked back to the house, and he saw that the crowd had begun to thin. “Seems a good time to get a swim,” he said to Magnus. “I’ll see you later.”
“We have dinner at seven.”
“Thanks.”
“And if you’d like a drink, we’ll be in the den around six. See you later.”
Drake went inside and caught himself whistling as he dashed up the stairs. He slipped into his bathing trunks and then remembered that he ought to call home.
“Hello. Harrington House.”
“This is Drake, Alexis. How’s everything? I’m calling to let you know the plane landed safely.”
Her chuckle always had a ring of home and family. “Somehow, we didn’t think that plane was still in the air. How’s the picnic?”
“Out of sight! This man does everything with style and class. What’s Tara doing?”
“Practicing. She’s let me know that when she’s studying the piano, as she puts it, she does not want to be disturbed.”
“Do you think all children develop as she does? She’s six, and a few days ago, she told me I should run for president and she and Grant would vote for me.”
“She has learned so much growing up in this house with adults who love her and take time to talk with her and explain things to her. She’s had wonderful nurturing here, and I’m so grateful for it.”
Love Me or Leave Me Page 11
