Love Me or Leave Me

by Gwynne Forster

  “Now,” she begged. “Now.”

  But he meant to get her back to boiling point and teased her with his talented fingers while he sucked her nipple. He felt the fluid flow from her and lifted her hips.

  “Take me in, baby. Ah, yes. Yes,” he said, easing into her velvet canal. Almost at once he could feel the beginnings of her pulsations around him, and then the squeezing and pinching began, and he thought he would go out of his mind from the pleasure of it. He pumped furiously, using every skill he knew, for he wanted them to explode together, as one. And then it began in earnest as her thighs quivered, and he felt the rhythmic clutching over the length of his penis. He prayed to control it until… Suddenly a scream tore from her and her muscles gripped him with such power that he shouted aloud and gave her the essence of himself.

  “I love you.” The words left their lips simultaneously.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes and stared up at him. “I don’t believe you can share something this powerful with me and then walk away. I’ll never believe it. You belong to me.”

  Yes. He did. But he wasn’t ready to confess it. “Maybe it isn’t enough for you to know that I love you and that I’ve never loved another woman or even imagined it. But be patient for now. Will you?” She seemed to nod her head. He’d given himself two more months, and he had to stick with it. By then, the Josh Harrington houses would be ready for occupation, as would the Josh Harrington–Fentress Sparkman Memorial Houses in Frederick. They would also have Fisherman’s Village in Barbados, among other ventures, to their credit, and with his reputation assured, he wouldn’t have to ever worry about making a living for himself, his family and Henry—if need be.

  He wrapped his arms around her. “If you know that,” he said, in response to her declaration a minute earlier, “you’ll stop doubting and let yourself love me.” Then, he kissed her, lay his head on her shoulder and went to sleep.

  Hours later, still locked inside of her, he said, “Did you give that guy your phone number?”

  “Did I… Good heavens, no. He had the dumbest lines I’ve heard in ages. Want something to eat?”

  Lord! How he loved her! “You bet I do. I’ll fix it, if you don’t mind my doing it wearing nothing but a towel.”

  She put her hands above her head and stretched. “Whatever works for you works for me.”

  Heading for the bathroom, he hoped he didn’t have occasion to remind her of those words.

  Chapter 12

  Pamela awoke early that Monday morning in her Baltimore apartment, resolute, not buoyed in spirit; far from it, but with a new resolve. Maybe Drake needed to know that she would chart her own course and go for her own dream, if not all of it, at least that part that was within her control.

  If after what we experienced Saturday night he doesn’t commit, I’m going to look out for myself. I’m going to call an adoption agency this very day. I know he loves me. How could he cherish me as he did Saturday night if he didn’t love me? Lord knows I love him. If I lose him, it will make me ache and maybe for a long time, but it won’t kill me.

  She sat up, swung her feet off the bed and headed for the bathroom. An hour and twenty minutes later, she walked into her office, sat down and reached toward her in-box. Her phone light blinked.

  “Raynor wants to see you right away,” her secretary said.

  “Thanks.”

  “So much for getting this office straightened out today,” she said to herself. “Two days away from here, and the place is a jungle. Jeepers! And I haven’t even checked my email.” She unlocked her desk, got a notebook and headed for her boss’s office.

  “Good morning,” Raynor said. “You’re looking fit. I know you don’t like to report on local crimes, but—”

  She exhaled a long breath. “Ugh. But what?”

  He leaned forward, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “This one’s a real lulu. Assemblyman Hydell’s been caught with his fingers in the till and with his pants down, and there’s a relationship between the two, or so I suspect. What do you say?”

  She stared at her boss. Was he offering her that over Timmons, his bloodthirsty crime reporter? “Crime, scandal and sex. That it?”

  He nodded slowly, as if conveying something profound. “Right. And your assignment is to find out what the truth is.”

  She had to be sure of her ground, so she asked him, “What about Timmons?”

  “Every single one of Timmy’s stories reads alike. He’s always positive that he’s got the truth. Never allows the possibility of error in his quotes. Hydell would sue in a minute, and I can’t take that chance. You don’t take chances with facts, so I’m going with you on this one. You’ll do a great job.”

  She wouldn’t have thought that, on that particular morning, anything could have jacked up her enthusiasm and started her adrenaline flowing, but Raynor’s words did both.

  “How much time do I have?”

  “As much as you want. Two weeks?”

  She couldn’t help laughing. To him, two weeks seemed like an eternity. “I’ll do my best.”

  The minute she got back to her office, before she sat down, she picked up the phone, dialed the number for Children Who Need You and told the voice on the phone that she wanted a newborn baby girl of African descent. “With a health certificate,” she added. The voice thanked her and blessed her for her willingness to give love and a home to an abandoned child.

  “We’ll have a nice healthy baby for you,” she was told and assured that it wouldn’t take more than two or three months. “We want you to come down here to our office in a couple of days and fill out some papers.”

  Pamela marveled at the ease with which she could adopt a baby outside the country, compared to the red tape she’d have to deal with to get an American child. She had taken the first step, and although she was happy for having accomplished it, her joy was overlaid with sadness that Drake would not be the father of her child. She recalled again that once, in a flash of anger when she mentioned adopting, he’d told her that if she wanted a child so badly, he’d give her one. But she didn’t want his child under those conditions. Too bad! She wrapped herself in her professional cloak and got busy.

  “My. Hydell, here I come.”

  Shortly after noon the following Thursday, she delivered the story to Raynor. “Wow,” he said, after reading it. “You can deliver this on national news tonight, and you’ll get a fat bonus. That was quick. I’d like to know your sources.”

  “Right square in the middle of Hydell’s office, and not one but two, the second of whom suggested a third source that would corroborate what he said. It seems Hydell doesn’t respect his promises, and members of his staff neither like nor respect him. If he ever faces a trial, he’s in trouble.”

  “I’ll say. Well done, Pamela.”

  “Thanks. May I have tomorrow off?”

  “Sure. Jane or Timmons will cover for you.”

  After her broadcast that evening, she boarded a night flight to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and at nine-thirty the next morning walked into the office of Children Who Need You. “I’m here to support my application for an adoptee,” she told the secretary who gave her a form.

  “Have a seat and complete and sign this form. That’s all there is to it. We’re careful about who we give our babies to, but I’m sure you’ll be accepted. We’ll let you know when you should come for your child.”

  Her heart pounded furiously. “You mean I can start preparing for it?” she asked the woman, barely able to breathe.

  The receptionist smiled. “For her. Absolutely.”

  She left the office of Children Who Need You skating on a cloud. After the plane landed in Baltimore/Washington International Airport, her first act was to purchase a pink teddy bear in the airport commissary. During the taxi ride from the airport to her home, she became aware suddenly that her right hand pressed loving strokes on her abdomen, and she gasped aloud.

  “Knock off that fantasy right this minute, girl,” she told hers
elf. “That is definitely the wrong way to go. But if it hadn’t been for…” She stopped herself before finishing the thought. Drake was not the reason why she was adopting a child, and she acknowledged that he didn’t have any responsibility for it. She was twenty-nine the first time she saw Drake. And if, up to that time, she hadn’t responded fully and completely to a man, hadn’t found love with someone who loved her, Drake was not to blame.

  Two weeks after Pamela began adoption proceedings, Drake sat with Telford and Russ in the office of their warehouse in Eagle Park—half a mile up the road from Harrington House—discussing Russ’s plans for the shopping mall in Accra, Ghana.

  Drake scrutinized a section of the plan for the nth time. “I really like what you’ve done, brother, but I don’t know how we can go any further with this until we examine the location and I can see what I’ll have to work with. You’re probably right about the bricks, but I’d like to check out the possibility of using cement.”

  “Right,” Telford said. “We don’t know how much damage to expect during their rainy season, or whether their bricks are top quality.”

  “I was thinking the same,” Drake said.

  Telford went to the little alcove that served as a kitchen, refilled his coffee cup and drank half of it while his brothers waited for the thoughts that they knew were simmering in his mind. He sat down, rested his elbows on his thighs and folded his arms. “We have to go there, all three of us together. We can’t make these decisions sitting here and imagining whether we’re on target. We have to know what we’re doing. In fact, we need to figure out whether we want to do this project, and we can’t do that sitting here. Drake, I suggest you phone Sackefyio and get a date for about two weeks from now.”

  Russ ran his fingers thought his hair—a habit he acquired in childhood—and frowned. “Look here! I agree we ought to go, but…man, I can’t run off to Ghana and leave my wife. I’ve only been married two weeks and two days.”

  Telford snickered, but Drake cast solemn eyes toward Russ, wondering at the change in his brother. The man who charted his own course and walked alone was no more.

  “She’ll understand,” Drake said in an attempt to appease Russ.

  “Yeah, but I won’t,” Russ retorted.

  “I feel you, brother,” Telford said. “So, since this is like a return to the motherland, so to speak, let’s take our wives with us this time. After we do business, we can take them on a tour of the region. What do you say?”

  Russ’s face beamed with enthusiasm. “Velma’s adventure-some. She’d love that.”

  “Alexis would, too. I say we put it to them today.”

  Drake and his brothers had always been a team, their togetherness as tight and as seamless as if it had been sealed by a master welder. And that togetherness, he realized, had made him what he was. But now, they were not three, but two plus one, and he felt himself the odd man out. Telford and Russ were looking at him for approval.

  “Works for me,” he assured them with as much verve as he could muster.

  For the remainder of the day, an idea played around in his mind. “Why not?” he asked himself after dinner that night. “It’s not a commitment on her part or mine, and if she doesn’t like the idea, she can say no.” He went to his room, dialed Pamela’s phone number, asked her whether she’d like to go to Ghana with him and told her why.

  “If you had asked me to climb Mount Everest with you, I couldn’t be more stunned. I’d love to go, provided I can get time off from work.”

  He didn’t want to hear her say she couldn’t go, and he didn’t want to beg her, but he needed her to go with him. And needed it badly. “Promise your boss a story, and ask him to let you take along a movie camera. Telford is great with cameras, or at least he used to be.”

  “Great idea. I’m sure Raynor will buy that idea for the series he presents during Black History Month in February. I’ll get one of our cameramen to teach me how to use the camera. Drake, this is wonderful. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

  “You can’t know what your going will mean to me, sweetheart.”

  “Do so.” Her laughter, soft and seductive, sent a thrill shooting through his body. “Bye, love,” she said in barely a whisper, as if she knew she could tease his libido into action as easily as the wind bends a blade of grass.

  At dinner the following evening, he said to Telford, “Since you and Russ are taking your women when we go to Ghana, I’m taking Pamela. You guys are not going to put me in the shade.”

  “Humph. She shoulda told you no,” Henry said. “You want to have your cake and eat it, too, and she oughtna let you. A fine woman like that one deserves better.”

  “Am I going to Ghana, Mommy?” Tara asked, saving Drake the need to answer Henry.

  “No, darling. Too many mosquitoes there, and you know how you hate them. You’re going to stay with Grant and his parents.”

  Tara clapped her hands and giggled gleefully. “Oh, goody.” Then her face became solemn. “But, Mommy, what about Mr. Henry? He can’t stay here by himself.”

  “Don’t worry, darling,” Alexis said. “Mr. Henry will be fishing in Fort Lauderdale.”

  Tara’s glee seemed boundless as she laughed and danced. “And I will get some new shells.” She looked at Drake, her smile brilliant. “Uncle Drake, can you eat cake and still have it? When I eat mine, I don’t see it anymore.”

  “That’s Henry’s idea,” he replied, allowing himself a hearty chuckle. “He’ll be glad to explain it to you.”

  He had to check all of their building sites before they left for Ghana, and that would leave him little or no time for his private life. He phoned Pamela and gave her his schedule for the next two weeks. “It doesn’t suit me, baby, but at least we’ll be together all the time while we’re in Ghana. I’m looking forward to it.”

  After a rather long pause, she said, “Something tells me you guys need a second engineer. Your work isn’t done until you hand the keys to whoever’s going to occupy the property.”

  “True, but that’s the way it should be. Each of us has a job, and engineering the building of a structure is mine.”

  “I know that, and I know you’re good at it. Don’t get your dander up. Call me from wherever you happen to be. By the way, I bought two cans of spray to keep mosquitoes off. Think that’s enough?”

  “Probably, unless they think you’re as sweet as I do. Be sure and get your shots. If you’re free and don’t mind, I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  “Be more precise.”

  “I’ll try to make it Thursday, and don’t be so fresh. Remember the kind of punishments I mete out.”

  “Do I ever! Uh…I’d…uh, appreciate it if whoever’s making the hotel reservations would give me a separate room, Drake. I wouldn’t be comfortable sharing a room with you on a trip with your brothers and their wives.”

  She could cool him off just as quickly as she could warm him up. “Of course you’ll have your own room. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to suggest otherwise. Pamela, you may trust me not to compromise you.”

  “Don’t be offended. Wouldn’t you have thought it strange if I didn’t express a preference?”

  He thought for a minute. “Eventually I suppose I would have. You’re well within your rights, but I like to know that you trust me.”

  “Do you think I’d travel five or six thousand miles from home with you if I didn’t?”

  “Point taken. I’ll see you Thursday. Blow me a kiss.”

  She did. “Bye, love.”

  On the first day of October, at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport, Pamela’s feet touched African soil for the first time. She didn’t know what she expected, but being in the region of her roots and her mother’s roots didn’t give her any special sensation. Nonetheless, after passing through customs to the limousine that Sackefyio had waiting for them, she realized that she hadn’t seen a white face. “Finally, something that’s truly black-owned,” she said under her breath.

  “
Amen. I heard that,” Velma said. “And how sweet it is!”

  Drake took her hand and walked over to a tall man who wore an elegant, royal-blue agbada. “Pamela, this is Ladd Sackefyio, one of my closest friends during undergraduate years. Ladd, this is Pamela Langford.”

  “Welcome, Pamela. I’m delighted to meet you,” he said, extending his right hand and shaking hands with her. He then turned to Drake. “You have great taste. I wish you both blessings.”

  “Thank you,” Drake said, and she thought he looked a little shy. Shy for him, at least.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Ladd,” she said. “Drake speaks highly of you.”

  Ladd’s eyes twinkled. “I hope so. If I got into devilment, he was right there with me. Doris—that’s my bride—is at home waiting for us.”

  Drake then introduced his brothers and their wives to Ladd, and they got into the stretch Mercedes and headed for the Sackefyio compound. Doris Sackefyio, Ladd’s wife, met them at the gate. After greeting Drake, she turned to Pamela. “I’m so glad you came. Ladd and Drake have been close since their college days, and even at this distance, they’ve stayed in close touch. I hope you and I will be friends.”

  After accepting the woman’s welcome, numerous questions thundered in Pamela’s head. What did those people think she was to Drake? Did they consider it proper or improper for her to accompany a man to whom she wasn’t married? After stewing about it, she asked Drake those questions.

  His even white teeth showed in a devilish grin. “Sweetheart, you have four adults chaperoning you, and if my memory serves me correctly, only one is required.”

  They settled into their hotel rooms, and she was grateful for a spectacular view from her window in the M Plaza Hotel. She’d done her homework, and instead of going to sleep in order to combat her jet lag, she phoned the local television station, told the manager who she was and what she wanted, and got an offer of a translator, cameraman and chauffeured car. She thanked the station manager, but let him know that she had just arrived and needed to sleep, and that she would call him the next day. In truth, the jet lag didn’t bother her, but she thought it prudent to tell Drake about her plans and to suggest that he ask Ladd for any tips he might give her. After all, she reasoned, it was Drake’s business trip, and she didn’t want to do anything to derail it.