by Donna Hill
“You were working and I interrupted you,” he said, seeing the folder on the table.
With Connor’s unannounced arrival that set her thoughts scattering, she’d totally forgotten what she’d been doing. The excitement reignited. Her eyes lit up when she turned away from the dryer and faced him.
“You won’t believe what I found today,” she said, sounding almost giddy with happiness. She hurried over to the table. “This folder contains the early history of the founders of Dayton Village! Birth certificates, marriage license, freedom papers and the receipt for the land.”
“Whoa.” His brows rose. “Can you show me?”
“I don’t really want to disturb the contents again, but—” she grinned “—I have an even better idea. You can watch me work.”
He frowned in confusion. “What do you mean?”
She took the video camera from the table. “Let’s go in the living room.”
Olivia powered up her laptop, took the memory stick from the video camera and inserted it in the USB port. Within moments the images of her working on the folder and documents filled the screen. She and Connor sat hip to hip and Olivia had to force herself to concentrate on the images in front of her and not the fact that this man who she wanted for lunch was sitting half-naked on her couch. Did he have anything on under the towel?
Connor watched in rapt admiration of her precision and diligence. The process was slow and painstaking but she never seemed flustered. He could feel her excitement with each new discovery.
“So this is what you do, huh?”
She turned and smiled at him. “Yep. It’s what I do.”
“This is amazing,” he said in awe. “You hit the jackpot.”
She bobbed her head in agreement. “Yeah, I think so. And there’s no telling what else may be out there.” She sat back with a self-satisfied grin on her face.
“I guess that means that you’ll be around for a while,” he said offhandedly.
“There’s still so much to do.” She glanced at his profile and tried to figure out what was going on in his head. Did he want her to stay? “I need to do some interviews, examine the other structures… ”
“Sure.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “The Daytons and my own family have similar beginnings.”
“Really? How so?”
“Well, my grandfather, Clive Lawson, was born in rural Louisiana, right at the height of the Great Depression. His father, my great-grandfather Raford, and his wife, my great-grandmother Mae Jean, worked in the cane fields. My great-grandmother started cooking for the people in the surrounding area and selling her dinners. They eventually opened a small juke joint. My grandfather was sent to work in the fields when he was ten. When the owner, Mr. La Fountain, died he willed a piece of land to my grandfather. Clive was only twenty years old and a landowner. Grandpa got his brothers to work the cane fields. They built on the land, made money, married and continued to expand. The story goes that they made their real money selling hooch.” Connor chuckled. “Guess that’s why us Lawsons love our hard liquor. The main house was built right where those cane fields used to be and it’s still there. It’s where we all grew up.”
Olivia listened intently, imagining the young Lawsons working the fields and building a family and a legacy. How she envied that, the knowledge of knowing who you were, where you’d come from.
Connor was contemplative. It was the first time he’d actually shared that part of his family history. There was never anyone in his life that he wanted to have know him in that way. Not even Adrienne. Yet here he was, throwing back the veil to a woman that he’d recently met. He glanced at Olivia. But she wasn’t like anyone else. That was the problem.
Olivia slapped her thighs and jumped up from her seat. “I am being a lousy hostess. Can I get you anything? Something to drink, eat?”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Her heart thumped. “Wine.”
“Sure.”
She went to the kitchen to get glasses and the wine from the cabinet. When she turned, Connor was standing there.
“I want to apologize about earlier.”
“Nothing to apologize for.”
“Yeah, there is. I was being a real jerk.”
She drew in a breath. “Okay. I can accept that,” she said with a wry smile. “You want to tell me why you were overcome with jerkiness?”
Connor lowered his head and chuckled. “Victor Randall seemed to bring it out in me.” He looked at her. “I have no right to feel one way or the other about you and him.”
“There is no me and him.” She paused. “There was once upon a time, but it never amounted to anything.”
Connor leaned against the frame in the door and let his eyes wander all over her. “You sure about that?”
She swallowed. “Very.” She took a step toward him and stopped. “Why don’t you let me prove it to you.”
“How?”
“Take off the towel.”
His eyes flashed for an instant. “Right here?”
“Yeah,” she said on a breath of need. “Right here.”
“Pleasing a woman is what I do.” He unwrapped the towel and let it fall to the floor.
The air stuck in Olivia’s lungs. He had nothing on under that towel. She toed off her shoes, unfastened the button on her jeans, unzipped and shimmied out of them. Connor didn’t move. She tugged her T-shirt over her head and tossed it aside.
“Don’t stop now.”
Olivia licked her bottom lip, then reached behind herself to unfasten her bra. She swung the strap on her finger, then tossed the garment across the countertop, earning her a rousing applause. She giggled, turned her back to him, bent at the waist and rotated her hips before easing her panties across her hips and down her thighs.
“Woman… ” he groaned, lusting after that perfect derriere.
Olivia turned to him. Her arm demurely covered her breasts and her free hand covered the triangular patch of hair between her legs.
She catwalked toward him, pressed against him. His erection was stiff against her belly. She felt it jump and she smiled.
Connor grabbed her, clasped his hand behind her head and brought her mouth to his. His hot tongue dived into her mouth, played there before he moved to her neck, behind her ears. His hands stroked her, tugged hers away from her breasts and her sex. He slid a finger into the wet slit and she cried out. Her inner thighs trembled.
“Aaah… ” he moaned in her ear. “Almost ready for me.”
She cupped her breast in her hand and offered it up to him, and he gladly took it. Her breathing escalated. Tremors shot through her body. She needed him. Now. She was beyond ready. She took him in her palm and massaged the head of his erection, then pressed it to her wet opening.
A guttural sound rumbled in his throat. He pushed her against the wall. His eyes burned into hers. “This is what you want?”
“Yesss.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s what I want. I want you.”
As if she weighed no more than a loaf of bread he lifted her and she wrapped her legs greedily around his waist, and then there he was inside her and she nearly came with the first stroke.
Olivia buried her face in his neck and held on tight as he moved her up and down on him at will. He cupped her behind and plowed harder and faster. Her head was spinning. She was so close. Her toes curled. Her head arched backward.
Connor drew a taut nipple between his teeth and sucked. Olivia screamed and her entire body shuddered when his finger stroked her from behind, pressed, and she exploded into a million pieces.
He held her, let her climax wash over her. His was on the way. His sacs were ready to burst. He pulled out with an animalistic groan and spent himself all over her belly and down her thighs.
&n
bsp; They slid down to the floor in an exhausted heap.
Chapter 12
The fire shimmered in the electric fireplace, casting off a comfortable warmth. The rain continued to pound. Two empty wineglasses sat on the coffee table. Etta James crooned “At Last” in the background.
Olivia was wrapped in Connor’s arms with a throw from the couch covering them. Connor tenderly stroked her curls, and placed tiny kisses every so often on her forehead. What she felt right then at that moment was a closeness that she had never experienced. The lyrics to the song were hauntingly real for her. She wanted to hold on to this moment, even though she knew it was only temporary. She snuggled closer.
“Cold?” he whispered.
“No.”
He adjusted the throw over her shoulders. “What is it, then?” He ran the tip of his finger along the tiny cleft in her chin.
She released a slow breath. How much could she say, if anything at all? But if she wanted to hang on to this temporary closeness she would have to give a little.
“You’re very lucky, you know,” she began slowly.
“Lucky? How do you mean?”
“You know who you are, who your family is, where you came from… ”
He listened to the wistful quality in her voice and waited for the rest.
“I don’t have any of that. I suppose that’s what steered me into my profession, searching for beginnings.”
“You want to tell me what you mean?”
Silence hung between them and stretched. Connor figured that was all she would say, and he wouldn’t press her. Then she started to talk again.
“I have no idea who my parents are. I was… given up as a baby. Spent the first sixteen years in foster care. I did have some nice families,” she quickly added. “I stayed with Frank and Lorna Hollis the longest. All they ever told me was that my birth mother’s last name was Gray. They wanted to adopt me, but I didn’t want it.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t believe that being adopted would change anything for me. Not really. I’d been bounced around for so long. As soon as I got attached I got pulled from the home and sent somewhere else. I didn’t want to love the Hollises. I figured that even if they adopted me, at some point they would get tired, too. I couldn’t deal with that. The only thing that was constant in my life was that I lived in Atlanta for most of it, until I moved to New York.”
“I’m sorry,” Connor whispered.
“Don’t be. I’m used to it.”
“Are you really?” He adjusted his body and sat halfway up. He looked into her upturned face.
“Most of the time I don’t think about it much.” She glanced away.
“And when you do think about it?”
She paused. “Then I remember that nothing is permanent. That commitment is overrated. That love is only for the moment. And if you love too long it gets taken away.”
Connor didn’t know how to respond, how to heal what hurt her inside or if he even could. He totally understood her reluctance to commitment; he had his own, as well. What was hard for him to grasp was not having family, a real one. Sure, he might be at odds with his father and might not be as close to his siblings and cousins as he once was, but he knew that come hell or high water they were there for each other. Family was the centerpiece of what made him the man that he had become.
He tenderly kissed the top of Olivia’s head. For now all he could do was hold her and make the time that they did have together good times.
* * *
“Well, I don’t have the fixings for jambalaya, but I can make a mean roasted chicken,” Olivia announced as she came out of the bathroom freshly showered.
Connor had finished his shower and was putting on his dry clothes. “Sure. Maybe we can catch a movie or something afterward. It’s still early.” He tugged his shirt over his head.
“I’d like that. Sounds as if the rain has slowed down.” She ruffled her wet hair with the towel.
“Need some help in the kitchen? I’ve been known to be quite handy.”
Olivia laughed. “Of course. Can you cut and steam vegetables?”
He extended his arms. “I’m your man.”
She wouldn’t read anything into the words. “Come on, then.” She waved him on.
They laughed and talked about all sorts of things as they prepared dinner: music, politics, religion and the places they’d traveled. The more they talked the more they realized that they had been crossing each other’s paths for years. They had both been at Luther Vandross’s last concert at Radio City Music Hall; they loved Lela James and had been at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center when she’d performed with Kem. When Connor stayed in New York, he often frequented the Akwaaba Mansion bed-and-breakfast in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and her first apartment was right around the corner from it. They’d both attended the same lecture series featuring Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, only on different dates.
“I visited Germany about four years ago,” Connor said, before taking a sip from his glass of wine. “There is always so much talk and data on the Holocaust but very little if anything is known about the blacks who were also there and tortured and experimented on.”
“Yes! The Rhineland Bastards, they were called.”
A spark of admiration lit Connor’s eyes. “You know your stuff.”
“It’s what I do,” she said with a grin.
He lifted his glass and she did the same. “To knowing our history.”
Olivia tapped her glass against his. If only that were true.
* * *
After dinner Olivia felt a little lazy, a little cozy, and pleaded to stay in and find something to watch on TV instead. Connor agreed, with the caveat that she join him before sunrise for his morning run.
“If I blink my eyes three times and wiggle my nose will you go away?” she said, taken aback by the very idea of running before dawn.
Connor tossed his head back and laughed, then focused on her in all seriousness. “You’re going to have to do a helluva lot more than that.” He leaned forward, lifted her chin with the tip of his finger and placed a soft kiss on her lips. “Trust me. You’ll love it.”
When he looked at her like this, when he was this close, it was hard to deny him anything. She swallowed. “Fine.”
“And since I’m such a compromising kinda guy, you can pick the movie.”
* * *
The movie wound up watching them after they launched into another heady conversation. Connor told her about his very first reno job. It was a former brothel in the French Quarter and the new owners had wanted it rehabbed and turned into a tourist attraction.
Olivia giggled. “My first real job was in Atlanta. I was fresh out of college. I worked at the High Museum and I assisted the curator in collection and archiving. It was very interesting work. I stayed about two years.”
“How did you wind up at The Institute?”
“Hmm. A series of opportunities presented themselves over the years. Internships. Postgraduate work. Fellowships. I attended conferences and met a host of people in the field. I got a recommendation from a fellow attendee when an associate position opened at The Institute. I didn’t get it, but I did get a five-year research contract. It gave me some stability but I knew there was always an out.”
“That’s where you met Victor.”
“Yep. He was my boss. What a cliché, huh?”
“It happens.”
“He’s leaving The Institute in a month,” she quickly said. “He’s submitted my name to take his place and the board has pretty much approved. All I have to do is say yes.”
Connor sat up straighter. “Well, you’re going to say yes, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure why I’ve hesitated to g
ive him my answer. Well, that’s a small lie. I do know.”
Connor’s expression tightened. “Why?”
How could she put this so that it didn’t sound as trite and trifling as it had become? “One of the myriad reasons why Victor and I didn’t work is because he was my boss. It was wrong on so many levels.”
“And… ”
She pushed out a breath. “Now he feels that there can be something between us because we won’t be working together anymore.”
Connor’s jaw tightened. He pushed up from the couch and crossed the room, putting the coffee table between them. “Can there be?”
She vigorously shook her head. She looked into his eyes. “No. It’s over. Done.”
“Then, why hesitate? What string is he pulling?” The lines around Connor’s eyes tightened.
“Basically, if I say yes to him and me, it will ensure that I get the job. If I say no to a relationship, the offer will likely disappear. He didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the message. So I’d be pretty much out of a job. My contract is due to end when this project is over. If I did decline the job offer and wanted to stay at The Institute, I’m pretty sure that Victor would have a hand in not getting my contract renewed.”
Connor murmured an expletive under his breath. His expression turned ominous. He wasn’t going to go down this path. Made no sense for him to get his back up about some woman and her former lover slash boss and their happily-ever-after. “You’ll figure it out.” He turned his back to camouflage the dark turn of emotions that she would easily detect in his eyes. He refilled his glass of wine. “More wine?”
Olivia felt stung as surely as if she’d been struck. She wasn’t even sure why she’d told him, why he needed to know anything about the decisions that she had to make for her life. That was what happened when you got comfortable, trusted, let your guard down. “Sure. More wine sounds great.”
The movie ended. Dinner was over. The rain stopped. Conversation had dwindled down to awkward.
Connor stood, stretched. “I should be getting home.”
“Oh. Sure.” Olivia got up, rubbed her hands down her thighs. “I’ll, uh, walk you to the door.”
