“You seem to know him very well,” Naomi prompted. But she failed to get the reply that she wanted and rephrased the question.
“How long have you known each other?”
“Since Rufus was a freshman in college. He worked his way through school in my first restaurant, starting as a busboy, but I promoted him after a week; he must have been the youngest maître d’ in the country.” She smiled, and Naomi sensed the woman’s deep affection for Rufus. “He never gets too important to drop by and see me a couple of times a month. I’m real proud of him.”
Rufus reflected on those days when life had been hard for a struggling young orphaned boy who had a younger sister to care for; but it hadn’t been complicated. There had been no fame or notoriety to make him question every woman’s motives; no heartbreaking, loveless marriage; and no consuming interest in a woman with whom he wasn’t sure he wanted a liaison, whom he didn’t understand, and who seemed unable to trust him enough to let him know her.
What a difference an hour could make, Rufus thought, as they walked back to his car, each obviously preoccupied with personal thoughts. The psychological distance between them widened during the drive to Naomi’s apartment. He could feel her sliding away, closing her protective shield around her. He said nothing when, apparently lost in thought, she waited until he walked around the car to open the door for her. That was out of character for her.
They reached her apartment door and he spoke first. “Most of the time, I enjoy being with you a lot, Naomi.” He didn’t think it necessary to tell her that tonight hadn’t been one of those times. “You’re stimulating, compassionate, lovely, intelligent. And you’re a real woman; in fact, I’m not even sure you know how much of a female you are. I don’t know what I want out of this relationship, but I do know that I can’t stand superficial relationships, and I hate conflict. That’s what my marriage was—endless conflicts, maneuvers, and challenges. Always a jostling for advantage. Etta Mae thought only of herself, never of us. And when I stopped letting her maneuver me and demanded that she treat our marriage as a partnership, our war began in earnest. I’m too old, too weary, and too contented to go that route again. You’re holding back something, and it’s definitely not a small thing. I readily admit that you’re entitled to your privacy, so let’s…let’s give each other some space; you seem to want it, and I…well, I bow to your wish.”
He had the impression that she had carefully digested every word he’d said. Her cynical laugh held just enough of a tinkle, just enough merriment, to rattle him. He stared in a detached awe, as she raised her chin, dropped her head slightly to one side, and smoothly derided everything that had happened between them since the day they’d met.
“Rufus, you sound as if we’re ending a love affair, when there hasn’t been anything between us to end. Lighten up, honey. As my grandpa likes to say, Franklin D. Roosevelt died and to everybody’s surprise, the world kept right on turning. We can both be replaced. Next year, you won’t remember that you ever knew me. And I…” She shrugged and let it hang, blew him a kiss, and turned to open her door.
Arms of steel spun her around. “I’m surprised somebody hasn’t blunted that sharp tongue of yours. I’ve told you that I will not permit you to banish me with the wave of your hand as if I’m of no consequence. No other woman has ever tried it, not even Etta Mae, and she was a master of games and feminine shenanigans. I fire you up as no other man ever has, and I can do it at will.”
Her tantalizing face-saving smile gave him the impression that she thought she was being indulgent, something that he refused to tolerate. He was already simmering from the effect that her laughter, her flowery, sexy scent, and her beloved feminine presence had been having on him since they’d left OLC. His temper and his libido blazed in response, and he reached behind her, turned the key that she’d just inserted in the lock, pushed the door with his foot, and pulled her inside. The words she would have uttered died inside of his mouth.
She knew he intended it to be a punishing kiss, an expression of his frustration and anger, but to her it was simply his kiss, his passion, and she surrendered to it. He barely touched her and she curled into him, turning his fire into a tender ravishment that electrified her, inflamed her as he’d said he would. She had been so hungry for his touch, so starved for the feeling of protection, of the wonderful masculine strength that she always found in his arms, that she forgot about his anger. Almost simultaneously with his touch; her arms went around his strong corded neck and her lips parted for his kiss. She forgot about caution and her decision to preserve a distance between them. Driven by her need for him, she melted into him, moaning her pleasure, as he deepened the kiss and raised her passion to the level of his own. He brought a hand to her hips, and held her tight against him, but she tried to nestle even closer and stilled his dancing tongue while she feasted on it.
His shudder made her aware of his need for relief, of relief in her, but she was lost in the emotional fog that he had draped around her and was oblivious to the warning. He slipped his hand inside her coat and caressed her breast through the sweater. She knew only that she wanted, needed more of what he was giving her, and, barely conscious of her actions, she pressed his hand more firmly to her. Naked awareness possessed her and she moaned his name. Was she falling, or had the world spun off axis? Her fingers dug into his shoulders, claiming him for her anchor.
“Rufus. Oh, Rufus!” The words were barely intelligible.
“Naomi, I can’t stand any more. Take me to your bed, or send me home,” he whispered in a voice husky and thickened with desire, as he put her gently from him. She stood trembling before him, disoriented, wanting him. “Do you want me? We can’t go on like this; we’re driving each other crazy. Tell me!” His overwhelming need must have pushed him beyond thought of what making love with her might do to them both. She gazed up at him and into eyes that glistened with passion and with a tenderness, a softness that nearly took her breath away.
“Tell me,” he repeated patiently.
She shifted her eyes from his consuming gaze, wanting desperately to embrace what she saw there, knowing that she could not. “I want you,” she told him softly, swallowing the lump that thickened her throat. “I don’t remember ever having had this feeling before—what I feel with you, I mean. But I can’t, and I’m sorry I let it get out of hand. At least you proved your point.”
From his slow, deep breaths, she sensed that he was attempting to bring his passion under control. “I don’t care about points.” He shifted his stance and seemed more relaxed. “Neither of us is the winner here, Naomi.” He spoke in a voice so low that she strained to understand.
“I’m sorry, Rufus. Good night.” Dear God, make him leave. Please don’t let him see me tremble like this.
She would have expected that after such an experience, a man would leave abruptly and in anger, so she watched him warily. But he took her hand and walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, poured them each a glass of orange juice, and gently stroked her back while they sipped in silence. Apparently satisfied that she had settled down, he held her tenderly, then kissed her on her forehead and left.
After half an hour, she managed to move from the spot in which he’d left her and lock her front door. How could he be so caring and loving after she had thoughtlessly led him on? And why did he persist with his sweetness and gentleness when he knew she wasn’t what he needed? If she let herself believe in him, if she weakened and began to hope, she would be courting disaster, wouldn’t she? She wanted to trust him and what he represented, and in spite of her sense of foreboding, she began to hope. She crawled into bed, but instead of sleep, her mind was filled with the memory of his kisses, of the way he had stood with her in her kitchen, calming and stroking her. Protecting her.
“God, don’t let me need him,” she pleaded.
For Rufus, there was no sleep that night. He didn’t bot
her to go to bed, but sat in a deep lounge chair in the boys’ room and thought about his life and about Naomi. He had never been affected by a woman as he was by her; she responded to him eagerly, wholeheartedly, even joyously, and withheld nothing. He was momentarily amused by the thought that it was always he who put out the fire; she never seemed to think beyond what she was feeling. God, but she was sweet, and he wanted that sweetness for himself alone. When she was in his arms, he felt as if he could slay dragons single-handedly. He didn’t know when he had begun to need her, but he had.
By daybreak, he had decided that he was going to have her no matter the cost; beyond that, he refused even to guess. He stroked his jaw and sipped from the warm can of ginger ale that he’d gotten out of the refrigerator hours earlier. Naomi was a maze of conflicts, but he was beginning to wonder if the inconsistencies he saw in her were deep-seated. He thought not. After he’d let her provoke him with that burnt orange dress, he’d noticed something different about her, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it. Now, it came to him; Naomi had discovered feminine power that night. She didn’t discover how to use it, but she found out that she had it. He shook his head in wonder. At age twenty-nine? And in spite of her strong attraction to him, she was unusually shy of involvement. But hadn’t he told her he didn’t want any emotional attachments? And she wasn’t as he had first thought, a tunnel-vision person who focused on work and nothing else. Oh, she needed her work, all right, just as he needed his, but she found time to work hard for One Last Chance and to help others. He nodded slowly, having found a piece of the puzzle: Naomi needed to help others. That kind of woman usually wanted a nest, but Naomi swore that she didn’t. He didn’t believe her.
The following morning, Naomi received another early-morning summons from Judd. As usual, his request was urgent, but this time she sensed in his manner a deep concern. Whatever it was, she’d face it. How many more shocks could Judd give her, she wondered, dressing hurriedly. She filled a bag with the chocolate fudge brownies she’d made the previous morning and was soon on her way. Her grandfather loved chocolate and was always pleased when she made brownies for him. She walked into the sedate Tudor house and found him sitting in his study with a man he introduced as his lawyer. The situation had escalated beyond the old man’s control, she learned; the child through its mother had retained a private investigator. She knew that the adoption papers were sealed by law, but it appeared that nothing prevented the principals from obtaining information by other legal means.
She discovered that the private investigator had begun his search at the few private clinics in the area that also served as halfway houses and found that only one of those currently operating had ever had an African American client and that had taken place only two years earlier. Records of a defunct clinic showed that there had been one in the year in which Naomi’s child was born, and interviews with two former workers had identified Judd, a prominent and highly visible clergyman, as the person who had brought her there. She felt intense pleasure at the fate of the owners of that clinic, who, she learned, had been forced to close when the unusually large number of babies they’d placed in adoption had come to the notice of public officials. The old man seemed to have switched his interest to the right power play. She expressed strong disagreement.
“I didn’t create this situation,” she informed the two of them acidly, “and I’m not going to let it destroy me. If I have to pay a penalty, I’ll pay it. There are such things as decency and duty, Grandpa. At least, that’s what you’ve been preaching to me, and to anybody else who would listen, all these years.”
She watched dispassionately as he huffed and shifted in his chair, indicating that he was losing patience with her. He peered at her over his glasses. “I appreciate what you’re saying, but if you do something hasty, gal, you’ll regret it as long as you live.”
Her best bet was to switch tactics, she figured. Judd had his own system of logic. “Now, Grandpa, don’t get your dander up,” she chided the old man, “there may be a legitimate reason why they’re looking for me after all this time. Can’t you see that? And it isn’t the standing of the name Logan in the community that’s important here”—a reference to his argument when he’d bullied her into going to that clinic fourteen years earlier—“there may be a child’s well-being at stake, and that child is my flesh and blood.” She paused. “Your flesh and blood, too, Grandpa. Didn’t you stop to think of that?” She grabbed her bag and left hurriedly, unwilling to let her grandfather see her break down.
Naomi turned the key in the ignition and backed slowly out of the driveway. Nervous and scared, she contemplated her next move. She couldn’t remember ever before having had the feeling that she was all alone, on her own, as she was now. Judd Logan had made up his mind, and he had never learned how to reverse himself. It was one thing to defy him when her actions concerned only her, but this was a bigger issue, one that involved a number of people, probably far more than she knew. The bright sunshine reflecting off clean, new snow was blinding, and she lowered the visor. Behind it, she glimpsed the magazine picture of Mary McLeod Bethune that she kept there. Its framed twin hung in her studio. She had clipped the pictures while at the clinic awaiting the birth of her child, and whenever she needed inspiration, she looked at one of them.
She thought of the hurdles over which her idol had climbed. Mary Bethune was an African American, a child of slaves, an educator who had worked throughout the first half of the century to improve education standards among her people in the South. That such a woman had in 1904 founded a college that still flourished after ninety years had inspired her to help create One Last Chance. She had cofounded it to help young girls who were experiencing what she had faced. An unmarried pregnant girl would be advised sympathetically of her options and of the short- and long-term consequences of her decision. And she would receive the nurturing and support that she needed.
She glanced briefly at the picture. “I’m not facing the odds that you did, Mary, old girl,” she said aloud. She took a shortcut toward Rock Creek Parkway, oblivious to the scenic beauty created by the unusual late-autumn snow. A bullhorn called out her license plate number got her attention, and she pulled over. She accepted the ticket for speeding and drove into a filling station to try and steady her nerves. What else could happen in one morning?
She noticed a telephone booth, and without even considering what she did, she dug in her purse, found a quarter, and dialed.
“Meade.” His voice thrilled her, comforted her; he wasn’t in that filling station with her, but he was there, and that was something. She opened her mouth but couldn’t make a sound.
“Naomi?” His voice held impatience. “What is it? Why are you calling?”
“Rufus. I…I don’t know why I called. I saw this telephone booth and I…I just called you. It’s been such an awful morning. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“You aren’t bothering me.” She hadn’t even wondered how he’d known that it was she who’d called. Her one thought was that he was there and she needed his strength. The tremors in her voice had been uncontrollable, and he had heard them, she realized, heard and known that she had reached out to him in distress.
“Where are you?”
She told him.
He was silent for a while. “Why not go home and get into something warm and casual, and the boys and I will pick you up in about an hour. I promised to take them sledding in the park, and it’s best when the snow’s still fresh. Would you like that?”
“Yes. Yes. I’d love that. It would be wonderful. See you later.” He didn’t hang up, so she waited.
“Are you all right? Can you drive home?” Naomi assured him that she could. She felt better for having spoken with him, even as her common sense cautioned her that she was courting heartache. Of all the men she’d met, this was the one man who was least forgiving by nature and who would not accept the explanation th
at she would someday have to give him if she didn’t stop now. And what about him? For the first time, she considered how he might be affected if he grew to care for her, learned her secrets, and felt betrayed. I care too much, she admitted.
Rufus watched his children’s faces light up when Naomi opened the door. Their joy at seeing her and her pleasure at their excited greetings touched him, and he knew he had done the right thing in inviting her to join them.
“Where’s your sled?” Preston asked her, in a mild reprimand.
“You can ride mine, Noomie,” Sheldon declared protectively, chiding his brother.
“She can ride mine, too,” Preston was quick to add. She hugged them and got hugs in return.
When she finally looked up at Rufus, he fought to remove all but a tolerant expression from his face.
“Hi. Thanks for inviting me to go along. The children are so nice to be with.”
His raised eyebrow was his response. He disliked small talk, considering it too strong a challenge to one’s honesty. “I’m glad to see you with a bloom on your face. What happened?” He had promised himself to keep things between them impersonal, but when she’d called needing him, he hadn’t remembered it. His only thought had been to shelter her.
“I called you just after I got a ticket for speeding at eighty miles an hour on the Shirley Highway and the Washington Boulevard.” She had told him the truth, he conceded, but he wasn’t fool enough to believe she had given him the whole story.
“I don’t have to ask where you’d been. Does your grandfather upset you like that very often?” Getting a traffic ticket wasn’t what had upset her, what he wanted to know was why she’d been so distressed that she hadn’t known how fast she was driving.
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