She walked to the table with head up and shoulders back in her usual regal stride, and got her jacket.
“Where’re you going?” Pearl asked her.
“Yes,” Amber said. “Are you leaving already?”
“After all that I did yesterday and today, you’d think I’d be tired, wouldn’t you?” he heard Ruby say, and as far as he was concerned, those were the words of a sober person. What the hell! If she wanted to go home with him, he’d take her there. Ruby tripped to the bridal table, kissed Opal, patted D’marcus’s shoulder and walked back to Luther.
“I’ll take you home, Ruby,” he said, wanting to do the right thing. “If you’re afraid to stay there by yourself, I’ll sleep on the living-room sofa.”
She laid her head to one side and looked at him with half-open, seductive eyes. “Didn’t I tell you that I’m going home with you?” She reached out and took a flute of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, and before Luther could stop her, she emptied the glass down her throat. “Delicious. Absolutely delicious,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She didn’t seem to need steadying, but, nonetheless, he walked out of the room with his arm around her. At the cloak room, he collected their coats, helped her into hers and took his time getting into his gray chesterfield. He was stalling for time while he did some thinking, but she locked arms with him, reached up and kissed his cheek and urged him to the door. If he lived to be a thousand, he’d never forget this night.
He loved her and he desperately wanted her, but did he dare make a move? What if he misread her, took the wrong step and ruined the most important friendship of his life?
“All right,” he said to her when they got into her car with him at the wheel, “you said you want to go to my house, so I’m taking you there. But when you decide you want to leave, you only have to tell me.”
“I know that, Luther,” she said. “I’ve trusted you all my life. Sometimes I think you’re closer to me than my sisters are.”
For some reason, he didn’t want to hear that. He wanted some assurance that, when she got to his house, she’d sprawl out on the sofa and go to sleep or, at best, she’d go to the guest room and stay there. He parked in front of his house, walked up the stone path to his front door and inserted his key. He opened the door, and she strolled in.
“Gosh, what a beautiful place,” she said as she dropped herself on the sofa, crossed her knees and began swinging a shapely leg whose slope he knew so well that he could draw it from memory. “You wouldn’t have any champagne, would you?” she asked him. “I’ve decided that I like it. Imagine living twenty-nine years and not knowing how good champagne is.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any.”
“Then could we have a glass of wine? After all, this is the first time I’ve been here since you bought this place. I like it.”
“Since you’re tired, perhaps you’d like to turn in? I’ll show you the guest room.”
“What about the wine? Don’t you plan to be hospitable?”
“Look, sweetheart, it’s almost midnight.”
She didn’t move. “I’ve been up this late before. Lots of times, in fact.”
He took a deep breath, admitted defeat and went to his kitchen for the wine. When he returned to the living room with two glasses of white wine, she had removed her coat and the jacket to her dress, exposing her beautiful brown shoulders and just enough cleavage to excite him.
He put the glasses on the coffee table. Damned if he was going to let her make a joke of him. “As soon as we drink this, I’m taking you upstairs.”
He must have appeared foolish with his mouth agape as she picked up the glass, drank the wine, put the glass back on the table and said, “Okay. I’m ready.”
She walked up the stairs ahead of him, and he could have told her to save the rear action; he’d been looking at it for years, and he knew it well enough to write a sonnet about it.
“To your left,” he said, doing nothing to squelch the annoyance that crept into his voice. How was he supposed to deal with her? He didn’t know this side of her, wouldn’t have dreamed she had it, and seeing it made her even more enticing. “Not in there,” he said as she strode toward an open door. “That’s my room.”
Without so much as a pause, she turned and entered his room.
“I said this is my room,” he repeated. “You’re sleeping across the hall.”
“Okay,” she said. “Where across the hall?”
He directed her to the guest room, and when she walked in, he stepped out, closed the door and slumped against it. “Thank God, I can breathe.” Once inside his own room he removed his jacket, tie and shirt and sat on the edge of the bed to remove his shoes. Then he heard her knock. Now what? With a bare chest, but still wearing trousers, he got up, opened the door and gazed down at her.
He gulped. “What is it, Ruby?” The voice he heard must surely belonged to someone other than him; he’d never squeaked.
“Would you…uh…unzip my dress, please?” she asked him, managing to appear fragile and helpless. Oh, hell! Maybe it just seemed that way to him.
“Unzip your…Who usually unzips it?”
“Nobody. This is the first time I’ve worn it.”
Instead of turning her back, she stepped closer, and he thought his knees had turned to rubber. “Please,” she said.
“Turn around,” he said gruffly. His fingers shook as he attempted to grasp the zipper, and he fumbled uncontrollably. Finally he managed to hold it, closed his eyes and pulled. He didn’t hear the dress drop to the floor, and shock reverberated through his body when he realized that she had handed it to him. He opened his eyes and stared at the voluptuous beauty before him.
“My God,” he uttered with a groan. He pulled her into his arms, let his hands roam over her breasts, arms, waist and buttocks until she reached up, clasped his face between her palms and parted her lips beneath his. He lost himself in her arms.
Ruby awakened and sat up suddenly, alarmed at the weight of a hand on her bare thigh. It didn’t make sense. And why would a sledgehammer be pounding the top of her head? She looked to her left and gasped. Good Lord, that was Luther. What was…? It came back to her with blinding accuracy. At that moment he awakened fully and propped himself up on his left elbow.
“What’s wrong? Can’t you sleep?” He reached out to put his arm around her, but she slid farther from him.
“Wh-what have I done?”
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry or that you didn’t know what you were doing,” he said. “I’m having none of that.”
She slid off the bed. “I’m sorry, and I apologize for…for…I don’t know what came over me. Would you please close your eyes?”
“Why?” he said in an odd voice that didn’t sound much like Luther’s comforting baritone.
“Just please close your eyes. I want to dress.” She got into her clothes as quickly as possible. “I’m going home. Do you know where my car is?”
He sat all the way up. “In front of the house. Are you telling me you don’t remember me driving your car here?”
“Luther, please forgive me for any pain or inconvenience I’ve caused you.” He started to get out of bed. “No, please don’t. I don’t want you to get up. I can find my way out. I…uh…thanks for everything.” She wasn’t sure why she was thanking him, but she hoped she would upon reflection.
She found her car keys on the table beside the living-room sofa, next to her coat. When she got into her car and put the key into the ignition, she glanced up at the house and saw Luther standing at the window.
“Lord, I must have been out of my mind to make love with Luther. He’s like a brother, and…what can he possibly think of me? She rubbed her forehead in an attempt to ease the pain. “That’s the last champagne I’m ever drinking. No. That’s the last alcohol. From now on, I’m going to stay as sober as a judge.”
She drove home, and after she walked in the door, her first thought was of the lonely e
choes of her steps as she headed upstairs. The flashing red light on the phone beside her bed told her that she had messages. No doubt from Pearl and Amber. Tomorrow would be time enough to deal with them.
“What do they think?” she said aloud. “And Lord, what was I thinking? I had no business going to Luther’s house that time of night. I must have been out of my mind.” She showered, put on a nightgown and prepared to get a few hours sleep. She hadn’t been in bed five minutes when the memory of the moments in Luther’s arms came back to her as clear as a bright summer morning.
The man sent her through the stratosphere. For the first time in her life, she had exploded in orgasm after orgasm. And oh, how he had loved her. He’d worshipped every inch of her, kissed her from forehead to feet, and when he finally got inside her…the earth had moved, and it wouldn’t stop. She sat up in the bed and let out a sharp whistle. Then she blinked rapidly; she hadn’t known that she could whistle. She wondered what he’d thought of her wildness, her completely uninhibited behavior. If only she didn’t have to see him again. Well, he would learn that she didn’t plan to chase him. Never!
Luther stood at the window of his bedroom and watched as Ruby pulled away from the curb. What had he done to himself? An ache settled inside of him, more painful than any he’d ever experienced in the years of longing for Ruby. He’d known all along that, if he got a taste of her, he’d need her more than ever, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. She had stood before him, almost nude, with her lips parted and that look of expectancy, that invitation to madness on her face. He couldn’t stand it. Her gaze had roamed his face and settled on his lips, and he’d pulled her body to his and plunged his tongue into her waiting mouth.
He turned, limped back to the bed—his limp was always most prominent when he was unhappy—and sat down on the edge of it. What a woman she was! She had come to him like a nail to a magnet, responding to his every touch, every kiss. And oh, man, when he’d finally got inside her, she’d gone wild, matching him stroke for stroke and bump for bump, exploding in multiple orgasms that he could feel, gripping his penis until he thought he’d lose his mind. She suited him as no other woman had.
He fell over on the bed, but sat up quickly when the musty odor of their lovemaking aroused him. “What do I do now?” he asked aloud. “She couldn’t get away fast enough. This prosthesis turned her off, and she was in such a hurry to leave that she didn’t even take the pains to hide that from me.” He knew he wouldn’t sleep, so he showered, changed the bedding to remove that reminder, went to his den and turned on the television. On the coffee table sat the two glasses he had placed there earlier, hers empty and his untouched.
“It’s a lesson I won’t forget,” he said. “Neither Ruby nor any other woman who’s likely to interest me will settle for a man with one leg. I might as well accept that and get on with my life.” He went into the kitchen to make coffee, turned on the tap and stopped with his hand suspended in the air. “Maybe it wasn’t my leg. Maybe I was mistaken. I thought I gave her all that a woman could ever want, but maybe I was so carried away with what was happening to me that I got it wrong. Yeah, that’s it. My prosthesis doesn’t look that bad. Oh, I don’t know. I’ll learn to live without…Oh, hell!”
In his semidark living room, Luther sat in the early-morning quiet, thinking of his life, of the woman he loved and had possessed but couldn’t have, of the family he wanted so badly. He had to fight back the threatening depression. He couldn’t let it sink him. And why should he? His mind brought back to him the story of Derek LaChapelle, who had won eight varsity letters at Northbridge High in Northbridge, Massachusetts, while playing with a prosthetic left leg. Derek had lived with it from childhood, Luther said to himself. At least he’d grown up with both legs, and nobody who didn’t know would guess he had a prosthesis.
He punched the sofa pillow and said to himself, “Heck, I’m going back to bed.”
Several afternoons later, while sorting out a problem in her office, Ruby answered a telephone call from Pearl.
“Paige and I are going to paint our bathroom and kitchen,” her sister said. “This yellow on the walls now was Opal’s suggestion. She loves yellow, but I’ve gotten to the place where I can hardly stand it. D’marcus will see so much yellow in his place that he’ll think he’s got jaundice. Say, why don’t you come over and help us?”
“Okay. I can leave here around five-thirty, but I’ll have to run home and change.”
“Good. Paige bought some frozen quiches, and we can make a salad. See you later.”
Ruby hadn’t been in the apartment Pearl shared with Paige more than half an hour when Luther walked in with containers of paint, two rollers and some paintbrushes. She stared at her sister. “Why didn’t you tell me he’d be here?”
Her face the picture of innocence, Pearl merely shrugged. “He who? You can’t be talking about Luther. Anything wrong with you two?”
“Of course not,” Ruby said, so quickly that Paige’s eyebrows shot up. “I mean, what could possibly be wrong with Luther and me?”
“Nothing,” Paige said. “The two of you left Opal’s reception when it was still going strong, and my tongue almost dropped out. Arm in arm is what I saw with my own two eyes.”
“You’re imagining things,” Ruby said.
“Maybe she was, but I wasn’t,” Pearl said. “I also didn’t imagine all that champagne you drank. I know you were happy for Opal, but you didn’t have to drown yourself in it.”
“Now, look here. I—Oh, hello, Luther.”
Pearl and Paige stared at Ruby. “Did you two have a fight?” Pearl asked without looking directly at either of them.
“If we did, I don’t remember it,” Luther said, his gaze piercing Ruby with an unmistakable and unspoken accusation. “Why do you ask?”
“’Cause you’re acting like you just met,” Paige said.
“Where do you want me to put this stuff?” Luther asked Pearl. “If I’d known you planned to paint this evening, I’d have worn something appropriate. If you can hold off till Saturday, I could do most of it myself.”
He went to the refrigerator, opened it and poured a glass of orange juice. “I love orange juice,” he said. “If I thought I could tolerate the local politics, I’d move to Florida.”
“Thank God you can’t tolerate them,” Pearl said. “I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
“You’d manage,” he said. Suddenly, Ruby realized that both Pearl and Paige were staring at her. Wasn’t she the Lockhart who was closest to Luther? Yet she hadn’t reacted to his suggestion that he preferred Florida to Detroit. Her second slipup. The first was not hugging him when he walked in.
Luther seemed preoccupied and in a hurry. “I’ll just set this stuff in the pantry, Pearl. If you need me to help you with it, give me a ring.”
“You going?” Pearl asked him, obviously astonished.
“Yeah. Call me if you need me.”
“Something’s gone wrong,” Pearl said to Ruby after Luther left. “You two are always like two peas in a pod. Did he give you a hard time about drinking all that champagne and playing up to him at Opal’s reception?”
“I didn’t play up to him,” Ruby said.
Paige rolled her eyes. “Girl, if you think you didn’t, then you really did have too much to drink.”
“Right,” Pearl said. “And if you don’t ever get kissed again, he sure laid one on you when you led him out to that little anteroom. Darned if I would have thought he had it in him.”
A frown distorted Ruby’s face. “I don’t believe a word of that, and if you two don’t stop putting me on, I’m going home.”
“My advice to you is lay off the drinks,” Paige said. “If you don’t remember that, you don’t know what you did after you left there.”
“Your imagination is getting out of hand, Pearl,” Ruby said, wondering why she hadn’t stayed home. She didn’t even like quiche. “Get off my case, or I’m leaving.”
“I haven’t sa
id a thing,” Paige said. “It didn’t used to be so easy to yank your chain, Ruby.”
“Leave her alone,” Pearl said. “When I wake up tomorrow, I don’t want to see anything yellow. Let’s get started.”
Ruby wrapped her hair in a hand towel, grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, a roller and a can of paint, and went to the bathroom to begin painting. Luther had hardly acknowledged her presence. Would a man be so cool if he thought you were good in bed? She doubted it. And especially not Luther who, for almost as long as she could remember, had encouraged her in everything she did. Maybe she hadn’t satisfied him. She couldn’t remember how he’d reacted in the end. She only knew that he’d made love to her as if she were the queen of his heart, and she had seemed to float on a cloud, and then go higher and higher until she exploded in relief.
A tear fell on her hand. How could I do that? I’m so ashamed. He doesn’t want to be around me. I drank so much champagne I don’t know what I did to…Why did Luther make love to me?
“What about Wade?” Ruby heard Paige ask her sister, interrupting Ruby’s thoughts. “Maybe he won’t like the gray you’re putting in the bathroom.”
“You can’t get more conservative than gray,” Pearl said, “and you know how conservative Wade is, bless his heart. Gray walls, silver shower curtain, silver frames on the posters, gray carpet and gray and green paisley towels. That’ll be cool, right?”
“Works for me,” Paige said. “By the way, let’s see if we can get Ruby into something other than black and navy blue for your wedding reception.”
“You have to admit that the royal blue she had on on Saturday night was an improvement. I’m going shopping with her tomorrow. I’ll find her something to wear.”
“We’ve almost finished here,” Paige said. “Let’s put the quiches in the microwave, and you start on the salad.”
“Maybe we should call Luther and ask him if he wants to have supper with us. We certainly have plenty.”
Forbidden Temptation Page 2
