She’d just settled behind her desk when the secretary called, “Your lawyer on two, Ms. Lockhart.”
Her hands shook as she lifted the receiver. “Ruby Lockhart speaking.”
“I have great news for you. You are now legally the sole owner of Everyday Opportunities, Inc. It’s signed, sealed and in my hand as we speak.”
“I’m so pleased. I can’t tell you how glad I am that it’s over without a court fight. Send me the papers and your bill.”
“Right,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure to work with you, Ms. Lockhart.”
She dialed Luther’s number, but when she realized what she was doing, she hung up, closed her eyes, covered her face with her hands and slumped in her desk chair. She needed him. How had they ever gotten to the place where they weren’t there for each other? She shouldn’t have made love to Luther, but if she hadn’t she might never have known how a woman was supposed to feel in a man’s arms. What was wrong with him? He’d lie if he said he hadn’t enjoyed it. She flung out her arms. Oh, I don’t know whether he did or whether he was pretending as I once did with someone. Lord, if I could only stop thinking about it.
A few minutes later, she met LeRoy in the corridor carrying a brown bag from the delicatessen next door. “It’s hell out there,” he said. “Cold, windy and damp. We’re in for a heavy snow, at least according to the weather forecast.”
“When? My heating oil must be getting low, and delivery isn’t due for another four days.”
“You’ll probably be all right. The snow isn’t due for two days,” he said. “Thank God my rent includes the heating bill.”
“Don’t mention heating bills, LeRoy. That big old Tudor house of mine eats fuel the way a wolf consumes meat.”
When she reached home later that day, she wished she had left the thermostat higher, for she couldn’t feel much difference between the temperature inside her house and outside of it, but with fuel so low, she hadn’t dared leave the heat up. She put a kettle of water on to boil and went up to her bedroom to change into heavy pants and a sweater.
If Ruby worried about the inclement weather, so did Luther. He left work early and went home to Maggie.
“I’m going to drive you home now before the traffic worsens, and if it’s snowing when you wake up tomorrow morning, don’t come in.”
“But, Mr. B, I haven’t cooked anything for you. Oh, the pantry, refrigerator and freezer are full, but I haven’t had a chance to cook.”
He walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Maggie, I cooked for myself for years before you began spoiling me. Now get dressed. We have to stop at the supermarket.”
“You think we’re going to have a storm sure enough?”
“Absolutely,” he said and winked at her. “My dad’s big toe is acting up. That’s a better weather predictor than a meteorologist.”
She stared at him for a second and then laughter poured out of her. “You go ’way from here, Mr. B. I do declare.”
After taking Maggie shopping and on to her apartment, he went home, spread salt on his driveway in case of snow, heated a frozen pizza in the microwave, got a can of beer and went to the living room to watch television while he ate it. Damn! He’d become so used to having Maggie for company at dinnertime that intense loneliness enveloped him.
“This is no good,” he said aloud, and although he didn’t want to do it—or so he told himself—he dialed Ruby’s number. She didn’t answer her home phone or her cell phone, and he had to assume that she was at one of her sisters’ homes. He had no intention of calling either of them and asking for her. As it was, they seemed to have welded him to Ruby, and as much as he wanted her with him, her family wouldn’t be the instrument that brought it about.
“What the heck! I may as well get a good night’s sleep.”
He awakened the following morning to the sound of wind howling so fiercely that his bedroom window rattled. He slid out of bed. He attached his prosthesis and hobbled over to the window and released a sharp whistle. Snow barely covered the sidewalk in front of his house, the street and the tree limbs, but it fell so hard, he couldn’t see the street or the nearest house.
“Looks as if we’re in for it,” he said to himself, and reached for his robe. He raised the thermostat and called the managers of his showrooms and told them to remain closed. After eating one of Maggie’s delicious scones and washing it down with two cups of coffee, he crawled back into bed and set the alarm for ten-thirty. What was the advantage of a blizzard if you couldn’t stay in bed longer than usual?
At about nine o’clock, the ringing of the telephone beside his bed awakened him. “Biggens speaking.”
“Hi, Luther. It’s Ruby.” He bolted upright in bed.
“Are you all right?”
Her voice sounded far less confident than usual, alerting him and filling his head with all kinds of possibilities, none of which comforted him. “I…I don’t think so. I’m not getting any heat and the thermometer in my dining room registers thirty-eight. When I called the oil company, a man told me that day after tomorrow is the earliest that he could promise delivery, and then, only if it’s stopped snowing.”
He pulled the covers up to his shoulders. “Pack what you’ll need for two or three days. I’ll be over there in forty-five minutes.”
“I don’t think you can see enough to drive.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there shortly.” He slid out of bed and took special care doing it. Call it a premonition, but something told him that the day would be his, that it would either be the beginning or the end of what was most precious to him. He was sorry for the circumstances in which she found herself, but he intended to make it the answer to his prayers.
Luther need not have worried about Ruby’s reaction to his suggestion that she stay at his house during the emergency, for she had called him hoping that he would invite her to do precisely that. She peeked out of the window, saw him park, raced down the stairs with her small suitcase and flung the door open before he rang the bell.
“You’re right; it’s cold as the devil in here,” he said, picking up her bag and holding out his hand for her key.
“It’s sweet of you to do this, Luther. Things haven’t been too good between us lately, but…I knew you’d help me if you could.”
He didn’t look at her when he said, “My pleasure, Ruby. I’ll always be here for you. You know that.” He locked her door and put the key in his pocket.
Luther’s silence as he drove to his home almost unnerved her, but she pressed her lips firmly together and didn’t comment on it. Instead, she focused on the sound of the grainy snow striking the windshield, the crunching of snow beneath his tires and the poor visibility. She told herself that Luther had to concentrate on driving, and that they might have three days in which to talk.
At last, he drove up to his house, into the garage, stopped and cut the motor. But instead of getting out of the car, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Two or three minutes passed, and she could stand it no longer.
“Are you sorry you brought me here, Luther?”
“Definitely not. Why? Are you sorry you came?”
She hadn’t expected that question. “No. But you’ve been so quiet I thought maybe—”
He interrupted her. “Don’t even think it. Let’s go in,” he said. He reached in the backseat for her suitcase, got out and went around to her door. “I hope you don’t mind my taking you through the kitchen.”
She hadn’t been in his kitchen, so she stopped and looked around. “This is a supermodern kitchen, Luther, and…my goodness, you’re neat. I always thought bachelors were messy.”
“Some of them may be. Come on, I’ll show you to your room, and I want you to feel at home and to behave as if you are home.”
“Is it the same room I had before?” she asked him, and when his eyebrows shot up, she realized that she had surprised him. Feeling suddenly wicked, she said, “Did you think I forgot I spent the better part of a night here? I’d re
member that if I woke up after twenty years in a coma.” Having dropped that bomb, she walked past him without looking at him, climbed the stairs, turned to her left and went directly to the guest room that she had used briefly on that momentous night.
When she didn’t hear footsteps behind her, she strode back to the landing and looked down at him. He stood like a statue, staring up at her with his knuckles pressed against his hip bones.
“I’m sorry,” she said, enjoying the fact that she’d discombobulated him. “Had you planned for me to sleep somewhere else?”
“Don’t overdo it, Ruby,” he growled. “I haven’t yet achieved sainthood, and you’d be wise to remember that.”
She whirled around, went back to the guest room, flopped down on the bed, kicked up her heels and flung her arms out wide. “Lord, let it snow. Please let it snow.”
A few minutes later, the sound of what she presumed was her suitcase hitting the floor outside her room startled her, and she perched on the edge of the bed, her heart pounding like the hoofs of a runaway thoroughbred.
“Did you have any breakfast?” Luther called to her.
“Not a thing,” she called back. “Come in.”
He ignored the invitation. “I’ll get you something to eat. It’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes. Your suitcase is here at the door.”
If he was planning on being big brother to her for the next few days while she slept a dozen feet from him, he had a surprise coming. “Thanks,” she called to him. “I’ll be there in a minute.” She got her suitcase, changed into jeans that were much too tight and a red cowl-neck sweater, replaced her boots with a pair of sneakers and tripped down the stairs, happier than she’d been since the night he’d taught her what it was to be a woman.
“I can set the table,” she said, “if you tell me where everything is.”
He turned the bacon, and she wanted to tell him that two people shouldn’t consume half a pound of bacon, but she didn’t. “You’re my guest, and you’re not expected to work.”
She contemplated doing nothing for three days, didn’t like the idea and said, “If I don’t have anything to do for three days, I’ll go nuts and take you with me.”
“I doubt that. The flatware’s in that drawer, plates are in the cabinet beside your head, and we can eat in the dining room or here in the kitchen.”
She set the table in the kitchen. “I believe in simplicity,” she said.
She wondered at his frown until he said, “I suppose those jeans you’re wearing represent simplicity.”
“Don’t tell me you noticed.”
He stopped scrambling eggs and stared hard at her. “In all these years, I never realized that you’ve got a wild streak. You believe in being reckless, too?”
“When I think it’ll pay off, yeah. In all these years—as you put it—I never felt free and liberated as I do now. My sisters are married, and they don’t need me for a role model. Look after those eggs before they get tough as leather.”
After censuring her with the look one gives a bad child, Luther turned his attention to the eggs. He put a platter of eggs and bacon on the table along with toast, butter, jam, and orange juice. “No instant?” she asked when he placed the coffeepot on the table.
“Instant is not coffee, and I drink coffee. I don’t like anything that isn’t real and unadulterated.” He reached for her hand and said the grace. They ate, hardly speaking until he said, “Do you play poker?”
“Who me? I don’t know the first rule. I can play black jack.”
He refilled their cups with hot coffee, took a sip and leaned back in his chair. “Every four-year-old can play black jack. Well, if you can’t play cards, I suppose we’ll have to play house.”
“House? What’s tha…?” She slapped her hand over her mouth and thanked God for her dark skin that hid the flush of heat burning her face. A grin settled around his mouth and slowly encompassed his whole face as his eyes sparkled and laughter poured out of him. She stared at him. Did he have any idea how handsome he was? He winked at her, and she could feel her eyes narrowing.
“You’re too cute for your own good,” she said, getting up from the table and taking her soiled dishes to the sink.
“Thanks. You don’t often compliment me.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“I’ll do that,” he told her, and cleared away the remains of their breakfast and turned on the dishwasher. His elbow brushed her nipple, and when she gasped, his head snapped around, and she could see the hot want in his eyes.
Something had to give, and she wondered what they’d do next. He didn’t keep her guessing. “Let’s go outside and see how the snow’s coming along. I want to feed the birds, too.”
Electricity shot like live sparks from his fingers to hers when he took her hand and led her to his glass-enclosed, heated back porch. He felt the sparks and the tension, too, she realized when he stopped and gazed down at her with an inquiring expression on his face. He opened the porch door with difficulty, owing to the snowdrift leaning against it, and put seeds in the bird feeder.
The blast of cold air sent shivers through her, and she rubbed her arms for heat. Couldn’t he see that she needed his arms around her, that she needed him to warm her and love her?
But her tongue did not betray her feelings. “You must spend a lot of time here,” she said, observing the television, radio and CD player, and the comfortable living room–like seating arrangement. She sat beside him on the big leather sofa.
“It’s my favorite part of the house. In summer, I often sleep out here, and I ate out here frequently until Maggie came to keep house for me. I told her to stay home until this emergency is over.”
He turned on the radio and tuned it to a station that offered commercial-free, easy-listening music. “Let’s talk, Ruby, and I mean open and honest with no holds barred. This may be our last chance to straighten out whatever it is that’s wrong between us. I can’t be your buddy, your pal any longer. I’m tired of the pretense, the on-again-off-again passion between us. I hate it.”
The chill that enveloped her had nothing to do with the temperature of the room. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I thought our relationship had finally gotten on the right track—well almost—and then you showed me that you didn’t want your family to know that our feelings for each other had changed, that we were lovers, that—”
“That isn’t true. You—”
“Oh yes it is. You got uptight when I called you sweetheart when Paul and Amber left your house with me. I was mad enough to shake you.”
“I know, and you didn’t kiss me, you bruised me.” She took his hand, and at the touch, frissons of heat plowed through her. He saw her reaction, and a blaze kindled in his eyes.
“I never know what to expect from you any longer,” Ruby said, still holding his hand. “It’s like I don’t know you as I once did.” She didn’t want to talk; she wanted what only he had given her. Without thinking, she moved closer to him, and the warmth of his body began to heat her blood.
His gaze, sweet and gentle, drew her even closer. “I told you that the relationship between us had changed, Ruby, and that comments and actions that once amused us, or that we formerly ignored, would have significance now, because we’re not buddies but lovers. Lovers can hurt each other as no one else can.”
She closed her eyes and rested her head against the sofa, as visions of him kissing, caressing and loving her played in her mind’s eye. Without thinking, she parted her lips and rimmed them with the tip of her tongue. At his gasp, she opened her eyes and stared up at him, caught, like a deer in headlights, with his eyes hot and stormy, passion exposed.
She’d never wanted anything as she wanted him at that moment. Unconsciously crossing and uncrossing her legs, she grabbed his arm and her fingers dug into his flesh. “Luther, I—”
She stopped short when a loud crash startled her. “My Lord! Somebody must have gotten killed.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll see what it is. Stay here.”
Damn the luck! In another second, she would have been in his arms, and he would have made her tell him why she had made love to him that night. He went to the front door, and saw the drivers of two SUVs and a US postal truck standing outside their vehicles gesticulating. None appeared to have been hurt. His conscience clear, he headed back out to the porch to deal with the business at hand.
Ruby hadn’t moved. He sat in the spot he’d just vacated and took her hand. “Nobody seems to have been injured. If that crash hadn’t occurred right then, only God knows what you and I would be doing this minute. Would you please look at me.” She turned so that he could see her face. “I’m asking you for the very last time, Ruby. Why did you make love to me?”
“I—I wanted to. I mean—something happened to me that night. You were different, not my friend, but a living, breathing and stunning man that I wanted. I’d wondered what it would be like with you, and I wanted to…well, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. Talk to me. I’ve had a lot of pain about this. Tell me.”
“Please believe me that it wasn’t the champagne.
That only gave me the courage to do what I wanted to do.”
“Okay. Why did you run away almost as soon as it was over? You can’t imagine how that hurt me.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was so ashamed of myself.”
He jerked his hand from hers. “You were ashamed of having me inside you? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No. I was ashamed of the way I acted. I mean I couldn’t control…oh, I don’t know. I was afraid of what you’d think of me.”
He grabbed her shoulders. “Are you telling me the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Look at me, woman! All this time, I thought you left either because I didn’t satisfy you or because my prosthesis disgusted you. Talk to me!”
Her eyes widened and for a second her lower lip drooped. Then she said, “Didn’t satisfy me? Until that night with you, I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. I burst into orgasm so many times that I hardly had energy enough to walk when I left you. I thought you weren’t…that I didn’t please you. I’ve nearly gone crazy wanting you ever since.”
Forbidden Temptation Page 20
