Irreconcilable Differences

For artist and free spirit Naomi Logan, sexy radio call-in host Rufus Meade is the wrong man at the wrong time. His conservative views drive her crazy—especially his theories about working women. But after telling him what she thinks—on the air—the last thing she expects is to see him standing on her doorstep…handsome, outspoken and sexier than any man has a right to be.

Irresistible Desires

It seems that opposites not only attract, they ignite! His kisses leave her breathless. And she’s awakened feelings in him that he’s never felt before. But a failed marriage and the responsibility of raising two young sons alone make Rufus wary of getting too close. Then Naomi uncovers a shocking secret from her own past…a secret that could drive Rufus even further away.

Will their romance lead to heartbreak or happiness for two very different people who are exactly the same…in their desire for love?

Sealed With a Kiss
Gwynne Forster

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoy this story of Naomi Logan and one of my favorite heroes, Rufus Meade. If you like reading about a sexy, strong, successful, loyal and faithful man who loves his woman and his family, then you’ll adore Rufus. Not only is this a romance in which opposites attract—and do they ever—it is also about having a loving relationship and being a single parent.

As in Sealed With A Kiss, I try to make every story I write upbeat and humorous, yet I always touch upon serious issues that couples encounter in finding true love. I hope you enjoy this Arabesque reissue, as well as the upcoming reissue of Against All Odds and a holiday collection that includes one of my short stories, “Christopher’s Gifts.”

I receive letters every day about books that I’ve written over the years, but none of my romances seem to be as popular as the Harrington series. The series includes Once In A Lifetime, After The Loving, Love Me or Leave Me, Love Me Tonight, and A Compromising Affair.

I enjoy receiving mail, so please email me at GwynneF@aol.com, or write me at P.O. Box 45, New York, NY 10044. If you want a reply, please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. Visit my webpage, www.gwynneforster.com, and follow me on Facebook (Gwynne Forster’s Page) and Twitter at http://twitter.com/UNOFF. For more information, please contact my agent, Pattie Steel-Perkins, Steel-Perkins Literary Agency at MYAGENTSPLA@aol.com.

Sincerely yours,

Gwynne Forster

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My sincere thanks to Monica Harris, the former editor of Arabesque, who read the first three chapters of this story, asked me for the rest and three weeks later offered me a two-book contract that started me on my career as an author. I am grateful to my husband for his gracious acceptance of the time he spends alone while I’m focused on fiction writing; for the wonderful brochures he designs for each of my books; and for the many other ways in which he assists and promotes my work. I also thank my beloved stepson, who takes such pride in my work as a writer, solves my computer problems and encourages me in every way that he can.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

She burrowed deeper into her pillow, hoping to silence the persistent ringing in her ear. Finally, she gave up trying to sleep and reached for the phone.

“It’s six-thirty in the morning. Would whoever you are please go back to sleep?”

“Gal, I want you to come over here right away. There’s something I ought to tell you.” Naomi sighed and sat up in bed. The Reverend Judd Logan’s commands did not perturb Naomi. She had dealt with her paternal grandfather’s whims and orders since she was seven years old, when he became her guardian and she went to live with him. She tumbled out of bed, her eyes still heavy with sleep, and groped for the bathroom. She hadn’t asked him whether it was urgent: of course it was. To him, everything was urgent. And you never knew what to expect when you received his summons, but you could be certain that you were supposed to treat it as if it came from a court of law. She smiled despite herself. She was twenty-nine years old, but she was still a child as far as he was concerned. However, because she loved him, she didn’t have trouble with that. After all, there was nearly a seventy-year difference in their ages. Thoughts of his age gave her a moment of anxiety; his call really could be urgent. She dressed hurriedly, remembering to take a light jacket. Early mornings in October were sometimes chilly.

The drive from her condominium in Bethesda, Maryland, across Washington to Alexandria, Virginia, were her grandfather lived, took half an hour even at that time of morning. She parked her gray Taurus in front of her grandfather’s imposing Tudor-style home and rang the doorbell before letting herself in. Judd Logan didn’t like surprises. If you handed him one, he lectured you for an hour.

She entered the foyer dragging her feet, wondering at her sudden feeling of apprehension. The spacious vestibule had been her favorite childhood haunt, because her grandfather had put a console piano there for her and always placed little gifts and surprises on it. She would look up from her practice and notice him listening raptly, though he never told her that he enjoyed her playing. The piano remained, but it held no attraction; her childhood had ended abruptly when she was sixteen.

She found him in his study, writing his memoirs, and walked over to hug him, but he dusted her off with a gruff “Not now, gal, wait until I finish this sentence.” How typical of him to shun affection, she thought; not once in the nearly twenty-two years since she had gone to live with him had he ever made a gesture toward her that she could confuse with true emotional warmth. She knew that he locked his feelings inside, but she wished he would learn a little something about affection before he left this earth. At times, she’d give anything for a hug from him—or from just about anybody. For some odd reason, this was one of those times.

With a sigh, she sat down, perusing the snow-white curly hair that framed his dark, barely lined face and the piercing hazel-brown eyes that seemed to reflect a knowledge of all the ages gone by.

“What’s this about, Grandpa? You seemed a little agitated.”

He turned his writing pad upside down, drew a deep breath, and plunged in without preliminaries. “I’ve had two letters from them and yesterday I finally got a phone call. It’s about the baby.”

She jerked forward. “The baby? What baby? Who called you?”

The old man looked at her, and a sense of dread invaded her as she saw his pity and realized it was for her. “Yours, gal. I tried back then to spare you this. I thought that since the adoption papers were sealed by law, no one would ever know. But they found me, and that means they can find you, too. The adoptive mother says that the child wants to find its birth mother.” She saw him wince and knew that the lifelessness that she felt was mirrored in her face.

“Grandpa, I’ve lived as a single woman with no children, and I’ve worked to help young girls avoid experiencing what I went through. I’m a role model. How can I explain this?” She pushed back the temptation to scream. “I knew I shouldn’t have given in to their pressure, their browbeating. The counselor at the clinic made me feel that if I didn’t give the baby up for adoption, it wouldn’t have a chance at a normal, happy life. They said a child born to a teenager starts life with two strikes against it. I was made to feel selfish and incompetent when I held out against them. But they finally convinced me, and I gave in. It didn’t help that I was depressed, and Chuck didn’t answer my letters. Grandpa, I’ve been sorry every day since I signed that paper. They didn’t even let me see the baby, said it was best to avoid any bonding. I wish you hadn’t let me do it.”

He stood and braced his back with both hands. “No point in going over that now, gal; we’ve got to deal with this last letter. Take my advice and let well enough alone. Don’t turn your life upside down; you’ll regret it.”

Naomi looked off into space, reliving those days when all that she loved had disintegrated around her. She spoke softly, forcing words from her mouth. “I’ve spent the last thirteen years trying to pretend that it never happened, but you know, Grandpa, it has still influenced every move and colored every decision that I’ve made.”

“I know, Naomi gal. But where would you be now if you had kept that child and been disgraced?” She looked around them indulgently at the replicas of bygone eras. Judd’s 1925 degree from the Yale University School of Divinity, framed in gold leaf, hung on the wall. Doilies that her grandmother had crocheted more than sixty years earlier rested on the backs of overstuffed velvet chairs. And on the floor lay the Persian carpet that the old man’s congregation had given him on his fortieth birthday. She smiled in sympathetic understanding.

“Grandpa, out-of-wedlock motherhood is not the burden for a woman that it was in your day. I tried to tell you that.”

He shook his snow-white head. “They wanted to reach the child’s biological father, too, but, well…”

“Yes.” She interrupted him gently. “I remember believing that Chuck had deserted me, and he’d drowned surfing off Honolulu. I didn’t know. I’ll never understand that, either, you know; he was a champion swimmer. I’ve wondered if he was as unhappy as I was and if it made him careless.”

“I’d feel better about this whole thing, gal, if you’d just find yourself a nice young man and get married. You ought to be married; I won’t live forever.”

She stared at him, nearly laughing. Wasn’t it typical of him to bring that up? He could weave it into a technical discussion of the pyramids of Egypt. She broke off her incredulous glare; he didn’t accept reprimands, either spoken or silent. “Get married? I’ve stayed away from men. Who would accept my having a baby, giving it up for adoption, and never bothering to tell its father? What man do you think is going to accept all that? Anyway, I’m happy just as I am, and I have no intention of offering myself to anybody for approval.”

The old man straightened up and ran a hand across his still remarkably handsome face, now nearly black from age. “A man who loves you will understand and accept it, Naomi. One who loves you, gal,” he said softly. The sentiment seemed too much for him, and he reverted to type. “You have to watch yourself. You’re moving up in that school board and working with that foundation for girls. You’re out to change the world, and you don’t need this on your neck.” She opened her mouth to speak and thought better of it. Judd had managed things for her since she was a child; she was a woman now.

“You let me handle this thing, gal, it’s best you not get involved.” She didn’t care if he mistook her silence for compliance. She had learned long ago not to argue, but she would do whatever she wanted to.

It seemed to her that the drive back to her studio on upper Connecticut Avenue in Washington took hours longer than usual; a jackknifed truck, a two-car accident, rubber necking, and the weather slowed her progress. The day was becoming one big conspiracy against her peace of mind. “Am I getting paranoid?” she asked herself, attempting to inject humor into something that wasn’t funny. Having to assume the role of mother nearly fourteen years after the fact was downright hilarious—if you were listening to a stand-up comic. She would not fall apart; she was doggoned if she would, and to prove it, she hummed every aria from La Traviata that she could remember.

She didn’t get much done that day, because she spent part of it listless and unable to concentrate and the rest optimistically shuffling harebrained schemes to locate her child. She had to adjust to a different world, one that wasn’t real, and the effort was taking a toll. She couldn’t summon her usual enthusiasm during her tutoring session that evening and could hardly wait to get home. But tomorrow would be different, she vowed. “I’m not going to keel over because of this.”

At home that evening, she curled up in her favorite chair, intent on relaxing with a cup of tea and soothing music, determined to get a handle on things. “I’m going to find something to laugh about at least once an hour,” she swore. As she searched the dial on her radio, a deep, beautifully sonorous male voice caught her attention, sending shock waves through her and raising goose bumps on her forearms. Well, he might have a bedroom voice, she quickly decided, but his ideas were a different matter. “Educated career women, including our African American women, put jobs before children and family, and that is a primary factor in family breakups and youthful delinquency,” he stated with complete confidence.

How could anyone with enough prestige to be a panelist on that program make such a claim? He was crediting women with too much responsibility for some of the world’s worst problems.

She rarely allowed herself to become furious about anything; anger crippled a person. But she had to tell him off. After trying repeatedly to telephone the radio station and getting a busy signal, she noted the station’s call letters and flipped off the radio. Meade, they’d called him. She would write him and urge him into the twentieth century.

Her immense relief at being able to concentrate on something impersonal, to feel her natural inclination to mischief surface, restored her sense of well-being. She embraced the blessed diversion and wholeheartedly went about giving Mr. Meade his comeuppance. But as she walked briskly, almost skipping to her desk, she admitted to herself that the basis for her outrage was more than intellectual. His comments had come bruisingly close to an implied indictment of her, even if she didn’t deserve it. She shrugged it off and began the letter.

“Mr. Meade,” she wrote, “I don’t know by what right you’re an authority on the family—and I doubt from your comments tonight in the program Capitol Life that you are—but you most certainly are not an authority on women. If a great many American women, and especially African American women, didn’t work outside the home, their families would starve. Would that bother you? And if you tried being a tiny bit more masculine, maybe the women with whom you associate might be ‘less aggressive,’ as you put it, softer and more feminine. Don’t you think we women have a big enough load without you dumping all that on us? Be a pal and give us a break, please. And don’t forget, Mr. Meade, even squash have fathers. Please be a good sport and don’t answer this note. Most sincerely, Naomi Logan.” She addressed it to him in care of the program and the station.

That should take care of him, she decided, already dismissing the incident. But within a week, she had his blunt reply: “Dear Ms. Logan, if you had listened to everything I said and had understood it, you might not have accused me so unfairly. From the content of your letter, it would appear that you’ve got some guilt you need to work through. Or are you apologizing for being a career woman? If the shoe fits, wear it. The lack of a reply would be much appreciated. Yours, Rufus Meade.”

Naomi hadn’t planned to pursue her argument with Rufus Meade; it was enough that she’d told him what she thought of his ideas and that her letter had annoyed him. A glance at her watch told her that the weekly radio program Capitol Life was about to begin. Curious as to whether he was a regular panelist, she tuned in. He wasn’t a regular, she learned, but had been invited back because of the clamor that his statement the previous week had caused.

The moderator introduced Rufus, who lost no time in defending his position. “Eighty percent of those who wrote or called protesting my remarks were women; most of the men thought I didn’t go far enough. Has any of you asked the children in these street gangs where their mothers are when they get home from school—provided they’re in school—what they do after school, when they last had a home-cooked meal, whether their parents know where they are? I have. Their mothers aren’t home, so they don’t know where their children are or what they’re doing. With nobody to control them, the children hang out in the street, and that is how we lose them. Children need parental guidance. When it was the norm in this society for mothers to remain at home, we had fewer social problems—less delinquency and fewer divorces. One protestor wrote me that even squash have fathers. Yes, they do. And they also have mothers who stick with them until they’re old enough to fend for themselves. In fact, the mothers die nurturing their little ones’ development.”

Naomi rubbed her fingers together in frustration. A sensible person would ignore the man and his archaic ideas. She flipped off the radio in the middle of one of his sentences. Wednesday’s mail brought another note from him.

“Dear Ms. Logan, I hope you tuned in to Capitol Life Sunday night. Some of my remarks were for your benefit. Of course, if you have a closed mind, I was merely throwing chaff to a gusty wind. Can’t say I didn’t try, though. Yours, RM.”

Excitement coursed through her as she read his note. She knew that not answering would be the best way to get the better of him. He wanted her to be annoyed, and if he didn’t hear from her, he would assume that she had lost interest. But she couldn’t resist the temptation, and she bet he was counting on that.

Her reply read, “Dear Mr. Meade, next time you’re on the air, I’d appreciate your explaining what a two-month-old squash does when it no longer needs its mother and fends for itself. (Something tells me it gets eaten.) You didn’t really mean to equate the maturity of a squash with achievement of adulthood in humans, did you? I’d try to straighten that out, if I were you. Don’t bother to write. I’ll keep tuning in to Capitol Life. Well, hang in there. Yours, NL.”

She only had to wait four days for his answer. “Dear Ms. Logan, you have deliberately misunderstood me. I stand by my position that as long as women guarded the home rather than the office and the Mack truck, juvenile crime and divorce were less frequent occurrences. You are not seriously concerned with these urgent problems, so I will not waste time writing you again. I’m assuming you’re a career woman, and my advice is to stick with your career; at least you’ll have that. Yours, RM.”

Naomi curved her mouth into a long, slow grin. She always enjoyed bedeviling straitlaced, overly serious people, though she acknowledged to herself that her cheekiness was a camouflage. It enabled her to cover her vulnerability and to shrug off problems, and besides, she loved her wicked side. Rufus Meade’s words told her that he was easily provoked and had a short fuse, and she planned to light it; never would she forgo such a tantalizing challenge.

Curled up on her downy sofa, she wrote with relish: “Dear Mr. Meade, I’ve probably been unfair to you. You remind me so much of my grandfather, who was born just before the turn of the century. If you’re also a nonagenarian, my sincere apologies. For what it’s worth, I am not a ‘career woman.’ I am a woman who works at a job for which I am well trained. The alternative at present would be to marry a male chauvinist in exchange for my keep, or to take to the streets, since food, clothing, and shelter carry a price tag. But considering your concern for the fate of the family, I don’t think you’d approve of the latter. But then, it isn’t terribly different from the former, now, is it? Sorry, but I have to go; the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera performance is just beginning, and I’m a sucker for La Traviata. Till next time. Naomi Logan.” After addressing it to him, she mailed it and hurried back to listen to the opera.

Several days later, engrossed in her work, Naomi laid aside her paintbrush and easel and reluctantly lifted the phone receiver. In a voice meant to discourage the caller, she muttered, “Yes?”

There was a brief silence, and then a deep male voice responded. “Miss Logan, please.”

She sat down, crossed her knee, and kicked off her right shoe. That voice could only belong to him. She had heard it only twice, but she would never forget it. It was a voice that commanded respect, that proclaimed its owner to be clever, authoritative, and manly, and, if you weren’t annoyed by its message, it was sensually beautiful.

“Speaking,” she said almost reluctantly, as if sensing the hand of fate. There was more silence. “I’m hanging up in thirty seconds,” she snapped. “Why are you calling?”

His reply was tinged with what struck her as a grudging laugh. “Miss Logan, this is Rufus Meade. It seems that your spoken language is as caustic as your letters.”

Her world suddenly brightened; she’d made him angry enough to call her. She tucked a little of her wild hair behind her ear and laughed. Many people had told her that her laughter sounded like bells clinking in the breeze. “I thought I had apologized for being disrespectful,” she said softly, with an affected sweetness. “If Grandpa knew how I’d behaved toward an older person, he’d raise the devil.”

“At the expense of being rude,” he replied tightly. “I doubt that there’s a ninety-year-old man on the face of this earth who is my equal, and if you’re less than eighty, I’m prepared to demonstrate it.”

Oh ho, she thought, and howled with laughter, hoping to infuriate him further. “My, my. Our ego’s been pricked, and we’ve got a short temper, too.”

“And less patience, madam. You’re brimming with self-confidence, aren’t you, Ms. Logan?” She assured him that she was. Up to then, his conversation had suggested to her that he didn’t hold her in high regard, so his next words surprised her.

“Taking a swipe at me in person should be much more gratifying than having to settle for snide remarks via the mail and over the phone, so why don’t you have lunch with me?”

She laughed again, turning the screw and enjoying it. “You couldn’t be serious. Why would you think I’d enjoy the company of a man who prefers bimbos to women who can spell? No, thank you.”

She sighed, concerned that she might have overdone it and realized that she had indeed when he replied in a deadly soft voice. “I hope you enjoy your own company, Ms. Logan. Sorry to have troubled you.”

He hung up before she could reply, and a sense of disappointment washed over her, a peculiar feeling that warmth she hadn’t realized she felt was suddenly lacking. It was strange and indefinable. She didn’t welcome close male friendship because she couldn’t afford them, and she had not been courting Rufus’s interest. She had just been having fun, she reasoned, and he wasn’t going to have the last word.

She got out her pen and paper and wrote: “Dear Rufus, how could one man have so many quirks? Bimbos, short temper, heavyweight ego, and heaven forbid, spoilsport. You need help, dear. Yours faithfully, Naomi.”

Naomi hadn’t heard from Rufus in three days, and she was glad; their conversation had left her with a sense of foreboding. She arrived home feeling exhausted from a two-hour argument with her fellow board members of One Last Chance that the foundation, which she had cofounded to aid girls with problems, would overstretch itself if it extended its facilities to boys. In the Washington, D.C., area, she had insisted, boys had the Police Athletic League for support, but for many girls, especially African American girls, there was only One Last Chance. And she knew its importance. How different her life might have been if the foundation had been there for her thirteen years ago, when she had been sixteen and forced to deal with the shattering aftermath of a misplaced trust.

She refreshed herself with a warm shower, dressed quickly in a dusty rose cowl-necked sweater and navy pants, and rushed to her best friend Marva’s wedding rehearsal. Dusty rose reminded her of the roses that her mother had so carefully tended and that still flourished around the house on Queens Chapel Terrace, where she had lived with her parents. She couldn’t recall those days well, but she thought she remembered her mother working in her garden on clear, sunny mornings during spring and summer. She regularly resisted the temptation to pass the house and look at the roses. She’d never seen any others that color, her favorite. It was why she had chosen a dress of that shade to wear as maid of honor at Marva’s wedding.

Marva was her closest friend, though in Naomi’s view they were exact opposites. The women’s one priority was the permanent attainment of an eligible man. Marriage wasn’t for her, but as maid of honor, she had to stand in for the bride—as close to the real thing as she would ever get. At times, she desperately longed for a man’s love and for children—lots of them. But she could not risk the disclosure that an intimate relationship with a man would ultimately require, and to make certain that she was never tempted, she kept men at a distance.

Naomi knew that men found her attractive, and she had learned how to put them off with empty, meaningless patter. It wasn’t that she didn’t like any of them; she did. She wanted to kick herself when the groom’s best man caught her scrutinizing him, a deeply bronzed six footer with a thin black mustache, good looks, and just the right amount of panache. She figured that her furtive glances had plumped his ego, because he immediately asked her out when the rehearsal was over. She deftly discouraged him, and it was becoming easier, she realized, when he backed off after just a tiny sample of her dazzling double-talk.

I’ll pay for it, she thought, as she mused over the evening during her drive home. Whenever she misrepresented herself as frivolous or callous to a man whom she could have liked, she became depressed afterward. Already she felt a bit down. But she walked into her apartment determined to dispel it. The day had been a long one that she wouldn’t soon forget. “Keep it light girl,” she reminded herself, as she changed her clothes. To make certain that she did, she put on a jazz cassette and brightened her mood, dancing until she was soaked with perspiration and too exhausted to move. Then she showered, donned her old clothes, and settled down to work.

She took pride in her work, designing logos, labels, and stationery for large corporations and other businesses, and she was happiest when she produced an elegant, imaginative design. Her considerable skill and novel approaches made her much sought after, and she earned a good living. She was glad that a new ice-cream manufacturer liked a logo that she’d produced, though the company wanted a cow in the middle of it. A cow! She stared at the paper and watched the paint drying on her brush, but not one idea emerged. Why couldn’t she dispel that strange something that welled up in her every time she thought of Rufus? It had been a week since her last provocative note to him, and she wondered whether he would answer. It was dangerous, she knew, to let her mind dwell on him, but his voice had a seductive, almost hypnotic effect on her. Where he was concerned, her mind did as it pleased. Tremors danced through her whenever she recalled his deep voice and lilting speech. Voices weren’t supposed to have that effect, she told herself. But his was a powerful drug. Was he young? Old? Short? She tried without success to banish him from her thoughts. While she hummed softly and struggled to fit the cow into the ice cream logo, an impatient ringing of her doorbell and then a knock on the door startled her. Why hadn’t the doorman announced the visitor, she wondered, as she peeped through the viewer and saw a man there.

“May I help you?” She couldn’t see all of him. Tall, she guessed.

“I hope so. I’m looking for Naomi Logan.” Her first reaction was a silent, “My God it’s him!” Her palms suddenly became damp, and tiny shivers of anticipation rushed through her. She would never forget that voice. But she refused him the satisfaction of knowing that she remembered it. She’d written him on her personal stationery, but he’d sent his letter to her through the station; she didn’t have a clue as to where he lived. She struggled to calm herself.

“Who is it, please?” Could that steady voice be hers?

“I’m Rufus Meade, and I’d like to see Miss Logan, if I may.”

“I ought to leave him standing there,” she grumbled to herself, but she knew that neither her sense of decency nor her curiosity would allow her to do it, and she opened the door.

Rufus Meade stood in the doorway staring at the woman who had vexed him beyond reason. She wasn’t at all what he had expected. Around twenty-nine, he surmised, and by any measure, beautiful. Tall and slim, but deliciously curved. He let his gaze feast on her smooth dark skin, eyes the color of dark walnut, and long, thick curly black tresses that seemed to fly all over the place. God, he hadn’t counted on this. Something just short of a full-blown desire burned in the pit of his belly. He recognized it as more than a simple craving for her; he wanted to know her totally, completely, and in every intimate way possible.

Naomi borrowed from her years of practice at shoving her emotions aside and pulled herself together first. If there was such a thing as an eviscerating, brain-damaging clap of thunder, she had just experienced it. Grasping the doorknob for support, she shifted her glance from his intense gaze, took in the rest of him, and then risked looking back into those strangely unsettling fawnlike eyes. And she had thought his voice a narcotic. Add that to the rest of him and…Lord! He was lethal! If she had any sense, she’d slam the door shut.

“You’re Rufus Meade?” she asked. Trying unsuccessfully to appear calm, she knitted her brow and worried her bottom lip. She could see that he was uncomfortable, even slightly awed, as if he, too, was having a new and not particularly agreeable experience. But he shrugged his left shoulder, winked at her, and took control of the situation.

“Yes, I’m Rufus Meade, and don’t tell me you’re Naomi Logan.”

She laughed, forgetting her paint-smeared jeans and T-shirt and her bare feet. “Since you don’t look anywhere near ninety, I want to see some identification.” He pulled out his driver’s license and handed it to her, nodding in approval as he did so.

“I see you’re a fast thinker. Can’t be too careful these days.”

Unable to resist needling him, she gave him her sweetest smile. “Do you think a bimbo would have thought to do that?” It was the kind of repartee that she used as a screen to hide her interest in a man or to dampen his, like crossing water to throw an animal off one’s trail.

His silence gave her a very uneasy feeling. What if he was dangerous? She didn’t know a thing about him. She tried to view him with the crust caused by his physical attractiveness removed from her eyes. Clearly he was a most unlikely candidate for ridicule; nothing about him suggested it. A strapping, virile male of about thirty-four, he was good-looking, with smooth dark skin and large fawnlike eyes, a lean face, clean shaven and apparently well mannered. She backed up a step. The man took up a lot of psychological space and had an aura of steely strength. He was also at least six feet four, and he wore clothes like a model. So much for that, she concluded silently; all I learned is that I like what I see.

His demeanor was that of a self-possessed man. Why, then, did he behave as if he wanted to eat nails? She was tempted to ask him, but she doubted his mood would tolerate the impertinence. He leaned against her door, hands in his pockets, and swept his gaze over her.

“Miss Logan, your tongue is tart enough to make a saint turn in his halo. Are you going to ask me in, or are you partial to nonagenarians?”

There was something to be said for his ability to toss out a sally, she decided, stepping back and grinning. “Touché. Come on in.” She noticed that he walked in slowly, as if it wouldn’t have surprised him to find a booby trap of some kind, and quickly summed up his surroundings. After casually scanning the elegant but sparsely furnished foyer and the intensely personal living room, he glanced at her. “Some of your choices surprise me, Naomi.” He pointed to a reproduction of a Remington sculpture. “That would represent masculine taste.”

“I bought it because that man is free, because he looks as if he just burst out of a place he hadn’t wanted to be.” He quirked his left eyebrow and didn’t comment, but she could see he had more questions.

“The Elizabeth Catlett sculpture,” she explained, when his glance rested on it, “was the first sculpture that I had even seen by an African American woman; I bought it with my first paycheck. I don’t know how familiar you are with art, but along with music, it’s what I like best. These are also the works of African Americans. That painting,” she pointed to an oil by the art historian James Porter, “was given to me by me grandpa for my college graduation. And the reproduction of the painting by William H. Johnson is…well, the little girl reminded me of myself at that age.”

Rufus observed the work closely, as if trying to determine whether there was anything in that painting of a wide-eyed little black girl alone with a fly swatter and a doll carriage that would tell him exactly who Naomi Logan was.

While he scrutinized the Artis Lane lithograph portrait of Rosa Parks that both painter and subject had signed, Naomi let her gaze roam brazenly over him. What on earth is wrong with me, she asked herself when she realized, after scanning his long, powerful legs, that her imagination was moving into forbidden territory. She had never ogled a man, never been tempted. Not until now. She disciplined her thoughts and tried to focus on his questions. Her heartbeat accelerated as if she’d run for miles when he moved to the opposite end of the room, paused before a group of original oils, turned to her, and smiled. It softened his face and lit up his remarkable eyes. She knew that she gaped. What in heaven’s name was happening to her?

“So you’re an artist? Somehow, I pictured you as a disciplinarian of some sort.” He stared intently at the painting of her mother entitled “From My Memories” and turned to look at her.

“Isn’t this a self-portrait? I don’t have any technical knowledge of art, but I have a feeling that this is good.” She opened her mouth to speak until she saw him casually raising his left hand to the back of his head, exposing the tiny black curls at his wrist. She stared at it; it was just a hand, for God’s sake. Embarrassed, she quickly steadied herself and managed to respond to his compliment.

“No. That’s the way I remember my mother. Have a seat while I get us some coffee. Or would you prefer juice, or a soft drink?” She had to put some distance between them, and separate rooms was the best she could do.

He didn’t sit. “Coffee’s fine,” he told her, trailing her into the kitchen. She turned and bumped into him, and excitement coursed through her when he quickly settled her with a slight touch on her arm. Her skin felt hot where his finger had been, and she knew that he could see a fine sheen of perspiration on her face. Reluctantly, she looked up, saw the tough man in him searing her with his hot, mesmerizing eyes, and felt her heart skid out of place. He made her feel things that she hadn’t known could be felt, and all of a sudden, she wanted him out of there. The entire apartment seemed too small with him in it, making her much too aware of him. The letters had been fun, and she had enjoyed joshing with him over the phone, but he had a powerful personality and an intimidating physique. At her height, she wasn’t accustomed to being made to feel small and helpless. And she had never experienced such a powerful sexual pull toward a man. But, she noticed, he seemed to have his emotions under lock and key.

He leaned over her drawing board seemingly to get a better view of the sketches there. “Are you a commercial artist, or do you teach art somewhere?”

“I’m a commercial artist if by that you mean work on contract.”

Rufus looked at her quizzically. “Did you want to be some other kind of artist?”

Naomi took the coffee and started toward the living room. She had a few questions of her own, and one of them had to do with why he was here. “I wanted to be an artist. Period.” She passed him a cup of coffee, cream, and sugar. He accepted only the coffee.

“Why did you come here, Rufus?” If he was uncomfortable, only he knew it. He rested his left ankle on his right knee, took a few sips of coffee, and placed the cup and saucer on the table beside his chair. His grin disconcerted her; it didn’t seem to reach his eyes.

It wasn’t a hostile question, but she hadn’t meant it as friendly, either. She watched as he assessed her coolly. “You certainly couldn’t have put it more bluntly if you tried. Whatever happened to that gnawing wit of yours? I came here on impulse. That last hot little note of yours made me so mad that neither a letter nor a phone call would do. You made me furious, Naomi, and if I think about it much, I’ll get angry all over again.” She leaned back in the thickly cushioned chair, thinking absently that he had an oversupply of charisma, when his handsome brown face suddenly shifted into a fierce scowl.

She wasn’t impressed. “What cooled you off?”

He shrugged first one shoulder, then the other one. “You are so damned irreverent that you made the whole thing seem foolish. One look at you, standing there ready to take me on, demanding to see my ID with your door already wide open—well, my reaction was that I was being a jackass when I let you pull my leg. You’ve been having fun at my expense.”

It didn’t seem wise to laugh. “It was your fault.”

He stiffened. “How do you figure that any of this is my fault, lady?” This time, she couldn’t restrain the laughter.

“Temper, temper. If you didn’t have such a short fuse and if you talked about things you know, especially on a radio broadcast, none of this would have happened.”

He stood. “I’m leaving. Never in my life have I lost my temper with a woman, or even approached it, and I’m not going to allow you to provoke me into making an exception with you. You’re the most exasperating…”

Her full-throated laughter, like tiny tinkling temple bells, halted his attack. He gave her a long, heated stare.

She shivered, disconcerted by his compelling gaze. With that fleeting desire-laden look, he kindled something within her, something that had fought to surface since she’d opened her door. She walked with him to her foyer, where indirect lights cast a pale, ethereal glow over them, and stood with her hand on the doorknob. She knew he realized she was deliberately prolonging his departure, and she was a little ashamed, but she didn’t open the door. It was unfathomable. A minute earlier, she had wanted him to leave; now, she was hindering his departure. Less certain of herself than she had been earlier, she fished for words that would give her a feeling of ease. “I meant to ask how you became an expert on the family, but, well, maybe another time.”

Rufus lifted an eyebrow in surprise. He hadn’t thought she’d be interested in seeing him again. Despite himself, he couldn’t resist a slow and thorough perusal of her. He wanted to…no. He wasn’t that crazy. Her unexpected feminine softness, the dancing mischief in her big brown eyes, and the glow on her bare lips were not going to seduce him into putting his mouth on her. He stepped back, remembering her question.

“I’m a journalist, and I’ve recently had a book published that deals with delinquent behavior and the family’s role in it. You may have heard of it: Keys to Delinquent Behavior in the Nineties.”

“Of course I know it; that book’s been a bestseller for months. I hadn’t noticed the author’s name and didn’t associate it with you. I haven’t read it, but I may.” She offered her hand. “I’m glad to have met you, Rufus; it’s been interesting.”

He drew himself up to his full height and pretended not to see her hand. He wasn’t used to getting the brush-off and wasn’t going to be the victim of one tonight. He jammed his hands in his pockets and assumed a casual stance.

“You make it seem so…so final.” He hated his undisciplined reaction to her. Her warm, seductive voice, her sepia beauty, and her light, airy laughter made his spine tingle. He had really summoned her up incorrectly. She was far from the graying, disillusioned spinster that he had pictured. He wanted to see what she looked like; well, he had seen, and he had better move on.

“Couldn’t we have dinner some evening?” He smiled inwardly; so much for his advice to himself.

He could see that she was immediately on guard. “I’m sorry, but my evenings are pretty much taken up.” She tucked thick, curly hair behind her left ear. “Perhaps we’ll run into each other. Goodbye.”

He wasn’t easily fooled, but he could be this time, he cautioned himself, and looked at her for a long while, testing her sincerity and attempting to gauge the extent of his attraction to her. Chemistry so strong as what he felt wasn’t usually one-sided; he’d thought at first that she reciprocated it, but now, neither her face nor her posture told him anything. She’s either a consummate actress or definitely not interested in me, he decided as he turned the doorknob. “Goodbye, Naomi.” He strode out the door and down the corridor without a backward glance.

Naomi watched him until he entered the elevator, a man in complete control, and hugged herself, fighting the unreasonable feeling that he had deserted her, chilled her with his leaving; that he had let his warmth steal into her and then, miser-like, withdrawn it, leaving her cold. What on earth have I done to myself, she wondered plaintively.

Rufus drove home slowly, puzzled at what had just transpired. Everything about Naomi jolted him. He didn’t mislead himself; he knew that his cool departure from her apartment belied his unsettled emotions. What had he thought she would be like? Older, certainly, but definitely not a barefoot, paint-spattered witch. She’d had a strong impact on him, and he didn’t like it. He had his life in order, and he was not going to permit this wild attraction to disturb it. She had everything that made a woman interesting, starting with a mind that would keep a man alert and his brain humming. Honorable, too. And, Lord, she was luscious! Tempting. A real, honest-to-God black beauty.

He entered his house through the garage door that opened into the kitchen and made his way upstairs. All was quiet, so he undressed, sprawled out in the king-sized bed that easily accommodated his six feet four and a half inches, and faced the fact that he wanted Naomi. It occurred to him from her total disregard for his celebrity status that Naomi didn’t know who he was. She found him attractive for himself and not for his bank account, as Etta Mae and so many others had, and it was refreshing. If she didn’t want to acknowledge the attraction, fine with him; neither did he. If there were only himself to consider, he reasoned, he would probably pursue a relationship with Naomi, though definitely not for the long term. It had been his personal experience that the children of career women didn’t get their share of maternal attention. That meant that he could not and would not have one in his life.

Chapter 2

Several afternoons later, Naomi left a meeting of the district school board disheartened and determined that the schools in her community were going to produce better qualified students. She had a few strong allies, and the name Logan commanded attention and respect. She vowed there would be changes. She remembered her school days as pleasant, carefree times when schools weren’t a battlefield and learning was fun. A challenge. When she taught high school, she made friends with her pupils, challenged them to accomplish more than they thought they could, and was rewarded with their determination to learn, even to go beyond her. She smiled at the pleasant memory, suddenly wondering if Bryan Lister was still flirting with his female teachers, hoping now to improve his university grades.

Oh, there would be changes, beginning with an overhaul of that haphazard tutoring program, even if, God forbid, she had to run for election as president of the board. She ducked into a Chinese carry-out to buy her dinner. As she left the tiny hovel, she noticed a woman trying to shush a recalcitrant young teenaged boy who obviously preferred to be somewhere else and expressed his wishes rudely.

She got into her car and started to her studio, a small but cheerfully decorated loft, the place where her creative juices usually began flowing as soon as she entered. Sitting at her drawing board, attempting to work, she felt the memory of that scene in which mother and son were so painfully at odds persist. The boy could have been hers. Maybe not; maybe she’d had a girl. What kind of parents did her child have? Would it swear at them, as that boy had? How ironic, that she devoted so much of her life to helping children and had no idea what her own child endured. She sighed deeply, releasing the frustration. She would deal with that, but she wasn’t yet ready. It was still a new and bruising thing. It had been bad enough to remember constantly that she had a child somewhere whom she would never see and about whose welfare she didn’t know, but this…she couldn’t help remembering…

She had stood by the open window; tears cascading silently down her satin-smooth cheeks, looking out at the bright moonlit night, deep in thought. The trees swayed gently, and the prize roses in her grandfather’s perfectly kept garden gave a sweet pungency to the early summer night. But she neither saw the night’s beauty nor smelled the fragrant blossoms. She saw a motorcycle roaring wildly into the distance, carrying her young heart with it. And it was the fumes from the machine’s exhaust, not the scented rose blooms surrounding the house, that she would remember forever. He hadn’t so much as glanced toward her bedroom window as he’d sped away.

She heard her bedroom door open but didn’t turn around, merely stood quietly, staring into the distance. She knew he was there and that no matter what she said or how much she pleaded, he would have his way; he always had his way.

“Get your things packed, young lady, you’re leaving here tonight. And you needn’t bother trying to call him, either, because I’ve already warned him that if he goes near you, if he so much as speaks to you again, I’ll have him jailed for possessing carnal knowledge of a minor.”

“But, Grandpa…”

“Don’t give me any sass, young lady. You’re a child, sixteen years old, and I don’t plan to let that boy do any more damage than he’s already done. Get your things together.” She should have been used to his tendency to steamroller her and everybody else, but this time there was no fight in her.

“Did you at least tell him…” He didn’t let her finish, and it was just as well. She knew the answer.

“Of course not.”

She fought back the tears; the least sign of weakness would only make it worse. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell him,” she said resignedly, “so he doesn’t know.”

She looked at the old man then, tall and erect, still agile and crafty for his years. A testimonial to temperance and healthful living. With barely any gray hair, he was an extremely handsome example of his African American heritage and smattering of Native American genes. She thought of how much like him she looked and brought her shoulders forward, begging him with her eyes.

“But, Grandpa. Please! You can’t do this. He didn’t take advantage of me. We love each other, and we want to…”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do. I’m your legal guardian. That boy’s nineteen and I can have him put away. You’re not going to blacken the name of Logan; it’s a name that stands for something in this community. You’ll do as I say. And what you haven’t packed in the next hour, you won’t be taking.”

She got into the backseat of the luxurious Cadillac that the First Golgotha Baptist Church had given her grandfather when he’d retired after forty-five years as its pastor. “Where are we going?” she asked him sullenly, not caring if she displeased him.

“You’ll find out when you get there,” he mumbled.

“I thought you’d stopped driving at night.”

“I’m driving tonight, but it’s not a problem; the moon’s shining. And kindly stop crying, Naomi. I’ve always told you that crying shows a lack of self-control.”

She bristled. Did he even love her? If he did, why couldn’t he ever give her concrete evidence of it? She made one last try. “You have no right to do this, Grandpa. I love him, and he loves me, and no matter what you make me do now, when I’m grown, Chuck and I will get together.”

She heard the gruffness in his aged voice and the sadness that seemed to darken it. Maybe there was hope…

“I’m doing what’s best for you, and someday you’ll see that for yourself. You know nothing of love, Naomi. That boy didn’t fight very hard for you, gal. Seems to me I gave him a good reason to run off when I warned him to stay away from you. It’s a moot point, anyway; his folks are sending him to the University of Hawaii, and you can’t get much farther away from Washington, D.C., and still be in the United States. This is the end of it and I know it, so I’m not letting you offer yourself up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of love. I’ve lived more than three-quarters of a century, long enough to know how outright stupid that would be.”

Her tears dropped silently until she fell asleep. When they had arrived at their destination, she got out of the car and walked into the building without even glancing back at her grandfather. Two months later, tired of resisting the pressure, she listlessly signed the papers put in front of her without reading them.

Naomi sat at the drawing board in her studio without attempting to work and tried once more to reconcile herself to her grandfather’s incredible news. If they’d found him, they would easily find her. Did she want to be found? Or did she want to find the child and its family? But who would she look for? I’ve had a few hassles in my life, she thought, but this! She answered the phone automatically.

“Logan Logos and Labels. May I help you?”

“Yes,” the deep, sonorous male voice replied. “You certainly may. Have dinner with me tonight.” Of course, Rufus meant the invitation as an apology for his abrupt departure from her home, she decided. She searched for a suitable clever remark and drew a blank as thoughts of her child crowded out Rufus’s face. Her throat closed and words wouldn’t come out. To her disgust, she began to cry.

“Naomi? Naomi? Are you there?”

She hung up and let the tears have their day, tears that had been waiting for release since her grandfather had signed her into the clinic and walked away over thirteen years ago. She got up after a time threw water on her face, and went back to her drawing board, hoping for the relief that she always found in her work. Then she laughed at herself. Solitary tears were stupid; crying made sense only if someone was there to pat you on the back. She looked at her worrisome design and shrugged elaborately. It would be about as easy to get that ridiculous cow into the ice-cream logo without changing the concept as it would be to get her life straightened out, tantamount to getting pie from the sky. She sat up straighter. Mmmm. Pie in the sky. Not a bad idea. In twenty minutes, she’d sketched a new ice-cream logo, an oval disc containing a cow snoozing beneath a shade tree and dreaming of a three-flavors dish of ice cream. Why didn’t I think of that before, she asked herself, humming happily, while she cleaned her brushes and tidied her drawing board. She held the logo up to a lamp, admiring it. Nothing gave her as much satisfaction as finishing a job that she knew was a sure winner.

Her euphoria was short-lived as she heard the simultaneous staccato ring of the doorbell and rattle of the knob. She opened the door and stared in dismay.

“Is anything the matter? Are you all right?” Rufus asked her, pushing a twin stroller into the room, apparently oblivious to the astonishment that he must have seen mirrored on her face.

She said the first thing that came to mind and regretted it. “You didn’t tell me that you are married,” she accused waspishly.

She put her hands on her hips and frowned at him. She usually took her time getting annoyed, but she wasn’t her normal self when it came to Rufus Meade. She took a calming deep breath and asked, him, “Whose are these?” pointing a long brown finger toward the stroller.

One of the twins answered, “Daddy look.” He reached toward the ten-by-fourteen color sketch for the ice-cream logo. “Ice cream, Daddy. Can we have some ice cream?”

Rufus shook his head. “Maybe later, Preston.” He turned to her and shrugged nonchalantly, but Naomi didn’t care if her exasperation at that ridiculous scene was apparent.

“What was happening with you when I called, Naomi? You sounded as if…look, I came over here because I thought something was wrong and that maybe I could help, but whatever it was evidently didn’t last long.”

Still not quite back to normal, and fighting her wild emotions, she figured it wasn’t a time for niceties and asked him, “Where is their mother?”

This time, it was the other twin who answered. “Our mommy lives in Paris.”

“She likes it there,” Preston added. “It’s pretty.”

Rufus glanced from the boy to Naomi. “Since you’re alright, we’ll be leaving.” He wasn’t himself around her. Her impact on him was even greater than when he’d first seen her. Tonight, when he’d faced her standing in her door with that half-shocked, half-scared look on her face, her shirt and jeans splattered with paint, hair a mess and no makeup, he had been moved by her open vulnerability. It tugged at something deep-seated, elicited his protective instinct. He admitted to himself that fear for her safety hadn’t been his sole reason for rushing over there; he was eager to see her again and had seized the opportunity.

Her softly restraining hand on his arm sent a charge of energy through him, momentarily startling him. “I’m sorry, Rufus. About your wife, I mean. I had no idea that…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he told her, mentally pushing back the sexual tension in which her nearness threatened to entrap him. Expressions of sympathy for his status as a single father made him uncomfortable. He regretted the divorce for his sons’ sake, but Etta Mae had never been much of a wife and hadn’t planned to be a mother. She wanted to work in the top fashion houses of Paris and Milan and, when offered the chance, she said a hurried goodbye and took it. Neither her marriage nor her three-week-old twin sons had the drawing power of a couturier’s runway. She hadn’t contested the divorce or his award of full custody; she had wanted only her freedom.

He watched the strange, silent interplay between Naomi and Preston, who appeared fascinated with the logo. His preoccupation with it seemed to intrigue her, and she smiled at the boy and glanced shyly at Rufus.

“Do you mind if I give them some i-c-e c-r-e-a-m?” She spelled it out. “I have those three flavors in the freezer.” He eased back the lapels of his Scottish tweed jacket, exposing a broad chest in a beige silk Armani shirt, shoved a hand in each pants pocket, and tried to understand the softness he saw in her. He couldn’t believe that she liked children; if she did, she’d have some. She probably preferred her work.

“Sure, why not?” he replied, carefully sheltering his thoughts. “It’ll save me the trouble of taking them to an ice-cream parlor where they’ll want everything they see.”

“Do they have to stay in that thing?” She nodded toward the stroller.

“You may be brave,” he told her, displaying considerable amusement, “but I don’t believe you’re that brave.” His eyes were pools of mirth.

“What are you talking about?” She tried to settle herself, to get her mind off the virile heat that emanated from him. She had never before reacted so strongly to a man, and she disliked being susceptible to him.

His suddenly huskier voice indicated that he read her thoughts and knew her feelings. “Preston can destroy this place in half an hour if he really puts himself to it,” he explained, “but with Sheldon to help him, you’d think a hurricane had been through here. We’re all better off with them strapped in that stroller.”

“If you say so.” She knelt unsteadily in front of the stroller and addressed the twin who’d pointed toward the logo. “What’s your name?” A miniature Rufus right down to his studied gaze, she decided.

“Preston,” he told her with more aplomb that she’d have expected of a child of his age, and pointed to his twin. “He’s Sheldon.”

“How old are you?” she asked his identical twin brother.

“Three, almost four,” they told her in perfect unison, each holding up three fingers.

Naomi looked first at one boy and then the other, then at Rufus. “How do you know the difference?”

“Their personalities are different.” He looked down at them, his face aglow with tenderness, and his voice full of pride.

She introduced herself to the boys and then began serving the ice-cream. On a hunch, she took four of the plastic banana-shaped bowls that she’d bought for use in the logo and filled them with a scoop each of the chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry flavors.

Rufus nodded approvingly. “Well, you’ve just dealt successfully with Preston; he’d have demanded that it look exactly like that painting. Sheldon wouldn’t care as long as it was ice cream.”

Naomi watched Rufus unstrap his sons, place one on each knee, and help them feed themselves while trying to eat his own ice-cream. Her eyes misted, and she tried to stifle her desire to hold one of the children. She knew a strange, unfamiliar yearning as she saw how gently he handled them. How he carefully wiped their hands, mouths, and the front of their clothes when they had finished and, over their squirming objections, playfully strapped them into the stroller.

“Do they wiggle because it’s a kid thing, or just to test your mettle?”

He laughed aloud, a full-throated release as he reached down to rebutton Sheldon’s jacket. She would have bet that he didn’t know how; it was the first evidence she’d had that his handsome face could shape itself into such a brilliant smile, one that involved his eyes and mouth, his whole face. He had a single dimple, and she was a pushover for a dimple. The glow of his smile made her feel as if he had wrapped her in a ray of early morning sunlight, warming her.

“Both, I guess,” he finally answered.

He turned to her. “That was very nice, Naomi. Thank you. Before I leave, I want you to tell me why you hung up when I called you. Didn’t you know that I would have to send the police or come over here myself and find out whether you were in trouble? I brought my boys because I don’t leave them alone and I couldn’t get a sitter quickly.”

“Don’t you have a housekeeper, nursemaid, or someone who takes care of them for you?”

Rufus stood abruptly, all friendliness gone from his suddenly stony face. “My children are my responsibility, and it is I, not a parental substitute, who takes care of them. I do not want my children’s outlook on life to be that of their nanny or the housekeeper. And I will not have my boys pining for me to get home and disappointed when I get there too tired even to hug them. My boys come before my career and everything else, and I don’t leave them unless I have no choice.” He turned to leave, and both boys raised their arms to her. Not caring what their father thought, she quickly took the opportunity to hug them and hold their warm little bodies. His expression softened slightly, against his will, she thought, as he opened the door and pushed the stroller through it. “It was a mistake to come here. Goodbye, Naomi.” As the door closed, she heard Preston, or maybe it was Sheldon, say, “Goodbye, Noomie.”

Naomi began cleaning the kitchen, deep in thought. Did they have low tolerance for each other, or was it something else? She had never known anyone more capable of destroying her calm, not even Judd. And there was no doubt that she automatically pushed his buttons. The less she saw of him, the better, she told herself, fully aware that he was the first man for whom she’d ever had a deep, feminine ache. “I don’t know much,” she said aloud, “but I know enough to leave him alone.”

Naomi parked her car on Fourth Street below Howard University and walked up Florida Avenue to One Last Chance. She chided herself for spending so much time thinking about Rufus, all the while giving herself excuses for doing so. She had just been defending herself with the thought that being the father of those delightful boys probably added to Rufus’s manliness. He was so masculine. Even his little boys had strong masculine traits.

Rufus had made her intensely aware of herself as a woman. An incomplete woman. A woman who could not dare to dream of what she wanted most; to have the love and devotion of a man she loved and with whom she could share her secrets and not be harshly judged. A home. And children. Maybe she could have it with…oh, God, there was so much at stake. Forget it, she told herself; he would break her heart.

She increased her pace. It seemed like forever since the foundation’s board members had argued heatedly about the wisdom of locating One Last Chance’s headquarters in an area that was becoming increasingly more blighted. But placing it near those who needed the services had been the right decision. She walked swiftly, partly because it was her natural gait, but mainly because she loved her work with the young girls, whom she tutored in English and math. She welcomed the crisp, mid-October evenings that were so refreshing after the dreaded heat and humidity of the Washington summers. Invigorating energy coursed through her as the cool air greeted her face, and she accelerated her stride. Not even the gathering dusk and the barely camouflaged grimness of the neighborhood daunted her.

Inside OLC, as the girls called it, her spirits soared as she passed a group playing checkers in the lounge, glimpsed a crowded typing class, and walked by the little rooms where experienced educators patiently tutored their charges. She reached the nurse’s station on the way to her own little cubicle, noticed the closed door, and couldn’t help worrying about the plight of the girl inside.

Linda was half an hour late, and Naomi was becoming concerned about her. The girl lacked the enthusiasm that she had shown when they’d begun the tutoring sessions, and she was always tired, too worn-out for a fifteen-year-old. When she did arrive, she didn’t apologize for her tardiness, but Naomi didn’t dwell on that.

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” Naomi asked her, attempting to understand the girl’s problems.

“Five of them,” Linda responded listlessly.

“Tell me what you do at home, Linda, and why you come to One Last Chance. Speak carefully, because this is our diction lesson for today.” Already becoming a fatalist, Naomi thought sadly, when the girl opened her mouth to object, but closed it without speaking and shrugged indifferently.

“At home, I cook, clean, and take care of my mama’s children. I study at the drugstore where I work after school and weekends, but I have to be careful not to get caught. I come here for the company, so I can hear people talk good English and see what you’re supposed to wear and how you’re supposed to act. I can get by without the tutoring.”

“Do you enjoy the tutoring, Linda?”

“Yeah. It makes my grades better, but I just like to be around you. You treat me like I’m the same as you.”

“But you are the same.”

“No, I’m not. You got choices, and I don’t have any yet.” She smiled then. “But I’m going to have them. I’m going to be able to decide what I want. I’m going to learn to type and use computers. That way, I’ll always be able to get a good job, and I’ll be able to work my way through college.” She paused and looked down at her hands. “I’m not ever going to have any children, and I’m never going on welfare and have people snooping around to check on me. It’s humiliating.”

Good for you, Naomi thought, but she needed to correct her about one thing.

“I’m sure that motherhood has many wonderful rewards,” she told her. “When you fall in love and get married, you may change your mind.”

Indicating what she thought of that advice, Linda pulled on one of her many braids and rolled her eyes disdainfully. “Not me,” she objected, slumping down in the straight-backed chair. “All I have to do is look at my mama and then look at you. There’s never going to be a man smart enough to con me into having a baby. After taking care of all my mama’s babies, I’d have to be touched in the head to have one.”

Naomi didn’t like the trend of the conversation. “You’ll see things differently when you’re older,” she responded, thinking that she would have to teach Linda that life was more enjoyable if you laughed at it sometimes.

“Really?” the girl asked skeptically. “I see you don’t have any kids.” Linda opened her book, effectively ending the discussion. Shocked, and unable to find any other way to get the privacy she needed, Naomi lowered her eyes.

They completed the literature assignment, and as Naomi reflected on Linda’s above-average intelligence, the girl suddenly produced a drawing.

“What do you think of this?” she asked, almost defensively.

Naomi scrutinized it and regarded the girl whose face was haunted with expectancy. “You’ve got good technique, and this piece shows imagination. I like it.”

Linda looked up and smiled wistfully. “I love to paint most of all. It’s one thing nobody can tell me is good or bad, because I always manage to paint exactly what I feel.” As if she had disclosed something that she thought too intimate to tell another person, Linda quickly left the room.

Naomi watched her leave. Crazy about painting and forced to study literature. It was almost like seeing her own youth in someone else, except that she had had all the advantages of upper-middle-class life that Linda lacked. She understood now that her strong attraction to Chuck had partly been escape from loneliness. He had fulfilled her need for the loving affection that she missed at home, and he’d made her feel wanted. Cherished. God forbid that because of a desolate life, Linda should follow in her footsteps, she mused, getting up to replace her teaching aids in the cabinet that held her supplies.

Rufus stole silently away from the open door and, deep in thought, made his way slowly up to the president’s office. He was a board member of Urban Alliance and stopped by One Last Chance to discuss with its president participation in the Alliance’s annual fund-raising gala. He hadn’t known of Naomi’s association with OLC and was surprised to find her there. Certainly, he would not have expected to witness her gently nurturing that young girl. She had empathized totally with the girl, whose background was probably the exact opposite of her own, holding him nearly spellbound. He mounted the creaky spiral staircase whose once-regal Royal Bokhara runners were now threadbare, thinking that perhaps he had misjudged Naomi again. He had gotten the impression from her letters that career and independence were what she cherished most and that, like his ex-wife, she thought of little else and wouldn’t take the time to nurture another human being.

Maybe she was different from what she represented herself to be. She was tender and solicitous with his boys, who were immediately charmed by her. Captivated was more like it. Not because of the ice cream, either; they ate ice cream just about every day. No. It was more. He couldn’t define it any more than he could figure out why she’d had such a powerful impact on him, why she was constantly in his thoughts.

She was brash and a little cynical. But she was also soft and giving. He remembered his sudden need to get out of her apartment, away from her; he had never had difficulty controlling his libido until he’d met that woman. He grinned. She affected his temper that way, too.

He sat listening to Maude Frazier outline her plans for One Last Chance’s contribution to the gala, aware that her words held no interest for him; his mind was on Naomi Logan. In an abrupt decision, he politely told Maude goodbye and loped down the stairs in hopes of seeing Naomi before she left. He was relieved to find her in the basement laundry room. And what a sight! Without the combs and pins, her hair was a wild, thick frizz, and her slacks and shirt were wet in front. He leaned against the laundry room door and watched her dash around the room folding laundry and coping with an overflowing washing machine.

“Want some help?”

She dropped a clean tablecloth back into the sudsy water, braced her hands on her hips, and stood glaring at him.

“See what you made me do? You frightened me.” He observed her closely, but with pretended casualness. Was she trembling?

“Sorry. Anything I can do to make up for it?”

“You can help me fold these things, and you can wipe that cocky grin off of your face.” She hated being caught off guard; he didn’t blame her. It put you at a disadvantage.

She was obviously wary of him, and he wanted to put her at ease, so he spread his hands palms upward in a gesture of defenselessness. “I’m innocent of whatever it is you’re planning to hang me for, Naomi. Now, if you’ll show me how you want these things folded, I’ll help you.” She did, and they worked in companionable silence.

Rufus carefully hid his inner feelings, controlling the heady excitement of being with her, but he wouldn’t bet that he’d be able to hold it back for long. He wouldn’t put a penny on it. She zonked him.

His impatient nature wouldn’t allow him to wait longer before probing. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

“And why would that be? Why do you think I don’t care about people?” she asked him, a bit sharply.

Didn’t she know that her defensiveness was bound to make him suspicious? He was a journalist, after all. He shrugged and decided not to accept the challenge. He wanted to know her, not fence with her. “Did I say that, Naomi? I’ve seen softness in you.” And I want to know whether it’s real.

“Humph. Me? A career woman?” Her glance must have detected the tenderness, the protectiveness that he felt, because she reacted almost as if he’d kissed her. Her lowered eyes and the sensual sound of her sucking in her breath sent his blood rushing through his veins.

Rufus quickly cooled his rising ardor. He sensed her nervousness but didn’t comment on it, as he weighed her consistent refusal to carry on a serious conversation with him. When she finally looked directly at him, he spoke. “You treat everything I say with equal amounts of disdain.”

“Be fair. Aren’t you exaggerating?” He was sure that his words had stung her, though that was not what he had intended.

“Not by much, I’m not,” he answered, running the fingers of his left hand through his hair and furrowing his brow. “Do you volunteer here often?” He switched topics in the hope of avoiding a confrontation and making peace between them. “You seemed to have unusually good rapport with the girl whom you were tutoring. Most kids in these programs don’t relate well to their tutors and mentors. How do you manage it?”

He found her inability to disguise her pleasure at his compliment intriguing; it meant that she valued his opinion. If he let her have the psychological distance that she seemed to want, maybe she would open up.

“You saw us?” He nodded. “It isn’t difficult; she’s hungry for attention and for a role model, and I really like her.” They were leaning against the washing machines, and he appraised her with a thoroughness that embarrassed her.

“Is she one of the girls sent here from Juvenile Court? What had she done?”

Naomi’s eyes snapped in warning, and her tone was sharp. “Linda found her way here on her own. She had the intelligence to realize that she needed help. I doubt she’ll ever become a delinquent.”

Her fierce protectiveness of the girl puzzled Rufus; his reporter’s instincts told him that something important lay behind it, but he didn’t consider it timely to pursue the matter. He looked at the pile of laundry that they’d folded and sorted. “Well, that’s finished. Anything else?”

“No. That’s it. I’ve got to get home and deal with my work.” When he didn’t respond, she looked up, and he had the satisfaction of seeing guilt mirrored in her eyes. Guilt for having been provocative again without cause. He altered his censorious appraisal of her, relaxing his face, letting the warmth within him flow out to her, and her expressive eyes told him that she responded to what he felt. She should have moved, but she didn’t, and he reached for her, involuntarily, but quickly withdrew his hand. He looked into the distance, then glanced back at Naomi, who remained inches from him, standing in a way that told him she wouldn’t mind if he touched her. He didn’t want to leave her, he realized, but he had little choice unless he found a casual way to keep her with him.

“I promised to attend a lecture on the family over at Howard, and I’d invite you to join me if your clothes were dry.” He thought for a second. “Well, you can keep you coat on. Think your work can wait an hour or so?” She smiled, and he sensed an inner warmth in her that he hadn’t previously detected. He’d always thought her beautiful, but that smile made her beauty ethereal.

He took her hand. “Come on. Say yes.” She nodded, and he clasped her hand, soft and delicate, in his. At that moment, he knew he felt more for her than he wanted to or than was sensible and made a mental note to back off.

Chapter 3

They left the lecture in a playful mood. “Okay, I agree that he wasn’t a genius,” Rufus declared, “but he did make some good points.” His changing facial expressions fascinated her. Naomi watched a grin drift over his face slowly, like a pleasant idea dawning, and walked closer to him. She was not inclined to give the lecturer as much credit as he did, though, and they joked about the man’s shortcomings.

Arm in arm, they crossed the street to where two boys in their mid-teens stood beneath the streetlight. One cocked his head, gave them a hard look as they approached, and then ran up to Rufus.

“I don’t believe it, man. Look who this is! How ya doin’, Mr. Meade?” Naomi watched while Rufus autographed the boys’ shirts, since they had nothing else on which he could write, answered their questions, and gave them reasons why they shouldn’t hang out in the streets. The happy youths thanked him and promised to take his advice.

“Right on, man!” one said, as the two ambled toward what Naomi and Rufus both hoped was home. He’s a kind and gentle man, she decided. And not merely with his own children. What other celebrity with his stature, a best-selling author, would stand on a street corner at nine at night and give autographs to two street urchins? She frowned. And when had boys like those begun to read books on delinquency? Maybe they knew his journalistic writings, but she didn’t think so. No doubt there was something about him that she didn’t know.

At her car, he told Naomi, “I’ve enjoyed being with you tonight, Naomi. I enjoyed it a lot.” He paused, making up his mind, remembering his earlier vow to back off. She was a heady lure, a magnet, and he wasn’t going to get mired in her quicksand. He took his time deciding to walk away, all the while searching her face intently. Then he held the door for her. “Good night Naomi, I hope we meet again soon.”

Naomi drove away feeling as if he had dangled her from a long pole, gotten tired, and dropped her. She had learned one thing that evening, though: she wasn’t merely attracted to him; Rufus Meade was a man whom she could genuinely like, even care for. And therein lay the danger! But she knew he had not forgiven her for suggesting that he hire a woman to care for his boys. If he had, he would have kissed her good-night, she reasoned, because every move he made said it was what he wanted. And she had wanted him to do it. She had better watch herself.

She entered her apartment and didn’t stop until she reached her bedroom. At least I’m consistent, she joked to herself, looking around the dusty rose room, as she pulled off her dusty rose sweater and reached for her gown of the same color. She stretched out on a chaise lounge and thought about the evening with Rufus.

She could hardly believe that he had invited her to the lecture of that she had so readily agreed to go. She hadn’t said yes voluntarily; she had been drugged by his charisma. He was smoldering fire, and if she didn’t stay away from him, she would be badly burned. Her tinkling laughter broke the silence. All of a sudden, she understood moths.

Rufus took his minivan swiftly up Georgia Avenue, across Military Road, and north on Connecticut Avenue to Chevy Chase and home. His sister, Jewel, greeted him at his front door.

“Who on earth is Noomie? Preston and Sheldon have been telling me stories about her: she’s a fairy; she makes ice cream; she has a pink nose; she lives in Thessa; and you are angry with her.”

Rufus frowned. “She doesn’t have a pink nose, and she lives in Bethesda. Except for that, they’re right.” He had already learned that when you have small children, you have few secrets.

Jewel put her hands on her hips and wrinkled her nose affectionately. “Anything else?” He knew she always became suspicious when he didn’t satisfy her curiosity. Still, he was uncomfortable with the discussion.

“Not that I know of. Thanks for staying with my boys, Jewel; I hate for them to sleep away from home, and if you didn’t sit here with them, I wouldn’t have a choice.” He walked her to her car. “I’ll call Jeff and tell him you’re on your way so he can watch for you. Don’t forget to call me. You know when you babysit for me at night, I’m always uneasy until I know you’re safely in your house.”

She hugged him affectionately. “Rufus, you are such a worrywart. You know I’ll be all right. Look…”

“Go on, say it.”

“No. I shouldn’t interfere in your life.”

He opened her car door. “Of course I worry about you, Jewel. I look after you because you’re my sister. Heck. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t looking out for you. But I’d be equally concerned for the safety of any other woman leaving me and traveling alone this time of night—though that rarely happens.”

Jewel grabbed the chance. “Does that include Noomie? Or do you plan to keep her a secret forever?”

“Her name is Naomi, and there isn’t much to tell. She has pros and she has cons and right now, I’m shuffling that deck, so to speak.”

“Which side was winning when you left her tonight?”

Jewel understood him better than anyone else ever had, so he wasn’t surprised at her blunt question. She always said that pussyfooting around got you nowhere with him. Still, he didn’t like being transparent, not even to her. “You’re saying I was with her tonight?” He looked down at his sister, a beautiful, happy wife and mother, and grinned when he felt her grasp his arm lightly. Jewel always liked to touch when she talked. Naomi was a toucher, too.

“Yes, you were. There’s a softness about you that says you wish you were with her now.”

He leaned against her dark blue Mercedes coupe and folded his arms against his broad chest. “I think it best that I don’t discuss her just now, Jewel; I don’t know where our relationship is going or if it’s going anywhere at all.” He looked off into the distance. He didn’t want to talk about Naomi; he was too full of her.

“Rufus,” Jewel began apologetically, as if wary of breaching is privacy. “Are you beginning to care for this woman? If you are, give her a chance, a real chance. There must be a reason why the boys are so taken with her, talking about her almost nonstop.”

“I’d rather not go into this, Jewel.” He didn’t want to legitimize Naomi as the woman in his life by discussing her with his sister. He knew Naomi wasn’t like Etta Mae. And he knew that his loveless marriage with his ex-wife wouldn’t have worked even if she hadn’t wanted a career as a high-fashion model. She had never committed herself to the marriage, and when the twins were born, she didn’t commit to them. Only to her career. He hadn’t discouraged her; she needed the spotlight, and he had wanted her to be happy. But how could she have left her three-week-old babies and gone on an overseas modeling assignment? And she’d stayed there.

Jewel’s grip tightened on his arm. “This is part of your problem, honey. Don’t compare her with Etta Mae, whom you still refuse to talk about; it hurts you, so you bury it all inside, where it simmers and festers and gets bigger than it really is. She isn’t evil; she just has tunnel vision. Try to stop reopening those wounds; you’ll never be happy till you do. Let it go, Rufus.”

He moved away, turned, and voiced what he had never before mentioned to her. “What about Mama? She wasn’t there for us, either.”

Jewel shook him gently. “But she took whatever jobs she could get, and that meant traveling. She once told me that she didn’t have a choice.”

It was as if he hadn’t heard her. “She made a living, but she was never home, and in the end, she didn’t come back. When I knew that she wasn’t coming back, that she had gone down in that plane, I thought I would die, too. She was going to write a book on cocoa. Cocoa, for God’s sake!”

His sister’s startled look told him she hadn’t realized that after sixteen years he was still in such turmoil about their mother. “Rufus listen to me. You’ve forgotten something very important. Papa had been an invalid since before I was born, and Mama had to support us. Etta Mae worked because she wanted to. That’s a big difference.”

The only evidence he gave of his inner conflict was the involuntary twitch of a jaw muscle. “Maybe I shouldn’t have voiced my feelings. But I used to cry myself to sleep when I was little, because I missed her. You didn’t feel so alone, because you had me. When you were born, I swore I’d take care of you. Mama had a hard life: a breadwinner, a young woman married in name only and forced to be away from her children. Jewel, I don’t want a woman I love to be caught up in that kind of conflict, and if I married while my boys are little, well…”

He disliked speaking of his personal feelings, but his love for his sister forced him to continue to try and make her understand the choices he made. “Preston and Sheldon are my life. I left my job at the Journal to work at home as a freelancer because they needed me, and I wanted to be there for them. I remember what it was like to be left with a succession of maids, babysitters, and cleaning women to whom I was just a job. And my boys are not going to live like that. Jewel, I can’t expect a woman to put my children before her own interests; their own mother didn’t do it.”

He put an arm around his sister’s shoulder. “Naomi has a career and she’s devoted to it. She’s also very good at what she does, and she deserves every opportunity to reach the top of her field.” He paused, then spoke as if to himself. “And I’ll be the first to applaud her when she gets there.”

He opened the car door. “Enough reminiscing. It’s getting late.”

Jewel started the motor. “At least you’re thinking about her. That’s all I want, Rufus, that you’ll find someone who truly cares for you and whom you can love in return. When that happens, you’ll forget about these other concerns.”

Rufus looked in on his boys, got a can of ginger ale from the kitchen, and went to his study. But after an hour, still looking at a blank page, he conceded defeat. He couldn’t afford to become involved with Naomi. She was a complicated mixture of sweetness, charm, sexiness, simple decency, and fear. He enjoyed her fun and intelligence and, most of the time, loved being with her. Her cynical wit didn’t fool him, and didn’t matter much. He knew it was a screen, a defense. And he couldn’t dismiss his hunch that there was a connection between Naomi and that girl at OLC, or that Naomi saw one.

He answered the telephone on the first ring, hoping it was the woman in his thoughts.

“Rufus, this is Jewel. I want you to think hard about this. What can be so unacceptable about Naomi if Preston and Sheldon are crazy in love with her? You know they aren’t friendly with strangers; in fact, they shy away from people they don’t know well. Talk, Rufus. It might help.”

He hesitated, understanding that his response to her could become his answer to himself. He knew with certainty only that he wanted Naomi, but he wasn’t foolish enough to let his libido decide anything for him. He thought for a moment and answered her as best he could.

“I’m not sure I know the answer, or even that she’s as important to me as you seem to think. She has some strangely contradictory traits, and this bothers me. But worry not, Sis; I’m on top of it.” He hung up, walked over to his bedroom window, and let the moonlight stream over him.

She’s got a hook in me, he admitted. I’ll swear I’m not going to have anything more to do with her, but when I’m with her I don’t want to leave her; when I see her, I want to hold her. But I’ve got my boys, and they come first.

He stripped and went to bed, but sleep eluded him. One thing was sure: if he didn’t have the boys, he’d be on his way to Bethesda, and the devil take the morrow.

Naomi unlocked her studio, threw her shoulder bag on her desk and opened the window a few inches. The sent of strong coffee wafted up from a nearby cafeteria, but she resisted retracing her steps to get some and settled for a cup of instant. She had barely slept the night before. Rufus had weighted the temptation of kissing her against the harm of doing it, and harm had won out. It wasn’t flattering no matter how you sliced it, especially since she had wanted that kiss. When had she last kissed a man, felt strong masculine arms around her? She knew she was being inconsistent, wanting Rufus while swearing never to get involved. Keeping the vow had been easy…until she’d first heard his voice. When she saw him, it was hopeless. She sipped the bland-tasting coffee slowly.

Images of him loving her and then walking away from her when he learned her secret had kept her tossing in bed all night. She’d finished reading his first book, The Family at Risk, and had been appalled at some of his conclusions: the family in American society had lost its usefulness as a source of nurturing, health care, education, and economic, social, and psychological support for the young. Spouses, he complained, had separate credit cards, separate bank accounts, and separate goals. Oneness was out of fashion. Homemaking as an occupation invited scorn, and women avoided it if they could. He claimed that the family lost its focal point when women went to work, and without them as its core, the family had no unity. She hadn’t realized how strongly he believed that women had a disproportionate responsibility for the country’s social ills. He wouldn’t accept her past, she knew, so she’d put him behind her.

She laughed at herself. She didn’t have such a big problem, just a simple matter of forgetting about Rufus. But what red-blooded woman would want to do that? It was useless to remain there staring at the stark white walls. “I’m going home and put on the most chic fall outfit in my closet,” she declared, “and then I’m going to lunch at the Willard Hotel.”

The maître d’ gave her a choice table with a clear view of the entrance. The low drone of voices and the posh room where lights flickered from dozens of crystal chandeliers offered the perfect setting for a trip into the past, but she savored her drink and resisted the temptation; wool gathering slowed down your life, she told herself. Suddenly, she felt the cool vintage wine halt its slow trickle down her throat, almost choking her, and heated tremors stole through her as Rufus walked toward her. But her excitement quickly dissolved into angst when his hand steadied the attractive woman who preceded him. He wasn’t alone.

The sight of the handsome couple deeply engrossed in serious conversation stung her, and she lowered her eyes to shield her reaction. She looked at the grilled salmon and green salad when the waiter brought it, and pushed it aside. She just wanted to get out of there. Aware that she had ruined the day for the little maître d’, she apologized, paid with her credit card, and stood to leave. A glance told her that Rufus was still there, still absorbed in his companion and their conversation. She took a deep breath, wrapped herself in dignity, and with her head high, marched past his table without looking his way.

The furious pace of her heartbeat alarmed her, and she decided it would be foolish to drive. Dinosaurs. This was a good time to see them. But on her way to the Smithsonian Institute, the crisp air and gentle wind lured her to the Tidal Basin, and she walked along the river, deep in thought. Why was she upset at seeing Rufus with another woman? There wasn’t anything between her and him, and there couldn’t be anything between them. Not ever. She took a few pieces of tissue from her purse, spread them out, and sat down. She could no longer deny that he was becoming important to her, so she braced her back against a tree and contemplated what to do about it.

“Even if you wanted to be alone, you didn’t have to pick such a deserted place. Are you looking for trouble?”

By the time Rufus ended the question, she was on her feet, trembling with feminine awareness at the unexpected sound of his voice. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t frighten a person like that?” she huffed, not in annoyance, but in pulsing anticipation. “It’s downright sadistic, the way you suddenly appear. Where did you leave your date?” She blanched, realizing that she had given herself away, but pretended aloofness. She didn’t want him to know that seeing him with an attractive woman had affected her.

He cocked an eyebrow. “I helped Miss Hunt get a taxi, and she went back to her office.”

“Why are you telling me that?” she asked, as if he hadn’t merely answered her question. “It isn’t my concern.”

“I didn’t suggest otherwise. Are you okay?”

“Of course, I’m okay,” she managed to reply, and turned her back so that her quivering lips wouldn’t betray her. “How did you get here?” It was barely a whisper.

“I followed you. When you passed my table immediately after your lunch was served, you seemed distressed. I wanted to be sure you were all right.”

He walked around her in order to face her. “I was surprised to see you lunching alone in that posh place. I only go there because Angela, my agent, loves to be seen there. She says it’s good for her image.”

Intense relief washed through her, and she gasped from the joy of it. Her mind told her to move back, to remember who she was and that she had reasons to avoid a deeper involvement with him, but her mind and heart were not in sync, she learned.

Oblivious to the squirrels that were busily hoarding for the winter, the blackbirds chirping around them, and the wind whistling through the trees, she stood with her gaze locked into his, shaken by her unbridled response to him. She was barely aware of the dry leaves swirling around them and the wind’s accelerated velocity as they continued to devour each other with the heat in their eyes, neither of them speaking or moving. Feeling chill-like tremors, she rubbed her arms briskly, letting her gaze shift to his lips.

His sharp intake of breath as he opened his arms thrilled her, and she walked into them, her body alive with hot anticipation. He had lost his war with himself, and she gloried in his defeat. She felt him sink slowly to the turf, clasping her tightly. He lay with her above him, protecting her from the hard ground. She knew, when he immediately helped her to her feet without even kissing her, that their environment alone had stopped him. Blatant desire still radiated from him. She didn’t remember ever having encountered such awesome self-control.

“Chicken sandwiches and ginger ale taste about the same as grilled salmon and salad,” she told him, when they finished.

“Something like that occurred to me, too.” He smiled.

They stood at the curb, near her parked car, neither speaking nor touching, just looking at each other. She hadn’t noticed that he’d shortened his sideburns or that he had a tiny brown mole beside his left ear. And in the sunlight, she could see for the first time that his fawnlike eyes were rimmed with a curious shade of brownish green. Beautiful. A lurch of excitement pitched wildly in her chest. Back off, girl, before you can’t! Without a word, she turned blindly toward her car, but he grabbed her hand, detaining her, and forced her to look at him. Then he brushed her cheek tenderly with the back of his closed fist and let her go.

She drove slowly. She could stay away from him, she thought, if he wasn’t so charismatic. So handsome. So sexy. So honorable. And oh, God, so tender and loving with his kids. He was a chauvinist, maybe—she was becoming less positive of that—had a trigger-fast temper, and was unreasonable sometimes. But he made her feel protected, and he was the epitome of man. Man! That was the only word for him and, if she were honest, she’d admit that she wanted everything he could give a woman—his consuming fire, his drugging power and heady masculine strength—just once in her life. But most of all, she wanted the tenderness of which she knew he was capable. Naomi laughed at herself. Who was she kidding? Well, her grandpa had always preached that thinking didn’t cost you anything; it was not thinking that was expensive. She mused over that as she drove, deciding that in her case, both could cost a lot. Once with him would never be enough, she conceded, wondering how he was handling their…encounter.

Rufus steered into his garage and forced himself to get out of his car. He walked around the garden in back of the house, sat on a stone bench, absently turned the hose on, and filled the birdbath. Why couldn’t he leave her alone? It had taken every ounce of will he could gather to stop what he’d started down by the Tidal Basin. He couldn’t pinpoint what had triggered it, and he wondered how he managed to appear so calm afterward when he actually felt as if he would explode. And why had he felt obligated to ease her mind about Angela? He’d never even kissed her, thought he’d just come pretty close to it. Besides, he and Naomi spent most of their time together fighting. He had been discussing a three-book deal with Angela when Naomi had passed their table; one look at her face, and he knew she’d seen them. He had immediately terminated the discussion and followed her. Get a grip on it, son! He noticed two squirrels frolicking in the barbecue pit, walked over to the patio, and got some of the peanuts that he stored there for his little friends. He went to the pit, got down on his haunches, and waited until they saw him and raced over to take their food from his hand.

Why couldn’t he leave her alone? Nothing could come of it. The question plagued him. And another thing. Good Lord! She was jealous of Angela. Jealous! How the devil was he going to stay away from her if she reciprocated what he felt? They didn’t even like each other. Scratch that, he amended; only fools lied to themselves. He went up to his room, changed his clothes, and went to get his boys from Jewel’s house.

Naomi sat at her drawing board that afternoon and wondered whether she could do a full day’s work in two hours. She was way off schedule, and she didn’t have one useful idea. “Oh, hang Rufus,” she called out in frustration. “Why am I bothered, anyway? Why, for heaven’s sake, am I torturing myself?” She dialed Marva, who answered on the first ring. Naomi always found it disconcerting that Marva’s telephone rarely rang a second or third time. She would almost believe her friend just sat beside the phone waiting for a call, but Marva was too impatient.

“Are you going to One Last Chance this afternoon?” she asked her. “I think we ought to firm up the plans for our contributions to the Urban Alliance gala. If we don’t get a bigger share of the pot this time, OLC will be in financial difficulty.”

“I know,” Marva breathed, sounding bored, “but it’ll all work out. You ought to be concentrating on who’s going to take you and what you’re going to wear.” Suddenly, Marva seemed more serious than usual. “Someday, Naomi, you’re going to tell me why a twenty-nine-year-old woman who looks like you would swear off men. Honey, I couldn’t understand that even if you were eighty. Don’t you ever want somebody to hold you? I mean really hold you?”

Caught off guard, Naomi clutched the telephone cord and answered candidly. “To tell the truth, I do. Terribly, sometimes, but I’ve been that route once, and once is enough for me.” Well, it was a half-truth, but she knew she owed her friend a reasonable answer, and she would never breathe the whole truth to anyone.

She changed the subject. “Guess what happened while you were gone, Marva.”

“Tell me.”

“Well, Le Ciel Perfumes saw the ad I did for Fragrant Soaps and gave me an exclusive five-year contract. I get all their business. Girl, I’m in the big time now. Can you believe it? I talked to them as if I could barely fit them into my tight program. Then I hung up, screamed, and danced a jig.”

“You actually screamed? Wish I’d been there.”

“But, Marva, that’s what every commercial artist dreams of, a sponsor. I treated myself to a new music system. My feet have hardly touched the ground since I signed that contract.”

“Go, girl. I knew you had it in you. We’ll get together for some Moët and Chandon; just name the hour.”

On an impulse and as casually as she could, she asked Marva, “You know so many people in this town, do you happen to know Rufus Meade?”

“Cat Meade? Is there anybody in the District of Columbia who doesn’t know him or know about him?”

“I didn’t know him until recently, and I didn’t realize you read books on crime and delinquency, Marva,” she needled gently.

“Of course I don’t; I hate unpleasantness, especially when it’s criminal. What does this have to do with Cat Meade? Cat was the leading NFL wide receiver for five straight years. Didn’t you ever watch the ’Skins?”

“Oh, come on, girl. You know I can’t stand violence, and those guys are always knocking each other down.”

Marva laughed. Naomi loved to hear the big, lusty laugh that her friend delighted in giving full rein.

“Now I understand your real problem,” Marva told her. “You haven’t been looking at all those cute little buns in those skintight stretch pants.”

“You’re hopeless,” Naomi sighed. “What about Meade? Did he quit because he was injured, or does he still play?”

“From what I heard, he stopped because he’d made enough money to be secure financially, and he’d always wanted to be a writer. He’s a very prominent print journalist, and he’s well respected, or so I hear. Why? Are you interested in him?”

In for a penny; in for a pound. “He’s got something, as we used to say in our days at Howard U, but he and I are like oil and water. And it’s just as well, because I think we also basically distrust each other. He doesn’t care much for career women, and I was raised by a male chauvinist, so a little of that type goes a long way with me. Grandpa’s antics stick in my craw so badly that I’m afraid I accuse Rufus unfairly sometimes. Why do you call him ‘Cat’? That’s an odd name for a guy as big as he is.”

Marva’s sigh was impatient and much affected. “When are you going to learn that things don’t have to be what they seem? They called him Cat, because the only living thing that seemed able to outrun him were a thoroughbred horse and cheetah, and he moved down the field like a lithe young panther. My mouth used to water just watching him.” The latter was properly supported by another deep sigh, Naomi noted.

“I hope you’ve gotten over that,” she replied dryly.

“Oh, I have; he’s not running anymore,” Marva deadpanned. “And besides, it’s my honey who makes my mouth water these days.” She paused. “Naomi, I’ve only met Cat a few times at social functions, and I doubt that he’d even remember me. Of course, any woman with warm blood would remember him. Go for it, kid.”

“You’re joking. The man’s a chauvinist.” She told her about his statement when he’d appeared on Capitol Life, supporting her disdain, but she could see that Marva wasn’t impressed.

“Naomi, honey,” she crooned in her slow Texas drawl, “why are you so browned off? If isn’t like you to let anybody get to you like this. Lots of guys think like that; the point is to change him…or to find one who doesn’t.”

“Never mind,” Naomi told her, “I should have known you wouldn’t find it in your great big heart to criticize a live and breathing man.”

She assured herself that she wouldn’t be calling him Cat. “I don’t care how fast he was or is.” They’d been having a pleasant few minutes together the night he’d brought the boys to her apartment, and she had asked him a simple, reasonable question. After all, a working journalist couldn’t take twin toddlers on assignment, so who kept them while he worked? But he was supersensitive about it. That one question was all it had taken to set him off. Then, down at the Tidal Basin, he’d nearly kissed her. She should never have let him touch her. Why the heck wasn’t he consistent? The torment she felt as a result of that almost kiss just wouldn’t leave her. She hoped he was at least a little bit miserable. What she wouldn’t give to be secure in a man’s love! His love? She didn’t let herself answer.

Naomi’s contemplations of the day’s events as she dressed hurriedly that evening for an emergency board meeting at OLC was interrupted by the telephone. Linda’s voice triggered a case of mild anxiety in her; the girls at OLC were not allowed to call their tutors at home.

“What is it, Linda?”

The unsteadiness in the girl’s voice told her that there might be a serious problem.

“I hated to call you at home, but I didn’t know what else to do. My mama says I can’t go on the retreat. I won a scholarship, and it won’t cost anything, but she says I can’t go.”

Naomi sat down. Maude Frazier and OLC would wait. “Did she say why?”

“Yes. She said I’ll do more good here at home helping her and working in the drugstore than I will wasting two weeks with a gang of kids drawing pictures. She said she never wants to see another piece of crayon. What will I do?”

Naomi pushed back her disappointment; how would the girl ever make it with so little support? “I’ll speak with your principal. Don’t worry too much. We have two months in which to work out a strategy and get your mother’s approval, but I’m sure the principal can handle this. Why didn’t you tell me that you won a scholarship? How many were there?”

“One. I didn’t tell you, because I figured Mama wouldn’t want me to go.” Naomi beamed, her face wreathed in smiles. She wished that she could have been with Linda to give her a hug. She doubted the girl received much affection; she certainly didn’t get the approval and encouragement that her talent deserved.

“Just one scholarship for the entire junior high school, and you won it? I’m proud of you, Linda, and I’m going to do everything possible to help you get those two weeks of training. I’ll see you in a couple of days?” The conversation was over, but it had an almost paralyzing effect on Naomi. What was her own child going through? Were its parents loving and understanding? Did they encourage it? It! God how awful! She didn’t even know whether she’d had a girl or a boy.

She hurriedly put on a slim skirted, above the knee dusty rose silk suit with a silk cowl necked blouse of matching color, found some navy accessories, and left home having barely glanced at herself in a mirror. She knew that color always set off her rich brown skin, and when she wore lipstick of matching color, her only makeup, as she did now, the effect was simple elegance. She arrived precisely on time and was not surprised when, at the minute she seated herself at the long oval table, Maude Frazier, the board’s president and arbiter of social class among the African American locals, lowered the gavel. “Now that we’re all here, let us begin our work.”

Naomi considered Maude’s philosophy, that if you weren’t early, you were late, autocratic, and unreasonable. One morning, either in this life or the next, Maude was going to wake up and discover that she really wasn’t the English queen. Naomi got immense pleasure from the thought.

Maude’s announcement that they had a guest brought Naomi’s gaze around the table until she found Rufus Meade sitting there looking directly at her. Her reaction at seeing him unexpectedly was the same as always. Tension gathered within her and her heartbeat accelerated when he dipped his head ever so slightly in a greeting and let his lush mouth curve in a half smile. She knew the minute he responded to the fire that she couldn’t suppress, that the tension pulsing between them was a sleeping volcano ready to erupt. She felt her heart flutter madly and shifted nervously in her chair as Maude opened the discussion.

She would not have anticipated that the talks would become so heated. The meeting ended, and she realized from Rufus’s facial expression that he was furious with her. She believed her argument—that One Last Chance existed to be a buffer between distressed girls and the cruelty of society—was the correct one. And she was amazed when Rufus took the position that what she really wanted was for the foundation to be a shelter for delinquents. She hoped he wasn’t a poor looser; several board members sided with him, but the majority supported her.

She was wrong, and he would straighten her out, he vowed, forcing himself to remain calm while, oblivious to onlookers, he ushered her to the elevator and on to the little office where she tutored. “I know there are special circumstances, but we have to be very careful when we’re deciding what they are.”

“I’m already familiar with your brand of compassion,” she told him, with what he recognized as exaggerated sweetness; “it doesn’t extend to females. It does cover cute little replicas of yourself, naturally, but it amazes me that you allowed your perfect self close enough to a woman to beget them. I don’t suppose it was the result of artificial insemination, was it?” He wanted to singe her mouth with his when she looked at him expectantly, as if deserving a serious, friendly answer, though she knew she’d irked him.

He surprised himself and figured that he probably shocked her as well when he broke up laughing. When he could stop, he looked down at her and, in a playful mode, shook his head from side to side, his single dimple on full display. “Naomi, I refuse to believe that you are so naive as to issue me that kind of challenge. Don’t you know better than to tell a man to his face that you doubt his virility? Are you nuts?”

Her intent regard amused Rufus. If she had been aware of the look of fascinated admiration on her smiling face, ten to one she would have banished it immediately. Her answer riled him. He wondered whether her attention had strayed when she asked provocatively, “How far off was I?”

Abruptly, he stopped smiling, forgot caution, and felt his face settle into a harsh mask. He pulled her close to him and absorbed her trembling as he lowered his head and brushed her mouth with his lips. He drew back to look at her, to gauge her reaction, but fire raced through him when she braced her hands against his chest in a weak, symbolic protest and whimpered, and he knew he had to taste her. Her soft, supple body offered no resistance, and as he sensed the giving of her trust, a warm, unfamiliar feeling of connection with someone special gripped him. She burrowed into him, giving herself over to him, pulling at something inside him. Something he didn’t want to release.

He fitted her head into one of his big hands and gently stroked her back with the other, trying to temper their rapidly escalating passion. But her gentle movements quickened his need. He nearly bent over in anguish when she wiggled closer, caught up in her own passion. Capitulating at last and in spite of himself, he captured her eager mouth in an explosive giving of himself, his body shuddering and his blood zinging through his throbbing veins.

He sensed a change in her then—a feminine response to his own burgeoning need—and altered the kiss to a sweet, gentle one, easing the pressure before asking for entrance with the tip of his tongue. Her parted lips took him in, and he felt her tremble from the pleasure of his kiss as she wrapped her arms around his neck in sensual enjoyment. He didn’t wonder that she returned his kiss so ardently, that she was caressing his arms, shoulders, and neck, that she was loving him right back. His only thought was that she felt so good in his arms, tasted so good, responded to him hotly and passionately, that she fitted him, that she belonged right where she was. He didn’t remember ever having had such a passionate response from a woman nor even having had one excite him as she did. He wanted her and he was going to have her even if she was… He jerked his head up and looked down into her passion-filled eyes. Not in a million years. Never! He told himself as he put her gently but firmly away from him.

Naomi grasped her middle to steady herself. He had to know that it was good to her, she surmised. Like nothing she had ever felt. Did he know that her body burned from his kiss? She had waited so long for it. Forever, it seemed. Nearly all her life. Those strong, muscular arms holding her, soothing her; the heady masculine smell of him tantalizing her; and the possessive way that he held her were more than she could have resisted. More than she wanted to resist. And she needed to be held, needed what he had given her, needed him. Her eyes closed in frustration. What was it with him?

“Look,” she heard him say, as he brushed his fingers across the back of his corded neck, apparently struggling both for words and for composure, “I’m sorry about that. You made me mad as the devil, and I got carried away. My apologies.”

She reeled from his blunt rejection, but only momentarily. With more than thirteen years of practice at putting up her guard, she slipped it easily into place. “Looks as if I was right, after all, Mr. Meade,” she bluffed, covering her discomfort. “You’ve got a problem.” She whirled around and left him standing there. He would never know what it had cost her.

Chapter 4

An hour later, still puzzled over Rufus’s behavior, Naomi forced herself to answer her doorbell. Tomorrow, she was going to speak to the doorman about not buzzing her to ask whether she wanted to receive visitors. What was the point in having such an expensive place if it didn’t guarantee her security and privacy? She knew very well that if it was Rufus, the young doorman would be so awed that he wouldn’t dare insult him by asking his name and announcing him, as house rules required. With a tepid smile, she cracked the door open and saw him standing there, the epitome of strength and virility. She tried to curb her response to him, a reaction so strong that blood seemed to rush to her head. And that annoyed her. Her next impulse was to close the door with a bang, but she wasn’t so irritated that she wanted to hurt him.

“May I come in, Naomi? Not once when I’ve stood at this door have you willingly invited me in.”

Feeling trapped by her attraction to him, and hoping that a clever retort would put her in command, she gave him what she hoped was a withering look.

“What do you want, Meade? You’ve already gotten yourself off the hook with an apology, so why are you standing here?” She spoke in a low, measured tone, trying to keep her voice steady.

Rufus was silent for a minute, trying to gauge her real feelings, which he had learned were probably different from what she let him see. Her gentle tone belied her sharp words, and he welcomed it. He watched her bottom lip quiver while she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, trying not to respond to what he knew she saw in his eyes. His gaze traveled slowly over her, caressing her, cataloging her treasures—flat belly, rounded hips, wild hair, long legs, a full, generous mouth, and more. He wanted her badly enough to steal her. Badly enough to forget everything else and go for her. But he hadn’t come to her apartment for that. Telling himself to get with it, he reined in his passion and assumed a casual stance.

He cleared his throat, impatient with his physical reaction to her. “Naomi, it must be clear to you that we have to reach some kind of understanding. We have to work together for the next month, and if we can’t cooperate, that gala will be a disaster. So ease up, will you?”

He was taken aback by her forced, humorless smile. And her words. “Why don’t you level with yourself? You didn’t come over here tonight to make it easier for us to work together. You’re here for two reasons; your testosterone is acting up; and you’re feeling guilty about the way you behaved back there at OLC. Well, you can go home, wherever that is. Your boys will be ‘pining’ for you.”

Rufus could see that she wanted to take back the words as soon as they escaped her lips. Weeks earlier, those revealing remarks had slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them—childhood hurts that remained solidly etched in his memory—and she had thrown them back at him. He knew that she saw pain in his eyes, that his reaction to her barb aroused her compassion. He regretted having exposed himself to her when he alluded to his unhappy childhood, and she could bet he wouldn’t make that mistake again. He hated pity. To cover her own insecurity, her own vulnerability, she had used it against him. But she reached out to him then with her heart as well as her hand, and he looked first into her eyes, softer than he had ever seen them, and then at her extended hand, grasped it, and walked in. Into her house and into her arms.

He breathed deeply, savoring the union, as they held each other without the intrusion of the passion and one-upmanship that had marked their brief relationship. When he felt himself begin to stir against her, he moved away.

“Naomi, if you’d put on more clothes, maybe we can talk this thing out.”

Her embarrassment at having greeted him in her short silk dressing gown was too obvious to conceal, and he noticed that she didn’t try, but expected him to understand that she had forgotten she was skimpily dressed. It was a small measure of trust, but it was something, and he welcomed it.

“All right. I’ll be back in a minute. There’s a bar; help yourself to a drink.” She left him in the living room and returned within minutes dressed, as promised. He liked that.

“Didn’t you find anything you’d like to drink?”

“I don’t drink anything stronger than an occasional glass of wine at dinner. Thanks anyway.” She looked great no matter what she was wearing, he observed, and told her so. “You’re really something to look at, you know that? My common sense almost deserted me when I saw you standing there in that red jersey robe, with that thick black curly hair hanging around your shoulders. Dark women look great in pinks and reds.”

She sat down and kicked off her shoes, and he could see that his compliments made her nervous. She did not want an involvement with him any more than he wanted one with her. He grinned. In their case, want didn’t count for much.

“Thank you,” she replied briskly, “but there isn’t anything to talk out, as you put it. I am not looking for a romantic involvement with you or anyone else, not now or ever, so we shouldn’t have any difficulty working together.”

Rufus glanced at her shoeless feet as she tucked them beneath her. A free spirit would do that, he figured. But she had caged that side of her, he guessed, and she had done it years earlier. He leaned back in the sofa and appraised her slowly and thoroughly until she suddenly squirmed. What a maze of contradictions she was! If she thought so little of romantic involvement and marriage for herself, why had she championed it for her young charge at OLC? The thought perturbed him; her adamant disavowal of interest in men didn’t ring true. He noted that the shoes were back on her feet.

Rufus leaned forward. “Sorry about that,” he apologized, referring to his blatant perusal of her. “But I can’t believe you know so little about what happens when a man and a woman get their hooks in each other. So I have to assume that either you’re being dishonest with yourself or you just don’t care to level with me. That kiss you gave me, Naomi, almost made me erupt; I’m still reeling from it. You were right when you said that’s why I’m here.”

“You’re making too much of this,” she told him, obviously uneasy with the drift of the conversation.

Her attempt to minimize it annoyed him. “When you kiss a man like that, giving him everything he’s asking for and letting him know that you’re loving what he’s doing to you, you’re either consenting or making demands of your own or you’ve gone too far.”

He ignored the outrage that he saw in her reproachful eyes and went on. “You and I want each other, Naomi. Don’t doubt it for a minute; we want to make love to each other. I confess that making love with you was one of the first thoughts I had when I met you. But I told myself then, and I’m telling you now, that I don’t intend to do one thing about it. You and I would be poison together.”

Naomi was a worthy adversary, he recalled at once. “Of course you aren’t going to do anything about it,” she purred, “because I won’t let you. As for me wanting you, let me tell you how much weight you can put on that. I saw a beautiful pair of green leather slippers in Garfinkel’s not long ago, and I wanted them badly. They were the perfect complement to something I had just bought. I took a taxi all the way back up here to Bethesda at a cost of twenty dollars, got my credit card, taxied back, and would you believe those shoes were gone? You know what I did? I shrugged my shoulders and bought a pair of royal blue ones that didn’t match a thing I owned. When I left the store, I was perfectly happy. Nothing gets the better of me, Rufus. Believe me, nothing!” He disliked her facetious grin. “So you’re right; there’s no need to make a big deal out of it,” she went on, her quivering lips belying her tough words. “You’ll find another one—darker or lighter, taller or shorter, but with the same basic equipment—and you’ll be just as happy.”

He shook his head in amazement. “I don’t believe you said that.” His blood pounded in his ears when she crossed her knees and let her right shoe slip off as she did so, revealing a flawless size nine foot with its perfectly shaped red toenails. His couldn’t take his eyes from her.

He swore softly. “You’d drive me insane if I spent much time around you. Stop acting,” he growled in a velvet soft voice. “You’re as vulnerable to me as I am to you.” He told himself to cool off. “We have to have a meeting Tuesday or Wednesday. Which would you prefer?”

“Neither.” His impatient glance provoked a hesitant explanation. “I tutor at One Last Chance in the afternoon of both days this week, and I can’t disappoint this girl; she has a lot of problems, and she’s known very little caring. The night you saw her with me, she showed me an excellent drawing that she had done with crayons; it was wonderful. She just needs guidance.”

“Then you believe she has talent for art?”

“Yes, but I’m not tutoring her in art. I’m helping her with math and English.”

“What’s the girl’s name?” He wondered if now was the time. Her feelings for this girl aroused his curiosity and his suspicions, too, he realized.

“Linda.”

Rufus hesitated, aware of a primitive protectiveness toward her, fearful of hurting her. “Naomi. If I’m wrong here, tell me. I get the impression that you have a special connection with this girl, that you have deeper feelings for her than for the others at OLC. And my instincts say that your concern for her has a personal basis.” He watched as she readied herself to divert him.

“Really, Rufus, what could have made you think such a thing?”

“I realize that you were tutoring her in English, but I didn’t know that you were qualified to teach math as well. What level?”

“She’s in her last year of junior high. I taught those subjects in high school for four years.”

“Why did you give it up?” Naomi was a complex person, he was beginning to understand, and the more he saw of her, the more he wanted to see. He leaned back against the deeply cushioned brown velvet sofa, watching her intently.

“I never wanted to teach, but Grandpa would pay for my education only if I studied to be a teacher. Teaching is the proper work for girls of my class, he told me a thousand times. I did as he wanted, same as everybody else always does, and I taught until I’d saved enough money to study for a degree in fine art. He hasn’t forgiven me for it, but, well, he’s done some things that I haven’t been able to forgive him for.” He nodded, letting her know that he sympathized with her, then lifted his wrists and glanced at his watch.

“I’ve got to get home; I told Jewel I’d be there by nine.” He hesitated to leave. “How did you get involved with One Last Chance?”

He pondered the reasons she might have for taking so much time to answer. “I saw the need for it. I’m one of its founders. Who’s Jewel?” On to another topic, was she? The tactic neither fooled nor amused him.

From Naomi’s reaction, he realized that his grin had been mocking rather than disarming, as he had intended. “Jewel’s my baby sister. Why? Are you jealous?” He couldn’t resist the taunt; it was the second bit of concrete evidence she’d given him that her interest was more than casual and his attraction for her more than physical. Yet he doubted that she would ever own up to it.

Her studied smirk as she slanted her head, tipped up her nose, and peered at him had all the arrogance that any crowned European could have mustered. It was admirable. What a gal!

“Well?” he baited.

“Put all your money on it,” she bantered, with a brief pause that he knew was for effect, “and then see your lawyer about filing for bankruptcy.” He smiled, enjoying the teasing.

“You’d be fun if you’d just forget about sex,” she told him, referring to his comment about their heated kiss.

He knew she meant to provoke him, but instead of indulging her, he quipped: “Forget about sex? Sweetheart, that is one thing I’ll remember even after I’m buried.”

His seductive wink, a mesmerizing slow sweep of his left eye, was aimed to strip her of any pretense about her feelings. And for the moment, it did. He held his breath when she dusted a speck of lint from the lapel of his jacket, pushed the handkerchief further down in his breast pocket, and rubbed a speck of nothing from his chin. The expression in her eyes nearly unglued him, but he kept his countenance and satisfied himself with a brush of his fingers across her cheek. He was unprepared for the warmth that quickly enveloped them and for the sweet, mutual contentment that they had not previously experienced together. Wordlessly, they walked to her door and stood there looking at each other, comfortable with the tension, with their desire in check. Simultaneously they reached out to each other, but didn’t touch and withdrew as one, as if it had been choreographed. He sucked in his breath and left without a word.

The rooms appeared to have grown larger after he left her, and her beloved apartment seemed cold and unfriendly. Her footsteps echoed along the short, tiled hallway. Strange, but she had never noticed that before. A restlessness suffused her. She reached for the telephone, then dropped her hand. So this was loneliness. This was what it was like to miss a man. She had to stop it now. Maybe it was already too late. She didn’t think she had the strength to face exposure, certainly not his rejection. Rufus already meant too much to her, had too prominent a place in her life, and she couldn’t bear his scorn if he ever knew about her past. One Last Chance was important to her, but if she couldn’t get Rufus out of her life any other way, she would have no choice but to leave it, to walk away from the most satisfying thing in her world other than her work. He was right; she had wanted him desperately. She still did. But if she walked away from him, away from the sweet and terrible hunger that he stirred in her, away from the promise of love in his arms… She went to bed trying not to think about Rufus and fell asleep imagining the ultimate joy that he could give her.

The next morning Naomi got up at six-thirty, unable to sleep longer, and phoned her grandfather.

“Why are you calling so early, gal? I thought you artist types worked at night and slept most of the day.”

She ignored his attempted reprimand for having abandoned teaching for art. “Grandpa, I think we ought to look up those people who want to find me and get it over with; I can’t stand this uncertainty. A month ago, I had a quiet life and was contented, all things considered. It’s like a death sentence must be; maybe the waiting and not knowing is worse than the actual execution.”

“Don’t you be foolish, gal,” he roared into the phone. “They may give up or I may find a way to discourage them.”

“But where does that leave me? Did I have a girl, a boy, twins? And are the adoptive parents loving, abusive, rich, dirt poor? What about my feelings, Grandpa? This is becoming unbearable.” She thought about Rufus and how devoted he was to his boys. He put them before everybody and everything, including his career. She recalled his painful allusion to his childhood when, after “pining” all day for someone, no doubt his mother, that someone had gotten home too tired to give him the love he needed. What would he think of her? She heard Judd’s insistent voice.

“What was that, Grandpa?”

“Where’s your mind, Naomi?” She imagined that he was rolling his eyes upward, expressing his frustration. “I said that I tried to spare you as best I could. But if you’re going to be foolish and go looking for trouble, I’d better hire a lawyer. Never could tell you a thing.”

“So the lawyer can tell you that we don’t have any options? This is something that has to be done on a personal basis.” She hated discussing it with him. Her grandfather would soon be ninety-five; he’d been born the last day of the nineteenth century, and she tried never to argue with him. Not only because he’d taken her in and made a home for her when her father had remarried to a woman who didn’t want a stepchild around, and had become her legal guardian when her father had died, but because she cared for him and didn’t like to upset him. He’s the product of anther era, she reminded herself, a time when a man did what he thought best for his family and expected them to accept it as he knew they would.

“We’ve got a problem, so we’ll get legal advice,” she heard him say in his usual authoritarian fashion. The sisters and brothers of the First Golgotha Baptist Church didn’t get out of line with their pastor, and forty-five years of such near idolatry had spoiled Judd Logan. “These hotshot lawyers are worthless,” he continued, “but you need them sometimes.”

“There’s no point in asking you not to, Grandpa, because you always do whatever you like. I don’t need a lawyer; I need to meet my child’s adoptive parents and ask them to let me see my child. If they want to reach me after all this time, there’s a good reason.” She wouldn’t say more about it then; it would take him a while to accept the idea, if he ever did. “I have to go over to One Last Chance, Grandpa. One of the girls is meeting me there at nine.” She didn’t say goodbye, because she knew he’d have a comment then or later. Twirling the phone cord, she waited.

“I want you to listen to me, gal. Don’t rush into anything. And I wish you’d stay away from those places like Florida Avenue,” he complained. “What kind of people do you meet over there? I’m sure Maude Frazier doesn’t waste time around there. It’s not proper for an unmarried girl of your class to hang around those people.” Naomi grinned, stifling a giggle as she did so. The old man was on a roll. He loved to preach, and it didn’t matter whether he had an audience of one hundred or one.

“Grandpa, you’re talking about seventy years ago.” Reminding herself that there was a generation between them and enough years in age for a two-generation gap, she let it pass.

“We’re never going to agree on certain things,” she told him gently. “You tried to save people’s souls. Well, when I’m at One Last Chance, I’m trying to help people mend their lives. There must be a connection there somewhere.” She told him goodbye and hung up.

Half an hour after arriving at OLC, Naomi looked at her watch. Linda was late. She knew that the girl wouldn’t offer an excuse, and when she arrived, she didn’t. Linda had missed several sessions, and Naomi had been tempted to speak with her mother but had refrained for fear of causing trouble.

“I spoke with your principal. Has he told your mother the consequences of your not going to the retreat and completing your art project?”

Linda’s eyes widened. “You mean he’s going to tell my mama I’ll be in trouble if I don’t go? Boy, that’s super cool! Tell me to tell her I can’t go to the retreat unless I have my hair done.”

Naomi laughed. “Linda, we tell the truth to the extent possible. The principal won’t be lying. That retreat is important to you; your career decisions may hinge on it.”

She knew that Linda admired her, but she was stunned when the girl suddenly told her, “I wish I could be like you, Naomi. I wish I was you.”

Naomi tugged at her chin with a thumb and forefinger. “My dear, if you knew everything there is to know, you might not want to be in my shoes at all.”

Linda stared directly at her. “With you, I’d take my chances.” Shaking her head, Naomi looked at Linda and remembered herself fourteen years before. If you got what you prayed for, she thought with wise hindsight, it could ruin your life.

She went home and began designing invitations for the Urban Alliance gala. There weren’t enough sponsors, she decided. Rufus would know what to do about it. She got his number and telephoned him. She was taken aback when his initial response to her call was unfriendly; he was deep into his current manuscript, Subculture of the American Juvenile, he explained, and hadn’t wanted to be disturbed. But he’d immediately become warm and agreeable.

“Give me an hour, and I can get over there,” he stated, as if confident that she would accept his offer. She couldn’t help smiling. To begin the day with Judd Logan and end it with Rufus Meade would tax a saint—that is, unless the saint was slightly sweet on Rufus, her conscience whispered.

She pushed the thought aside and asked him, “How far away are you, Rufus?”

“Fifteen minutes. Just over in Chevy Chase. Why? You need something that’ll melt? Or maybe something that’ll melt you? Hmm?” He laughed, but she refused to join in his merriment. She wished he’d be consistent and stop the sexual teasing, since they had both sworn not to get involved.

“Are you bringing the boys? Should I dash out and get some ice-cream?”

He answered gruffly, yet seemed touched. “Thanks, no. They’re over at Jewel’s house, playing with their cousins. I’ll see you shortly.”

Naomi hung up and leaned against the edge of her kitchen table. Rufus claimed that he would not permit anything to happen between them, and that was fine with her, because she couldn’t afford it. But his behavior didn’t always suit his words. He teased her, and though he didn’t telephone her, when they spoke, he took every opportunity to make her aware of him as a man. A desirable man. She shook her head in wonder, but her bewilderment was fleeting; she spun on her heels and headed for her bedroom.

“Two can play this game,” she told herself, as she remembered how elegant he’d been when he’d come to her house, even when he’d had the twins with him. “If he’s a phony,” she muttered, “we’ll both know it soon.” She reached into her closet for her silk knit “Sherman tank,” a sleeveless cowl-necked magnet for males, dismissed caution, and shimmied into it.

Chapter 5

To her chagrin, Rufus arrived wearing a long-sleeved sport shirt with black jeans under a light overcoat. His dreamy eyes took her in from head to foot, apparently appreciating the svelte curves revealed by her burnt orange knit tube dress. His grin didn’t reach his eyes, she noticed. Leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his broad chest, he told her without a trace of a smile and in deadly earnest, “Don’t you play with fire, honey. I wouldn’t want you to get singed.”

She had an awful feeling of defeat, but only temporarily, because she knew that her sharp mind rarely deserted her. She pushed one of the kitchen chairs toward him, hopefully gave him a level stare, and asked in what she had cultivated as her sweetest voice, “You wouldn’t be the culprit, would you?” A bystander would have thought that she was seriously seeking valuable information. “You usually back off when things warm up. So I don’t have to worry about you, do I?” But she quickly realized that Rufus was not in a joshing mood. She saw his body stiffen and his muscles tense and thought of a big cat about to spring.

He rounded the table. “You like to tease, do you? Well…” She headed him off, sensing something subtly different about him. It wasn’t the annoyance; she’d seen him practically furious. It was the steel, a street kind of steel that a man reserves for his true adversary.

She gulped. “I’m not teasing you, I’ve never…”

“I’m not asking you; I’m telling you. You didn’t wear that hot little number all day long, now, did you? And I’ll bet you weren’t wearing it when you called me.”

She backed up a little. Where was that suave, genteel man with the iron control? This Rufus seemed to be itching for friction, to need it. But she was doggoned if she’d let him intimidate her.

“Your reputation doesn’t include being a bully, so be yourself and sit back down.”

His steely, yet strangely gentle fingers sent fiery ripples spiraling down her arm. “Don’t play with me, Naomi. You poured yourself into that thing to get my attention.” He grinned, and she realized for the first time that his grin did not necessarily signify amusement. “You’ve got my attention. I told you that I had no intention of pursuing this…this whatever-you-want-to-call-it between us, and you assumed that I meant I wouldn’t take you to bed. That shows how much you know about what goes on between a man and a woman.”

He was right. She knew very little about it, but enough that she sensed the danger of her galloping attraction to him. She scoffed at him, pretending amusement.

“You do fancy yourself, don’t you? Well, I want you to understand something, Mr. Meade: I don’t knuckle under for any man.”

She watched with frank fascination while Rufus walked away from her, turned, and placed his hands on his hips. “Naomi, only a fool would wrap himself in a red sheet and go out to meet a thousand-pound bull. I don’t fancy myself; but baby, you do fancy me.” Then he added in a dangerously soft voice, “I’d rescue you from a burning building, Naomi, but if you push me another fraction of an inch, I’ll have that dress off of you in a split second. And before you can bat one of your big eyes, you’ll be begging for mercy. Believe it!”

Tiny shivers skittered from her head to her toes and a rapidly spiraling heat suffused her as she imagined what he would be like if she dared him. She stared in rapt attention at his hypnotic face, taking in his serious manner, thrilled at the temptation of him standing before her, tense and flagrantly male, excited in a way that she had never been before. She didn’t wonder or even care what he thought as she stood there looking at him, trembling. Time had no meaning as her gaze traveled up his long, lean frame, pausing briefly on his powerful chest and strong corded neck and reluctantly coming to rest in the turbulent pools of fire that his eyes had become. Vaguely, she realized she needed to compose herself, but a feeling of helplessness nearly overcame her. She rimmed her lips with the tip of her tongue and, with what sense she had left, turned to leave the room.

Rufus narrowed his eyes at what was one of the most lush examples of honest feminine need he’d ever seen. He reached for her, and she moved to him without caution or care, like a moth to a glowing flame, nail to magnet. He gathered her to him with stunning force, and as if it was what she needed, she moved up on tiptoe, curled her arms around his neck, and let her long artist’s fingers weave through the tight black curls at the base of his head. He brushed her lips briefly, molded them softly to his, and held her head while he took his pleasure. Dimly, he realized that she was out of her league when she felt him growing against her and sagged in his arms.

Gently he lifted her and pressed his closed lips to her breast, hating that offending dress that separated him from her flesh. “Rufus. Oh, Rufus.” Was she begging him for more, or pleading for mercy? He couldn’t tell which, but he knew he was rapidly reaching the point where he’d need awesome self-control. He lowered her to her feet, held her away from him, and looked at her. She was as shaken as he, and his behavior annoyed him, because he didn’t want to mislead her or hurt her. And he didn’t trust himself to have an affair with her, after that kiss, which had been even more powerful, more punishing that the other that they had shared, he wouldn’t count on his ability to keep his head straight. He moved away from her, certain from the look of her that she wanted him even closer. And he was pretty sure now that her experience with men had been minimal. But what was he supposed to do while she stood there, apparently absentminded, rubbing the spot where his lips had been? He swore softly and pulled her to him again.

“I want you, Naomi.” He spoke in low guttural tones, the quiver in his voice a sure sign—if she had known it—that he could be putty in her hands. But she didn’t know it, he discovered, and she replied with the volley of an ingénue.

“Please let me go. That doesn’t flatter me, Rufus. I told you, it’s not going to happen now or ever.” If she had been a hot poker in his bare hand, he could hardly have put her away from him more quickly. He had almost made a fool of himself over her, and she’d turned him off, just like that. How could a woman go up in smoke in a man’s arms one minute and arrogantly tell him to get lost the next?

He wiped his mouth symbolically with the back of his hand and allowed her to witness one of his indecipherable grins. “Better stop playing it so close to the edge with me; the next time you behave the way you did tonight, we may both regret it. And Naomi,” he chided gently, almost affectionately, “you deserve better than you asked for just then, and I should have given you better than you got. But I’m human; try to remember that, will you?” There’s something about her that’s different, he thought, but couldn’t name it. Shrugging it off, he reached both hands toward the ceiling and grabbed fists full of air, stretching his big frame like the great cats for which he’d been nicknamed.

Naomi admitted to herself that her passionate exchange with Rufus was a humbling experience, and she had the guilty feeling that she’d brought some of it on herself. She knew how she looked in that dress, but she didn’t intend to worry about it. His last remark convinced her that he really was very likeable, that she could trust him with herself anyplace and at any time. Frankly observing him, she could almost pinpoint the second that he decided to change the tenor of the conversation.

“All right, let’s get started,” he directed. “I’m sure some of the fraternities would be glad to join this; I can get my frat to go along and you might contact your sorority.”

“What’s yours?” she asked. “I’m a Delta.” She shook with laughter at his stunned disbelief that they belonged to brother-sister Greek letter societies. Her Delta to his Omega. Stranger things had happened, she reminded him, hinting that at last they had found common ground.

He feigned innocence. “You’re joking! What do you mean, ‘at last’? What kind of ground was that we found when we were setting each other on fire a minute ago? As an English teacher, you should take a page from Shakespeare, ‘to thine own self be true.’”

She had backed away from involvements, from attachments that she would have liked to pursue, because she didn’t trust a man to love and accept her as she was. And she paid for it in loneliness. Even now, she chose craftily not to reply to his message but to the package in which he wrapped it. “Mr. Meade,” she queried, “where is it written that you’re not a man unless you mention sex at least once in every sentence?”

“Who mentioned sex? I was talking about whatever it is between us that draws us together, no matter how much we swear we don’t want it. I know what I’m backing away from, Naomi, and I know why. But do you?”

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