After the Loving (22 page)

She nodded. “Yes. I know every word of it.”

He had unnerved her, and that wasn’t his intention; he had only wanted to let her know what she meant to him, and that nothing she told him would change what he felt for her.

“This means more to me than…Russ, I don’t know how to express what I’m feeling right now.”

“Just trust me to be with you through whatever you’re facing.”

She rested her head against the back of the chair, folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes.

“What is it? Don’t you feel well?”

“Sorry,” she said, sitting forward and looking directly at him. “I’m fine. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, but before we get to what was on my mind when I called you, I have to tell you what happened to me just before dark this afternoon, around five, or so. I hope you’ll believe me, because I’m having trouble believing it myself.”

He dragged the hassock over to her chair and sat down beside her. “Go on. I’ll believe you.”

He listened to her incredible story of the old man and his German shepherd. “You weren’t frightened?”

“No. I invited him in for coffee or tea, which he declined, and then I offered to drive him to Beaver Ridge, but he refused that offer as well.”

Holding both of her hands in his, he ruminated over what she told him. Finally, after thrashing it around in his mind for a while, he said, “Isn’t there a lesson in this? I mean, it’s as if you were getting divine guidance.”

“Maybe. I guess so. But hold that thought until after I tell you what I called you about.”

He got up, poured her a glass of Chardonnay and opened a beer for himself, then he sat on the hassock and said, “I’m listening.”

“First, I should have told you that I’m trying to purchase a building, a place where I can locate my business. It has to be large enough for an office, a testing kitchen, and storage space for my standard supplies. Something like a warehouse. I have a real-estate agent handling it. It’s something I should have discussed with you before I took the first step.”

“I’m glad you’re doing this. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I guess because I’m not used to sharing my personal and business activities. I’ve always worked alone. I hope you understand.”

“I do. Will you tell me more about it? Not now, but before you sign anything.”

“I will,” she said, “and I…I may even ask you to look it over.”

“I’ll be glad to do that. What was the other thing?”

“Well, that’s about me. On the advice of my nutritionist, I was examined by a medical doctor, and after some tests, he said I have a hypothyroid that makes it difficult for me to lose weight and easy for me to gain. I’m taking medicine for it, but that alone won’t keep me from gaining. I’ll still
have to eat sensibly and exercise daily, but I won’t blow up every time I eat a bowl of grits.”

He wanted to ask her how long she’d known that, but decided that she might consider the question provocative. Instead, he asked her how she felt about herself after learning that what she had considered a weight problem could be a health condition.

“Does knowing that make a difference in the way you feel about yourself?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Uh, my nutritionist is a buddy from my college days. We were roommates. She thinks… Well—”

“Tell me. Don’t hold back. Let me be with you in this.”

She didn’t look directly at him, but seemed to have found something interesting just over his left shoulder. “Lydia—that’s her name—Lydia said I never worried about my weight when I was in college, and Alexis said that whatever is going on with me now is…uh, deeper than…than how I look.”

He’d thought that all along. “Do you…plan to get help with this?”

“Yes. I’m working on it.” She paused, as if in thought. “I’m thinking about what that old man said— ‘Any man would be proud to have me for a daughter.’”

Remembering that part of her strange story gave him a slight chill. “He was right, but I wonder how he knew.”

Her shrug was barely noticeable, but it told him that she was equally perplexed. “I’m beginning to like your idea that I was getting divine guidance. I can use some more of that.”

For the first time, she sipped the wine, but when he looked at his beer, he saw that it had no foam. He discarded it in the kitchen and got another one.

“I appreciate your telling me this. By taking me into your confidence, you’re telling me that I’m important to you.”

Her gaze held a quizzical expression. “Didn’t you know that? Do you think I would make love with a man who wasn’t important to me, that I could enjoy such intimacy with a man I didn’t care deeply for? Are you serious?”

“I don’t think it’s the same thing,” he began, but as if her words had triggered a reminder of what they experienced that long night of loving, she rimmed her lips with the tip of her tongue and her eyes took on the dark, shimmering glaze that he’d come to recognize in her as desire. Desire for
him
. And like a river seeking its sea, his blood plowed headlong toward his loins.

He put the beer on the floor beside the hassock, took the glass of wine from her fingers and placed it beside the beer. “I need you.”

She stood and held out her right hand to him. In a second, he was on his feet with his arms around her and his fingers gripping her tightly to his body. Her lips parted, and his tongue found its home in the sweet warmth of her mouth.

“So long,” she murmured against his lips when he released her. “It’s been so long.”

He gazed down into her face, knowing that the most essential question between man and woman blazed on his. “I don’t want to take you upstairs.”

Her arm draped around his waist, holding him as if she feared releasing him. “Come with me.”

He wanted to pick her up and carry her to her bed, but he knew she would begin thinking about her weight, and he wanted that as far from her thoughts as possible. Arm and arm, they walked down the hall to her room. Henry and Alexis wouldn’t like finding a wineglass and beer tankard on the floor, but the throbbing in his loins made every thing or person other than Velma insignificant.

As he had sat at her feet, first holding her hands and then gripping her knees, his gaze pinned on her, she had hardly
been able to think of what she wanted to tell him. With his gentle acceptance of her shortcoming as a friend, if not as a lover, love bloomed in her heart for him as never before. He hadn’t questioned her failure to tell him of the doctor’s diagnosis, and he had a right to know that, if nothing else. A man might not want to be saddled with a woman who had health problems when she was barely thirty. Without warning, every atom and molecule in her body responded to him, and he knew it. Somehow, her body communicated to him its needs.

She controlled the urge to run with him to her room, but she wanted to, for frissons of heat swirled around in her, igniting every nerve end in her body. He closed the door behind them, and she turned to him with lips parted and took him in. But she knew at once that he was as hungry as she, when he trapped her between himself and the wall, twirling his tongue in and out of her mouth in a certain promise and pressing his bulging need against her belly. She thought she would scream in her impatience to know again the pleasure of his thrusts within her.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he said. “I need a little help here, or I’ll explode.”

“I want you the way you are and the way you have to be. Just love me, Russ. That’s all I need.”

“Can you slow down now, and let me lead us? I want it to work for both of us. Later, whatever you want and whatever you do will suit me.”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t, for his hand had snaked down to her bosom, and his fingers were teasing her nipple while his tongue danced in her mouth. She reached up until she could touch his head.

“What do you want?” The words seemed torn from him.

“I want your mouth on my breast,” she said, freeing it
from the rounded neckline of her dress before he could manage it.

When he looked down at the glistening brown areola and licked his lips, she sucked in her breath and waited for the pleasure of feeling his mouth on her. He lowered his head, sucked her into his mouth and feasted there until tremors shook her. He stopped, unzipped her dress and, when she stepped out of it, tossed it across a chair. He picked her up and lay her on the bed. Then, with fingers that trembled, he unhooked her garters, rolled down her stockings and pulled off the garter belt.

“Help me with this thing,” he said of her brassiere that fastened in the back. She unhooked it, and he leaned over her, spreading kisses over her face, neck and ears until she moaned, “You know what I want. Don’t tease.” She thought she would bounce off the bed when his tongue began twirling around her right areola and his fingers slid up her thigh, parted her folds and began their magic.

“Please, honey. Take off your clothes. I’m going out of my mind.” She unfastened his belt, yanked it off and tugged at his sweater. Within seconds he stripped himself and removed her bikini panties.

“Now,” she said. “Now.”

But he resumed the tease and torture, suckling her and letting his talented fingers dance at the entrance of her love portal, strumming her the way a master lyrist plays the lyre. Her belly quivered and her legs trembled until, nearly wild in her passion, she swung her body up to him, took him in her hands and pressed upward until she had him within her.

With one hand beneath her hips and the other one around her shoulder, he moved within her, stroking and twisting, until she tightened around him and every part of her, every pore in her body, opened to him.

“I can’t bear it,” she moaned. “I’m so full.”

He increased the pace, rocking her until she felt the heat at the bottom of her feet and the pumping and squeezing in her vagina. And then she howled in release, sinking to the depths, while he stroked her, dragging her from the abyss of her orgasm and catapulting her to the pinnacle of ecstasy.

Flinging her arms wide, she cried out. “Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord.”

“Is it good to you?” he asked her. “Is it? Is it?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Do you want anybody else? Do you?”

“Only you,” she moaned. “I only want you.”

He gripped her to him, rocked her, lost his body, mind and soul in the valley of her passion and gave her the essence of himself.

A
couple of hours before daylight, Russ made it upstairs to his room by the force of more willpower than he remembered ever having exerted. Leaving her had nearly killed him, but he couldn’t afford to expose her by allowing his family to know he hadn’t slept in his bed.

He loved her. Oh, how he loved her, but the knowledge that another human being had the ability to control him, to bend him, sent chills through his body. He stripped, threw himself across his bed, buried his face in the pillow and groaned. If he was as much like his father as his uncle Fentress proclaimed, would he also be a doormat for the woman he loved? He believed in himself, in his strength as a man, but the knowledge was of little comfort; he knew that generation after generation, history repeated itself.

He tossed for a while, then got up, slid beneath the covers and waited for daylight. It seemed to him that the wind had never howled so fiercely or so noisily, but he knew it wasn’t
the wind but his troubled mind that made him too restless to fall asleep.

At the first streak of dawn, he rolled out of bed, donned a robe and went to the bathroom. With both Alexis and Tara living on the second floor, he could no longer stroll around naked. The shower refreshed his body but left his emotions seriously in need of repair. He walked into the breakfast room, saw that the table hadn’t been set and went to the kitchen to find Henry.

“What happened to you?” Henry asked him, measuring the flour for biscuit dough. “Ya sick? It’s a quarter past six in the morning.”

“Must have looked at the clock wrong. I’ll set the table.”

Henry put the bag of flour aside and stared at Russ. “I knowed you since before you turned seven, and I never knowed ya to lie. As late as you always sleep, yer body’s clock shoulda told you it wasn’t nine o’clock. Something ain’t right with ya.”

He wasn’t up to hassling with Henry. “I’m going in there to set the table. Hurry up with those biscuits.”

“And when did you start doing housework? You ain’t like yerself.”

He knew Henry cared deeply for him, but he was in no mood for the man’s pungent observations. “I have an apartment, as you well know, and I live alone. Who do you think does the housework?”

“You don’t. Probably looks like a pigpen. Here’re some clean napkins. Bennie ironed them yesterday.”

He was supposed to respond with a witty remark to the mention of Bennie, but he didn’t feel like it. He put the napkins on a tray beside the glasses. “Thanks. Glad to hear she did some work.”

Placing the napkins, glasses and flatware mechanically,
his thoughts elsewhere, he didn’t hear footsteps, so he whirled around, nearly dropping a glass when Telford said, “What’s this? Man, I didn’t know you knew how to set a table.”

“Why shouldn’t I know how? I’ve been eating at tables since I was three.”

He didn’t look up, but he could feel his brother’s hard stare when he said, “What wildcat did you… Say, what’s the matter? It isn’t even six-thirty.”

“I know what time it is, Telford,” he said, wishing he’d stayed in his room and realizing that with every word he uttered, he increased suspicions about himself. He glanced up to see a troubled expression on his brother’s face and wanted to apologize, but if he did that, he’d get a battery of questions.

It occurred to him that his laughter, joking and lightheartedness of the past weeks had led his family to expect that of him, but he was behaving as he had before Velma taught him to laugh, to enjoy just being alive. Too bad. He didn’t feel like being frivolous.

“Is Henry in the kitchen?” Telford asked him.

“Yeah. He’s making biscuits.”

“Thank God that’s
one
thing I can count on around here,” Telford said, spun around and headed for the kitchen.

He finished setting the table and considered sitting down at his usual place and waiting for breakfast, but he thought better of it, got a mackinaw from the closet in the foyer and went outside.

He walked down the road, feeling the invigorating bite of the late winter wind in the early dawn, and when a fawn scrambled across his path, he stopped, knowing that the doe would follow, putting him in danger if he was between her and her calf. While he waited, he slipped his hands into
his pants pockets for warmth, and his fingers settled on his keys.

As if propelled by a force outside of himself, he turned back, got into his Mercedes and drove off. With no destination in mind, he headed toward the sunrise. Two hours later, he sat on the banks of the Patapsco River, drinking coffee from a paper cup and shuffling through the pages of his mind. Some new pages and some tattered and yellowed with age.

Was it reasonable for a man to lose himself so completely in a woman? Three times the night before, he’d given her all of himself. Everything. As vulnerable to her as a newborn baby. And then, when he’d thought himself sapped of energy and drained of desire, she settled herself atop him, loved and kissed him from head to foot and, if that hadn’t nearly disintegrated him, she then took him, all of him, his essence, stripping him of himself.

He would never forget soaring unfettered and uncontrolled, his manhood fully and finally glorified to the utmost. He swallowed the last of the coffee and pitched the cup into a nearby refuse basket. The memory of it would remain with him for as long as he lived, and he would love her for just as long.

“Say, buddy. That your car parked over there in that no-parking area?”

He looked up into the face of a Maryland highway patrolman. “Yes. It’s mine. I didn’t realize parking here is prohibited.”

“Let’s see your papers.”

Russ got up and stood facing the man. “They’re in my car behind the visor. Officer, are you married?”

“Been married for eleven years. Good years. Why?” the man asked, as if getting such a question was not unusual in his normal working day.

You could say things to a stranger that you wouldn’t dare mention to anyone else, because he would never see you again. Russ looked the officer in the eye, wanting to be certain that the answer he got was the truth.

“Did you ever feel as if you didn’t own yourself?” he asked the man. “That you didn’t belong to your
own
self? I mean when the woman you love
really
loves you, do you have to lose your insides?”

The officer braced his hands against his hips and looked hard at Russ. “Hadn’t thought of it that way, but I can remember a couple of times when it sure seemed like that, when I gave up everything, including my
self
. That was a while back. I wouldn’t mind if it happened now two or three times a week, if I get your meaning.
Say!
You weren’t thinking of jumping into this river, were you?”

Russ stared at the man. “Good Lord, no. But that a woman could have that much control over me—”

“Not to worry, friend. The good thing about it is that she doesn’t know it. Trust me, she’s so busy doubting herself that she would never believe it.”

They walked together to the car, and Russ opened the door and gave the officer his papers.

“They seem in order,” the patrolman said. Then his gaze bored into Russ. “You can start worrying when she no longer gives you an opportunity to lose yourself. Until then, consider yourself a lucky man. And watch where you park.”

That No Parking sign wasn’t there when he got out of the car, and he’d swear to it, but he thought it wise not to voice his thoughts. He got into the Mercedes, ignited the engine and looked back to wave at the patrolman, but didn’t see him or his car. He switched off the engine and brushed his hand across his forehead, wondering whether the patrolman
had anything in common with the old man and the German shepherd.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” he said aloud, “but one thing is certain—I’m in one hell of a spot with Velma.” He ignited the engine and headed for Eagle Park.

“You mean he just went off without a word to anybody?” Alexis asked Telford when she joined him for breakfast.

“That’s right. I wonder if he and Velma had a fight.”

“Just like he used to be. Tight-lipped and sharp-tongued,” Henry said and sat down with them to eat his regular breakfast of fresh fruit, cereal and coffee. Henry didn’t believe in clogging his arteries with biscuits, sausage, eggs, and bacon. “I wonder what coulda happened. When we left them in the den last night, they didn’t look like two people likely to get into a fight.” Henry added, “’Course it won’t be the first time I was wrong.”

“I’m going down there and find out why Velma hasn’t come to breakfast,” Alexis said. “This isn’t one bit like Russ. Maybe I can help.”

“Just a minute,” Velma said in answer to Alexis’s knock. Velma opened the door and her mouth dropped open seconds before her lashes covered her eyes. Alexis didn’t doubt that her sister expected her visitor to be Russ.

“Hi,” she said with a breeziness intended to cover the awkwardness of the situation. “Aren’t you coming to breakfast?”

Velma’s face darkened into a frown. “Why, yes, but it’s not quite eight-thirty. Any…uh, problems?”

“Well,” Alexis said, temporarily at a loss for words, “you usually eat early. I wanted to be sure you’re all right.”

“I got to sleep late.”

“Nothing wrong, I hope.” Even to herself, she sounded as if she was fishing for information.

But Velma’s face transformed itself into a brilliant smile. “No, indeed. It was the most wonderful night of my life. Oh, Alexis. I can’t begin to tell you how I feel. Russ is…he’s wonderful. He…he’s precious to me.”

“No help here,” Alexis said to herself. “Honey, I’m happy for you. Nothing compares with the love of a wonderful man. It was a long time coming, but you have it now, and you’re very fortunate. So is he. I’d better finish my breakfast.”

“You stopped eating to come see if I was all right?”

She patted Velma’s shoulder. “When you’re a creature of habit, expect such things. We let Tara sleep late on Saturdays, and she’ll be down in a few minutes. She’ll want pancakes, too, and I’m not sure Henry made the batter. See you later.”

Polite, meaningless chatter. She hated making talk, but how else could she have closed the conversation without raising her sister’s suspicions? She went back to the breakfast room to finish her meal.

“I take it she was alone,” Telford said, after Henry left the table.

“Alone and floating on the clouds. They were together last night, and they definitely did not have a fight. That makes his disappearance even more inexplicable.”

“Depends on how his mind’s working. He won’t let too much time pass without giving me a call,” Telford said.

She braced her right elbow on the arm of her chair, took several sips of coffee and studied her husband’s face. “If he’s got his thinking cap on, he’ll call Velma. She’s the one he’s going to have to deal with.”

At about two o’clock that afternoon, Velma began to pack. Henry, Telford, Alexis and Tara had each found a reason to stay in their room or, at least, to keep out of her sight. She saw nothing that she could kick, slam or throw,
and with no outlet for her anger, she decided to leave. Russ had a reason for his behavior, but she didn’t care to know what it was.

“Mind if I come in?” Alexis asked, already walking through the door. “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Just what it looks like. I’m going home. I don’t need to be here to find out what he’s got to say. I don’t want to hear it, and I’m not going to listen. He owes me better than this. Dammit, he can’t love me out of my senses and then walk off as if I don’t exist. Damn him!”

“I think you should sit down and calm yourself. Convict him after you let him have his say. And leave anger and self-pride out of it. If he made you so happy, what do you think you did to him? You don’t know what happened to him in that bed with you last night. Until he tells you that, hold your tongue, because saying you’re sorry will be wasted on Russ.”

Velma put her hands on her hips and glared at her sister. “And his sorry will be wasted on me, too.”

When Alexis put both arms around her, she had to fight back the tears. “He did a real job on me last night, Sis. I couldn’t forget him if my life depended on it, but that doesn’t mean I have to accept this. I won’t.”

At the soft knock on the door, both of their heads snapped up, and when Velma didn’t speak, Alexis answered.

“Yes?”

“Open the door, please, Velma.”

Velma sucked in her breath and grabbed her chest as if that would slow down her heartbeat.

“Good luck,” Alexis said, rushed to the door and opened it. “You’ve got your work cut out for you,” she said to Russ and headed down the hall.

“Don’t I know it!”

She stood rooted in the spot as he walked in and
closed the door behind him. “I see you’re packing. You have every right to be angry. Yes, and hurt. I didn’t do it deliberately.”

“How can you say that? Did somebody put a gun in your back?”

When he didn’t respond to that remark, she braced herself for words that she would probably rather not hear.

“What we did in this room, in that bed last night knocked the stuffing out of me,” he said without preliminaries. “I’d never had such an experience. Never. You made me king of the world. What I was feeling for you when I stumbled out of this room at four-thirty this morning scared the living hell out of me. I knew I loved you and that you loved me, but I didn’t have a clue as to what that meant until last night.”

She wasn’t prepared for that, and his confession rocked her, settled deep inside, down in the pit of her where she lived. She had to sit down lest her legs desert her, and she groped toward the edge of the bed, sat there and looked up at him.

“When I woke up this morning, every atom of my being loved you. I loved the whole world. I cried because I was so happy that I couldn’t contain what I was feeling for you. I wallowed in the bed, kissing and hugging the pillow on which you had laid your head. I kissed the air. I sang in the shower, and I danced until I was exhausted. Then I dressed, went to the breakfast room, sat down, and Henry said, ‘We don’t know where he went.’ It was downhill from there.”

He walked over to the window that faced the garden, turned and walked back to her. “It may sound trite, but you must know that I’d rather hurt myself than you. I was sitting at the edge of the Patapsco River down near Sykesville trying to deal with…” He threw up his hands. “With us. When I finally got a grip on myself, my first thought was that I’d hurt you, that I’d probably damaged what was most
precious to me. If you can’t forgive me, I’ll have to accept it, but I don’t know how I’ll live with it.”