Sealed With a Kiss (21 page)

“Naomi, I’d bet there isn’t another woman on this earth who starts the kind of fire that you do and never gives a thought about what will happen once it gets going. Honey, I’m in trouble here.”

“What does that mean?” She snuggled close to him; talk about fires was clearly of minor interest.

“It means,” he explained indulgently, “that I’m human, and one day we’re going to exceed my capacity for control.”

She chuckled, obviously unconcerned, and teased, “If you lose it, we’ll work something out.”

His eyebrows arched upward.
“What?”
She continually astonished him; surely she wasn’t that innocent.

She seemed to throw away all caution. “Now, now! Don’t get your dander up. You told me to trust you, and that’s what I’m doing.”

“Naomi, I am trying to have a serious discussion with you. Would you please not joke?” Sometimes he thought she might be playing a game. She couldn’t be as naive as she seemed, could she? It was near the end of the twentieth century, for heaven’s sake; how could such a beautiful woman insulate herself to the point that she knew practically noting about men?
And why would she do it?

Her voice came to him as if from a distance, disturbing his worrisome thoughts. “You’re right, I guess. But I already told you that I haven’t had too much practice with this kind of thing. Give me time.”

He was about to probe dangerously deep when he remembered Judd Logan’s words:
“It’s been almost fourteen years since she let herself get as close to a man as she was to you last night. And I know that for a fact.”
Naomi forestalled any comment that he might have made by drifting into a soft hum of Duke Ellington’s
Solitude.
As she had no doubt hoped, he let the matter of his self-control drop. And there, beneath the Louisiana moon, he opened he jacket of his tuxedo, got as much of her in it as he could, wrapped her close, and began a slow one-step on the bank of the Mississippi.

He disliked ambivalence in himself. After such an evening with a woman, he’d have expected them to spend the rest of the night together. And he was tempted, almost eager for it. But he needed more from her than what he was certain would be mind-shattering sex. He wanted total communication, all of her. The problem was that he didn’t know for how long, only that he needed it. When had he come so far, and how? When she was soft and loving, like now, he never wanted to leave her.

She commented on the eeriness of a dingy lit barge that chugged down the river with the help of a ghostly tugboat. A hoarse horn warning an approaching vessel had broken the night silence and their mood. He looked down at her comfortably settled in his arms, but seemingly oblivious to her effect on him, and he wondered how he made her feel. His mood changed, and she eased out of his arms.

“Maybe we should be getting back. That taxi driver probably thinks we’ve decided to spend the night.” She stumbled. “There goes my shoe heel.” He checked, saw that it was broken, lifted her, and began walking toward the taxi.

He held her closer when she shifted in his arms and demanded that he put her down. “I may need help, as you impressed upon me on more than one occasion,” he reminded her, “but at least I know how to accept it when I get it. You’ve got to learn how to accept help—and compliments, too—graciously. I’m not putting you down. You can’t walk if one shoe has a three-inch heel and the other is flat.” He opened the door and put her in the taxi.

“You’re attentive, and I like that, but I don’t want to be suffocated,” she mumbled grumpily. He sensed that she was distancing herself, putting her emotional barrier back in place, and he was getting tired of it.

It was best to tell her good night in the hotel lobby. He wanted to spend the night with her, but he didn’t want to have to pick his way through her minefield of personal conflicts. And he had a choice of that or settling for physical release, something he rejected. Both of them deserved better. Rather than deal with the heat he knew would consume them if he walked her to her door, he’d just look up some old buddies. At the elevator, his kissed her quickly and left her.

He changed his ticket so that they could fly back to Washington together. Even after the two-hour flight, she was still withdrawn. He instructed the taxi driver to take her home first. At her door, he told her that he would be away for a week or ten days.

“I have to go to Lagos, Nigeria, to get material for a magazine piece that I agreed to write. I could have refused, but not without some backlash. I won’t see you again before I leave, but I’ll call you.”

Her surprise was evident. He knew that her mental wheels were busily turning and that she would reach the wrong conclusion: he hadn’t hinted about it during three days in New Orleans, when they had been together almost constantly, nor during their flight back to Washington.

Her response wasn’t what he’d expected. “What about Sheldon and Preston? Will they stay with Jewel?” He shook his head in dismay. Why in the name of God did she cling so tenaciously to her rigid self-control?

“Yes. Of course.” He leaned casually against the door. “She takes good care of them, but…I don’t know. I hate to leave them again so soon, especially to go out of the country. I like to be here for them if they need me.” His voice trailed off.

“When will you leave?”

He studied her carefully. Did it matter to her? She was behaving as if their relationship was entirely impersonal.

“Day after tomorrow. I have to get back before Christmas.” He continued to look at her for a good while and would have walked away, but she stepped closer, grazed his lips slightly and quickly with her own, and whispered, “Come back safe—and soon.” He kissed her then, turned, and left. But a keen sense of dissatisfaction enveloped him. His own feelings were more ambivalent than they had been the night before, while they’d held each other on the bank of the Mississippi. He knew that was partly due to Naomi’s coolness. She was baffling. Their relationship was baffling. He was convinced that it was in his best interest to stay away from her, but he didn’t seem able to; he was drawn to her, and the pull was unlike anything he had experienced with any other woman. But she would swear that there could be nothing between them, and in less than five minutes, she could be in his arms, heating him up until he wanted to explode. And you’re no better, his conscience nagged at him. Maybe by the time he got back from Nigeria, it would be out of his system. He laughed derisively; there wasn’t much hope for that.

Naomi unpacked, put her soiled things in the laundry, and went to the refrigerator to see what she could find for dinner. Was there another like him? A man, a quintessential male who enjoyed nurturing his small boys, who fretted about leaving them in good care only for a week? Didn’t he see in his own dilemma what his mother must have faced countless times?

“I’m not going to think about Rufus,” she told herself adamantly. She wasn’t sorry that she had gone to New Orleans, nor that they had gotten close to each other while there. But she wished she hadn’t let him know that she cared for him. She hadn’t been able to help herself. When he had indicated that he was fed up and left her, she’d thought she’d never be with him again and had weakened. And she
had
needed him. Then he’d walked back into her hotel room with his arms open and gathered her to him, and she had felt for the first time since her mother’s death that someone cared for her and wanted to protect her.

He claimed that his shoulders were big enough for whatever burden she was carrying and that together they could work through any problem she had. All she had to do was open up her soul to him, tell him about her mistakes, what hurt her, the dilemma she faced. He didn’t want much—just for her to lay her heart on the line and give him proof positive that she wasn’t what he thought, so he could turn his back and crush her heart. I’d rather have a broken heart and his respect than to have his scorn
as well as
a broken heart, she told herself. I was right all along; there’s no place for him in my life.

Chapter 11

S
leep didn’t come easily for Naomi that night. The decision she’d reached was a troublesome one, but it was time to put order into her life. She got out of bed before sunrise and waited impatiently until she could telephone Judd’s lawyer. He didn’t welcome her call nor the information that she had followed him and had been policing the Hopkins house. But she got what she wanted from him: the boy did not attend school out of town, but worked after school and on weekends. Sitting in front of the house, waiting for him to come home from school, had been a waste of time.

She switched tactics and began morning surveillance. On the second day, she saw him just as she drove up. Her heart pounded painfully as she watched him jump off the porch onto the walkway and breeze away on his in-line skates with his book satchel on his back. He was tall for his age, as she’d expected he’d be, and had his hair cut in the style of a Mohawk warrior. She couldn’t see his facial features, except for the café-au-lait complexion that he’d inherited from his father, along with towering height; but she didn’t doubt he was hers. She couldn’t doubt it; every molecule in her body had reacted to him. She tried without success to steady her hands on the steering wheel, and for an hour, she sat there trying to summon enough calm to drive home.

Her spirits lifted when she found in her mailbox letters from chairs of fine arts departments at three universities, each asking for more information about Linda. The girl’s sketches had impressed them, and their carefully worded letters allowed Naomi to hope that Linda would get the training her talent warranted.

Naomi’s attempts to work proved a waste of time. Disconcerted, she intermittently pondered what to do about her son or sat catatonic-like, stunned by the proof that she had a child almost as tall as she was. She noticed the flashing red button on her answering machine and played her messages back without really listening to them—until Rufus’s voice pierced her dim consciousness. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to return my call last evening and that you had to leave home so early this morning. I’m on my way to Washington National Airport. Take care.” She replayed it three times. No goodbye. No “See you when I get back.” Nothing. A bottomless, piercing ache dulled her insides, and she knew that its only cures—her son and the man she loved—were out of her reach. She swallowed the bitterness, stood up, and looked around her. Her bedroom appeared to be the same; so did her hands when she glanced at them. But nothing was the same, and it never would be again. The whole world had changed. She had a boy who was at least five feet eight inches, and she had never touched him. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “I’ll be damned if I’ll cry.”

Two mornings after that, Naomi stood by a window in her studio, painting a winter scene from a photograph that she had taken in Rock Creek Park the previous winter. Realizing that she had absentmindedly juxtaposed on the scene of pristine white snow and evergreen shrubs the shadowed silhouettes of a man and two small boys, she put her brush aside and threw the canvas into the wastebasket. “Just like I’m messing up my life.” She answered the telephone reluctantly to hear Jewel ask the unthinkable and the impossible.

“I can’t do that, Jewel,” she pleaded. “I can’t keep Rufus’s boys. He’d never forgive you. Things aren’t good between us, and they aren’t going to get any better.” But she finally acceded to Jewel’s request. With her husband hospitalized for a ruptured appendix, Rufus’s sister couldn’t care for her own children, and since the boys wanted to stay with her, she reasoned, she couldn’t refuse. Jewel couldn’t leave them with a stranger. She lost the battle with her conscience and her heart.

“I don’t have room enough here, Jewel, so you’ll have to let me stay at Rufus’s house with them. He won’t like it,” she warned again.

She had her telephone calls transferred, got some crayons and a small sketchpad for the children to use, packed a few personal things, and left. At the elevator, she stopped and considered taking her work with her, thought better of the idea, and continued on her way. She was unprepared for the boys’ joyous reception; they danced, laughed, and smothered her with hugs and kisses. She knelt and held them in her arms, her heart lighter with the feeling that she was no longer so alone and that the horrible ache that had plagued her all morning had dulled and become almost bearable. She closed her eyes and hugged them to her.

Naomi looked up, embarrassed, to find Jewel watching them and knew the conclusion that Rufus’s sister had reached. But she couldn’t hide her feelings for the children. Jewel gave her the keys to Rufus’s cars and the money he’d left with her and went home.

Naomi packed the happy boys into the back seat of her car, strapped them in, and went grocery shopping. Rufus had obviously taught them to be helpful, because they advised her on brand names, the color of grapes—they always bought green ones—and the size, shape, and color of the milk container, among other things. She didn’t believe Sheldon’s claim that Rufus always bought them a big bag of candy and ignored it.

She couldn’t remember a happier time in her life. She devoted her days to the children, discovering that they loved to draw and to sing, helped them make welcome-home drawings for their father, and plastered them all along the wall for him to see as he climbed the stairs. Rufus’s grill was too heavy for her to move out of the garage, so she put together a makeshift one and they roasted hot dogs on the back terrace.

The days passed swiftly, and she realized she didn’t want her time with the little boys to end, didn’t want to return to her own life, with its web of secrets, uncertainty, and heartbreak. But Rufus was to return the next day, so in the evening she cooked what she knew he liked, got the house in order, gave the boys their bath, and helped them into their pajamas. She read them a story that she had written and illustrated for them. It was about two little boys, their daddy, and a fawn that had wandered lost into their garden. The boys loved the story and had demanded it each night after that.

She had slept every night in Rufus’s big bed, rationalizing that she should be near the boys, who had the adjoining room, rather than at the end of the hall, in the guestroom. She loved to read in bed and was enjoying a historical romance when a powerful clap of thunder seemed to shake the house. A brilliant bolt of lightning followed. Thunderstorms made her nervous, but there was no time to indulge in fear. At the second and even louder burst of thunder, both boys came running into the room and tumbled into the bed on each side of her. She got out of bed and turned on all the upstairs lights so that the lightning flashes wouldn’t seem so ominous, then crawled back into bed between the twins and decided it was as good a time as any to teach them
Jingle Bells.

Rufus said a prayer of thanks as the big jet rolled to a stop at Washington National Airport. The trip had been twice as long as scheduled and fraught with peril and near disaster; at one point, he’d wondered if he’d ever get home. An attempted hijacking at an airport in Africa had been tragically foiled; at Heathrow Airport in London, the plane had landed in a heavy rainstorm; and the flight from there to Washington had been diverted to Philadelphia due to the storms hovering over the lower half of the eastern seaboard. It had taken hours to get a plane out of Philadelphia. More than once during the ordeal he had thought of his mother, whose life had been ended while she was on a business trip only a few hundred miles from Lagos. He got through customs quickly, hailed a taxi, and decided to go directly home to get the minivan. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was eight-thirty, but he wanted to see his boys and he wanted them home with him. Anxiety gnawed at him when he saw that every room on the second floor of his house was brightly lit. No one was supposed to be there.

He unlocked his front door and opened it carefully. Nothing seemed amiss. The storm might have caused a short circuit or something similar; at least, he hoped that explained it. He set his luggage in the foyer and moved carefully into the hallway, where he could see the staircase and the light in the upstairs hall.

Halfway up the stairs, he simultaneously noticed the childish drawings and clay figures and heard the singing. He bounded up the remaining steps three at a time. They didn’t hear him, and he stood unnoticed at his bedroom door and took in the incredible scene. Preston and Sheldon sang lustily at the tops of their little voices, laughing and jumping around Naomi, hugging and teasing her, and she was adoring them, showing them in numerous tender ways that she loved them. He heard her patiently explain to Sheldon that the word was jingle and dingle, then watched her take his little face into the palms of her hands and tell him that he was smart and wonderful and that she “loved him to pieces.” Preston sat in her lap, and she cuddled him playfully, and then the boys knocked her backward and the three of them laughed hysterically.

His heart swelled in his chest until he almost burst with joy. Could he be dreaming? It was his house, his bed, his boys, and Naomi. He clutched at his chest as if to stop his heart’s wild pound, as if to control the dizzying delirium that sped through him. He loved her. Right there, he knew that he loved her totally, profoundly, and irrevocably. He thought of his reservations about her, his convictions about independent women, his sworn resolve to put her out of his life. None of it mattered. Even his suspicions were unimportant. He loved! For the first time in his life, he loved! He pushed away from the door, his only thought being to get to them and to her and to get them into his arms. Naomi and his sons saw him and welcomed him with shrieks of joy. He gathered them to him and held them, and the boys began talking excitedly, but Naomi only gasped her amazement at his unexpected presence, clearly overwhelmed.

She struggled to detach herself from the aura of unbridled joy that permeated the room. He had so much love to give, and he showered it on his boys. She longed to be a part of it, to belong to them, but she had made her decision and she would abide by it. She watched enviously as he hugged and teased his boys, giving himself to them without reservation. Nearly an hour elapsed before he calmed them and got them to sleep.

“No reading tonight,” he told them. “It’s already two hours past your bedtime.” They didn’t want to cooperate, but sleep soon claimed them, and he finally turned his attention to her. She remained in the middle of his bed wearing her cotton ski pajamas, too shocked to be embarrassed. He hadn’t been angry, but happy…and almost lighthearted. She got up slowly and reached for her robe, which she’d thrown across the foot of his bed.

“Where are you going?” His voice was low and husky, almost a growl. And there was a tinge of belligerence, too. She looked up at him, wonder if his earlier pleasantness had been a sham.

“I’m going home. Now that you’re here, there’s no need for me to stay.” She backed away a step, almost bumping into a bookcase, when he walked over and stopped right before her. He brushed her cheek with the thumb of his left hand and searched her eyes, and her heart began a furious pounding in her chest. She stifled a sob and turned quickly away. Her heart wanted her to stay with him always, but her head admonished her to remember her son and her vow that he would be a part of her life.

His hand rested lightly on her shoulder. “What happened? I left the boys at Jewel’s house.” She told him.

“Jeff’s recovering from an operation for a ruptured appendix, and Jewel is taking care of him. He’s been very sick, but he’s coming along nicely. Their kids are with Jeff’s parents, and I agreed to keep your boys.” He nodded. She hated that he’d found her in his bed wearing dreary, unfeminine pajamas, and that because she hadn’t been expecting him, she’d been uninhibited in her welcome. She wasn’t certain whether he was pleased to find her there with his boys, and he seemed to sense that.

He took her hand, walked over to the bed, and sat down. “I hope you realize,” he said in a warm, reassuring voice, “that if my boys couldn’t have remained with Jewel, you’re the
only
person I’d have wanted them to be with. They love you, and you love them. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done.” She wanted to go home. She didn’t want his appreciation; she couldn’t let him thank her for the happiness she’d had with his children. She spoke dispassionately, in a detached voice.

“It was my pleasure, Rufus. Please don’t take that away by thanking me. I’m glad you’re home safe. Now I have to go.”

He looked at her and thought of the way she’d been in the middle of his big bed, gamboling with his sons. Thought of the nights when he had tossed in that same bed, wanting her so badly that it pained him. Thought about how much he loved and needed her, needed to love her, to give himself to her. Desire flared in him, but he had promised himself that he wouldn’t touch her unless and until she assured him that she wanted him and would never regret holding him in her body. He tried to cool the heat that invaded his loins, but the fire intensified.

“Don’t go, Naomi. Stay here…with me. Please stay.” He didn’t attempt to hide the low shimmer of his voice or the pleading tone that sprang from the pit of his gut. She reached out to caress his face, and the feel of her silky fingers gently soothing him was more than he could bear; he grasped wrist and pulled her to him. “I need you.
Naomi, I
need you!
”

She gazed at him as though disbelieving her ears, as if she was afraid to hear his words, afraid that he might be serious.

She glanced up, intending to tell him that she was definitely leaving, and gasped at the naked, vulnerable look of longing on his face. The temptation was so great; she could go home and have all her worries greet her when she got there, or she could stay with him and…and then what? She stood, determined to be sensible.