Sealed With a Kiss Read online

  “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.