Sealed With a Kiss

“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.