Forbidden Temptation

“He asked me to go to the frat dance with him Saturday after next.”

“Must not be the same Lawrence. I don’t know of a Kappa dance coming up anywhere near here.”

She didn’t press it. “Thanks. Must not be the same guy,” she said, but she knew it was the same man.

She gave it to Lawrence Hill straight when he called and asked her, “Well, what will it be? I’ve waited impatiently all day for your answer.”

“I can’t imagine why, Mr. Hill. I spoke with my brother-in-law who I think you know. D’marcus Armstrong. He said the local Kappa fraternity isn’t having a dance on Saturday. Goodbye.” She hung up without giving him a chance to speak. Was he planning to say the dance had been postponed and then suggest that they go some place else? She wished she hadn’t been so hasty. It would have been fun to watch him wiggle out of the hole he’d dug for himself.

If this was a sample of the current dating game, Ruby didn’t want any part of it. With her sisters married as her mother wished, she could at last focus on her career, and that was what she planned to do.

Fine particles of snow dusted her face as she stepped out of her house and strode to the waiting taxi, her form of transportation until her car was serviced. She loved her work at Everyday Opportunities, Inc., and with her family responsibilities behind her, she was in a position to develop the consulting firm into a huge business. After all, small businesses employed more people than corporations did. In an expansive mood, she overtipped the taxi driver and marched with buoyant steps into the building that housed the consultancy, greeting employees and building attendants as she went. She hung up her coat and headed for her office, the company’s second most spacious accommodation.

“Looking good this morning, Miss Lockhart,” one of the clerks told her, his white teeth sparking against his nut-brown face.

Her new shoes, with the pointed toes and spiked heels, didn’t feel good on her feet, but apparently they made her look good. She gave the clerk a bright smile.

“Yes, indeed,” said her secretary, who happened by at that moment. “With those legs, Miss Lockhart, you ought to pitch all your flats straight into the garbage. ‘If you got it, flaunt it.’ That’s what my brother always said, God rest his soul.”

Such comments gave Ruby courage to accept as normal that men found her interesting and wanted her company, though it was a new experience. She kept that in mind when Joel Coleman, owner and operator of Diet Sensibly, Inc., a small business that she counseled, invited her to dinner. She accepted.

“Who’s the new man in your life?” Joel asked her as they waited for the first course.

She scrutinized him for a second to see if his question implied a hidden motive, decided that it didn’t and relaxed her face into a slight smile. “Why do you think there is one?”

“We’ve known each other for about four months and suddenly you’re a changed woman. That usually means a new love interest.”

“If that’s the case, why am I having dinner with you?”

Joel leaned back in the chair, poised, with a self-possessed air, and smiled. “I didn’t have the nerve to ask that question. Why are you having dinner with me?”

She realized that she hadn’t given the man his due. He was not only a clever businessman, he had a mind that served him well. “I thought you’d be a pleasant date. Was I wrong?” She added the latter in order to level the playing field; the man was sharp, and she meant to let him know that the trait wasn’t confined to him.

His left eyebrow rose slowly. “In other words, back off. Right? I try to be as pleasant as possible.” A few seconds passed, and he added, “Whenever possible.”

“Hmm. I don’t think I’ll ask about the occasions when it’s not possible to be pleasant.”

His shrug and half smile suggested that nothing could be gained by pursuing the matter. While they consumed as good a meal as she’d had in a long time and she discovered that they had much in common, she sensed a restlessness, an undercurrent of edginess in him that put her on guard. There’d be no invitation to come in for coffee when he took her home, she promised herself. This brother could be too difficult to control.

“Would you like to go to a night spot?” he asked her as they left the restaurant. “Brock Madison’s Trio is performing nearby.”

“I’d love to, Joel, but I have to get up early in the morning.”

“If you’re sure,” he said.

She couldn’t help being on edge. She hadn’t wrestled with a male since her early teens, the age at which the boys she knew confused no with go ahead. She imagined that some never got the responses straight in their heads.

“Since you have to get up so early,” Joel said as they stood in her open front door. “I don’t suppose I can expect a nightcap. But I would like a kiss.”

Like a thunderbolt the realization hit her that she didn’t want Joel or any man other than Luther to kiss her. She turned away just as he came in for the kiss.

“That’s what I suspected. Thanks for a pleasant evening.” With that, he strode down the walk whistling the “Toreador’s Song” from the opera, Carmen.

She closed the door, thinking that, if she had hurt his feelings, he certainly intended her to see that her rejection meant nothing to him. She could do without Joel Coleman, Lawrence Hill and Trevor Johns. In fact, she could do without any man who didn’t spell his name L-u-t-h-e-r B-i-g-g-e-n-s.

But she couldn’t imagine a future with the man she’d known almost all her life.

Deciding that it was past time he got on with his life, Luther drove slowly along Ford Road, organizing his thoughts and formulating the arguments he would need to convince his family to accept his proposal. He reached his parents’ home in Dearborn, Michigan, a few minutes before noon on the second of January.

“Happy New Year, everybody,” he said as he strolled into the den where his parents, his sister Glenda and his brothers Charles and Robert sat around the fireplace roasting nuts and enjoying the still-sparkling Christmas tree. They all jumped up when he walked in, but stood back until Irma hugged her oldest son first.

“We thought you’d never get here, son,” Jack Biggens said. “Your mother’s got the bread ready to bake, but she knows how you like to walk in and smell it perfuming the place. Come on over here and have a seat.”

He hugged his father, handed him a bottle of Scotch and greeted his siblings. “Mom, are you baking the bread here in the fireplace as usual?”

“Beats the oven anytime,” she said. “It’ll be ready in about forty-five minutes, just in time for lunch.”

He sat down and began cracking pecans, his favorite nut. “We got a lovely poinsettia from Ruby,” Glenda said. “I haven’t seen her for a while. How is she?”

He didn’t come there to talk about Ruby, and he didn’t intend to. “Ruby’s fine, as far as I know. When are you going back to school, Charles?”

“Classes start the tenth, so I’ll be leaving Friday.”

Their conversation roamed over a myriad of topics and, as usual, he enjoyed the love and camaraderie with his family. After lunch he decided that the time had come to tell them what he wanted. He waited until they’d left the table and were back in the den.

“I’ve been managing the dealerships ever since I recovered from that accident and left the service,” he began. “Dad’s ready to retire, Glenda doesn’t live anywhere near a dealership, Robert’s got his own thriving company, and Charles has never been interested in the automobile business. I hired an accountant to estimate the worth of the business, and I want to buy you out.” He heard the gasps, noted that they didn’t come from his parents and continued.

“I’ll buy five-sixths of that amount from you, and you can split it among yourselves as you see fit.”

“That wouldn’t be fair, son,” Jack Biggens said. “Since you’ve been the manager, you’ve increased the holdings and the profits. I think you should get a quarter, and that’s what I’m proposing.”

“You mean we’re going to sell to Luther?” Charles asked.

“Why not?” Jack said. “He busts his butt at it every single day, and you don’t give him a hand when you’re in town. I say we take a vote.”

“No vote’s necessary. I say we just do what’s right,” Irma said. “If the five of us split three-fourths of the proceeds, it’s just and right.”

Luther knew that, when his mother put her foot down, his siblings would fall in step.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll send the contract over before Charles goes back to the university. It’s a load off my shoulders.”

As he headed home, an icy mist threatened to make driving impossible, and he stopped several times to deice the windshield. He didn’t make New Year’s resolutions, but as he walked into his house, he promised himself that he would get over his almost lifelong passion for Ruby Lockhart. Pain lodged in the region of his heart when he let himself recall how, on that one night when she was his, she’d moved beneath him, rocking to his rhythm like an ocean wave undulating beneath the moon.

“It hurts,” he said aloud. “But she’ll never know how much.”

He wasted no time drawing up his plans to modernize the business and, before he went to bed that night, he knew where and how he’d start. “I’ll have my hands too full to think about Ruby, much less see her.”

However, Luther’s role in Ruby’s life remained basically as it had always been.