Sealed With a Kiss (32 page)

“Oh, Noomie. My school is having its annual parents’ day program tomorrow night. The boys sit with their fathers and the girls with their mothers. They’re having some big shot guest speak, but I didn’t get his name. Grandpa agreed to sit with me. My mom said you could go along with her if you want to. She said be at our house by seven o’clock. You coming?” She nodded, too full to speak. She managed to grin at his familiar thumbs-up sign, closed the door, and went to finish her coffee.

Naomi leaned against the door, speechless. She knew that her grandfather was taken with Aaron, but she found it hard to believe that he’d go so far as to publicly acknowledge him. She went into the living room, picked up the portable phone, and dialed.

“Grandpa, did you tell Aaron that you’re going to sit with him at his school’s program tomorrow night? Won’t that be the same as announcing that he’s my son?” The old man cleared his throat. His reticence made her wary; she had never known him to be reluctant to express his views.

“Naomi, gal, we have to face this now. We’ve turned a corner, and there’s no going back. Aaron wanted to go to church with me last Sunday, and I had to postpone it. I’m a minister of the gospel, gal, and I have to do what’s right. I’ve thought about it, worried about it, and prayed about it, and I have to do this. I’ve been kept here for a purpose, to support my great-grandchild, maybe. I don’t know. You took a stand and did what you felt you had to do. I admired your for it, even though I opposed it, and I’m glad you did it. Now, I have to do what I know is right. We’ll face whatever comes together, Naomi gal. Just take my advice and do what I’ve been telling you. Talk to Rufus before it’s too late.” She’d barely hung up when the doorbell rang. She put the flower in a bud vase and placed it on the table in the foyer as she went to open the door.

Rufus felt a tightening in his stomach as the doorknob turned. He didn’t know what he’d hoped to accomplish with this spur of the moment visit, but he couldn’t stay away. He had to see her. She had been hurting when she’d called him last night, and it was a deep hurt. The startled look on her face when she’d opened the door and seen him standing there had quickly changed to welcoming warmth, and he knew she was glad to see him. She opened the door wider and stood back to let him in. He stopped before her. Close. Reading her eyes and the slight quiver of her lips. Oh, God, he needed this woman so badly.

“Ah, Naomi, come here to me, sweetheart.” Miraculously, she stood wrapped in his arms, sobbing his name against his lips. A shudder ricocheted through him as her soft, warm body and roaming lips inflamed him. He picked her up and set her bodily away from him; he’d warned himself before leaving home that making love with her wouldn’t solve their problems, would only exacerbate them. She tried to move back into his arms, but he restrained her gently.

“Hold on, sweetheart, we need to talk. How about some coffee?” They walked back to the kitchen, and she gave him a mug of coffee.

“Why did you call me last night, Naomi?” He waited until she sat down and deliberately faced her across the table. He had to see her eyes and the movements of her mouth: Naomi had spent so much time covering up her feelings that you needed a microscope to figure out what was going on with her.

“Are you going to tell me why you called me? Naomi, if I start making love to you, I can get you to tell me anything, but that’s not what I want for us. Beside, it’s a form of blackmail. You’re so articulate, witty, and wicked when it suits you, why won’t you talk to me? Are you willing to drop this? If you are, tell me. It won’t kill me.”

Naomi had been sipping her coffee, seeming to weigh his every word. She remembered Judd’s advice of minutes earlier, but she couldn’t banish her fear that if she told him everything, he would scorn her. “Rufus, why do you think I had a hidden motive for calling you?”

“I didn’t come here for that, Naomi.” How could she look so calm, knowing that she was skirting the truth?

She straightened up and looked directly into his eyes. Maybe she was going to level with him at last. She spoke softly, seeming to measure her words carefully.

“There’s noting else I can tell you now, Rufus. I’m glad you came over here this morning, more than you could guess. And knowing that you’d have been there for me last night if I’d had a problem makes me happy.”

He placed his cup on the table and stood. “That’s it.” Bitterness laced his voice. “That’s all you’ve prepared to say to me?” She nodded. His hand touched his forehead in a mocking military salute.

“Stay there, honey. I can let myself out.”

She got up slowly and put the few dishes in the dishwasher. She hadn’t been able to deal with Rufus’s questions; her mind had been on her narrow escape. If he had arrived five minutes earlier, he’d have found Aaron there. She tried to dismiss the feeling that she stood at a precipice, about to tumble into disaster.

Rufus stepped briskly up to the lectern. Next to writing, his greatest pleasure was in talking to young people, especially teenagers. As usual, before he began to speak, he let his gaze sweep his audience as he took its pulse. Why was Naomi there? If she wanted to see him, she knew where he lived. But this wasn’t the time to think about Naomi, he told himself, and got down to the business at hand. He smiled appreciatively at the waves of applause that greeted him at the end of his twenty-minute talk. Reaching down for the small case that he’d brought with him, he stepped across the rostrum to the boys and girls who stood with their parents. He knew that the older boys weren’t shaking hands with the speaker, but with Cat Meade, the former NFL wide receiver. Nonetheless, he hoped his message would have an impact on their lives. He handed each a key ring, a small gold-plated replica of a house, on the back of which was inscribed,
“Best wishes, Rufus
Meade.”

He reached for the hand extended to him and looked into Judd Logan’s face. “What are you…” His glance shifted to the right and the boy beside Judd. He managed to exchange greetings with them, finish his round, smile at everyone, and get off the stage. He had to find her.

As if she’d known he’d come, she remained seated, right where she’d been all evening, open and vulnerable. He walked up to her, knowing that if he said a word, he’d regret it. The people around them were just a faceless mass of human flesh; there was only Naomi, the woman he loved beyond all reason. The woman who thought so little of his capacity for caring and understanding that she couldn’t tell him she had a teenaged son. If that boy wasn’t hers, there was no such things as genes. He stared at her for minutes and said nothing. Talking would have been useful yesterday or that morning, but not now. He shook his head sadly, not caring that his disappointment showed, nodded to the startled woman beside her, and walked away.

Home at last, away from the fuss and adulation that he hated, away from the scene of his shocking discovery. At the door to his sons’ bedroom, watching their peaceful sleep, he gave thanks for the one constant in his life: his love for his sons and theirs for him. Why couldn’t she have trusted him? Why hadn’t she realized that he’d have climbed mountains for her, and that he’d have made her problems his own, that all he asked in return was her trust, her faith in him? He walked to the window, drawn there by the howling winter wind, and looked out at the desolate, leafless trees, eerie shapes beneath the dark, cloudy skies. He’d never felt so disheartened, nor so alone.

He’d had clues, but they hadn’t fit any pattern. At last he understood Naomi’s protectiveness toward Linda and her sudden refusal to block the admittance of boys to OLC. Still, something didn’t fit. If the boy was hers, where had he been? Naomi had said she was an only child, so that boy had to be her son. And the age fit the bits and pieces of information he’d gotten from her and Judd.
It’s been over 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,
Judd had told him. That boy had to be about fourteen. He walked out of the room and closed the door. Something wasn’t right, and he had to decide whether he cared enough to find out what was beneath it all. He wondered what she was thinking right then, whether she realized what she’d done.

Naomi looked up at the inquiring faces of Aaron and Rosalie and into the knowing eyes of her grandfather. “Come on, Naomi gal, we’re the last ones here.” His withered fingers grasped her shoulders, urging her to get up, and his old eyes softened with sympathy. She trailed them outside, hardly aware of her surroundings. At her car, Judd stopped her. “No point in crying over spilled milk, gal. You didn’t tell him, and now he knows. Either find a way to patch it up, or forget him and get on with your life. Neither course is going to be easy. If I’d known this would happen, I’d still have sat with Aaron. It was past time for you to level with Rufus; you hadn’t any right to let him care for you while you kept him in the dark about something like this. I kept your secret, but you know I didn’t like doing it. I begged you just yesterday to talk to him. You’re going to have to make the first move, and you’d better make it soon.”

Naomi turned at the touch of Aaron’s hand on hers. “I’ll be over tomorrow morning, Noomie.” She nodded. Ten minutes later, she walked into her apartment, too numb to do more than pull off her clothes and get into bed. She hadn’t misinterpreted the cool disapproval in Rufus’s eyes; he had condemned her without giving her a chance to explain. She had been right not to confide in him; he didn’t care enough. And she’d have to straighten Judd out. She’d told Rufus many times that there couldn’t be anything between them, so she couldn’t be accused of leading him on.

She answered her door at eight-fifteen the next morning to find a very solemn Aaron standing there. He walked past her quickly, as if to avoid a greeting.

“If you didn’t eat breakfast yet, I’ll eat with you. All I did was get up, put my clothes on, and leave. My mom dropped me off.” She wondered about his nervous chatter; it was unlike him. She put together a hearty breakfast and sat down with him.

“What’s on your mind, Aaron?” She didn’t plan to let him disturb her equilibrium, no matter what he said or did. Rufus had given her enough to deal with.

He chewed his bacon deliberately, swallowed it, and sipped some coffee. “What is Cat Meade to you, Naomi?” She hadn’t expected his question to be so direct. Unfazed, she looked into her son’s steely, accusing gaze. She no longer had a reason for evasiveness and secrecy; she could be herself.

“I love him, Aaron.”

“I see. So he’s the one. And you didn’t tell him about me. He found out on his own last night, because I’m the spitting image of you and I was with Grandpa. Why didn’t you tell him?”

“I didn’t think I could handle it if he scorned me for having a child that was given up for adoption. He doesn’t know that part yet, and he still judged me harshly, without hearing me out.”

“Come on, Noomie. The guy got a shock. Do you think it would’ve been worse if you’d sat down and talked to him?” He sipped the last of his coffee, and she watched his young face sadden.

“I should have stayed out of your life. If I hadn’t pushed my mom so hard to find you, you’d probably be married to the guy by now. But I’m not really sorry, Noomie, because now that I know you, I understand myself better. I guess I shouldn’t have stuck so close to you and Grandpa, though. My mom says it’s natural for me to like being around you, since you don’t mind. But I’ll disappear, if it’ll make things better between you and Mr. Meade.” He looked at her expectantly, and she hurt for him. He had chosen to take responsibility for the mess she’d made.

“Aaron, Rufus can’t replace you in my life, any more than you can take his place. Try to understand that you aren’t part of any solution to my problem with Rufus. And meeting you was my decision; a decision I have never regretted. Nor will I ever. You come here as often as you like and as long as Rosalie doesn’t mind.” He seemed more relaxed, and she hoped she’d put his mind at ease.

Later, he stood at her door, about to leave, more pensive than she remembered having seen him and without his usual swagger. “I hope you make up with him, Noomie. I like him a lot. Us guys in my class think he’s a saint; he’s practically our guardian angel. Sometime you can tell me how you met him.” She laughed at the memory, and Aaron smiled broadly, as if glad to see the change in her. He left, but forgot his thumbs-up sign. If only he’d forget about her and Rufus; she knew she had to do just that. From Rufus’s behavior last night, it was over between them.

Rufus sat in his office with Sheldon on his knee and Preston between his legs leaning against him and listened to Dick Jenkins drone on and on. He didn’t usually discuss business with his boys hanging onto him, but Dick had dragged the appointment out for three hours. He had switched on the answering machine and didn’t answer the phone, but when he heard, “I’m Aaron Hopkins. I met you last night,” he picked up the receiver.

“Hello, Aaron. I can’t speak with you right now. Give me your number, and I’ll call you in five minutes.” That should get rid of Jenkins.

“Aaron, this is Rufus Meade.” The boy wanted to come and see him. He wasn’t going to discuss Naomi with anyone, but he’d listen to Aaron, he decided. He opened the door an hour later to the handsome boy who looked so much like the woman he loved.

“Come in, Aaron.” He noticed the boy’s reticence and draped an arm loosely around his shoulder.

“Thanks for letting me come. Where are the twins?” He hadn’t expected that Naomi would have told the boy about him and his children.

“They’re about to have a nap.” He poured two glasses of ginger ale and sat down, motioning to Aaron to do the same. “What can I do for you?” He watched Aaron take a deep breath, as if preparing himself for an ordeal.