She sat down and kicked off her shoes, and he could see that his compliments made her nervous. She did not want an involvement with him any more than he wanted one with her. He grinned. In their case, want didn’t count for much.
“Thank you,” she replied briskly, “but there isn’t anything to talk out, as you put it. I am not looking for a romantic involvement with you or anyone else, not now or ever, so we shouldn’t have any difficulty working together.”
Rufus glanced at her shoeless feet as she tucked them beneath her. A free spirit would do that, he figured. But she had caged that side of her, he guessed, and she had done it years earlier. He leaned back in the sofa and appraised her slowly and thoroughly until she suddenly squirmed. What a maze of contradictions she was! If she thought so little of romantic involvement and marriage for herself, why had she championed it for her young charge at OLC? The thought perturbed him; her adamant disavowal of interest in men didn’t ring true. He noted that the shoes were back on her feet.
Rufus leaned forward. “Sorry about that,” he apologized, referring to his blatant perusal of her. “But I can’t believe you know so little about what happens when a man and a woman get their hooks in each other. So I have to assume that either you’re being dishonest with yourself or you just don’t care to level with me. That kiss you gave me, Naomi, almost made me erupt; I’m still reeling from it. You were right when you said that’s why I’m here.”
“You’re making too much of this,” she told him, obviously uneasy with the drift of the conversation.
Her attempt to minimize it annoyed him. “When you kiss a man like that, giving him everything he’s asking for and letting him know that you’re loving what he’s doing to you, you’re either consenting or making demands of your own or you’ve gone too far.”
He ignored the outrage that he saw in her reproachful eyes and went on. “You and I want each other, Naomi. Don’t doubt it for a minute; we want to make love to each other. I confess that making love with you was one of the first thoughts I had when I met you. But I told myself then, and I’m telling you now, that I don’t intend to do one thing about it. You and I would be poison together.”
Naomi was a worthy adversary, he recalled at once. “Of course you aren’t going to do anything about it,” she purred, “because I won’t let you. As for me wanting you, let me tell you how much weight you can put on that. I saw a beautiful pair of green leather slippers in Garfinkel’s not long ago, and I wanted them badly. They were the perfect complement to something I had just bought. I took a taxi all the way back up here to Bethesda at a cost of twenty dollars, got my credit card, taxied back, and would you believe those shoes were gone? You know what I did? I shrugged my shoulders and bought a pair of royal blue ones that didn’t match a thing I owned. When I left the store, I was perfectly happy. Nothing gets the better of me, Rufus. Believe me, nothing!” He disliked her facetious grin. “So you’re right; there’s no need to make a big deal out of it,” she went on, her quivering lips belying her tough words. “You’ll find another one—darker or lighter, taller or shorter, but with the same basic equipment—and you’ll be just as happy.”
He shook his head in amazement. “I don’t believe you said that.” His blood pounded in his ears when she crossed her knees and let her right shoe slip off as she did so, revealing a flawless size nine foot with its perfectly shaped red toenails. His couldn’t take his eyes from her.
He swore softly. “You’d drive me insane if I spent much time around you. Stop acting,” he growled in a velvet soft voice. “You’re as vulnerable to me as I am to you.” He told himself to cool off. “We have to have a meeting Tuesday or Wednesday. Which would you prefer?”
“Neither.” His impatient glance provoked a hesitant explanation. “I tutor at One Last Chance in the afternoon of both days this week, and I can’t disappoint this girl; she has a lot of problems, and she’s known very little caring. The night you saw her with me, she showed me an excellent drawing that she had done with crayons; it was wonderful. She just needs guidance.”
“Then you believe she has talent for art?”
“Yes, but I’m not tutoring her in art. I’m helping her with math and English.”
“What’s the girl’s name?” He wondered if now was the time. Her feelings for this girl aroused his curiosity and his suspicions, too, he realized.
“Linda.”
Rufus hesitated, aware of a primitive protectiveness toward her, fearful of hurting her. “Naomi. If I’m wrong here, tell me. I get the impression that you have a special connection with this girl, that you have deeper feelings for her than for the others at OLC. And my instincts say that your concern for her has a personal basis.” He watched as she readied herself to divert him.
“Really, Rufus, what could have made you think such a thing?”
“I realize that you were tutoring her in English, but I didn’t know that you were qualified to teach math as well. What level?”
“She’s in her last year of junior high. I taught those subjects in high school for four years.”
“Why did you give it up?” Naomi was a complex person, he was beginning to understand, and the more he saw of her, the more he wanted to see. He leaned back against the deeply cushioned brown velvet sofa, watching her intently.
“I never wanted to teach, but Grandpa would pay for my education only if I studied to be a teacher. Teaching is the proper work for girls of my class, he told me a thousand times. I did as he wanted, same as everybody else always does, and I taught until I’d saved enough money to study for a degree in fine art. He hasn’t forgiven me for it, but, well, he’s done some things that I haven’t been able to forgive him for.” He nodded, letting her know that he sympathized with her, then lifted his wrists and glanced at his watch.
“I’ve got to get home; I told Jewel I’d be there by nine.” He hesitated to leave. “How did you get involved with One Last Chance?”
He pondered the reasons she might have for taking so much time to answer. “I saw the need for it. I’m one of its founders. Who’s Jewel?” On to another topic, was she? The tactic neither fooled nor amused him.
From Naomi’s reaction, he realized that his grin had been mocking rather than disarming, as he had intended. “Jewel’s my baby sister. Why? Are you jealous?” He couldn’t resist the taunt; it was the second bit of concrete evidence she’d given him that her interest was more than casual and his attraction for her more than physical. Yet he doubted that she would ever own up to it.
Her studied smirk as she slanted her head, tipped up her nose, and peered at him had all the arrogance that any crowned European could have mustered. It was admirable. What a gal!
“Well?” he baited.
“Put all your money on it,” she bantered, with a brief pause that he knew was for effect, “and then see your lawyer about filing for bankruptcy.” He smiled, enjoying the teasing.
“You’d be fun if you’d just forget about sex,” she told him, referring to his comment about their heated kiss.
He knew she meant to provoke him, but instead of indulging her, he quipped: “Forget about sex? Sweetheart, that is one thing I’ll remember even after I’m buried.”
His seductive wink, a mesmerizing slow sweep of his left eye, was aimed to strip her of any pretense about her feelings. And for the moment, it did. He held his breath when she dusted a speck of lint from the lapel of his jacket, pushed the handkerchief further down in his breast pocket, and rubbed a speck of nothing from his chin. The expression in her eyes nearly unglued him, but he kept his countenance and satisfied himself with a brush of his fingers across her cheek. He was unprepared for the warmth that quickly enveloped them