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“See you later.” He dashed up the stairs, didn’t see Henry in the kitchen and went on up to his room. If only he could be as sure as his brothers. He dialed Kendra’s number and hung up before the second ring. That wasn’t the way to go. She wasn’t for him, and he shouldn’t mislead her. He opened his briefcase and gazed unseeing at Russ’s drawings for extensions to the Florence Griffith Joyner Houses. What kind of evening did he want with Pamela? At times, thinking about her softness aggravated his libido until it made him uncomfortable. At other times, he could see her and think of her dispassionately.
“No point in stewing over it,” he said to himself. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
Pamela, too, had concerns about the course of their relationship. Now that she knew he cared but was uncertain as to what he wanted for them, she meant to teach him to love her. If that didn’t work and soon, she meant to invite him to take a walk. She put on a red woolen suit and silver hoop earrings, let her hair hang on her shoulders, added Calèche perfume and black accessories, and looked at her watch. He’d be there in five minutes. Almost immediately the doorman buzzed her.
“Good evening, Miss Langford. Mr. Harrington to see you.”
“Thanks, Mike. Ask him to come up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sang the words, because he liked Drake and encouraged her to be with him.
She walked around the living room rubbing her hands together, fingering the art objects that she had collected in her travels, lecturing herself that she shouldn’t seem eager. And then the doorbell rang and she sprang toward it, calmed herself and walked the remainder of the way.
“Hi,” he said, handed her a bouquet of tea roses and grinned. “You look better every time I see you.”
“Stop fibbing and come in while I put these in water. They’re beautiful. Thank you.” She went to the kitchen, got a vase, put water in it and arranged the flowers, taking her time in order to retrieve her aplomb. She brought them back, said, “I’m putting these on my night table,” and brushed past him on her way to her bedroom, the fabric of her suit gently caressing his.
“I’m ready,” she said when she came back to the living room.
“I’m not.”
Before the words registered, she was in his arms and his mouth was on her. His lips parted over hers; she inhaled his breath and the tip of his warm tongue probed for entrance into her mouth. Stunned by the swiftness of it, she hadn’t time to summon control and submitted to the passion that swirled within her. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, and he demanded that she take more. Her nipples hardened and she heard her moans as he gripped her hips to his body with one hand and, with the other, tightened around her shoulder until she could almost count his heartbeats. His hand roamed over her back as if he sought the answer to what touched her, to what would make her his alone. Her hand went to his nape, caressing, asking for more, and he gave it, darting here and there to every crevice in her mouth, squeezing her to him until she had a raw, aching need to have all of him.
Shamelessly she rubbed the painful nipple, and he moved her hand, pinched and caressed it until she cried out, “Drake, I can’t stand this.”
He stopped the torture at once, and with both arms around her he enveloped her in a gentle embrace. “I don’t suppose you intended for it to go that far. I know I didn’t, but I’m pretty sure I’ll do it again, unless you make it impossible.”
When she didn’t respond, he tipped up her chin and gazed into her eyes. Knowing what he saw, she quickly closed them. The feel of his lips on her forehead, her cheeks and the tip of her nose told her that he cherished her. At least for now, he does, she thought.
“I think it would be a good thing if we headed for the restaurant.”
The expression on his face and the tone of his voice made it clear that if they didn’t leave, they might be there till morning. “I’ll get my coat.”
“You know,” he said near the end of their dinner, “I like the fact that you’re comfortable enough with me that you don’t feel a need to chat. Self-possession is a good trait.”
She nearly laughed. “Drake, I’m not one bit comfortable with you right now. I am overwhelmed by what you did to me in my apartment. It’s the first time in my life that a man destroyed my will. I am self-possessed most of the time, or so people tell me, but not right now. I’m quiet because if I talk, I’ll probably say something I’ll regret…like what I just said.”
His stare seemed to penetrate her. Then, he laughed. “If I was sitting beside you, I’d hug you. I wondered if I was out of line back there. You’re not alone, Pamela. I also got a surprise. A big one. As long as you’re not sorry—”
“I’m not.”
“Neither am I.”
He held her hand as they walked to his Jaguar, which he’d parked three blocks from the restaurant. “I’ll be terribly disappointed if you don’t like this movie,” he said.
“Not to worry. I need a good laugh.”
“I’m going to assume that that remark had no negative implications.”
“I don’t believe in indirect insults. A stab ought to be clean and lethal.”
He opened the passenger door for her, fastened her seat belt and closed the door. “Something tells me I’d better get a breastplate,” he said after settling into the car and closing the door.
“Why? I wouldn’t harm a strand of your hair. Besides, do I look like I’d hurt a flea?”
He turned fully to face her. “If my hair is so safe with you, move over here and let me get my arms around you.”
She did as he’d asked and was rewarded with a tenderness that was new to her, with him or with anyone. “I could get used to this with you,” he whispered, “but I’d better move slowly, because I don’t know what the end will be.”
She didn’t release him, because she didn’t want to, because she needed to prolong and savor that moment when she first knew she loved him. She reached up, ran her hands over his hair and then let her fingers trail down the side of his face and her thumb caress his bottom lip. It was an intimate gesture, she knew, but she felt like being honest with him. And it was the one way she could tell him he was precious to her without saying the words.
As if he understood the meaning of her gesture, he whispered, “Yeah. Me, too,” turned the key in the ignition, put the car in Drive and headed for the movie.
Chapter 3
This must be my day, Drake thought as Pamela’s head lolled on his shoulder while she laughed hysterically. “Everybody must to get off from street,” the on-screen Russian sailor said to the old woman in his broken English as he pretended to be a representative of the local authorities. His submarine had accidentally surfaced off Nantucket, and he and his fellow sailors were trying to get back to it without causing an international incident.
“Did you really enjoy it so much?” he asked her as they left the theater. “I confess I’ve seen it a dozen times, beginning when I was a teenager, and I’ve laughed as hard each time I’ve seen it as I did the first time.”
They walked out swinging their locked hands, and through out the drive to the apartment building in which she lived, they reminisced about the movie, laughing at the funny parts. He walked with her to her apartment door, uncertain as to how he wanted to end the evening, though he knew lovemaking or the suggestion of it would be a mistake.
She proved the wisdom of his intuition when she said, “This evening was very special. Do you still need breathing space?”
Unprepared for the question, but aware that she had a penchant for candidness, he took his time answering. “I don’t remember having equivocated about anything of importance to me, but how I answer your question could have a powerful effect on my life. I like being with you, and I want to see you, but right now, that’s as far as I can go.”
She laid her head to one side and looked hard at him, so much so that she nearly unnerved him. “That isn’t far enough for me, Drake. Limbo isn’t a place where I would knowingly go. I realize that you need to assure yourself that you have a firm grip on your future, that you’re managing your life’s course, and I respect that, but I also have to manage mine. You can start a family when you’re sixty, but I don’t have that option.”
Standing on tiptoe, she kissed his cheek and dazzled him with the smile that showed a half dimple in her right cheek. “If the tide was moving in the right direction, you could mean everything to me. But it isn’t, and I’m not going to wait for you to make up your mind. Good night.”
He told her good-night, and as he walked down the hall to the elevator, it was as if the weight of his feet dragged him along. He heard the lock turn on her door and swung around, wanting with all his heart to turn back and find solace in her arms. But he comforted himself with the thought that what he needed was a good rest, a chance to empty his head of work and of the minutiae cluttering his life, a chance to focus on what was important to him personally.
He had planned to spend the night with Russ, but changed his mind and headed for Eagle Park. He got home after midnight, and it surprised him to find Telford and Alexis sitting in the den watching a movie. He was tempted to slip by and go to his room. He had never been less willing to share himself with another person. But that was not the way of the Harrington brothers, so he went into the den, mixed a Scotch whiskey and soda, and joined Telford and Alexis.
“I hardly expected you back tonight,” Telford said. “I hope all’s well.”
He pulled out the hassock from beneath his chair and propped his feet on it. “Let’s put it this way. For now, at least, everything depends on me. But she’s not waiting while I figure out where I’m going.”
“I always thought you were the most resolute person imaginable,” Alexis said. “Do you have misgivings about her?”
“That’s one of the things about this that perplexes me,” he said. “She’s the kind of woman I want. Nothing’s wrong with her, and she suits me, but still I seem willing to risk losing her. I don’t think that any woman I want will be available to me, nor do I believe I’ll meet another one like Pamela, at least not soon. I guess the problem is that there is unspoken pressure on me to fall in love and get married. Nobody’s said it, but all this marital and soon-to-be marital bliss is making me feel that I’m missing a lot. I can see the difference in you and in Russ, and I also want to feel equally secure with the woman who’s special to me.” He threw up his hands. “Oh, what the hell. I guess I’m just not ready to settle down.”
“So she told you she won’t wait while you shilly-shally?” Telford asked, pushing the needle where he knew it would hurt, for Drake prided himself in his ability to think through a problem, come to a decision and act on it without equivocating.
Drake spread his legs, leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “You could say that.”
“Man, I hope she doesn’t settle on someone else.”
“I hope for her sake that she does,” Alexis said, causing both men to sit upright and stare at her. “If she wants children, she’d better do something about it, or she will forever regret it. A man can’t possibly understand the instinct that makes women want to be mothers.”
“I know it’s powerful,” Drake said. He wished he’d gone directly to his room. Alexis was right, but knowing that caused a cloud of weariness to settle over him. “I think I’ll be getting to bed,” he said. “Thanks for the company.” He plodded up the wide, winding stairs, his mind on Pamela and how he’d felt earlier that evening at the door of her apartment. And he thought back to the times she had caressed him so sweetly and so lovingly—asking nothing and demanding nothing—and he’d felt as if he could move mountains.
He reached the landing and banged his fist on the railing. “What the hell’s wrong with me? I know damned well I don’t want any other man to have that woman.” But did he love her? “Hell, I’m not going there,” he said to himself. “If I do love her, I’ll probably act like it.”
After a shower, he dried his body and slid between the leopard-print sheets that he preferred. “The day will come, I hope, when I look back at this time and laugh at myself.” He turned out the light and went to sleep.
At that moment, Pamela worried less about Drake’s decision than he did. She had made up her mind to relegate him to her past and look for a man with whom she could build a life. She loved him, and she believed in his integrity, but he’d already killed enough time. Long after telling him good-night and, in effect, goodbye, she sat on the edge of her bed trying to deal with her inner conflict and her sense that their song hadn’t played out.
But I can’t go on like this. I need someone I can count on, a man who will give me the family I long for.
“Oh, Lord,” she moaned. “Why did I have to fall in love with him?”
Refusing to succumb to the moroseness that threatened her, she went into the living room and put on Jump for Joy, a compact disc that she bought in Paris two years earlier. Where but in Paris would one find the music of Josephine Baker, who died decades earlier? Pamela never failed to dance to that music, and she danced then. Danced until she fell across her living-room sofa exhausted. Danced until the tears cascaded down her cheeks like water from a broken dam. She lay there for a few minutes, getting used to the pain, then got up from the sofa, splashed cold water on her face and laughed.
“Drake Harrington, you’re the only man who can lay claim to making me cry, and, honey, you’re the last one.”
Awaking the next morning to the ringing of the telephone, she slammed the pillow over her head, dragged the blanket up to her neck and got more comfortable. The ringing persisted, and she reached from beneath the covers to knock the phone from its cradle, but missed and bruised her hand against the lamp.
“All right,” she grumbled and sat up. “Hello.”
“You still in bed? Sorry to wake you up. I know it’s Saturday, but I thought you’d be up and around. I called to remind you that Tuesday is your mother’s birthday,” her father said, “so don’t forget. You know how she loves her birthdays. We don’t expect you to come down here during the week. Just call.”
“I’d be there if I could get off, Daddy. How are you and Mama?”
“We’re good.” His deep and musical voice had always given her a feeling of security, as did the strength he projected with every word he spoke, even when he was being amusing. “We watched you on the national news the other night. First time we saw you on camera. I can’t tell you how proud we were. I opened a bottle of champagne, and we congratulated ourselves on what we’d created.” Laughter rumbled out of him, the self-deprecating and mischievous laughter that she loved so much.
“Bob Kramer had an emergency, and the producer grabbed me the last minute and said, ‘You’re on.’ How did I do?”
“Great. You don’t think I’d open my best champagne to commemorate a flop, do you? We’re proud of you. It was first-class.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“And you looked great in that red suit. Where’s that engineer you were talking about? Isn’t it about time he spoke to me?”
“That may never happen, Daddy. There’s something real good between us, but… Well, he isn’t ready.”
“From all you said about him, he’s probably a good man, but if he isn’t ready, move on. A lot of first-class white guys would flip backward over you. I keep telling you that.”
“I know, Daddy. I know. Where’s Mama? Let me speak with her, please.”
“She’s at the hairdresser’s.”
“Well, give her a hug for me. I’ll be sure to call her Tuesday.”
She hung up and got out of bed. Her father wanted her to marry a man who, like himself, was white, but the last thing she wanted was a marriage complicated by the social problems that her parents faced. Besides, she was attracted to black men. Her father could hardly be called prejudiced considering that he’d married an African-American woman and embraced her entire family. Pamela tossed her head as if in defiance and headed to the kitchen to make coffee. He married the person he wanted—and against his family’s wishes, I might add—and, if I get the chance, I’ll do the same. As soon as she got to her office, she phoned a florist and ordered flowers for her mother, specifying that they arrive Tuesday morning.
Shortly before noon on Saturday, Russ arrived at Harrington House—the place where his room always awaited him—with Velma Brighton, his bride-to-be and Alexis’s older sister. Weeks had passed since Drake and his two older brothers had been together, and it seemed to him almost like Christmas as they greeted each other with the customary embrace. He loved his brothers and welcomed the women of their choice as he would have blood sisters.
“Only three more months,” Drake said to Velma. “How do you keep Russ’s feet on the ground?”
Velma winked, displaying the wickedness that he associated with her dry humor. “With patience.”
“Not so,” Russ said. “I’m a changed man. I wait till the light turns completely green before I enter the inter section.”
“I never knew you to do otherwise,” Telford said.
“Was he always like this?” Velma asked, standing against Russ with his arms snug around her.
“Always,” Henry put in. “Ain’t a one of these boys changed one bit since they were little. Instead of being an impatient kid, Russ is an impatient man.” He rubbed his chin as if savoring a pleasant thought. “But I’ll say it right in front of him. He’s as solid as they come.”
Although Henry had worked as the family’s cook since Drake was five years old, Drake and his brothers regarded him as a member of the family who did most of the cooking. Long before their father’s death, it was Henry to whom they looked for guidance and nurturing, for Josh Harrington worked long hours to build a life for his children and to ensure their status in Midwestern Maryland. They couldn’t count on their mother—a woman who didn’t want to be tied down and who left home for lengthy periods of time whenever it suited her—to be there when they needed her. So they turned to Henry, who treated them as if they were his own children.
Henry’s pride in the three men was obvious to anyone who knew the family. Indeed, acknowledging his role as a father figure to the Harrington men, Alexis had asked Henry to escort her down the aisle at her wedding to Telford, for which she earned his gratitude and deepening love.
“You got all your wedding plans straight?” Henry asked Velma. “Let me know if you need me for anything.”
“I wish I had me to do the catering,” she said, and not in jest, for she had achieved wide fame as a caterer of grand affairs. “And I just found out that one of my bridesmaids is almost four months pregnant and showing. Since I have a matron of honor, I don’t know what to do with her. In three months, she’ll be over six months and even bigger than she is now. Other than that, everything’s fine.”
“Aren’t you going to replace her?” Alexis asked. “She’s got a lot of chutzpah to spring a late pregnancy on a bride.”
“Not to worry,” Velma said, “I’ll think of something. For the last three days, I’ve been lecturing to myself that she doesn’t deserve any more consideration than she’s giving me, but…she’s a friend.”
Drake listened for Russ to tell Velma that what that bridesmaid was proposing to do was unacceptable, but Russ said nothing, and he wondered at the change in his brother. Time was when Russ would have pronounced that the woman be excluded, and in a tone so final that his bride-to-be wouldn’t dare object.
Later, as the three men sat together in the den discussing the advisability of entering into a contract with the Ghana interior minister to build a shopping mall, Drake observed the calm and assurance with which Russ accepted Telford’s rejection of one of his ideas, where months earlier, he would have complained that his two brothers always got their wishes because they voted together. On this occasion, Russ merely said, “What’s your reason?” then listened and nodded his approval.
She’s all the balm Russ’s ego needs, Drake thought. She’s good for him. Again, the memory returned of those moments with Pamela’s arms around him, teasing him, and how like a king he felt when she unashamedly adored him.
Henry looked into the den. “Drake, did you see the mail I put on yer desk?”
“I haven’t looked at that desk since I’ve been back here. Thanks.”
“I’d like to know who scrambled yer brain,” Henry said. “If it’s who I think it was, you shoulda been home Friday night before last when she called ya.”
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said to his brothers, bounded up the stairs and went to his room. He dug through a week of mail and found the one thing he didn’t care to see: the tiny, stingy handwriting of Selicia Dennis. Although tempted to throw it away without opening it, he decided to read it.
Dear Drake,
I’m sorry that we haven’t hit it off. I fear I’ve misrepresented myself to you. Doris Sackefyio was kind enough to give me your address, and I’m apologizing if I made a nuisance of myself. I’m enclosing two tickets to the memorial jazz concert at the Kennedy Center next month. I hope you’ll use the second ticket to take me with you.
Warmly, Selicia
He noted that she included her phone number, but not her email address. He put the tickets in an envelope, debated whether to enclose a note, decided not to and sealed it. To be sure that she got it, he would send the letter by certified mail, return-receipt requested. Feeling the need to be outside and alone, he put on a storm jacket, stopped by the den to tell his brothers he’d see them later and walked out toward the Monocacy River. If he encountered a living being, at least it wouldn’t be able to talk.
On Monday, having convinced herself that she should attend a luncheon of industry professionals, Pamela found herself seated beside a likable man who obviously had the respect and—she thought—the envy of his peers. Oscar Rankin—tall, handsome, fortysomething, white—had the veneer of success wrapped securely around him. He set his cap for Pamela and made no effort to hide his interest. She’d heard of Oscar Rankin—who hadn’t?
“Would you like more wine?” he asked her. When she rejected the wine and his other offer to be of service to her, he changed tactics. “I saw you on the national evening broadcast a few nights ago,” he said, “and you brought that show to life. Of course, looking as you did—stunningly beautiful with a no-nonsense attitude—would captivate any sensible man.” In a subtle and innocuous way, he managed to claim her attention throughout the luncheon.
“Let me help you with that.” She looked up and saw him beside her at the cloakroom window, and before she could discourage him, he was holding her coat for her. Mildly irritated, she asked him, “What do you want, Mr. Rankin?”
