Adam’s Outlaw Read online

  “Oh, I don’t know, Adam. I haven’t a clue about another building we could use. Fred, Annie, and I drove around all morning before they dropped me off at my parents’ house. We didn’t see anything that looked good. I’m depressed.”

  So much for the idea that Toni had given up on a building, Adam thought as he started the van. Still, she looked anything but depressed. In her red sundress and lavender sandals she made him think of a little girl on her way to a birthday party.

  “I take it you don’t intend to give up?” He gave the security guard a thumbs-up sign and drove out onto Riverside Drive. “I’d hoped that you and I might spend some time together, go to the beach maybe.”

  “Oh, Adam, I’m sorry. I’d love to go away with you, but not now. I’m not giving up on a building. Just think what it would mean.” She grew more excited as she spoke. Adam tried not to see that the excitement was for her project, not for their trip.

  “Nope.” She caught his arm and turned a warm, positive smile on him. “These people are going to have someplace to live that they can afford, if I have to build it myself.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that. Well, if you can’t squeeze the beach into your schedule, how about going to a basketball game with me?”

  “I really don’t have time, Adam. I need to go to the school and get on the phone. We only have six months, remember? Maybe some other time.”

  Adam could see that any relationship with Toni would have to involve her charity projects. He was beginning to appreciate the complaints of the policemen’s wives.

  “Well, then,” he said, throwing out his last hope, “we can stop by the tax office on the way.”

  “What’s happening at the tax office?”

  “The possibility that there might be a building being sold for nonpayment of taxes.”

  “What good will that do us? Materials I can get donated, money to buy a building I don’t have.”

  “I have to tell you, Toni, that as much as I hate to use my name, raising money is one thing I might be able to help you with. Anyway, you never know. It wouldn’t hurt to check.”

  Toni looked down at her hand. Without thinking, she’d slid it down Adam’s arm until their fingers were laced together. There was something comforting about that. Her own hand was small and rough. Adam’s, lightly tufted with dark hair, was big and strong. There was no question he made her feel good. She was beginning to like having him around, even though his comments often dampened her enthusiasm.

  They didn’t agree about what she was doing, yet she was beginning to see that he might be right about the impracticability of her plans. Somehow that was disturbing. She didn’t want to align herself with someone who accepted the status quo, even if he did work against it. She wanted to make things different. He only wanted to make them better.

  She glanced at her watch and back at Adam. She’d go. If he offered to help her out, she wouldn’t turn him down. At the moment she was turning around in circles. Only a tiny twinge of guilt nagged at her logic. Was she agreeing with Adam because she wanted the man, or his help?

  For a long moment they simply gazed at each other. The adoring look in his eyes melted away the last of her resistance. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about what had happened between them, channeling her energies to the tenants of the Swan Gardens instead. But the afterglow of their lovemaking was still there. Once she gave in to that knowledge, she would have agreed with almost anything Adam said. Besides, the expression on her mother’s face when she’d learned that her luncheon guest was the son of a former maid had been delicious.

  Toni wondered if her mother and father had ever shared the joy that Adam had given to her. They must have sometime. After all, she was living proof that they’d been together. But her mother was always so distant. Toni had never known her to discuss anything personal. Still, she knew her mother wasn’t really a snob and didn’t mean to be unkind. She just didn’t know any other way of life.

  Toni’s father wasn’t any more open. They were anachronisms, throwbacks to another time. They loved Toni in their own way. They simply had no idea how to show it. It was still hard for Toni to believe that her warm, story-telling grandfather had a son so totally different from himself.

  Though Adam tried, the tax office was no help. Toni quickly realized that Adam was held in high regard by the tax collectors, who agreed to do some further looking. She was the outsider. From their curious looks it was obvious the employees weren’t accustomed to seeing Adam with anybody like Toni, and it was more obvious that they viewed her with great skepticism.

  “Thanks anyway, Adam,” she said as they left the hall. “Now, where is this basketball game?”

  “At the Boys’ Club. I have a little group that I work with most afternoons. If enough players turn up, we divide into teams and play a game. Otherwise, it’s just a scrimmage.”

  “What do you mean, ‘turn up’?”

  “The boys mean well, but I have to fight the drug dealers, juvenile hall, and sometimes their parents for them. It’s an ongoing struggle to keep them clean and involved.”

  “How old are these kids?”

  “Anywhere from six to twenty-six, depending on who went to school and who’s out of jail. I’m afraid my teams aren’t what you’d call Pop Warner candidates.”

  “Why not work with one of the leagues? At least those kids are officially organized and interested in playing. Wouldn’t it be more rewarding to have a real team?”

  “You mean with real uniforms, real referees, and a schedule?”

  “Yeah. Like my scout troop.”

  “Toni, these kids don’t even have addresses. Ask for birth certificates? Forget it. There’s no way we could meet the requirements to play in the leagues you’re talking about. Besides, I’ve got no guarantee that half the team won’t come in so spaced out, they can’t even play.”

  “Why do you do it, Adam, spend your time working with kids like that?”

  “Because I was one of those kids, Toni.” His voice was stiff and a bit angry. He didn’t understand her statement. What was the difference between what she was doing and his project? She was working with the less fortunate, the needy. The difference, he realized, was that Toni expected success and often enjoyed a certain amount of it. He only hoped for some, and often found little.

  I was one of those kids. Toni thought about Adam’s quiet admission as he pulled into the parking area adjacent to a graffiti-marked building. There had been raw pain in his voice. She felt ashamed, thinking about what it must have been like for him growing up, heading for this place after school when she’d been heading for the Zesto Ice Cream Parlor or the shopping mall.

  If she thought her reception at city hall was cool, it was a heat wave compared with the icy treatment she received from the basketball players gathered beneath the net-bare hoop in the gym. Adam introduced her, stationed her on the bleachers, and turned to his waiting players.

  “All right, guys, are we ready to play?”

  “Nah, man,” one longtime member said in a tired voice. “E.T. got busted with a hot stereo and Leno got himself a job running numbers for the Iceman. We’re two players short.”

  Adam let out a deep sigh. He’d hoped he might be making some positive impression on the kid they’d nicknamed E.T., but apparently not enough. He’d look into the arrest later. Maybe he could get him off with probation. If Leon had gone with Iceman, he was lost. “Sorry, guys. Maybe we’ll just scrimmage. I need the workout.”

  “We’ve been messing around all morning,” a skinny, freckle-faced kid said. “We want to play a real game.” He dribbled the basketball in a circle. “You could play, Adam.”

  An older player took a lazy shot. “We’d still be one short, man.”

  “What about letting me fill in?” Toni called out from her seat on the bleachers.

  “A lady?” The players looked at her in disbelief.

  “Why not?” Adam asked. “You play with me and I’m a man.”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, but you’re a jock.”

  “What’s the matter, guys, are you chicken?” Standing up, Toni put her hands on her hips and rolled back and forth on the balls of her feet.

  “Okay,” the freckle-faced kid said with a sneer. “If you’re willing to take a chance on her, Captain, she’ll have to be on your team. We get Tree, you get the broad.”

  “Fine.” Adam eyed Toni with amused concern. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Toni. These guys are totally serious about this game.”

  “So am I.”

  A half an hour later Adam found out that Toni was just as dedicated to her ball playing as she was to her housing project. What she lacked in skill she made up for in determination. After an uncertain beginning, the boys quickly found out that Toni Gresham had a killer instinct and a mean hook shot. If they double-teamed Adam, Toni got the basket. If they concentrated on Toni, Adam got free.

  The score seesawed back and forth for most of the game until Toni finally began to tire and the boys went ahead. A mean skid on the floor gave Toni a new scrape on the knee that already had a scab, and Adam brought the session to an end.

  “Sorry about calling you a broad,” the freckle-faced boy said shyly. “You’re all right, Toni.”

  “Yeah,” the others agreed. “Good game, Captain.” When they offered their hands in a high five, they extended the camaraderie to Toni as well.

  As they drove away from downtown, Adam glanced at Toni. Her face was streaked with eye makeup, and she was stoically nursing an angry wood burn on her knee. Injured, tired, totally disheveled, she was about the most appealing woman he’d ever seen.

  He hadn’t yet allowed himself to face the reality of making love to Toni. He didn’t want to consider what it might mean to her, or to him. It had happened. He’d allowed it to happen, even after he’d turned away from her. She’d trusted him, slept in his arms all night.

  Even now he didn’t understand why he’d left her house to buy precautions. It hadn’t been just because he’d been crazy with wanting her. Control was something he’d learned and perfected. It had been more than desire he’d felt. She was so tiny and so brave. He wanted to protect her. All day he’d refused to examine those feelings. She was wrong for him. He was wrong for her. Yet even now he wanted to pull over to the side of the road and take her into the back of his van and … He swerved too close to the car in the next lane and jerked the wheel back to the right.

  They drove in silence for a while. Yet the silence wasn’t awkward. It was a comfortable sharing of companionship. He cut through the back entrance that bordered on the country club golf course and entered Toni’s Sherwood Forest subdivision.

  “You all right, Adam?” Toni realized they hadn’t spoken, and she wondered if he was angry that she’d intruded on the basketball game.

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Fine. Thanks for letting me play.”

  “Thanks for helping out. You’re a good player.”

  “Just another one of those things that annoys my mother. Greshams swim, play bridge and tennis, not softball and basketball.”

  “I can see where you must have been a real trial to your mother.” He reached out and took her hand. Touching her seemed to be as natural as smiling at her, and he found himself doing that constantly. If his fellow officers could see him now, they’d swear he’d been into the stash in the evidence room. Adam Ware had never had a reputation for being lighthearted.

  He released her and reached inside his pocket, retrieving his cigar. He jabbed it into his mouth, rolling it around uncomfortably.

  Toni leaned back against the door and studied him. “Why do you do that?”

  “Do what?” Adam wasn’t sure why he had pulled back. Maybe it was because he was thinking about his mother. He found it difficult to talk about her. They’d been very close, planning his future, looking forward to the time when she wouldn’t have to work so hard. He’d buy her a little house, move her out of Cabbage Town, and help the people who lived the kind of life he had.

  During his senior year he’d accepted the scholarship with Jacksonville State. But by then she wasn’t there to share it and he’d never felt quite right about his life. He’d gone a little wild for a while, until he’d gotten hurt. The injury had jerked him up and reminded him of the future and his plans to help others.

  He played for the Saints until he reinjured his knee, then he retired and went back to college. While he’d been a player there’d been a woman, a woman who quickly decided she wouldn’t like being either a student’s wife now or a policeman’s wife later. Their engagement had come to an end along with his athletic career. He had become a dedicated, serious man with no plans ever to allow himself to be close to anybody. He didn’t fit anywhere and he’d learned to accept that.

  “Why do you chew on that cigar?” Toni asked.

  “Nasty habit, huh?”

  “Well, I’ve known people with worse.”

  “I don’t know. Works out my frustrations, I guess. Like your nursery rhymes.” He pulled the van up in front of her house and cut off the engine.

  “Do you realize I haven’t spouted a rhyme all day long? I think,” she said shyly, “that I’ve found a better outlet for my frustrations.” She took the cigar from his mouth and threw it out the window.

  “You have?”

  “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

  The teacup was quiet and still, as though a spell had been cast over it. As Adam locked the door behind them, Toni went into the bedroom and began to brush the moussed spikes from her hair. She watched him as he came up behind her, sliding his arms around her waist and kissing the side of her neck.

  “You’re right, outlaw. My lips are telling me that this is a definite improvement.”

  “Oh, Adam, are we real? Am I truly here with you, like this?”

  He pressed his lips against her cheek as his hands rose to her shoulders. Catching the straps of her sundress, he slipped them off. His fingers found the back zipper and pulled it down, allowing the dress to fall to the floor in a splash of color. Her panties followed and she was nude. He raised his head and looked in the mirror, seeing the flush on her face and the wonder in her eyes.

  “You are very real,” he whispered in a voice that measured several notes below hoarse. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”

  They watched in the mirror as her nipples began to stiffen. Adam’s erection pressed against her, and the beat of his heart matched her own. There was a lopsided grin on his face as he reached around and cupped one of her breasts in his palm. He began to massage the soft globe, touching, examining it as though he’d never seen a woman before.

  She blushed. “I’m not very big.”

  “You’re absolutely perfect. Just look at us. Look how well we fit together.”

  The muscles in Toni’s stomach were having an anxiety attack, and she knew that in another minute she wouldn’t be able to keep still.

  “I think,” she managed to say, “that there’s something wrong with this picture.”

  “Oh, what’s that? It looks good to me.” Adam could have said it felt good, too, because Toni was like silk. She was warm and alive and he wanted to sweep her off her feet and plunge into her, hard and rough and … Damn, what was he thinking? Toni was little, delicate. She deserved to be treasured and adored, not ravished.

  “You still have all your clothes on,” she said. Twisting around in his arms, she unfastened his belt, unzipped his pants, and reached inside.

  “Oh, Toni.” He took in a big breath of air. “Don’t do that.”

  She slid his slacks and briefs down his legs in a quick jerk before returning her attention to the part of him that didn’t care about his decision to hold back on the ravishment.

  “I want to look at you,” she said. “Touch you. This morning I was so … aroused, I didn’t have a chance to do this. Are you shy, Adam Ware?”

  “Shy? I don’t know. Maybe I am.” He groaned. “I mean, maybe I was. Oh, Ton
i, you’d better stop that. I don’t seem to have any control at all around you.”

  “Good. I like you wild and wanton.”

  “Me? Wild and wanton?” He let out a roar. “You got it, outlaw.”

  And she did. When Adam loved her, he didn’t hold back. She met him thrust for hungry thrust, soaring through a primeval jungle of desire that took them to the beginning of time and slung them into the future. Afterward Adam lay on his back, holding Toni on top of him. He’d never felt such happiness.

  “What are you thinking, Adam?” Toni asked hesitantly, and she held her breath as she waited for his reply.

  “You’re right, outlaw. This beats a cigar any day.”

  She stiffened. She hadn’t known how badly she wanted him to say that he loved her until he didn’t. She hadn’t allowed herself to formulate the words, but she knew they’d been there all along. For a long time she lay still, feeling him breathe, feeling his heart beat in a slow, even sound that echoed in her ear.

  Maybe he didn’t know how special this was for her, she mused. She was certain that as a jock and a police officer, he’d had hundreds of women chasing him. She’d had several semiserious relationships herself, but none in a long time and never like this.

  Adam felt Toni’s sudden distance and he didn’t know what had happened. He sensed she needed reassurance, but wasn’t sure what to say. Intimate talk had never been easy for him. Up to now, he and Toni had fought, disagreed, and faced off against each other’s philosophy of life. Still, they’d seemed so perfectly attuned that each had understood the other’s thoughts and words without explanation. He nuzzled her forehead. He didn’t want to lose this special closeness.

  “What’s wrong, Toni?”

  “Nothing, Adam. I’ve never seduced a man like this before. I feel like I’m fifteen. This is really crazy, isn’t it? What would Cosmopolitan magazine say about me?”

  Never seduced a man? That wasn’t the way he had interpreted what they’d done. To him they’d made love and it had been very special. He couldn’t give voice to his feelings just yet. They were too new and perhaps too unwanted. He’d never intended to fall in love.