"So give her another chance! I'm begging you!" Deena glanced at her sister, gum popping and indifferent, then back to the stern face of her former princ.i.p.al, singularly aware of the momentousness of the fight she now faced alone. You know my family. We have babies in high school and go to jail before we're 21. I'm trying to teach her what's right, but all around her are bad examples! She needs you around. She needs to see people who are educated and self-respecting, who look like us." Her eyes filled with tears. Nearby, both grandma and Lizzie were stone silent.

"Deena, I have to treat this with an even hand. If I found a male student pimping out girls, everyone would expect me to deal with him harshly. I can't appear light in this matter." He sighed. "I can't have her prost.i.tuting herself."

"It's not the same. Exploiting others is not the same as exploiting yourself." Deena turned to her sister. "And she won't do it again. Right?"

Lizzie nodded as if bored.

"Yeah, sure thing."

Princ.i.p.al Williams gathered Kleenex from the box on his desk and handed them to Deena.

"Stop crying. I can't have you in here crying." He gaze skated reluctantly to Lizzie. "If she promises..." he hesitated. "I guess I'll let her stay."

"Oh, thank you!" Deena cried.

"But not today. Take her home and get some sensible clothes on her. Tomorrow we start again, and I expect to see a new att.i.tude."

"Yes, sir," Deena was already standing. "Thank you so much. G.o.d, thank you."

Williams nodded. "Alright, alright. Go on now. And no more crying."

Outside, Grandma Emma strode right past Tak's Ferrari and kept moving. She clutched an oversized black pocketbook in both hands and her feet moved faster than Deena had ever seen.

"Grandma, where are you going? It's this car, remember?"

She whirled on her, like thunder and fury.

"What? You think I'm so ignorant I can't remember the fancy car you drove up here in?"

Her mouth creased to a single trembling groove, dark eyes now slits. Around them, high schoolers poured out the double doors to mill in the street.

"No, I-"

"The next time you want to go somewhere to bad mouth my family, you leave me at home. You hear me?"

Deena paused. "Bad mouth?"

"Yeah!" Grandma Emma took a step closer. "Or do you talk like that so often you don't even know when you doing? Talking bout how we uneducated and what not!"

"I didn't mean it as a slight. I just-"

"If we shames you so, why don't you go back to that other family you got? The white one that likes to kill people? Or don't they want you?"

Deena's lip trembled. "I never said I was ashamed-"

"You didn't have to!"

"Grandma-"

"I takes you in. I clothes you. I feeds you. And you bad mouths me and my family."

She started off again, an angry gait ailed by arthritis. But Deena call. Didn't follow.

"Me and my family," she'd said.

Her family.

Her's.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

Tak turned to Deena, smiling at the sight of wild brown locks framing her heart shaped face as she lay on the pillow. She was frowning. It was the end of the summer, August, and he knew what occupied her thoughts at this time of year.

"You don't have to do this. They can't make you."

Tak propped up on an elbow, his tanned skin contrasting with the stark white of the bed sheets.

Deena sighed. "They'd die if I didn't. I'd never hear the end of it."

"You'd hear the end of it if you stopped listening."

"Anyway, I'm the reason they do it every year. I came up with the idea."

He couldn't fathom why she would want to not only attend a banquet honoring the life of her grandfather, but plan one. Yet she'd done so year after year, celebrating a man who'd spent years grinding her into dirt. She owed him nothing. In fact, she owed him more than nothing. She owed him hatred.

Deena stared at him until a smile cracked her sullen expression. "Maybe it won't be as bad as last year."

Last year, he thought, G.o.d help us if it were.

She'd planned her menu with care, calling it a 'veritable smorgasbord of the safe and daring.' It included cracked crab and caviar, shrimp c.o.c.ktail and pates, canapes and imported cheeses; and all that was before the rosemary lamb chops and herb crusted salmon she'd serve as the main course.

Tak and Deena had argued in the caterer's office and in the car afterwards, and she started to cry. He couldn't understand this, he'd shouted; wouldn't understand this. And she dashed tears, trying to explain.

"You think I don't know how my grandfather felt about me? Do you think I need you to constantly remind me?" She shook her head.

"It isn't for him," she said finally. "It's for my grandmother. The only person in the world that wanted us. Eight days we sat in that foster home, before Grandma Emma and Grandpa Eddie came. They took one look at me and disappeared for another two. Later on I found out that my grandma used that time to convince him to take us in."

He was treading in deep and treacherous waters, he knew; where a banquet was no longer a lavish dinner but gushing grat.i.tude for crumbs kicked her way. So he backed off, and let her be. And the result had been a sobbing and heartbroken Deena, returned from the banquet with a stain on her dress and stories of how they made fun of her, of her food, her clothes, her everything.

This year she stayed firm in not planning the event. Tak suspected part of that was due to the fight she'd had with her grandmother following the visit to Princ.i.p.al Williams' office. At the last minute, when the Hammonds realized that Deena wasn't going to be footing this year's bill, they threw something together, and it was this something that she considered attending.

Tak sat up with a thought.

"Tell you what," he said. "Let's stay busy today. Then you won't have time to think about it."

Deena shook her head. "I have to at least go, Tak. My grandmother'll be disappointed."

He shrugged. Last he'd heard, she still wasn't speaking to Deena.

"Disappointed in what is the question, Deena. And maybe the answer is in not having you to bully."

He swung legs out from the bed and stood. "Not sure how sad you need to be about that one."

Deena closed her eyes.

He knew what she was thinking. They could be a cruel bunch, those Hammonds, and not going could be worse than enduring. She'd go, he thought, because in the end, that was easier.

She opened her eyes.

"What'll we do instead?"

Tak grinned in surprise.

"Whatever you want. Large or small. Name it and it's yours."

Somehow, that didn't seem enough. An idea occurred to him.

"Hey, let's redecorate your place. Looks like the inside of a mausoleum, anyway."

Deena pouted. "That's a bit strong."

"No, not really," He reached for the pajama pants he'd discarded by the bed the night before and pulled them over his naked torso. "Listen, I'm an artist. You can't possibly expect me to spend so much time in such drab surroundings."

Deena stood. "Hmph. I wouldn't have thought you'd notice. Your eyes are closed so often."

Tak stared at her. "What was that? A s.e.x joke?" He s.n.a.t.c.hed a pillow and heaved it at her. "That was terrible. Now get dressed so we can get to work."

Like everything else about her, he found her pension for bad jokes adorable.

They spent the morning shopping and the afternoon redecorating. Sunshine yellow curtains, goldenrod paint, a cream throw rug, several pieces of his artwork and a crystal floor lamp were all in tow when they finally returned to her apartment. Deena never knew a man could be so fussy about shades of color.

At the furniture store she'd balked at the idea of a living room set, crying poverty and the like, only to have him spring for the one she showed the most interest in. When she complained about the amount of money he was spending, he threw in an entertainment center as well.

They changed clothes, moved the old futon to the center of the room, and went to work layering the floor with newspaper and cracking open cans of paint. They worked in silence for a while, with nothing but the slick sounds of wet paint being slathered onto walls to entertain them.

"You're making a mess, Dee," Tak scolded, scowling at her poor painting skills. She looked at him baffled, then down at herself. In an effort to paint higher than her wingspan allowed, she'd leaned against the wall, lathering paint all over the torso of her t-shirt. She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Sorry," she mocked.

He frowned at her, knowing he was only being particular because they were painting. Even this was art to him. He turned back to the wall, then rounded on her suddenly.

"Hey! Isn't that my shirt?"

Knowing that it was, Deena began to whistle innocently as she returned to painting with renewed vigor.

"That is my shirt!"

She whistled even louder and made bold, dramatic sweeps of the brush to demonstrate how busy she was.

"Can't talk right now, Tak. Got a lot of work to get done over here."

"What! You're gonna give me back my d.a.m.ned shirt!"

He rushed Deena and hoisted her over his shoulder. Laughing, she squirmed to get free of his powerful grip. Paint smeared his shoulder and back as he carried her through the living room, past the bedroom and into the bathroom.

"Sticking your tongue out at me! Ruining my shirt! I'll show you!"

Deena laughed fitfully as he carried her away.

"And didn't I tell you that you were making a mess?"

He dumped her into the bathtub. Doubled over with laughter, she attempted to escape before he turned the shower on full blast. Yellow paint seeped from her now transparent shirt and lounge shorts, draining into the tub beneath her.

With a determined expression and a single hand, Deena s.n.a.t.c.hed him in, and in seconds they were saturated and giggling, her body beneath his. She kissed him as cold water rained down.

"Uh uh. Don't try to distract me. You still haven't taken off my shirt." The water plastered razored black hair to his forehead and neck, as he murmured between kisses.

"That's because I'm not going to." Deena traced the bridge of his nose with a single finger, then kissed him again. He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh yeah?"

"Oh yeah," she replied. Suddenly they were struggling again, as he yanked at the shirt, as she fought to keep it. But her fight was brief, and her laughter long.

"Deena, you made that way too easy."

Tak kissed her again, tossing his sopping wet t-shirt of a prize from the tub. He returned to Deena, heart pounding the way it always did when she was within his grasp.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.

Deena ran the flats of her palms across the broad dark table and tried to ignore the glares of those around her. Jennifer Swallows, 69, with the firm twelve years, in the industry forty. Sam Michaels and Donald Mason, each in their fifties, had been with the firm over twenty years. Herb West, at 67, had been with the firm ten, but in the industry forty. There were others, twenty-five in all, and each had something Deena did not. Decades of experience. And yet she was there, among this elite group, with seventy-five other architects on the other side of the door, snubbed from this all-important meeting.

Daichi entered the room with a scowl and closed the door behind him. He held no briefcase, no notes, nothing to indicate the meeting's purpose. He allowed his gaze to rake over each of the architects present, twenty-three men, Jennifer and Deena, and spared no one the invasive appraisals that bordered on molestation. Still, Daichi's entrance conjured up stirring images of Tak, flickering like an 8mm film-Deena's office door, a bare leg, his mouth at her neck, then lower. She cleared her throat and shifted in her seat. This would be a long meeting.