Against All Odds (Arabesque) (10 page)

“Yes. Yes, I want you, and you’ve had plenty proof of it. But nothing can come of it. My father is out of joint because I rented an office in your building. What do you think his reaction would be if we...if I—”

“If we became lovers?” he interrupted. “Can’t make yourself say it? Well, I don’t share your fear. Rafer is concerned about himself, his family name, another loss to the Roundtrees. Not about your virtue, I’m afraid. A man who loves his children doesn’t ridicule them in public. I’m sorry to say this, sorry if it hurts you, but it’s true. If you go on trying to please him, you won’t have a self to give. He doesn’t deserve you. I’d hoped we could have dinner together, but if you don’t want to—”

“Where would we eat?” The smile in his twinkling eyes stole her breath.

“I know just the place.”

* * *

Adam stopped the car at Rafer Grant’s front door, put the car in park, turned and looked at Melissa. She was preparing to get out quickly and leave him sitting there, as he’d known she would, and his right hand stilled her departure.

“Melissa, when have I ever left you to walk to your door unescorted? You underestimate me.”

She opened the door. “Please, Adam, not tonight. I’m not ready to do battle with him. I enjoyed dinner. Good—”

In an abrupt move, he took her gently to him. “You may refuse me permission to see you to your door, but not this—I’m taking this.” His kiss was hard and quick, but he knew he’d shaken her. He stayed there until the front door closed behind her and a figure, no doubt Rafer, approached her. He wanted to go into that house, to shield her from her father’s unkind words, from the torrent of abuse that awaited her. For the first time in his adult life, he faced what he regarded as an insurmountable barrier, but he refused to consider the one certain way around it, and he wouldn’t back away. She was in his blood.

Adam headed for Beaver Ridge, pensive and restless. He didn’t fool himself. If he had to see her every day, his desire for her would grow, not diminish. He cursed—since when had he spent so much time thinking about one woman? Bitter laughter spilled from his lips when he reminded himself that no woman had stood against him as she had. With any other one, he would have long ago plucked the bud, sated himself, and gone his way. It was the reason that sophisticated women had suited him. This one was different, very different. She would want it all, and he wasn’t ready to spring for that.

He realized that he hadn’t driven home, that Bill Henry’s house was at the next turn. He parked, remembered with considerable relief that it wasn’t necessary to lock the car, and started up the modest walkway.

“Well, what brings you here tonight, Adam?” His uncle’s voice came from a corner of the shadowy front porch, hidden from the light of the moon. “Come on up. Mosquitoes are hiding ever since I lit one of those lemony candles that Winterflower insists on sending me. ’Course, you didn’t come here this time of night to discuss mosquitoes. I was in town this evening—heard an awful lot of whispering about you. What’s her name?”

He regarded his uncle with affection. A tall, powerfully built and energetic man with smooth dark skin and a pencil thin mustache, he had been Adam’s childhood idol. B-H had had time to listen to his dreams for the future while his father strove to preserve the family legacy. He’d never wanted to be like his uncle though, because Bill Henry didn’t care about money or building empires; he was a seeker of contentment.

“What’s her name?” B-H asked again, and Adam noted that as usual he didn’t mince words, nor was he reluctant to get personal.

“Her name is Melissa Grant, and she’s head of the search firm that located my newest Leather and Hides employee for me, the one I probably ought to suspect.”

B-H nodded. “I see. And you think she might be in cahoots with this fellow—”

“The fellow we’re speaking about is my manager of Leather and Hides,” Adam cut in. His uncle released a long, sharp whistle.

“So you think she wants to sink the business? I know you’ll handle that one way or another, so that’s not all that’s bothering you.” When Adam didn’t respond, B-H allowed a considerable amount of time to elapse, before he asked, “Are you talking about Emily Morris’s daughter?”

Adam swung around. “Yeah. Why?”

B-H stood and walked toward the front door, signaling the end of their conversation. “Just watch your step. There hasn’t been a real blitzkrieg around here in over thirty years, and it looks like we’re in for one. Stop by again soon.”

* * *

Meals in the Roundtree home had always been a time of family bonding, and Adam raced down the winding stairs knowing he’d find his mother and brother waiting at the breakfast table. It was one of the reasons why he didn’t eat breakfast in New York. He couldn’t get accustomed to being alone at a breakfast table. Mary Roundtree didn’t spoil her sons, but she gave them as much mothering as they would tolerate. In Adam’s case that wasn’t much.

“It’s so good to have you home, Adam. Sit down, and I’ll get your breakfast.” He was about to tell her that he’d get it, when he remembered the tradition that she dictated what the family ate for breakfast. She couldn’t prevent their eating junk for lunch, she told them, but she could put a good, healthful breakfast in them. Adam had noticed Wayne’s unusual silence, but he waited until their mother left the room before inquiring about it.

“What’s on your mind, Wayne?” The brothers occasionally went fishing or played tennis on Saturday mornings when both were at home, a carryover from their boyhood days. “It’s too hot for tennis. How about spending some time with me at the office?”

“I’d rather we went over to Leather and Hides. Last night while you were out, Nelson called to report another vat of improperly tanned calf skins. He was so outraged that I’ve begun to wonder if he’s involved in this.”

They discovered nothing at the factory that Calvin hadn’t reported. Adam was more certain than ever that he was dealing with sabotage, because someone had brought formaldehyde from a locked cabinet in the basement up to the third floor and added it to the chrome tanning when zirconium salts should have been applied.

“What’s the damage?”

“We’ll have to find a buyer for this glove leather,” Adam told Wayne, “and we won’t be able to fill our orders for first-quality shoe leather. Whoever’s doing this is trying to destroy the family’s reputation along with the business. Somebody on our payroll is at the bottom of this.” As if he didn’t have enough to think about: he had to know whether Melissa had a role in it, whether she’d selected someone whom she could depend on to wreck the business. He didn’t want to believe her capable of it, but the possibility existed, and his desire for her wasn’t going to overrule his common sense. “I’m going to the office to think about all this. I’ll let you know what I decide.”

* * *

Adam closed his office door, locked it, and stretched out on his luxurious leather sofa. He’d come to appreciate the solitude that living alone afforded, and he could only be assured of that total separation from others on Saturdays or Sundays in his office. Sunday was out—small town people went to church on Sundays, and if you had any standing in the African American communities of Frederick and Beaver Ridge, you’d better be there. To go to one’s office was to risk being labeled an infidel, and the brothers and sisters did not associate with nonbelievers.

He turned over on his stomach and remembered that he hadn’t eaten lunch, but food wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted Melissa. He had to see her, but where could they be together without the wrath of their families or the speculations of gossip mongers? He couldn’t go to her house, and she wouldn’t be welcome in his, and if they went to a public place, the news would float back to their families within the hour. Did he dare even to telephone her? He sat up. For himself, he feared nothing, but he didn’t want to trigger her father’s mean behavior. He paced the floor, but with each step his desire to see her, to be with her, intensified. She’d said that her father was never violent. He dialed her number.

To his chagrin, Rafer answered. “This is Adam Roundtree. I’d like to speak with Melissa, please.” He hadn’t hesitated to identify himself, because surreptitious behavior wasn’t his style.

“What do you want? Isn’t it enough that your family stole her birthright? Now you’re after
her!
I won’t allow it.”

He listened to the man’s discourteous remarks with as much patience as he could muster. “If you won’t allow me to speak with Melissa, please tell her that I—” He broke off when he heard Melissa’s voice.

“Give me that phone. How could you speak that way to another person, Daddy, especially when that person is calling me at the place you said would be my home? If I came back, you promised this would be my home. You listen to me, Daddy—if I’m at home, I should be able to receive calls and entertain my friends without your interference. So it’s clear that I’m not home now, but I soon will be.” She disregarded her father’s stunned expression, aware that she had never before defied him to his face, and turned her back.

“Adam. I apologize for my father. You wanted to speak with me?” Her spirits rose as the deep timbre of his voice warmed her heart.

“I would have preferred not to call, but I had no choice. I want to see you. Where can we meet?”

Melissa looked at her father, saw the veins that protruded at his temple, the rapid breathing that always accompanied his moments of extreme displeasure. When she tried to please him or when, as now, she finally defied him, his reaction was the same.

“Pick me up in a half hour,” she told Adam, hung up, and waited for the inevitable. She figured her father needed at least one minute’s worth of verbal explosion, gave it to him, and went to her room.

* * *

Adam strode up the steps and rang the bell at Rafer Grant’s front door. He was certain that Melissa had planned to wait for him on the front steps and had arrived ten minutes earlier than agreed in order to forestall her. He greeted Rafer with as much civility as he could, looked up and saw Melissa coming down the stairs, a vision in a wide-skirted dress of buttercup yellow and knew that, if he had to, he’d take far greater chances in order to be with her.

He took her hand, turned, and looked Rafer Grant in the eye. “Good night, Rafer.” The man’s whipped expression said that he’d gotten the message, clear and unmistakable: Adam Roundtree did not hide his actions from
anyone.

* * *

Neither spoke, and both knew that their relationship had changed, because each of them had risked something in order to preserve it. Adam drove two blocks, aligned the Jaguar with the curb, parked, and turned to her. She had to know that he’d needed to see her or he wouldn’t have called, that her defense of him to her father had heightened his desire to possess her, to be one with her. He reached for her and took her to him hungrily, shocked at first to realize how badly he’d needed to have her in his arms and then stunned by the ardor with which she returned his kiss, clung to his embrace. Again, a nagging memory pestered him: where and when had he known her before?

She nestled in his arms, and he held her there as he marveled that words seemed unnecessary, that they seemed to belong together. Yet he knew that it couldn’t be. He wasn’t ready for it, not with her, not with a woman who might be guilty of the epitome of treachery, not with the daughter of a man who hated him. Reluctantly he released her. He had to get his emotions into harmony with his brain. Her hand remained on his chest, warm and sweet, and he wanted to pull her back to him. To feel again her soft breast against his chest and her eager mouth welcoming his tongue. He ignored his craving for her and started the engine.

Her words reminded him of what she faced, of what they both faced because of their attraction. “I pray to God that I never have to stand between you and my father. Nothing would have convinced me that he was capable of such acrimony if he hadn’t directed it to me, if I hadn’t been the butt of it. I’ve seen a house that I want, and I’ll be moving as soon the deal is closed. I shouldn’t have let him persuade me to come back here, but fate seems to have had a hand in it, so I’m not knocking it.”

“Fate is an excuse people use, Melissa. I don’t believe in it,” he said, working hard at combating his vulnerability to her.

“I know. You told me that.”

He knew that their circumstances troubled her, as they did him. He could feel it, but he couldn’t relent and comfort her. His desire for her already neared fever pitch, and he had to keep his counsel, had to resolve the problems at Leather and Hides. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—think beyond that.

* * *

He drove toward Baltimore and stopped at an elegant little mom-and-pop restaurant just on its outskirts, where they were unlikely to encounter anyone from Frederick or Beaver Ridge. But as they entered, Adam saw his brother, Wayne, at a center table with a woman whom he didn’t know.

“Do you see someone you know?” Melissa asked.

“My brother and a companion.” He sat back, looking in Wayne’s direction until his brother acknowledged his presence. That accomplished, he opened the menu and concentrated on what he’d eat.

“So much for privacy. I doubt we’ll get any before you move into your house.” He couldn’t bring any humor to his chuckle. “And then we’ll have more privacy than will be good for us.” He could tell from her reply that she didn’t have her sense of humor with her right then.

“Will your brother come over here? Do you think he’ll join us?”

A smile touched the corner of his mouth. Her feelings about additional company couldn’t have been clearer. She didn’t want any, at least not his brother’s.

“Wayne wouldn’t engage me in a public confrontation, Melissa. My brother and I respect each other.” They ordered cold minted pea soup, Maryland deviled crab cakes, salad, and peach cobbler a la mode for dessert. Adam contemplated the soup in which he normally delighted, but which he could not enjoy. He had looked forward to being with her as they’d been that Sunday with Winterflower, but he knew she wouldn’t let down her guard, that Melissa Grant wouldn’t drop her public persona so long as they were under his brother’s watchful eye.