Against All Odds (Arabesque) (22 page)

“I could get used to being in this place with you. I come here to find peace, to shut out my problems, to rejuvenate as it were. And I always come here alone. But having you here with me feels good. Feels right.” He let his gaze roam up the trunk of a tall elm. “Are you glad you came?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’m glad.” His heartbeat raced wildly when she reached up and tucked his scarf closely around his neck but wouldn’t look at his face.

“Come on—let’s walk,” she said, though she grasped his arm and faced him, making it impossible for him to take a step. His fingers guided her face upward until he could see the passion glittering like soft lights in her eyes.

“Oh, honey. Sweetheart, we’re insane,” he said softly. Immediately her arms reached up to caress his broad shoulders.

“I know. Oh, Adam, I know.” He watched, captivated by her soft, yielding manner, as she raised parted lips for his kiss even as the words left her mouth. He covered her mouth with his and drank in her sweetness. He needed her closer, and he needed all of her. She moved against him, but he stilled her. He needed all of her, to know her fully, to communicate with her at the deepest level. But how could he, when the level of trust that he needed eluded them? He tucked her to his side and walked on. Unsatisfied.

“Time to go,” he told her abruptly after seeing a brown bear dash into the thicket. They walked swiftly through the high pines, white ash, and oak trees that thrived there. Riffling excitement, akin to fear, alerted Adam to danger, causing him suddenly to sniff the wind and look up at the black sky. He released her hand.

“Let’s get out of here. We’ll have to make a run for it.” Drenched and shivering, they reached the lodge.

“Too bad we didn’t wait an hour to take that walk,” he lamented, as the storm moved on, and the sun peeked through the clouds.

“You’re t-t-telling m-m-me.”

“You’re shivering. I’ll get something warm for you.” He removed her jacket and shoes and wrapped her in a woolen blanket.

“T-th-thanks.”

“I think I’d better call a doctor.”

“No d-d-don’t. I’m scared to death of electrical storms—it’s just nerves,” she told him, and he stared at her, incredulous. He took her in his arms and rocked her until the tremors stopped. She’d shown no sign of fear while she sprinted a half mile in that electrical storm.

He reflected on Melissa’s behavior as he set about preparing lunch. He’d never seen her so vulnerable as when she’d trembled uncontrollably because of fear, not even when she had lain beneath him and splintered in his arms, and he realized he felt a new tie to her, a feeling that she needed him.

After lunch he made a fire in the fireplace to ward off the sudden chill that followed the thunderstorm. They sat before it, and he took her hand.

“What do you want from life, Melissa?” He could see that she’d rather he’d phrased the question differently.

“A girl and a boy in whatever order they decide to show up.”

He took no offense at her attempt to downplay its importance to her, because he knew she had a tendency to squirm whenever their conversation became too personal. “And?”

“Well, I don’t want to conceive them by artificial insemination, and I don’t want to be an unmarried mother.”

Adam couldn’t help laughing. She refused to admit that she wanted a husband. “Anything else? What about a father for those kids?”

A brief wistfulness flashed in her limped eyes. “He can be part of the package.” Her manner changed. “Are we talking serious, here?”

“Not as serious as we might, but I need to know something about you apart from your intelligence, efficiency, wit, sexy beauty, and earth-shattering lovemaking.” Her raised eyebrows and skeptical look said that he might have overstated it. Heat flooded her face, and she shrugged, her diffidence adding to her allure.

“Seventy-five percent of the men in this country wouldn’t need to know any more than that,” she said, “and the other twenty-five percent wouldn’t know what to do with that information if they had it.”

He hadn’t thought her shy or so tender. Getting her to reveal herself proved as simple as getting blood from a turnip. His eyes narrowed as he remembered his first encounter with her father. “What—besides your father—makes you cry?”

“Adam, that’s behind me. If I hurt, it’s for my mother.”

He rolled over, clasped her in his arms, and she spoke more readily of her life. They talked, holding each other until sleep claimed them.

* * *

Hours later they awakened in a chilled room beside a cold fireplace. Melissa snuggled closer to Adam. The tender protectiveness he’d shown her bound him more closely to her, and she forgot the reasons why she should avoid him. She wanted to tell him she loved him, but even in his loving, protective mien, when he’d held her while she trembled uncontrollably in fright, he’d withheld something. She looked down at him, his arms behind his head and his eyes closed for emotional privacy, and thought of his masterfulness under pressure and his awesome passion for her. Yes, he charted his own course, and he hadn’t committed himself to her because he hadn’t accepted their relationship. Something or somebody stood between them, and she had an eerie feeling that the chasm they faced involved her family. A deep intimacy had developed between them as they’d sat before the fire talking and sipping coffee, but he had told her little of himself and nothing of what he envisaged for them. Yet he’d filled her heart with himself. She had to hold back—she didn’t want to, but she had to.

Chapter 10

M
elissa unpacked her small weekend bag and dropped the soiled garments into the hamper. A glance at her watch confirmed that she didn’t have time to get to Sunday morning church. Who would have thought their weekend would pass as it had—first a storm in which they’d nearly drowned and then an afternoon and night of the deepest intimacy she’d ever experienced. They’d shared affection and their minds, but not their bodies. If they had spoken words of love and given of their bodies, too, she doubted she could have left him for any reason. But he’d kept their temperatures low, though she knew that wasn’t what he’d intended when he took her there. She understood that their feelings for each other had changed, that they’d come to a reckoning point and had opted for caution and restraint. She hadn’t been hurt nor had she attempted to seduce him when he bluntly suggested they leave early, because he couldn’t spend another celibate night there with her.

She answered the phone reluctantly, since Adam had no reason to contact her that she could imagine. Her father’s voice roared through the receiver.

“Where were you yesterday and last night? Your mother stayed in her room all day. I told you she’s not well, and I thought you came back here to look after her.”

Why hadn’t she realized that her father manipulated her, using her mother, her brother, and one phony situation after another to control her? “I spent the time with friends,” she said, and let her voice proclaim her right to do as she pleased. She hadn’t lied, she’d been with Adam and the little creatures she’d met near the brook. For the first time his taunts had no effect on her. Loving Adam had made her strong, and her newfound relationship with her mother made her less dependent on her father for parental affection. She didn’t want to hurt her father, though, so she didn’t share with him her suspicion that Emily remained in her room to avoid him. She changed the subject.

“What do the police have to say about Timmy getting shot?”

“Your uncle Booker is dealing with it, and he’ll bring Adam Roundtree to justice. Mark my word. You’ll rue the day you turned your back on your own people.” When she didn’t answer, he added, “So you’re ready to agree that he did it.”

Annoyed, she told him in icy tones. “You’d save a lot of breath and energy, Daddy, if you’d get to know your daughter. I hold integrity inviolate, and I won’t lie for a Grant or a Roundtree or anyone else.” He hung up, dissatisfied with her as usual, but she shrugged it off, put on a top coat, and went out to buy milk. On an impulse, she stopped at a public phone and called her mother. Her father had just gone out, she learned, and decided to pay her mother a short visit.

“You’re just glowing, darling,” her mother said. “Were you with Adam this weekend? Rafer swears you were.”

Surprised at the question and uncertain how to answer, Melissa only nodded. But Emily assured her that she hoped Melissa had been with him.

“Mama, are you suggesting—”

“I’m saying what it sounds like. I was a prude, insisting to Bill Henry that we wait until after we married. That was the fashion in those days. But we didn’t marry, and I never knew him. A thousand times I’ve bemoaned the day I exacted that promise from him. Melissa, I’ve had thirty-one years to wonder what it’s like to make love with a man who loves and cherishes me. Rafer and I both got cheated.”

She noticed the quivers in her mother’s voice and asked if she felt ill. “I don’t feel sick, just weak all the time. Not a bit of energy. If I complain, Rafer takes me back to the doctor for more tests. I’ve been scanned so much I feel transparent. That’s all these doctor do. Tests and more tests and feed whatever it is they find into the computer. How the devil will the computer know what’s wrong with me? It hasn’t been to medical school.” A wide grin spread across Melissa’s face, and soon, peals of laughter erupted from her throat. Her mother had a devilish sense of humor, and all these years she hadn’t known it.

In recent weeks she’d noticed an absence of the invisible weight, the aura of defeatism that she had always observed about her mother. She looked at her mother’s rich brown, wrinkle-free face, naturally black hair, and svelte figure. Who’d guess she had lived for fifty-two years? The doctors wouldn’t find her mother’s illness in her bloodstream nor her vital organs. The name of Emily Grant’s disease was despair, lack of a reason for living.

Melissa walked over to her mother and began to massage the back of her neck and her shoulders, all the while thinking and putting her mother in perspective. It should have been obvious that Emily’s listlessness and myriad of complaints stemmed from discontentment with her life, that her total submissiveness to her husband was unnatural and partly phony, that she just didn’t care enough to fight hard for her rights, that her reclusive behavior had the earmarks of a power play, a defensive tactic. Her fingers stilled, and she pulled a small footstool to the front of her mother’s chair and sat down.

“Mama, why don’t you get out of the house, volunteer at one of the shelters, teach in the Head Start program, tutor, read to the blind, anything except stay in this room. You have a college degree, Mama. And you’re too young to fold up like this.” Her heart constricted at the expectancy, the eagerness, mirrored in her mother’s face, and hope welled up in her as they walked toward the foyer.

“Honey, I’ve never gone anywhere much without your father, except shopping, and I certainly haven’t done a thing unless he wanted me to. Your grandfather wouldn’t rest until I married Rafer and gave him some grandchildren, so I bowed to his wishes. You know the rest.”

“Well, it’s time you did something for yourself, Mama.”

“I hear what you’re saying, and I may try it, but you and I both know that nothing will give me back Bill Henry. And that’s my problem. You make sure you don’t ever have one like it.”

“If I have a choice, Mama, I won’t take the one that will make me miserable. So please don’t worry about me, and get out of here and do something about your life.”

* * *

Adam walked through the recreation room of the Rachel Hood Hayes Center for Women, talking to the women who had taken refuge there. Small children clung to several of them, fright still mirrored in their young eyes. He took pride in The Refuge, as it was popularly known, and he hurt for the women whose hard lives and cruel mates had forced them to leave their homes for a communal shelter. He had intended that the one being built in Hagerstown would have only private rooms and small apartments, but the continuing fiasco at the leather factory threatened to get out of hand, and since he used his Leather and Hides shares to finance his charities, including The Refuge, he’d had to retrench.

The crooks had struck again on Saturday night while he’d been at the lodge with Melissa. He forced himself not to think of her in connection with it. His heart dictated forbearance, but his common sense counseled him to challenge her. Reorienting his thoughts, he shook hands with a woman who had arrived at The Refuge so badly battered that he’d had her hospitalized for more than a week, patted an older woman, there for the third time, and headed for his small basement office.

Adam didn’t wait for an elevator. He opened the door to the stairwell and stopped just short of colliding with Emily Grant.

“What?” They spoke simultaneously. Adam stepped back and held the door for her.

“Mind if I ask why you’re here.” He didn’t care if she detected suspicion in his tone.

“I’m a volunteer. Why? Is something wrong?”

Adam braced a hand on each hip, took a deep breath and pierced her with an accusative gaze. “Did Rafer send you here? He isn’t satisfied with the damage we’re getting at Leather and Hides and wants to start on The Refuge, is that it?” She appeared at first to wilt under his stern rebuff, but he could see her back stiffening.

“I don’t know any more about Leather and Hides than what you just said, and I have no idea what Rafer is doing.” That comment made him realize that Emily didn’t know his relationship to The Refuge. Nothing on the door identified the place by its correct name, the Rachel Hood Hayes Center for Women. He took her arm and walked with her to his small office.

“Emily, I don’t suppose you knew that I’m the founder of this place and its sole support. It’s a memorial to my maternal grandmother.” She told him that she hadn’t.

“Melissa suggested that I do some volunteer work, Adam, but she doesn’t know I’ve actually started. I needed something for myself and when I saw these women, I knew I could help them. My body hasn’t been battered, but my brain certainly has. I’ve been happier here these past four days than at any time since...well, it’s meant everything to me. I feel like a different person. Please let me stay, Adam. I know that when Rafer finds out, he’ll want your neck and mine, too, but I have to do this and I’m not turning back.”

He opened two of the soft drinks that he kept in a tiny refrigerator beneath his desk and handed one to her. “I want you to stay here as long as you like.” He rubbed his chin reflectively. “Do you mean to tell me your husband doesn’t know you’re doing this?”

“It’s a long story, Adam.”

He forced himself not to glance at the elegant watch strapped to his left wrist. “I’ve got plenty of time.” She gave him what he figured was a well-censored account of a troubled marriage, careful to omit mention of the main reason for it, and they spoke at length. He thought over what she’d told him and released his signature whistle.

“There’s going to be hell to pay,” he warned. Emily sipped some ginger ale and leaned back in her chair with all the serenity of a reclining Buddha.

“So what? I’ve always had hell to pay.” He tapped the rickety wooden desk with the rubber end of a pencil and laid his head to one side, watching her carefully. He ruled out the possibility of her presence there as an effort by Rafer to manipulate him.

“And you say Melissa doesn’t know about this?”

Emily leaned forward, as though to beseech him. “She suggested I do something, but she didn’t mention this, and I haven’t told her about it.”

He nodded. According to the facts he now had, the cleavage between the two families didn’t appear as great as he and other people thought. Yet it went deep. Wayne might feel strongly about it, but he wouldn’t be unfair. And B-H disassociated himself from the feud. Its main keepers appeared to be Rafer and his mother, but two more fierce or more committed fighters he didn’t care to meet.

“I’m happy to have you with us,” Adam said, and walked with her a few paces down the hall to the elevator.

“Are we going to be friends?” she asked him, when he held the door open. In that moment, it cheered him that he’d adopted the habit of smiling.

“I think we are,” he said with a smile and meant it. He went back to his office, feeling as though he and Melissa had a chance at happiness. He pulled the sheet from his fax machine and read, “Somebody mixed the chrome and zirconium samples, and we’ve got some useless fluids and a hell of a stench here—Cal.” So much for that, he muttered. He figured he’d just spent twenty seconds in a fool’s paradise. Too much dirty water flowed under the bridge—seventy years of hatred, the sabotage, and the things about him that Melissa didn’t know and for which she might not forgive him. They didn’t stand a joker’s chance.

* * *

A few days later, the Saturday after Thanksgiving Day, Melissa sat in Banks’s kitchen while her friend altered a dress she’d recently bought.

“This is a great color for you,” Banks said. “Turn around. It doesn’t fit because your waist is too little for the rest of you.” Melissa waited for the words that would follow Banks’s melodramatic sigh and groaned when she said, “But I guess Adam likes it.”

“Throw out all the bait you like, kiddo,” Melissa said, “but this fish isn’t biting.”

“Come on. If he was my guy, I’d hire a blimp and trail a mile-high streamer behind it proclaiming ‘Adam Roundtree is my man,’ and, by damn, I’d sign it.”

Melissa laughed. “You’re hopeless.”

“The least you could do is let me enjoy him vicariously.”

“I don’t kiss and tell, Banks, and I don’t ask you about Ray.”

Melissa knew her friend shrugged mainly for effect—she enjoyed attention and got a laugh when she said, “What’s to ask about Ray? He fills the bill for the moment.”

* * *

With the dress finished and pressed, they got into Melissa’s car and went to look for antiques. Melissa saw an old, sterling silver apple designed with a bite taken out, teeth prints evident, and a loop at the bottom for a key chain. She had it wrapped and sent to Adam, ignoring Banks’s raised eyebrow but not her succinct words: “What’s he supposed to do, conquer or surrender?” They bought apple cider at a farm and stopped for lunch at the adjoining restaurant.

Melissa nodded toward an adjoining booth and asked Banks, “Do you hear what I hear?” They listened as two men aired their views on women working. One didn’t want his wife to work, but the second disagreed on principle. He wanted an independent, interesting woman with a career of her own, one who stayed with him because she wanted him and not because she’d rather not work. His voice grew more persuasive when he admonished his companion, “Keep your ego out of the way and get a woman who’s your equal. Who the hell cares whether bag carrots taste as good as the ones on a bunch or the kid’s Reeboks last a week longer than some other brand? You can’t stay in bed all the time, man. Then what do you do?”

Melissa glanced toward the familiar voice as she and Banks left their booth. Wayne Roundtree. She hoped Adam was as far ahead of most Frederick men on the issue as his brother appeared to be.

“Isn’t that Wayne Roundtree?” Banks asked. “If I were a little younger...well, I could go for a man who thinks like that.”

“You’re always seeing a man you could go for.”

“I’m not promiscuous, honey, but I’m not dead either,” Banks assured her. “Take a hint and give Adam something to mull over. A man shouldn’t be too sure of a woman.” Melissa’s deliberate smile denoted the contentment of a cat licking her whiskers. Let Banks think whatever she liked.

* * *

Adam pushed a shopping cart full of used books into The Refuge’s small library and began shelving them. Ordinarily he didn’t go to the place on Mondays, but he knew the volunteers—mostly older women—needed his help following the weekend’s Thanksgiving celebrations, and he’d do as much as he could during his lunch hour.