Against All Odds (Arabesque) (29 page)

He drove past the Taney house on South Benz Street, and Melissa seemed to spit in its direction, mystifying him.

“It’s a small pleasure I allow myself whenever I pass here,” she explained. “Now that we have school integration, I wonder whether our children still learn that, as chief justice of the Supreme Court, old Taney in the Dred Scott Case of 1857 upheld the tenet that slaves and their descendents were not citizens of this country and couldn’t sue in Federal courts, and that congress couldn’t forbid slavery in the United States or its territories. I refuse to forgive even his memory. Pursing my lips as if to spit at the place isn’t very ladylike, but it’s oh so satisfying.”

A deep chuckle rose in Adam’s throat. “The lady’s a bag of surprises. I never know what to expect of you.” He glanced over at her after pulling into the interstate. “You’re like a brilliant comet shooting through a bunch of ordinary stars.” He had the pleasure of seeing her settle down in the soft leather seat, fold her arms in contentment, and smile as though she possessed the secrets of the ages. Maybe she did, he mused, as she rested her head against his shoulder—she certainly had the key to his closet.

At the little restaurant they got seats at a small table in the rear, away from a group of happy revelers.

“What’s so amusing?” he asked as the waiter approached.

“This red tablecloth clashes with my fuchsia suit, don’t you think?”

“Do you really think I’m looking at this tablecloth?”

“Oh!” Crimson tainted her cheeks, and he observed her more closely when she ducked her head.

“You seem a bit down tonight. Anything wrong?” The shake of her head denied it, but he soon realized that she’d been waiting for the chance to share her concerns.

“We both knew way back when...when this started that if we got close there’d be turmoil in our families. I barely have one left. Earlier today my father begged me not to continue seeing you, to testify in support of my cousin, and to dissuade my mother from getting a divorce. Adam, I can’t do any of those things. I can’t give up my integrity, and I don’t know how he can ask me to. All my life, he drummed into my head how important it is to be faithful to the truth and to myself, that I should never compromise on those things. Do you think he’s sick?”

He stroked the back of the hand she rested on the table. “No. But I think Hayes-Roundtree may be his Achilles’ heel.”

“It isn’t his feud, and I told him so.”

“Maybe not, but it’s the excuse he uses. The thought of Bill Henry makes him feel like a whipped dog, and he didn’t do anything to deserve getting the short end.” Adam didn’t think it a matter for grinning, but when she squinted at him, he couldn’t avoid it.

“He isn’t guiltless, Adam. Daddy went into that marriage knowing that Mama didn’t love him.” Adam stared at her in surprise.

“Oh, I was blind about their relationship,” she said, “but since I’ve been back home, I view a lot of things differently. I hate to see him so desperate, though. He told me I’d be sorry for standing against him, but if I regret anything, it will be my loss of faith in him.”

Adam seized the opportunity to press his point. “If you’re standing against him for me, you’re pretty quiet about it, because you still haven’t told me what you know.”

“We’ve already had this discussion, Adam. I want you to succeed, and soon. But you have to find out on your own. When you do, I won’t deny the truth.”

She couldn’t be different, and that suited him. He’d met too many women and men who didn’t have a conscience and who had a price. She knew that he was scrutinizing her right then, but she sat unruffled, letting a smile play around her lips so he’d know she didn’t mind that he looked at her. He wanted to take her to his lodge, away from everybody and every unsolved problem, to lose himself in her. He needed her to bind the wounds he’d inflicted on himself when he blew up at Wayne. But he’d never run from anything, and he’d never used another person. As long as his thoughts were only of himself, and he had no right to touch Melissa.

A full moon lit their way back to Frederick. Tall, leafless trees cast eerie shadows across the highway as they sped through the night. And Adam’s thoughts drifted to the night he’d first kissed Melissa and how he’d spent the rest of it, sleepless, preaching to himself that nothing but disaster could come from a romantic involvement with her. But he’d paid no attention to his common sense, and the damage lay all around them. Quickly he threw out his right hand to protect Melissa as he slowed down abruptly and swerved to avoid a doe. He noticed how she tensed, and at the next rest stop he parked, walked around to her door, and gave her a hand getting out of the car. He held her loosely, stroking her back, but keeping her far enough away to make sure he didn’t succumb to his feelings.

“I’m sorry I frightened you back there, but I didn’t want to hit that deer.”

“I’m alright. I realized you knew what you were doing.”

He urged her closer. “I wish I did. Ah, Melissa, I wish I knew where we’re headed.” They got back in the car.

“Moral of the story is don’t speed,” she teased.

“Or leave woolgathering to sheep shearers,” he added with a chuckle. “It’s early yet. Let’s stop by the Watering Hole for a few minutes.” They remained there for about an hour, watching the strange night pairings, the loners, and those afraid to be alone.

“This scene is wearing on me. Are you ready to leave?”

She nodded and drained her wineglass. He held her hand as they walked out, leaving their audience gaping. He felt good, and her comment that they had just made Miss Mary’s Wednesday night prayer meeting a success brought a chuckle from him. They walked arm in arm in the brilliant moonlight to his parked car. Adam stood at the passenger’s door, looking at her, wanting and needing a resolution of their relationship. A pain of longing shot through him, and he bent down to kiss her. She welcomed him lovingly, her embrace strong and her lips open for the thrust of his tongue. He gave in to his feelings and admitted to himself the joy he felt when she molded herself to him and clasped him to her.

A niggling thought that he’d had early in their relationship began to plague him again, telling him to walk away while he could, to remember his vow never to let another woman control him, to let her go before she reined him in and had him at her mercy. The words “I can’t” exploded from him, and Melissa stared at him.

“Can’t what?”

“Shh,” he whispered. “Just let me hold you.” He hadn’t ever asked her for tenderness, though he’d been tender with her. He felt her discipline her own want and, instead, let him take what he needed from her as she reached up to receive the kiss that tenderly possessed them both. He raised his head to break it off and looked beyond Melissa and into the eyes of Louise Grant-Coston, Rafer Grant’s sister. He held Melissa away from him, and as though ice suddenly flowed through his veins, he stared at the woman he’d detested for more than half of his life.

Chapter 13

T
he following Sunday morning, Emily fell into step beside Melissa as they left church service. They had both dressed warmly for protection against the biting winter wind, and Melissa smiled inwardly when her mother tugged the luxurious fur more tightly around herself. She was learning that her mother loved beautiful things.

“I’ve never enjoyed walking so much as now,” her mother told her as she hunched her shoulders against the cold. “I can almost appreciate this coat. Rafer always insisted on driving, and you know how he hated for me to go anywhere by myself.” Melissa looked at the woman beside her. Her face and figure seemed to have lost years in a few short weeks, and her whole being seemed to proclaim the sweetness of life. Her rich brown skin glowed, and her eyes sparkled.

“You are more beautiful every time I see you, Mama. It’s the most amazing thing.”

“Well, I don’t know abut that, honey,” Emily demurred, “but if it’s true, it isn’t that I’m happy—maybe it’s because for the first time in years, I’m free to do as I please.” She glanced down a narrow side street that jutted off Court. “I haven’t tasted a cloud nine in over thirty years. They used to serve them in the Watering Hole. Let’s stop there.” She took Melissa’s arm and steered her toward the popular bar. “When I was young, this is where we hung out. But the Banks family bought the place, changed the policy, and the older crowd took over. I don’t know where the young people go these days.”

“Mama, are you sure you want to go to the Watering Hole right out of church? It’ll be crowded. And what’s a cloud nine, anyhow?” Her mother’s laughter heightened Melissa’s spirits.

“In my day, every young person knew what that was. A cheap champagne cocktail. A cube of ice, a jigger of cheap champagne, and ginger ale to the top.” Melissa’s grimace brought another laugh from Emily. “Honey, sophistication is a matter of definition. Sojourner Truth or Phillis Wheatley would probably have been shocked at such carrying-on, but what they did stuns me.” They talked amicably until they reached the local gathering place. Melissa knew that her mother couldn’t even contemplate the reaction that her presence in that place would generate. A hush and gaping stares greeted their entrance, but to Melissa’s astonishment her mother ignored it and strolled confidently to a vacant table.

She watched her mother sip the harmless drink with relish but contented herself with coffee, though she hated the chicory with which southerners delighted in ruining its taste. She glanced around when her mother nudged her and asked, “Isn’t that Timmy sitting over there staring at us?” Melissa suppressed a catch of breath, nearly choking herself—she’d never known anyone to look at her with such distaste.

“He looks as if he’d like to murder me,” Melissa said. “But why? I haven’t done anything to him.”

“I know Timmy’s a coward, and I know his mind has never been infected with common sense, but he isn’t that crazy,” Emily assured her. “I never could figure him out. I was mother to him for almost a year, and you watch. He won’t even walk over here and ask me how I am.” She drained her glass. “A long-stemmed glass should be handled with white gloves.” Emily strolled over to Timothy.

“I haven’t seen you in ages, Timmy, not since I heard you’d had an accident. Are you alright now?” Emily asked him. Melissa remembered that her mother had always been able to coax him into being gracious.

“I’m fine,” he said grudgingly.

“Good,” Emily said, patting him on the shoulder. “You come see me sometime, now. You hear?” A scowl marred his face as he looked up at her.

“Aren’t you lost, Aunt Emily?” Melissa marveled at the new Emily Grant, who favored Timothy with a dazzling smile, and informed him, “Not anymore, son. Not anymore!”

Melissa smiled at the devilish twinkle in her mother’s eyes and turned to leave. “Mama,” she said, pronouncing the word distinctly, “you’re having fun at everybody’s expense. Come on, let’s go.” Melissa paid, and they left with even more attention than they’d gotten when they walked in. They soon knew why. Rafer Grant had entered the bar in the meantime and seated himself near the door. He attempted to intercept his estranged wife.

“Don’t make a spectacle of yourself, Rafer,” Emily admonished with apparent disdain for his status as one of the town’s leading attorneys. “If you want to talk, come on outside. We don’t have to be the sole source of town news. You go on home, Melissa; I’ll call you.” Melissa nodded to her parents, feeling oddly alienated from them both, and walked on home.

* * *

“You either drop these ridiculous proceedings, or I’ll make certain that Melissa and Adam Roundtree won’t want any part of each other. The state of Maryland isn’t as big as the space they’ll want between them.”

“You wouldn’t do that to your own daughter,” she gasped.

“You go ahead with that divorce, and you’ll see. That man has been nothing but trouble to us.”

“I love my daughter, Rafer, just as you should, but if the feeling she and Adam have for each other won’t withstand whatever it is you plan to tell one of them, then I’m sorry. I only have one life, and I’ve wasted too much of it already. I’m going to try and live the rest of it on my own terms. Do what you like.”

“You asked for it.” He left her standing there, bemused, wondering what he knew. Rafer was too much the attorney to engage in idle threats.

* * *

Snow banked high around her house prevented Melissa from opening her kitchen door Monday morning, so she eased up the window and threw seed out to the birds. She tested the phone line, found it operating, and relaxed. She knew she couldn’t get to her office through that heavy snow, but she didn’t mind working at home so long as she had access to her on-line services. She dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and sat down to her computer just as her phone rang. Her father didn’t waste time on small talk, but went right to the reason for his call.

“I thought you ought to know that you aren’t the first woman in this family to have an affair with Adam Roundtree.”

Melissa sucked in her breath. If her father heard her, he ignored it. “Your aunt Louise tells me she had an affair with him years ago. I guess he just can’t resist Grant women.” When she didn’t respond, he needled her. “What have you got to say to that, young lady?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Really?” he snorted. “Then ask him.”

* * *

Melissa wrapped her arms around herself and paced from one end of her den to the other. Twice she started toward the stairs leading down to the second floor and twice she remembered that she probably couldn’t open her front door. She had to talk with Adam, to know if her father’s story had any truth, but she wanted to be with him when she asked him about it. Right then, she needed the reassurance of his arms around her, holding her. She didn’t know what she’d do if he admitted having had an affair with her aunt, a woman known among the local people for her beauty and her feminine figure. Beauty that she had envied as a young girl.

She whiled away most of the day, unable to focus on her work, almost uninterested in it. When she could stand it no longer, she telephoned Adam at home in Beaver Ridge only to have Mary Roundtree tell her that Adam went to his office on weekdays, snow or no snow.

“How did you get to the office?” Melissa asked Adam as though hers was a casual call. “I don’t think I can open my front door.”

“Hi,” he chided for her failure to greet him. “If you can’t get out of the house, I’ll come over and dig you out. I hitched a snowplow to my dad’s old Chevy truck and got in here with no difficulty. I’ll be over there in about an hour.”

Melissa changed into an off-white denim jump suit and prowled aimlessly about the house until she glimpsed Adam digging his way to her front door. Four or five inches of snow wasn’t much in New York, but it stilled the town of Frederick. She watched him for a minute, dropped the curtain, and went to the kitchen to make coffee. She could at least be hospitable, she told herself, if he cleaned her walkway and steps. And any way, a man was innocent until proved guilty. Wasn’t that the American way? She resisted the temptation to serve the coffee in porcelain cups, laid two paper napkins on the table, and set two mugs on them. She rubbed her hands together, caught herself doing it, and dropped them to her side. Then she rubbed her thighs. When he finally rang the doorbell, she walked to the door on wooden legs.

“Hi. What took you so long to get here?” He stepped in, pulled off his gloves, and took her into his arms for a kiss. He must have sensed her resistance, for he leaned back and looked into her face.

“What’s this? You don’t want me to kiss you? After digging out there in the cold for the last half hour, I deserve some warmth, don’t I?” His arms tightened around her, but she turned her head.

She knew that she’d gone about it all wrong, but she couldn’t help her feelings, and she wouldn’t pretend. His reaction did not surprise her. She sensed at once the psychological distance he put between them, knew that if he proclaimed innocence she trod on dangerous ground. But she had to hear him say it.

“Would you like some coffee?”

He looked her straight in the eye, the twinkle that she loved devoid of warmth. “You don’t feel like offering hospitality, and I don’t want any. Why did you call me?”

She locked her hands behind her to still her fingers. “Let’s go in the living room.”

“I’m fine right here.” He leaned against the front door and folded his arms. “Say whatever you’ve got to say, Melissa. I’m going back to work.”

She took a deep breath and slowly expelled it. “My father is accusing you of having had an affair with my aunt Louise. I told him I didn’t believe it.” She glanced up hopefully, but received neither confirmation nor denial from his hard, unfathomable stare.

“What’s the question? I see you’ve already made up your mind.”

“I told you that I denied it to him.”

“But not to yourself.” He straightened up, walked a few paces away from her, and walked back. “I refuse to defend myself, Melissa. I realize that I should have told you about this months ago, before we got so deeply involved, but I anticipated that you’d react this way, and couldn’t bring myself to mention it.” He stopped pacing, shrugged with an air of indifference, and stared at her when she brought her hand to her chest as though to regulate her heart.

“If you’re interested in the truth,” he went on, “I was fifteen years old, and your thirty-year-old aunt seduced me deliberately and vengefully. And she made it very pleasant,” he told her in a voice hard with bitterness. “I didn’t know what had hit me. She built my ego to the heavens to make certain that I’d go back to her and I—a boy with no previous experience—went back for more. I can still hear her laughing at me. Is that what you wanted to know?”

She turned her back and knew, when he walked around to face her, that he intended to have his say. Only she didn’t want to hear another word.
Adam had slept with her aunt.

“How could you? How could you?”

“Weren’t you listening? Don’t you know that a fifteen-year-old boy who hasn’t had any experience is no match for a thirty-year-old woman? Especially one like Louise Grant. She flaunted her sexuality, and she had plenty to show off. It wasn’t until long afterward that I realized she’d done it for the pleasure of belittling me—a member of the Hayes-Roundtree family. I hated her, and I still despise her. I wanted vengeance against her and her whole family, and I got some a year later when I didn’t tell Rafer that I’d seen his briefcase with his court papers in the men’s room at the Harlem Restaurant.”

Pain seemed to squeeze her heart, and she put both hands to her ears and shook her head, denying what she knew to be the truth. “And was that the end of it?”

He glared at her. “Weren’t you listening, or aren’t you interested in the truth?”

She turned her back. The old jealousy of her sensuously beautiful aunt—who had once suggested that she, Melissa, was the family’s ugly duckling—returned nearly to suffocate her. Louise had had everything that she as a gangling teenager had lacked; she had even been Adam’s first woman. She knew her reaction was unreasonable, but she couldn’t help it.

“I want you to leave, Adam.”

“Are you saying you hold me responsible for something that happened when I was fifteen years old? For your own aunt’s criminal act of child molestation?” he asked, clearly incredulous. She looked up at him, tall and proud, lacking even a semblance of warmth toward her.

“Adam, please, just—”

“I’ll leave when I’ve had my say. You know you’re wrong, but you’re looking for an excuse to get back into your father’s good graces. If you don’t care enough to see through his scheme, I’m glad he told you. You could overlook my deliberate act of vengeance a year after your aunt seduced me, when I was sixteen and more responsible. You could ignore an act that ruined your father’s political career, but you haven’t the heart to understand that a boy is most any woman’s easy victim.” The fierceness, the coolness of his gaze made her heartbeat accelerate, and she suddenly hurt so badly that she knew she wasn’t ready for him to walk out of her life. But she refused to absolve him.

“You said you went back to her, that you wanted it to continue. You should have told me before...you should have let me choose whether to— You don’t know what she was like when I was a ‘plain Jane’ teenager. My own aunt. Beautiful. Voluptuous. All of my dates talked about her, boasted about her. And now you tell me this.”

He reached for the doorknob. “This is all my mistake. I wish you well, Melissa.”

She gazed up at him as he moved to open the door, apprehension thundering like wild horses in her head. She backed away from the door, disbelieving that he would leave without another word, that he’d walk out of there as though she no longer existed.

“Is that all you have to say?” she mumbled. He stepped toward her and tipped up her chin with the tip of his right index finger, as though to be certain that she understood.

“What else do you want me to say? You don’t believe in me.” He opened the door and left.

* * *

Adam drove the truck into the garage adjacent to his family’s home, parked, and sat there. During the drive from Frederick, he hadn’t let himself think over what had just happened. How long had Rafer known about him and Louise and why—Louise’s glacierlike look a few nights earlier as he’d bent to kiss Melissa flashed through his mind’s eye. So she was going for the kill. She’d tried repeatedly and without success since he’d been an adult to get at him, to coax him into an affair, and he’d tired of her shenanigans and told her that she didn’t measure up to the women he’d known as a man. He knew she hated him, but he hadn’t dreamed that she wanted revenge badly enough to reveal her own indiscretion.