“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.
Heat pooled in his middle when she idly stroked his left hand.
“Will Wayne be angry with you?”
He realized then that she had a deep concern for his family’s reaction to their being together. He told the truth.
“Wayne is angry, and he will continue to be for some time.”
He watched, fascinated, as the gray of her eyes lessened and the brown grew more striking. Obviously appalled, she exclaimed, “Don’t you care?”
“Every bit as much as you do, I assure you,” he replied, “but I try not to allow the opinions of others to dictate my behavior.”
“Doesn’t anything get to you?”
“Sure. You get to me, Melissa. What do you suggest I do about it?”
She glanced anxiously toward Wayne.
“Don’t be provocative. We’re not alone.” No, they weren’t. But if there had been no one around them, it would have made no difference. The communion he needed with her couldn’t be expressed in words. Frustrated and fearing that he’d spoiled the evening for her, he squeezed her hand and suggested that they leave.
“I’m not a masochist, but the longer I sit here with you, the more I’m beginning to feel like one.” Tenderness for her surged within him, and he longed to cherish her for the world to see, to protect her from the berating he knew she’d get at home because of him. Their circumstances chafed him, its reality like bile in his mouth. He wanted to kick something.
When they got back to her parents’ home, he parked and cut the motor. Her hand reached toward the door, and he told her in a voice soft but firm, “Don’t even think it, Melissa. I went in and got you, and I’m taking you back in there.” He took her key, opened the door, stepped inside, and took her into his arms. Her passionate trembling when his fingers streaked down her cheeks and her neck nearly cost him his self-control. He didn’t consider whether he had an audience, didn’t think of that, only that he needed her fire, her woman’s heat, her total surrender.
Blood pounded in his brain as the heady scent of her desire tantalized her nostrils. The slight movements of her hips against him stunned him and then, as though giving in to her feelings and dismissing caution, her action became rhythmic undulations that sent blazing heat to his groin. At his swift, powerful erection, her arms tightened around him, and she sucked his tongue into her mouth and gave herself to him. He nearly buckled from the force of his desire. He demanded, a
nd she gave. Gave until the blood coursed through him like a rising river rushing out of control; gave until he thought he’d lost possession of his big muscular body as it quivered with rampant passion; gave until the salt of her tears brought him back to reality, and he released her. He stood for long minutes looking into her eyes, looking for the woman that he wanted her to be. Looking for himself. At last he forced a smile, ran his hand over her frizzled curls in a gesture of affection, and left her.
The next morning, Sunday, he got out of bed at eight o’clock after having slept barely three hours. Frustrated because she was who she was and at himself because of the dilemma he’d gotten into, he had to settle at least one thing. What was her tie to Nelson? To his relief, it was she who answered his telephone call. He greeted her warmly before asking, “Melissa, did you know Calvin Nelson before you interviewed him for my company?”
He had to admit her genuine surprise at his question. “I met Nelson the day before I brought him to your office. Prior to that he was a name on my computer screen. Why?”
“I needed to know.”
“If you doubt my integrity, say it right out.”
“If I find fault with you, Melissa, I’ll tell you to your face.”
“Watch your step,” she shot back, her voice cool and businesslike. He hung up. He’d annoyed her, and he hadn’t solved one thing.
* * *
Melissa dressed for church in a white seersucker dress and white low-heel sandals. Disconcerted by Adam’s odd question, she told herself that it couldn’t mean anything, that a man couldn’t kiss a woman as he’d kissed her the night before unless he at least respected her. She stopped by the breakfast room for a cup of coffee and found her father seated at the table deep in thought, his place setting undisturbed.
“Good morning, Daddy.”
“You’re a traitor,” he began with obviously controlled fury. “You know Jacob Hayes stole your birthright and that every one of his descendants has laughed in our faces, flaunting their millions at us. And you have the nerve to go consorting with Adam Roundtree, parading yourself with him right in front of me. You’ve got no shame and no family pride. I ask you to come home and look after your mother, and what do you do. You open an office in a Roundtree building and walk out of my house with Adam Roundtree holding your hand. You’re—”
Melissa couldn’t listen any longer. She left the room without having gotten the coffee and started up the stairs. For the first time, she wondered about her father’s unnatural hatred for the Hayes people. He isn’t a Morris, she reflected; he only married one. “I’m tired of this.”
* * *
Banks knocked on Melissa’s office door the next morning and walked in with two cups of coffee and a box of powdered sugar doughnuts. Except for her beloved Snickers, Melissa confined her junk food intake to late night snacks, but that morning she ate two of the doughnuts, arousing her friend’s curiosity.
“Most mornings, I can’t get you to eat half of one of these things. What’s got into you?”
“How does tall, dark, and handsome sound?” Melissa asked, in an attempt at jocularity as she idly braided the curly hair that hung over her right ear.
Banks gulped her coffee. “You’re sweet on Adam? Good Lord! Why don’t you just drop the bomb and start World War Three?”
Melissa shook her head, conceding her dilemma. “My father is outraged because I went out with Adam Saturday night, says I’ve disgraced the family, and that Adam’s motive in seeing me is suspect. I enjoy being with Adam, and I’m sick of this ridiculous feud, but I can’t let my family down, Banks. I can’t betray my folks.”
Banks removed the cigarette from the corner of her mouth, and when she didn’t see an ashtray, put it out against the sole of her shoe. That done, she settled into the room’s most comfortable chair and looked at Melissa. “I don’t know how meddlesome you allow your friends to be, but you might as well learn right now that I speak my mind. So if you don’t want to hear it, push the rest of my doughnuts over here and tell me to leave.”
Melissa returned her friend’s steady gaze. “If you’ve got the guts to say it, I can take it.”
“Well,” Banks began after a long pause, “have you ever wondered whether Moses Morris, your grandfather, just stood silently and naively by while Jacob Hayes took him to the cleaners? Do you think a man smart enough to swing a loan for a high-risk venture with no capital behind him was stupid enough to let another man soak him? Think, Melissa. That was nearly three-quarters of a century ago, when most of the black people in this country didn’t have a reason to go to a bank.”
She lit another cigarette, puffed it, and sent a perfect smoke ring drifting its way to extinction. “And what about the court ruling, Melissa? Don’t you think that has any validity? From what I read of it, the jury consisted of ordinary people living in the county here, and none of them stood to gain anything. You can read the trial record in the library on Market Street, or you can read the newspaper reports preserved in some of those glass cases in City Hall.” She laughed, though it was more of a snort. “Or you can take the town tour that old lady Aldridge sells the tourist; she never fails to mention it. The Hayes-Morris feud is almost as famous around here as the one between the Hatfields and the McCoys.” She glanced at Melissa to gauge her reaction. “I like it,” she joked, not bothering to veil the mockery. “I like the fuss the townspeople make over it. It legitimates us black folk as social beings.”
“Anybody would think you invented sarcasm,” Melissa said, her tone conveying admiration.
Banks feigned modesty. “Aw, shucks, you know I didn’t invent it, honey. I just know how to make good use of it.”
She extinguished her half smoked cigarette in the manner previously adopted. “You know, Melissa,” she continued when she saw that Melissa didn’t object to her candid words, “all this sounds like jealousy to me, like your grandfather wanted to kick himself for his own rash behavior. Even I know you don’t bring in gas or oil overnight. If he took his money out of that speculative venture before the find, he didn’t have a claim. And, honey, if you let this ridiculous grudge keep you from a man that just about every woman within driving distance would like to have, you’re doing yourself a disservice. And you’re crazy. Plain looney.” She crossed her leg and swung it. “Her highness, Mary Roundtree, is going to see red. Ha. Serve her right. She always was too highfalutin for me.” She sighed and got up...a bit dramatically, Melissa decided. “I’m going back to work, Melissa. You can tell me what you think about this at lunch.”
* * *
An afternoon several days later, Melissa put the keys to her new house in the pocket of her slacks and began the ten-block walk to her parents’ home. She hoped the workers would complete the renovations within a couple of weeks, because she needed her own place, and soon. Her father had stopped speaking to her, and her mother stayed in her room reading the world’s great books, the purpose of which Melissa sensed was to legitimate her refusals of Rafer’s company, if indeed, it was she who did the refusing.
* * *
Her mother welcomed her visits, but rarely went to Melissa’s room. Melissa had begun to suspect that Emily Grant would do most anything to avoid her husband’s anger. Did that account for the times when she’d find chocolate under her pillow, a pink rose in her bathroom, or a book of verse on her night table? But never a word of it from her mother. Or when, as a child, she’d find a new doll or other toy in her drawer or closet. She had attributed that to her love of surprises and had thought that her mother knew that and catered to it.
She couldn’t help pondering Banks’s caution of her loyalty to her parents, especially her father, an allegiance that her friend believed to be misplaced. Why shouldn’t she enjoy Adam’s company? He hadn’t hurt her in any way, and even with her limited knowledge of men, she knew he was honorable. Proud and at times arrogant, perhaps, but honest. Yet she hadn’t been able to forget how he’d queried her about Calvin Nelson nor the questions he’d asked: how we
ll and how long she’d known the man. She disliked the subtle implication that she might have recommended a personal friend after taking a retainer for an executive search. The more she thought of it, the closer she came to getting mad.
She walked into the house, went to the telephone, and called him. “Why did you ask me the other day how long I’d known Calvin Nelson before I brought him to you? I’ve been thinking about that, and I do not like the insinuation.”
“I told you not to worry, that I was covering all bases.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” The lilting cadence of his voice always thrilled her, but waves of joy washed over her at the sound of his deep, vibrant laugh, a wondrous sound that he so rarely let her hear. He must have heard the warmth in her voice, must have detected how well his brief answer had charmed her.
“I want to see you tonight.”
She wouldn’t let him bend her to his will. “I don’t think so. What did Wayne have to say about our being together last weekend?”
“Don’t let that concern you,” he replied with evident lack of concern. “He means well. They all do—Rafer included—in their way. What time should I call for you?”
The man wasn’t accustomed to hearing the word no, and as Jason Court had warned her, he didn’t like it when he heard it. Well, he should know by now that she was as independent as he. “Not tonight, Adam,” she insisted. “A war broke out in our house after you left here the other night.”
“You mean I’m not worth your defense of me?”
She heard his laughter and figured it was time he got some of his own. “You’ve got the courage to come to my house and create a storm. Well, suppose I come by for you at, say, seven o’clock tonight. Be ready.” She hung up. And you can be sure, she murmured to herself, that I’ll ring your bell at a quarter to seven.
She grabbed the phone before its second ring. “What’s the matter? Chicken?” she asked. But Adam was not the caller.
“Melissa, this is Timothy Coston, your cousin Timmy.”
Against All Odds (Arabesque) Page 10