Against All Odds (Arabesque)

by Gwynne Forster

  His twinkling eyes brightened when he smiled at her. “I’d better get back to work. It isn’t even lunch hour.” He glanced up at the sculptured molding on the high ceiling. “When you’ve finished decorating, this place will look great. I’m glad you moved. Every time I’ve brought you home, I’ve had to fight the urge to go in your house and protect you from harassment, because I know it’s due to me that your home life’s been unpleasant.” She turned to face him fully and wrapped her arms around him, but he hugged her and quickly disengaged himself. She smiled, loving her ability to arouse him.

  “You’ve changed, Melissa, but your father hasn’t accepted it. You were in New York on your own and you succeeded where many have failed. That would give you or anybody confidence and a right to demand treatment as an adult. You won’t tolerate from your folks what you once did, but Rafer apparently hasn’t realized that. I can’t figure out his behavior.”

  “Long story.” She wasn’t going into that. “When is that game you want me to see?” Adam’s laugh held little humor, and Melissa sensed his displeasure at her having changed the subject. Didn’t he realize how often he did the same?

  “Sunday. Will you go? Wayne’s coming along.” Both of her eyebrows jerked upward.

  “Oh, yes, you did say that. If you’d said B-H would be going with us, it would make more sense to me. Why Wayne?”

  “He wants to get to know you, and I want him to. What’s wrong with that?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It should be fun.”

  * * *

  Adam knew he’d better leave while he could. He wasn’t surprised at what had taken place between them, but he hadn’t planned it, and he certainly hadn’t known he would behave with her as he had. That would bear examination when he had the time and privacy. He could have used the phone to invite her to the game, but he hadn’t. He admitted to himself that even though they’d been together for three hours the evening before, he’d gone there because he had needed to see her. He knew he teetered dangerously toward caring deeply for her, but swore that it wasn’t going to happen. Still he had to admit that if he found that she wasn’t involved in the sabotage of his leather manufacturing company, he’d probably go after her. He didn’t let himself dwell on their families’ certain reaction. Whether to tell her about the problem at Leather and Hides and how much to disclose bore heavily on his mind. He needed to share it with her, but he also had to be cautious.

  “I hate to put a damper on this peaceful moment, Melissa, but I have to tell you something. Someone has been damaging leathers at our factory, and one of the reasons I came back to Beaver Ridge was to find the culprit.” Her eyes widened in surprise. “So far, we don’t have a lead,” he went on, “but we know the person either works there or has an accomplice who does.” He didn’t tell her when it began.

  “Oh, Adam, I’m so sorry. This must be terribly expensive. I can’t imagine who would do it. You don’t have any serious competitors. You have to get at the bottom of this.” She seemed genuine in her expressions of regret and concern, but he still scrutinized her for any clue that would point to her guilt and couldn’t find a single one.

  He noticed her untidy appearance and looked down at the beige and brown tiles she’d been setting. “If I wasn’t dressed, I’d help you with that. Why don’t I bring over a batch of Clara’s crab cakes or whatever you’d like this evening and do that for you?”

  Her mouth dropped open at his suggestion. “You’d do that? Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

  He laughed. “Don’t give it a second thought, Melissa. I’m not in the habit of volunteering to inconvenience myself. Setting those tiles for you will give me pleasure.” His steady gaze must have been warm and inviting as he’d meant it to be, because she folded her arms and rubbed them with her hands. Feeling wicked, he added, “And so will you.”

  * * *

  “You’d think Nelson Mandela was coming here, the way I’m acting,” Melissa muttered, trying to settle the butterflies in her stomach. Confound it, she couldn’t even put on a decent dress. Nobody got dolled up to put in a floor and hang pictures. Disgruntled that he’d see her looking frumpy twice in a day, she compromised and topped a pair of army combat fatigues with a tight-fitting, scoop-necked lavender sweater and went to answer the doorbell.

  She couldn’t contain her amazement. Adam Roundtree in jeans and an open-necked jogging shirt. “I didn’t know you could look like this. Scruffed up, you’re...well—” she scratched her temple as she searched for the right word “—you know...

  human, more accessible. I don’t know. You’re different.” His stare knocked her off balance. She would never have expected the message she read in his eyes. He quickly shuttered his gaze, but in that brief, open moment, she saw him as she never had, as he’d never permitted her to see him. Vulnerable. And hurt.

  She needed to make amends for her seeming callousness, to heal him. But a vision of the trouble ahead, of her mother’s life flashed through her mind, and she wanted to suppress and to deny the compassion, the tenderness, that he wrung out of her. She pushed the warning out of her conscious thoughts, and her right hand lifted seemingly of its own volition to caress his jaw. He stood, wordless, while she stroked his jaw, his gaze sweeping her face repeatedly as though seeking some truths, some answers that she alone possessed.

  Shaken, she stepped closer to him with her eyes narrowed in a squint and her womanly need to banish his anguish unguarded. “What is it, Adam? What have I said?” But he stepped back, away from her, as though unwilling to forgive her and loath to accept her succor.

  “Adam?” His pained stare drilled her as surely as any bullet ever pierced its target.

  “I’m human, alright. As you once said, I bleed just like you do.”

  She saw the change in him—from anguish to need—and without thought as to the meaning of her feelings or the implications of what she did, she opened her arms to him. “Adam, tell me what’s the matter, what I’ve done.”

  He didn’t try to stifle the groan that could have been torn from his soul, so violent, so wrenching, as he rushed into her outstretched arms, aware that he was giving her more of himself than he had ever given to another human being. He let her hold him while he drank in her murmurings, her soothing words that declared her respect and her appreciation of him as a man. Abruptly he covered her mouth with his own, curtailing her outpourings in a powerful, ravishing kiss. His fever for her blazed, but he got a grip on his emotions and dragged himself out of the clutches of desire.

  Her glance locked on his face, but even as she continued to hold him tight, he read in her eyes repudiation of what they’d just shared and saw her uncertainty and her fear that she’d gone too far. He wouldn’t deny the pleasure of being in her arms, and he wouldn’t belittle what he felt. He believed in facing the truth even if it hurt, because you couldn’t solve a problem unless you knew precisely what it was, unless you understood its nature and what caused it. And he had a problem.

  “Melissa, where are we headed? I can’t guarantee that if I have another angry exchange with Rafer, I won’t fight back. It’s against my nature to let a man impose on me with impunity. But he’s your father and you love him. I don’t want you between us.” He set her away from him, though he was loath to separate from her, and pointed to the bag of food that he’d placed on the table by the door.

  “Want to eat now, or after we finish? Me, I’m hungry right now, and the scent of those crab cakes makes my mouth water. How about—” He turned abruptly toward the door, alerted by the sound of footsteps and braced himself for another encounter with Rafer Grant.

  Melissa opened the door to her father, who looked past her to her guest. Adam sensed Melissa’s discomfort in what was becoming an all too frequent occurrence, but he didn’t give quarter. He’d known instinctively that the caller would be Rafer. By some ruse the man seemed to know just when he needed to be reminded of what could happen if he let himself get too close to Melissa. He let her take t
he lead.

  “Is anything wrong with Mama?” Adam didn’t believe he’d previously witnessed such courteous and thinly veiled antagonism. She could hold her own, alright, he thought with pride.

  “No more than usual. You know why I’m here, and you know I don’t want him hanging around you. This is why you moved, isn’t it?” Adam stepped closer to her.

  “I moved so you and I could live in peace, Daddy, and we wouldn’t be a constant source of annoyance to each other. I’m tired of so much unpleasantness, and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave now.” Tension gripped Adam as Rafer’s nostrils flared, and his eyes shone with hostility.

  “He’s turned you against your family. After all they’ve done to us, you’re throwing yourself at him. You can flaunt him in our faces, but you won’t give your own cousin Timmy a job. You will regret this. I promise you. You’ll be sorry.”

  Adam stared at the closed door. He pitied the man. Loyalty and love couldn’t be had on demand and especially not from your child. That had to be earned from the child’s birth onward. He turned to Melissa, saw that she had hung her head, and knew that their evening was shot: no friendship could flourish in an environment of suspicion and hatred. Rafer would gladly see him dead, and he and Melissa had misgivings about each other. Why couldn’t she have been someone else? He took the bag of food in one hand and grabbed her arm with his other one.

  “Come on, let’s eat and get this floor fixed.”

  * * *

  Melissa prowled around in her basement after Adam left. Her father had a knack for spoiling her pleasant moments with Adam, and she foolishly let him do it. But she couldn’t turn her back on her father, and now that she knew that a deep, personal hurt fueled his anger, she judged him less harshly. She shouldn’t attend that football game with Adam and Wayne. In her view she and Adam were behaving as fatalists do, as if they had no control over the course of their lives when neither of them believed that. But she’d promised, she rationalized, so she’d go.

  Melissa supposed that where Wayne was concerned, she was on trial, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of behaving as if she knew it. She sat between them aware that her body language was that of a woman with two casual male friends. Indeed, until Adam looped his arm around her shoulder, an onlooker wouldn’t have known which of the two she cared for. She moved closer to him.

  “Mind your manners, Melissa. My women do not root for the New York Giants,” Adam said.

  “In other words your women just go along with whatever you do. Sweet little things. My men do as they please. If they were patsies, they’d bore me.” She watched her warm breath furl upward until it dissipated in the cold November air.

  “Your men?” His sharp whistle split the air. “Tell me more.” She ignored his taunt.

  “If the Giants lose, you owe me,” he challenged, apparently warming up to the easy banter.

  “How much? Or should I say, what?”

  Adam’s gentle laughter warmed her inside, and she noticed that it brought a quick glance from his brother. “Me thinks you don’t trust me,” he replied in a voice that suggested she might be foolish to do so.

  “Sure I do, but you can be very imaginative sometimes, and I’d as soon not be the victim of your agile mind. So no blind bets. What’s the wager?”

  “You’re smart to get it up front,” intervened Wayne, who had been silent until then. “I recall that when we were hellions in our teens and about to scale a neighbor’s barbed wire fence, Adam bet me that my pants would tear worse than his. I forgot that he was high jumping in gym class and took him on. It wasn’t only my pants that got torn, but he breezed over that six-foot fence as though it wasn’t there and had the gall to suggest that I should have been wearing my thinking cap when I bet him. It’s best to stay on your toes when you’re dealing with Adam.”

  Anticipating a Redskins’ score, Wayne jumped up but quickly sat down, his jubilation short-lived, when the perfect pass slipped through the wide receiver’s outstretched hands. Melissa patted his shoulder. “You poor baby. Well, at least you finally got a chance to stretch.” When the next play resulted in a Giants’ interception of the Redskins’ pass, Melissa soothed, “I’m sorry. I wanted my boys to win, but I didn’t want them to romp all over your guys.”

  Wayne grumbled, “Get her to cool it, man.” But Melissa knew from Adam’s warm laughter that their outing was going as he’d hoped, had perhaps even known it would. His response reassured her.

  “I’m congratulating myself on not having insisted that she take that bet, because I’d planned to ask her to put up a few months of her time as collateral.”

  Melissa sat forward, alert, when Wayne asked Adam, “What were you planning to wager?”

  Her breath stuck in her lungs while she waited for Adam’s answer, staring as his shoulders bunched in a half hearted shrug.

  “Myself.” Air zinged through Wayne’s teeth in a loud whistle.

  At halftime Adam stood and wound his scarf more tightly around his neck. “I’m going for coffee. Would either of you like anything else? Peanuts, maybe?” Melissa nodded agreement, wondering why Adam would deliberately leave her alone with Wayne. Adam’s brother seemed friendly enough, but how would he behave once they were alone? She was still a Grant. In the heavy silence a less self-possessed person might have resorted to small talk or rambling, but Melissa didn’t say anything. She knew Wayne would take advantage of the opportunity, so she waited for him to speak.

  “Do you love him?”

  Taken aback, she turned toward him, thinking that bluntness must be one of their family traits. “Adam doesn’t know the answer to that question, Wayne, and you shouldn’t know before he does.”

  “Do you know the answer?”

  She noticed that his voice wasn’t hostile, and from his relaxed manner he didn’t appear to want to aggravate her. So she answered him honestly.

  “I try not to think about it. I haven’t faced it. I don’t know how your family has reacted to the friendship between Adam and me, but because of it my father barely speaks to me.”

  “Scared?”

  “You could say that. Maybe.”

  “Adam is a different man when he’s with you. If I didn’t see him laughing and teasing with you with almost childlike enjoyment, nobody would make me believe it. Well, the jury’s still out, but I have a feeling that if the two of you break up, it won’t be due to any outside force or faction.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know the hostility between our families worries you. It plagues all of us, but it won’t be the cause of permanent cleavage between you and Adam. Only the two of you can ruin your friendship.”

  She stared at him. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Melissa, I know Adam. And you’re not a patsy, either.” He paused. “Adam hasn’t told me anything about you. Where’d you go to school?” She told him, adding that her degree was a master’s in business administration. Several people sitting below them turned around when Wayne’s whistle pierced the air.

  “So you two have the same degree. This gets more interesting all the time. Hold on, I’ll get that for you.” He reached between their seats and retrieved her umbrella. “What’s this thing for?”

  “We’re supposed to have rain or snow, and I hate getting wet when I’m not dressed for it.”

  He laughed. “Cover all bases, do you? I thought we weren’t expecting a change in weather until after midnight. Are you another of these people who leaves nothing to chance? If you are, Adam’s meticulousness probably doesn’t bother you. It can wear on me.”

  She looked up as Adam placed a tray of coffee in her lap. Wayne took it from her, removed the lids, and gave her and Adam each a cup. They drank their coffee and nibbled the nuts in companionable silence, but Melissa had the impression that Wayne had warmed up to her. He held his empty cup for her peanut shells and took her own empty cup before Adam could reach for it.

  * * *

  Melissa pulled up the collar of
her coat to ward off the late fall chill as they walked to the car. Adam’s arm snuggled her close to him, and his gloved fingers toyed with her cold nose, and she had a delicious feeling that he cherished her and was protective of her. Excitement wafted through her, and she reveled in Adam’s attentiveness, though he always showed concern for her. His openness with it in his brother’s presence lit up her whole being.

  When they reached the car, Adam slapped Wayne’s shoulder. “You drive back.”

  “You’re ordering me to chauffeur so you two can make out in the backseat.”

  Adam attempted to stare Wayne down, feigning distaste for the presumptuous remark, but Wayne protested. “I’m telling it like it is, brother.”

  Melissa couldn’t help but marvel at their camaraderie. Maybe a brother and a sister couldn’t be that close, she surmised. Or maybe the environment in which she and Schyler had grown up hadn’t been conducive to that kind of love and affectionate exchanges.

  When Wayne eased the Jaguar toward MacArthur Boulevard and Route 270 to Frederick, Adam leaned back in the seat, winked at Melissa, and announced that he was sleepy.

  “Watch your step back there, Melissa,” Wayne warned. “He’s a fox that I wouldn’t let anywhere near my chickens.”

  “You sound downright friendly,” Adam said in a voice that Melissa thought strained and tension-filled. The silence weighed on her, for she knew that if Wayne bothered to reply, both she and Adam would know his reaction to their relationship.

  Wayne turned off the radio. “I am. To both of you.” She didn’t know what response she’d expected from Adam, but he didn’t say that he was glad nor did he thank his brother. But as she mused over their afternoon and evening, she concluded that Adam hadn’t brought Wayne and her together in order to gain his brother’s approval, but to give him a chance to make a more informed opinion of her. What a man.

  “Let yourself out at Beaver Ridge, Wayne. I’ll take Melissa home. If Rafer sees the two of us anywhere near that house on Teal Street, he’ll lose control for sure.”