Against All Odds (Arabesque)

by Gwynne Forster

  “MTG. Melissa Grant speaking.”

  “I’m surprised you’re in this morning. It’s been snowing for fifteen minutes, and the streets are already white. It might be a good idea to leave.” Her gaze followed the twirling pencil in her left hand. He’d spin me around like that if I let him, she mused. She tossed the pencil across the desk.

  “Adam, do you think James Earl Jones ever identifies himself when he makes a phone call?” His chuckle warned her that her barb had missed the mark.

  “He shouldn’t have to. I doubt there’re many people who wouldn’t recognize that voice, and you can bet his significant other wouldn’t be among the few who didn’t. If a man has an intimate relationship with a woman, she ought to recognize everything about him.”

  “Humph. If the male ego needed physical space, men would be scarce as dog feathers. What size hat do you wear, Adam?” She leaned forward, placed her elbows on her desk, her palms beneath her chin and waited.

  “I’ve never worn a hat. And no matter what you say about my ego, you recognized my voice.”

  “Yeah, but that’s a defense mechanism,” she teased, eyeing the window and the swirling snow.

  “Against what?” he demanded, his testiness sizzling through the wire.

  “Against being mistaken for a significant other,” she replied, getting up to lock her door because she knew what would happen if she didn’t. But to her chagrin, the cord’s length didn’t allow that precaution.

  “What man would be so pea-brained as to hang such a nondescript title on you? You come under the heading of woman, babe.” When he got casual and flirtatious like ordinary mortal men, she told herself with some amusement, she’d better watch her nervous system.

  “Still there?”

  “Haven’t moved a fraction of an inch.”

  “I suggest you go home before you have trouble maneuvering your car through that snow.”

  “I didn’t drive this morning,” she said and would have liked to bite her tongue.

  “Then you ought to consider putting on your boots and hiking it home. This stuff’s getting bad.”

  She straightened up and weighed the folly of staying there for the sake of annoying him against getting home in reasonable comfort. She hung up and looked around for her bag of Snickers. If she ignored his advice, she could wind up bedeviling herself rather than Adam. Her door swung ajar, and she gazed up into a pair of fierce brown eyes, not a bit surprised that he was making sure she left the building before the weather worsened.

  “Just as I thought. Settling in for the day, were you? I’m asking everyone to leave within the next thirty minutes. The storm is getting heavier by the second, and I’m going to turn off the heat to make certain everybody gets out of here. You’d get yourself snowbound just to vex me.”

  “Tut-tut! Really, Adam. You could do something about your tendency to be overbearing. Just a wee bit of improvement there would do wonders for your personality.”

  He had to struggle not to laugh. He’d seen Melissa in many moods and with a number of facial expressions, but he couldn’t recall her having previously shrouded herself in innocence. Her serene countenance and angelic eyes proclaimed her blameless, and she even lowered her gaze, he noted, and folded her hands in her lap to enhance the effect.

  He grinned down at her. “You’re a dirty fighter, but you’re one hell of a woman. Come on, let’s get out of here.” He took her coat from the coat tree and walked over to her with it. She pushed her chair back from the desk and glared at him. Then she reached in her desk drawer, pulled out a brown paper wrapper, and handed it to him.

  “Have a Snickers while you find your way down off of your high horse.” Her smile dared him as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her knees, displaying her endless legs to the greatest advantage. He swallowed the saliva accumulating in his mouth, glanced back at the open door, and rubbed his dampening palms against his pant legs.

  “One of these days you’re going to find out who you’re playing with.”

  “Anytime, Mr. Roundtree.”

  He couldn’t believe the transformation in her. Her smile had become sultry and her teasing blatant. He had to control the inclination to whistle. He’d regarded her as laid-back and cool, touchable but unavailable. Maybe he’d been right, but he was certain now that her dress-for-success suits and Brooks Brothers ties disguised a wild siren. He threw the coat to her.

  “Melissa, this storm is intensifying. You may be satisfied with candy for supper, but I’m not, and I’m not going to leave you alone here in an unheated building. So come on.” She looked toward the window, then back at him, and he could see her judging the weather and knew the minute she decided to cooperate. She stood, began to put on her coat, and he reached out to help her, but she brushed past him, pulling his nose as she did so.

  One spark. Her touch was as tinder to dry grass. His left arm imprisoned her shoulder and his right encircled her waist as he brought her into the heat of his body. He stared into her eyes, eyes that asked him for all that he could give a woman, and every nerve screamed for the release of himself within her. He had to summon every vestige of willpower that he possessed to resist opening himself fully to her, revealing every nuance of himself, for he knew that if they started loving each other, neither one of them would call a halt to it until they had sated themselves. He tried without success to focus his attention on the rattling of a partially open window somewhere down the hall. Having given in to his feelings, he stood with his back to her desk holding her, soaking up her warmth. Warmth he hadn’t realized he needed so badly. Finally the tapping of a woman’s stiletto heels in the corridor brought him back to himself, and he released her.

  “Melissa, we have to do something about this and soon. If we continue to see each other, I don’t give us much chance of avoiding it. You know, we’re mature adults, and we’re supposed to know what we want and don’t want. You’re as familiar as I am with the circumstances past and present that are against any lasting relationship between us, but logic isn’t what we’re dealing with here. We want to make love with each other, and we will. We both know that.”

  She locked her office door and walked along with him. Uncommunicative. “Let me guess,” he said, frowning. “You’re wondering whether Loraine saw us when she passed the door.” Her eyes widened and she sucked in her lip. “Yes, Loraine. Nobody else in Frederick wears four-inch heels. By tomorrow night, half of the town will have heard her own version of it and the other half will have gotten it secondhand. I hope you’ve got better things to worry about.”

  When they reached his car, he brushed the grainy snow from the door and scraped the windshield. She remarked that Frederick didn’t have any underground garages and few indoor ones, and that not having them was an inconvenience in bad weather.

  “It’s just as well,” he replied, laughter taking the punch out of his words. “I’d hate for our first time to be in the backseat of a car.”

  “You’re awfully sure of yourself,” she grumbled. “For the last twenty minutes, you’ve been acting as if you’re the one who decides this. But let me tell you: contrary to what that song says, everything depends on me.”

  Adam glanced at her as the Jaguar’s skidding wheels fought his efforts to get them home. “You’re grumbling, but I see you’re not disagreeing with me.” He got out, opened the trunk, took out the two army blankets that he kept for emergencies, and threw them under the spinning wheels.

  “I’ve used sawdust and dry leaves, but I never heard of anybody using blankets. Where’d you get that idea?”

  Adam breathed deeply and adjusted himself as the car crawled away from its temporary prison. He got out and put the wet blankets back in the trunk. It didn’t surprise him that she’d chosen not to respond to his challenge, because he had learned that she wouldn’t let him push her into a corner. He looked over his shoulder as the car chugged into the main street and the snow pelted its windshield. “You will learn, Melissa, that I’m innovative. If it does
n’t work one way, I go at it another way, and I usually manage to do what I set out to do and finish what I start.”

  He noticed that she adjusted her skirt, folded and unfolded her hands, and shifted away from him toward the passenger’s door. Let her squirm. The sooner she realized that they were destined to be together, even if temporarily, no matter what their families said or did and no matter what happened at Leather and Hides, the sooner he’d get on with his life. He stopped in front of her house.

  “I’ll come around and get you. There’s no point in both of us getting our feet soaked.”

  “Would you like some coffee?” She didn’t look at him as she spoke, and he wondered whether she was eager to be alone with him or afraid of it. Who knew what she was thinking and feeling when she squinted like that. He shook his head. She’d be surprised how often and how thoroughly she perplexed him.

  “I’ll wait here while you check the faucets, the lights, and your radiators. A couple of inches of snow can put this town out of commission, and we’ve got four or five inches.” He slapped her playfully on the bottom. “Hurry up. I’ve got to get going.”

  She spun around, her eyes like daggers. “My reaction to that is about the same as yours to getting your nose pinched. So keep your hands to yourself!” He didn’t care if his laughter irked her as she stood with her hands on her hips glaring at him.

  “You’re trying to pick a fight—but sweetheart, when we tangle, I’d prefer it to be under different circumstances. Believe me. Now go check your house, because if I do it, that Jaguar may be sitting right out there tomorrow morning.” She went, and he figured she could hear his sigh of relief as she walked down the hall. He watched her and wondered what, other than a fire, could make her rush or lose her cool facade. A casual acquaintance might think her aloof and frigid, but he knew better. She was like a fine, rare diamond: cold on the outside and fire on the inside. And he wanted to explore every facet of her.

  Chapter 8

  Melissa awoke early that morning feeling as a tigress must while prowling and pacing alongside a barbed-wire fence too high to scale. She wanted Adam, and what she felt for him went deep—deep enough to shatter her if he walked away. But he promised her nothing, and if she made love with him, he’d leave his mark on her forever. She didn’t want to be like her mother, married to one man and loving another, losing her sense of self because of guilt. But she wanted a family of her own, though honesty forced her to admit that she wanted it with Adam Roundtree. He had all but promised her that they would make love. And soon. Face it, she told herself, you know you’re not going to stop him, and he knows it, too. She stepped into the warm shower, but chills coursed through her at the thought of her father’s certain reaction when he discovered how far she had gone with Adam.

  The municipal workers cleared the snow from her street around noon, and Melissa dressed warmly, put on an old pair of boots, and set out for her parents’ home. She leaned into the rising wind and tried to walk faster. Few people greeted her along the way. A five-inch snowfall was rare in Frederick, and everything was closed except the post office. It would be too much to hope that her father would be at his office and she’d find her mother alone, but she felt the need to see her even if it meant a confrontation with her father. Did young girls unburden themselves to their mothers? She didn’t know, but she figured women her age didn’t do it. It didn’t matter. Her new relationship with her mother was precious to her, and she wanted to spend every moment with her that she could.

  * * *

  Emily opened the door and held out her arms. Melissa hadn’t felt an urge to cry, but her tears came. She hadn’t been cold, but when she stepped into the warmth of her mother’s love, her sense of drifting in an unfriendly, frosty environment dissipated. Until she found herself dabbing at her tears with the back of her hand, she hadn’t been aware that she shed them. She stepped back and looked into her mother’s warm eyes, so like her own.

  “I don’t remember the last time I cried.” Her mother’s gentle hands stroked her back, and she soaked in the healing that they generated.

  “That’s what mothers are for. You can be yourself with me. This just makes me even more remorseful for not always having been here for you when you needed me.”

  Melissa shushed her. “I have you now, and that’s what matters. Where’s Daddy?” Her breath hung in her throat as she awaited the answer. She had no desire to grapple with her father’s blind hatred of Adam and his family.

  Her mother’s words comforted her. “Rafer went to his office same as always. I’ll make us some tea, and we can talk.”

  When Emily led them up to her room, carrying a tray of tea and sandwiches, Melissa realized that her mother had a sense of well-being only in her own room—that within her home, she could relax only in her bedroom.

  “Now tell me about those tears,” Emily soothed. “Have you fought with Adam?”

  “No, but I’m not sure I can talk about him. I’ve got to work out my feelings about him and about us.” The look of understanding that met her gaze caused her to wonder how her mother had come to terms with the destruction of her plans for a life with Bill Henry. But she didn’t ask her. Instead, she told her of her meeting with the man.

  “I gave Bill Henry a ride during that downpour we had early last week. He asked about you, and I thought he was pretty upset when I told him that you had been ill. Quick as a flash, he changed all over. I thought at first that he intended to pounce on me. Said he was very sorry to hear about it.” She paused. “He sure was concerned, Mama.” Her mother’s teacup clattered in its saucer, staining the green broadloom carpet with amber liquid.

  “Until I told you about us, I hadn’t mentioned Bill Henry’s name to anyone in thirty years, and I haven’t seen him in nearly as long. How does he look?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Very distinguished, I imagine. When I saw Adam, I saw Bill Henry as he must have been at Adam’s age. Does he still live at the old Hayes mansion?”

  Melissa told her about Bill Henry’s lifestyle and his little clapboard house. “I thought you knew.”

  Emily leaned forward in the brightly upholstered wing chair. “Who would tell me? Everybody in our families knows the story, and half the town, too.” She sat up straight, looked Melissa in the eye, and spoke in a hoarse, teary voice. “I tell you again, honey. If you want Adam, don’t let anybody stop you. Imagine what it’s like to live twenty miles from the only man you ever loved, want him every day of your life, know that he wants you, and not be able to have him. Be strong, and don’t let them ruin your life.”

  Melissa sipped her tea, buying time, trying to find a way to tell her mother what bothered her. She chose another, less personal, issue and silently scolded herself for doing it. “Mama, I don’t want to be the one to tear this family apart.” Her mother’s hand rose and fell disparagingly, as though slapping at the air.

  “You can’t destroy what doesn’t exist. After Schyler was born, your father moved out of this room, and I didn’t blame him. The bathroom between us isn’t for intimacy, but for show. He had his son, and he finished the marriage. I did everything I could to keep us together, but it was never enough. There hasn’t been any intimacy between us for over twenty-five years. We coexist, nothing more.”

  Melissa knew that her face must have mirrored her sense of horror. “How could you live like that, without love or affection for so many years? How could Daddy do such a thing?”

  Emily slipped off her shoes, and her right foot found its customary place beneath her left thigh. “At least he was honest. Don’t judge him too severely, Melissa. He’s always had to walk in the footsteps and the reflections of other men. His tragedy is that it’s always been high noon for him, and he never created a shadow of his own. That can make a man lose perspective, make him desperate.”

  * * *

  Trudging back home in the howling wind, Melissa reflected that she hadn’t told her mother the real reason for her visit. She loved Adam and wanted to tell her mother.
Wanted to tell her that she needed to be with him in the most intimate way. Wanted to tell her mother that she needed advice. She walked through her door as her answering machine was recording Adam’s voice and ran to the phone, but was too late. She telephoned him and advised him of his bad timing.

  “What did you want?”

  “I wanted to know if you were all right.”

  “I had expected you to say you couldn’t live another second without hearing my voice.” The minute she’d said it, she wanted to retract the careless statement. But he laughed.

  “A modified version of that would be accurate. I’m going to New York this evening, and I wanted you to know. I’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  “Anything wrong?” She had to cover her disappointment that she wouldn’t see him perhaps for several days.

  “Just loose ends. Stay out of mischief.” He hung up before she could retaliate, and she called him back.

  “Yes, Melissa. I didn’t move, because I knew you’d need the last word. What is it?”

  “Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall,” she quipped, quoting Shakespeare. “Have a good trip, Adam.” His deep laughter still warmed her long after she’d hung up.

  * * *

  Sunday afternoon, three days later, Adam pushed his right index finger through the handle of his garment bag, dragged it from the carousel, threw it over his right shoulder, and strode out of the airport. He had ordered a limousine before leaving New York, because three days of sparring with employees and competitors had drained him. He’d worked night and day with little sleep and knew better than to drive. He ignored the half dozen newspapers that had been placed there for him, opened the bar, poured himself two fingers of bourbon over ice, and sat back to review the past three days. Melissa had been right—the corporate raiders wanted his best employees, and he didn’t doubt that as soon as they weakened his staff, they’d go for his jugular. He had gotten things under control, but the sooner he found the culprit at Leather and Hides and got back to his own business, the better.