* * *
Adam lay on his back, holding Melissa in his left arm. “Let’s talk, sweetheart. I want to begin the year with nothing between us hidden or unsolved, with everything out front. I once asked you how you felt about masquerade parties, but I didn’t get much of an answer. Tell me where you were five years ago tonight.” She sat up in bed, and he had the impression that he’d triggered her memory.
“What was I doing? Let’s see. I went to a party, a masquerade party. Why?”
“Where?” Her face clouded as though she had an unpleasant memory. I won’t stop now, he told himself and waited.
“The Roosevelt Hotel in New York. It was an AKA sorority affair. Why?”
“Why did you run away from me?”
“That was you?”
“Yes. I want to know why you ran.”
“A few minutes before I met you at that party, I broke off with a man whom I had believed loved me; he’d just proved that he didn’t. I had walked away from him and stumbled right into you. I left you, because I didn’t want another man’s kiss.”
“Did you get over it?”
“Long ago.”
“I looked for you, and I never forgot you. Occasionally I’d think you were the same person, but she was much shorter.”
“I wore flat shoes that night. Ballerina slippers.” She grazed his shoulder tenderly with her fingertips. “I didn’t see your mother tonight. Was she at the wedding?”
“I’m sorry to say that she wasn’t, but her absence didn’t mar my uncle’s happiness, Melissa, and her attitude toward you won’t influence my feelings.” He pulled her down beside him and leaned over her.
“Will you marry me? I’ll love you forever, Melissa. I swear it. And no matter what my mother and your father think, we can’t permit them to wreck our lives. We may not be as fortunate thirty years later as Emily and Bill Henry. Will you take me for your husband and the father of your children?”
She squinted at him. “Shouldn’t you be on your knees right now?” He reveled in the laughter that poured out of him, release that he’d learned through her and because of her.
“Don’t keep me hanging here, lady.”
“How about Valentine’s Day? That should give me time to have a dress made. Oh, Adam. I’m so full of love for you.”
Epilogue
Adam leaned against the doorjamb of the room he shared with Melissa in the family home at Beaver Ridge and wondered when again his wife would have a chance to hold her son of ten days. They had come back to the family home after Melissa’s delivery, so that their child could spent its earliest days among their families. Grant Roundtree had already found his niche as a force for peace. Mary Hayes-Roundtree cooed at him from her chair on one side of the chaise lounge on which Melissa reclined, and Emily Morris-Hayes made goo-goo eyes at him from the other side. Wayne, who was currently in possession of the little prize, insisted that he saw a clear likeness to himself. A five-foot teddy bear and a Lionel train bore testament to the love of Grandfather Rafer, who used his lunch hour to visit his daughter and grandson, and Schyler had come home from Nairobi for the event. Wayne had been so impressed by the changes he saw in Melissa on his visits to New York, and with his nephew, that he had stopped running from Banks and had begun to see her in a different light. Adam stood straighter when a hand rested on his shoulder, glanced around, and saw that his uncle B-H had joined them.
“Feels good, doesn’t it, son?”
“Yeah. Unbelievable!”
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781459234666
Copyright © 2012 by Gwendolyn Johnson-Acsadi
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Against All Odds (Arabesque) Page 35
