Against All Odds (Arabesque) (9 page)

Melissa’s mother had remembered her daughter’s love of pink roses and had placed a vase of them in her room. A bowl of lavender potpourri perfumed Melissa’s bathroom, and the scent teased her nostrils when she opened the doors of her closet. Emily Grant had greeted her daughter with a warm embrace.

“Welcome home, dear. I knew he’d keep after you till you gave in.” Melissa returned the fierce hug, though she thought it out of character for her usually undemonstrative mother.

“I’m not sure you’ve done the right thing, coming back,” Emily continued, “but I’m glad to see you. I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you, too, Mother, and I hope we’ll get to know each other again. It’s been a long time since I lived at home.”

“Over ten years. I know you’ll be busy, but you come see me whenever you have time.” Thereafter Melissa saw little of her mother, who, she recalled, preferred the solitude of her room and who, she’d decided, looked the picture of health.

She unfolded
The Maryland Journal,
checked the real estate ads, and walked four blocks to investigate the one office that might suit her needs. With its attractive lobby and wide hallway, the redbrick, five-story building enticed her as she entered it. The office suite that she liked had high ceilings, large windows, parquet floors, and a comfortable adjoining office for her secretary. Her excitement at finding exactly what she needed ebbed when she learned that the building was owned by the Hayes-Roundtree family. Unfortunately, if she wanted prime space, she’d have to take it.

She didn’t mind renting from Adam’s family, although she knew her father would explode. How could he harbor such intense hatred? It wasn’t even his war. He hadn’t known about the feud until he met her mother, but he’d since used it to justify every disappointment, every failure he’d had. She had to shake her guilt for having thought it, but she rented the office nevertheless. For the sake of peace, she had sacrificed her feeling for Adam and come home, but there were limits.

Raised eyebrows greeted her when she introduced herself to her office neighbors: a Grant renting from the Roundtrees. She’d almost forgotten about small town gossip. One friendly woman who introduced herself as Banks told her, “I see you’ve emancipated yourself. Good thing, too—when hell breaks loose, everybody will sympathize with the good guys.” Melissa grimaced. She didn’t need an explanation as to who the good guys were.

* * *

Melissa didn’t have long to wait for an indication of the problems that her move into that building would cause. Her cousin Timothy stood at the corner light as she left the building, and she smiled as she walked toward him.

“Hi,” he greeted her. “I heard you’d come back home, but what the hell were you doing in there? That’s the Hayes Building.” Cold tension gripped her as she noted his angry frown.

“Where else can you find decent office space in this town?” Her attempt to dismiss it as irrelevant didn’t please him.

“You’ve been gone a while, but the rest of us have been right here watching them flaunt their money. Find some other place. Why do you need an office anyway? Uncle Rafer said you were coming home to be with Aunt Emily.”

“Long story,” she said, unwilling to explain what she considered wasn’t his business and waved him goodbye.

He yelled back at her. “Get out of that place. You’re just going to start trouble.” I seem already to have done that, she thought, her steps slow and heavy.

* * *

Melissa worked late the next evening, arranging the furniture, books, and fixtures that had arrived that morning from New York. That done, she decided to acquaint herself with one of her new computer programs, but she had just begun when the screen went blank, the lights in her office flickered, and darkness engulfed her. She didn’t have a flashlight and hadn’t bothered to locate the stairs, and a glance at her fourth-floor window told her that the moon provided the only relief from darkness. She didn’t get a tone when she lifted the telephone receiver, so she prepared herself mentally to spend the night there and tried to remember where she’d put her bag of Snickers.

“If you don’t have a lantern or flashlight, go into the hallway and stand right in front of your door. I’ll be along shortly with light.”

She looked toward the loudspeaker as tremors shot through her, and she struggled to still the furious pounding of her heart at the sound of Adam’s voice. She hadn’t known that he had come home to Beaver Ridge, only that he’d left New York. It had to be Adam. She couldn’t mistake anyone’s voice for his—no other sounded like it. Did he know she was there? Would he be glad to see her? She opened the door and waited.

The air conditioning was off, but goose bumps covered her bare arms, and chills streaked through her as the lights approached. He stopped a few feet away.

“Melissa! What— What are you doing here?” Her eyes beheld his beloved face before taking in the length of him, as though assuring themselves that it was he. “Melissa— Am I hallucinating?” He took a step closer.

“Adam— Adam, I...I’m standing in front of my new office.”

“My God!”

He didn’t want her there. Why had she thought he cared for her even a little? She wanted to back up, but the eerie, unsettling atmosphere and the shock of seeing him kept her rooted there. Her gaze followed the two lanterns as they neared the floor, and then she looked up at him walking to her, a determined man whose motives she didn’t need to guess.

“My administrative assistant didn’t say she’d rented this suite. Tell me why you are here.” He stood inches away, so close that she breathed his breath and smelled his heat.

“I—” He stepped closer, and her hand went to his chest. “I— Adam!” Quivers began deep inside of her when his hands grasped her shoulders, pulling her closer, and then wrapping her to him. She couldn’t wait for his mouth, but stood on tiptoe and pulled his head down until his lips reached her moist kiss. She refused to let herself remember that he’d told her goodbye. She had him with her, and she had to have what he was offering her. Her parted lips took him in, and with unashamed ardor she sipped from his tongue’s sweet nectar and fitted herself against his hard body. He thrust deeply into her mouth as though rediscovering her seductive honey, and she arched her hips into him. Her shameless demand must have threatened his control, for he eased the kiss and lightened his caress.

“I take it you’re glad to see me,” he said, a smile softening his face. He looked down, saw the two lanterns, and laughed as he reached for them. “Sweetheart, you’re so disconcerting that I forgot about the blackout. There may be some more tenants waiting for me. Come on.”

She couldn’t believe he’d said it. “Adam, you just kissed me as though we’d never get another chance, and now you’re acting as though you only patted your dog.”

The man grinned. “I don’t have a dog. Pets never appealed to me, and I don’t think of Thunder as a pet. He’s my friend.”

She gaped. “Who the devil is Thunder?”

“My stallion. Try not to be outraged, Melissa. For a moment there, I gave myself the choice of moving away from you and cooling things down or seducing you into letting me put you on the floor. You do not belong on any man’s floor, Melissa—so cut me a little slack, will you? Now tell me why you have an office in this building.”

He showed surprise at her explanation.

“I’m glad I worked late tonight. You would have been here alone if I hadn’t. We don’t have night watchmen in our buildings here, and most people don’t stay after hours, so if you plan to work after seven, notify my secretary.”

“Your secretary? Is there where you’ll be spending the next two months?” He nodded.

“Good Lord!” She didn’t want to know that instead of avoiding each other, their respective moves guaranteed that they’d be together more frequently now than ever.

* * *

The first repercussion from her having moved into the Roundtrees’ office building greeted her when she got home. News that a Grant had rented office space in the Jacob Hayes Building wouldn’t need wire service. She’d bet everybody in Frederick knew about it before dark. Rafer seemed to have been waiting to pounce.

“Now you’ve done it. You’ve really done it. You’ve moved into that building, and you’re paying them good Grant money. Haven’t they done enough to us? Don’t you have a bit of pride?” He paced the length of the foyer, turned and glared at her. “I assume you’re paying rent. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“I’m paying rent, and it’s my money, not Grant money.” She had expected his anger, but not his constant harassment. Rafer put his thumbs in the watch pocket of his vest, paced as he did when he had a judge to admire him, and told her, “I want you out of the Hayes Building tomorrow and not a day later.”

Melissa looked at him, snugly wrapped in the splendor of his self-righteousness, and knew two things: if she didn’t have her own home within two weeks, she’d go crazy; and she was going to learn not to care what her father said or thought. Her cold smile conveyed the message that the Melissa who returned home was different from the one who’d left ten years earlier.

“You’re a lawyer, Father,” she reminded him, “so I’m sure you know the penalty for breaking a lease without provocation.”

The following morning Rafer used different tactics. He arrived at her office minutes after she did and, with her office door ajar, lectured her for not being attentive to her sick mother, who Melissa suspected wasn’t sick, and demanded that she leave her office and go home.

She wouldn’t dignify it with an answer, she decided, and was about to close the door when she heard her friend Banks’s voice.

“Well, I’ll say, Mr. Grant, you’re a real sweetheart. I always ignored the things people said about you, since I figured nobody was all bad—but, honey, you make me rethink my philosophy.”

Melissa recalled having witnessed her father’s upbraiding once before. She heard Adam’s voice again and knew that as long as she was in her office, she’d have peace. But she had no doubt that she’d pay when she got home. Her father would never let her forget that, because of her, Adam Roundtree had ordered him off Hayes-Roundtree property.

* * *

She’d known he’d come. He walked through her open door at six o’clock that evening, an hour after the normal end of the workday, as if he’d expected her to be there. He closed the door.

“You’ll get more of that when you get home, won’t you?” he said without preliminaries. “Does he get violent?”

Alone with him, worn out and vulnerable after her father’s antics, she crossed her arms beneath her breast. “Yes, he’ll have his say, but he’s never been violent nor showed a tendency toward it.” Her words must have reassured him, because he became less tense.

“I hadn’t realized that your mother is sick. How is she?” A half laugh that was little more than a sigh slipped through her lips, and her shoulders flexed in a shrug as she pushed the frizzy hair away from her temple.

“I don’t think my mother’s sick. As far as I can see, she’s the same as always. She stays in her room as much as possible and doesn’t disagree with anything my father says or does. But I have noticed that when he’s away she comes out of her room more often, even goes shopping.”

“You came home because Rafer asked you to, or maybe he demanded it. But can you live in the house with him?”

She fidgeted with a rubber eraser and avoided his eyes. “I’m looking for a small house. I love the Federal town houses like the ones in North Court and Council, but I don’t believe anybody would sell me one of them.”

He inclined his head. “You’re right, but it’s a moot point, since they’re never for sale. Whoever has one is keeping it. Some of those houses have been held by the same family since the Civil War. Have dinner with me this evening.”

She sensed that he wanted to postpone the time when she’d have to deal with her father, and asked, “Why do you want us to have dinner together?”

His incredulous look brought bubbling laughter from her throat, and in her amusement she didn’t noticed the change in him. The breath escaped her in a sharp gush as he drew her into his arms. “Wha—” Her hands clutched the lapel of his jacket and then tried to pull him closer to her. His answering sigh encouraged her exploration of him, and her fingers eased first into the tight curls at the back of his head and then found their way inside his jacket, roaming over his chest and shoulders.

He broke away from her, walked to the window and turned his back to it, facing her. “Melissa, I’d thought that if we didn’t see or speak with each other for a couple of months, if we were out of touch, we’d either lose interest or discover that what we felt was more than the physical. But instead, here we are. How can you ask why I want to have dinner with you? I want you and I want to find out whether it’s mutual.”

How could he have a doubt? Surely, he knew...

“Do you want me?” he persisted. She knew that his relaxed, casual stance as he leaned against the wall was misleading, and she sensed his vulnerability, that by asking the question he had exposed himself to an extent unnatural to him. Her pride wouldn’t let her lie, so she hesitated, searching for a way around it. He held her glance, waiting.

“Adam,” she began in a hesitant voice, “what I want or don’t want may prove irrelevant in this case.” His eyes dared her to look away, and she couldn’t doubt the importance that he attached to her answer.

“Irrelevant? That may be, but I don’t think so. I’m not asking what you plan to do about it. I just want an answer—yes or no.”

The fire in his eyes set her lips to trembling in anticipation as both fear and excitement clutched at her. If she said no, would he ignore it and attempt to seduce her? And if she said yes, when would he claim what she told him was his? She kicked at the half empty box of items that she planned to place on her desk and in its drawers.

“Well?”

“You...you know I do. Why are you forcing me to say the words? Will saying what you want to hear satisfy you?”

He walked toward her, shrouding her in his captivating aura, a male animal stalking his certain mate. “Say it, Melissa. Say the words. Tell me that you want me.”