Against All Odds (Arabesque) (35 page)

* * *

Melissa walked up the stairs carrying the small rectangular red package, resplendent in its gold-speckled green silk bow, and laid it on the table beside her bed. He’d asked her to open it after he left, but she dreaded knowing its contents. She needed a token of his love, something more than the pulsing fire of his kiss, the kiss he later regretted. She supposed that he was in as much of a dilemma as she about their relationship, but he at least had control of his feelings. Not that that surprised her. From the beginning she had been impressed with his mastery of himself and his refusal to allow others that role. She sat on the side of her bed, her gaze fixed on his gift, and thought back to their happier times. Maybe she’d squandered a precious moment with him—she didn’t know, but something had made him withhold his love.

When she’d seen him at her door, joy had suffused her only to be extinguished by his cool manner. They had been as strangers. Polite. Careful. And then he’d reached out for her, and she didn’t remember how she had gotten into his arms. Only that she nestled where she knew she belonged. His harsh kiss had quickly turned worshipful, and she’d thought her prayers had been answered. Maybe he didn’t love her, but he couldn’t deny that he wanted her. She turned out the light and swung her feet beneath the cover, leaving the gift unopened. She could wait until morning for another letdown.

* * *

“Mrs. Roundtree’s residence.”

Melissa assumed it was the maid who spoke, gave her name, and asked for Adam.

“Sorry, ma’am,” came the reply. “Mr. Adam already left for New York.” Melissa fingered the little book of verses, a selection of poems that Adam had chosen and had bound in leather with gold tooling especially for her. Each one brought to mind something of their relationship, pleasant and painful. But not one contained the phrase “I love you,” though she couldn’t swear that each wasn’t an ode to love. I’d better not assume too much, she admonished herself and decided to write him a thank you note.

* * *

Adam stood by his window, looking across at the snow-
blanketed promenade of Lincoln Center, holding Melissa’s note crushed into a ball. What had he expected? He moved away from the window and wandered aimlessly around his apartment. Discontented. Drifting for the first time in his adult life. “What the hell’s gotten into me?” he asked the silence that surrounded him. None of the things he usually enjoyed doing on Sunday mornings in winter attracted him. He thumbed through the books on his shelf, books he longed to find the time to read, and walked away. Disinterested.

It’s this apartment that’s getting to me, he decided. An hour later he was on the train to Westchester. Winterflower opened the door before he rang. He accepted her generous hug and marveled at the sense of calm that he immediately experienced.

“You’re troubled. What’s brought you here?” she asked him.

“I needed a dose of your company.” He followed her to the basement and leaned against the edge of a wooden sawhorse while she unveiled a clay mural.

“Perfect timing,” she told him. “I want this to dry in the garage. It’s less humid there.” He stored it as she wished, walked out into the sunlight, and stood transfixed by the idyllic scene. The great trees stood burdened with icicles. Evergreen shrubs peeked through the snow, and birds darted in and out of the birdhouses that hung from branches and porch eaves. A blackbird tripped across his foot, unafraid. He couldn’t hear a sound, and he knew he’d come for the peace and for Flower’s calming presence. How different the setting from his last visit—a time when his body had just begun to churn with desire for Melissa. He looked in the direction of the rock on which she had sat with her hands in her lap. Relaxed. Serene. He turned quickly to open the porch door, but as he reached for it, it swung open and he looked into Winterflower’s knowing eyes.

“Why can’t you admit that being without her is tearing you apart? You’ve tallied some superficial reasons why you can’t go to her and just give yourself to her. The problem begins with you, Adam. Not Melissa. She told you that she loves you.” He cocked an eyebrow, remembering her ability to see beyond the ordinary.

“Yes,” she continued. “And she risked her standing with her family and the community for you.”

“There are things you don’t understand, Flower.”

“Like what?” she scoffed. “The fact that you’re fooling yourself? You are a realist, a man who rejects sentimentality, who despises the shortcomings that afflict most of us mortals. A man who demands the truth of his associates. But not of yourself, Adam?”

He frowned. The assistant district attorney had been more understanding. “What are you getting at, Flower? I want it in English.”

“Your complaints against each other are excuses, though hers make more sense.” He tried to associate her words with what he felt. “You’re both scared to go the other mile,” she went on, leading him into the kitchen. “You’ll give fifty percent, but not fifty-one. There’s virtue in self-pride, Adam—but none whatsoever in self-centeredness. You can’t expect Melissa to bare her soul to you when you’ve never told her that you love her.”

“Why are you so certain that I love her, that I want a permanent relationship with her?” He watched, amazed, as Winterflower threw up her hands in exasperation, the closest to being disgusted that he’d seen her.

“When did a man, especially one such as you, tie himself into knots over a woman he didn’t love?”

His gaze swept over her, but his thoughts were of how badly he’d wanted to include Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet
—“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”
—in the collection that he gave Melissa at Christmas and how dissatisfied he’d been when he’d forced himself not to do it. A rueful smile played around his lips.

“See what I mean?” Flower changed the subject. “B-H must be bursting with happiness along now.”

“Yes,” was his quiet answer as he recalled her special talent. “He’s a lucky man. Emily is a wonderful woman.”

“Not more so than her daughter.”

* * *

Five o’clock in the afternoon, three days later at the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church in Frederick, Melissa started up the aisle as the organ began to play, but her steps faltered when she saw that Adam stood beside Bill Henry as he waited for his bride. He turned slightly until he saw her and locked his gaze with hers. She hadn’t thought to ask her mother who would be best man, but what would have changed if she’d known? No wonder her mother hadn’t needed a rehearsal. She fought to hold her tears in check, but she couldn’t banish the heartache that threatened to rob her of the self-possession she needed in order to make it through the rest of the day. Her hands trembled as she passed him, her eyes diverted, and took her place on the other side of the groom.

She saw Bill Henry throw custom aside and turn fully to the front to watch Emily Morris approach him, escorted by her son. Melissa didn’t doubt his happiness, for her mother had given him his dream and dressed in a white beaded satin and lace gown with a headdress of beaded lace, and she carried his white calla lilies. She didn’t think she’d ever heard a couple repeat their wedding vows so clearly and so loudly. Amused, she glanced over to find Adam watching her, the twinkle in his eyes aglow. After Bill Henry kissed his wife and walked up the aisle with her, Melissa saw Adam approach and offer her his arm. She had to fight a feeling of giddiness—what a time to experience a bout of hysteria!

Adam must have sensed her feelings for he tugged her a little closer and said, “That was almost enough to make a man cry. They’re very happy.” She looked up at him and knew that her face mirrored her surprise, but she only nodded, unable to speak.

“The bride is beautiful,” he went on, “but not more so than the woman on my arm.” Her shoe heel caught in the red carpet that Bill Henry had ordered laid down for his bride’s satin-
slippered feet, and Adam stopped, removed her other shoe and carried both of them in his hand. At the door he knelt and put them back on her feet.

They followed the bride and groom to the reception, and after the newlyweds drank a toast, cut the three-tiered cake, and began the dancing, Adam rose and extended his hand to Melissa. Custom demanded that she dance with him. She’d be lost, she told herself, hoping that she alone knew how her body quaked.

The band played a fox-trot, but he danced the one-step. She looked into the distance, past his shoulder, but he lifted her chin with his index finger and forced her gaze to his own. She missed a step, and he held her closer.

“Adam... Please...” She couldn’t avoid his eyes, as fiery as she’d ever seen them.

“I love you, Melissa. You’re my life. Everything.” She missed several steps and had to cling to him for support.

“Do you still care for me? Or have I killed what you felt?” Her heart thundered in her chest and she couldn’t help trembling in his arms. She fixed her gaze on his mouth and moistened her lips.

“Melissa, what do you feel for me?” He had stopped dancing.

“I love you.” He bent closer to hear her words. “I love you, too, Adam.”

“Come on. Let’s go.” His hoarse voice sent trills of excitement through her. He turned and started for the door just as the bride’s beautiful calla lilies brushed Melissa’s chest. Grateful for her good reflexes, she caught them, looked around the room for her mother, and when she found her, waved and grasped Adam’s arm.

Wayne met them at the door. “Where to?”

“Thanks, buddy. Thirty-eight Teal.”

“Right on.”

Adam didn’t speak again until his shoe heel kicked her front door shut.

“I’ll put the flowers in some water. You wait here.” She removed her coat, hung it in the closet, and stood with her gaze on the hallway, waiting for him. She made up her mind to accept the explanation he gave her, to take whatever he offered. He loved her—that was enough, all she would ever need. She raised her arms when he stopped in front of her. The twinkle in his eyes danced in a lover’s smile as he looked into her eyes before he lifted her and sprinted up the stairs, his arms tight around her.

Her impatience for his possession mounted as he stood beside her at the foot of her bed. “I expected more from you than I was willing to give, Melissa. I know that now. Subconsciously I asked for proof that you loved me, while I withheld that from you.” She placed a finger over his lips. She didn’t need the words, but realized that he might and gladly gave them.

“Shh. I didn’t have any basis for believing that you had an affair with Aunt Louise, that you would lie to me. I was wrong in not listening to my heart, in not believing in you. When I...when I read those poems, I looked for one that said you loved me, but—”

He interrupted her. “How could you not know? Why do you think I carried you out of that garden in the presence of half the population of Frederick, defying my mother when I was there to support her? Why would I wrap my coat around you and allow myself to get drenched in that icy rain? Why do you think I sat on the edge of your sofa, chilled to my bones, and drank cold, sugarless tea—which I hated—while I waited for you to calm down?”

She sucked in her breath and shivers raced through her as she beheld the storm that suddenly swirled in his eyes. “Nothing and no one is as important to me as you are,” he said. She heard the unsteadiness of his voice and saw desire blazing on his countenance. Her mouth opened beneath his, and she clung to him, nearly delirious with happiness and reveling in her womanhood, when the movement of his tongue in and out of her mouth reminded her of the way he could make her feel. With eyes that had become pools of warmth and blatant desire, he asked permission to love her.

“Yes. Oh, Adam. I’ve waited so long for you. So long.” He reached behind her and released the zipper of her dress, while she held his face lovingly between her hands. The touch of his fingers trailing down her spine triggered her feminine heat, and her body arched to his in unmistakable demand. He turned back the coverlets, laid her in bed, and quickly joined her. Pleasure radiated through her when he covered her body with his own, and she felt his love flowing in her and through her until she lost herself in him.

* * *

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.