Against All Odds

He let the remark pass rather than risk putting a damper on a pleasant evening. Later they walked up Seventh Avenue to the Village Vanguard, but neither liked the avant-garde jazz offering that night, and they walked on.

Adam took her arm. “Let’s go over to Sixth Avenue and Eighteenth or so. The Greenwich Village Singers are performing at a church over there, and we may be able to catch the last half of the program. Want to try?” She agreed, and at the end of the concert, Handel’s Judas Maccabeus, he walked with her to the front of the church to shake hands with two acquaintances who sang with the group. While he spoke with a man, his arm went around her shoulder, automatically, as if it belonged there, and she moved closer to him. He glanced down at her and nodded, letting her know that he’d noticed and that he acknowledged her move as natural, but he immediately reprimanded himself. He’d better watch that—he’d been telling the man with whom he spoke that Melissa wasn’t available, and he had no right to do it.

“That was powerful singing,” he remarked, holding her arm as they started toward the front door. She nodded in agreement.

“That mezzo had me spellbound.” He tugged her closer.

“Would you have enjoyed it as much if you hadn’t been with me?” She looked up at him just before a quip bounced off of her tongue. She’d never seen a more serious face, but she had to pretend that he was teasing her.

“I doubt it,” she joked, “you’re heady stuff.”

“Be careful,” he warned her, still serious. “I’m a man who demands evidence of everything. If I’m heady stuff, you’re one hell of an actress.” His remark stunned her, but she recovered quickly.

“Oh, I’ve been in a drama or two. Back in grade school, it’s true, but I was good.” Laughter rumbled in his throat, and he stroked her fingers and told her, “You’re one classy lady.”

* * *

Melissa looked around her as they continued walking down the aisle of the large church toward the massive baroque front door and marveled that every ethnic group and subgroup seemed to be represented there. She stopped walking to get Adam’s full attention. “Why is it,” she asked him, “that races and nationalities can sing together, play football, basketball, tennis and whatever together, go to school and church together, but as a group, they can’t get along? And they make love together—what’s more intimate than that? You’d think if they can do that, they can do anything together.”

“But that’s behind closed doors,” he explained. “Two people can resolve most anything if there’s nobody around but them, nobody to judge them or to influence them. Take us, for instance. Once our folks get wind of our spending time together, you’ll see how easily a third person can put a monkey wrench in a relationship.”

* * *

Melissa quickened her steps to match those of the man beside her. He must have noticed it, because he slowed his walk. Warmth and contentment suffused her, and when he folded her hand in his, she couldn’t make herself remove it. Was the peace that seemed to envelop her the quiet before a storm? She couldn’t remember ever having felt so carefree or so comfortable with anyone. Adam was honorable, she knew it deep down. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t leave her to cope alone with the problems that they both knew loomed ahead if they continued to see each other.

As if he’d read her thoughts, he asked her, “Would your family be angry with you if they knew we spent time together?”

Looking into the distance, she nodded. “I’d say that’s incontestable. Furor would be a better description of my father’s reaction.” She tried to lift her sagging spirits—only moments earlier they had soared with the pleasure of just being with him. He released her hand to hail a speeding taxi, and didn’t take it again. She sat against the door on her side of the cab.

With a wry smile, Adam commented, “If you sat any farther away from me, you’d be outside this cab. Scared?”

She gave him what she intended to be a withering look. “Of whom?”

“Well, if you’re so sure of yourself,” he baited, “slide over here.”

“I read the story of ‘Little Red Riding Hood,’” she told him solemnly, careful to maintain a straight face.

“Are you calling me a wolf?”

She was, she realized—and though he probably didn’t deserve it, she refused to recant. “You used that word. I didn’t. But I bet you’d be right at home in a wilderness.” Or most other places, she thought.

She controlled the urge to lean into him, when his long fingers stroked the back of her neck. “Don’t you know that men tend to behave the way women expect them to? Huh? Be careful, Melissa. I can howl with the best of them.” Tremors of excitement streaked through her. What would he be like if he dropped his starched facade?

“What does it take to get you started?” she asked idly, voicing a private thought.

“One spark of encouragement from you.” He flicked his thumb and forefinger. “Just that much, honey.” She couldn’t muffle the gasp that betrayed her.

“Move over here,” he taunted. “Come on. See for yourself.” Tempting. Seductive. Enticing her. The words dripping off of his smooth tongue in an invitation to madness. She clutched the door handle and prayed that he wouldn’t touch her.

“Melissa.”

She clasped her forearms tightly. “I’m happy right where I am.” Her heart skittered at his suggestive, rippling laughter.

“You’d be a lot happier,” he mocked, “if you closed this space between us.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Believe me, honey,” he purred, “I’m doing exactly that.” If she didn’t control the impulse, her fingers would find his and cling.

He took her key to open her door for her and held it as though weighing the consequences of alternative courses of action. After a few minutes during which he said nothing and she was forced to look into his mesmeric eyes while she fought rising desire, she had the impulse to tell him to do whatever he wanted—just get on with it. But seemingly against his will, as if he pulled it out of himself, he spoke.

“I’d like to spend some time with you, Melissa. I don’t have loose strings in my personal life nor in my business affairs. I need to see whether our friendship, or whatever it is that prevents our staying away from each other, will lead anywhere. I’m not asking for a commitment, and I’m not giving one. But there’s something special going on between us, and you know it, too. What do you say?”

“We’ll see.” Even if she hadn’t already learned a lesson, she had good cause to stay away from Adam. The most optimistic person wouldn’t give a romance between them a chance of maturing, because no matter how they felt about each other, their families’ reactions would count for more. So that settled it—she wouldn’t see him except with regard to business. But how could she be content not knowing what he’d be like if she let herself go and succumbed to whatever it was that dragged her toward him? Oh, Lord! Was she losing sight of the storm that awaited her when Rafer Grant learned of her passion for Adam Roundtree?

* * *

Adam awakened early the next morning after a sound and refreshing sleep. He’d made up his mind about Melissa, and as usual he didn’t fight a war with himself about his decision. That was behind him. He suspected that given the chance, she’d wrestle with it as any thinking person in her circumstances would, but he didn’t plan to give her much of a chance.

He scrambled out of bed as the first streaks of red and blue signaled the breaking dawn, showered, poured coffee from his automatic coffee maker, got a banana, and settled down to work. He liked Saturday mornings, because he was free to work on his charities, the projects whose success gave him the most pleasure. The Refuge, as the Rachel Hood Hayes Center for Women that was situated in Frederick was commonly known, had become overcrowded. He had to find a way to enlarge it and expand its services. His dilemma was whether to continue financing it himself or seek collaborative funds. If it were located in New York City or even Baltimore rather than Frederick, raising the money would be fairly simple, but corporations wouldn’t get substantial returns from humanitarian investments in Frederick, and he couldn’t count on their support.

He looked out of the window across Broadway and toward the Hudson River, knowing that he wouldn’t see Melissa’s building. He had had years of impersonal relationships and loveless sex, and he had long since tired of it. After the humiliation of that one innocent adolescent attachment, he’d sworn never to be vulnerable to another woman. The lovers he’d had as a man had wanted to be linked with Adam Roundtree and regarded intimacy as a part of that. They hadn’t attempted to know or understand him. Hadn’t cared whether he could hurt or be disappointed. Hadn’t dreamed that a hole within him cried out for a woman’s love and caring. But Melissa was different. He sensed it. He knew it. He pondered what his mother would think of Melissa. She’d probably find reasons to shun her, he mused, and none of them would have anything to do with Melissa herself. Mary Hayes Roundtree was bitterly opposed to the Morris/Grant people for having vilified her family’s name without cause. And he suspected that Melissa’s fair complexion might bother her, too—his mother liked to trace her roots back to Africa, and she ignored all the evidence of miscegenation that he could see in the Hayes family. A muscle twitched in his jaw. He couldn’t and wouldn’t allow his mother’s preferences and prejudices to influence his life.

He spent an hour on his personal accounts, then lifted the receiver and dialed her number.

“Hi. I mean, hello.”

He could barely understand the mumbled words. “Hi. Sorry to wake you, but I’ve been up for hours. Want to go bike riding?”

“Biking?” The sound resembled a lusty purr, and he could almost see her stretching languorously, seductively. “Call me back in a couple of days.”

“Come on, sleepyhead, get up. Life’s passing you by.”

“Hmm. Who is this?” He had a sudden urge to be there, leaning over her, watching her relaxed and inviting, seeing her soft and yielding without her defenses. Her deep sigh warned him that she was about to drop the receiver.

“This is Adam.” He heard her feet hit the floor as she jumped up.

“Who? Adam? Bicycle?” A long pause ensued. “Adam, who would have thought you were sadistic?”

“I didn’t know I was. Want to ride with me? Come on. Meet me at the bike shop in an hour.”

“Where is it?”

“Not far from you. Broadway at Sixty-fifth Street. Eat something.”

“Okay.”

They rode leisurely around Central Park, greeting the few bikers and joggers they encountered in the still cool morning. Melissa knew a rare release, an unfamiliar absence of concerns. It was as if she had shed an outer skin that she hadn’t known to be confining but the loss of which had gained her a welcomed freedom. She looked over at the man who rode beside her, at his dark muscular legs and thighs glistening with faint perspiration from their hour’s ride and at the powerful arms that guided the bike with such ease. From her limited experience, she had always believed that it was the man who wanted and who asked. She shook her head, wondering whether she was strange, decided that she wasn’t, and let a grin crease her cheeks. Self-revelation could be pleasant.