Scarlet Woman

Rachel patted Melinda’s shoulder and looked as if she wanted to deny her statement. “Girl, our folks love to gossip. You know that.”

She stared down at Rachel, who stood little more than five feet five inches in her three-inch heels. “It isn’t just ‘our folks’ who gossip. All small-town people gossip—they don’t have much else to do.” Seeing the relief on Rachel’s face, she knew the woman had been saved from embarrassment. Or maybe from lying.

Later that afternoon, the school’s superintendent called Melinda to his office. “Mrs. Rodgers, I understand your late husband’s will contains provisions that aren’t favorable to you. I was—”

“Who told you that? As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing bad in that will.”

“But I heard you’d been disinherited, and I thought you might ask Mr. Hunter to settle some money on the school.”

She propped her hands on her hips and glared at him. It wasn’t easy to ring her bell, but he’d just managed to do it. “Is that all, Dr. Hicks?” Without waiting for his answer, she spun around and left.

On an impulse, she stopped by Blake’s office on the way home. If he couldn’t do something to arrest the awful gossip, she’d chuck the whole thing.

“Melinda. What a surprise,” he said and stood when she entered his office. “What can I do for you?”

She explained the reasons for being there. “It started yesterday with Judd Folson. Even Rachel’s repeating these stupidities. I’m fed up.”

The tips of his fingers warmed her elbow. “Come on in.” He didn’t go to his desk as she would have expected, but led her to the leather sofa that rested beneath a collection of paintings by African-American artists and sat there beside her.

“Tell me about it.” His voice conveyed an unfamiliar softness, a tenderness, maybe even an intimacy. At least she thought so.

“It’s…I know a lot of people don’t like my father, and I understand that. I even accept it, because he’s a big dose for me sometimes, but what did Prescott ever do to anybody?”

“Ordinary people envy the rich, Melinda. He didn’t have to do anything to anybody.”

Her eyes widened, and her pocketbook slipped from her lap to the floor. She caught herself, but not quickly enough to hide her shock. He picked up her pocketbook and put it on the sofa beside her.

“Why are you surprised? The poor have hated the rich since the beginning of time.”

She couldn’t help staring at him. “Rich? What do you mean rich? I know Prescott was well off, but rich?”

Now, she had obviously surprised him. “Prescott Rodgers was worth millions, and his estate will earn royalties probably for as long as people wear glasses and use cameras.”

She slumped against the back of the sofa and slowly closed her mouth. “I never dreamed…Prescott never talked about his finances, and I didn’t question him about them. I knew we were well off. We had what we needed, but if he hadn’t given me anything more than the first real peace I’d had in my life, I would have been contented.”

He stared at her for so long that she decided she’d lost his sympathy, that she’d better leave. But he restrained her with a hand on her shoulder, a hand whose warmth she felt to the marrow of her being.

“Don’t go. Please. This takes some getting used to.”

“Why? What did you think? That I—”

He cut her off. “Don’t say it. Right now, I don’t know what to think. Prescott talked freely to me about his affairs, or at least I think he did, so it didn’t occur to me that he didn’t share them with his wife.”

She didn’t like the chill that settled in her chest. “There was no reason why he should have.” She stood and walked to the door, giving him no choice but to follow her.

“If you want to take over the matter of that foundation, it’s all right with me,” Blake said.

“You know I can’t do that. I’ve sworn to do as he wished, and I can’t sidestep my integrity and live with myself.”

His voice behind her, so close to her ear, sent shock waves throughout her body, and she had to will herself not to turn around.

“I…I’ll help you with it. Maybe…” His breath seemed to shorten, and his words became rasping sounds. “We’ll…Like I said, I’ll help you.”

And then it hit her. His opinion of her didn’t differ from what the rest of Ellicott City thought about her. “You don’t believe me, do you? You think I knew and that I can’t wait to get my hands on Prescott’s money, don’t you? Isn’t that right?”

The sudden coolness of her body told her he’d stepped away from her back. She saw his hand on the doorknob and remembered that moment two weeks earlier when it had rested on her waist. Protective. Possessive. He turned the knob, and when she risked a glance at him, she bit back the gasp that nearly sprang from her throat. Desire, fierce and primitive, shone in his eyes.

“What do you want me to say?”

The words seemed to rush out of him. Perhaps he’d found some kind of reprieve, had grabbed the opportunity to reply logically, but without saying anything meaningful. She didn’t answer. But she hurt. Oh, the pain of it, shooting through her like a spray of bullets tearing up her insides. The ache of unappeased desire, and the anguish of knowing he thought so little of her. With her hand covering his, she pulled open the door and rushed down the corridor to the elevator. He didn’t think well of her, but he wanted her. She didn’t know if she could stand it.

He watched her rush away from him, her hips swaying almost as if in defiance above the most perfect pair of props a man ever looked at. Seconds earlier, he’d come close to doing what he’d sworn never to do. As she reached the elevator, he closed his door and leaned against it. It wouldn’t do for her to look back and find him watching her. She needed his help; without it, the good people of Ellicott City would laugh at her, and he couldn’t bear to see her ridiculed.

A man confided things to his lawyer, but to keep his wife in the dark about his wealth…He ran his hand over the hair at the back of his head. He didn’t believe she was lying, but something didn’t jell. A woman who’d been married for almost five years ought to know how to finesse a man’s revved-up libido. Any man’s. But she didn’t make small talk, didn’t joke, didn’t say anything that would have cooled him off. That level of naiveté in a twenty-nine-year-old widow was incomprehensible. He should keep his distance, but he didn’t see an alternative to sitting with her while she contacted the people on her list.

She’d had time to drive home, so he called her. “Melinda, this is Blake. Suppose you stop by after school, and we’ll go through your list till we get twelve people to agree to serve. The sooner we do this, the better.”

Her long silence annoyed him until he let himself remember that she was probably as shaken by their near-encounter as he. “All right,” she said at last in a voice that suggested disinterest. “I want to finish it as soon as possible.”

He believed that, but not her feigned disinterest. “Till tomorrow then.”

She hung up, obviously discombobulated, and he was certainly at the root of her discomfort. While he tried to think of a way to smooth their relationship without indicting himself, the phone rang.

“Reverend Jones on one,” Irene said.

“Hunter. What may I do for you, sir?”

“I just talked with that daughter of mine. She doesn’t seem to understand my position in Ellicott City. If anybody should be on that board, it’s me. You’re her advisor, so I’m depending on you to set her straight.”

Here we go! He sat down and, to make certain he stayed calm, he picked up a red-ink pen and began doodling. “Reverend Jones, my job is to advise my client, not to dictate to her, but I’ve warned her that it’s best not to give either a political or a religious flavor to the board. Further, I’ve suggested that she exclude from consideration members of her family and of Prescott’s family.” He hadn’t, but the words might convince Jones not to ride hard on Melinda.

“That’s bunkum. Rodgers didn’t have any family. At least not that anybody around here ever heard about, and they can’t come in now and start demanding the man’s money when it belongs to Melinda.”

“You needn’t worry about that, sir. Have a good day.”

He hung up and considered the pleasure he’d get out of pitching something—anything—across the room. Booker Jones planned to aggravate him to distraction, and he’d probably do it from the hallowed perch of his pulpit.

His anticipation of Booker’s tirade proved prophetic. Melinda forced herself to go to the Third Evangelical House of Prayer—her father’s small church—the following Sunday morning and hadn’t been seated for ten minutes when she realized that her personal affairs would be the text of her father’s sermon.

“Children, obey your parents. That’s a commandment. But does my own daughter obey it? I say to you, parents, don’t be discouraged, as I am not discouraged. They will perish, every last one of them. But our reward will come, and oh, how beautiful it will be. Let them know that money is the root of all evil. Let them know that they will burn in hell. And brothers and sisters, it won’t be a little blister, and there won’t be any salve to put on it….”

Tuning him out, all she heard was the drone of his voice. Getting up and leaving wasn’t an option, so she sat there and let herself think of pleasant things. Her life with Prescott and the peace and contentment she’d known with him. But as she reminisced, it came to her forcefully that Prescott had treated her as if she were a child, taking care of her material needs, giving her an allowance, never broaching the subject of sex—not that she’d have welcomed it. She’d gone from one father to another one, and neither had prepared her for her encounters with Blake Hunter. A tough man with a soft core, she surmised, and a masculine persona that fired her up and awakened the womanliness in her. She hadn’t known the meaning of the word lust until she first looked into his eyes and he stared at her until her nipples tightened and her blood raced as if she were in a marathon.

She wanted to close her eyes and think about him, but didn’t dare for fear her father would think she slept during his sermon. At last the choir sang the closing hymn, and she rushed out of the church.

“Didn’t Reverend Jones really preach today? Bless the Lord,” one of the sisters said to her.

No way was that woman going to make her concur with her father’s accusations. “My father speaks his mind,” she told the startled woman and brushed past her.