Scarlet Woman

Scarlet Woman
Gwynne Forster

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Brother Simba Sanna, formerly co-owner of Karivu Books, Hyatsville, Maryland, and an exemplary man of strong moral character. In my research for this book, Brother Simba shared with me his experiences as a volunteer teacher and counselor to African-American youths during their incarceration in Lorton Prison, in the Washington, D.C., area, and after their return to society. Brother Simba inaugurated a study group at Lorton (the African Development Organization), and he remains a mentor to those young men who accept his counsel. My thanks also to my husband, who supports and encourages me in everything that I undertake.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Prologue

Melinda looked out of the only window in her tiny one-room apartment and saw nothing. Not the children jumping rope and playing hopscotch, nor the single mothers who sat on the stone bench beneath a big white oak tree escaping the late-August, Maryland sun. Over and over, her mind replayed Prescott Rodgers’s proposal. Marry and live with him in his home and brighten his life by doing for him what he couldn’t do for himself. He wanted her to read to him the classic literature of the English language. Although he was a brilliant man, dyslexia had deprived him of the pleasures of reading and writing. He had contacted the high school at which she taught English, offering to pay a student to read to him. None found the idea attractive, and she eventually volunteered to do it one or two hours weekly at no charge. But his tales of his world travels, especially his wanderings through Italy, so intrigued her that the few weekly hours soon became a daily ritual, a treat to which she looked forward each day.

A self-made man, inventor of a film-developing process, a fluid for contact lenses, and a type of eyeglass lens, all of which yielded hefty royalties, Prescott Rodgers had amassed a fortune. He lived a reclusive life, fearing scorn because he could not learn to read.

“We’re both lonely,” Prescott had argued, “and we have much to give each other. I know the chemicals I’ve worked with all these years are shortening my life, and I’d like to spend what’s left of it in your company. Marrying me would still the tongues of those curious about your daily visits.”

“Well, I…I don’t know—”

“Will you accept a marriage of convenience? That’s selfish of me, I know, because you’re young, and I’m sixty-eight years old.”

As a married woman, she would escape much of her father’s intolerance and authoritarianism, and she would have a companion. Musing over her own life of loneliness—for which her father’s self-righteousness and his indictments of all who disagreed with him were largely responsible—she reasoned that at last she would have a niche. She would belong with someone. Melinda added up the advantages, shoved the doubts and disadvantages out of her mind, and agreed.

She married Prescott Rodgers in a private ceremony in the office of Blake Edmund Hunter, Prescott’s lawyer, with only Hunter and her parents as witnesses.

Prescott gave her a monthly allowance of $1,100 for her most personal needs, provided her with a housekeeper, and bore all other expenses. She read to him each morning, entertained for him, sparing though it was, and enjoyed the remaining four and a half years of his life as his wife.

Chapter 1

Melinda Rodgers sat in Blake Edmund Hunter’s law office on that damp, mid-May morning, dumbfounded, as he read aloud her late husband’s will. She was to set up a foundation for remedial reading and the acquiring of literacy that would meet the needs of both children and adults and have it fully operating within a year of his death. She must also marry within the year.

If she failed to fulfill either requirement, the house in which she lived and everything else—except for one million dollars to rehabilitate homeless people—would go to a charity of Blake’s choice.

“It doesn’t surprise me that he’d want that foundation,” Melinda said to those present—Blake, her parents, and her best friend “—but as much as he valued individual freedom, I can’t believe he’d attempt to force me to get married.”

“You just have to carry out his wishes,” her father, the Reverend Booker Jones, said. “You wouldn’t be foolish enough to throw away all this money. The church needs some repairs.”

“Now, dear,” Lurlane Jones said, in a voice soft and musical. “Our Melinda is in mourning. We mustn’t push her.”

Melinda watched Blake Hunter lean back in his desk chair and survey the group, his sharp, cool gaze telling them that he judged them all and found them wanting. She tried not to look at him, lest she betray her feelings.

“I really wouldn’t have thought it of Prescott,” she said, “but I guess you never truly know a person.”

She glanced toward Blake, and her heart turned over at the softness of his unguarded look. She told herself not to react, that she had to be mistaken. He had shown her respect but never liked her, and she doubted he had or ever would have any feelings for her, though Lord knows he lived in her heart and had since the minute she met him.

With his cool, impersonal gaze back in place, he immediately confirmed her thoughts. “Don’t think you can play at this, Mrs. Rodgers, and you’re not allowed to hire anyone to do it for you. You have to do it yourself and to my satisfaction.”

His sharp words and unsympathetic attitude surprised her, for he had always appeared gracious and considerate toward her during her husband’s lifetime. “As my husband’s close friend, I expected that you might give me some advice, if not help, but I see I’m on my own. I’ll be in tomorrow morning to talk this over with you.”

His left eyebrow shot up, and he nodded in what appeared to be grudging appreciation. “I’ll be here at nine.”

“Let’s go, Rachel,” Melinda said to the friend she’d asked to be with her when the will was read. But she noticed that the woman got up with reluctance, almost as if she didn’t want to leave.

“You do what that will says,” Booker Jones roared in the descending elevator. “We can’t afford to lose one brown cent of that money. We need it to do the Lord’s work.”

“Melinda will do what’s right. So stop fussing,” Lurlane said.

Melinda didn’t respond. Her father taught his parishioners that money was the root of all evil, but he never said no to it.

“Is he like that all the time?” Rachel asked Melinda as they walked down one of the main streets of Ellicott City, Maryland. “My father hardly ever raises his voice.”

“Your father isn’t a preacher,” Melinda reminded her. “If other pastors are like my father, they’re always right. He talks over everybody and across everybody, because when he opens his mouth the world is supposed to shut up and take heed.”

“Girl, you go ’way from here,” Rachel said. “He’s a good man. Last Sunday, he preached till he was plain hoarse and couldn’t say another word.”

“Yes, I know he’s good, and I bet he started whispering into the mike. Nothing shuts up my father.”

“He’s a righteous man.”

“You’re telling me? He’s the only one on earth. I wish he’d understand that he can’t mold people as he would clay figures just because he believes they’d be better off.”

“Now, Melinda. You don’t mean that.”

She did mean it. Her father believed in what he taught, but he was driven by a secular monster, the one that made you want praise and acceptance. Tired of the subject and uninterested in Rachel’s views of Booker Jones, Melinda stopped talking. Who knew a man better than his family?

“Rachel, why do you think Prescott put that clause in his will forcing me to remarry? I just can’t figure it out.”

“Me, neither, girl, and Blake Hunter is going to see that you do it or lose everything, including your house.”

Melinda shrugged. “I’m not worried about that, because I never intend to remarry.”

Rachel stopped walking. “Was Mr. Rodgers mean to you? I’d have thought an older man would be sweet as sugar to a woman less than half his age.”

Melinda smiled inwardly, aware that the comment reflected the local gossip about her and Prescott. “My husband treated me as if I were the most precious being on this earth. He…he was wonderful to me. Those four years were the happiest of my life.”

“Well, I’ll be! I guess there’s no telling about people. Maybe I’d better start looking for an older man. I’m thirty-two. With a fifty-or sixty-year-old man, that ought to stand for something.” Rachel didn’t say anything for half a block, and then she spoke with seeming reluctance. “How old do you think Blake Hunter is? And how come he’s not married?”

“Why would I know?”

“He was your husband’s close friend, wasn’t he?”

“They never discussed the man’s private affairs when I was around. I know practically nothing about him.”

“I’ll bet you know he’s a number ten.”

“A what?”

“A knockout. A good-looking virile man who makes you think things you couldn’t tell your mother.”

So she’d been right. Rachel hadn’t wanted to leave Blake’s office. The woman was after Blake. She told herself to forget about it. Nothing would ever happen between Blake Hunter and herself.

Melinda walked into the redbrick colonial she’d shared with Prescott and froze when she realized she’d been expecting to hear his usual, “That you, dear?” “Get a hold of yourself,” she said aloud, squared her shoulders, and headed for her bedroom, determined to meet the rest of her life head-on. The sound of Ruby vacuuming the hall carpet reminded her that the upkeep of the house was now her responsibility.

“We have to talk, Ruby,” she told the housekeeper. “I don’t understand it, but Mr. Rodgers didn’t provide for you in his will, and I can’t keep you on here. I’m afraid we’ll have to separate.”

“He paid my wages for the entire year after his death, Miz Melinda. And last year, he drawed up a real good pension plan for me. Only thing is, I has to work here for the next twelve months. He done good by me.”

Melinda swallowed several times and told herself it didn’t matter that Prescott had left his housekeeper better fixed than his wife.

“Is Blake Hunter in charge of your pension and wages?”

“Yes, ma’am. My pension starts thirteen months from now, and Mr. Blake will send me my salary every Friday, just like he always done.” She coughed a few times and patted the hair in the back of her head. “If I was twenty years younger, that man wouldn’t be single. No sirree. That is one sweet-looking man. A face the color of shelled walnuts.” She rolled her eyes toward the sky and wet her lips. “Them dreamy eyes and that bottom lip…Lord.” She patted her hair. “Honey, that is some man.”

Imagine that. “He’s a hard man,” Melinda said, thinking of how lacking in compassion for her he’d seemed when he read the terms of her late husband’s will. Harsh terms, and so unlike Prescott. “But if anybody could break through that wall he’s got around himself, Ruby, I expect you could.”

Ruby put the can of furniture polish on the table and shook out the chamois cloth she used for polishing. “Miz Melinda, that man just can’t help being hard. He done nothing but work from daylight to dark six days a week from the time he could walk till he finished high school. His daddy cracked that whip.”

She stared at Ruby. Surely the woman was mistaken. “He told you that?”

“No, ma’am. He sure didn’t, but I heard him telling Mr. Rodgers that and a whole lot more. That man been through somethin’.”

Melinda’s eyes widened, but she quickly replaced that with a bland facial expression. No point in letting Ruby know that anything about Blake interested her. She’d had two shocks in two minutes, and she had a hunch she’d get more of them. She leaned against the wall and waited for Ruby’s next shot. Her impression of Blake had been of a privileged youth from an upper middle-class family. How had he become so polished? Ruby’s high-pitched voice interrupted Melinda’s musings.

“Working a boy like Mr. Blake’s daddy done made him work would amount to child abuse these days,” Ruby said, warming up to the subject. “He said his folks was poor as Job’s turkey.”

“Well, he certainly overcame it,” Melinda replied and walked rapidly up the wide stairs, richly carpeted in Royal Bokhara. However, realizing that she’d practically run from the talk about Blake because she didn’t want to think of him, she slowed her steps. As executor of Prescott’s estate, the man would be a fixture in her life for the next twelve months, and she’d better learn to handle the consequences.

Blake Edmund Hunter looked from one woman to the other as Melinda stood to leave his office and Rachel Perkins remained in her chair gazing at him. Another one of nature’s stupid tricks! Rachel wanted him so badly she was practically salivating, and Melinda Rodgers didn’t know he was alive. His gaze followed Melinda’s svelte physique, straight, almost arrogant carriage and sweetly rounded buttocks as she strolled out of his office. He wanted her and had from the minute he first saw her, but he was Prescott’s friend, so he hadn’t let himself give in to it when Prescott was alive. He was damned if he’d succumb to it now.

If anything turned his stomach, it was a gold-digging woman, an unfaithful wife, or a treacherous friend. She hadn’t given him reason to believe that she would be unfaithful to Prescott, and he was grateful for that, because she’d been temptation without trying and he wouldn’t have considered disloyalty to Prescott.

Yet, as much as he desired her, he had reservations about her. For instance, that virginal innocence she wrapped around herself didn’t fool him. She was less than half Prescott’s age, and nobody could make him believe a young, gorgeous woman like her had married an old, solitary recluse for love. She’d married Prescott Rodgers for his money, and Blake would see that she carried out the terms of that will, or else. That clause Prescott had inserted requiring Melinda to marry within a year or lose her inheritance…He squeezed his eyes shut and told himself the lump in his throat had nothing to do with that.

He answered the phone, grateful that its ringing had derailed his thoughts. Dangerous thoughts.

“Yes, Lacy. Look, I’m sorry, but I have to deal with this will.”

“But you can leave it long enough to have lunch with me.”

He glanced at his watch and banged his left fist on his desk. Softly. Reaffirming his intention to stay away from her. “I’m having lunch at my desk today, and for goodness’ sake, Lacy, please don’t pout. It’s so childish.” He could imagine her lower lip protruding in what she considered a sexy come-on.

“You’re busy every time I call.”

Leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes, he told himself not to show annoyance. “Lacy, I told you I’m not ready for a relationship, and I haven’t said or done anything that would make you think otherwise. I’m sorry.”

In his mind’s eye, he could see her lighting a cigarette and taking a long drag, a habit he hated. “Maybe this weekend?” She had the tenacity of Muhammad Ali smelling victory, but he refused to be roped in.

“I’m longing to see you,” she whispered.

He wished she wouldn’t beg. Three dates didn’t amount to a commitment. “Yeah, right! I’ll…uh. Look, Lacy, I wish you well. I’ll see you around.”

He hung up, but he doubted that ended it. Any other woman would know that he’d just broken ties with her, such as they were, but not Lacy Morgan. He’d never seen a human being with thicker skin.

He walked over to the window and looked down at the flowering trees, but they didn’t engage his thoughts. What would happen to Melinda if she couldn’t do as Prescott’s will required? His long, tapered fingers rubbed his jaw, and he shook his head as if to clear it. The Rodgers account was but one in his portfolio, and several others required his attention. He pushed the intercom button.

“Irene, could you come in and take a letter to Folson?”

“Yes, sir.”

Now here was a woman he admired: always professional, and she expected him to be the same. So he wasn’t prepared for her comment.

“Blake, I don’t see how Melinda is going to set up that foundation. People here don’t think highly of her since she married Mr. Rodgers. And to make things worse, she never once went anyplace with him from the time they married till he died. Some say they weren’t really married, that she just lived with the old man.”

His jaw twitched, and he knew he grimaced, for her blood reddened her light skin and she lowered her eyelids. So much for her unfailing professionalism. He looked over a few notes and dictated the letter.

“Anything else, sir?”

With his elbows propped on the desk, he made a pyramid of his ten fingers and looked her in the eye. “Yes. There is. I was Prescott Rodgers’s witness when he married Melinda Jones in this office in the presence of her parents. That’s all.”

He didn’t care for character assassins any more than he liked gold diggers, and he hated feeling protective toward Melinda, but he did. Feeling a flush of guilt, he tapped his Mont Blanc pen on his desk. If she couldn’t establish that foundation, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to live with himself. He’d insisted that Prescott include that provision in the will and had worded it himself. If she ever found out…

Melinda dressed carefully that morning, choosing a white linen suit—she wasn’t going to mourn in black; Prescott had made her promise she wouldn’t—a blue-and-white striped linen blouse and navy accessories. She wanted to look great, but she didn’t want Blake to think he’d ever entered her mind.

“Come in, Melinda, and have a seat,” Irene said, when she opened the door. “He’ll be with you in a second.”

Looking around the reception room, she marveled at its decorations, carpets, paintings, and live green plants—elegance without ostentation.

“Good morning, Melinda. Nothing pleases me like promptness.”

She stood, accepted his extended hand and wished she hadn’t, as her heart lurched, and fiery ripples spiraled up her arms. His gaze seemed more piercing than ever, or had he noticed what that physical contact with him had done to her?

“Hello, Blake. I’ve thought this over and figured that I can either try to comply with this strange bequest or walk away from the entire thing.” At his quick frown, she added, “Neither one of those provisions is easy to comply with, but I’ve made up my mind to do all I can to get that foundation up and operating. Reading is what brought Prescott and me together, and I know how dear this project would be to him.”

His frown deepened. “What do you mean by that?”

So Prescott hadn’t confided that problem! She lifted her left shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Long story. Let’s get started on this.” Something flickered in his gaze, but she discounted it as being impossible. Blake Hunter had no feelings for her.

She made notes as he talked, suggesting names of people she should contact, and providing her with tips about their personalities and attitudes. Once, when she glanced up at him and saw the softness in his fawnlike, brown eyes, she had to stifle a gasp and quickly turned her attention to the tablet in her lap.

“Your father wants to be on the board,” he said. “I can’t advise you about that, but I’m sure you’ll want board members who can get along with each other.”

Laughter flowed out of her at the thought of her father cooperating with any group of eleven people anywhere in the world. She looked at Blake. “Do you know anybody in this town who can swear to having had a gratifying conversation with my father?” She’d often thought the problem with her father was his longing for acceptance, but she would never allow herself to say that.

What was certainly mischief gleamed in his eyes. “I didn’t know you knew that. What he’s like, I mean.”

“Blake, I lived in the house with him until I went away to college.”

His big body settled itself in his desk chair, relaxed, and he twirled a pencil, the only playful thing she’d ever seen him do. “I’ll bet you thanked God for college.”

She leaned toward him, enjoying this unfamiliar side of him. “Did I ever! I put on some lipstick before the train left the station.”

A smile played around his lips, mesmerizing her. “What about your soul? Weren’t you afraid you’d burn in hell for that worldly deed?”

“Tell you the truth, it didn’t cross my mind. Do you think a bird worries about the cage after it flies out? Not for a second. I thought, ‘Free at last!’”

Suddenly, his demeanor changed, and she supposed he’d only temporarily forgotten himself, that it was back to business.

“I’ll ask Irene to type out this list of prospective board members along with their street and e-mail addresses and their phone numbers. This will take time, so the sooner you get on it, the better.”

“Yes, sir!”

His eyebrow went up sharply, but she didn’t care if he recognized her insolence. He couldn’t change faces with her like a chameleon and expect her to accept it.

“You’re not as easygoing as you appear to be, are you?”

She put the tablet in her pocketbook and stood, preparing to leave. “I didn’t know anybody thought me easygoing. That is a surprise.”

“Real little tiger, eh?” he said, walking with her to the door.

She whirled around and he towered over her, inches from her body. Get a grip on it, girl. “Tiger, lion, or leopard. Cross me, and I claw. But unless you step out of line, you’ll never get so much as a hint of my feline side.”

She wanted to back away from him, but the door trapped her. She didn’t like the feeling that pervaded her body, a strange hunger that she suspected had nothing to do with food. He didn’t move, and she didn’t want him to know what his nearness did to her. Then his pupils seemed to dilate, and his nostrils flared. Oh, Lord, please let me get away from here without making a fool of myself.

Summoning all the strength she could muster, she whispered, “Would you please open the door?”

He reached around her in what felt like a half caress, though she knew it wasn’t, and turned the knob. She stepped backward and nearly lost her footing, but he grabbed her and pulled her toward him.

“What…?”

She glanced over her shoulder as Judd Folson walked in for his eleven o’clock appointment. And from the man’s knowing expression, she didn’t doubt that he assumed he’d caught her in Blake Hunter’s arms a week after she buried her husband.

She raised herself to her full height—nearly six feet if you took into account her three-inch heels—and looked him straight in the eye. “Good morning, Mr. Folson. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

The man nodded in reply, gaping as he did so, and she realized that Blake’s arm remained around her waist. She stepped away, stood against the doorjamb, and made herself smile.

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Hunter. I hope Irene can get that list to me in a day or two and I can get started.” Nervous words, and she knew it.

But he didn’t answer, only stared at her with those piercing eyes and nodded his head before turning to Judd Folson.

“Have a seat, Judd,” Blake said to his visitor, though his thoughts remained with the woman who’d just left. “I just looked over your suit.”

“Man, if you could work with that nice little tidbit hanging on to you, I take off my hat to you.”

In the process of sitting down, Blake stopped seconds before touching the chair. “What tidbit are you talking about?” Folson was a good client, but that didn’t mean he could make a rude statement about another one of his clients. About to slap his right fist into the palm of his left hand, he caught himself and sat down.

Folson shifted uneasily in his chair, and Blake didn’t have to be told that the man noticed his testiness. “Well, I thought you and she were…not that I blame you. She’s just about the best-looking…uh…woman around here, and after four or five years as Mrs. Rodgers, she must be—”

Blake interrupted him, because he knew that if he heard him say it, he’d pick him up out of that chair and…He told himself to calm down.

“Mr. Folson,” he began, though he normally addressed the man by his first name. “I was opening the door for Mrs. Rodgers who stood with her back to it, and when you almost knocked her down, I grabbed her to prevent an accident. I assume you would have done the same.”

“Well, sure. I…I just thought. Never mind. What do you have for me?”

Blake opened the file and outlined for Folson his options in respect to property he wanted to sell. “You’ll get top price for it now, but it’s impossible to predict its future value. Depends on property changes in the neighborhood and whether we get aggressive growth in another part of town. My advice is to sell now, take your three hundred percent profit, and consider yourself lucky.”

“All right, let it go. I need to get rid of some holdings anyway.”

“I’ll keep you informed.”

He wanted the man to get out of there. He bowled and played soccer and basketball at the same club as Folson and sometimes with him, though he wouldn’t call him a friend, but right that minute, he wanted the man out of his sight. He stood, signaling the end of the appointment.

Folson shook hands and went on his way, but Blake walked back and forth in his office until he forced himself to sit down. He let out a sharp whistle as the truth exploded in his brain. Melinda Rodgers’s behavior as she walked toward that door was solid evidence that she reciprocated what he felt, and she’d lie if she disowned it. Now, how the devil was he supposed to handle that?

He answered the intercom buzzer. “Yes, Irene.”

“Melinda Rodgers on two.”

“Hello, Melinda. What can I do for you?”

“Hello, Blake. I have some questions that occurred to me since I left your office. First, is that clause stipulating that I have to marry within a year legal?”

What was she getting at? “It’s legal. Why do you ask? You thinking about contesting it?”

“Contest it? Why should I do that? He was entitled to specify his wish. I just don’t understand it.”

Angry now at himself for his softness toward her and for having reprimanded Folson in her defense, he spoke sharply to her. “It shouldn’t be difficult for a woman like you to find a husband. If it’s known that you’re looking for one, you can have your pick. So, that certainly won’t be an obstacle to your inheriting Prescott’s estate. Your problem is setting up that foundation.”

Her lengthy silence was as much a reprimand as any words could have been. Finally, she said, “And the foundation. Are you sure someone else can’t set that up and I approve it?”

“Trust me, you’ll do as the will states. That, or nothing. If you want that inheritance, get busy.”

He thought she’d put the telephone receiver down and left it, until he heard her say, “Is there a provision in that will that allows me to replace you as its executor?” Her tone, sharp and cold, was meant to remind him that he was her husband’s employee, a fact that he never forgot.

He looked down at his tapered and polished fingernails. Perfect. You could even say he had elegant hands. But at that moment, he wanted to send one of them crashing through the wall. Replace him, indeed!

“For whatever reason you’d like to have my head, Melinda, don’t even think it. You and I will work together until this is settled.”

“I don’t suppose you’re offering to help me fulfill that second clause in the will.”

She let it hang, loaded with meaning and the possibility of misinterpretation. Thank God for the distance between them; if he’d been near her, he didn’t know whether he’d have paddled her or…or kissed her until she begged him to take her. He told her good-bye at the first opportunity and hung up, shocked at himself. Prescott was dead, but even so, he didn’t covet his friend’s wife. Melinda had pushed his buttons, but the next time, he’d push hers. And she could count on it.

If she wasn’t mistaken, something had happened between Blake and herself while they stood at his office door. For a few seconds, her whole body had anticipated invasion by the wild, primitive being within hand’s reach, and she’d been ready to open herself to him. Men who stood six feet four inches tall and had a strong, masculine personality weren’t all that uncommon. But add those warm fawnlike eyes that electrified you when he smiled and…She grabbed her chest. Oh, Lord…. If she could only avoid him.

Melinda dreaded going to church that next Sunday. Custom allowed her to stay away the first Sunday after becoming a widow, but not longer. After the service, she went to her father’s office on the first floor of the church, not so much to visit with him as to avoid the condolences of her father’s parishioners who huddled in groups at the entrance to the church and on its grounds. She knew what they thought of her, that they believed only wicked women wore high heels, perfume, and makeup and that she had married Prescott for money. For all their righteousness, only one of them had come to sit with her during her husband’s final illness.

“You seem tired, Papa,” she said. “Maybe you need a vacation.”

“Can’t afford it. You get busy and set up that foundation, otherwise you’ll lose that money.”

He wasn’t going to inveigle her into putting him on that board; once the word was out, no one else would sit on it.

“I’ll get started on it, but I wish everybody would remember that Prescott hasn’t been gone three weeks. I need time to adjust.”

“Didn’t mean to rush you, but you have to make hay while the sun’s shining, and people will be more likely to help you now while your grief is fresh.”

Melinda hadn’t associated her father with greed. Maybe he really did need money for the church. Best not to comment on that. “Yes, sir. I’d better be going. See you soon.”

She patted his shoulder and jerked back her hand, remembering that he didn’t like being touched. She’d like to know what would happen if he unlocked his emotions, but she wouldn’t want to be there. The thought brought Blake Hunter to mind. Now, there was a man who probably controlled the blinking of his eyelids.

After parking her four-year-old Mercury Sable in front of her parents’ house, she went in to see her mother. “Why weren’t you in church this morning, Mama? You aren’t sick, are you?”

“No, honey. Your father had a miniconvention yesterday, and after cooking and serving that gang, I was too tired to get out of bed this morning.”

“Papa ought to get you some help. You’re practically a slave to those preachers and the members of that church.”

Lurlane Jones rolled her eyes and looked toward the ceiling. “Bring me Aladdin and his magic lamp—I’ll get some help a lot quicker that way. Your father does what he can.”

Her mother had the looks and bearing of a woman of sixty, though she’d just turned fifty, and her father looked as if he hadn’t lived a day longer than forty-five years though he’d recently passed his sixtieth birthday.”

“It’s sapping your life, Mama. The hardest work Papa ever does is preach his sermons, and since my brothers and I are no longer here to help you, you’re slaving here all day and half of some nights. You won’t catch me doing that for any man. Never!”

Lurlane tightened the belt of her robe and began brushing her long hair in a soothing, rhythmic fashion, as if expressing pleasure with her life and all around her. “We’re of different generations, Melinda. When you find a man you love the way I love your father, you’ll understand.”

Melinda’s head came up sharply. “Are you suggesting that I didn’t love Prescott?” It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder what her parents thought of that marriage, and they hadn’t let on.

“You loved him as a friend, a pleasant companion, and only that. You’re still an unbroken colt, as your grandfather would say, but that’ll change before long.”

“My life, the part I held to myself, wasn’t secret after all,” she said to herself, walking rapidly out of the dining room to escape the sound of the ticking clock—a source of irritation for as far back as she could remember—knowing that her mother would follow. She wrapped her arms around Lurlane, kissed her, and left.

Driving home with her mind on her options, she was glad she’d invested in blue chip stocks most of her teacher’s salary and every penny of the allowance that Prescott gave her each month. The payoff was having enough money to support herself while she studied for a Ph.D., and enjoying the choice of remaining among the gossipmongers of Ellicott City or leaving the town. But she could not dishonor Prescott’s wishes that she set up that foundation, so school would have to wait one more year.

As she entered the house, she heard Ruby say, “She’s not back yet, Mr. Blake. Maybe she stopped by Reverend Jones’s house. She does that some Sundays.”

Melinda rushed to the phone that rested on a marble-top table in the hallway. “Hello,” but he’d already hung up. She looked down at the receiver she held, while disappointment weighed on her like a load of bricks.

Every molecule in her body shouted, “Call him back,” but he would want to discuss business, while she…She went into her room, threw her hat and pocketbook on her bed, and looked around. Blake Hunter had aggravated her nerves and irritated her libido for almost five years, and it hadn’t gotten the better of her. She wasn’t going to let him mess up her mind now.

She ignored the telephone’s insistent ringing. “Yes, sir, she just walked in. Yoohoo! Miz Melinda, it’s Mr. Blake.”

“Hello, Blake.” Did that cool, modulated voice belong to her?

“Hi.” A pause ensued, and she wondered why, as her heartbeat accelerated.

“What is it, Blake?”

“I hope you didn’t decide to put Reverend Jones on the foundation’s board of trustees.”

She stared down at the phone. “I thought we had an understanding about that.”

“Yeah. Well, I wanted to be sure.”

“Not…to worry.” The words came out slowly as she realized he’d changed his mind about something, and that her father’s membership on the board was not the reason he’d called. She sat on the edge of the bed, perplexed.

“Why are you calling me, Blake?”

“Didn’t I just tell you—”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, interrupting him. “But if that’s the way you want it, fine with me.” Angry at herself for seeming to beg the question, she added in a voice that carried a forced breeziness, “Y’all have a nice day.”

“You bet,” he said and hung up.

Pressing him hadn’t gained her a thing; she might even have lost a few points with him.

Chapter 2

The biggest error he’d ever made. What the devil had come over him? He’d feasted his eyes on her, eaten at her table, wanted her for nearly five years and kept it to himself. Not once had he done anything as stupid as making that phone call. He’d swear that, until yesterday, she hadn’t had an inkling as to how he felt about her. The thing to do was get his mind on something and somebody else. To make himself useful. He put on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, stuck a baseball cap on his head, got into his Mercury Cougar, and headed for Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore, a state facility for short-term prison inmates.

As he entered the institution, he met a priest he’d often seen there. “Got three new ones today,” the priest said. “Tough kids. I expect you can do more for them right now than I can.”

Blake didn’t like the sound of that. “Where are they?”

“Up on 9XX3. Jack will send them down.”

“Thanks. As soon as one leaves here, two or three replace him.”

The priest shook his head. “And they’re so young.”

Blake sat on the uncomfortable sofa, drabness facing him from every angle, and waited for the young men. Why would a person risk going back there once he regained his freedom? Yet the prison held dozens of repeat offenders. Finally, the boys arrived, none of them over eighteen.

“I’m Blake. A lot of the guys here take my course in criminal law. Would you like to join?”

“School? Juku, man,” the oldest one said. “Man, that’s like an overdose of Nytol.”

Blake shrugged and pulled his cap farther down on his forehead. “I make it cool, man. One of the brothers learned enough law to get his case reopened. I wouldn’t think he’s any smarter than you.”

“I gotta keep my lines open, man. Otherwise, while I’m in here, my territory’ll go up for grabs.”

The youngest of the three looked at Blake, attentive, but unwilling to cross the leader.

“How long are you in for?” Blake asked the older, talkative one whom he’d sized up as the leader.

“Eighteen months. Why you take up your time coming out here?”

“We brothers have to hang together,” Blake said. “The street’s mean. It can suck every one of us in like quicksand.”

“Man, I ain’t fooled by your jeans and sneakers,” the older one said. “You don’t know nothing ’bout the street, man. It’s a pisser out there.”

Blake had been waiting for that. It always came down to are you really one of us? He rested his left ankle on his right knee, stuck his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, and leaned back.

“I hustled the streets of Atlanta till I owned them. You name it, I did it—running errands on my bike, shining shoes, selling shoestrings, peddling books, peanuts, even the Holy Bible. I delivered packages, did whatever I could to make a living and keep myself in school.” He had their attention now, and he’d keep it. “Every cop knew me, and I knew every junkie on the street, but I wasn’t their customer.”

“Did you rat on them?”

Blake raised an eyebrow and pasted a look of incredulity on his face. “I’m sitting here talking to you. Right?”

“Cool, man. My name’s Lobo.” The older one held out his hand, palm upward. “Put it right there, man. You’re mega.”

He supposed that was a compliment, so he thanked Lobo.

The others introduced themselves as Phil, who hadn’t said anything previously, and Johnny, who was the youngest of the three. Two potential gang members if he’d ever seen any.

“I’ll be here next Saturday at three o’clock when I teach criminal law. Hope to see you brothers in the class.” He picked up the bag he’d rested on the floor. “Meanwhile, I brought along a few things you might like to share—some chocolates, writing pads and pens, deodorant, soap, aftershave, things like that. See you Saturday.” Rule number one, never overstay your visit.

Lobo extended his hand, and Phil and Johnny did the same. “Chill out, brother,” Lobo said. “You da man.”

Blake let himself grin. Getting their confidence was the first step. Later, he’d try what the correction institution didn’t bother to do—work at correcting them.

When he got outside, it surprised him to see the priest sitting against the hood of his Cougar. “How’d you make out?” the priest asked him.

“I made a dent, but not a very deep one. They’ve been there less than a week and already they’re a little gang.”

“Not very encouraging,” the priest said. “How’d you get into this?”

Blake walked around to the driver’s side of his car. “I’m going to Ellicott City. If you’re headed that way, I’ll give you a lift.”

“I’m going to Baltimore.”

“A couple of years back,” Blake said, as he headed into Baltimore proper, “I had a client, a young Moslem man, who told me he’d managed to turn some of the brothers around, giving up one day each week to teach in the Lawton Prison Program. He impressed me, and I decided to do something similar.”

“I wish I knew how he did it.”

“He had his successes as well as some failures, you know.” He slowed down to avoid colliding with one of Maryland’s road hogs. “By the time we get to these criminals, most are too far gone for help, but I decided to try with the young ones.” He paused for a minute. “I’m not being disrespectful, Father, but it might help if you learned the language of the street and took off that collar. They don’t want to be corrected, so you have to be subtle.”

“Thanks. You don’t play golf by any chance, do you?” the priest asked him.

“You bet. I’m no Tiger Woods, but I occasionally shoot around par.”

“Then maybe we could go out together some Saturdays after your class. My name is Mario Biotti.”

“Blake Hunter. It’ll be a pleasure.”

He dropped the priest off in Baltimore, and headed home. He loved junk food but didn’t allow himself to have it often. Today, however, he pulled into Kentucky Fried Chicken and ordered a bucket of Southern-fried buffalo wings, French fries, buttermilk biscuits, and coleslaw. Walking out with his treasure, he patted his washboard belly, assuring himself that he could occasionally indulge in junk food and keep the trim physique in which he took pride. As he opened the door of his car, he heard his name.

“Mr. Hunter. Well, this is a pleasant surprise.”

Rachel Perkins. Just what he needed. “Hello, Miss Perkins,” he said, remembered his baseball cap, and went through the motion of tipping his hat. “Great day we’re having,” he added, getting into his car as quickly as he could and igniting the engine.

Her obvious disappointment told him he’d escaped an invitation that he wouldn’t have wanted to accept, and a grin crawled over his face as he waved at her and drove out of the parking lot. He’d always enjoyed outfoxing people, and Rachel Perkins was outdone.

At home, he put the food on the kitchen counter, washed his hands, and was preparing to eat when the telephone rang.

“Hi, Callie. What’s up? I was going to call you as soon as I ate.”

“Nothing much. Mama said Papa’s still poorly, but I haven’t been down there since we last talked. He keeps driving himself just as he always did, even though we send him money and he doesn’t have to do it.”

“He’s a hard man, and that extends to himself. Thank God I got out of there when I did.”

“Tell me about it. I have to thank you for insisting I get my General Education Diploma and for sending me to college. No telling what I’d be doing now if you hadn’t.”

“Water under the bridge, Callie. You only needed a chance. Why don’t you come up here for part of your vacation? You haven’t seen my house yet.”

“Maybe I’ll do that. Don’t forget to call Mama.”

“I won’t. Hang in there.”

He hung up and walked back into the kitchen with heavy steps. He dreaded going to Six Mile, Alabama, but no matter what his father’s shortcomings, his mother needed his support, and he’d have to get down there soon. He sat against the kitchen counter, propped his left foot on the bottom rung of a step stool, and bit into a piece of chicken. Somehow, it failed to satisfy him as it usually did on those rare occasions when he ate it. He put the food in the refrigerator and went out on his patio. What the devil was wrong with him? He was hungry, but had neither a desire nor a taste for food, and that didn’t make sense: he loved to eat. Maybe he needed a check-up.

The phone rang again, and he raced to answer it. “Hello. Hello?”

The caller had the wrong number. He slammed his left foot against a leather puff that he’d bought in Morocco and considered himself fortunate to have chosen that rather than the wall as a means of relieving his frustration. Damn her, anyway.

Melinda looked over the list of people Blake suggested for membership on the board of the Prescott Rodgers Foundation, as she’d decided to call it, and ran a line through the name of Andrew Carnegie Jackson. The man’s parents named him Joseph, but he changed it, claiming that Joseph reminded him of the song “Old Black Joe.” A man with money, he’d said, ought to have a name to go with it. Hardly a social event took place in Ellicott City that someone didn’t make a joke of it.

She stared at the name Will Lamont, and grabbed the phone with such recklessness that she jerked it off the table and the receiver fell on the floor.

“What are you trying to do to me?” she asked, her voice sharp and cutting, when Blake answered the phone. “Will Lamont is head trustee at my father’s church. I can’t put him on this board unless I appoint my father, too.”

“Then scratch off his name.”

“That’s exactly what I did. How could you—”

“If he’s off the list, what’s the problem? I gave you a bunch of names. Do what you please with them.”

Her fingernails dug into the flesh of her palm. “Thanks so much. You’re supposed to be helping me, but it’s clear you’re waiting for me to blow the whole thing.” She held the phone in her left hand and pounded softly and rhythmically on the desk with her right fist.

“So you think I’m an ogre? Fine. I like that—it means I don’t have anything to live up to.”

She wanted to…What did she want? She’d better rope in her thoughts. “Prescott talked about you as if you could change the direction of the wind. I wish you’d show me some of your virtues. So far, you’re batting pretty low.”

“Well, I’ll be doggoned. You want to see some of my virtues. Why didn’t you say so? I’ll be happy to oblige you.”

She looked down at the print of her little fingernail in her right fist and shook her body, symbolically shedding the goose pimples that his words brought to her arms. Suggestive words that embedded in her brain images of his beautiful fingers stroking her flesh.

Angered that he seduced her so easily, she said, her voice crusted with ice, “What are you talking about?”

“Me? Same thing you’re talking about. Why?” The words came out almost on a laugh. Mocking. Yes, and accusing. “Did I say something wrong?”

She escaped to the safety of talk about the foundation and the list before her. “Who drew up this list, you or Irene?”

“I gave her the names. She did the rest. She’s extremely efficient.”

She didn’t give two hoots about Irene’s efficiency, and she was sure he knew it. “Did you put these booby traps in here intentionally, or did you have temporary lapses of political savvy?”

“I don’t have such lapses. If you see a name on that list, it’s because I intended for it to be there. I don’t mix foolishness with business.”

“I see.” She couldn’t help needling him, even though she knew that was a substitute for something far more intimate. “One of your virtues. Right?”

She heard the wind swoosh out of him and prepared herself for biting words, but the expectation didn’t materialize.

“Think over this conversation, Melinda, and let me know what you make of it. Any disinterested person would think you’re after more than you’re receiving. Think about what you want before you get in too deep.”

She had to let that stab go by, because he’d changed from teasing to baiting, and she refused to bite. “Since I’m not a disinterested party, I won’t be able to judge. Right?” She began walking back and forth from her desk to her bed. “The will says you’re to help me. If you don’t, I’ll do it without you.”

“You might as well cooperate with me. It will be done to my satisfaction or there’ll be no foundation and no inheritance.”

She swore under her breath. “A person with a flea brain could see through what you’re doing. I refuse to fail, because that would make you happy.”

She imagined that one of his mesmerizing grins had taken possession of his face when he said, “You don’t want me to be happy?”

“Does the sun rise in the north?” she asked him. “This isn’t getting me anywhere. See you.” She hung up and immediately wished she hadn’t. Jostling with him had been fun, and while they were at it, she’d had a warm, cozy sensation, far from the forsaken feeling she had now.

An hour later, his belly full of calories, Blake lay flat on his back on his living-room floor listening to Ledbetter sing the blues. He wasn’t contented, but he felt a lot better than he did before she called to chew him out. If only he had a firm handle on whatever was going on between them.

He voiced his frustration with a satisfying expletive. She could raise hell and threaten all she pleased, but she’d fulfill the terms of that will or she’d be just another widow. She married Prescott for money, and if she wanted to get it, she’d have to earn it. She could heat him to boiling point; it wouldn’t make an iota of difference.

Melinda decided to tackle Judd Folson first and get that over with. Too bad that he’d misunderstood the scene with Blake and her when he’d walked into Blake’s office.

“Good morning, Mr. Folson. This is Melinda Rodgers. I’m calling to—”

“Oh, you needn’t worry, Melinda. Blake explained that he had to catch you when he opened the door. I didn’t—”

The nerve of him. She told herself not to react. “Mr. Folson, my late husband’s will requires that I establish a foundation to support remedial reading here in Ellicott City, and I’m inquiring as to your willingness to serve on the board. I’m canvassing twelve of the town’s leading citizens. It’s a charity foundation, so there’s no honorarium for this.” She heard a sound like someone clearing his throat and waited for the verdict.

“The leading citizens, eh? Well, now, that’s right decent of you. You can put my name down.”

Martha Greene agreed to serve, but not before she let Melinda know what she thought of the Reverend Booker Jones. “That man thinks everybody’s headed straight for hell, everybody but him, that is. It’s a wonder you turned out as well as you did.”

Melinda closed her eyes tight. Ten more to go, and she could shake Ellicott City dust from her feet, except for Christmas and Mother’s Day. Turned out as well as you did! Grin and bear it, girl, she admonished herself. It’ll soon be in the past.

“Then you’ll serve, Mrs. Greene? Thank you so much. My husband would be pleased.”

“You think I’m doing it for him?” the woman shot back. “I’m signing on because of all the people around here who can barely read a street sign. Prescott Rodgers stayed as far away from the citizens of this town as he could get. Anybody would have thought he was scared we’d absorb some of his money.”

Just a sweet, loving human being. “Whatever your reason, Mrs. Greene, I do appreciate your help.”

She hung up. “Whew.” That was as much as she could take for one evening. She went over the lesson plans for her classes in American literature and contemporary fiction writing, got ready for bed, and put on a Billie Holiday CD. Jazz, Mozart, and Brian McKnight ballads could lull her into contentment every time. She sat on the floor with her back against her bed and closed her eyes to let the sound of Billie singing “Why Not Take All of Me?” wash over her. Within seconds, Blake Hunter filled her thoughts, and then she could feel his fingers gently loving her neck, face, arms, her belly, thighs, all of her. She gripped the coverlet on her bed as he hovered above her, and when he wiped tears from her eyes, she felt the dampness on her face and knew that she cried.

Melinda got to school the next morning, but she’d tossed in bed all night begging for the sleep that never came, and every muscle in her body ached. When questioned about her obvious fatigue, she explained to Rachel that working on the foundation had worn her out.

“I thought maybe you’d been out with that fine brother who’s handling Prescott’s will.”

“You saw him the last time I did.”

Rachel lowered her gaze, and Melinda couldn’t help noticing the look of embarrassment on the woman’s face. “Are you suggesting that I’m seeing Blake socially?” she asked Rachel.

“Well…uh…no, but you know how people talk.”

Melinda didn’t press Rachel, but the woman’s words failed to placate her. She’d noticed her fascination with Blake, and Melinda didn’t blame her. Who would? Blake Hunter wasn’t just handsome; his tough, masculine personality and riveting presence jumped out at you, and you had to pay attention to him. Any female between the ages of eight and eighty with warm blood running through her veins would give the man a second look.

“What are they saying about me and Blake Hunter? What can they say?”

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.

With her heart lodged in her throat, she knocked on Blake’s office door the next afternoon at three-thirty. He opened the door, smiled, and her pulse kicked into overdrive.

“Hi.”

Not hello, but hi. She looked up at him and tried to smile back, but she suspected she hadn’t succeeded. What had caused this about-face?

“Hello. Uh…hi.”

If he noticed her lack of composure, he didn’t let on. “I wish you’d brought some fries or something. I didn’t get any lunch. Been preparing for a trial tomorrow morning.”

“I could go get some,” she said, wondering at his turn of mind.

His fingers touched her elbow, and he walked with her to his desk. “No need for that. I’ll order something by phone. What would you like? I’m having French fries and ginger ale.”

“You haven’t eaten since breakfast, and you’re ordering French fries?”

A sheepish expression flashed across his face. “Come to think of it, all I had for breakfast was a glass of V-8 juice.”

She shook her head in wonder. “How can you look the way you do if you don’t eat properly?”

His eyebrows went up, and she knew she’d said the wrong thing.

“How do I…Never mind. Most days I eat bran flakes and a banana. That better?”

“Decidedly,” she said and put forth a lot of effort to prevent his seeing how relieved she was that he hadn’t finished that sentence. When he’d eaten the French fries, he opened both bottles of ginger ale, wrapped a napkin around one, and handed it to her.

“Ready?”

She nodded. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

A grin converted his whole face into a thing of beauty. She’d better concentrate on that board of directors, or anything other than him that would occupy her mind. The man was safer in a less jovial mood.

“Let’s try Alice Pride first,” Blake suggested. “She craves social status, so she ought to be a shoe-in.”

And indeed she was. “I’m just so glad to do some good for my town,” Alice said. “Just let me know when you’re calling the first meeting. I’ll be there.”

And so it went for the first two calls. Then Melinda dialed Luther Williams and told him the purpose of her call.

“What?” she asked, and her face must have mirrored her horror at Luther Williams’s indictment of her, because Blake snatched the phone.

“This is Blake Hunter. We’re working on setting up this foundation according to Rodgers’s will. What’s the problem, Luther?”

“Well…I…You know what everybody says. I mean, you don’t expect me to join in with a kept woman to—”

“What the hell are you talking about, man? This foundation was Prescott Rodgers’s bequest. And what do you mean by trashing a woman’s reputation on the basis of gossip? That’s slander.”

Melinda put the list on the desk, picked up her pocketbook that she’d placed on the floor, and started for the door.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he called after her and slammed the receiver into its cradle. “Is that all it takes to make you tuck your tail in and run? Is it?”

She whirled around and slammed into him. “You don’t know what it’s…like,” she whispered, as the fire began to blaze in his eyes. The belt on his trousers touched her belly. So close. Lord, he was there, and she could have him. She closed her eyes to hide the temptation before her.

“You’re not a coward, are you? You won’t let them beat you down. I won’t let you run. Do you hear me? Stand up to them. Show the bastards you don’t care what they say.”

“Bu…bu…but I…I do care. I do.”

Shivers coursed through her as he locked her to him. Startled, she looked into his fierce eyes, then dropped her gaze to his mouth and parted her lips. For a brief, poignant moment, he stared down at her. Open. Pliable. Susceptible to her. His tremors shook her, and her nerves tingled with exhilaration when she heard his hoarse groan of capitulation. Then his mouth was on her, and his tongue stabbed at her lips until she opened and, at last, had him inside of her. His big hand gripped her buttocks and she undulated wildly against him as his velvet tongue promised her ecstasy, plunging in and out of her and testing every crevice of her mouth. Strong and commanding like the man himself. He held her head while he plied her mouth with sweet loving, stroked her back, her shoulders, and her buttocks until she sucked his tongue deep into her mouth and feasted. When his hand went to her breast, she pressed it to her while his fingers twirled her turgid nipple. Hungry for all of him, she spread her legs and he rose hard and strong against her. She slumped into him and might have fallen if he hadn’t lifted her, carried her to the sofa, and sat down with her in his lap.

For a long while, he sat there, rocking her and stroking her, soothing her with a tenderness she’d never known.

“It wasn’t any use, was it?” he said at last.

She knew what he meant and didn’t pretend otherwise. “Looks that way. But it shouldn’t have happened. I have enough problems as it is.”

“I won’t argue with you about that. We have to work together on this foundation, and don’t forget, there’s one more clause.”

“How could I forget that?” she asked, getting to her feet. “I think I’d better go now.”

“Do you want me to…Can I drive you home? I mean…do you need me for…something?” He gasped it, as if releasing the words pained him all the way to his gut.

She shook her head. “I drove, but thanks.”

He walked with her to the door and stood looking down at her. Nobody had to tell her what he was thinking or what he wanted. Suddenly, his right shoulder lifted in a quick shrug, and she knew he’d won over temptation. A least one of them had sense. If he’d kissed her again, she wouldn’t have left the way she entered. That much strength she doubted she had. But what about tomorrow and the next day and the next?

He winked at her and grinned. “Don’t worry, Melinda. There isn’t much I set myself to do that I can’t manage. See you tomorrow.”

By the time she reached her car, her breath came in short gasps, but that didn’t explain her inability to steady her fingers enough to get the key in the ignition and start the vehicle. After a few minutes, she gave up. Why had everything become so difficult? She wanted to lay her head on the steering wheel and wake up in Italy, Switzerland, Kenya, or anywhere but Ellicott City.

The people had the same character as the town: museum pieces, all show and little substance. If she got involved with Blake, the busybodies would assume they’d been right all along, and if she stayed in Ellicott City, she didn’t see how she could avoid it. He might have the mental toughness of a samurai warrior, but she’d been in his arms, and she knew how badly he wanted her. The next time…For five years, she’d hungered for him, locked him in the privacy of her heart and the recesses of her mind, never revealing to anyone what she felt and how it pained her. And now, he’d transformed her into a hot and passionate woman, a willing lover. She didn’t believe in lying to herself, so she didn’t promise herself she’d resist him.

Blake stood at the window in his office and looked down on Old Columbia Pike where he could see the top of Melinda’s green Mercury Sable. Why didn’t she drive off? He didn’t want to become involved with her, but he’d had her in his arms, felt her tremors, smelled her heat and tasted her sweetness, and he wouldn’t bet five cents that he wouldn’t touch her again. When a woman wanted him as badly as she did…He swallowed hard. His hands had roamed her body and she’d relished it, had opened herself to him, as uninhibited as a tigress in heat. And he was starved for her.

“Blake, I’ve been buzzing you,” Irene said, and he turned to see her standing in the doorway between their offices.

“Oh, thanks. What is it?”

“Lacy Morgan’s on line one.”

He swore. “Tell her I emigrated to Alaska.”

“What? I beg your pardon.”

What a great idea. “You heard me. Tell her exactly that.”

“Bu…but…How do I phrase it? I can’t just lie.”

“Tell her I told you I moved to Alaska.” He snapped his finger. “Oh, yes, and I didn’t leave a forwarding address, a phone number, fax number, or an e-mail address.”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “That is an order, Irene.”

“Yes, sir…I mean, Blake.”

His laughter followed her rapidly retreating figure, a cleansing release that he’d needed and needed badly. With luck, Lacy Morgan would consider herself insulted. Now, if he could just straighten out the rest of his life that easily. Not a chance. He grabbed his briefcase, got in his car, and drove to the Patapsco River where the swiftly moving water never failed to soothe him. He looked at the late-day sun, slowly dying, its rays filtering through the leaves of the oak and beech trees that towered in the distance. A light, fresh breeze frolicked against his body, cooling and refreshing it. Pretty soon it would be night and, as on every other night, he’d be all by himself. He took his cell phone out of his briefcase, pulled air through his front teeth, shrugged, and put the phone away. He didn’t want to hear any voice but hers.

Chapter 3

“Who is it?” Melinda called downstairs to Ruby when she heard the doorbell.

“Uh, it’s…Mr…. What did you say your name was?”

“Humphrey. Jonas Humphrey.”

“Jonas Humphrey, ma’am.”

Now, who could that be? She knew Prescott’s few associates, or thought she did. During the last two years, Blake had been their only visitor. But after that bombshell Blake had dropped about her late husband’s finances, she couldn’t be sure about anything concerning Prescott. She kicked off her bedroom shoes, stuck her feet in a pair of loafers, and went downstairs.

“I don’t think we’ve met, Mr. Humphrey. What can I do for you?”

“Well, miss—” he looked around, shifting his gaze from place to place as if appraising the room’s appointments “—could we sit down, perhaps? I’d like a soda or anything cold, if you don’t mind.”

She knew a shifty look when she saw it, and she wasn’t going to be taken in by this interloper. “Would you please tell me why you’re here?” she asked the man. Around forty or forty-five years old, she supposed, he projected self-confidence, though she wouldn’t have credited him with a right to it.

She leaned against the piano and trailed the fingers of her left hand rapidly over the bass keys in a show of impatience. “Well?”

He cleared his throat and looked approvingly at the Steinway grand. “I don’t suppose you know it, but my beloved Heddy passed on about six months ago, and I find the burden just too heavy to bear. When your dear father was preaching night before last, it came to me clear as your hand before you that he was leading me straight to you. I own a little shop down at the end of Main Street.” He took a card from his pocket, handed it to her, and she read Humphrey’s Firewood. “It’s not much, but everybody around here needs wood.”

Where was this leading? “What does all that have to do with me?” she asked him, though she’d begun to guess the answer.

“Reverend Jones said a woman shouldn’t be alone, that she needs a man’s protection. I’m sure he taught you that from childhood. Well, since we’re both alone, and…well, I thought we might get together. I see you like music. I do, too.” He sat down and crossed his knee, though she remained standing. “I got all the records Sister Rosetta Thorpe and Hank Williams ever made. I had one by Lightnin’ Hopkins, but my dear beloved smashed it one day when she got mad with me. God rest her soul.”

She’d had enough. More than enough, in fact. “Mr…er…Humphrey, did you say your name was? I am not interested in getting married. Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d excuse me.” She called Ruby. “Would you please let this gentleman out? And, Ruby, don’t let anybody else in here unless you know them.”

The door closed, and Ruby called up to her. “All right, ma’am. He said he knowed Mr. Rodgers. I’m telling you some of these mens is the biggest liars.”

Had her father put that man up to proposing to her? She sat down and telephoned him.

“Jonas Humphrey?” he asked her, a tone of incredulity in his voice. “You mean that thief down on Main Street? Why, he’d steal a cane from a blind man. Of course I didn’t send him over there. You watch out, girl, because they’ll be hearing about that will. Not that it would hurt you to get married. A woman shouldn’t be alone—”

She’d heard that a hundred times already. “Sorry, Papa, but I have to go. Talk to you again soon.”

“All right, but you come to prayer meeting tomorrow night.”

She dressed and rushed to meet Rachel at Side Streets Restaurant. The historic old mill pleased her more than the wonderful seafood served there. Its quaintness gave her a sense of solidness, of permanence. They had barely seated themselves when Ray Sinclair entered with his latest girlfriend. In her single days, she’d been enamored of Ray, but he had ignored her, often seeming to make a point of it. The day he stepped in front of her and got into the taxi she’d called, her affection for him dissipated like chaff in a windstorm. But on this occasion, he seated his date, left her at the table, and walked over to speak with Melinda.

“Terribly sorry to hear of your great loss, Melinda. If I can do anything to help, just snap your fingers.”

She leaned back in the booth and spoke with dispassion. “I don’t need anything, Ray. My husband provided well for me and, if he hadn’t, I provide well for myself. Nice seeing you.”

Rachel’s eyes seemed to have doubled in size. “Why’d you dust him off like that? He’s the most eligible man around here. If that doesn’t beat all—”

Melinda threw up her hands. “When I had a crush on him before I got married, he flaunted it, showed me as often as he could that he thought himself too good for me. Now he wants to know what he can do for me. I guess he’s been listening to all the gossip, or maybe he’s heard about the will. That poor girl he’s got with him is welcome to him.”

She’d hardly walked into her house when her phone rang. Ruby had left for the day, so she waited for the voice on her answering machine.

“I was wondering if you might like to go with me down to Lake Kittamaqundi for the Fourth of July celebration. It’s nice and casual. Give us a chance to get reacquainted.”

Why was she supposed to recognize his voice? She did, but he didn’t need to know that. “Who is this?” she asked.

“This is Ray,” he said, obviously crestfallen.

“Now let me see, hmmm. I’ll have to let you know.”

“We’ll have a good time. I’ll order a picnic basket, some wine, and…Listen, we’ll do it up big.”

“Are we still talking about watching kids shoot marbles and dogs play catch down by that lake?”

“Uh…well, there’s the fireworks, you know. Anyhow, I’ll call in a day or so to see what you decided. I’m glad you’re going. It’ll be great.”

It wouldn’t hurt him to hope; he might recall the many times he’d let her hope and pray, and all to no avail. Of all the men in Ellicott City, Ray Sinclair was least likely to get a second glance from her.

If she were certain of the reason for his sudden interest, she might be amused, but she remembered Luther Williams’s insulting suggestion, the awful accusation that had brought her into Blake’s arms, and she no longer felt like playing games with Ray. Who knew what he’d heard or what he wanted? Tomorrow, she’d work on that foundation, much as she hated doing so. But the sooner she finished it and got out of Ellicott City, the happier she’d be.

He knew it was a dead giveaway, opening the door before she’d hardly had time to ring the bell, but the entire day had been one long wait for three-thirty.

“Hi.” He meant it to sound casual, and he hoped it did, but he didn’t feel one bit nonchalant about her. “Ready to tackle that list?” he asked, mostly to remind her, if not himself, that they were together for business and not social purposes.

“That’s why I’m here. Whether I’m ready for it is something else.” She was looking directly into his eyes as if searching for something important. It wasn’t a stare, more like an appraisal. Or a question, as if she didn’t really know him and wanted answers about him.

And she was getting to him, too, so he made light of it. “I don’t have crumbs around my mouth, do I?”

The back of her right hand moved slowly over his left cheek in a gentle, yet astounding caress. “Your mouth is perfect. Let’s tackle the mayor first.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She threw her briefcase on the sofa and walked away from him in the direction of his desk. “I mean the mayor will probably be difficult, so let’s call him and get it over with.”

He caught up with her and stopped her with a hand on her right shoulder. “Baloney. You know I wasn’t talking about the mayor. You walk in here, make a suggestive remark, caress me, and then stroll off as if all you’ve done is toss a piece of paper into the wastebasket.” He pushed back his rising irritation. “Honey, you play with me, and you will get burned as sure as night follows day.”

She stepped away from him. “Oh, for goodness’ sake. I was just being pleasant.”

He imagined that his face expressed his incredulity; he refused to believe she didn’t know a come-on from a pleasant pat. “Pleasant? Yeah. Sure. And I’m standing in the middle of the Roman Forum.”

“Oh, don’t make such a hullabaloo over a simple, friendly gesture. If you wanted to hear some real corn, you should have been in on the conversations I had with two would-be suitors today.”

His head snapped up. “Who? You mean—”

“One guy proposed marriage, and the other one’s an egotist who thinks all he has to do is phone me. Biggest laugh I ever got.”

She could see the perspiration on his forehead, and he knew it, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. He couldn’t even reach for his handkerchief, because she’d glued her gaze on him. He laid his head to one side and decided to go for broke.

“Not bad for one day. At this rate, you can’t miss. If we can finish this list, you’ll be free to get on with that other business.”

Now what had he done? She’d wilted like a crushed rose. He looked downward and kicked the carpet with the toe of his left shoe, ashamed that his words—spoken to hide his own feelings—had bruised hers. The urge to take her in his arms and soothe her almost overwhelmed him, but he knew the consequences if he gave in to it. He’d tempered his opinion of her, but too much remained unexplained, and not all of it was pretty. The wisest thing he could do would be to keep a good solid distance between them. With her standing there open and vulnerable, a defenseless beauty, he laughed to himself. If he was serious about staying away from her, he’d better pray for sainthood.

She straightened her shoulders and sat down, and his admiration for her soared.

“Good afternoon, Mayor Washington,” Melinda said, and continued with her reason for calling. “I hope I can count on you to serve.”

She held the phone away from her as if to protect her eardrums, and he took it. He’d rather not get on the wrong side of His Honor, the mayor, but he said, “Frank, this is Blake Hunter. I’d be careful about that kind of talk if I were you.” He winced as he thought of Melinda’s ordeal with the people of Ellicott City. “Mrs. Rodgers is setting up a foundation as prescribed in her late husband’s will. If you slander her as you were doing, she’ll sue you, and as the representative of her husband’s estate, I’d have to take you on.”

“You?” The mayor sounded as if he was stunned.

“You got it. I’d rather not do that, buddy, but you know me. I’ll bite the bullet every time.”

“Sorry, brother,” the mayor went on, “but…you know she’s not fit for something so important as that foundation is to this community.”

Blake tightened his fist, then he ground his teeth. Count to ten, man, he told himself, loosening his tie. “Have you forgotten that there won’t be a foundation unless she sets it up?”

“In that case the money goes to the city. Right?”

“A million will go to the city for the benefit of the homeless alone and the rest to a charity event or organization of my choice. It will pay for you to cooperate.”

“That’s not the way I read it. If necessary, we’ll go to court.”

“Forget that, buddy. You’ll only be wasting time and money.”

Melinda grabbed the phone. “Excuse me, Blake, but I just want to tell the mayor that he will not serve on this board, not now or ever. That’s right, sir.” She hung up.

“You just made an enemy, but he deserved it. Let’s get on with this.”

Well after seven that evening, they could count twelve people who were willing to serve on the board. Melinda leaned back in the chair, locked her hands behind her head, and blew out a long breath.

“I’m pooped.”

He didn’t doubt it. “Me, too. How about something to eat? Let’s go around the corner to Tersiguel’s. I feel like some decent food.”

“Fine. Where’s the ladies’ room? I need to freshen up. I’ll eat what Ruby cooked for me some other time.”

“There’s one just off Irene’s office. I thought you were too pooped to bother with hair and lipstick and things like that.”

“Mr. Hunter, I never get that tired.”

They’d barely seated themselves when Martha Greene paused at their table. “Oh, how nice to see you, Mr. Hunter! Good evening, Melinda.” From hot to freezing in less than a second.

Melinda searched Blake’s face for the question she knew she’d find there. “What is it?” he asked her.

“As far as I know, I’ve never done anything to offend her, but she seems to enjoy being rude to me.”

His eyes softened with what she recognized as sympathy, but she didn’t want that, not from him or anyone else. He reached across the table, evidently to take her hand, but withdrew before she could enjoy the warmth of his touch.

“I believe I reminded you once that most people envy the rich, but when a woman is both rich and beautiful, women will dislike her and men will turn cartwheels for her. Even so, Martha Greene isn’t known as a charitable person.”

Flushed with the pleasure of knowing that he thought her beautiful, she lowered her gaze. “You don’t know how happy I’ll be when the will is settled and this business is history.”

The expression in his eyes sliced through her, and she knew that somewhere in those words, she’d made a blunder. A serious one, at that.

“I imagine you want to get on with your life,” he said, “especially after having spent almost five of your best years in semiretirement. But don’t forget that when you finish this round, you’ve got to show me a marriage certificate.”

She knew that she gaped at him; she couldn’t help it. Her fingers clutched the table, knocking over the long-stem glass of white wine that soaked the tablecloth and wet her dress.

“You kissed me and held me as if I were the most precious person in the world, and now you can say that to me. You’re just like all the others.” As though oblivious to the wet tablecloth and the dampness in her lap, she gripped the table and leaned toward him.

“You at least know that Prescott was happy with me, that I made his life pleasant, and that I was loyal to him. You know I never looked at another man, because I didn’t look at you.”

“Look! There’s no need to—”

“Yes, there is. You listen to me. It happened the minute you opened your office door for Prescott and me when we went there to be married. And the first time you came to our home I knew that what I felt for you twenty minutes before I took my marriage vows was definitely not superficial. From then on—at least once a week for almost five years—I had to deal with you. But you didn’t know it, and don’t tell me you did. You don’t know what it cost me, and you’ll never know. So don’t sit there like a judge-penitent and pass sentence.”

She tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table, grabbed her purse and briefcase. “I’ll eat whatever Ruby cooked. I’ll…I’m sorry, Blake.”

Walking with head high, away from the source of her pain, her eyes beheld only a blur of human flesh and artifacts. She didn’t see the gilded candles on the hanging chandelier, the huge bowl of red and yellow roses on a marble stand beneath it, or her reflection in the antique gold-framed mirrors that lined the walls. Only the gray bleakness of her life. But none of those who accused her would ever see one of her tears. The gossiping citizens of Ellicott City irritated her. But Blake’s words bored a hole in her. She got into her car and sat there, too drained to drive. Should she fault herself for having let him hold her and show her what she’d missed? Maybe she shouldn’t have allowed it. But I’m human, and I’ve got feelings. After a while, she started the car and moved away from the curb. “You’re dealing with your own guilt, Blake,” she said aloud, and immediately felt better. “You wanted your friend’s wife. Well, take it out on yourself.”

Blake washed his Maryland crab cakes down with half a bottle of chardonnay wine and considered drinking the whole bottle but thought better of it. He shouldn’t have plowed into her, knowing he’d hurt her, but she had infuriated him with her tale about the men who wanted to marry her. He knew she’d attract every trifling money hunter and womanizer in Howard County and maybe farther away than that.

As much as he wanted her, he didn’t intend to get in that line. Her apparent eagerness to gain control of Prescott’s millions didn’t sit well with him, especially since she hadn’t once shown the grief you’d expect of a woman recently widowed. His left hand swept over his face. It wasn’t a fair accusation, and he knew it. Not everybody grieved for public consumption. He didn’t covet another person’s wealth; he made a good living and had every comfort that he could want, but he’d earned it. He’d worked for every dime he had, and he couldn’t sympathize with, much less respect, anybody who didn’t work for what they got. He let out a long, heavy breath. How had it come to this? She was in him, down deep, clinging to the marrow of his being, wrapped around his nerve ends. Way down. Right where he lived.

“Oh, what the hell. If it hasn’t killed me so far, it won’t!” He paid the check and left her twenty-dollar bill on the table for the waiter.

He walked into his house, threw his briefcase on the carved walnut dining-room table, and looked at the elegance all around him. Thick oriental carpets covered his parquet floors; Italian leather sofa and chairs; silk draperies, fine walnut tables and wall units and fixtures, and fine paintings adorned his living room. All of it aeons away from the days when water soaked his bed every time it rained, and wind whistled through the cracks of the house in winter. The memory depressed him, and he wondered if the hardships of his youth had made him a tough, cynical man. He hoped not. Shaking it off, he telephoned his mother in Alabama, his thoughts filled with the one problem he’d never solved. His relationship with his father.

“How’s Papa?” he asked her after they greeted each other.

“Just fair. I think he’s tired, and I don’t mean ordinary tired. I sense that he doesn’t feel like going on.”

“You serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t, son.”

“I don’t like the sound of it,” he told her. He’d gotten the same feeling when he spoke with his father the previous morning. “I’ll be down there tomorrow.”

After hanging up, he remembered his promise to visit Phil and Johnny. The warden had separated them from Lobo, who’d set up business as usual there in the jail. Blake called the warden and asked him to explain to the boys that he’d see them on Sunday.

“I’d hoped to hold my grandchildren,” his father told him, “but none of the three of you bothered to get married yet.” His thoughts appeared to ramble. “You had a tough life, but you made something of yourself, and I’m proud of you. I know I seemed hard, maybe too hard, but we had to live. Make sure you find a girl who’ll stick with you through thick and thin. One like your mother.”

The old man’s feeble fingers patted Blake’s hand. He’d never thought he’d shed tears for his father, but when he walked out of the room, they came. And they flowed.

He didn’t want to use Melinda, but when he boarded the plane in Birmingham, his only thought was to have her near him. It might be unfair to her, but life wasn’t fair. Right then, he knew he could handle most anything, if she was there for him. As soon as he walked into the terminal in Baltimore, he dialed her on his cell phone, and when she didn’t answer, he felt as if the bottom had dropped out of him. Surely she didn’t mean that much to him.

“It’s because I know I’m losing my father,” he rationalized. As a child, he’d almost hated the man who’d driven him so relentlessly. How often he’d wondered if he worked so hard to save young boys from a life of crime because he’d had neither a childhood nor the freedom that adolescence gives the young. What the heck! He put the car in Drive and headed for the Metropolitan Transition Center.

For the first time, he thought his private visit with the young boys—this time, Johnny and Phil—was less than rewarding, because he didn’t feel enthusiasm and couldn’t force it.

“You got a load, man?” Phil asked him.

He shrugged; it wasn’t good policy to share your personal life with the prisoners, who tended to focus on themselves.

“You not sick?” Johnny’s question surprised him, because the boy hardly ever showed interest in anyone.

“I’m fine. But I think my father is dy…isn’t going to make it.”

“That ain’t so good,” Phil said and, to his astonishment, the boy put an arm around his shoulder. “It sucks, man. I know how you feel.”

Another time, he would’ve asked Phil about his father, but right then, he was grateful that at last he had a bond with the boys, even if that progress grew out of his own grief. At the end of the hour, he knew their time together had been productive. Driving home, it came to him forcibly, a blast like a ship’s signal in a fog: he’d reached them not because of any ingenuity on his part, but because he had needed their comfort. They understood that and accepted him because they had been able to give something to him. It was a lesson he hoped never to forget.

Shortly after he got home, he answered the phone and, to his disappointment, heard Lacy’s voice.

“I called you half a dozen times,” she said in that whining voice that made his flesh crawl. “At least six times.”

“Right. You said that a second ago. I was at the prison with two boys I’m working with.”

“Why would you waste time with those thugs? When they get out, they’re going right back to dealing drugs and shooting innocent people.” As if she’d been wound up like a top, she held forth on the subject of bad, hopeless children.

“I think every kid deserves a chance to make something of himself, and I’m doing what I can to help.” He looked at his watch. With more things to do than he cared to contemplate, wasting ten minutes listening to Lacy’s prattle didn’t please him. He closed his eyes, exasperated. “These two boys are serving time for petty theft, and there’s hope for both of them.”

He imagined that she rolled her eyes and looked toward the ceiling in a show of disinterest when she said, “If you say so.”

“Lacy, this is one more way in which you and I are as far apart as two people can get. You don’t care what happens to those kids. I do.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake! Are you taking me to Lake Kittamaqundi on July Fourth for the Urban League picnic?”

“I have no plans to go, Lacy. Count me out.”

“But everybody’s going, and I don’t want to miss the fun.”

She still hadn’t gotten the message. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he wasn’t going to that picnic with her. “I’m sorry, Lacy. If you want company at the picnic, you’ll have to ask someone else. Okay?”

After a few seconds of silence, her breathy voice with its sexual overtones bruised his ears. “I don’t want to go with anyone else, but I can’t drag you over there.” A long pause. “Can I?”

“No, you can’t. See you around.” For a woman of classic good looks, he couldn’t figure out why she sold herself so short, insisting on a relationship with him, although he told her in many ways that it wasn’t going to happen.

He thought of calling Melinda, apologizing to her and telling her he needed her, but he couldn’t do that. In his whole life, he’d never let anybody see him down.

“Hold your head up and push your chin out even if you’re dying,” Woodrow Wilson Hunter had preached to his children, drilling it into Blake, the last of the three to leave home. There had to be a gentler method of nurturing a boy into manhood; at times, he still felt the pain. He ate a sandwich and stretched out in bed to struggle with himself and his feelings for Melinda until daylight rescued him.

The telephone rang as he walked toward the bathroom to get his morning shower, and thinking it was probably Lacy, his first inclination was to ignore it. But he heard his sister Callie’s voice on the answering machine and rushed to lift the receiver.

After listening to her message, he asked, “When did it happen?”

“About half an hour ago. I’m on my way there now.”

He hung up, slipped on his robe, and walked out on the balcony just off the dining room. An era of his life was over, and yet it hung ajar. Unfinished and devoid of the explanation he needed but would never get. He stared out at the silent morning, at trees heavy with leaves that didn’t move. Air still and humid. Heavy, like his heart. Everything appeared the same, but it wasn’t. He went inside and telephoned Melinda.

Melinda dragged herself out of the tangled sheets and sat on the side of her bed. If she packed up and left town, she wouldn’t miss the place or the people. However, the losers would be those who lived in a world of illiteracy and who relied on information that they couldn’t evaluate and thus rarely questioned. If only she could avoid Blake Hunter until that board was operating to his satisfaction, the gossipmongers would have to find another subject. Weary of it all, she decided not to bother with the board that day.

“Now who could that be at eight o’clock in the morning,” she said aloud when the phone rang. “Not Ray Sinclair again, I hope.”

“Melinda, this is Blake. I can’t help you with that board meeting today. I have to cancel our appointment.”

“But…What’s happening, Blake? You told me I should go ahead with it, and I figured I was on my own from now on. What’s going on?”

Strange that he’d forgotten that; he took pride in having an almost infallible memory. “I’m sorry I plowed into you the way I did the other night when we were supposed to be having dinner. I shouldn’t have said those things, and I don’t know why I did because I didn’t believe them.” He supposed he’d surprised her, because she considered him a hard man.

“Something’s wrong. I know it is. What’s the matter, Blake?”

Her words and the compassion in her voice took him aback. He didn’t want to unload on her, but if he started telling her about the hole that had just opened in him and that grew bigger by the second, if he told her what he felt…“My…my father died, and I have to go to Alabama for a few days.”

“Your father? I’ll be right over there.”

“Melinda—”

“You…Maybe you shouldn’t be alone right now, and anyhow, I want to be there with you until you leave.”

Those words caressed his ears like a sweet summer breeze. He couldn’t discourage her, because he wanted, needed to see her.

“You might need me for something,” she went on, as though oblivious to his silence. “I’m coming over.”

He sucked in his breath. If she knew how he needed her…He hardly trusted himself to be alone with her. “I’ll be here” was all he managed to say.

He showered quickly and dressed, certain that if he opened the door for her while still wearing only his robe, he’d destroy what there was of a relationship with her.

Twenty minutes later, he opened the front door, and the rays of her smile enveloped and warmed him like summer sunshine. Without a word, she reached up, and he knew again the delicate touch of her lips on his mouth, warm and sweet. But he didn’t kiss her; if he did, he wouldn’t stop until they consummated what they felt.

“No point in saying I’m sorry. You know that,” she said. “I just…well, I needed to be here with you.”

His heartbeat accelerated so rapidly that, for almost a full minute, he couldn’t catch his breath. He shouldn’t encourage what was happening between them, because he was neither sure of her nor of himself.

“I’m glad you came. It’s so strange, knowing he’s gone and we never resolved our differences. After I matured enough to understand him and why he drove himself and everyone around him crazy the way he did, we ignored the issues between us, pretended they didn’t exist and got along with each other. I wish I’d confronted him.”

Compassion for him shone in her eyes with such fierceness that he had to steel himself against the feeling that slowly snaked its way into his heart.

“Didn’t he love you?”

His fingers pressed into his chest as if he could push back the pain. He wished she hadn’t asked that. “I don’t know. I wish I did. Yesterday. I was down there yesterday, and he told me he was proud of me. So, maybe. I don’t know.”

With a tenderness that shook him, her arms wrapped around him, held and caressed him, and he closed his eyes and let himself relax and absorb the loving she offered. She seemed to be telling him that he needed love and caring and that she wanted to give him that. Her fingers squeezed him to her, and then she released him and stepped back.

“What time is your flight?”

He studied her eyes, needing badly to understand what he saw there, and he didn’t want to make a mistake. “That reminds me, I have to check the Baltimore-Birmingham flight schedule.”

She patted him on the back. “I’ll do that. You pack. See? I told you you might need me for something.”

He had to get away from her before he did something foolish. “I…uh…there’s a phone out in the hallway.” He grabbed a suitcase from the closet in the foyer and headed for his bedroom without looking at her.

“There’s a Delta Airlines flight at eleven-forty. I’ll drive you.”

“I was going to drive and leave my car at the airport.”

“And it probably wouldn’t be there when you got back.”

He shrugged. “This is true, but if you drive me, how’ll I get home when I come back?”

She didn’t look at him when she said, “You’ll call me, tell me when you’ll be back, and I’ll meet you. Simple as that.”

He didn’t know her reasons, and he didn’t want to ask, because he wasn’t sure he had anything to give in return. “I can’t let you do this, Melinda.”

“Why? You want an affidavit stating that you’re not obligated to me? Give me a pen and a piece of paper.”

When he grabbed her shoulders, he surprised himself more than her. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you—”

“What about my integrity? Do you believe in that? Do you?” Her lips trembled, and her eyes held a suspicious sheen.

His fingers moved from her shoulders to her back and then gripped her waist. “Yes. Yes, damn it. Yes!”

Her lips parted to take him in, and desire slammed into him, hot and furious and overpowering. The sound of her groans of sexual need shook his very foundation, and against his powerful will, he rose against her hard and hurting while she feasted on his tongue. He had to…Caught up in the fire she built in him, he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and the other around her buttocks and lifted her to fit him. She straddled him, hooked her ankles at his back, and moved against him with a rhythm that sent hot needles of desire showering through his veins.

“Melinda. Melinda!”

“Huh?”

He set her away from him as one would a pan of boiling lye. Then, realizing that he might have hurt her, he folded her in his arms and hugged her. Her breath came fast and hard like that of a marathon runner at the end of a twenty-six mile race, and he held her as he strove to regain his own equilibrium.

After a few minutes, he trusted himself to speak. “Something’s happening here, and it…it doesn’t want to be controlled.” A half laugh tumbled out of him; he’d never been one to dodge responsibility, and when it came to fanning the fire between them, he was the guilty one.

“I’d like to know what’s funny so I can laugh. It’s gotta be an improvement over what I feel.”

She’d begged the question, so he had no choice but to ask, “What do you feel?”

She looked at him with the expression of one staring at the unknown. “Need. Confusion. Loneliness. A lot of stuff that makes me feel bad.”

He had almost relaxed when she said, “And I feel something for you that I shouldn’t, because you don’t want me to feel like this. But don’t worry—you’re as safe with me as a lion cub surrounded by a pride of lions.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted all that security, but it wouldn’t hurt to have it while the coming eleven months revealed her future.

Her father raised her to want only what was good for her, and though years had passed since she’d believed his every word, she conceded at the moment that she’d be better off if she’d never wanted Blake Hunter. But on the other hand, she was glad she hadn’t died without feeling what she experienced when he had her in his arms kissing and loving her.

Get your mind on another level, girl, she told herself as she let him ponder her last words. “We’d better get started,” she said after minutes had passed and he hadn’t responded to her assurance as to his safety. “No. Wait a minute, is there anything in the refrigerator that will spoil? Any plants? Pets?”

A frown clouded his face. Then he smiled, and she wondered if he’d done that intentionally to make her heart race and butterflies flit around in her stomach.

“I forgot about the refrigerator.” He dumped the handful of fruits into the garbage disposal. “That’s it. I’m the only thing here that breathes. Come on.”

He picked up his suitcase, took her hand, and walked to the door. “You’re a special person, Melinda. Very special.” He looked beyond her and spoke as if to himself. “And very dear.” She didn’t speak. How could she when she didn’t know what those three words meant? They walked to her car, and when he paused at the front passenger’s door, she handed him the car keys.

“Since you’re apparently not a male chauvinist, why don’t you drive?”

He stepped around to the driver’s side and accepted the keys. “You mean if I’d asked to drive, you would have objected?”

“You got it.”

“You think that means I’m not a chauvinist?”

She got in and closed the door. “It’s a pretty good indication. But if you are, you’ll let me know. That’s an ailment a man can’t hide.”

“Now wait a second. Who’s being a chauvinist?”

“Not me, I was just stating a fact.”

“That so? Do you know that much about men? I wouldn’t have thought it.”

“Whoa. I didn’t realize a married woman—or a widow for that matter—was expected to account for such things.”

He looked over his shoulder, moved onto Route 144, and set the car on Cruise. “And I didn’t ask you to, but you have to admit there’s a certain freshness, an innocence about you that one doesn’t associate with a woman who’s had almost five years of marriage. But maybe this isn’t the time to get into that.”

How much did he know about her marriage to Prescott? “I’m not sure I follow.”

His quick glance sent a chill through her. A man didn’t discuss his marriage with his attorney, did he?

“You mean about the innocence? Could be it’s just the way you are with me. Whatever. I like it.”

She folded her hands in her lap, stared down at them, and made herself relax as he turned into the drive leading to BWI airport. “No comment?” he asked.

“Some other time. No point in getting into a deep discussion that we can’t finish.”

A grin danced off his lips. “In that case, I’ll repeat those words the minute I get back here. Be prepared.”

They walked into the terminal minutes before his flight was called. He put his ticket in the breast pocket of his jacket, took her hand, passed the security checkpoint, and reached the gate as boarding began.

Blake dropped his suitcase on the floor and clasped both of her shoulders. “I’m never going to forget this, Melinda. Never. You can’t possibly know what your being with me these past couple of hours means to me. I’ll call you.”

She hardly felt his kiss; it passed so quickly. But she recognized in it a new urgency. Or maybe it sprang from a deeper need. She didn’t know, and she was afraid to guess. She walked slowly back to her car thinking that she had no idea where in Alabama he was headed.

Chapter 4

Callie ran to him with arms open and tears glistening in her eyes as he stepped into the terminal. Wordlessly, they held each other, seeking comfort in shared sorrow. Although she was two years older, once they became adults he’d treated her as a younger sister. He’d always loved her, and as a small boy, had followed her constantly unless there was work for him to do. He picked up his suitcase, and they walked arm in arm to her car.

“Thanks for meeting me, Callie. How’s Mama doing?”

“Pretty good. She said she expected it, though she hadn’t thought it would be so soon.”

“Neither did I, and I was with him yesterday. How’d you know I’d be on that plane?”

“It was the next one in from Baltimore, and I knew you’d make that one if you could.”

He remembered Melinda’s comment about his lack of male chauvinism just as he was about to ask Callie for the keys to her car, and he smothered a laugh. Instead, he asked her, “You want to drive, or you want me to drive?”

The startled expression on her face was evidence that he ought to mend his ways. “You’re going to sit in the front seat beside me while I drive?”

The laugh poured out of him, until he stopped trying to stifle it and leaned against the car, enjoying it.

“What on earth are you laughing at?”

He told her, leaving out what he considered irrelevant. “Maybe she was telling me something. Do you think I don’t have enough respect for women?”

Both of her eyebrows shot up. “You? No, I don’t think that. You’re a man who takes charge, and I expect you’d want to drive even if it was John’s car.”

He opened the driver’s door and held it for her. “You drive. As for me driving John’s car with him sitting there, you and I both know he’d have to be deathly ill. Did he get in yet?”

“He’ll be in tonight.”

Much as he disliked facing what he knew awaited him, it was nonetheless good to have the affection and support of his siblings, John and Callie. He knew they’d all be strong for their mother, but did they hurt as he did and did they feel cheated of a father’s love? Maybe some day they’d talk about it.

Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t the smile with which his mother greeted them. “I’ll be lonely when y’all leave,” she told them, “but he wouldn’t want us to sit around with long faces.”

He hugged his mother and walked into the house, feeling the difference the second he stepped across the threshold. The windows were wide open, and the curtains flapped in the breeze that flowed through the rooms. He turned to look at his mother with what he knew was an inquiring expression.

Her smile radiated warmth and contentment. “The last thing he said to me was ‘enjoy what’s left, and let the sunshine in.’ I’ll love him as long as I breathe, but I aim to do that starting now.”

The pain began to crowd his heart. Maybe it wasn’t the time, but he couldn’t hold it back. “You loved him so much, as hard a man as he…he was?”

With a vigorous shake of her head, she said, “He wasn’t hard. I know he seemed that way to you children, but the day he married me, he promised I’d never want for anything. Sometimes he worked all day and most of the night to keep that promise. I hurt for you all when you were growing up, and I didn’t like to see how you felt about him, but he taught you the values that would see you through life.”

“Mama, when I was ten or eleven, I’d get so tired I couldn’t even run.”

“I know, son. And I remember how he held my hand and cried at your college graduation as you stood up there and gave that speech, top student in your class.”

She turned to Callie. “When you got your degree, he said we’d go to your graduation even if his strawberries rotted on the bushes while we were gone, and you know the value of those berries and what they meant to him. He loved all of you.” She sniffed and blew her nose, fighting back the tears, but her eyes remained dry.

“John surprised us with these air conditioners he designed for his company,” she went on, “and your father walked all the way to Mr. Moody’s house and asked him to come down and see what John did. He was so proud of you all.”

Her arms wound around his shoulder, reminding him that he could count on her when everything else failed, and it had always been that way. “You were the one he worried most about,” she said with a wistful smile, “because you are so strong-headed, and you were so angry with him. Let it go, son.”

Why did the price of forgiveness have to be so high? He looked at his mother with new insight about the way their family life had been when he was young and bitter, and now he had to know more. “Did he ever tell you he loved you?”

Her lips parted in what was clearly astonishment. “Yes. All the time. Not always with words, maybe, but in numerous other ways. Let it go, son. Let the sunshine in.”

Blake lifted his shoulder in a shrug. “I guess I have to. The trouble is I wanted to love him.”

“You children made his last years beautiful. He had a lovely home, more than enough for us to live on even if we didn’t work, and for the first time in his life, he had a little leisure time.”

“I’m glad we could do it.”

John arrived that evening and they finished the funeral arrangements while they reminisced about their childhood. Blake didn’t like the drama and commotion that accompanied Southern mourning, and he was glad to have a moment alone. He walked out to the front gate where the summer breeze carried the scent of roses and the clear moonlit night brought him memories of his childhood. And loneliness. He went inside for his cell phone, came back and telephoned Melinda. Maybe it didn’t make sense, but he needed to hear her voice.

“I’ve just been thinking that I had no idea where you are,” she said after they greeted each other.

“I’m in Six Mile, about twenty miles outside of Birmingham. It’s small, barely a hamlet. Here’s my cell-phone number. Call me if you want to.”

“I will, and I’m glad you called me. How’s your mother taking this?”

“Philosophically as usual. I guess it’s worse for me than for Mama and my sister and brother, because my relationship with him was so much poorer than theirs, but I’m making it. Being with John and Callie, my older brother and sister, and talking things over with them puts a clearer perspective on my childhood. I’ll be fine.”

“How’d you get there from Birmingham? Rent a car?”

He leaned against the gate and inhaled the perfume of the roses. Strange how the floral scene reminded him of Melinda. Bright. Cheerful and sweet. “I’d planned to rent one, but Callie met me.” He told her of Callie’s reaction when he asked her whether she wanted to drive her own car. “I’ll have to be more careful. Callie says I’m just a guy who takes charge, but that can seem overbearing. What do you think?” He realized that he wanted her to think well of him, and that surprised him, because he didn’t remember ever caring whether anyone liked him. He had to do some serious thinking about what Melinda Rodgers meant to him and what, if anything, he’d do about it.

Her voice, soft and mellifluous, caressed his ears and wrapped him in contentment. “I think you’re tough, and I imagine you can be overbearing, but you haven’t treated me to any of that, so I don’t know.”

“What were you doing when I called?”

“I…uh—”

“What?” He told himself to straighten out his mind, lest his imagination get out of control.

“Well, I was lying here looking up at the ceiling, and don’t ask me where my mind was.”

“Would I be presumptuous to think your mind might have been on me?”

“Roses are red and violets are blue.”

He laughed because he couldn’t help it and because so much of something inside of him strained to get out. “I wouldn’t take anything for that. Go ahead and keep your secrets.”

“Are you going to let me know when you’re coming back so I can meet you?”

He closed his eyes and let contentment wash over him. In the seventeen years since he’d left his paternal home and the mother who’d nurtured him, he’d forgotten what it was like to have someone care about his comfort and well-being. Irene made a stab at it, but he didn’t cooperate because he didn’t want an office wife.

“I said I would, and when I tell you I’ll do something, I do it if it’s humanly possible. Remember that. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“Can I do anything for you while you’re away?”

“Thanks, but…” It occurred to him that she could, but he hesitated to involve her. He hadn’t heard from Ethan in over two weeks, and if the boy got into trouble again, he’d be a three-time loser, which meant he’d be an old man before he got out of jail.

“If you don’t mind, call this number, ask for Ethan, and find out how he is. Tell him where I am and that I want him to call me tomorrow night. Don’t give him your name, telephone number, or address. Just say I told you to call him. If he’s in trouble, call me back.”

To her credit, he thought, she didn’t question him about his relationship to Ethan, but promised to do as he asked.

He didn’t want to leave her with a cold good-bye, but their relationship didn’t warrant much more. So he merely said, “Talk to you again before I leave here,” and she seemed to understand.

“I’ll expect that,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”

He hung up and went inside. He didn’t feel like dancing, but he walked with livelier steps.

Two days later, Blake stood at his father’s final resting place, dealing with his emotions.

“If you had wound up in jail or as an addict,” his mother said, “maybe you’d have grounds to hate him. But look at you. He must have given you something that inspired you to reach so high and accomplish so much.”

What could he say? She looked at it with the eyes of a woman who loved both her husband and her children; she wouldn’t lay blame. He wished he were in the habit of praying, because he could use some unbiased guidance right then.

Gloria Hunter’s fingers gripped his arm. “Let it go, son. If you don’t forgive your father, you’ll never be able to love anybody, not the woman you marry, not even your own children.” His mother tightened her grip on him as she whispered, “Please let it die with him.”

Strange that he should think of Melinda at a time when he was finding his way out of the morass of pain and bewilderment that dogged him and had been a part of his life for as long as he remembered. What did she feel for her father? It was suddenly important for him to know if she loved Booker Jones, a man who few people in Ellicott City, other than his family and parishioners, seemed able to tolerate.

His mother’s words bruised his ears. “Son, you’ve got to let it go.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw again his father stand, tears streaking his cheeks, when Columbia University conferred the doctor of laws degree on his younger son. As pain seared his chest, he knelt and kissed the sealed metal casket. When he stood, his mother’s arms enfolded him, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile so broadly or her eyes sparkle so brightly with happiness.

Melinda waited until late the next morning before she tried to locate Ethan. She supposed he might be a relative, since Blake didn’t have any children. She amended that. He didn’t have any that she knew of.

“Ethan ain’t here,” the voice of an older female said in answer to Melinda’s question. When asked where she could find him, the woman advised, “Look down at Doone’s poolroom over on Oela Avenue facing the railroad. If he ain’t there, I couldn’t say where he is.”

She couldn’t find a phone number for Doone’s, but though she was wary as to what she might discover there, she got in her car and drove to the place.

“Whatta ya want, miss?” a big bouncer type of a man asked her.

“I’m looking for a boy named Ethan.”

He pointed to one of the pool tables. “Right over there. Hey, Ethan, a lady’s here to see ya.”

Melinda watched the boy amble toward her. An attractive, neat kid whom she imagined was about sixteen years old, she wondered what he was doing in a poolroom so early in the day.

“Ethan, do you know Blake?”

Recognition blazed across his face, and since he showed interest and wasn’t hostile, she decided to smile to indicate her friendliness.

As quick as mercury, his look of recognition dissolved into a frown. “Yeah. I know him. What’s the matter with him?”

“He has a family emergency and had to go out of town. He wants you to call him tonight. And please do that, Ethan, because he’s worried about you.”

Ethan looked hard at Melinda and narrowed his eyes as though making up his mind about her. “You sure he’s all right?”

She nodded. “I’m sure. Will you call his cell-phone number?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked past her. “Uh…yeah. I shoulda called him, so he’d know I wasn’t in no trouble. But I got this job staking balls late nights to early morning, so…I shoulda called and told him. Tonight, you say?”

“Yes. Tonight.”

“Okay. See you.” He started toward the table, then turned back to her. “Oh, I forgot to thank you for coming by.”

She told him good-bye, but she couldn’t get him off her mind. He didn’t seem like a criminal, but she supposed that wasn’t something obvious to the eye.

When she got back home, Ruby accosted her right at the door. “Miz Melinda, how come all these mens calling you? I left the messages on your desk, but it don’t look good to have all these mens calling here when you just been a widow. Six months from now when you needs one, that’d be a different matter. Oh yes,” she called, as Melinda walked up the stairs, “Miss Rachel said for you to call her. That woman sure is nosy. I told her I ain’t seen Mr. Blake in this house since poor Mr. Rodgers passed. God rest his dear soul.”

She looked at the names of her callers: Leroy Wilson, Frank Jackson, Roosevelt Hayes, Macon Long. She didn’t know any of them, but she knew what they wanted: a chance to help her spend her late husband’s money. She tore up the messages and telephoned Rachel.

“Hey, girl. What’s going on?” Rachel asked.

“Good question, Rachel. Any time you want to know what’s going on here, who’s been here and what I’m doing, ask me. That’ll save Ruby the trouble of telling me what you asked her.”

“Tight-lipped as you are? I wanted to know, so I asked. Really sorry, Melinda. I—”

“Now that we’ve got that settled, Blake hasn’t been inside this house since Prescott passed. Should I tell him you asked?”

“Of course n…Well, if you want to.”

She didn’t intend to play games with Rachel. They would either remain good friends or they wouldn’t, but she was a grown, unattached woman and she didn’t have to answer to a soul.

“Rachel, I’m meeting Blake at the airport in Baltimore tomorrow, and I can’t swear he won’t come into my house or that I won’t go into his and stay awhile.”

Silence hung between them. “Then you have got something going with him,” Rachel said after some minutes, her voice arid and hollow. “I thought so.” Suddenly, she appeared to brighten. “Well, if he makes your top twirl, honey, go for it.”

She didn’t believe her, but neither did she blame the woman for a gracious stab at face-saving. “Say, have you ever been to that Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore?” she asked, deliberately changing the subject.

“No. Want to go tomorrow?”

Melinda couldn’t help laughing at Rachel’s transparent effort to go with her to the airport to meet Blake. “Sorry, I can’t go tomorrow. I’m meeting Blake. Remember?”

After making small talk for a few minutes, they hung up. But before she could pull off her shoes, the phone rang again.

“Melinda, honey, this is Ray. I’m just confirming our date for July Fourth.”

She gripped the receiver and considered slamming it back into its cradle. The nerve of him trying to force her to let him display her at that fair for the benefit of local citizenry. “We don’t have a date, Ray. I told you I’d think about it. I’ve done that, and I’ve decided not to go with you. Thanks for being in touch after all these years. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to do.” She hung up. Five of them in one day, and Lord knows how many more such overtures she could expect. She didn’t wait long for the next one.

Minutes later, a man identifying himself as Salvatore Luca claimed to have seen her on Main Street, inquired as to who she was, and was anxious to meet her. At least he hadn’t come right out and applied for the job of husband.

“There must be some mistake, Mr. Luca,” she said in her sweetest voice. “I haven’t walked along Main Street in I don’t know when. Hope you find her.”

She settled down to study the list of twelve people whom, with Blake’s help, she’d chosen for the board, but she couldn’t get interested in the task of selecting the board’s officers. Why had Prescott saddled her with something for which she had no taste and worse, with the stipulation that she marry within the year or lose the inheritance, a modern-day coup de grâce?

Cold tendrils of fear shot through her. She got up from the richly inlaid walnut desk, walked to the window, and looked down at the goldfish pond in the back garden, but the colorful creatures didn’t amuse her. Not even the gentle breeze that brushed her face when she stepped out on the porch off her bedroom gave her pleasure. Maybe nothing ever would again. She turned away from the blackbirds that perched on the porch swing waiting for the crumbs she usually enjoyed feeding to them and walked slowly back into the house. It couldn’t be true; she wouldn’t let it be true. Blake couldn’t be like all the others, maneuvering for the money her husband had earned despite a handicap that would have bested most women and men. She didn’t want to think that of him, but he was certainly making the road rough for any other man.

She picked up the tablet containing the names of the board members they’d selected, and her gaze fell on Salvatore Luca’s name. She’d written it there, idly, as she spoke with him. She pitched the tablet away from her, lifted the receiver of the ringing phone, and slammed it back in its cradle without answering it. Fed up. With no school until September, she didn’t have to stay in Ellicott City. Not once in her life had she had a vacation, and she was due one. When the phone rang again, she ignored it.

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