Scarlet Woman

“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?”