LITMIR.BIZ

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promptly at eight o’clock to find coffee and, as he expected, his senior staff waiting for him. Their normal business completed, he detained them

      “Where might an abusive man look for a woman who’d defied him and escaped his brutality?” he asked the group. Anywhere but a small town was the consensus. He returned to his office and began redrafting plans for a women’s center in Hagerstown, Maryland, an unlikely place for one. His secretary walked into his office.

      “Are you planning to open another one?” He nodded, explaining that “this is more complicated and more ambitious than our place in Frederick.”

      Her gaze roamed over him, with motherly pride, it seemed. “If you need help with this, I’ll work overtime at no cost to you. It’s a wonderful thing you do for these poor women, supporting these projects from your private funds.”

      He leaned back in his big leather chair. “I can afford to pay you, Olivia, and I will. You do enough for charity.”

      “Pshaw,” she demurred. “What I do is nothing compared to the help you give people. These homes for abused women, that hospital ward for seriously ill children, and the Lord knows what else. God is going to bless you—see if He doesn’t.”

      He shook his head, rejecting the compliment. “I’m fortunate. It’s better to be in a position to give than to be on the dole.” Abruptly he changed the topic. “Olivia, what do you think of Melissa Grant? Think she’ll find me a manager for Leather and Hides?”

      “Yes. She seemed very businesslike. Real professional. Anyhow, I trust your judgment in hiring her. When it comes to people, you don’t often make mistakes.”

      Adam slapped his closed left fist into the palm of his right hand. Not in the last fifteen years, he hadn’t, but the thought pestered him that where Melissa was concerned he was ripe for a blunder of the first order.

      Melissa. He had the sense that he’d been with her before. She reminded him of a woman he’d danced with in costume one New Year’s Eve. He’d been dancing with the woman, but at exactly midnight she’d disappeared, leaving an indelible impression. As farfetched as it seemed, whenever Melissa spoke in very soft tones, he thought of that unknown woman. Perhaps he’d wanted the woman because she was mysterious. His blood still raced when he thought of her. Warm. Soft. He’d like to see her at least once more. Yet he wanted Melissa. He rubbed the back of his neck. His elusive woman was at least two, maybe three, inches shorter than Melissa, but he couldn’t dismiss the similarity in allure.

      He picked up the business section of The Maryland Journal and noted that the price of sweet crude oil had increased more rapidly than the cost of living index. His folks were no longer in the natural gas business and had sold their property in Kentucky, so fuel prices didn’t concern him, but every day his family had to combat the scandal brought on by Moses Morris’s unfair accusation of seventy years earlier. Anger toward the Grants and Morrises surged in him as he reflected on how their maltreatment had shortened his grandfather’s life and embittered his mother. His passion for Melissa cooled, and he strengthened his resolve to stay away from her.

      He dictated a letter pressuring Melissa to find the manager at once, though the contract specified one month. He rationalized that he wasn’t being unfair, that he was in a bind and she should understand.

      Several hours later Adam told himself that he would not behave dishonorably toward Melissa or anyone else, that he should have investigated MTG and identified its president. He tore up the letter and pressed the intercom.

      “Olivia, get Jason for me, please.” Melissa hadn’t been in touch with Jason, and that riled him. He paced the floor of his office as he tried to think of a justifiable reason to telephone her. Finally, he gave up the idea, left his office and went to the gym, reasoning that exercise should clear his head. But after a half hour, having conceded defeat, he stopped as he passed a phone on his way out and dialed her number.

      Adam held his breath while the phone rang. She’s in my blood, he acknowledged and wondered what he’d do about it.

      “Melissa Grant speaking.”

      “Have dinner with me tonight. I want to see you.”

      * * *

      She had dressed when he arrived at her apartment. He liked that, but he noticed her wariness about his entering her home. He didn’t put her at ease—if she didn’t want to be involved with him, she had reason to be cautious, just as he had. It surprised him that she didn’t question why he’d asked her to dinner, and he didn’t tell her, reasoning that she was a smart woman and old enough to divine a man’s motives. He’d selected a Cajun restaurant in Tribeca, and it pleased him that she liked his choice.

      “I love Cajun food. Don’t you think it’s similar to soul food?”

      He thought about that for a bit. “The ingredients, yes, but Cajun’s a lot spicier. A steady diet of blackened fish, whether red or cat, would eat a hole in your stomach. Reminds me of my first trip to Mexico. I’d alternate a mouthful of food with half a glass of water. I don’t want that experience again. Come to think of it, that’s what prompted me to learn to cook.”

      “You cook?”

      He knew she wouldn’t have believed it of him, and neither would any of his staff or business associates. “Of course I cook, Melissa. Why should that surprise you? I eat, don’t I?”

      “Aren’t you surprised that we get on as well as we do?” she asked him. “Considering our backgrounds, I’d have thought it impossible.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      * * *

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

      “But

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