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.

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