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 ...
--This text refers to an alternate
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
