Scarlet Woman. Gwynne Forster

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.