It’s amazing how quickly an opinion can be formed. All I knew about this woman was her name, and I was instantly on guard. I had an almost physical reaction to another woman’s name on Leo’s lips. And that told me more about my own feelings that I cared to admit, at least for the moment. I kept up the swinging, needing the rhythm.
“At first, she was just another girl, one of many. Melissa had just filtered into the group I was running with at the time, a friend of a friend, and as she began to be at the same places I was, an attraction happened. And other things happened. But as I got to know her, she seemed . . . hmm,” he paused for almost the first time in his story, seeming almost lost in thought. “Different. She was different from everyone else. She came to New York from a small town in Wisconsin, she wasn’t at all concerned with money and last names and who everyone was or might become one day. Anyway, we started dating, and then dating more seriously, and just like that, I was head over heels. I introduced her to my parents, stopped dating anyone else, and we became exclusive.” He paused to look at me carefully. “You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” I asked.
“You’re about to swing us right off this porch,” he said, and I noticed for the first time how much air we were catching. My body had a very definite reaction to this Melissa. Dragging a foot, I slowed us down to a normal pace.
“Sorry about that. You and this Melissa—I mean, you and Melissa—exclusive. Go on.” I forced my foot to just barely graze the porch every so often.
He did. They dated for months, she met everyone he was close to, she was welcomed thoroughly into the family. A junior partner at an accounting firm, she was knowledgeable in many areas of finance, and could hold her own in most conversations. She could kill it at a cocktail party, he said, and he was proud to have her on his arm.
But as the economic recovery was still struggling, Leo began to voice some of his concerns over the practices that not only the Maxwells were employing, but the banking world in general. “She’d encourage me to speak up, share my ideas, but I began to notice that she’d always add in something about it not being the right time, or to maybe keep some of it to myself until the climate had shifted, things like that. She knew I was unhappy with things at work, yet when we’d talk it out, I’d always come away feeling more confused than I was before, unsure about my position and how vocal I should be.”
He suddenly looked into my eyes, intense and a bit haunted. “Have you ever gotten so totally thrown by someone, you have no idea how it could have happened?”
“Honestly? No.” I paused, chewing on my lip. “But that’s because I never let anyone get close enough.” Very dramatic gulp. “Until you.”
We stared at each other, the emotion between us shimmering in the air in giant waves of ohmygodthisguycouldwreckmeforalwaysbutImightbeokaywiththat until a noisy jaybird startled us.
Lifting one corner of his mouth in that adorable way, he went on. “Well, until Melissa, I’d been the same way. But she snuck right on under the fence, under everyone’s fence—and my entire family was born with a gold-digger alarm.”
“No,” I breathed, and he nodded.
“Oh yeah. She was so good, I didn’t even see her coming. I continued to waffle back and forth about how involved I wanted to get at work, whether I wanted to make a shift into a different division, try something new—and then we spent a weekend up here in Bailey Falls. I hadn’t been up to the farm in years, but we both wanted to get out of the city for a long weekend, and she seemed fascinated by all the properties my family owned, and away we went up the Hudson. She seemed impressed by the overall size of the house, and the grounds of course, but a bit disappointed in the state of things up here. Especially since no one had lived on the farm full-time in years, things were a bit rustic.”