Maxine and Melvin – A little background

Maxine Wolff was thirty two when she met the dashing and highly successful thirty eight year old Melvin Porter who so easily charmed his way into her life and changed it forever. By trade she was a freelance multilingual consultant who headed a firm that specialized in verbal and document translations to facilitate communications for U.S. based companies interested in foreign investments world-wide. The job paid the bills and made for a very comfortable and fascinating lifestyle but her passion was everything artistic. She studied art, she invested in it, and she immersed herself in it.

Though she was an extremely talented artist in her own right she never pursued a career as one; she just used art as a form of release and expression. However after getting married and giving up her high profile job to raise her child she was toying with the idea of exhibiting her work in local galleries. She was simply waiting until her precious baby girl was old enough to start Kindergarten full time so she could dedicate to this endeavor without taking time away from her family.

Maxine met Melvin and his business partners when they contracted her firm to assist with diversifying their portfolio to include venture capital investments in Europe. Maxine knew that Melvin was married but he assured her that the marriage was over and he no longer loved his wife. Regardless she tried to resist getting sexually involved with a married man but his persistence and the unavoidable attraction between them soon wore down her defenses.

It wasn’t long before their negotiations with several start-up companies in Europe necessitated traveling abroad together which put them in ever closer proximity and intimate settings. They spent days in meetings and evenings at social events networking. They were perfectly matched on a professional level and experienced much success. There was always an excuse to go out for a celebratory dinner or drinks after closing a deal. Eventually they didn’t even pretend to have business reasons to spend time together. Predictably their professional relationship transformed into a close personal one that flourished into an illicit love affair. There were complications from the start. Not only because Melvin was married, but they were an interracial couple at a time in history when there was little tolerance for it. Several members of Maxine’s family and most of her close personal friends distanced themselves as did Melvin’s but it didn’t matter. They’d fallen in love and persevered against all odds.