“I tried calling you. Why didn’t you take my calls? Why wouldn’t you listen to me, Mel?”
She looked him full in the face. “All the talking’s been done, Hooker.”
“No!” He pointed the gun at her. “You’ve got to listen to me!”
Melanie tried to make herself one with the chair upholstery, hardly daring to breathe. Keep your eyes raised. The hardest thing to do is to shoot someone while looking into their eyes. The snippet from her training did nothing to make her feel better.
“I mean, no,” he said a little more calmly. “Not nearly enough’s been said. You need to know the truth. I’m here to tell you what really went down that night.” He swiped at the sweat on his forehead with the cuff of his denim shirt, a shirt Melanie knew he’d stolen from a clothesline. “I asked…demanded to talk to you after everything went down, but you…you’d been shot. They wouldn’t let me explain things.” His eyes held a desperate, crazy pleading. “You’re the only one who can help me, Mel.”
Melanie felt the ridiculous urge to cry. For the second time in as many days, she appreciated the irony of her predicament and hated it. She couldn’t be more than fifty yards away from five prime, well-trained males, and she’d entered the only unsafe place on the property.
Hooker’s hands shook so violently, she was afraid he would accidentally trip the trigger.
Keep it together, Mel. Keep it together.
“You don’t understand. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me, Mel. It wasn’t me.”
She attempted to push a response from her throat. “Then why have you been trying to kill me?”
“Kill you?” He stumbled back a couple of steps. “I haven’t been trying to kill you. I’ve been trying to talk to you. Why…why would I want to kill you? I’ve been trying to save my ass.” There was the sound of slamming car doors. Hooker jerked his head to listen, his anxiety quotient nudging up even further. “You’re confusing me. I need to get this out, don’t you see?”
There it was. The stillness she needed settled over her as a rare opportunity gaped wide-open.
Hooker continued. “That night… It’s kind of like a blur to me, you know? One minute I’m checking out a suspicious noise, the next I’m waking up on the cold ground with your boyfriend’s knee in my chest.” His voice rose in pitch as he continued. “Don’t you see? It wasn’t me, Mel. It was—”
Vaulting from the chair, Melanie acted on pure instinct. With her right hand, she forced the barrel of the gun away while she slipped her left leg behind his right knee and pushed against his shoulder. As he fell, she tugged the gun out of his grip, then planted her foot solidly against his solar plexus, pinning him to the floor.
She locked the safety on the gun, then allowed herself a moment to enjoy the afterglow. Oh, yes, she still had it.
Hooker started to struggle. Afraid he might get loose, she started to pull her hand back, the weight of the gun she held promising more strength to the impending blow.
“Damn it, it wasn’t me!” Tom Hooker flinched. “It was Roger!”
Her hand connected with the side of his head just as his words slipped through the protective adrenaline haze clouding her thoughts.
MELANIE’S MIND reeled as she stared at the unconscious man she had slowly, methodically bound with curtain ties. Hooker’s last words echoed as if he were saying them over and over.
It was Roger…. It was Roger…. It was Roger….
After three months of replaying the memories from that night, of reliving the horrifying moments in her sleep, feeling as if there was something she was missing, something that didn’t ring true, she knew the reason. That shadowy figure she had caught trying to slip through the senator’s window, the faceless man who had shot her hadn’t been Hooker. It had been his partner, Roger Westfield.
A man now Marc’s partner.
Facts that supported Hooker’s claim accumulated in her mind. Hooker’s repeated attempts to contact her. His unwavering proclamation of innocence. The staff psychologist saying the recurring nightmares were trying to tell her something. Marc telling her during the drive to the safe house that he would never have thought Hooker capable of doing what they all thought he had done.
“Yoo-hoo, Melanie. Are you in here, dear?” A pause, then, “Let go, you wicked creature!”
Melanie’s heart dropped somewhere down around her ankles as she heard her mother’s voice from the kitchen. Caught somewhere between shock that she could have been so wrong and alarm that the man responsible for almost taking her life was still out there somewhere, she absently checked the tie around Hooker’s feet, then haltingly stepped toward the other room. Just short of the door, she stopped, gathering her wits. Despite everything that had just happened, she realized a new fear. The fear that her mother would instantly know what had happened between her and Marc the past two days. As sure as if Melanie had a scorecard taped to the front of her T-shirt.
“Melanie Marie, where— Oh, there you are, dear.”
Melanie stepped into the kitchen to find the cramped quarters solidly divided into two camps. The McCoys stood beside her or behind her—large, hulking men who made her feel slightly intimidated but also as though she had the power of God on her side.
On the other side of the kitchen was her mother along with two state police patrolmen and…Craig.
Melanie’s heart skipped a beat, and her skin burned with guilt. But there was no anger in Craig’s eyes. Instead she watched worry turn into obvious relief, then curiosity as he eyed her disheveled appearance, then looked at Marc. When he gave her a small smile, relief washed through Melanie’s tense muscles. She knew without asking that she hadn’t lost her best friend.
Her gaze shifted to a movement closer to the floor.
Oh, God.
Goliath.
Her mother had taken a time-out when Melanie had entered, but now returned to the losing end of a game of tug-of-war with Mitch’s Saint Bernard, Goliath. Melanie rushed forward, realizing it was her bridal bouquet that was locked in Goliath’s jaws. White lily petals sprang from the arrangement like mammoth snowflakes, covering the tile and her mother’s pink shoes.
Craig tried to distract the dog as Wilhemenia yelped for someone to help. Then she lost her grip. Before Melanie could do anything, the hulking hound of a dog galloped from the room, triumphant.
There were several undisguised snickers from behind Melanie as her mother finally turned toward her, her face red, her hair sticking out from her usual smooth chignon. “Melanie, I want you to explain to me this minute what’s going on.”
“I—”
“For three days I’ve been worrying myself to death over your well-being—”
“Mom—”
“Ever since this twit—” she waved impatiently in Marc’s direction but seemed to have a problem isolating exactly which one he was “—kidnapped you from the powder room.”
“He’s not—”
“Then yesterday morning you call, trying to tell me something—” Melanie rolled her eyes, remembering she hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise “—and I nearly go deaf from this horrible sound, and the line goes dead.”
“That’s because—”
“Poor Craig has been as worried as I have. He’s not left my side, or Joanie’s, once throughout this entire ordeal. Except to go do what nature intended, of course, but that’s excusable considering all the coffee he’s—”
Craig gave Melanie an understanding look then touched her mother’s arm in an obvious effort to stop her. “I think she gets the picture, Mrs. Weber.”
“Then we pull up here and that overgrown creature—”
“Mother!”
Wilhemenia gave Melanie a reprimanding look. “You’re right to raise your voice to me. Here I am chattering away when we should be seeing to unfinished business. Officers, arrest that man.” She gestured toward where she thought Marc stood, but instead pointed to Jake. She started to tuck her hair into place. “And I think you should be able to
work up something by way of accessories with the—” she faltered as she looked over the McCoy bunch “—rest of them.”
“Over my dead body will you touch any of my boys,” Sean said, his voice booming commandingly through the room.
Wilhemenia fell silent. Silent. Melanie stared at her. She’d never seen anyone capable of quelling her mother’s incessant tongue. Lord knew she was incapable of it.
She looked between Sean and her mother, both powerful personalities. She recalled that every time Sean had come into her hospital room, her mother had made herself instantly scarce.
Craig seemed to notice the odd reaction and raised an eyebrow at Melanie.
Wilhemenia finally regained her voice, though it was noticeably softer, more self-conscious. “Your wedding is in three hours, Melanie. I think—”
“Until Hooker is caught, Melanie isn’t going anywhere,” Marc said, stepping next to Melanie and crossing his arms.
She wanted to scream as she watched Marc size up Craig. That’s all she needed. For Marc to coldcock her best friend because, like her mother, he didn’t understand that there wouldn’t be a wedding. She wasn’t going to marry Craig. Craig knew that without her having to say a word. The only reason he had proposed to begin with was that she’d been convinced Marc wasn’t going to play a role in her baby’s life. One look had told Craig that all that had changed.
She stared at Marc, exasperated. Why couldn’t he be more observant? Or was he acting on emotion, as she had that morning when she opened the window?
She raised her voice. “Will everyone just shut up a minute and let me speak?”
The room went suddenly, blessedly quiet.
Melanie tried to figure out where to start. She looked at her mother first.
“Mom, I’m sorry you had to worry about me, but there isn’t going to be any arresting here. Not of Marc or any of his brothers.” Wilhemenia opened her mouth to speak, but Mel hurried on. “While I didn’t agree at the time, Marc took me because the man who shot me three months ago had escaped from prison. So he did what he did to protect me. It was the right thing, the only thing to do.”
She glanced at Marc, remembering his cryptic words earlier when he told her she should marry Craig. She looked at him, wishing they could have finished that conversation. She knew there wasn’t going to be a wedding. But after what he’d said, should she tell him that?
“As for Hooker,” she said quietly, “while all of you were outside protecting me from my mother and my…fiancé—” she had to push the last word out “—Hooker was already in the house.” She took some pleasure in their dumbfounded expressions. “He’s tied up in the living room.”
“What?” Marc asked as his brothers bolted into the next room.
She nodded. Normally, she might have enjoyed a moment like this, proving she could still hold her own under fire, but she couldn’t. Not knowing what she did. Not knowing that Hooker hadn’t been the one who shot her. And especially since she’d knocked Hooker out for all his efforts.
“So,” she said, wanting to deal with Marc and the sticky situation she found herself in the middle of before telling him his new partner was the real shooter.
“I still think—”
“Keep out of this, Mother,” Melanie said.
Shocked by the firm order, her mother opened and closed her mouth several times, reminding Melanie of a hooked bass.
“Did you mean what you said this morning?” she quietly asked Marc. “You know, about my marrying…”
Her heart contracted in her chest. She waited for his response, some sign, a flicker in his expression, but there was none. And he was taking far too long to respond.
If ever she needed Marc to speak his mind, it was now.
Her mother touched her arm. “Melanie, dear, I really hate to interrupt—”
“I thought it was your life’s occupation.” Her mother looked as if she’d been slapped. Melanie cringed. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”
“I meant every word,” Marc said, his expression stony. “I wish you and Craig every happiness.”
Melanie would have whacked him if only her heart weren’t cracking in half. “That makes two of us. Only there isn’t going to be a wedding. Craig and I are not getting married.”
Marc and Wilhemenia stared at her as if she’d lost the last of her marbles while Craig slipped his arm around her shoulders, supporting her every step of the way. A move she was thankful for, because she was going to need his friendship to see her through this.
She cleared the tears from her throat. “But that’s not all. The man tied up in the room next door is not the one we should be looking for. The man who shot me is Roger Westfield.”
13
SHELL-SHOCKED. That’s the best way Melanie could describe how she felt. After all that had happened, it felt really weird sitting in the church antechamber pretending to get ready for her wedding. It seemed a shameful waste, really, seeing as she had planned everything out. Well, Joanie had planned everything out, and she had agreed, right down to the little nosegays the bridesmaids were going to wear, and the rosebuds being passed out instead of rice to toss at her, and…her groom.
Problem was, she didn’t have a groom. And she probably never would.
Craig.
At least she still had her best friend. He really didn’t know what to make of what was going on between her and Marc. She didn’t know what to make of it, for that matter. One minute they were having the most incredibly touching sex of her life; the next he was telling her, no, ordering her to marry Craig. It didn’t make any sense. None at all.
But Craig didn’t need it to make sense. Yes, he’d told her during the long drive home, he was a little disappointed.
“I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t admit that my pride has taken a hell of a blow,” he said, getting a hug for his admission, although not the type of hug Mel shared with Marc. The affection she traded with Craig was of a brotherly nature, and could never have been anything more, she realized. “I’d also be lying if I didn’t say I’m relieved.” He’d smiled at her. “I love you, Melanie, but…”
“Not in that way,” she had finished for him. “I love you the same way, Pookems.”
She only wished her feelings for Marc were as easy to sort through and settle.
She was coming to expect that from her relationship with Marc McCoy. Her heart gave a painful squeeze. From here on out, he’d play a role in her life, but only that of her child’s father, not her lover or anything more.
There was a brief knock at the door. Quickly sitting up, she rubbed her cheeks to put some color into them.
“Yoo-hoo,” her mother called out as she opened the door.
Melanie made an effort not to slouch.
Wilhemenia quietly closed the door.
“How is everything?” she asked, coming to stand behind her daughter.
Terrible. Awful. I want to crawl into bed and cry for a month. “Fine.”
Wilhemenia fluffed the back of her hair, then rested her hand on Melanie’s shoulder. “You look beautiful.”
Melanie blinked at her in the mirror. Had she heard right? Had her mother just given her a compliment? No, it wasn’t possible. Especially not when all of Wilhemenia’s carefully approved plans had been ruined. Besides, there was always something wrong, some different way she could have done her hair, an alternate color of lipstick or at least a reprimand about her poor posture. “Excuse me?” she heard herself say.
Wilhemenia smiled. “I said you’re beautiful.” Her gaze faltered, and she began toying with the sleeves of Melanie’s dress. “I know I probably haven’t told you that nearly enough, but I’ve always thought it.” She paused. “I just wished your life could have turned out different from mine.”
Melanie’s dress rustled as she turned to face her.
Certainly her mother wasn’t telling her what she thought she was? It couldn’t be possible. Had Wilhemenia been pregnant when she married? Her face went hot. She reminded
herself that her mother didn’t know of her condition. She peered at her a little more closely. Or did she?
“Are you trying to tell me something, Mother?”
Wilhemenia pulled a chair from the corner. She pulled it. She didn’t pick it up and carefully move it. She hung her purse on the chair, then sank into it. But she still didn’t say anything.
“Mom?”
“Do you remember what you asked me?”
Melanie watched her take papers from the cavernous depths of her purse.
“You know, in the bathroom, during the rehearsal dinner?” She avoided Melanie’s gaze as she put the papers in her hands. “It’s difficult to believe that was just three days ago. It seems like a lifetime.”
You can say that again. Melanie smiled to hide her thoughts. “Sorry, I don’t. Remember what I asked you, that is.”
Wilhemenia cleared her throat, an odd sound considering how elegant she usually was. “You, um, asked if I had loved your father.”
Melanie stared. Her mother stroked her hand. “I remember now.”
“The truth is, yes, I did love your father. More than life itself.”
Melanie looked at her. In the years since her father died, her mother had if not quietly cursed her father, at least blamed him for leaving her with two girls to raise. Melanie realized she had never tried to look into her mother’s heart for the truth. She’d merely accepted it, and yes, even judged her on it.
Her mother stared at the ceiling. “Yes, I know you’re pregnant, Melanie.” Her gaze shifted. “I overheard the day you told…well, when you told Sean about it.” Color touched her cheeks. Melanie guessed it was because of embarrassment. “I was coming back from the nurse’s station and saw him sitting with you, as he often did. I didn’t want to interrupt, but…” She trailed off and gave a guilty little smile. “But that’s not what this is about.”
“You were pregnant, too, weren’t you? When you and Dad married?”
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