Marc scanned her from forehead to chin. “So where does that leave you?”
She gazed toward the chapel doors and shrugged, looking particularly delectable in the dress she’d changed into at some point between Westfield’s arrest and subsequent transport to the ambulance. Sure, maybe the hem was a little long and the shoes too flat, but the rich material hugged her in all the right places.
“I guess it makes me a single parent in the making,” she answered.
“Yeah, me, too,” he murmured. “Shame, seeing as we’re so good together.”
“I’m not marrying you, Marc.”
He winced. “Ouch.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “Why not?”
“You know why not.”
“Because you think I only want to marry you because of the baby.”
She looked at a nearby woman, who was craning to hear their conversation. She whispered, “Something like that.”
“So live with me in sin, then.”
To his surprise, she bellowed with laughter.
He shrugged. “Hey, I’ll take it any way I can get it.”
Mel started to walk away. Marc caught her arm. “Have I ever told you how much I love your smile?”
She hesitated. “No, I have to say that’s a first.” A wary shadow eclipsed her eyes. “I’ve never heard you utter the word love in relationship to anything.”
He glanced down. “Anyway…”
She peered at him a little more closely.
“I guess the excitement’s over, so I’ll just be on my way.”
He didn’t miss the puzzled wrinkling of her forehead. Obviously she had expected more. “Okay.” She started to turn away, then hesitated. “I’ll keep you posted on how everything goes. You know, with the baby.”
He gave her one of his biggest grins. “Oh, don’t worry, Mel. I’ll be in touch.”
15
DESPITE HIS WORDS, Marc hadn’t tried to contact her over the next two weeks.
Melanie sat on the front porch swing trying to catch a stray breeze while Joanie and her mother discussed catering menus inside. Brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, she thought it was funny how things could happen right under your nose without your being aware of it.
For the past twenty-five years Melanie, Joanie and Craig had been the terrific trio. And in all that time, she had never noticed that her sister and her best friend had secretly been in love with each other. She shook her head. If anything good had come out of the whole fiasco, it was the acknowledgment of that truth. While Marc had held her under lock and key, among other things—her cheeks burned with the memory—the mere act of being so close together for a prolonged period of time had created a veritable hothouse of romance for Craig and Joanie, as her mother told the story. Melanie smiled.
Hothouse of romance, indeed.
She rocked the swing and ran her hand over her belly. Overnight, it seemed, her stomach had gone from being flat to swelling into a noticeable mound. Joanie and Craig’s impending wedding plans weren’t the only good thing to come out of recent events, she amended. While in the days immediately following the “non-wedding of the century,” as the townsfolk were referring to it, she had leaped on the phone every time it rang and had absently searched passing cars for signs of Marc, she had since found a certain, quiet peace. A peace that closely resembled the stillness she once felt as an agent. She’d come to terms with her impending single parenthood and knew that her baby would have all the love he would ever need right here with her, her mother, sister, and yes, even with Craig, in his role as uncle rather than father.
She’d started her new position as a security consultant at Beane and Sons and had begun mapping out plans for branching out on her own.
All in all, life was pretty good. Despite the bone-deep longing she often felt in the middle of the night.
If Marc wanted to play a role in their child’s life—
Beneath her hand, she felt a nudge. Her breath catching, Melanie sat very still. That was very definitely a nudge.
She’d felt her baby move.
“Mellie?”
She glanced up to find Sean walking up the steps. She was so excited, she didn’t stop to think it odd that he was there. She motioned him over.
“Come…sit down. I just felt the baby move for the first time.”
Sean took the space next to her and hesitantly held his hand above her stomach. She smiled and pressed his fingers against the side of her belly.
They sat like that for a long moment. Melanie started to get discouraged. Maybe it hadn’t been the baby, after all. Her doctor had said she should start to feel movement any day now, but—
“There!” she whispered in awe. “Did you feel it?”
Sean chuckled. A deep, proud sound that vibrated right through her. “I think you’ve got another McCoy male on your hands there, Mellie.”
She glanced into his eyes. “Is something wrong? Is Marc all right?”
Sean smiled and hesitantly removed his hand from her stomach. “Marc’s fine. As nervous as all get-out, but fine.”
Melanie frowned. “Nervous? Why would he be nervous?”
“Hi, Mel.”
She would recognize that sweet voice anywhere. A fascinating feeling not all that different from what she’d experienced when the baby moved spread through her as she turned her head.
There he was. Marc. In all his six-foot-two glory, grasping the porch column as if afraid to come up the steps.
Melanie didn’t know if it was due to the pure delight she’d just experienced, but she didn’t think he’d ever looked so boyishly handsome, so completely lovable.
She cleared her throat and quickly got up from the swing. Sean moved to help her, and she smiled at him. “I’m not at that point yet.”
Sean scratched his head. “I hope you don’t mind I came along for the visit, Melanie.”
“No, no, of course not.” She slid a quick glance in Marc’s direction. He was standing in the same spot. All at once the peace she had found scattered, leaving her feeling confused and out of sorts. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll get you something to drink.”
The screen door spring squeaked as she led the way in. She motioned for them to sit in the living room, then she hurried to the kitchen. She needed a few moments by herself to adjust to Marc’s sudden appearance. She heard the crinkle of the plastic furniture covers as she started to step into the kitchen. She nearly hit her mother with the door.
There was Wilhemenia, a pitcher of lemonade and a couple of glasses already on a tray, along with a heaping plate of cookies.
Her mother smiled. “I’ve got it.”
Melanie’s heart skipped a beat as she realized her excuse for escape had been stolen from her. She briefly closed her eyes, then followed her mother into the living room.
“Melanie, dear, help me take this plastic off, won’t you, honey?” Sean and Marc awkwardly got up and stood to the side as Wilhemenia started fussing with the cushions. “You know we take this off when we’re entertaining.”
Melanie’s gaze locked onto Marc’s, and they shared a small smile. Wilhemenia never took the plastic off her furniture, unless it was to change it.
“Of course,” Melanie said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
After all the plastic was off and Melanie had taken it into the other room, she hesitantly settled into a chair, trying to figure out what Marc wanted. And why he hadn’t come on his own.
One possibility struck her, and her gaze flew to his face. He didn’t think she’d renege on her agreement to allow him to visit their baby, did he? Is that why he’d brought Sean along? To work out a more binding visitation agreement?
Wilhemenia kept up pleasant chatter, telling Sean all about the aftermath of Roger’s capture and how she might have been shot herself if his son Jake hadn’t saved her life. And didn’t he have just a handsome bunch of boys, anyway.
Marc grinned at Mel, and she automatically smiled, feeling suddenly, oddly shy
.
He motioned toward the front porch. “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?”
She stared at him blankly. “Um, sure.” She got up. “But why don’t we go out back instead?” She gave him a weak smile. “I think we’ve already given the town enough to talk about.”
Wilhemenia and Sean didn’t seem to notice their going as Sean started telling Melanie’s mother about Mitch being left at the altar some years before. Melanie looked at Marc. He didn’t appear to be tuned in to the conversation. In fact, he looked so nervous, he made her even more nervous.
She led the way to the back steps, then into the yard, moving toward the gazebo. Only when Melanie started to enter did she realize how romantic the setting was. She stopped just outside the ivy-covered structure and looked at Marc expectantly, struggling to hold his gaze when just looking at him made her hurt all over.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment as he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. It was then Melanie realized he wore a yellow oxford shirt rather than his trademark black T-shirt, and nowhere to be seen was the ever-present vest he wore to hide his firearm.
Her gaze flicked to his face. “Marc, listen, I, um, just want you to know that I’ll let you play as big or as little a role in our child’s life as you want.”
A half-smile turned up the corners of his lips. “That’s what you think my being here is about?”
She looked toward the neighbor’s. Mrs. Jennings was peering over the hedge she was trimming. “I didn’t know, what with Sean being with you and all.”
He chuckled quietly. “I brought Pops along because he wanted to come.” He paused, and she returned her gaze to his face. “If I’d have known he could handle your mother that way, I would have brought him with me three months ago.”
She frowned. Three months ago? What did he mean? She swallowed, realizing he must have meant when he tried to visit her, only to have her mother turn him away.
His gaze trailed to where her hands covered her stomach. He looked altogether awkward and irresistibly at odds with himself. “Is it true? Did you and Pops feel him move?”
Her answering smile was wide. “Or her,” she reminded him. “Yes.”
“Is he…or she still moving?”
Melanie’s throat clogged with emotion. She wasn’t sure if it was such a good idea to encourage Marc to touch her. “Would you like to feel it?”
Unlike Sean, Marc barely hesitated as he laid his hand against her belly. She closed her eyes and guided his fingers to where she had felt the movement earlier. Come on, baby, move for Daddy.
As they stood there, birds rustling in the trees, the air carrying the keen scent of freshly mown grass, Melanie had never felt so right, so complete.
“Holy cow!” Marc exclaimed, tugging his hand away.
Melanie laughed at his childlike reaction, taking as much pleasure in his response as she had in her own. “Weird, isn’t it?”
He gently put his hand back again. But this time, the tender emotion erupting inside Melanie was almost too much to bear.
If only things had been different….
“What’s it like?” Marc quietly broke into her thoughts. “I want to know everything you’re feeling.”
Melanie told him.
Marc felt as if someone had completely pulled the earth out from under his feet as he watched myriad emotions cross Mel’s face.
She finally broke eye contact. “I think he’s tired himself out.”
He took that as his cue to remove his hand, and he did, however reluctantly.
For a moment there, one sweet, miraculous moment, he’d felt connected to Mel in a way he never had before. Gone were the reasons they shouldn’t be together. Gone were any doubts he or she might have had in the past. It had just been the two of them—and their baby.
He didn’t want it to end.
She started to turn away. He gently caught her arm.
“I have something to show you, Melanie.”
Her eyes widened slightly, most likely at his use of her full name.
Despite all the times he’d visualized this moment during the long drive from Manchester, he still fumbled with the damn velvet pouch as he slid it out of his back pocket. It fell to the ground between them.
Both of them stood staring at it, unmoving.
Then Marc knelt, staying there on the soft grass as he revealed the emerald ring blanketed in a pool of white silk.
He cleared his throat, forcing himself to look at her even though it appeared she didn’t know quite what to do. “I love you, Mel. There’s no way you can’t know that. Baby or no baby, I want to marry you.” Her hands covered her stomach. “But of course I’m glad there is a baby,” he said quickly.
Her skin glowed a warm rose in the early afternoon sunshine as she whispered, “Tell me why I should believe you, Marc.”
He swallowed hard. How did he go about doing that? “Would it help if I told you I bought the ring the day after you got shot? That I got this harebrained idea, after you asked me if I loved you, that what you really wanted was to get married?” He grimaced. “Only the idea turned out to be not so dumb, because the day I came over here to propose to you was the same day I found out you were engaged to Craig.”
He cleared his throat and looked at the ring that had paled in comparison to the one she had been wearing two weeks earlier.
“It may have taken me a long time to realize it, but you were right back then, you know, when you asked if I loved you. I did love you. I do. Only I didn’t know for sure until the day I nearly lost you in the chapel.”
Mel stared at him long and hard, a suspicious dampness in her eyes. He wanted to groan but kept it in check. He supposed this was one of those times when women were allowed to cry. Even Mel. Especially Mel.
Then she turned away from him and moved toward the house.
“Mel!” He scrambled to his feet. “I’m serious. Look—” He searched his pockets as he hurried after her. “I’ve even got the receipt to prove it.”
As quickly as she turned away, she turned back, catapulting herself into his arms and nearly knocking him over. He stood stupidly, holding the ring in one hand, the receipt in the other, as she pressed her body against his, their baby very noticeably between them. He couldn’t see her face, and she was squeezing him so hard he couldn’t breathe.
“Mel, you’re killing me here.”
She threw her head back and laughed, then kissed him full on the mouth. “Why couldn’t you have said all that three months ago, you big dope?”
He frowned. “What? You’re killing me?”
Her smile softened. “Yeah. That, too.”
He opened his mouth to respond, then refrained. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
Her eyes sparkled more brightly than the gem in his hand. “Yes, it may scare me to death, but it means exactly that.”
Everything that had swirled around like pieces from different puzzles three months ago suddenly settled into place as he looked into her face. Never had he been so sure that he was doing the right thing.
He swept her into his arms and started marching toward the house, ignoring her laughing demands to be let down.
He grinned at her. “Uh-uh. Not until we’re standing in front of a real pastor….”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6132-1
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Copyright © 1999 by Lori and Tony Karayianni.
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