by Leslie Kelly
“I think that went just fine,” he replied, still chuckling.
Yeah. It’d gone very well. He’d say their relationship was off to a rousing start. They’d talked and flirted, taunted and argued. Most of all, they’d pushed each other’s buttons.
She had awakened something in him—something he hadn’t felt in a good long time, if ever. It wasn’t merely lust. The sex-list thing had been a joke, he knew that. He’d simply liked teasing her with it to see the way her eyes snapped with fire, her chin jutted out and her sexy mouth turned mulish.
No, it wasn’t because of any list that he couldn’t wait to seek out Miss Tanner again. It was because for the first time in a number of years, he’d met a woman who’d gotten in the last word and left him practically begging for more. That, and because he was genuinely interested in getting to know her.
“Don’t you think you should go after her?” the waitress said as she came by with his check.
He shook his head. “Too soon.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman said as she walked away.
The young mother apparently agreed with the waitress. “No, it’s not too soon.” She kept on talking even while doing that nasty spit-on-a-napkin-to-wipe-the-kid’s-face thing all mothers did. “You need to strike while the iron is hot.”
Nick caught the kid’s resigned look and winked. “Oh?”
“She’s all flustered now. Once she gets home and thinks about it, she’s going to forget how charming you were and only remember how you yanked her chain about that list of hers.”
Nick winced. The woman had heard every word they’d said.
“Listen, when you have babies you develop ears like a hawk. And your conversation was a mite bit more interesting than ours.”
He laughed, dropping his hand to the pre-schooler’s head to rustle his soft hair. “You got a smart mama, you know that?”
The little boy nodded. Then, lifting his hand, he said, “What does this mean?”
Nick knew the middle finger was gonna pop up about two seconds before it actually did. “Yikes, sorry,” he muttered.
The mother sighed heavily and waved a hand, shooing him off while she dealt with the child.
Nick didn’t plan to act on the young woman’s advice. He had a feeling Melody wouldn’t take kindly to being followed down the streets of Savannah. Besides, he didn’t need to follow her. He knew where she lived.
Glancing at the table they’d shared, he spied Mel’s half-empty cup. It was smeared with a bit of her lipstick, the rosy color shining brightly against the white mug. Strange, he could still almost see her slim hand curled around it and the way her lips pursed as she blew on it to take off some of the steam.
Crazy. He’d never been so focused, so aware of a woman before. Of her every movement, the way she lifted her hand to brush back an errant strand of hair. The hitchy little sound she made in the back of her throat when she was upset. That brilliant, full-lipped smile.
Still looking at the mug, he started to chuckle as he realized something. Even though she’d blown him off with a resounding silent hand gesture, he’d obviously gotten under her skin. Melody had been so flustered she’d forgotten to even pay for her coffee, leaving him stuck with the bill. His and hers.
He didn’t mind, he’d have wanted to pay anyway. But he’d bet anything she wouldn’t have wanted him to.
When he actually looked at the check, his chuckle turned into a full laugh. Because Melody hadn’t only walked out without paying for a cup of coffee. “Biscuits and gravy,” he read aloud.
Mel had left him with the bill for her breakfast, and she’d had his favorite. Somehow that made him like her even more.
And reaffirmed just how much he couldn’t wait to see her again.
AFTER HER SILENT parting shot, Melody hadn’t been able to get out of the restaurant fast enough. She’d almost tripped over a couple of people as she’d made her escape, but she didn’t think she’d have been able to stop if someone who’d eaten one too many cholesterol-laden scrambled eggs keeled over of a heart attack right in front of her.
“Too much,” she muttered as she stood outside in the hot Savannah morning a few moments later. She’d had to pause to make her heart stop pounding and to regain her calm.
Nick Walker was too much. She just couldn’t take him today. Or tomorrow. Or next year. Maybe when she was fifty she could handle a man like Nick, but until then, uh-uh.
Why, oh why had Rosemary done this to her? Setting her up, telling him about that stupid list? She’d thrown Melody to the wolves…at least one Big Bad Wolf…when Rosemary, better than anyone, knew how deeply Bill’s betrayals had hurt her.
A product of a home broken by infidelity herself when she was very young, Rosemary had been the one Mel had confided in during the last miserable months of her marriage. Before she’d gone to the billboard, before she’d made a laughingstock of herself, Melody had poured her heart out to Rosemary.
And this was how her friend had repaid her.
“Maybe that’s why she did it,” she admitted under her breath. Because on one or two occasions when the self-doubt had been overwhelming, she’d told her best friend about her deepest fear—that Bill’s description of her as a pretty, lifeless, sexless doll was true. Rosemary had been a quiet, comforting voice of support. But she’d also wanted to go find a voodoo priestess and have some juju put on Bill so he could never get it up again.
Hmm…if the bastard didn’t stay out of her life from now on, Melody might just think about it.
Rosemary believed in action, not words. So Melody could almost hear her justifying today’s actions. Her friend had undoubtedly figured that the minute Melody recognized her Time magazine hero, she’d forget the list had been a joke, let her libido take over for her brain, and end up wiling away the rest of the day in this guy’s bed.
Finally realizing she’d better go before Nick came outside and assume she’d been waiting for him, she started walking back toward her place. “He’d probably think I was out here planning to pounce on him because of that stupid list,” she muttered.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t been tempted—the man was temptation on two legs. But she wasn’t ready for it. Sex with anybody required a level of trust she wasn’t sure she was capable of giving anymore.
And sex with somebody who could crush her with one bored look, or a lack of interest in a second round? No way. Her ego couldn’t stand it. She’d be better off going to bed with the unsexiest, most boring, unattractive guy she could find. That way, if she wasn’t inspiring enough to command a repeat performance, at least she wouldn’t give a damn.
With Nick, she’d give a damn.
She really didn’t deserve this, not now when she finally felt that things were coming together. Because Nick Walker made her feel anything but together. He confused her. Angered her. Amused her. Oh, Lord, definitely aroused her. But she didn’t have time in her life for any of that right now. Not confusion or anger, not distraction or embarrassment.
Not sex. Not him.
“Not sex with him.”
“Excuse me?”
She realized she’d spoken aloud when she glanced up and saw a man standing directly in front of her on the sidewalk. She’d almost barreled into him, paying attention only to what was going on in her head and not what was happening in front of her face. For a second she thought she’d just made an idiot of herself for about the tenth time in an hour in front of a complete stranger. But this wasn’t a stranger.
She wasn’t sure whether that made it better or worse.
“Uh, hi,” she said, clearing her throat. “I almost didn’t recognize you without salsa music or the smell of enchiladas.”
The Hispanic owner of the Mexican restaurant where Melody had hung out with her friends for years gave her a warm smile. “Believe it or not, this is my second favorite place to eat.” He pointed to the café she’d just left, which was only a few yards behind her. “I come here for grits and biscuits.”
The restaurant owner, who kept his few strands of overly shiny black hair brushed across his bald head in a blatant attempt to defy late middle-age, didn’t look like the grits-and-biscuits type. Though judging by the pendulous belly straining the buttons of his short-sleeved white dress shirt, Mel supposed he hadn’t been living on tortillas alone.
“You’re not with your friends this morning?” he asked, looking around as if expecting to see Paige, Rosemary or Tanya hiding behind a car parked at the curb. “I didn’t think you girls ever did anything without each other.”
She really hated the way some men called grown women “girls.” That was on her pet-peeve list. Along with men who called their cars their “ride” and their wives “baby.” Like her ex had.
“Not today. I’m all by myself,” she said.
He shook his head. “That is not good, señora. You shouldn’t be alone at this time. You should be with people…people who appreciate you and make you smile in that beautiful way.” His eyes glittered as he repeated, “Such a beautiful smile.”
His words were friendly, but something about the way he was looking at her made her uncomfortable. It was almost personal. Flirtatious. If he weren’t twenty years her senior and hadn’t been serving her and her friends chicken burritos since they were in middle school, she’d suspect the guy was coming on to her.
“I would give anything to see that smile every day.”
Okay, he was coming on to her. Eww.
Suddenly the idea of hooking up with an unsexy, unappealing guy for the sake of her ego became less palatable. Particularly when she, uh, pictured the possibilities with this one.
Nope. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t have sex with someone who didn’t attract her, not even for the sake of her banged-up pride. Not for fun, not because of a list, not to get back in the saddle, not for anything. So, really, the only solution was to have no sex at all. Not for a long, long time. Years. Decades.
Then she pictured Nick’s face…his big hands, his hard body, his soft, sexy voice.
And wondered if she’d last the week.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, as Nick headed from the station over to the D.A.’s office to pick up some paperwork, he realized he was still thinking about the woman he’d met for breakfast the day before. He hadn’t been able to get Melody off his mind since she’d walked out of the diner, leaving him there with a big smile on his face and a strong sense of anticipation in his mind.
It’d been a good long time since any woman had occupied his thoughts as she had over the past twenty-four hours. The past couple of weeks, really, since he’d been a little fascinated by her ever since he’d seen her spying on him with her camera.
A good long time? Hell, he couldn’t remember ever being so instantly attracted to someone. He’d had a hard time throwing off the image of her smile while he and Dex talked to their informant yesterday, and it’d been even harder to get to sleep last night with the sound of her laughter bouncing around in his head. He’d been so distracted, he hadn’t even noticed that Fredo was in his closet turning shoe leather into beef jerkey for a good bit of the evening.
He was still wondering why that particular woman wouldn’t leave his thoughts as he got into his car in the parking lot outside the station. Before he could even turn the key in the ignition, however, his cell phone rang. Checking the caller ID and recognizing the number, he answered, “Walker.”
“That’s my line.”
He shook his head, still not used to answering the phone and hearing Johnny’s voice on the other end. Damn, it’d been a long ten years without his one-year-older brother in his life. “Hey, Mr. Hotshot D.A. Does the town council know you’re making personal calls from the office?”
“Does the chief of police know you had breakfast with a strange woman yesterday?” his brother replied.
“Now, if we were both in Joyful, I wouldn’t even have to ask how you knew that.”
“Dex told me. I called you at your desk two minutes ago.”
Shaking his head as he buckled his seat belt, Nick said, “Knowing my partner is not a gossipy old woman, I gotta wonder what exactly you said to get that information out of his mouth.”
Johnny chuckled. “I asked him if you had any kind of social life whatsoever, since I suspect you haven’t been laid since making detective. You work too hard, little brother.”
Nick wasn’t going to argue that one. Because damned if Johnny wasn’t right.
Johnny had the courtesy not to rub it in. “So who was the woman?”
“I don’t know yet,” he admitted, knowing it was true. He didn’t know for sure who Melody was. “She’s a puzzle.”
Johnny understood. “Have fun figuring it out.”
No doubt about it. He was going to enjoy every minute of figuring what made her tick. “So what’s going on?”
“I promised Emma Jean I’d call and remind you about getting measured for your tux.”
Emma Jean was Johnny’s fiancée, the infamous woman who’d landed the former most eligible bachelor of Joyful. One more reason he’d never move back home…he sure didn’t want to inherit that title. “I have to wear an undertaker suit?”
“Undertakers don’t wear cummerbunds.”
“What the hell is a cummerbund?”
“Don’t worry. Your job is to show up, wear what you’re told to wear and not lose the ring.”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider eloping to Vegas?”
“I suggested it, but she didn’t bite,” Johnny said with a sigh. “And as best man, you have to suffer with me.”
Best man. It still boggled the mind. Even though his brother had thought the worst of him, along with everyone else in Joyful, Johnny had been among the first to listen—and to hear—the truth when Nick had finally gone home a few months ago to set things right…with his brother, with their mother. With his ex-wife, Daneen. Even with Daneen’s ten-year-old son, Jack.
The boy Nick had once prayed would be his.
“Emma wants an old-fashioned wedding, so we’re both stuck with the penguin suits.” Johnny didn’t really sound upset, which wasn’t surprising. His brother was totally gone on his fiancée.
Funny, thinking of Emma Jean as his brother’s bride…considering Nick had once asked her to marry him. Of course, that was years ago, before he’d walked out on her on prom night so he could run away and marry Daneen, who’d named him as the father of her unborn baby. One lie among many.
Things sure had worked out, because Johnny had always been the one Em had wanted. Nick had figured that out long ago. “Jack sounds pretty excited to be an usher.”
His brother was silent for a moment. “I didn’t realize you’ve been talking to Jack.”
“He e-mailed me in July. Seems he has no problem with me not being his father, but he still wants me to be his friend. We’ve talked a few times,” Nick said, still surprised himself.
“I told you that kid was something special.” Johnny had doted on Jack for years, so he’d been the one who’d taken Nick to meet the boy for the first time in June. Somehow, Johnny had known—as no one else did—that Nick was still raw when it came to Daneen’s son…the child who should have been his.
They could never have predicted how Jack would react. He’d been incredibly mature, admitting he’d known since age six that his mother had lied about his paternity. He’d overheard the truth but had kept silent, not wanting to embarrass Daneen or upset his Grandma. He’d also thanked Nick for helping them out financially over the years…something no one else knew about.
Some kid, that one. Made Nick wonder how things might have turned out if he’d reacted differently. If instead of lashing out in anger at Daneen and joining the marines, he’d stuck around to be some kind of father to the boy.
Too late. Much too late.
“You are coming back for the engagement party, right?”
“Will that get me out of wearing the cumbersome thing?”
“Cummerbund,” Johnny said w
ith a chuckle. “And no.”
Nick gave an exaggerated sigh. “I suppose I’ll come anyway.”
“Good. Gotta go,” Johnny said. “I have an hour with the courthouse secretary before she has to go on dog-tag duty.”
Ahh, Joyful. Some things never changed.
Disconnecting, and starting the car, Nick couldn’t help thinking about how different his life was from three months ago. He had a family again…a connection to Joyful, of all places. Things he’d never expected. So maybe the idea of finding a special woman wasn’t so ridiculous. Hell…maybe he already had.
Emma Jean would crow about that. His future sister-in-law had been urging him to believe he could meet someone, have something better in his future than he’d had in his past. Frankly, though he’d never admit something so sappy, having a relationship with his family again had given him a better future. And the other relationships from his old life seemed to be resolved now, too. Like the one with his ex-wife.
No, he was never going to forget that Daneen had lied to him—giving him the expectation of being a father, then yanking it away a month after their marriage. Or that she’d gone back home after their divorce and made him out as a villain who’d abandoned her and their child.
But he’d somehow been able to finally let go of his anger and come to an understanding with Daneen. She’d been as much a kid as him—just a couple of teenagers trying to escape from their shitty lives. And God knows she’d gone through hell lately. He pitied her, really, because at some point, he’d forgiven her.
A year ago, forgiveness hadn’t even been in his vocabulary. Now he had a more than passing acquaintance with the word.
So, yeah, maybe Em was right. Maybe things could be different. Nick had certainly changed, in more ways than one.
What had happened yesterday was a prime example. Because he sure couldn’t remember ever being as fascinated by a woman as he was with the sassy, ponytailed redhead who’d flipped him off.