She's Got the Look

by Leslie Kelly

  It had been a good arrangement. And since the two of them shared a delight in poker, in boating and in women, their friendship had grown rapidly. They’d even found common financial interests. Including, recently, a mutual desire to aid a riverboat-gambling proposal being lobbied for by a few local, er…businessmen. Some of Jonathan’s shady clients had liked having an in with the local media…a chance to get less-than-flattering stories removed from the inspection of the press and to get some good PR whenever possible.

  Drake had liked the money. Some might call it accepting bribes at the expense of his journalistic integrity. He preferred to think of it as his future alimony fund.

  Jonathan’s thing for ladies’ panties had been a surprise, but Drake had laughed it off as drunken rambling when his friend had first mentioned it a year ago. Later, when Jonathan had said the same thing while sober…well, Drake had quickly gotten over it. He was no saint in his bedroom. If he enjoyed leather and handcuffs, why couldn’t his friend get the same satisfaction from silk and lace?

  But what was fine in private was far from fine when it was in the public eye, particularly for people like Drake who were already so very much in the public eye. Guilty by association, that’s how most viewers—and TV execs—would look at it. That was why he’d had to back off and play down his friendship with the murdered attorney soon after his death. He’d done so the minute more risqué details had leaked out about the murder—like the fact that Rhodes had been shot while wearing ladies’ underwear, in a closet full of lingerie. Hopefully, Drake had disassociated himself soon enough.

  “You still seething over Jonathan? There’s no way you could have known how he’d be found. God, it makes me sick to even think about it.”

  Drake didn’t so much as glance over at Angie Jacobs, who reclined on some pillows on the other side of his bed, smoking a cigarette. He hated her smoking in his apartment, especially since smoking was one of the first things he’d had to give up last year after his heart attack. But considering she’d just blown him with more skill than any professional, he didn’t think he ought to complain.

  “I should have known about that damned closet,” he said instead. “Or you should have. I mean, you slept with him the weekend before he died, didn’t you?”

  “Jealous?” she asked, sounding amused and pleased at the thought.

  “Hardly.”

  Frankly, beyond giving an admittedly superior blow job and having a finely tuned nose for any scandalous story in Savannah, Angie meant nothing to him. Which was exactly what he’d told her the night of Rosemary Chilton’s party when she’d tried to make him jealous by flirting with Jonathan Rhodes. She’d been furious—typical Angie—and had gone home with the other man.

  Drake hadn’t cared. He hadn’t wanted to hang around, anyway, since Angie wasn’t the only one of his exes present at Rosemary’s party. For a decent-size city, Savannah could still be so small-town. Things had gotten a bit uncomfortable when he’d looked across the crowd and spied a familiar pair of dark, angry eyes.

  Besides, Angie turning to Jonathan had provided an easy out from what was already becoming a stale relationship. Drake would have left it at that since he was pretty tired of Angie anyway, but somehow the two of them had found their way back together after Rhodes’s murder. Frankly, it was good to have an ally in a storm of controversy and they were both in the eye of the station executives. Besides, in a weird way, he kind of got off on doing a woman who’d been fucked by a murder victim less than a week before his demise.

  “Believe me, if you were a bit jealous, you’d have no reason to be.”

  He wasn’t.

  “Because when Jonathan asked me if he could try on my panties before I left his place last Saturday night, I thought I was going to throw up. The sick bastard.” Her voice shook with anger.

  Drake didn’t want to imagine how she’d responded, but he’d bet it wasn’t pretty. If Rhodes had bought it the weekend of Rosemary’s party, he’d have suspected Angie of the crime. God knows, considering how rough she occasionally liked to get in bed, she didn’t have any problem with violence.

  Sometimes he wondered if his heart was up to the kind of sex he had with Angie. But, frankly, his dick had always called the shots over his heart…which hadn’t boded well for his marriage.

  Angie stirred, rolling to the side of the bed to get up. She never stayed long, having learned in the two months of their sexual relationship that he didn’t like clinginess. So she was obviously playing this cool, not pushing things, treating their surprising reunion carefully.

  Good. Because the last thing he wanted was for her to think tonight meant anything. He’d already been down the married path, and the long-term-mistress one. He had no interest in doing either one again. The marriage had cost him a heart valve, a ton of money and months’ worth of embarrassment. Not to mention the college yacht race trophy he’d been so proud of.

  The mistress, who’d expected to become the next wife, had been even more vengeful.

  So short-term flings with women who weren’t in the position to make demands were just the ticket. From the flight attendant he’d been banging in June, to Angie here, he much preferred meaningless sex to commitment.

  “Do you think it’s true that the underwear he was wearing when he died belonged to that woman we were talking to at the party?” Angie asked as she pulled her clothes on. “That photographer friend of Rosemary’s?”

  “You mean the one that dark-haired cop couldn’t take his eyes off of?” he asked, amused. “The cop you, if I recall correctly, looked ready to leap on?”

  “Shut up,” she snapped. “He’s a low-class nobody.”

  She couldn’t fool him. Angie had worn her lust for the man the way some women wore cheap perfume—until it practically oozed from every pore of her body.

  “Jonathan did seem rather taken with her, didn’t he?” Drake said, remembering her original question. “My source on the PD confirms she was one of the last people to see him alive Friday, and the police have questioned her.”

  “I know.” Angie dragged deeply on her cigarette, then flicked it into a nearly empty glass of water on the table by the bed.

  Drake frowned, wanting her to leave.

  “I’m wondering,” she continued, “what her relationship is with Detective Walker.”

  “The nobody?” He didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm.

  Her eyes narrowed, as did her lips. “For your information, my main concern is what, exactly, Jonathan might have said to that woman. Since she is obviously acquainted with Detective Walker, and he’s investigating the murder, it might be worth finding out what she knows about your…arrangement with Jonathan.”

  Drake didn’t blink, didn’t move a muscle. He just stared at Angie, who continued to fidget around with the zipper on her tight skirt. She finally noticed his lack of response and looked over. “What?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  She gave him a sly, catlike smile. “Jonathan did like his pillow talk. I know now why you killed that story on his money-laundering client. And why you did the exposé on the council member who was fighting so hard against the gambling legislation.”

  Son of a bitch. Jonathan had talked to Angie about their arrangement.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t plan on telling anyone. If that perverted bastard hadn’t gotten himself killed, believe me, I would have wanted in on the action.”

  Yes, he suspected she would have.

  “So you see, don’t you, why I’d like to find out what this Melody Tanner knows. Strictly for your sake, of course.”

  Oh, right. His sake. If it would get her an anchor slot or bring her to the attention of CNN, Angie would serve his weak heart up on a platter without a second’s hesitation. “Well, maybe you should cozy up to the cop and see what he knows,” he suggested, knowing his taunt would piss her off.

  It did. “Fine. Forget it. You can laugh all you want and I’ll sit back and watch when that
woman leads the cops right to your door. Maybe they’ll want to know how ‘close’ you and Rhodes really were…in a business sense of course.”

  They stared at each other across the expanse of the bed and, for a second, Drake considered lunging across it and smacking her. But he somehow managed to offer her a smile of truce instead. “Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe it is worth checking out this photographer…just to make sure she doesn’t know anything.”

  Though he hated to admit it, he realized, as he said the words, that Angie might be right. In order to get close to the Tanner woman’s underwear drawer, there was no telling what Jonathan Rhodes might have let slip.

  “Now, why don’t you let yourself out?” he asked, not trying to hide his boredom. She walked to the door, pausing only when he said, “And, Angie? Leave the key.”

  Her eyes flashed and she fisted her hands at her sides, knowing what he meant. But at least she left without a scene.

  Which was good. Because Drake had some damage control to do. And the place he needed to start was with the woman: Melody Tanner.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  NICK HADN’T BEEN SURE how Melody would react after they’d made love on her couch Tuesday night. But the woman had surprised him, as usual. There’d been no embarrassment. She hadn’t expressed any regrets, didn’t blame herself or him.

  No. Instead, after they’d both recovered enough from their passionate encounter to at least breathe normally again, she’d simply pulled her dress on over her naked body and invited him to stay for dinner, which he had.

  Her pasta sucked. But the sex more than made up for it.

  Funny, he would have expected their intimacy to make things more strained between them. But they’d laughed through dinner, talking, sharing sips of wine and opening up a little more about silly things. Movies. Pets. Her lousy cooking and his bad temper.

  They’d talked about everything from the heat wave to the play-offs to Rosemary and Dex. She’d asked about Joyful and he’d given her the Reader’s Digest version of his childhood there…leaving out a few details. Like what it had meant growing up the younger son of the town’s meanest drunken bully.

  He’d asked her whether she’d really been the Oscar Mayer kid and she’d confirmed it by introducing him to Oscar…one of her cats. Her cats liked him, though he still hadn’t figured out who C.C. was named for.

  She’d told him what it had been like to “come and play” on Sesame Street as a five-year-old. And he’d told her about Johnny and Emma, their upcoming wedding, and even, just a bit, about the scandal that had brought the two of them together.

  Somehow, it seemed that making love had let them completely remove the stress and expectation of her list, of the way they’d met. Of the murder. Everything else had been left at the door…everything except Nick and Melody and their overwhelming chemistry.

  By the end of the evening, he’d been absolutely sure of one thing: Melody Tanner was a funny, vivacious woman who had a wicked sense of humor and a laugh that deserved to be bottled and sold as a drug. Because he felt high whenever he heard it.

  When he’d left at around ten, he felt they’d completely eliminated the wall of embarrassment and mistrust she’d erected between them shortly after they’d met. That she’d let down her barriers and allowed herself to be the real Melody…charming, funny, happy and confident. And sexy enough to stop his heart.

  It had been about the finest evening he’d ever spent with a woman. Which made this so much harder to take.

  “Good God, Mel,” he mumbled as he looked over the newspaper photos he’d tracked down on the Internet Wednesday afternoon. “No wonder you needed a list…even then you must have suspected you were marrying a bastard.”

  He hadn’t wanted to do it, but the thought that Melody’s infamous list might actually have something to do with Jonathan Rhodes’s murder made it necessary to look into Melody’s past. And what an awful past it had been.

  The media coverage of the spurned-wife scandal had been brutal. The Atlanta papers seemed to have delighted in taking potshots at the former model who’d come up with such flamboyant revenge against her cheating husband last year. The pictures had been grainy and black-and-white, but in spite of that, the images of a paint-smeared Melody being rescued by a fireman on an extension ladder were quite shocking.

  He had to hand it to her, the billboard thing had been inspired. It was just too damn bad she’d gotten caught.

  “I hate this,” he mumbled as he shut down his computer.

  He hated what he had to do. Absolutely hated that he had to go back over to Melody’s place and question her about her ex-husband, letting on that he knew all about her ugly divorce. What she’d done. What it had cost her. Everything.

  He needed to know one thing from her, the one thing the papers hadn’t been able to report: how had Dr. Bill Todd reacted? With perhaps murderous anger?

  Figuring he’d at least try to recapture the good vibes from the previous night before he hit her with what he knew, he decided to wait until dinnertime to talk to her. So, without calling to give her any warning, he knocked on her door at six o’clock Wednesday night with a large pizza in one hand and a bottle of wine tucked under his arm.

  This time, she asked who it was. “Good girl,” he replied. Then, louder, he added, “It’s the pizza guy.”

  “I don’t open the door for strange delivery men unless they work for Cartier.”

  He laughed. “No diamonds. Will anchovies do?”

  Opening the door, she raised a brow as she saw the pizza and the wine. “Anchovies? I thought you had a thing about fish.”

  “I was kidding. Pepperoni and green pepper. It was the least I could do since you supplied dinner last night.”

  “Did we see each other last night? I can barely remember. Must not have been that memorable.”

  Striding through the door, he set the pizza and wine on a table by the door and caught her around the waist. Planting a deep kiss on her laughing mouth, he mumbled, “Ringing any bells?”

  “Hmm. Might need more reminding.”

  He kissed her again. Deeper, hotter, the little whimper in her throat telling him just how much she liked it.

  That whimper also reminded him he had to stop. Going further with Melody—going to bed with her again—wasn’t an option until he admitted that he’d spent much of the day digging into her past, prying into her most painful, private moments.

  Letting her go with a regretful shrug, he stepped back and picked up the pizza. “So, what do you say?”

  “How do you know I haven’t already made something?”

  “It’s pizza. Is there anything else?”

  “Ah, yes, the perfect comfort food for every pathetic single woman who doesn’t want to eat canned tuna fish with her cat every night,” she said as she followed him.

  He put the pizza on the counter, and set the bottle beside it before turning around to give her an incredulous look. “Pathetic doesn’t come close to describing you, darlin’. I don’t think you’d have to spend one evening alone for the rest of your life if you didn’t really want to.”

  “Maybe I do want to.”

  With a half smile he asked, “You want me to go?”

  She hesitated for maybe the length of one slowly inhaled breath, then shook her head. “No.”

  Good thing. Because he wasn’t going anywhere. Not only because he wanted her with the desperation of a man who’d had only one incredible night with her. But also because he had to figure out a way to question this woman about what must have been the most humiliating time of her entire life. Other than the thing with the dead guy in her underwear, of course.

  This still wasn’t exactly dating, he reminded himself. Coming to her house with pizza and wine, or pulling up a plate for some extra pasta, or having crazy hot sex on her living-room couch was not dating. So he wasn’t feeling the least bit tense or uptight, the way he normally did whenever he considered actually jumping back on the stupid relationship bandwagon.
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  What he and Melody had, other than a hot-enough-to-melt-the-arctic-shelf attraction, was a sort of friendship. At least, as much of a friendship as you could have with someone you wanted to smother in chocolate and then lick clean.

  “This is the kind you like, right?” he asked, gesturing toward the bottle of red wine.

  “Yeah. Though pizza goes better with beer, doesn’t it?”

  He certainly thought so. But Melody didn’t seem like a beer-drinking kind of woman.

  She put that supposition to rest by reaching for an open bottle that had been sitting on her small kitchen table. “There’s more in the fridge.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. Grabbing a bottle of beer, he untwisted the cap and drank gratefully from it. The wine he’d save for later—Melody might need it when they got around to talking business. His business.

  But not now. For now, he simply wanted to enjoy talking to her the way he had last night after they’d…well, just after.

  “So, you never did answer my question last night about your mother,” he said as he leaned against the counter and watched her open the pizza box, bending over to sniff appreciatively.

  “Did you ask me a question about my mother?”

  “Having a hard time remembering our conversation?” he asked, knowing what he most remembered about the previous evening.

  She stretched a little, a lethargic smile on her face. “I remember a lot of questions…mostly involving the word where.”

  Heat washed through him. “You know, I was asking where in your apartment you wanted to go.”

  Nibbling her lip and looking sheepish, she replied, “Sorry. I didn’t realize that.”

  A bit of color spotted her cheeks and Nick marveled at how utterly adorable this woman could be. A paradox, really…one minute strong and confident. Then intensely sexual. Then uncertain and nervous. And now, so cute and embarrassed.

  Clearing her throat and getting out some plates and silverware, Melody said, “What was it you asked about my mother?”

  Knowing she was intentionally changing the subject, steering clear of anything more intimate—for now—he answered, “I asked if she was happy with this rich new guy you said she married.”