There was a Glenzen Bros. truck parked out in front of the house. And Harry Glenzen—one of the original Glenzen brothers’ great-great-grandsons—was there with Barney Kingman. Together the two men were affixing a large piece of plywood to the dining-room window. Or rather to the frame of what used to be the dining-room window.
Melody had to push her seat all the way back to maneuver her girth out from behind the steering wheel.
From inside the house, she could hear the unmistakable roar of the vacuum cleaner. Andy Marshall, she thought. Had to be. Brittany was going to be mad as a hornet.
“Hiya, Mel,” Harry called cheerfully. “How about this heat wave we’re having, huh? We’ve got a real Indian summer this year. If it keeps up, the kids’ll be able to go trick-or-treating without their jackets on.”
“Hey, Harry.” Melody tried not to sound unenthusiastic, but this heat was killing her. She’d suffered all the way through July and August and the first part of September. But it was October now, and October in New England was supposed to be filled with crisp autumn days. There was nothing about today that could be called even remotely crisp.
She dragged herself up the front steps of the enormous Victorian house both she and her sister had grown up in. Melody had moved back in after college, intending to live rent free for a year until she decided what she wanted to do with her life, where she wanted to go. But then her mom had met a man. A very nice man. A very nice, wealthy man. Before Melody could even blink, her mother had remarried, packed up her things and moved to Florida, leaving Mel to take care of the sale of the house.
It wasn’t long after that that Brittany filed for divorce. After nearly ten years of marriage, she and her husband, Quentin, had called it quits and Britt moved in with Melody.
Melody never did get around to putting the house on the market. And Mom didn’t mind. She was happier than Melody had ever seen her, returning to the Northeast for a month each summer and inviting her two daughters down to Sarasota each winter.
They were just two sisters, living together. Melody could imagine them in their nineties, still living in the same house, the old Evans girls, still unmarried, eccentric as hell, the stuff of which town legends were made.
But soon there would be three of them living together in this big old house, breaking with that particular tradition. The baby was due just in time for Christmas. Maybe by then the temperature would have finally dropped below eighty degrees.
Melody opened the front door. As she lugged her briefcase into the house, she heard the vacuum cleaner shut off.
“Mel, is that you?”
“It’s me.” Melody looked longingly toward the stairs that led to her bedroom. All she wanted to do was lie down. Instead, she took a deep breath and headed for the kitchen. “What happened?”
“Andy Marshall happened, that’s what happened,” Britt fumed, coming into the cheery yellow room through the door that connected to the dining room. “The little juvenile delinquent threw a baseball through the dining-room window. We have to special order the replacement glass because the damn thing’s not standard-sized. The little creep claimed the ball slipped out of his hand. He says it was an accident.”
Mel set her briefcase on the kitchen table and sank into one of the chairs. “Maybe it was.”
Britt gave her such a dark look, Melody had to laugh. “It’s not funny,” Brittany said. “Ever since the Romanellas took that kid in, it’s been chaos. Andy Marshall has a great big Behavior Problem, capital B, capital P.”
“Even kids with behavior problems have accidents,” Melody pointed out mildly, resting her forehead in the palm of her hand. God, she was tired.
Her sister’s eyes softened. “Oh, hell. Another bad day?”
Melody nodded. “The entire town is getting used to seeing my car pulled over to the side of the road. Nobody stops to see if I’m okay anymore. It’s just, ‘Oh, there’s Melody Evans hurling again.’ Honk, honk, ‘Hey, Mel!’ and then they’re gone. I feel like a victim of the boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome. One of these days, I’m going to be pulled to the side of the road in hard labor, giving birth to this baby, and no one’s going to stop to help me.”
Brittany took a glass down from the cabinet, filling it with a mixture of soda water and ginger ale. “Push those fluids. Replace what you’ve lost,” she said, Andy Marshall finally forgotten. “In this weather, your number-one goal should be to keep yourself from becoming dehydrated.”
Melody took the glass her sister was pressing on her. Her stomach was still rolling and queasy, so she only took a small sip before she set it down on the table. “Why don’t you go upstairs and change out of your nurse’s uniform before you forget you’re not at work any longer and try to give me a sponge bath or something?” she suggested.
Britt didn’t smile at her pitiful attempt at a joke. “Only if you promise to lie down and let me take care of dinner.” Melody’s sister had to be the only person in the world who could make an offer to cook dinner sound like a dire threat.
“I will,” Melody promised, pushing herself out of the chair. “And thank you. I just want to check the answering machine. I ordered the latest Robert Parker book from the library and Mrs. B. thought it might be back in today. I want to see if she called.” She started toward the den.
“My, my, you do have quite a wild and crazy lifestyle. Spending Friday night at home with a book again. Honestly, Mel, it’s something of a miracle that you managed to get pregnant in the first place.”
Mel pretended not to have heard that comment as she approached the answering machine. There were only two messages, but one of them was a long one. She sat down as the tape took forever to rewind.
…it’s something of a miracle that you managed to get pregnant in the first place…something of a miracle…
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, remembering the look in Harlan Jones’s eyes as she’d met him at the door to her hotel room.
Cleaned up and wearing a naval dress uniform, he’d looked like a stranger. His shoulders were broader than she remembered. He seemed taller and harder and thoroughly, impossibly, devastatingly handsome.
She’d felt geeky and plain, dressed in too conservative clothes from the American shop in the hotel. And at the same time, she felt underdressed. The store had had nothing in her bra size except for something in that old-fashioned, cross-your-heart, body-armor style her grandmother used to wear, so she’d opted to go without. Suddenly, the silky fabric of the dress felt much too thin.
At least her hair was blond again, but she’d cut it much too short in her attempt to disguise herself. It would take weeks before she looked like anything other than a punk-rock time traveler from the early 1980s.
“I ordered room service,” she’d told him shyly. “I hope you don’t mind if we stay in….”
It was the boldest thing she’d ever done. But Jones’s smile and the rush of heat in his eyes left no room for doubt. She’d done the right thing.
He’d locked the door behind him and pulled her into his arms and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her….
“Hi, Melody, this is Mrs. Beatrice from the Appleton Public Library,” said the cheery voice on the tape, interrupting Melody’s thoughts. “The book you requested is here. We’ve got quite a waiting list for this one, so if you aren’t interested any longer, please give me a call! Hope you’re feeling better, dear. I heard the heat’s due to break in a day or two. I know when I was carrying Tommy, my eldest boy, I simply could not handle any temperature higher than seventy-two. Tom Senior actually went out and bought an air conditioner for me! You might want to think about something like that. If you want, I could send both Toms over to help you girls install it. Call me! Bye now!”
Girls. Sheesh.
That’s my girl.
With determination, Melody pushed that thought out of her head.
The machine beeped, and a different voice, a male voice with the slightest of drawls, began to talk.
“Yeah,
hi, I hope this is the right number. I’m looking for Melody Evans…?”
Melody sat forward. Dear God, it couldn’t be, could it? But she knew exactly who it was. This was one voice she was never going to forget. Ever. Not until the day she died.
“This is Lt. Harlan Jones, and Mel, if you’re listening, I, uh, I’ve been thinking about you. I’m going to be stationed here on the East Coast, in Virginia, for a couple of months, and um…well, it’s not that far from Boston. I mean, it’s closer than California and it’s a whole hell of a lot closer than the Middle East and…”
On the tape, he cleared his throat. Melody realized she was sitting on the edge of her seat, eager for his every word.
“I know you said what you said before you got on the plane for Boston back in March, but…” He laughed, then swore softly, and she could almost see him rolling his eyes. “Hell, as long as I’m groveling, I might as well be honest about it. Bottom line, honey—I think about you all the time, all the time, and I want to see you again. Please call me back.” He left a number, repeating it twice, and then hung up.
The answering machine beeped and then was silent.
“Oh. My. God.”
Melody looked up to see Brittany standing in the doorway.
“Is this guy trying to win some kind of title as Mr. Romantic, or what?” her sister continued. “He is totally to die for, Mel. That cute little cowboy accent—where’s he from anyway?”
“Texas,” Melody said faintly. Lieutenant. He’d called himself Lt. Harlan Jones. He’d gotten a promotion, been awarded a higher rank.
“That’s right. Texas. You told me that.” Britt sat down across from her. “Mel, he wants to see you again. This is so great!”
“This is not so great!” Melody countered. “I can’t see him—are you kidding? God, Britt, he’ll take one look at me and…”
Brittany was looking at her as if she’d just confessed to murdering the neighbors and burying them in their basement. “Oh, Melody, you didn’t—”
“He’ll know,” Melody finished more softly.
“You didn’t tell him you’re pregnant?”
Mel shook her head. “No.”
“You didn’t tell him you’re having his baby—that he’s fathered your child?”
“What was I supposed to do? Write him a postcard? And where was I supposed to send it? Until he called, I didn’t even know where he was!” Until he called, she didn’t even know if he was still alive. But he was. He was still alive….
“Melody, that was a very, very, very bad thing to do,” Brittany said as if she were five years old again and had broken their mother’s favorite lamp by playing ball in the house. “A man has a right to know he’s knocked up his girlfriend!”
“I’m not his girlfriend. I never was his girlfriend.”
“Sweetie, you’re having this man’s baby. You may not have been his girlfriend, but you weren’t exactly strangers!”
Melody closed her eyes. No, they were anything but strangers. They’d spent three days in that hotel room in that Middle Eastern city whose name she couldn’t pronounce, and another three days in Paris. In the course of those six amazing days, they’d made love more times than she could count—including once in the miniature bathroom on board the commercial flight that had taken them north to France.
That was her doing. She’d wanted him so badly, she couldn’t bear to wait until they touched down and took a taxi to their hotel. The plane was nearly empty—she’d thought no one would notice if they weren’t in their seats for just a little while.
So she’d lured Jones to the back of the plane and pulled him into the tiny bathroom with her.
After three days, she had learned enough of his secrets to drive him wild with just a touch. And Jones—he could light her on fire with no more than a single look. It wasn’t long before the temperature in that little room skyrocketed out of control.
But Jones didn’t have a condom. He’d packed his supply in his luggage. And she didn’t have one, either….
Making love that way was not the smartest thing either of them had ever done.
Brittany went to the answering machine and rewound the message, playing it again and writing down the phone number he left. “What does he mean by ‘I know you said what you said before you got on the plane for Boston…’? What’s he talking about?”
Melody stood up. “He’s talking about a private conversation we had before I came home.”
Brittany followed her out of the room. “He’s implying that you were the one who broke off whatever it was you had going.”
Melody started up the stairs. “Britt, what I said to him is not your business.”
“I always just assumed that he dumped you, you know. ‘So long, babe, it’s been fun. Time for me to go rescue some other chick who’s being held hostage.’”
Melody turned and faced her sister, looking down at her from her elevated position on the stairs. “He’s not that type of man,” she said fiercely.
She could practically see the wheels turning in Brittany’s head. “Now you’re defending him. Very interesting. Fess up, Sis. Were you the one who dumped him? Jeez, I never thought you’d turn out to be the love-’em-and-leave-’em type.”
“I’m not!” Melody started up the stairs again, exhaling noisily in frustration. “Look, nobody dumped anyone, all right? It was just a…fling! God, Britt, it wasn’t real—we hardly even knew each other. It was just…sex, and lust, and relief. A whole lot of very passionate relief. The man saved my life.”
“So naturally you decide to bear his child.”
Melody went into her bedroom and turned to shut the door, but Brittany blocked her.
“That’s what you told him before you got on the plane home, isn’t it? That crap about sex and lust and passionate relief? You told him you didn’t want to see him again, didn’t you?”
Mel gave up and sat down wearily on her bed. “It’s not crap. It’s true.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if this man is your missing half, your one true love?”
She shook her head vehemently. “He’s not.” God, over the past seven months, she’d asked herself the same question. What if…?
It was true that she missed her Navy SEAL. She missed him more than she was willing to admit. There were nights that she ached for his touch, that she would have died for a glimpse of his smile. And those amazing green eyes of his haunted her dreams.
But what she felt wasn’t love. It wasn’t.
Brittany sat next to her on the bed. “As much as you talk about passionate relief, sweetie, I just don’t see you as the type to lock yourself in a hotel room with any man for six solid days unless he means something special to you.”
Melody sank back against her pillows. “Yeah, well, you haven’t met Harlan Jones.”
“I’d like to meet Harlan Jones. Everything you’ve told me about him makes him sound like some kind of superman.”
“There you go,” Melody said triumphantly, sitting back up again. “That’s my point exactly. He’s some kind of superhero. And I’m just a mere mortal. What I felt for him wasn’t love. It was hero worship. Jones saved my life. I’ve never met anyone like him before—I probably never will again. He was amazing. He could do anything. Pilot a plane. Bandage my feet. Cut his sandals down to fit me yet make them look like new. He spoke four different languages, four! He knew how to scuba dive and skydive and move through the center of an enemy compound without being seen. He was smarter and braver and—God!—sexier than any man I’ve ever known, Britt. You’re right, he is a superman, and I couldn’t resist him—not for one day, not for six days. If he hadn’t been called back to the States, I would’ve stayed with him for sixteen days. But that has nothing to do with real love. That was hero worship. I couldn’t resist Harlan Jones any more than Lois Lane could resist Superman—and that’s one relationship that could never be called healthy, or normal, either.”
Brittany was silent.
“I still think i
t’s wrong not to tell him about the baby,” she finally said, setting the paper with Jones’s phone number on Melody’s bedside table. She stood up and crossed the room, pausing with her hand on the doorknob. “Call him and tell him the truth. He deserves to know.”
Brittany left the room, closing the door behind her.
Melody closed her eyes. Call Jones.
The sound of his voice on her answering machine had sparked all sorts of memories.
Like finding the bandage he wore under his shirt on the back of his arm. They had been in her hotel room and she had been in the process of ridding him of that crisp white dress uniform, trailing her lips across every piece of skin she exposed. She’d pushed his jacket and then his shirt over his shoulders and down his arms, and there it was—big and white and gauze and covering a “little” gash he’d had stitched up at the hospital that morning.
When she pressed, he told her he’d been slashed with a knife, fighting off the men he’d surprised in the hangar at the air base. He’d been stabbed, and he hadn’t bothered to mention it to either Harvard or Melody. He’d simply bandaged the wound himself, right then and there, and forgotten about it.
When she asked to see it, he’d lifted the gauze and shown her the stitches with a shrug and a smile. It was no big deal.
Except the “little” gash was four inches long. It was angry and inflamed—which also was no big deal to Jones, since the doctor had given him antibiotics. He’d be fine in a matter of days. Hours.
He’d pulled her back on top of him, claiming her mouth with a gentleness astonishing for a man so strong, intertwining their legs as he took a turn ridding her of more of her clothes.
And it was then Melody knew for dead certain their love affair was not going to be long-term.
Because there was no way this incredible man—for whom rescuing strangers deep inside a terrorist stronghold and getting sliced open in a knife fight was all in a casual day’s work—would ever remain interested in someone like drab little Melody Evans for long.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 80