“I figure sooner or later she’ll get tired of hiding and she’ll come out and talk to me.”
“She’ll have to come out tomorrow morning,” Andy pointed out. “She’s got to go to work.”
“Well, there you go,” Jones said. “Of course, by Monday morning, I’ll be AWOL. Unless I can arrange more leave. Hell, with the amount of vacation time coming to me, I figure I could sit out here on this porch until Thanksgiving.”
More leave? Melody closed her eyes. Oh, God, no…
“That would be a stupid way to spend your vacation.”
“Yeah, it would be,” Jones agreed. “But if that’s what I’ve got to do…”
“But you don’t,” Andy argued. “She doesn’t want you to stay. She doesn’t want to marry you. If I were you, I’d’ve been out of here a long time ago. ’Cause, like, what do you get out of this anyway? I mean, seven months ago, yeah, she was probably pretty hot. But now she’s all…well, no disrespect intended, but she’s all fat and funny-looking.”
Melody grimaced in despair. Andy was only a kid—what should she care what he thought of her physical attractiveness? But she did care. She cared what Jones thought and she braced herself, waiting for his response.
“She’s ‘fat and funny-looking,’ as you so tactlessly put it, because I made her that way,” Jones countered. “I did this, I got her pregnant, and I’ve got to make it right. I don’t deal with my problems by running and hiding like some kind of frightened girl.”
Melody couldn’t stand it any longer. Not only was she some awful fat and funny-looking problem, but she was cowardly, as well.
She headed downstairs and threw open the front door before she gave herself a chance to think. “I am not hiding,” she announced as she stepped out onto the porch.
Andy looked startled at her sudden appearance, but Jones just smiled as if he’d been expecting her.
“I knew that one would get you out here,” he drawled.
He was sitting back in one of the lounge chairs, legs crossed at the ankles, hands behind his head, elbows out, just the way she’d pictured him.
“You were listening?” Andy actually had the sense to look embarrassed.
“Yes,” Melody told him tartly. “I was listening. With my fat and funny-looking ears. I was practicing the Appleton skill of eavesdropping.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“For me to overhear. Yeah, no kidding, Einstein. And you still owe me an apology for making me chase you across the world yesterday.”
“I’m sorry,” Andy said.
His quick and seemingly sincere apology caught her off guard. “Well, good,” she said. “You should be.”
Jones smiled at Andy. “Thanks for keeping me company, but I think you’ll probably understand when I say scat.”
Andy was gone before Melody could blink.
Jones sat up, putting one leg on either side of the lounge chair, leaving space on the cushion in front of him. He patted the cushion. “Sit down. You look like you could use a back rub.”
He was right. The tension of the past few hours had turned her shoulders into knots. But there was no way she was going to let him touch her. That would be sheer insanity.
“Come on,” he whispered, holding out his hand for her. His impossibly sexy smile almost did her in.
But she sat down on the other lounge chair instead. “You know darn well where we’d end up if I let you give me a back rub.”
His smile didn’t falter. “I was hoping we’d end up having dinner.”
“Right. And we’ve never had dinner without it leading directly back to my bed,” she said bluntly. “Jones, what possible good could come of our sleeping together?”
The warmth in his eyes got hotter. “I can think of one hell of a reason—to remind you how really good we were together.”
“When we had sex,” she clarified.
“The rest of the time, too.”
Melody had to laugh. “There was no rest of the time. We were either having sex or unconscious.”
“We spent two days together behind enemy lines and I hardly even touched you the entire time.”
“That was foreplay,” she told him. “For you, anyway.”
His smile was gone and his eyes were nearly neon green in their intensity. “You don’t really believe that.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what to believe—I don’t know you well enough to do more than guess. But it sure seemed to me that while I was scared to death, you were having fun.”
“I was doing my job. And part of that job was to keep you from losing faith.”
“You did it well,” she told him. “I had total faith in you. God, I would have followed you into hell if you’d told me to.”
“So where’s your faith in me now?” he asked quietly.
Without his smile to light him up, Jones looked tired. He looked as if he’d slept about as well as she had last night—which was not well at all.
“The faith I have in you is still as strong,” Melody said just as softly. “I believe—absolutely—that you think you’re doing the right thing. But I also believe that getting married would be a total disaster.” She sat up, her conviction making her voice louder. “You’d never be happy married to someone like me. Jones, I work with the local Brownie troop, going around picking up trash on the side of the road for excitement. And when I’m feeling really adventurous, I volunteer down at the Audubon Bird Refuge. Believe me, I’m really boring.”
“I’m not looking to recruit you to join the Alpha Squad,” he argued. “I have six teammates—I don’t need to be married to a SEAL.”
“And I don’t need to be married to a SEAL, either,” she countered. She leaned forward. “Don’t you see, Jones? I don’t want to be married to someone like you. I want to find a boring, regular, average, normal man.”
“I’m as average and normal as the next guy—”
She cut him off. “Oh, please!”
“I am.”
“Yeah, I can just picture you in the yard with an edge trimmer or cleaning out the gutters. Or helping me shop for baby furniture—oh, that’s right up your alley! You can ‘take the point’ when we go to the mall,” she said, using some of the military terminology he’d taught her during their brief time together.
Jones shook his head, trying to hide his smile. “Come on, Mel. You said yourself you don’t know me well enough to—”
“I know enough to be convinced that you’re the polar opposite of average.”
“How can you be so sure?” He threw her own words back at her. “We were either having sex or un conscious.”
Jones stood up, and she knew she was in trouble. She held up one hand before he could move any closer. “Please don’t touch me.”
He sat down next to her anyway, invading her personal space, invading her senses. God, he smelled so good. “Please don’t tell me not to touch you,” he countered in that slight Western drawl that melted her insides and weakened her resolve.
He lightly trailed his fingers through her hair, not quite touching her. “We can make this work,” he whispered. His eyes were a very persuasive shade of green, but there was something in his face that told her he was trying to persuade himself as well. “I know we can. Come on, Mel, say you’ll marry me, and let’s go upstairs and make love.”
“No.” Melody pushed herself up and off the chair, desperate to get away from the hypnotizing warmth in his eyes. God, he made her dizzy. She pulled open the screen door and reached for the knob….
Locked.
The door was locked.
She tried it again, praying it was only temporarily stuck. But it didn’t budge. Somehow it had swung shut behind her and now was tightly locked.
She and Brittany kept a spare key hidden beneath a loose board under the front welcome mat, but when she lifted it up, there was no key to be found. Of course not. She’d used that key the last time she’d locked herself out. And it was sitting where she’d left it—on the foy
er sideboard. She could see it through the window, gleaming mockingly at her from among the piles of junk mail.
She could feel Jones watching as she fought the waves of nausea that hit her one after another.
She was locked out.
None of the downstairs windows was open—Brittany had just finished reading a heart-stoppingly scary serial-killer suspense novel and had been making a point to lock the windows at night. Even the mudroom windows were tightly shut. The only open window in the house was the one in the baby’s nursery—the tower room, way up on the third floor.
She was going to have to ask for Jones’s help.
She turned toward him, taking a deep, steadying breath. “Will you help me, please? I need a ride to the hospital.”
He was up out of the chair and next to her in a fraction of a second. “Are you all right?”
Melody felt a twinge of regret. For the span of a heartbeat, she allowed herself to wish that the concern darkening his eyes was the result of love rather than responsibility. But she wasn’t into playing make-believe, so she quickly pushed those errant thoughts aside and forced a smile.
“I’m locked out. I need to go get Brittany’s key. I think she’s probably still at work.” Please God, let her be there…
“As long as we’re going downtown, why don’t we stop and have some lunch?”
“Because I don’t want to have lunch with you, thank you very much.”
He inched a little closer, reaching out to play with the edge of her sleeve. Touching, but not touching. “So, okay, we’ll skip lunch, drive into Boston and catch the next flight to Vegas instead. We can get married before sundown at the Wayne Newton Wedding Chapel or someplace equally thrilling. No, don’t answer right away, honey. I know the thought overwhelms you and leaves you all choked up with emotion.”
Melody laughed despite herself. “God, you’re never going to give up, are you?”
“No, ma’am.”
The tips of his fingers brushed her arm, and she pulled away, straightening her back. “I can be as stubborn as you can.”
“No, you can’t. You dull, boring types are never as stubborn as us wild adventurers.”
Another wave of dizziness hit, and she reached behind her, suddenly needing to sit.
Jones held her elbow, helping her down into one of the chairs. “Is this normal?”
She pulled her hand free from his grasp. “It’s normal for me.”
“As long as we’re going to the hospital, maybe we should get you checked out. You know, make sure everything’s okay…?”
She sat back in the chair, closing her eyes. “Everything’s okay.”
“You’re looking a little green.”
She felt him sit down next to her, felt the warmth of his leg against her thigh, felt his hand press against the clamminess of her forehead. But she didn’t have the strength to move. “I feel a little green. But that’s normal—for me, or so my doctor tells me. Every now and then, I throw up. It’s part of my particular pregnancy package. I just sip some ginger ale and nibble on a cracker and then—if I’m lucky—I feel a little better.”
“And the ginger ale and crackers are…?”
“Conveniently stored in the kitchen,” she finished for him. “Inside the locked house.”
“Hang on—I’ll get ’em.”
She felt him stand up and she opened her eyes to see him step off the porch. “Jones…”
He flashed her a smile. “There’s no such thing as locked,” he told her and disappeared from sight.
COWBOY UNFASTENED THE screen and pushed the window up even higher. He slipped into the house and looked around as he slid the screen back into place.
This room had recently been painted. The walls were white and the window frames were bright primary colors. There was a band of dancing animals stenciled across the walls in those same brilliant hues.
He was standing in a nursery.
Some kind of baby dresser thing was against the wall and a gleaming white crib was set up in one corner of the room. Several silly-looking teddy bears were already waiting in the crib, their mouths set in expressions of blissful happiness.
Cowboy picked one of them up. It was as soft and furry as it looked, and he held it as he took in the rest of the room.
A rocking chair sat near the open window. It, too, had been painted white, with several of the same dancing animals carefully stenciled on the back. A package of what looked to be brightly patterned curtains and several curtain rods had been set on the dresser—a project yet to be completed.
It was obvious that Melody had already spent a great deal of time getting this room ready for her baby.
Their baby.
What had she been thinking about as she painted those yellow, red and blue animals on the walls? Had she thought of him at all? Had she wondered where he was, what he was doing?
He gazed into the teddy bear’s plastic eyes, unable to keep from smiling back at its loopy grin. But then his smile faded. If Melody had her way, his son was going to know this bear’s face better than Cowboy’s. This bear was going to be the kid’s constant companion while Cowboy would be a stranger.
He felt a rush of anger and frustration that quickly turned to despair. He couldn’t blame Melody for her mistrust. Everything she’d said was based in truth.
They didn’t know each other very well at all. And marriage did need more than sex and physical attraction to make it work. Growing up in a household filled with arguments, anger and tension could well be worse than growing up in a household without a father.
And it wasn’t as if he was any kind of major prize. Sure, he’d made the maverick jump from enlisted seaman to officer, but it wasn’t as if he had any great aspirations to follow in his own father’s footsteps and become an admiral.
He had a little money saved, but not a lot. In fact, it was barely enough to pay for that ring he’d bought at the local jeweler’s. He’d spent most of his disposable income on his car and that sweet little powerboat that was docked down in Virginia Beach right this minute. He liked things that went fast and he’d spent his money accordingly.
He hadn’t even considered saving up. The need for financial security hadn’t crossed his mind. He’d had no intention of settling down and starting a family for a good, long time.
But now here he was. Standing in his soon-to-be-born son’s nursery, his insides tied in a knot because there was no way out, no easy solution.
There was only the obvious solution—the grit-your-teeth and shoulder-your-responsibility solution that involved marriage vows and a shockingly abrupt change in lifestyle.
But hell, he’d made this baby; now he was going to have to live with it. Literally.
Cowboy gently set the bear back in the crib.
Right now, he had to go downstairs and fetch Melody some ginger ale and crackers from the kitchen. And then, despite his own doubts, he had to go out on that porch and convince her to do right by this baby and marry him.
Except every time he sat down next to her, every time he gazed into her heaven-blue eyes, every time he as much as thought about her, he wanted to skip the negotiations. He wanted nothing more than to swing her up into his arms and carry her into the house. He wanted to take her into her bedroom and show her exactly how well they could get along. He wanted to bury himself inside her, to lose himself in the sweetness he’d only known in his dreams for the past seven months.
Despite the fact that her near-perfect body was swollen with child, he wanted her so much he could barely breathe. He’d never even glanced twice at a pregnant woman before—in fact, he’d considered the lack of an hourglass figure to be something of a major turnoff. But now he found himself fascinated by the changes in Melody’s body. And he couldn’t deny the extremely primitive rush of masculine pride he felt every time he saw her.
He had done that. He had possessed her and made her his own.
In everything but name.
Of course, that insane sense of pride was a
ccompanied by a healthy dollop of toe-curling fear. How on earth was he going to be a good father when he didn’t have a clue as to how a good father acted? And how the hell was that enormous, destined-to-be-six-feet-three-inches, Harlan Jones-sized baby going to be delivered from petite little Melody Evans without putting her at risk and endangering her life?
And how was he going to react on his next counterterrorist mission with Alpha Squad, knowing he had a wife and son waiting for him—depending on him—at home?
He went down a few steps and pushed the nursery door open, then found himself in what had to be Melody’s bedroom.
It smelled like the perfume he’d caught a whiff of both yesterday and today. It smelled like Melody—sweet and fresh. The room was a little messy, with clothes flung over the back of a chair, and the bed less than perfectly made.
Her sheets had a floral print that matched the bedspread. Throw pillows spilled over onto the hardwood floor. Her bedside table was cluttered with all kinds of things—books, a tape player, CDs, bottles of lotion and nail polish.
It was a nice room, pretty and comfortable and welcoming—a lot like Melody herself.
Cowboy caught sight of his reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the closet door. The starkness of his dress uniform accentuated his height and the width of his shoulders, and surrounded by the tiny rose-colored flowers and the lacy curtains, he looked undeniably out of place.
He tried to picture himself dressed down in civilian clothes, in jeans and a T-shirt, with his hair loosened from its rather austere-looking ponytail, but even then he didn’t seem to fit into the pretty picture this room made. He was too big. Too muscular. Too male.
Cowboy squared his shoulders. That was just too damn bad. Melody was going to have to get used to him. Or redecorate. Because neither of them had any choice. He was here to stay.
He went down the stairs and found the kitchen.
The entire house was decorated in a pleasant mixture of both antiques and more modern furnishings. It was neat, but not obsessively so.
He searched the cabinets for some crackers and found a box that boasted unsalted tops. He grabbed the package and a can of ginger ale from a refrigerator that was nearly filled with fresh vegetables and went down the hall to the front door. He opened it, making sure it was unlocked before he stepped out onto the porch.
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 86