She was going to have to start by pulling away from this de licious kiss that was making her knees feel even more rubbery than usual. She was going to have to unlock her fingers from the thick softness of his hair. She was going to have to be tougher than this.
Melody stood up, slipping free from his embrace. "Excuse me," she said. It was amazing how she could sound so calm when inside she was experiencing an emotional tornado. "I have to go inside." He stood up, too. "Alone," she added.
He tried to hide his frustration by taking a deep breath and smiling. "Mel, honey, what do I have to do to convince you—"
"I think the presence of your tent on my property constitutes trespassing. I'll thank you very much to remove it."
He laughed at that. "I figured this way it was hidden behind the house. I thought the fewer people who knew about it, the better. But if you insist, I'll move the tent over into the Roma-nellas' yard. Vince said that would be okay. Of course, then everyone in town will be able to see it from the street."
"I don't care," Melody said. "Odds are everyone in town knows it's there already."
He took a step toward her and she took a step back. "Mel." He held out his hands, palms facing down as if he were calming a wild animal. "Think about this for a minute. We're both on the same side here. We're both trying to find the best solution for this situation."
"Jones, I know you don't really want to marry me," she said. "What I don't know is how you'd be able to make yourself say those wedding vows. It would all be a lie. 'Til death us do part. Yeah, right. Until divorce us do part is more like it. You know it as well as I do."
He leaned back against the porch rail, folding his arms across his chest. "You're right about the fact that I don't want to get married," he admitted. "But if I've got to marry someone, I'd just as soon have it be you."
"And I'd just as soon have it be someone normal—" She cut herself off. "God, haven't we had this conversation already?"
"Yes," he said. "And I'm going to say it again. I'm no different from any other man."
"Except for the fact that when you get in a knife fight with four-to-one odds against you, you win." Melody shook her head. "Jones, don't you see how incredibly out of place you are here?"
"I'm a SEAL," he said. "I've been trained to adapt to any environment or culture. Appleton, Massachusetts, shouldn't be that big a deal." He straightened up. "Where's the edge trimmer? In the garage?"
She blinked. "What? Why?"
He adjusted his baseball cap as he went down the steps and started walking backward along the path toward the garage as he talked. "You said you couldn't picture me using an edge trimmer. I'm going to help you out by actually letting you watch me use one."
Melody's laughter was on the verge of being hysterical. "You're not going to leave, are you? You're just going to stay here forever and torment me."
He stopped walking. With the sun shining down on him, glistening off his tanned skin, gleaming off his gold-streaked hair, he looked invincible. "That depends on your definition of 'torment.'"
Melody sat down on the steps, fighting the urge to burst into tears. She was so tired. She had all that she could handle working three-quarters time during these past few months of a difficult pregnancy. There was no way she could do that and go one-on-one in a battle of wills with a man who didn't know what it meant to quit Jones came back toward the porch, his eyes darkening with concern. "Honey, you look a little tuckered out." His voice was soft. "Maybe we should skip the lawn-care demonstration so you can go on upstairs and catch a nap before dinner, huh?"
She knew what he was doing. He was trying to show her that he knew the words and music to the middle-class, suburban song. He was trying to be normal. His words sounded as if they'd been married for years.
But all he'd proved was that he'd watched a few dozen reruns of The Cosby Show, or Family Ties. It was one thing to mimic and play pretend games. It was another thing entirely to keep up die pretense of being happily married for the rest of his life.
Melody hauled herself to her feet. "You are not normal," she told him. "You'll never be normal. And don't kiss me," she added. "Ever again."
Another of his smiles slipped out as he reached for her again, but she escaped into the house, locking the screen door behind her.
"Thank you for hanging the curtains in the nursery," she told him stiffly through the protection of the screen. "But the next time you come into my house uninvited, I will have you arrested."
If Jones's smile faltered at all, she didn't see it.
Chapter 8
"You did what?"
"I gave him a key," Brittany repeated calmly as she checked the rice and turned on the burner underneath the wok, bending over to adjust the gas flame.
Melody's knees were so weak she had to sit down. "To the house?"
"Of course to the house." Brittany added some oil to the pan and went back to cutting up the vegetables for the stir-fry. "What good would an open invitation to use the bathroom and the shower be without a key to the house?"
Melody put her head in her hands. "Brittany, what are you doing to me?"
"Sweetie, your SEAL'S been living in the backyard for almost a week now—"
"Thanks to your first asinine invitation!" Melody proceeded to give a ridiculously unflattering imitation of her sister's voice: "No, Lieutenant, of course we don't mind your tent in our backyard. Of course, Lieutenant, you're welcome to stay as long as you like.' I was waiting for you to offer to do his laundry and lay a chocolate out on his pillow each night. Jeez Louise, Britt, didn't you even consider the fact that I might not want him underfoot twenty-four hours a day?"
Her sister was not fazed. "I'm not convinced you know what you want."
"Whereas you do?"
The oil was hot enough, and Brittany tossed thin slices of celery into the wok. "No."
"Yet you insist on encouraging him to stay."
"My encouragement hardly makes up for your discouragement. But since he hasn't gone away yet," Brittany said, "I think it's a pretty strong indication that he intends to stay until you give in."
"I'm not going to give in."
Brittany turned to face her, knife in hand. "That's right. You're not going to give in—if you keep doing what you're doing. When you leave for work in the morning, you make a beeline for your car. When you come home, you make a beeline for your room. You haven't let the poor man say more than three sentences to you in the past four days."
Melody lifted her head. "The 'poor man'?"
Brittany returned some of her attention to her cooking, adding broccoli and thinly cut strips of zucchini squash to the wok. "I'm with Estelle and Peggy on this one, Mel. I know that's hard to believe—those two seeing eye to eye with me—but it's true. We think you should stop thinking only of yourself and marry the man."
Melody sat up even straighter. "You swore when I first told you that I was pregnant that you wouldn't lecture me. You said you'd support me whatever I decided to do."
"What I just told you wasn't a lecture," Brittany said firmly, stirring the vegetables. "It was an opinion. And I am supporting you, the best way I know how."
"By giving Jones a key to the house and an open invitation to just walk hi whenever the mood strikes him?"
"The man is a gem, Mel. This yard has never looked so good!"
Of course the yard looked good. Every time Melody turned around, Jones was outside her window, raking the leaves or tinkering under the hood of Brittany's car or lifting enormous amounts of weights. Every time she turned around, she caught a flash of sunlight reflecting off smooth, deeply tanned muscles.
Whether it was sunny and sixty degrees or drizzling and barely fifty, Jones went outside without a shirt on. Whether he was working in the yard or sitting and reading a book, he was naked from the waist up. You'd think that after a while she'd get used to the sight of all those muscles rippling enticingly in the sunshine or gleaming wet from the rain.
Yeah, right. Maybe i
n her next lifetime...
"And I don't know what your lieutenant's done to my car, but it hasn't run this well in years," Brittany added. "You really should let him look at yours."
"He's not my lieutenant. And if a smoothly running car is what you're after," Melody said hotly, "maybe I should marry Joe Hewlitt from the Sunoco station instead."
"You're impossibly stubborn," Brittany complained.
"Can we talk about something else?" Melody pleaded. "Isn't there something going on in the world that's more interesting than my nonrelationship with Harlan Jones?"
Brittany made room at the bottom of the sizzling wok for the cubes of tofu she'd cut. "Well, there's always the latest installment in the Andy Marshall adventure."
Melody braced herself. "Oh, no. What did he do this time?"
The stove timer buzzed, and Brittany turned off both it and the heat beneath the rice. "Tom Beatrice caught him outside the liquor store on Summer Street. He'd just given Kevin Thorpe ten bucks to buy him a six-pack of beer and a pack of cigarettes."
"Oh, Andy, you didn't..." Melody sighed, resting her chin in the palm of one hand. "Damn, I thought he was finally adjusting to Appleton."
She'd seen Andy out in the yard, hanging around Jones while he worked. Jones always had time to talk. Sometimes he even stopped to toss a ball around with the kid. She'd been secretly impressed with his patience and hoped that Andy had finally latched on to a man who was, indeed, a worthy role model.
There was no doubt about it. The boy was starved for affection and attention. Melody had ran into him a few times downtown over the past week.
The first time they talked, he'd hesitantly reached out to touch her belly again, smiling almost shyly when the baby kicked.
The second time, she'd bumped into him—literally. His cheek was scraped and his lip was swollen, and although he'd insisted he'd fallen off his bicycle, she knew Alex Parks and his friends had been giving the younger boy trouble again. The third time, he'd actually greeted Melody with a hug. He'd said hello to the baby by pressing his face against Mel's stomach—and got kicked in the nose for his trouble. That sent him rolling on the ground with giddy laughter.
He was a good kid. Melody was convinced that deep inside he had a sweet, caring soul. He shouldn't be trying to grow up so fast, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. "He's only twelve. He probably doesn't even like the taste of beer."
"He's twelve going on thirty," Brittany said grimly, "which, at the rate he's going, is how old he'll be when he finally gets out of jail. It's a wonder Tom didn't lock the little jerk up."
"Who's Tom and which little jerk didn't he lock up?"
Melody's shoulders tensed. Just like that, merely at the sound of Jones's voice, she was an instant bundle of screaming nerves.
He was standing on the other side of the screen door, looking into the kitchen.
"Tom Beatrice is the Appleton chief of police. And the little jerk is the kid who's running for Troublemaker of the Year— Andy Marshall. Come on in," Brittany called from the stove. "Dinner's almost ready."
Melody stood up, crossing to stand next to her sister. "You invited him to dinner?" she whispered through clenched teeth.
"Yes, I invited him to dinner," Brittany said evenly. "There's beer in the fridge," she told Jones. "Help yourself. And if you don't mind, would you grab one for me and pour a glass of milk for Mel?"
"It'd be my pleasure. Hey, Mel." Jones had dressed for the occasion. He was actually wearing a T-shirt with his jeans, and his hair was pulled back from his face in a single neat braid. "How're you feeling?"
Betrayed. Melody sat down at the kitchen table and forced a smile. "Fine, thanks."
“Really?" He sat down directly across from her, of course, where she wouldn't be able to keep from looking at him while they ate. Why did he have to be so utterly good-looking? And why did he have to smile at her that way all the time, as if they were constantly sharing a secret or a very personal private joke?
"Mel's been having trouble with backaches again," Brittany announced as she set the wok on a hot pad in the middle of the table.
Jones took a sip of his beer directly from the bottle as he gazed at Melody. "I'm available any time you want a back rub."
She remembered his back rubs. She remembered them too well. She looked everywhere but into his eyes. "Thanks, but a soak in the tub'll take care of it"
Jones took the serving bowl filled with steaming rice that Brittany handed to him. "Thanks. This looks delicious. What's up with Andy Marshall?"
"The little fool was caught trying to get his hands on beer and cigarettes," Melody told him.
Jones paused as he dished out the rice onto his plate, stopping to look up at her. "Shoplifting?"
She shook her head. "No. He paid Kevin Thorpe to buy them for him."
Jones nodded, passing her the heavy bowl. "At least he wasn't stealing."
Their fingers touched, and Melody knew damn well it wasn't an accident. Still, she ignored it. Her heart could not leap when he touched her. She simply would not let it. Still, she had to work to keep her voice even. "He shouldn't be drinking or smoking. Whether or not he stole the beer and cigarettes is a moot point."
"No, it's not. It's—"
The phone rang, interrupting him.
Brittany excused herself and stood up to answer it "Hello?"
Jones lowered his voice. "I think the fact that Andy didn't simply go into the store and walk out with a stolen can of beer in his pocket says a lot about him."
"Yeah, it says that he wanted more than one can of beer. He wanted an entire six-pack."
"It says he's not a thief."
“I’m sorry," Brittany interrupted. "That was Edie Myerson up at the hospital. Both Brenda and Sharon called in sick with the flu. I'm going to have to go over and cover for at least two hours—until Betty McCreedy can come in."
Melody looked up at her sister in shock. She was leaving her alone with Jones? "But—"
"I'm sorry. I've got to run." Brittany grabbed her bag and was already out the door.
"Where's Andy now? Do you know?" Jones asked, barely missing a beat in their conversation, as if the situation hadn't just moved from embarrassingly awkward to downright impossible to deal with. He took a mouthful of the stir-fry. "Man, this is good. After a week of Burger King and KFC, my body is craving vegetables."
Melody set down her fork. "Did you and Brittany plan this?"
He washed down his mouthful of food with a sip directly from his bottle of beer. "You really think I'd stoop to lying and subterfuge just for a chance to talk to you?"
"Yes."
Jones grinned. "Yeah, you're right. I would. But that's not what this is. I swear. Your sister invited me for dinner. That's all."
The stupid thing was, she believed him. Brittany, on the other hand, had probably planned to leave right from the start.
Melody picked up her fork but couldn't seem to do more than push the food around on her plate as Jones had a second helping. Her appetite had vanished, replaced by a nervous flock of butterflies that took up every available inch of space in her rolling stomach.
"So how's work?" he asked. "Are you always this busy?"
"It's going to get frantic as the election gets closer."
"Are you going to be able to keep up?" He gazed at her steadily. "I got some books about pregnancy and prenatal care out of the library, and they all seem to agree that you should take care not to push yourself too hard these last few months. You know, you look tired."
Melody took a sip of her milk, wishing he would stop looking at her so closely, feeling as if she were under a microscope. She knew she looked tired. She was tired and bedraggled, and this dress she had on made her resemble a circus tent. How had Andy described her? Fat and funny-looking. "I'll be fine."
"Maybe I could come to work with you—act as your assistant or gofer."
Melody nearly sprayed him with milk. Come to work with her? God, wouldn't that be perfect? "Th
at's really not a very good idea." It was the understatement of the century.
"Maybe we should compromise," he suggested. "I won't come to work with you, if you stop ignoring me."
He was smiling, but there was a certain something in his eyes that told her he wasn't quite kidding.
"I haven't been ignoring you," she protested. "I've been practicing self-restraint."
He leaned forward, eyebrows rising. "Self-restraint?"
She backed off, aware that she'd already slipped and told him too much. She had to get out of here before she did something really stupid—like throw herself into his arms. "Excuse me." She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up, then carried her plate to the kitchen sink.
Cowboy took another long sip of his beer, hiding the relief that was streaming through him. He could do this. He could actually succeed in this mission.
He'd been starting to doubt his ability to get through to her, starting to think she just plain disliked him, but in fact the opposite was true. Self-restraint, she'd said.
Hell, she liked him so much she couldn't stand to be in the same room with him, for fear she wouldn't be able to resist his attempts to seduce her.
Yes, he could win this war. He could—and he would—convince her to marry him before his leave was up.
His relief was edged with something else. Something sharp and pointed. Something an awful lot like fear. Yeah, he could take his tune and make her see that marrying him was the only option. But then where would he be?
Saddled with a wife and a baby. Shackled with a ball and chain. Tied down, tied up, out of circulation, out of the action. A husband and a father. Two roles he'd never thought he would ever be ready to play.
But he had no choice. Not if he wanted to live with himself for the rest of his life.
Cowboy took a deep breath. "Mel, wait."
She turned to look warily back at him.
Cowboy didn't stand up, knowing that if he so much as moved, she'd run for the stairs. Damn, she was that afraid of him—and that afraid of the spark that was always ready to ignite between them.
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