by Mary McBride
"I'm looking at a minivan."
His partner's eyes widened. "Jeez, Sonny. You really are serious about this."
"Nothing wrong with a minivan, pal."
"I didn't say that. Hey, I've got one myself." Mike snickered. "They build character."
Sonny took another sip of beer, wondering if it was too late to return Patrolman Moore's money. Probably.
"Nice going on that rape last night," Mike said. "Turned out the guy had a couple dozen priors. He's going away for a long time."
"That's good. This Cop on the Block deal might not be such a bad idea after all." As Sonny well knew, the thinking was otherwise in the department. The low-cost loans were great, but nobody thought it was going to make a damn bit of difference in the crime rate. Not that he was going to express that opinion to Mel, though.
"Hey, I ran into an old pal of yours yesterday. Elijah Biggs. He said to tell you to keep your nose out of his business. Well, he said it a little more colorfully than that, actually."
"I can imagine. He didn't happen to mention Lovey, did he? I was supposed to hook up with her a couple nights ago and she never showed up."
Mike shook his head. Just then the radio in his car gave out a garbled squawk. He sighed and stood. "No rest for the wicked, I guess. When's your vacation up, anyway? I don't like seeing my partner having so much damn fun on a Monday afternoon."
"Another week."
"Good. Oh, and I'm supposed to tell you to bring Melanie for dinner just as soon as you get a rope around her."
"Will do."
Sonny sat watching Mike respond to his radio call, trying to not feel envious, pretending his own adrenaline wasn't kicking in when Mike slapped his red light on the hood and peeled away from the curb.
He finished his beer and the last granola bar, then went back to work, hauling the trash that seemed to be breeding faster than he could carry it out.
* * *
A little before six o'clock, after her long and wonderfully dreamless nap and before she called the garage to send a mechanic over first thing in the morning, Melanie tried to start her car again.
"I'll be damned," she muttered when she turned the key and the engine promptly caught and then idled without so much as a glitch. She sat there a moment, blinking, thinking that if this had happened seven and a half hours ago, if the car had started, she'd be pregnant right now. Her baby would be born in January and all her plans would fall into place like perfectly spaced dominoes.
But who knew? Maybe if her car had started, she might have been in a terrible accident on her way to the doctor's office—or worse, on her way home.
Not that she felt like belting out a chorus of "Que Sera, Sera," but Melanie was willing the accept the verdict of fate. There was something to be said, she supposed, for a February baby. Little Alex or Alexis would be ten months old at Christmas, perhaps even starting to walk. That would be nice.
"Hey! How'd you get the car started?" Sonny was walking toward her, looking sexy as hell in jeans, a black T-shirt and a black wool blazer worn to conceal his shoulder holster. She didn't even want to imagine the scrap of black silk underneath. The total effect was I'm - not - a - drug - dealer - but - I - can - put - you - in - touch - with - one. She had always suspected that he was a frustrated actor since he played his undercover parts so well.
"I have no idea," she said. "All I did was turn the key and it started right up."
He leaned down, bracing his forearms on the window well. "You missed your appointment this morning, huh?"
"Yes." That was pretty much all she intended to say on the subject, so she hoped he wouldn't pursue it toward the inevitable argument.
He didn't, thank heavens. His response was to cock his head and offer her one of those deeply bracketed smiles that were always guaranteed to scare up a flock of butterflies in her stomach. His eyes turned that warm Bahamian blue under lashes as thick and shady as palm leaves.
"How about coming to dinner with me, Mel?" Sometimes the register of his voice made her tingle like a tuning fork. How the hell did he do that? She meant to say no, but heard herself ask, "Tonight?" instead.
"Now," he said, opening her door. "Come on. I'm famished. I thought I'd walk up to Papa Delgado's on Grant. Come with me."
"Well, I…"
"Come on. Lock up your car. Lock up your house. Let's go."
"I really hadn't planned…"
"I know," he said, and then reached into the car to pluck the keys from the ignition. "You don't have to plan everything, Mel. Some things just happen, darlin'."
That was precisely what she was afraid of.
* * *
Chapter 8
« ^ »
It was a lovely spring evening. In the park, the white dogwoods were turning a luscious pink as they soaked up the color of the sunset. Millions of leaves seemed to have popped open in the past twenty-four hours. The air had a touch of perfume in it. Sonny never noticed these details unless he was with Melanie. Without her, his environment was simply light or dark, hot or cold, wet or dry. Just one more reason he needed her, he thought. She civilized him.
And she needed him to add a little spontaneity to her rigid life, to make her laugh, not to mention returning missing spark plugs to her vehicle.
The worst of the rush-hour traffic was over now, but still Sonny linked his fingers protectively through Melanie's as they stood on the corner of Channing and Grant, waiting for the light to signal Walk.
Just as the light changed, a car sped through the intersection and squealed to a stop right in front of them. Well, calling it a car was an understatement. It was a two-tone, blue-and-white, heavy-on-the-chrome, convertible, pimp mobile. The license plate proclaimed Bigg Man, and that's just who appeared when the tinted window on the passenger door slid down. The big man. Elijah Biggs.
"You been hiding from me, Randle," he said, his lips sliding into a wide, oily smile.
Sonny shrugged. "Not well enough, I guess. You're blocking the intersection, Biggs."
"I'm looking for Lovey."
"Haven't seen her."
The pimp's gaze moved from Sonny to Melanie, paused for an appreciative moment, then returned. "Nice," he said. "Very nice. A little on the skinny side, though. Not much meat on those dainty white bones."
Sonny tightened his grip on Melanie's hand. The light changed and cars started honking.
"I'm going to write you up for obstructing traffic if you're not out of here in two seconds, Elijah."
The big man shivered, then smirked. "I'd sure hate that, Lieutenant. You see my Lovey, you tell her I'm looking for her. And you better tell her soon, you hear, or you'll be seeing me again. You know what I'm saying?"
The dark window glided back up. Biggs stepped on the gas and peeled away.
"Skinny," Melanie mumbled as she glared at the departing car. "Who was that?"
"Nobody," Sonny said, resenting the hell out of the fact that his job had once again encroached on his love life. His real life.
"Wasn't Lovey the woman you were talking to the other day outside Stover's?" she asked. "The one you wrote down your phone number for?"
He nodded.
"And now she's missing?"
He nodded again.
"Are you worried about that?"
It was Melanie who looked worried with her forehead crimped and her brows drawn together. The last thing he wanted was for her to be thinking about all the pimps, prostitutes and pure dregs of humanity he spent time with on the street. With his thumb and forefinger on her chin, he angled her frowning face up into his.
"Not tonight, babe. Tonight I'm worried about whether or not Papa Delgado's will have that red clam sauce you like so much. They didn't the last time we were there. Remember?"
Her gaze cut away from his for a second as if the memory were unwelcome, but then she laughed. "It wasn't red clam sauce. It was white. I remember the garlic."
Oh, yeah. So did he. When they'd made love later that night, she'd tasted like garlic.
Everywhere. Ever since then, just walking into an Italian restaurant made him hard.
The light changed again. Sonny pulled her arm through his. "You're right. It was white. Let's go get some," he said.
* * *
Papa Delgado's was crowded for a Monday, and they had to sit at the densely packed bar for half an hour with their shoulders rubbing and their knees colliding before their table was ready. Melanie was having a really good time, but she kept telling herself she wasn't.
This was too much like when they were first dating, when Sonny focused his blue-green eyes on her to the exclusion of everything and everyone else, when he was sweet and charming and no doubt drugging her or putting her under some sort of wicked spell. She took another sip of her Chablis, swished it around in her mouth a second to see if she could detect something strange in its taste. Well, just because she couldn't taste it didn't mean it wasn't there.
He refused to talk about work. Instead he regaled her with stories of his partner Mike's TV-sitcom home life and the adventures of Baby Jacob, who seemed to consider both Legos and pocket change as edible.
"He swallowed coins?" Melanie gasped.
"Seventeen cents."
"Oh, my God." In all her fantasies about motherhood, she hadn't once imagined a kid who snacked on nickels and dimes. "What did Connie and Mike do?"
Sonny shrugged. "Just waited for it to come out. Jakey only gave back sixteen of the seventeen cents, though."
"How…?" And then it dawned on her. "Oh," she said, suppressing the eeuuww.
The maître d' signaled that their table was ready, and Melanie excused herself to make a trip to the ladies' room. While she washed her hands, she stared at her face in the mirror. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were pleasantly flushed, and the corners of her mouth curled upward, giving the distinct impression of a happy person, which struck her as pretty outlandish since nothing had gone right since Friday afternoon.
She grimaced on purpose, then rummaged in her handbag for her lipstick, and while she dragged the color across her lips, she admitted to herself that she was still in love with Sonny. Who knew? Maybe she always would be. But that didn't alter the fact that she couldn't live with him.
"So don't look too happy," she warned her image in the mirror.
She found him at a table for two in a far corner of the back room, and then ignored his warm hand on her back when he stood to pull out her chair.
"I ordered for you, babe," he said, sitting down. "I hope you don't mind."
"Mind?" She could almost feel the furrows as they appeared across her forehead and the line that dug in between her brows. Her mouth tightened. "No, I don't mind."
Just after she spoke, the waiter slid a salad plate onto the table in front of her. "House salad, madam, with the house vinaigrette on the side."
"Perfect. Thank you." Across the table, she caught the little glint of victory in Sonny's eyes. "Okay. So you paid more attention while we were together than I thought," she said a bit grudgingly.
"Give me a little credit, Mel."
She didn't want to. She knew him too well. Give Sonny Randle an inch and he'd go for a mile. Give him a little credit and he'd eventually break the bank. Or her heart.
He looked pretty smug all the way through the salad, and when their entrées arrived, Melanie knew why. He had ordered her the white clam sauce, but instead of the usual linguine, he had requested angel-hair pasta. Her preference.
"Thank you, Sonny. That was nice of you," she said without a trace of sarcasm.
"My pleasure, darlin'."
* * *
They were strolling home, and Sonny couldn't stop thinking about garlic. Crossing Grant, Melanie had slipped her arm through his and now her hip brushed against his with every step they took. Their conversation was easy and comfortable, devoid of sarcasm or bitter little zingers about their failed marriage. Mel was actually laughing. And he kept thinking about garlic.
Well, sex, actually. It had been so long since he'd had any that he might very well be confusing it with garlic, he thought. It wasn't that he hadn't looked at other women in the past year. He'd looked plenty. The minute word got out about his divorce, he'd been swamped with invitations for good home cooking, as if that was what he missed most about being married.
He'd looked, but he hadn't touched. Sometimes, when he let himself really think about it, which wasn't often, it scared the hell out of him wondering if he'd ever again want anyone but Melanie. Considering the depth of his need, it surprised him that he hadn't jumped her bones already on her sofa or in the front seat of her car or right here, right now, walking down the street.
Better just think about garlic, he warned himself.
"Do you think I am, Sonny?" Her question seemed to come out of nowhere.
"Do I think you're what?"
"A pill? A pain in the ass? Or … what was it you used to call me?"
"A picker of nits?" he suggested, trying to not laugh.
Much to his relief, Mel burst out laughing. She clung even tighter to his arm as her laugher dissipated to a series of sighs. "I guess I am. I don't know any other way to be. Details are important to me."
"I know that, babe," he said softly. "How could you grow up the way you did and not be a control freak?"
Her feet quit moving. Her arm jerked out of his. "I am not a control freak."
Oh, brother. He should have stayed with the garlic.
"Okay. Maybe that isn't quite what I meant," he said, backpedaling for all he was worth.
Her chin came up and her hands settled on her hips. "Well, just what did you mean, then?"
"I meant that you like your world to have a certain order."
"That's true," she murmured.
"Well. See. That's all I meant. Come on." He took her hand and started down the sidewalk again.
"Control freaks try to control others," she said. "I don't do that. Do I?"
He shook his head. This wasn't a good time to remind her that she'd spent her all her waking hours from age ten to age twenty-eight micro-managing her weirdo father, who apparently couldn't even go to the john without specific guidelines from his daughter.
"I'm not," she said again, even more vehemently, obviously unsatisfied by his silent response.
This time it was Sonny who halted. He turned her to face him, and then draped his forearms over her shoulders and bent his forehead to touch hers. "You're not a control freak, Mel. You're just highly organized. But, hey, if you ever do want to control somebody, look no further than me."
"You probably could use a keeper," she muttered grudgingly as garlic wafted up and hit Sonny's senses like a jolt from a cattle prod. He nearly staggered.
"Keep me," he whispered.
"What?"
Her head snapped up, and her wide eyes searched his. For just a second he was seeing her though a fine mist, a wavering film that he quickly blinked away.
"I said 'Keep me.'" This time his voice was more or less under his control. "I really need you, Mel."
It was her voice that broke. "Oh, Sonny."
He couldn't prevent his fingers from sliding into her hair or his hands from angling her face for his kiss. She tasted like garlic and good wine and just plain Melanie. He deepened the kiss, needing to consume her completely, and she didn't resist.
At his back, a passing car honked.
"Go for it!" a voice yelled.
"You go, man!"
Sonny broke the kiss with a muted growl. "Come here." He pulled Melanie into a narrow walkway between two houses.
He couldn't think. He couldn't stop. Blood was hammering in his veins. In the darkness, he backed Melanie up against the side wall of the house, pinned her there with his weight, pressed into her warmth while he devoured her with kisses that she returned with equal fervor.
Like a kid on a hot date, he wrenched her blouse from her waistband and slid his hand along her ribs, up over the lacy fabric of her bra. It wasn't the gentle overture of a husband or even a randy date, but a
headlong assault by a pirate who'd been at sea too long, a cowboy who'd been months out on the trail, a wild man who hadn't been with a woman in a year.
He was too rough. He knew it, but he couldn't help himself. God. She tasted like sex itself. Her wet mouth. Her sleek tongue.
"Sonny! Stop!"
He couldn't.
"Sonny!" she said more insistently, pushing at his shoulders. "Stop! I mean it. Listen."
Then somewhere in the distance, with what was left of his brain, he heard it.
A woman's voice crying out.
"Fire! Fire! Somebody help!"
* * *
They raced down Channing, already aware of a sickening orange glow in the sky and flames shooting from the upper windows of a house in the middle of the block. The McKinleys? Melanie racked her brain to remember who lived there. Not the McKinleys. It was the Forresters. They had three little girls.
Sonny was holding her hand, but she realized she was holding him back.
"Go," she told him, holding the stitch in her side and gulping in air that already smelled like smoke. "Hurry. I'll catch up."
Without her, Sonny was able to sprint much faster. By the time she got to the house, he was nowhere to be seen.
People were pouring out of houses all around the square, some of them shouting as they ran toward the burning house, some of them looking frightened and dismayed in their approach.
"Did somebody call the fire department?" Melanie asked a tall man in striped pajamas whom she didn't even recognize.
"Probably," he said. "But let's do it again." He pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his pajama top and punched the three-digit emergency number.
"Melanie!" Joan Carrollis grabbed her by the elbow. "This is just terrible. What if it spreads to the Dieffenbachs' house? The whole block could go up in flames. My God. What should we do?"
At this point, Melanie was far more worried about people than property. "Is everyone out of the house?"
Joan blinked. "I don't know."
Melanie listened for sirens and heard only the rush and crackle of the fire, the shouts of the crowd. There had been complaints at city hall about the department's slow response times. When she'd read "It took them eleven minutes" or "We waited a full fifteen minutes," the times hadn't made much of an impression on her. They did now. Each of them seemed like an eternity.