by Mary McBride
. In spite of all the open windows, the minivan still smelled like Carl. Sonny'd even run the air conditioner full-blast in the hope that it would push out some of the foul odors, but no such luck.
They hadn't had much luck with the bust tonight, either. Everybody and his brother wanted in on it—the DEA, the Marshals, the Feebs—so that by the time a couple gallons of coffee were consumed and the chain of command was finally hammered out, Carl was so confused he barely knew where he was, much less where to locate Kinnison's new meth lab. Eventually Carl recognized the place on Third Avenue
, but it turned out to be merely a meth lab, not necessarily Kinnison's.
Then, since nobody volunteered to see their fragrant informant back to his refrigerator box, Sonny had taken him through a drive-thru for a couple of burgers before letting him out at his current address, the Bristol Avenue
overpass.
After he parked the van at the back of his house, he briefly considered checking on the place like a responsible property owner, then decided he'd much rather check out Melanie's house where the front light was still burning bright. He trotted up her front steps and looked down at the carpeted mat beneath his feet.
W, he thought, didn't just stand for Welcome. It also stood for Wonder, which was what he'd been doing most of the night. Wondering what had made her change her mind. W stood for Wine, too, and he wondered if the hint of liquid he'd detected in her voice was responsible for her sudden randiness and the unexpected invitation into her bed.
Last, but hardly least, W stood for Wallet. He slid it from his back pocket, opened it, and checked under the leather flap to make sure the condom he'd carried for the past year hadn't disappeared or disintegrated. With a sigh of relief, he saw that it was still there, although he wasn't sure about its condition. Hell, he hadn't carried one of these for a whole year since he was a hopeful and highly motivated sixteen-year-old.
After he slipped his wallet back into his pocket, he squatted to search for Melanie's key, which turned out to be wedged between layers of the mat. In his capacity as Cop on the Block, he was going to have to tell her to start leaving a spare key with a neighbor, preferably him, instead of a dead-giveaway spot like this.
He turned the key in the lock, then quietly walked inside. The smell of spaghetti sauce immediately hit his senses and made his mouth water, but it wasn't a late dinner that was on his mind.
Melanie was sound asleep upon the sofa in the living room, with one arm crooked beneath her head and the other curled against her chest. The oversize T-shirt she wore rode high on her hip, revealing a lovely length of thigh. Sonny just stood there, loving her, enjoying the view.
He was glad to see she still slept in those silly shirts. It was such an un-Melanie thing to do. She was really more the silk-and-satin type. Anything she did that went against her precise, perfect grain always pleased him for some reason. It might have been because her loving him, a lowly cop, had always struck Sonny as such an un-Melanie thing when she could have had her pick of slick attorneys, camera-friendly journalists, or any number of hot-shot politicians.
It wasn't easy to drag his gaze away to go to the kitchen to turn off the low heat under the pot on the stove, then to check the back door to make certain it was locked before he took her up to bed.
"Hey, baby," he whispered, brushing his lips across her ear. "Time for bed."
She smiled without opening her eyes. "Mmm. You're home."
He slid his hands under her shoulders, beneath her knees. "Here we go. Put your arms around my neck."
She did, sighing and clinging to him like a little girl who couldn't bear to wake from a sweet, sweet dream.
He negotiated the staircase gingerly, only to realize at the top that he didn't know which room was Mel's. A small lamp burned on a table in the second-floor hallway. He chose the door to the left of that, using his foot to push it open, and knew immediately he'd made the correct choice. It was Mel's room, all right, with the bed made up with military precision but nearly sagging beneath a couple dozen pillows. Big ones. Little ones. Square. Round. Heart-shaped. Needlepoint. Petit point. Cross-stitch. He'd forgotten half the things they were.
He remembered, though, that going to bed was always a damned production, first fighting the pillow collection and then having to contend with the tightly tucked-in sheets. As much as he'd grumbled about it when they were married, he wanted to laugh now. He'd missed everything about Melanie, including her stupid pillows.
This time, though, Sonny didn't bother sweeping the pillows onto the floor. He lay Melanie down in the center of them. While her arms still clung around his neck, he was tempted to taste the sweet wine-scented lips that were just inches from his face, but he knew once he started he wouldn't be able to stop. Or worse, because it had been so long since he'd last loved her, that he'd go the distance from start to finish in thirty seconds flat, which wouldn't exactly be an idyllic beginning to their second time around. And even worse than that was the fact that, without a decent shower in days, he probably smelled an awful lot like Carl right now.
He brushed his lips softly against hers. "I'm going to take a shower, babe. I'll be right back."
"Mmm," she murmured, her eyes still closed.
Sonny reached up and gently loosened her grip on his neck. He found the bathroom easily enough, and after he flipped the lights on, he caught himself smiling in the mirror as he surveyed the items decorating the white marble top of the vanity. A place for everything and everything in its place.
The soap dispenser sat just to the left of the hot-water faucet. Perfume bottles convened on the right atop a little mirrored tray, each label facing exactly the same way. In front of the fragrances, Melanie's comb and brush lay side by side, about an inch apart. Always the same distance between them. The little bathroom in his loft had been arranged identically when she'd lived there.
He remembered, during those six brief months of marriage, how he used to twit Mel by turning one or two bottles of her cologne the opposite way every time he left the bathroom, and how they'd always be back, facing the front like good little soldiers, whenever he returned. Or how he'd always playfully plant her comb crossways, deep in the bristles of her hairbrush, and then come back a short time later to find them once more neatly side by side.
God, how he'd missed her bone-deep sense of order. Right now, seeing all these objects in their proper spots only made him want her more.
He reached into the shower stall to turn on the water, and while he waited for it to heat, decided it would probably be a good idea to brush his teeth. Knowing Melanie as well as he did, he knew there would be at least six spare toothbrushes lurking somewhere, perfectly aligned in their unopened boxes.
Glancing at the drawers on the left side of the vanity, he pondered a possible location. Let's see. If he knew his girl the way he thought he did, they wouldn't be in the top drawer, whose space would be reserved for items used on a daily basis. And they wouldn't be in the larger bottom drawer where she'd keep only oversize things that didn't fit elsewhere, such as bottles of mouthwash and shampoo and cream rinse. That left drawers two and three.
On a hunch, he reached down and pulled the third drawer open. There, among spare disposable razors, extra bars of soap and tubes of toothpaste, and next to a little white bale of cotton pads, were half a dozen brand-new toothbrushes. Ha! He plucked out a blue one and shucked off the cellophane wrapper, which he obediently tossed in the tidy little wicker trash can.
Steam from the shower was already coating the mirror over the sink, so while he brushed his teeth Sonny couldn't discern the worried lines etched across his forehead. Melanie wanted a baby. And not just any baby now, but his. Once again he pondered the question that had been gnawing at him all evening long. Mel wanted his baby, but did she really want him, too?
The longer he thought about it, the more hesitant he became to start something—namely a child—that Melanie wasn't going to let him finish. She'd walked out on him once. What would
prevent her from walking out again, only this time taking his son or his daughter with her? He wanted to make damned sure that she was damned sure before that little boy or girl became anything more than the current gleam in his eye or the ache in his groin.
When he finished brushing his teeth, he looked around for a good place to put his toothbrush, then finally decided to play it safe by stowing it in his shirt pocket so he didn't disrupt the symmetry of Melanie's countertop.
Then, with a sigh, he shrugged out of his clothes, left them in a pile on the floor, and stepped into the billowing steam of the shower.
* * *
Nestled all snug in the pillows on her bed, Melanie listened to the rattle and moaning of the ancient pipes deep within the walls of her house. Sonny had just turned on the shower. It would be another five minutes, though, before he stepped under the cascading water. He'd brush his teeth, or shave, or put in eyedrops, do anything to dawdle while he waited to see if the hot water was going to turn ice cold.
The delay was one of his few idiosyncrasies, one he'd acquired during all those years of being shunted from one house to another, from one unknown plumbing system to another. It was more than just a preference for steaming hot showers. It was as if he'd decided early on that the world itself was cold and unpredictable enough without constantly risking the disappointment of hot water turning lukewarm on its way to freezing cold.
That's why he ate fast, too, without even being aware of it. Not that he'd ever actually told her, but Melanie knew from several heart-to-hearts with Mike that Sonny had gone to bed hungry more than a few nights in elementary school and junior high. One family in particular had made him wait until their natural children had eaten before the "foster boy" was fed, and then the mother, for lack of a better term, had always grabbed his plate before he was done because she wanted to finish cleaning up the kitchen.
She sighed and sank deeper into the pillows. It made sense. Her own childhood experiences were still dictating her behavior to this very day. Why would it be any different with Sonny? As a child, she'd had to keep everything in order to make certain her world didn't collapse, to keep from losing her father the way she'd lost her mother. Sonny had to eat fast before his plate was snatched away and he had to test the water to make sure it would stay hot.
What a pair! They were poster children for the notion that opposites attract. They were probably perfect mates with Sonny proving to her over and over that the sky wouldn't fall if she failed to make a list or to arrange everything just so, and with her proving to him that life could be beautifully predictable and utterly reliable.
Well … except she hadn't really done that, had she?
My God! Melanie jerked upright, spilling pillows onto the floor on both sides of the bed. She hadn't shown him that life could be predictable or reliable at all. What she'd done was walk out on Sonny, proving to him once more that nothing was reliable, that he shouldn't depend on anyone but himself. In all the months since their divorce, Melanie had never looked at it as anything but her own escape from his chaotic lifestyle. Not once had she considered it from his point of view, so it had truly never dawned on her that she was abandoning Sonny the same way his mother had, the same way all those foster families had.
How could she have been so selfish? How could she have been so ignorant, so blind to the possible damage her leaving might do to him? How could Sonny even consider taking a chance again after what she'd done to him?
All she wanted to do just then was to throw herself in his arms and ask him to forgive her, and at the same time to throw her arms around him and tell him she'd never hurt him again, never leave him again.
Unable to wait, Melanie scooted off the bed and headed for the bathroom where she could still hear the water running in the shower. When she opened the door, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the steamy atmosphere. Sonny's clothes were in a jumbled pile on the floor, and she had to battle her impulse to pick them up and neatly fold them. She must really be a sicko, she thought, if the urge to tidy up was almost as powerful as the urge to join her naked ex-husband in the shower.
She could see him through the wavy, wet glass of the shower stall, the details of his powerful body just a flesh-colored blur, but even so her heart beat a little faster and an urgent warmth she hadn't felt in a long, long time reverberated deep inside her.
"Sonny." She called his name softly, but he didn't hear her over the sound of the cascading water. She started to speak again, but just then came the sound of a cell phone buzzing somewhere in the pile of Sonny's discarded clothes.
No. No way. Not now. Sorry. This was one time she wasn't going to let his job or anything else come between them. There would be plenty of emergencies and interrupting calls in the future, hundreds of them, and she vowed that she wouldn't complain about a single one of them. But not this one. Not tonight.
Melanie bent down, fumbled until she found the little black phone tucked in the back pocket of Sonny's jeans, and pressed a button to put it out of commission.
Then, without any hesitation, without even bothering to take off her big T-shirt, she opened the glass door of the shower stall and stepped inside.
* * *
Sonny nearly jumped out of his skin.
He'd been standing with his eyes closed, nearly comatose under the pulsing stream of hot water while it pounded out some of the tight knots in his neck and shoulders. Then, all of a sudden, he felt a quick current of cool air on his back. He pivoted, and there was Mel with her hair getting wet and her pink T-shirt starting to mold itself to her lush, wonderful breasts. He didn't even have time to let out a surprised curse before she plastered herself against him and turned her pretty face up toward his for a kiss.
Ah, God. He'd actually been standing here thinking how Melanie would probably be fast asleep when he finally dried off and joined her on the pillowy bed, thinking how he'd almost be relieved that they'd be able to postpone making love until they'd come to an understanding about the future, about the two of them, or the three of them if that was going to happen.
But here she was, her wet arms winding around him, her wet mouth beckoning his. All of Sonny's good intentions shattered from the force of the explosion of his need.
A kind of whimper broke in his throat as he lowered his head to take possession of her mouth. At the same time his hands moved, one to curve around her neck, the other up beneath the wet cotton of her shirt. He'd barely sampled her mouth, though, before he was dragging the drenched shirt over her head and then kissing his way from her delicate shoulders and collarbone down to the fullness of her breasts.
Somewhere in the soggy recesses of his brain a little voice cautioned Sonny to be smart, to take it slow. But he wasn't smart. He was on fire. He couldn't take it slow. He no longer knew the meaning of the word. And neither, it seemed, did Mel.
With her wet mouth at his ear, she pleaded, "Now. Oh, God, Sonny. Please. Now."
With his hands hooked under her arms, he lifted her enough for her legs to circle his hips.
"Hang on, baby," he whispered as he slid his hands around to cup her backside, getting a firm grip, and then eased inside her as gently as he could considering the almost diamond hardness of his erection and the fierceness of his need.
If her soft moan was from pleasure or pain, he didn't know. He couldn't even think anymore. Only feel. Only give himself over to pulsing water and rising steam and wet flesh and the heat ripping through him.
Melanie, too. For every thrust, she begged for more, harder, faster, until Sonny's vision blurred and there was nothing in the world but white light and water and the rocketing hot pleasure of their climax.
Her legs were trembling when he lowered her. Still holding her against him, Sonny turned off the water. He opened the glass door and snagged a towel.
"Are you okay, babe?" He tilted her chin up and gazed into her eyes. "Mel?"
She let her breath out in a shaky sigh. Her lips were slightly swollen, but they managed to twitch into a s
mile. "Was it always like that?"
"Not always," he said with a little laugh. "If it had been, I think we'd both be dead by now."
"Or burned to a crisp."
"That, too." He smoothed his thumb across her mouth. "What a way to go, though, huh?"
He wrapped her in the big soft bath towel and carried her back to bed.
* * *
Melanie awoke an hour or so later and smiled. Just smiled like a simpleton. A sated simpleton. There was nothing in all creation to compare with the radiant heat of a naked man in bed.
She stretched, almost perversely enjoying the dull ache in her thigh muscles and lower back. Reaching her hand across the several inches of mattress that separated them, she ran her palm lightly along Sonny's arm and shoulder, relishing the feel of his skin and the tough musculature just beneath it. She listened to the cadence of his breathing, not even caring if that tiny rough catch turned into a full-fledged snore.
Good Lord, she must really have it bad, she thought, if Sonny's snoring was suddenly the music of the angels.
Once again, she tested the various parts of her body that ached or felt tender. It wasn't so much that she was out of shape, but just that it had been so long since she'd had such explosive sex. If ever.
She smiled again in the darkness and was about to let herself drift back to sleep when it suddenly occurred to her to wonder if she was pregnant. All she'd thought about earlier during the mind-blowing, toe-curling sex, if she'd thought of anything at all, was the mind-blowing, toe-curling sex itself. She remembered what Peg had said on her last day at city hall, about insemination by the genuine article as opposed to the artificial means.
Her smile widened perceptibly as she reached out to touch Sonny again, and she fell asleep thinking that the real thing was definitely the way to go.
* * *
Chapter 12
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Early the next morning, Melanie was still smiling as she moved around the kitchen fixing breakfast. Unlike most mornings, though, she kept getting distracted.